History of Armley Mills
Setting the wheels in motion – The Birth Of Armley Mills
The earliest record of Armley Mills dates from the middle of the sixteenth century when local clothier Richard Booth leased 'Armley Millnes' from Henry Saville.
A document of 1707 provides the first description of the mills. 'That Fulling Mill in Armley... containing two wheels and four stocks... also the water corn mill and all the fulling mills... containing one wheel and two stocks.' By 1788 Armley was equipped with five waterwheels powering eighteen fulling stocks.
'Fulling' is one of the final processes in cloth production, it involves pounding the cloth with large hammers in pits filled with a mixture of water, urine and 'fullers earth', causing the fibres to mat together or 'felt'. Fulling was the earliest process to move into purpose-built mills.
Founding fathers
In 1788 Armley Mills was bought by Colonel Thomas Lloyd who turned it into the world's largest woollen mill. Lloyd was a Leeds cloth merchant who had prospered and risen to become Deputy Lieutenant of the West Riding and Commander of the Leeds Volunteer Infantry.
In 1804 Benjamin Gott agreed to buy Armley Mills from Colonel Lloyd, but in November 1805 the mill was almost entirely destroyed by fire.
Gott re-built the mill from fireproof materials, using brick and iron wherever possible. It is Gott's mill which survives largely intact to this day.
Gott was a major figure in the history of Leeds and the wool industry in general. He was active in local politics, becoming
Mayor in 1799 and was also a leading and enthusiastic patron
of the arts.
Upstairs Downstairs
Although Colonel Lloyd re-built Armley Mills in 1788 he did not personally run the Mills. Instead they were leased to Israel Burrows and Christopher Hill. Hill was later replaced by Israel's brother John and the pair lived in two newly built semi-detached houses above the Leeds and Liverpool canal.
The central part of the house was composed of living rooms and bedrooms, while the shorter wings at either end contained kitchens, cellars, and on the first floor loom shops where the brothers are believed to have made their own cloth for fulling in the nearby Mills. The lower northern wing of the house has since been demolished. The current displays are not intended to reproduce the original décor but to highlight the differences in lifestyle between a wealthy mill manager and a working class weaver.
Victorian Innovation – Full Steam Ahead
Armley Mills prospered under Gott's management, exporting its wares to North and South America, Europe and the Far East. Gott became one of the largest employers in Britain, as well as one of the most wealthy. He died in 1840 and his sons John and William took over the business. They introduced the first steam engine to Armley Mills in 1850 to supplement, not replace, the waterwheels which continued operating into the 1860s.
From the 1860s the mill was leased to Kinnear, Holt and Company who installed spinning machinery. During the 1880s and 1890s various tenants occupied the mills engaged in a variety of trades usually, though not always, related to the textile industry. Then in 1907 the firm of Bentley and Tempest took over the whole building.
Carding was a method of straightening and arranging woollen fibres, using machines such as this, to prepare it to be spun into yarn. It could be dangerous work. In 1822 George Dyson, age 13, was killed at Armley Mills after being trapped in a Carding Engine.
Warping Mill. From this piece of equipment the yarn was wound round a beam and loaded onto the loom.
Decline and Closure
In 1907 the woollen clothing manufacturers Bentley and Tempest, who had been one of several tenants, became the sole occupiers of Armley Mills.
Ironically one of the firm's founders, Steward Tempest, had begun his working life at Armley as a 'half timer' at the age of 6 in the 1840s.
Like many other textile mills, Armley could not cope with the combination of the loss of markets as the British Empire split up, the increase in competition from abroad and the increasing use of man made fibres.
In 1969 the mill finally closed as a business and, in recognition of its historic importance was bought by Leeds City Council, re-opening in 1982 as Leeds Industrial Museum.
Leeds – A City Built On Wool
Leeds, situated between the hill farms of the Pennines and the crop producing areas of the East Riding, has a long history of involvement in the wool trade.
