Regent Cotton Mill, Failsworth History (original) (raw)

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| | The Regent Cotton Mill, Failsworth IntroductionThe Regent mill was built as a fine-looking cotton mill, one of only five in the Oldham area to have been listed as worthy of preservation [1]. The mill reached its centenary in 2006 and I have been interested to discover something of its history because my grandfather, William Dunkerley, was the overlooker there. The present owners of the mill are Salton Europe Ltd., an American domestic appliance business. For the story of the Regent Mill as experienced by its Overlooker click here.The Regent mill was a child of Oldham. That is, it was spawned by the cotton-spinning interests of Oldham which, at the time, was the greatest cotton-spinning town in the world. The cotton masters of Oldham were keenly competitive; when times were good, they rushed to capitalise new mills, some, inevitably, coming on stream just as the market subsequently turned down. Famine followed feast and losses profits.The years from 1891 to 1896 were particularly tough and it was about this time that Samuel Andrew, a long-serving Secretary of the Employers Association, complained, "we go on building mills and cannot make them pay" [2]. But this was ever the way capitalism works in limited liability companies. Optimism outruns prudence, hope leaves caution behind.From 1896 trade began to revive and with profits once more restored the promoters soon set about planning additional capacity. Between 1900 and 1908 fifty-five new mills were built in the Oldham district, thirty-seven of them from 1905 to 1907. One of them was the Regent mill in Failsworth.Birth of an IdeaWe do not know precisely when the concept of the Regent mill first arose, or when the band of men who were to be the driving force behind it first met to discuss the project. It was probably somewhere in Oldham, because the founders were all Oldham men, and we can guess that it might have been about 1903, for the earliest known documentary evidence of any progress is a plan of the card shed, dated June 1904 .A founding group probably needed to have a solicitor to deal with the necessary legal proceedings of establishing a limited liability company, and this was William Chadwick of Greenfield. For practical expertise in organizing production the group could count on Jesse Thorpe, already a mill manager. Daniel Sutcliffe and John Bardsley Fray, who described themselves as ‘_merchants_’, provided general business experience, and Samuel Edwin Shaw, a yarn salesman, could contribute marketing expertise. John Taylor Dawson was the accountant and George Stott, a famous mill architect, rounded off the pool of skills. All these men eventually became substantial shareholders in the new enterprise and several of them had an association with the venture for over twenty years. One of them would finally petition for its liquidation.George Stott was the son of an experienced mill-building architect and became known for the superb proportions and meticulous detailing of the facades of his projects. The Regent mill stands as a fine memorial to him. It is likely that Stott acted as a promoter of projects of interest to him and habitually invested in the mills he built; he eventually became the second-largest individual shareholder in the Regent.More than one hundred of Stott’s plans for the mill are preserved in the archive at Oldham Local Studies in Union Street (see figure above), including beautiful hand-tinted floor plans and a wonderful elevation of the main building. Most of the plans carry dates from which it is evident that work had begun by June 1904 and proceeded apace in 1905 and 1906.Incorporation and ConstructionIn fact the company was incorporated on 25th July 1905 as The Regent Mill Company Limited, registered initially at 125, Union Street, Oldham . It’s main purpose was ‘_To carry on the trades or business of cotton spinners, manufacturers, dyers, finishers, bleachers, merchants, doublers, and cotton waste dealers in any or all of their branches…_’ The company’s capital was to be £80,000 divided into 16,000 shares of £5 each. The initial shareholders, with holdings, were Chadwick, Sutcliffe, Thorpe, Shaw, Fray, each with 250 shares, Stott with 20 and Dawson. Shares would be offered to the public and of the £5 nominal value only 5/- (five shillings, or one quarter of a pound) was required on application with a further 2/6d (one eighth of a pound) on allotment. Any subsequent calls would not exceed 5/- at a time and it was anticipated that not more than £2 would be called up in total. Before the company could allot shares, 60% of the proposed 16,000 shares had to be applied for, and this milestone was achieved on 