Stewart's mother must have been a strong woman inside and out, because despite her hardships, she raised a extremely intelligent yet humble and personable man. God bless them.
Very much loved hearing Stewart talking about his mum - hearing his personal history in his own words (along with the photo of his mum) made this episode personal in a haunting, touching, yet delightful way. Thank you for that.
For me, the part of this episode that moved me a lot, was Stewart telling about his mum and her co workers and the toll they had to pay due to their hard labour. Missing parts of their fingers, hearing difficulties and a bad physique at the end. And having problems to make ends meet at the end of the month. Thanks to personal stories like his, it all comes much more to life. Stewart, your mum was amazing! ❤
And the timeline... Stewart was born in 1951, which means that his mother worked as a factory weaver probably well into the 1960s. That's not very long ago, as things go, and we usually consider the 1960s as modern history and not "long ago, when work was dangerous".
I remember as a child going into a cotton mill with a schoolmate who had to take something to her mum.I`ll never forget the cacophony of sound and the intensely hot,damp air filled with bits of floating cotton. That was about sixty years ago and I can still remember the damp stuffy air on my face, and I couldn`t hear properly for about an hour after I came out! Incredibly hard way to make a living!
I grew up in West Yorkshire and there were still some mills left using the old shuttle looms - even in the carpark outside it was defining. I can remember it to this day
@marjie lalonde - This is a museum with only 1 working loom - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-axcPX1FfVsg.html - Imagine this going on for over 1000 looms....
My mum worked in the cotton Mills from the age of 17yrs.I remember the same experience of visiting mum in the mill. The noise was scary, and your are right. You couldn't hear a thing for an hour once you left the place. I remember mum's hands being covered in friction burns, from changing the spinning bobbins. By the time she was 40yrs her lungs were badly damaged.. from inhaling cotton fibres.
There's video of Ian using the digger to peel a banana & another one of him picking up a grape with the bucket ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6u8zsD5xEDU.html&ab_channel=TimeTeamOfficial and ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cMv4dGvEi4s.html&ab_channel=TimeTeamOfficial
@@SirLouiz yes sir, those archaeology machine operators are the cream of the crop, although it's only fair to note half of ians precision came from being a winning motorcycle racer in his younger years hehe
Thank you Time Team. Every new episode dropped here saves my sanity. 18 months of episodes and counting. Thank you all - and hugs to Phil. Keeps me wanting a trowel and shovel in my aging years.
Episodes about cities or within cities always remind me why I’m grateful to live in the country and appreciative that most of my ancestors also chose rural living instead of the conditions of historical cities.
I don't think I can say it enough; thank you Tim Taylor for posting these! It's such a joy to be there, as new discoveries are made or hypothetical events are verified. Again, thank you!
WOW! My mother, now 90, lived in a mill town called Colne and worked in a mill as a young girl. She almost lost the top of her middle finger - it has always been a bit bent. Listening to Stewart puts it in context. PS. She went nursing in the British Army and served in the Korean war, de-mobbed and joined the Police Force, met and married Dad, had 3 kids and emigrated to Australia in 1963. And yes, she's a tough old bird.
This is probably my favourite TT ever. Not only does it show the very beginning of the industry I have worked in, I spent 18 months in the CIS Tower just across the road.
I'm a Lancashire man from Bolton. I love this series, but I think that these people know very little about the northwest of England and the textile industry. I found myself at the age of fifteen working in a Bolton cotton spinning mill, and to say that Manchester was a the forefront of the cotton industry is not correct. Manchester and Liverpool were the commerce centres, where the mill owners did their business. The real industrial manual work was all done in the surrounding towns, evidenced by countless photographs of the real cotton towns, available for anyone to see. The archaeologists in this episode appeared to make what they found, fit their theories. I love the series, but I don't like how they sometimes mould the facts to fit what they predict.
@@larryzigler6812 Try telling that to an eight year old who just spent 12 hours under a loom risking life and limb for the 7th time that week, not that he would hear you he was deaf
The coin was an old tradition to show the date of the building. When i was remodeling we always looked for the dating money and always left the year coin back in the new walls.
