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Pryce-Jones: Pioneer of the Mail Order Industry |
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The evolving woollen industry can be divided into 3 stages. During the first, the cottage industry phase, carding (making all the wool strands lie in the same direction before spinning into a yarn), spinning and weaving wool were effectively a pastime for the winter months, while the summer was spent attending the farms. In the early 18th Century most cottagers could afford a spinning wheel, but as technology advanced and looms became more complex, hand carding was replaced by the water-powered carding engine, forcing the cottage industry to give way to the second phase.
During the weaving shop phase Newtown became one of the important centres of the woollen industry, and Welshpool’s flannel market, selling locally made woollen wares, was replaced by one in Newtown. Weavers paid extortionate rent to the flannel manufacturers to live on the lower floors of their three or four storey buildings; the top floors housed increasingly sophisticated machines, such as the spinning jenny, in large open workshops. The population of the town more than quintupled in 60 years, reaching 4550 (by 1831, greatly overshadowing that of Cardiff, whose population, admittedly on a brink of an explosion, was a mere 1870 during the first census in 1801. It wasn’t all plain sailing for Newtown, however, as periods of depression plagued the overall growth and prosperity of the local industry. In 1838 Newtown was host to the first Chartist meeting in Wales, with its workers demanding improved conditions and civic rights; not an unreasonable demand for those who were paid in tokens that they could only spend in the manufacturer’s shop!
The third phase saw the emergence of large factories in Newtown. As these steam-driven enterprises spread their predecessors with water-powered machines gradually closed. The woollen industry in Montgomery suffered at the hands of competition from textile towns in Lancashire and West Yorkshire, where flannel was produced more cheaply. This depression was temporarily relieved after the 1859 opening of the Llanidloes to Newtown railway, which improved transport links. It was in this year that Llanllwchaiarn-born Pryce Pryce-Jones left the drapery business where he’d been working since he was 12 to establish his own drapery shop in Newtown.
Words: Carolyn Cowey
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