18th August 1905. There were only thirty-five shareholders, and one suspects that the directors carefully placed the stock with their friends, family and business contacts. The first share register shows that the largest holders were Turner Mayall of Liverpool, cotton brokers (2,000), Stott (1,500), Sutcliffe (1,050), Joseph Smethurst, a builder from Hollinwood (600), Shaw, Thorpe, Fray and Wilson (500 each), Samuel Smethurst, a builder from Oldham (450) and John Chadwick, solicitor (400). These ten men thus initially owned half the shares and controlled the company. By December an additional sixteen shareholders had signed up and a few others appeared in 1906, among them Arthur W. Butterfield, described as a Merchant. Another substantial shareholder, who appeared on the register in 1907, was John Wood & Sons, Stock and Share Brokers, of 42, Clegg Street, Oldham (1,310).The initial directors, who had to hold at least 250 shares each, were Chadwick, Thorpe, Shaw, Fray and Wilson, the last a mill manager from Oldham. Dawson was to be the Secretary. Sutcliffe had become the sixth Director by October 1905 and Butterfield the seventh by March 1906.To build the mill, capital was called up from the shareholders, but loans were also taken on, normal practice in the industry. On 30th September 1907 the land and mill were mortgaged for £30,000.The Regent mill was erected on a superb site between the Rochdale canal to the southeast and the main road from Oldham to Manchester to the northwest. Raw cotton could be brought to the mill from the growing areas in the southern United States via the Manchester Ship Canal, and exports could follow a similar route to the sea. In addition the Rochdale canal could provide water for the boilers and be used for the delivery of coal and other supplies. The main road allowed easy vehicular access, and the railway line from Manchester to Oldham could be accessed from Failsworth station, two minutes walk from the mill. This would have been very useful for ease of movement of personnel, including management and merchants.Stott advanced rapidly with the project. The mill was to be based on ring-spinning technology, more modern than the mule frames generally used in Oldham. Mule spinning was a discontinuous process that required the use of highly-skilled, and well-paid strongly unionised labour. In contrast ring spinning was continuous and could be tended by semi-skilled, lower-paid and much less militant workers. Ring frames needed less headroom than mule frames, which meant the mill building could have a lower profile. The Regent mill was to use cast iron supports with triple-brick arches and be faced with the superb quality red glazed Accrington brick, set off with buff sandstone ornament. It was topped by a tall tower bearing the name ‘REGENT’ surmounted by a flagstaff, still there today, able to display a Union Jack on Empire Day and other suitable occasions, visible for miles around.The building was about 345 feet long and 130 feet wide, in its main parts. Beyond that, at the southern corner, there protruded the engine room and boiler house and the chimney was nearby. There was also a small detached block, located alongside the main gate, that contained the offices, comprising the watch house, the general office, a telephone room, lavatories and, in the south, the boardroom. This now contains a retail shop run by Salton.The engine room was lined with multicoloured, ornamental, glazed tiles and from it a rope race rose into the mill to give power take-offs on each floor. A flue ran from the boiler house to the chimney, located a few yards to the south. The chimney was 70 yards high, 9 feet 4 inches wide at the top, and set on a concrete base. In its heyday it would have belched thick black smoke across Failsworth as it was started up, an evil well tolerated by the inhabitants because it meant employment and prosperity.The main body of the mill comprised four storeys, but there was no cellar. On the plans, however, the ground level is referred to as the ‘_cellar_’. There were lavatories on two floors of the mill and fire escapes at the outside. The tower contained a water reservoir that fed the sprinkler system, in case of fire, and is still in use today.The ‘_cellar_’ contained the yarn cellar, the waste room, the cotton room, the dust room, the warehouse on the Oldham Road side, and a kitchen. The first floor was the card room, the second floor was the ring frame room and the third (top) floor was the winding, warping and beaming room.The mill was to be powered by one of the largest of twenty-nine inverted ‘marine’ type vertical engines built by Buckley and Taylor of Oldham with 1800 installed horsepower (ihp). The engine had a 63-inch diameter low-pressure cylinder and