I find it totally amazing of the history that went with this mill. But the Living conditions that Helen was stating as being gruesome, is pretty much what the Coal Miners and the Loggers faced here in the states in the very early days of the industrial era here as well. Companies would buy large plots of land, and built cheap housing for it's workers, and building a store or what have you for the workers, the issue was, they made sure the workers always stayed broke to keep them working at their mines or logging camps, by paying them very little, so they could not save up anything and then take back the money they DID pay them, at their company stores. It was a vicious circle and a lot of people worked themselves to death, leaving their wives and children broke and poor...
yes it is actually quite heart breaking to hear about, and as i said above we don't know what work is in comparison. or should i say, in some countries. nz native
This was a confusing episode for the team until everything dropped into place on day 3. The coin found in one of the old sellers provided an accurate date as to when those cottages were built. My only regret is that it wasn't Time Team that found something else in a car park here in Leicester :)
See Tony’s “Worst Jobs in History” episode on the industrial revolution. He gets underneath one of the early spinning machines,while it’s running-a job usually done by children-showing how incredibly dangerous it was to clear the bits of cotton roving that fell through.
I've seen the majority of Time Team's episodes and seeing the tarmac (blacktop in the US) being ever so carefully removed, I don't think the operators are given enough credit for their skills. Kudos to the operators of the diggers. Well done!
29:46 I wonder if this is before or after Phil learned about crushed shell mortar vs whole shell mortar dating different periods of castle construction hehe
My great-grandparents worked in wall Mills here in the states, and Woonsocket Rhode Island where there were hundreds of Mills, my great-grandmother was working at 11 years old on the deplorable conditions in one of these Mills. As an adult I was an overhead door mechanic and worked on garage doors and many of these old mills and even in the 1980s these places were horrendous. This is a really wonderful episode 👍☮️
The coins cemented into the wall in the 1770s - when my own parents were having a house built in east Texas in the mid 1950s, one of the workmen came and asked my mother for some coins to put into the foundation "for luck". I could still see one when I visited there as a child in the 60s. Widespread old traditions.
3:23 TR: "And your passion is prehistory!" PH: "Yeah but this IS.. this is the prehistory of the Industrial Revolution!" :D I recall taking a historical trip around Manchester led by our UMIST History of Engineering lecturer Mr Marsh. Amazing architecture and industrial history.
I remember viewing this in early 2006, likely February or March and being utterly astonished because we had only just hurriedly moved away from the apartment building on the intersection of Simpson Street and Angel Street that faces the gate into the carpark site that was excavated here. I showed my wife what was in the television and we both recalled seeing the activity across the street, but we were vastly too preoccupied to afford the time to observe more closely. I wish that I was able to take time out to inquire and observe but we were on the edge of being overwhelmed by care for our only infant child who had entered that winter very well and thriving, and became progressively and startlingly poorly with respiratory illnesses, culminating in a diagnosis of cystic fibrosis and a decision to move to my native Australia (I met my British wife whilst living in the north west of England and our child was born there). Remarkably, the first hospital that we became ‘frequent flyers’ in was Booth Hall, the design of which was endorsed by Florence Nightingale. We decamped from Manchester and its congested atmosphere to my wife’s parents’ house in Shropshire to focus on getting the youngster well enough to pass a depressurisation test and be able to fly at altitude - which is what came to pass after some time and effort (at the time we left the UK with the youngest person to travel to Australia reliant on supplementary oxygen and without medical escort) - and it was almost on the eve of our departure that I saw this episode. It struck me then, and it still strikes me that our child would surely have died had we been living in that location during the time of Arkwright’s mill - with cause of death recorded as a non-specific ailment like ‘consumption’, almost certainly within the first few years of life. We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to those textile and allied industry workers in the north and midlands of England and elsewhere in the United Kingdom. They did what they had to do to survive and get by day to day, conducted through a multitude of years and decades, many of which were in peril of injury at work, and in absolute unsanitary squalor - for example, the detail of how impoverished burials became an uncontrolled mass grave at the bottom of Angel Street, and in turn that site became Angel Meadow Park, including St Michael’s Flags (grave stones placed to seal the burial) includes utterly horrific details that were a presage of the disturbance and desecration of the bodies of the dead throughout WWI trench warfare battlefields - and there is no exaggeration in that statement. However, they steadily fought (often literally) and struggled to obtain and accrue incrementally better conditions, remuneration and benefits, and pass custody of those forward to progressively enrich every following generation, much of which we now take for granted - a middle class capable of discretionary spending, weekends, eight hour days, elimination of child labour, public holidays… and robust public services like schooling and health care, which made a literal world of difference our child, who is now on the cusp of 18 years old and quite well. What a thing they did. As an aside… that wasn’t the first very cool television production that I missed out on observing. Much of the first series of Life On Mars was filmed in the cobbled streets and lanes around where I was living several years earlier - in the Northern Quarter of Manchester near Piccadilly Railway Station. One chase scene went past the front door of our apartment building on Tariff Street, and under my bedroom window!