Originally the cloth market was actually held in the open air on Leeds Bridge, before moving, in the eighteenth century, into a series of purpose built cloth halls.
Leeds' position as a centre of the cloth trade was greatly enhanced by the opening of navigable waterways – the Aire and Calder Navigation in 1690 and the Leeds/Liverpool Canal in 1700 – which provided a direct link between Leeds and its customers and suppliers in Europe, Australia and the Americas.
Dark Satanic Mills
In 1801 there were about 20 factories in Leeds, not all of them textile mills. By about 1838 there were 106 woollen mills alone, employing 10,000 people.
The new mills replaced traditional skilled operatives. Leeds was transformed into a major city, creating extremes of wealth alongside poverty, cultural opportunities alongside environmental devastation, learning alongside ignorance.
Working conditions in the mills were unregulated and frequently appalling, children were particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, working long hours in terrible conditions. In one notorious case in 1832 a child died in a Leeds mill when he was not allowed to stop work to go to the toilet.
Heavy Metal
The demand for machinery and equipment produced by the textile industry created opportunities for engineers in Leeds. One of the first was Matthew Murray, who after helping John Marshall introduce machinery into the flax spinning industry, was a leading figure in establishing the company of Fenton, Murray and Wood at the Round Foundry in 1795.
Here they produced textile machinery, steam engines and locomotives, including the world's first commercially successful steam locomotive which came into service in 1812 for the nearby Middleton Colliery.
During the nineteenth century many small, and some giant, engineering companies grew in Leeds, exporting locomotives, cranes, traction engines and other heavy engineering products around the nation and around the globe.
By 1861 engineering was the second largest employer in the city and by 1900 the biggest, employing 20% of the male workforce.
The firm of Boulton and Watt in Birmingham were so alarmed by Matthew Murray establishing a works in Leeds that they bought adjoining property in an effort to prevent the company expanding, they also engaged in blatant spying or, as it is now known, industrial espionage.
Off The Peg
In the second half of the nineteenth century the woollen industry 
in Leeds declined in the face of competition from other growing towns like Bradford. Another textile related industry appeared to take its place, often in the mills abandoned by the woollen manufacturers - ready made clothing. The inspiration behind this new industry came from John Barran. Barran came up with the revolutionary idea of off the peg, ready-made clothing.
In the 1850s Barran applied new technology to the industry introducing Singer sewing machines and, more innovatively, a new type of band knife made by Leeds engineers, Greenwood and Batley. The industry flourished in Leeds with a number of companies involved who later 
became household names, such as Burtons and Hepworths.
The big clothing factories were supplemented by large numbers of sweatshops where Jewish immigrants, driven from Russia and Poland after 1881, provided a cheap workforce. The importance of the industry can be gauged from the fact that by 1911 a quarter of women workers in Leeds were employed in the clothing industry.
Hot off The Press
The first known printer in Leeds was John Hirst who in 1718 began printing the 'Leeds Mercury' newspaper. In 1810 there were still only eight printing houses in Leeds but in the next decade the numbers mushroomed. By 1911 printing was the fourth largest employer in Leeds, employing 8000 people.
Printing was, and remains one of Leeds' most important industries, both because of the number of small and large printing houses and the local engineering companies which produced printing machinery and equipment. Advances by Leeds printing engineers gave the city's industry an early advantage in colour printing.
Leeds printing engineers like Crabtree's exported printing presses all over the world, and the small town of Otley to the north west of Leeds became famous for printing press manufacturers and the 'Wharfedale Press'.
Notable Leeds printers included Alfred Cooke's, which was established in 1866 and by 1895 had built the world's largest printworks and enjoyed Royal Patronage (the building still stands on Hunslet Road). Another famous Leeds printing company was John Waddington Ltd, which started life printing posters for the theatre around 1900 and then diversified into games and packaging, most notably Monopoly, in 1935. By 1993 Waddingtons employed 2700 people in Leeds and exported their products all over the world.