was sometimes loaded to 2,000 ihp. It ran until 1958, when it was scrapped.There were 60,000 ring spindles (in 1915), manufactured by Platt Brothers of Oldham. The mill was equipped with its own generator to provide electrical lighting, but gas lighting was used in the ‘_cellar_’. There was a ten-ton road weighbridge in the yard.The builders may have been the two Smethursts who were among the substantial early shareholders, but whoever they were, they were quick. Location of the company’s registered office was changed to ‘_Regent Mill, Oldham Road, Failsworth_’ on the last day of January 1906 and the mill was ready for operation later that same year.OperationsOn the ground floor, the cotton was taken in, probably as 220 kg bales, initially from barges at the Regent mill wharf of the canal. Perhaps later the bales were delivered to the mill by lorry. The bales were taken through storage, probably in the cotton room, and at the appropriate time moved upstairs to the card room.On the first floor, the bales were opened layer by layer and the cotton was blown into an upward-moving stream of air while dirt and trash settled downwards. The cotton fibres were then fed into the carding machines (or ‘_engines_’) where they were combed into a parallel band, called a lap, that was twisted into a loose sliver (pronounced as in ‘diver’) to be loosely wound into large ‘_cans_’ for storage and transport.A number of slivers were then blended repeatedly in draw-frames. Here a series of pairs of rollers, each set rotating slightly faster than the previous pair, drew out, further aligned, and blended the slivers. They were then reduced in a speed-frame to rovings of about 5 mm diameter and wound onto large bobbins. The cotton was then ready to be spun into yarn.Spinning took place on the second floor, the heart of the mill. Here the rovings were spun out on the ring frames until they had been made into the various qualities of yarn required by the weaving industry, either as warp or as weft. Ring frames comprised banks of feeder bobbins, drafting (or drawing) rollers, a ring and traveller to impart the necessary twist, and cops to receive the finished product. The ring frames could be set up to produce various yarns of different thickness[3]. For example, coarse yarns were needed to weave denims, fine ones for shirting, with an almost infinite variety between.Once a yarn had been spun it was sent to the third floor for preparation to customer specifications. For the warp, or longitudinal threads on the loom, many individual strands of yarn were prepared in a special way, a process known as ‘_warping_’. Cops of yarn from spinning were ranged in a warping frame and wound off onto a large warping beam, from where they could be wound onto a cylindrical roller, or beam[4], that would later be fitted into the back of a power loom and this was called ‘_beaming_’. For the weft the various qualities of yarn were simply wound onto bobbins of one type or another, to be ultimately loaded into shuttles for use on the power loom. A letterhead of 1908 described the company as ‘_Makers of ring yarn in warp, beam, bundle, cheeses and chains_’ and these were probably the Regent mill’s main output.The finished products from the third floor would be taken down to the ground floor and be stored in the Yarn Room and the Warehouse.The production from the mill would have been commercialised as widely as possible, and for this purpose the company maintained a position at the Manchester Exchange ‘_No. 8 Pillar_’.**Years of The Regent Mill Company Limited (RMCL)**The mill came into production at a good time. 1907 was described as a ‘_year of unbounded prosperity, the most remunerative ever experienced_’[2]. The shareholders did not know it, but this was to be the Lancashire cotton industry’s last period of prosperity, when pride and confidence seemed to boil over. One industry leader said ‘_Lancashire clothed the world and its workpeople are unique. However many mills are built we cannot hope to satisfy the needs of expanding world population_’[2]. The first balance sheet of the RMCL that is available at the National Archives was to 13th May 1909. By then the £5 shares were paid as to £1-7-6d making £22,000 of shareholders’ capital employed. There was loan and mortgage capital of £94,685 and the profit and loss account showed a positive balance of £1,755. The buildings were worth £45,923, the engines and boilers £14,391, machinery £58,665, stock in trade £12,417, debtors £1,995 and cash in hand a modest £56. Total assets were therefore £133,448. Clearly, beside the mortgage loan of £30,000 the company had taken on additional bank borrowings of about £80,000 to enable it to construct the mill and finance initial production. Things seem to have