I hear you! 20 years ago I lived in an apartment just down the st on Gt Ancoats - it had just been built; even at 19, I absolutely refused to entertain the whole ‘Converted Mill Cool’ culture that had already been around for years for this precise reason… I’m Manchester born and vividly remember visiting Quarry Bank and Styall mills at Primary school - and being utterly horrified aged like 7. I later went to Leeds to University & never went back to Manchester. I’m so glad your child ended up well and that you too got out 😊
Man I'd be walking on eggshells in every parking lot and staring at my feet like a weirdo absolutely anywhere in Britain! What a wild thought, that such an incredibly important industrial history site is under some macadam in a parking lot. Maybe symmetrical though. Industry tends to gobble itself up. One of my fave episodes too.
That's what they do in Manchester, Even the last bit of the Roman fort is just a lump of stone under a railway arch, no signs, nothing, most folk don't even know it exists
Both of my grandmothers and their husbands and children worked in Lancashire weaving sheds. I could see the workers through open doors and Windows, it was hot inside due to the steam which was essential to keep the cotton in the right humidity which kept the cotton moist enough to stop it catching fire as well as the cotton on the looms flexible, so it did not break.The air was full of lint which got on the workers chests-giving them lung disease.
Apparently a amateur metal detectorist here in Denmark found one of the biggest gold treasures ever to be found in Denmark from the Viking period, and apparently at first he thought it was garbage - It was literally his first time detecting. It was found about half a year ago, but revealed to the public just the other day! It made me think of Time Team.
They are talking about Mee Maw . The way to talk over loud machines. My Granny worked in the weaving sheds from 14. She could lip read. Long after becoming deaf.
All happening within memory. Bless TT-and so kind of Stuart to tell us some "real, live" history. I so admire ALL the folks on TT. Thanks much. (Reporting from Northern New Mexico.)
My 2x great grandfather was a Scots Irish weaver from co. Mayo Ireland. I wonder if he worked in a mill or at home. He emigrated to New Brunswick Canada in 1840 and became a farmer. If he had worked in a mill working a farm must have seemed like heaven in comparison.
Stewart i know exactly what you mean, hard working men and women working for nothing . No terraced house in Salford had a inside toilet , they were in the back yard and in our backyard hung on the wall was our tin bath . Friday night was bath night bring it in fill it up and the whole family one at a time of course had a bath kids first then straight to bed . Mum and dad would finish off , empty it and then hang it up until next Friday . conditions of the working class . 1968
I recommend, for those interested in the abysmal living conditions of the historical poor, Jacob A. Riis’s “How The Other Half Lives” from 1890 is very poignant and well-researched and George Orwell’s works from the 1930s are all incredible.
I just wish that you has all of the old series, right from season 1, it would be facinating to see how techniques and technology evolved over the time of the show.
If you type in each season and episode they are actually all on here. The ones that I haven't found they have been dropping in every Sunday so I have something new to watch until the new new stuff is happening.
Im a mohair topmaker, Been in textiles for 35 years. Im raking it in not like Marx and Engels would be complaining about 100 years ago. There is no one left who can get their heads around working machines and natural fibers.
Found this series during the covid shutdown in the US when there was not much going on. Almost feel like I know some of the people their excitement is contagious. All the ladies are so pretty too so I was told.
I grew up in the town just by Lawrence and Lowell Massachusetts, and grew up learning all this industrial history and the reality of factory workers through the 19th and 20th century. Missing fingers is an obvious indicator of the danger involved, but there was also inhalation of cotton fiber, and then, of course, catching all kinds of infectious diseases from your fellow workers, and anyone else who was crammed into those tiny apartments with you.
