Empress Mill, Ince

Empress

Location within Greater Manchester
Cotton
Spinning
Architectural style	Single-storey shed mill
Location	Ince-in-Makerfield, Wigan, Greater Manchester
Further ownership	Lancashire Cotton Corporation (1930s) Courtaulds (1964)
Coordinates
Construction
Built	1907
Demolished	May 1975
References

Empress Mill, Ince was a single storey shed mill alongside the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, spinning cotton in Ince, Wigan, Greater Manchester, England. It was operated by the Lancashire Cotton Corporation from the 1930s and passed to Courtaulds in 1964. Production finished in 1975. It was the last mill in Ince to close, despite the intervention of Member of Parliament Michael McGuire, and a debate in the House of Commons on 20 March 1975.

Location

Ince or more formally Ince-in Makerfield is an area of Wigan, and an electoral ward of the wider Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, in Greater Manchester. It lies on the southeastern bank of the River Douglas, south east and 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) from Wigan's town centre. It is 15 miles (24.1 km) south of Preston, 16.5 miles (26.6 km) west-northwest of Manchester, and 17.4 miles (28 km) east-northeast of Liverpool. Principally, Ince was a mining town. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal passes through Ince. Empress mill was built on land adjacent to the canal, by the seventh lock in the 21 lock Wigan flight completed in 1816. Ince and Wigan lie in a synclinal basin, where the middle coal measures of the Lancashire Coalfield outcrop allowing open cast workings. There was ready fuel for the steam engines of the mills. In the 1830s Wigan became one of the first towns in Britain to be served by a railway; the line had connections to Preston and the Manchester and Liverpool Railway.

History

This was a single-storey spinning mill, itself unusual. The industry peaked in 1912 when it produced 8 billion yards of cloth. The Great War of 1914–18 halted the supply of raw cotton, and the British government encouraged its colonies to build mills to spin and weave cotton. The war over, Lancashire never regained its markets. The independent mills were struggling. The Bank of England set up the Lancashire Cotton Corporation in 1929 to attempt to rationalise and save the industry. Empress Mill was one of 104 mills bought by the LCC, and one of the 53 mills that survived through to 1950. It continued to compete and spin until 1975. Its problems were explained in the House of Commons on 20 March 1975 by the constituency's MP Michael McGuire, that other producing countries were applying tariffs against British cotton, and dumping their surplus in the UK. He complained that Civil Servants had a "Bonga Wonga" attitude, and were doing nothing to support the Lancashire industry.

The engine house and chimney have been demolished and replaced by a square tower. The land is now an industrial estate.The name Empress mill was given by Jamsedji Nusserwanji Tata on the day Queen Victoria was proclaimed Queen of India.

Owners

• Lancashire Cotton Corporation (1930s–1964)
• Courtaulds (1964-

See also

• Textile manufacturing
• Cotton Mill

External links

• COTTONTOWN Blackburn with Darwen (Cotton Town: Your Town, Your History website)
• Spinning the Web: The Story of the Cotton Industry website