got off to a reasonable start, as shown by the small profit achieved. The following three years, however, seem to have been more difficult and the company showed cumulative losses rising to over £10,000 to 1911, decreasing in 1912 and moving to profit in the following year and in 1914. At this time the company commissioned plans to re-equip the carding room and to build a two-storey extension on the canal side of the mill. In 1916, Buckley and Taylor drew up plans showing the arrangement of a cross compound engine in the top room.Looking again at the financial situation of the company, losses followed in 1915 but then, as the First World War developed, and despite government controls on industry, there was a period of rising profitability. The balance on the profit and loss account rose from £1,781 in 1916 to £3,052 in 1917, before bounding upwards to £11,168 in 1918 as the war ended and controls came off. The experience of the Regent mill was similar to that of other mills in Oldham and it was anticipated that there would be a period of sustained prosperity as markets opened up again after the war, and normal life resumed.One of the consequences of removal of government control of the economy was a general increase in prices, including labour rates. The cost of building new mills soared – mills that before the war had cost £1 a spindle now cost £4 a spindle and mill owners right across Oldham saw an opportunity to cash in on the apparently increased value of their assets, by swapping equity for debt. Many of the limited companies began the process of recapitalisation, the Regent mill among them, and eventually these reconstituted concerns accounted for 46% of the total number of Lancashire spindles .Thus the management made a proposal at an Extraordinary General Meeting on 14th October 1919 to wind up the Regent Mill Company Limited and sell it to a new company to be called the New Regent Mill Limited (NRML). With the exception of Wilson, the main players of the RMCL were to reappear in the NRML and were to receive £24,000, less expenses estimated as £5,500, for their trouble.**Years of the New Regent Mill Limited (NRML)**On 23rd October 1919 the Memorandum of Association of the new company was issued. The initial subscribers, of one share each, were Sutcliffe, Dawson, Shaw, Fray, Charles Collinge Spencer (a contractor from Oldham) plus William Dunkerley and John Thomas Wild, both from Failsworth, respectively the overlooker and the engineer of the RMCL (see adjacent figure). William Dunkerley was my grandfather and had worked at the Regent mill since 1908.The Memorandum had been signed on 14th October, the same day it was agreed to wind up the old company. The new company was incorporated on 28th October, its registered address being Princes Street, Failsworth, the location of the mill. By 5th December it was reported that 200,000 shares with a nominal value of £1 each had been allotted, paid as to 10/-, raising £100,000. Consideration for purchase of the assets from the RMCL by the NRML was £200,000 cash. The balance paid must have comprised money loaned to the company. The directors were to have been Spencer, Shaw, Thorpe, Sutcliffe and Fray, but Spencer died in December and in January 1920 the other four made up the board.The initial balance sheet of the NRML showed assets and liabilities of £324,384. Share capital made up £100,000, loan capital £156,189, accounts owing were £28,292, owing to bank was £31,379 and the balance on the profit and loss account was £8,522. These were represented by assets comprising buildings, engines, boilers and machinery (less depreciation) of £249,267, stock of £39,979, debtors of £32,417 and cash in hand of £74. Thus about £120,000 had been added to the value of the Regent mill assets during the recapitalisation.The first share register, of February 1920, showed that most of the main players had taken large stakes in the new enterprise. Shaw had 40,430 shares, Fray 34,220, Sutcliffe 10,000, Thorpe 9,700 and Spencer (deceased) 5,000. Albert Riley, a manufacturer of blinds had 10,000, my grandfather and his brother Edmund Dunkerley, a warper from Oldham, each had 500 shares (see figure, below), the engineer, John Wild, had 750 shares and his assistant, Fred Whitehead, had 250. Quite a few of the other shareholders came from Southport or Blackpool and probably represented retired former cotton industry men, now with capital to speculate in the new boom. Many such men had holdings in several mills. However, besides William Dunkerley and the engineering staff, there were a few other local people who entrusted their savings to the venture. They included Annie Whitehead, spinster and landlady of the Royal Oak Hotel in Failsworth – possibly a relative of the assistant