The last of the direct Arkwright family died in the early/mid 1980's (1984 I believe) and the vast estate passed to a Great Niece. She passed away in 2020 and the estate then passed to her son and daughter. The estate itself was sold off last year. The large house and some of the cottages went with a large amount of land. Then many smaller lots of land and other buildings, farms and cottages have been sold off in smaller lots. My knowledge of this comes from the fact that her son is a close friend of mine and prior to the main house being sold off I spent many a night there - great dinner parties were the norm. Great memories.
Oh finally!! I was waiting and waiting for this! I kept coming in and had to keep waiting hours and hours. 🤦♀️😁. But that is all right, at least I am watching now. This looks a good ne❣️
Brilliant to see another episode in without doubt the greatest series of history. Apart from the fun the team seem to have each episode, what I like is how they worked on so many different eras - Roman villa one week, WW2 bomber the next. I wonder how long it will be before the first 'nonsense' post appears. There seemed to be a rash of them about 4-6 months ago. Were they a Bot, a bug, or spies passing cryptic coded messages?
And working in the Mills or the Foundries were a step up from being a farm laborer! Historically, the mass of humanity lived lives that were 'nasty, brutish and short". Compared to our ancestors, we live lives of unimaginable luxury.
With the living conditions the way they were, it’s no wonder people stole things during that period. Which also explains why those people ended up in Australia, as convicts.
Helen and others should have realized that ashes on the floors of the tenement were not bad, they helped stop the growth of mould in the damp living conditions
*MY FAVORITE EPISODE* by a very long way - they have done soma amazing digs - but to show is the mill that started the industrial revolution and the house cellars that started the Russian revolution in ONE episode is AMAZING
Logically this was his first mill. He sells the rights for subsequent mills. He would sell plans for the most economic sized mills, without wasted space. Ergo, other mills, to his design, were narrower, housing the machinery first and foremost, before worker comfort. Housing in some rural areas was not much better than in citys at that time. I know of a family of 13 living in a two down, two up cottage in a west sussex village. And they were well off. All employed full time. Father, Mother, Grandmother, six sons and four daughters, from the ages of seven up. The seven year old girl being a maid at the local inn. Housing was, and is still, expensive. It is only since two incomes were used that people were able to afford buying their own home. Now the effect is no longer as beneficial, as house prices have risen quickly due to this apparent affordability. If only one income was used, house prices would be far lower today.
I believe that it does not have to do with incomes but with demand. You CAN buy something big with one income if there are no other buyers around to drive the price up, you rarely can do that even with two incomes if lots of people are "bidding" for it and driving the price up.
what is fascinating is how 'new' the modern world is. that mill was built 200 years before my birth, prior to that life was probaly not that much different for the previous 2000 years or even longer. You lived in a small village, town, worked the land, had a trade and that's where your family was born, lived and died. We live today in such a 'new' way , that goes back only 8, 9 generations.
@@Happyheretic2308 and likewise… Arkwright wouldn’t have been able to do what he did without the workers… what makes one more important that the other, in your eyes?
phil is actually descended from a woman who lived in the dordogne region about 20,000 yrs ago says his dna. also, what genes they couldn't identify a few guessed it might be amphibian. nevertheless, phil is an absolutely sharp archaeologist who knows his stuff through and through - dating with mortar rather than (re-used) brick. bloody brilliant.
I think there's an important part to add to this story. It's the enslaved people in North America and the West Indies who were forced to pick large portions of the cotton that went through those mills. While the workers in the mill had much more freedom than the enslaved people did, they also worked in dangerous environments and many lived in horrid places as well.
Convicts were sent to America, too, around half as many as were transported to Oz. They needed Australia for the purpose after the American revolution.
My family have spent over a hundred years in Mills in Manchester and Rochdale. Dark days over dark waters tinged with pollution. The air thick with soot and enough Bronchial problems to last a lifetime. TV hadn't been invented so my Grandmother had nine children in her two bed terraced house. Not many had Electricity or a Bathroom. The allotment was part of our daily diet, and Horse muck lay everywhere in mounds big enough for grass to grow in and the odd Tree. It stank all year, on top of the stench from the Canal lined by Mills and Factories which had been closing down for a few years. The 1962 clean air act helped which cut the Soot that landed back to earth when it rained or when it was Foggy you could taste it. Meanwhile the Mill owner lived in a different world, and the difference to my Grandmothers existence was extreme. We will never see that again. Now most of the wealth is held by fewer people.
