logo   home menu links credits
Processing and Manufacturing
Animal products
Plant products
Textiles
Minerals
Metals
main image Cotton mills, New Lanark, Lanarkshire
Powered machinery for carding and spinning cotton was patented in the late 1760s and early 1770s. The first Scottish cotton mill was established in 1778. Many more were added in the 1780s and early 1790s, concentrated in west-central Scotland.

New Lanark, founded in the 1780s, was one of a number of sites where large cotton mills became the focus of new villages. By 1793, there were four mills here. They were operated by a huge workforce which was dominated by children.

New Lanark's subsequent fame arose from the comparatively humane conditions which its workforce enjoyed – by no means typical of Scottish experience.


Resource pack
  1     2     3     4