engineer – and Failsworth’s sub-postmaster with 250 shares. More than half the shares were held by six people, who thus controlled the business. The venture did quite well at first and in 1921 paid a dividend of 10 pence per share. However, the good times did not last. The post-war boom was short lived as market shortages were quickly satisfied and overseas competitors, particularly the Japanese, began savagely undercutting Lancashire prices. Lancashire had allowed costs to spiral out of control, the boom was unsustainable and the newly re-capitalised mills were unable to make a profit.What followed had been coming for over a hundred years. The Lancashire cotton industry imported all its raw materials and depended on overseas markets for most of its custom. The initial genius that had led to the invention of revolutionary cotton processing machinery and its successful application by vigorous entrepreneurs working in well-organized capital markets had become part of history. The big Lancashire machinery manufacturers, such as Platts of Oldham, had been exporting their products around the world as fast as they could and, inevitably, the machines were first copied and then improved upon. Labour in many countries was prepared to work for a fraction of the price of the Lancashire workers, and there were no strong unions able to force labour prices up. Lancashire, with the benefit of hindsight, had become a sitting duck.By 1922, in common with most of the mills of Oldham, the Regent mill was in difficulties. On 6th April it signed an agreement with its bankers, The London, Joint, City and Midland Bank, covering all its property and also ‘_12 leasehold dwelling houses_’ in Ashton Road West and Valentine Street, Failsworth.The mill was now unable to pay dividends. By 1926 losses has spiralled to £125,000, an enormous sum, and the company had been obliged to call up the outstanding unpaid monies on the shares so that all shareholders had to either double their stake in the venture, with no hope of a profit, or go bankrupt. It was a case of having to throw good money after bad and the hapless shareholders must have felt truly desperate. The creditors had instituted a scheme of arrangement to manage the debt, effectively taking over control of the company.The balance sheet to 20th January 1927 showed the same nominal share capital as before, namely £200,000, fully called up. Of this, £66,887 was still to be contributed but up to that time only 500 shares had been forfeited for non-payment. Total debt due from the company in respect of all mortgages and charges was £120,617 and total assets were £422,947. Losses for the year were £15,098, bringing total losses on the profit and loss account to a mammoth £153,326. The situation had become impossible. The shareholder’s register at this date showed that Shaw still owned 41,430 shares, Fray 30,970, Sutcliffe 10,000, Thorpe 9,700, the executors of Spencer 833, a Charles Fray had 5,000, Riley had 10,250, the two Dunkerleys had 500 each, Wild had 750, Whitehead 250 and poor Annie Whitehead of the Royal Oak Hotel had increased her holding to 2,450.Did these shareholders refuse to get out with their money while they could, or did they simply not see the bad times coming and end up unable to sell other than at a loss, if at all? We do not know, but my intuition tells me it was more a case of the latter than the former. I do know that my grandfather, William Dunkerley, paid his calls, as a matter of pride, although it left him close to bankruptcy and biased my grandmother against the cotton industry and my father against shareholding throughout his lifetime. (A marvellous poem of the time records the predicament of many in Oldham as demands for calls came in, and can be read here).It was John Bardsley Fray that pulled the plug on the NRML. On 14th November 1927 he petitioned the Chancery court for a winding up order, together with other petitioners, and the order was granted on 5th December. A Mr. Murgatroyd was appointed as liquidator, a position he occupied until the company was finally dissolved on 21st September 1937.It is not clear what actually happened to the facilities of the Regent mill after the NRML was wound up. I know that my grandfather lost his job at about this time and was forced out of the cotton industry after over forty years service. His fate was shared by many, and much desperate hardship and bitterness ensued. My grandfather was a JP and had been Chairman of Failsworth Council on several occasions, and he eventually obtained employment as a brewer’s representative, out of which he seems to have suceeded in earning a reasonable living. Many others were not so fortunate. Perhaps the mill continued operating under Mr. Murgatroyd as a going concern; in