In 1820, seven years after its invention by Benjamin Law, John Halliley installed a rag machine at Aldams Mill and began the manufacture of shoddy in Dewsbury. In 1860 the Huddersfield architect John Kirk opened an office in the town, took his twenty-year-old son Albert Holmes Kirk into partnership and entrusted that part of the business to him. At that time no fewer than fifteen of the twenty-three mills in Dewsbury belonged to shoddy manufacturers. By the turn of the century, Mark Oldroyd & Sons of Spinkwell Mill owned factories in Germany and Silesia and German firms such as Bielefeld Bros & Wertheim and Frederick Wutow had premises in Dewsbury. Shoddy was well suited to the manufacture of military uniforms, and there must have been battles – between the Crimean War and the conflict in Aden, by which time the trade was over – when both sides were dressed in cloth from Dewsbury-based companies. The Kirks specialised in opulent textile warehouses built to resemble the palazzi of Renaissance merchant princes, but during the good times, as prosperity spread through the whole population, they diversified into buildings for retail.NB This walk will be repeated Friday 19th September with an option to visit The Arcade renovation site with a Health & Safety briefing and tour by the Site Manager. Today's walk does NOT include a tour of The Arcade site but we will visit the OUTSIDE of The Arcade.Walk led by Simon Poë and Rosalind Arden.