any case, the machines were definitely running again a few years later.The Lancashire Cotton CorporationBy the late 1920s the situation of the cotton industry in Lancashire was desperate. Many spinning mills and weaving sheds had closed down, the stock market had crashed and a general slump was affecting western economies. Political action was called for. Within the cotton industry the main problem was seen as affecting the spinning industry; weaving was having a rough time and the finishing trades were getting by, but in spinning cutthroat competition between individual enterprises meant awful hardship. If things were hard for shareholders they were no better for the banks that had, in effect, had the assets thrust into their hands as companies defaulted on their loans.It was for this reason that the Bank of England became involved. It promoted the establishment of a quasi-government authority, to be called the Lancashire Cotton Corporation (LCC), which was set up in 1929, headed by Sir K. D. Stewart. Its target was to control ten million spindles and rationalise production by central planning. It would utilise the most efficient plants to lower production costs, and would scrap uneconomic mills. It was hoped that some of the export markets that had been lost might then be won back and part, at least, of the Lancashire industry saved. In the end, as might have been foreseen, this intervention in the market was controversial. Doughty mill owners who were fighting for survival with some distinction found themselves competing against a state enterprise that appeared to have access to large amounts of capital on which it was paying no interest. Certainly the LCC began to gain control over a large number of spindles, but its business seemed to come more from the remnants of the home market than from export.During 1928 there were difficult negotiations to persuade creditors and shareholders to exchange their shares for Income Debentures and Shares in the LCC. Writing in The Times on 18th January 1930, Sir K. D. Stewart explained:‘All loose assets are included in the valuation and approximately half the purchase price is in 5% Convertible Income Debentures and the remainder in Ordinary and Deferred shares. ... The new capital required for reconstruction will be provided by an issue of First Mortgage Convertible Debentures, which will be a first charge on all assets. The Income Debentures ranking after these will be entitled to a dividend of 5½%, payable only out of profits and will have rights of conversion into Ordinary shares. In cases where the assets are insufficient to provide unsecured creditors or shareholders with any interest, Deferred shares to an amount equal to 5% of the valuation are to be created for their benefit.’ He also emphasised:’ The control of the corporation lies with the Bank of England.’The LCC persisted with its efforts in the face of both doubts and hostility. It established central purchasing and marketing organisations and progressively took control of mills and weaving sheds. Sometimes the mills were closed down and scrapped, but others were brought back into production per the plan, to a fanfare of local newspaper headlines and the relief of local workforces. The truth is that the ordinary shareholders were fobbed off with worthless paper (see figures) while the banks were offered the possibility of eventually getting something out of a bad situation rather than the certainty of nothing. This allowed them to keep assets on their balance sheets and manage their liquidation over a period of time instead of having to write them off all at once and risk provoking a banking crisis.LCC attempted a capital raising exercise in 1931, the prospectus being published in The Times on 26th March. It was for £2 million six-year 6½% First Mortgage Debenture Stock and in the event, though competitively priced, 96% was left with the underwriters, The Sun Insurance Office Ltd. Lancashire had been too hurt, and become too sceptical, by the debacle of its cotton industry and there was no faith left.By this time several dozen mills had been taken over, the names and dates of the contracts signed with the LCC being published in the prospectus. Among them is the name of The New Regent Mill Limited, acquired on 10th December 1930.The LCC ran a trading loss of £382,795 in 1932, but this was reduced to £69,766 in 1933 and in 1934 a profit of £30,189 was recorded . Although this looks creditable, it is likely that the accounts of the organisation would not have reflected the real commercial state of the business. In January 1935 the LCC owned 5,361,000 equivalent mule spindles and had scrapped 4,630,000 others. Of 140 mills it had acquired, 74 had been, or were being, scrapped at that time .The 500 Ordinary shares in the NRML that had cost my grandfather, William Dunkerley, £500 – perhaps the price of two houses – eventually became 302 Deferred shares in the Lancashire Cotton Corporation. In 1937 the LCC undertook a Scheme of Arrangement and Reorganisation of Capital which saw his Deferred shares converted into £1-5s-2d of Ordinary Stock, of nominal value £1. Since fractional shares were not permitted, the LCC paid out 5s-2d in cash and issued a share certificate for one share of the Ordinary Stock.In February 1940 the Lancashire Cotton Corporation reached the milestone of being able to pay a dividend on its shares and my grandfather’s one share earned 1/6d, of which the sixpence was deducted as income tax. Other dividends followed, up to at least number 7 of January 1946, still at 1s-6d. In fact, my grandfather had died in 1936 and the cost of having the share made over into the name of his widow was more than the share and dividends were worth. The end result was that William Dunkerley’s total return for £500 invested in hope in 1919 was the five shillings and two pence paid out to him on consolidation of his Deferred shares to Ordinary Stock. Something similar would have been experienced by the vast majority of the small investors in the cotton industry of Lancashire in the twentieth century. It is hardly surprising that my grandmother, Selina, swore that no member of her family would ever again work in the cotton mills.Post-Lancashire Cotton Corporation – Courtaulds, Pifco and SaltonProduction at the Regent mill continued under the LCC until, probably in the 1950s, ownership passed to Courtaulds, at that time a large UK textiles company . In 1954 a beam store extension was built in the mill yard. The mill was apparently converted to run on mains electricity and the steam engine was scrapped in 1958. The chimney and boiler house were demolished and yarn production finally ceased in March 1966. One must assume that during these years the business remained generally profitable.It was probably in 1970 that the building was purchased by Pifco , a long-established manufacturer of household electrical appliances, and it was then acquired by its present owners, Salton of Chicago in the United States, when this company took Pifco over in 2001. Salton designs, markets and distributes small electrical appliances under such well-known names as Russell Hobbs, Haden and Tower. Their most recent, and highly successful, brand is the George Forman grill . Salton’s European business, extending throughout Western Europe, is now run out of the Regent mill and the Salton name looks down from the mill tower - although the name 'Regent' is still hidden behind the Salton boards.AcknowledgementMany thanks to John MacMillan for checking financial aspects of this account for coherence. Thanks also to David Berry, Human Resource Manager of Salton Europe Ltd., for reading through a draft, providing useful additional information and allowing me to visit the Regent mill. Any faults remain my responsibility!Notes and References[1] Grade 2 status[2] In Law, B., 1999, 'Oldham Brave Oldham', page 94.SourcesFor general background information I have drawn on the excellent ‘_Oldham Brave Oldham_’ by Brian Law, published by Oldham Council in 1999, ISBN O 902809 50 4. Plans of the Regent mill are stored in Oldham Local Studies & Archives, Union Street, Oldham under Stott Architectural Practices, Catalogue ref. No. D-SRJS.For details of the mill engine, much important technical detail on mill construction and information about George Stott, see ‘_The Cotton Mills of Oldham_’ by Duncan Gurr and Julian Hunt, 1998, ISBN 0 902809 46 6. There is a photo of the engine in 'The Cotton Mills of Oldham, brief history and gazetteer', 3rd edition by D. A. Collier, Duncan Gurr and Julian Hunt, held at Oldham Local Studies and Archives under accession number MI:TI.For The Regent Mill Company Limited see National Archive file BT31/17517/85370.For The New Regent Mill Limited see National Archive file BT31/32327/159895.A summary balance sheet of The New Regent Mill Limited at 16/1/1926 is in Cotton Spinning Companies’ Summarised Accounts, page 43, published by S. G. Pollard, Oldham, available in Oldham Local Studies and Archives, accession number CSCSA, and also on ‘_Spinning the Web_’ at www.spinningtheweb.org.uk searching under ‘new regent’.For Lancashire Cotton Corporation see National Archive file BT56/34.Salton can be contacted at Salton Europe Ltd. at Failsworth, Manchester M35 0HS, tel. 0161 947 3000, fax 0161 682 1708, e-mail to postmaster@saltoneurope.com.Researched and written by: Philip DunkerleyContact: dunkerleyphilip@hotmail.comThis page was last modified on 21 January 2008 | | 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