page_title: Bagley & Wright
section_title: Division and conglomeration - 1890 to 1900
hierarchical_section_title: Bagley & Wright / Division and conglomeration - 1890 to 1900
caption_attribution_description: English: Image of some of the mills owned by Bagley &amp; Wright in 1885.Wellington Mill (Lower Left), Belgrave Number 1 Mill (Lower Right), Industry Mill (Centre) and Wood Top Mill (Far right) from a 1895 Bagley &amp; Wright Memo heading
context_page_description: Bagley & Wright was a spinning, doubling and weaving company based in Oldham, Lancashire, England. The business, which was active from 1867 until 1924, 'caught the wave' of the cotton-boom that existed following the end of the American Civil War in 1865 and experienced rapid growth in the United Kingdom and abroad.
  In 1897, the business split into two with the sewing cotton operation being subsumed into the newly formed English Sewing Cotton Company. The remainder of the Bagley & Wright business remaining independent in the form of Bagley & Wright Manufacturing. Although the Wright and Bagley families lost influence on the ESCC part of the business following a scandal over the distribution of dividends in 1902, they remained in control of Bagley and Wright Manufacturing until it was finally dissolved in 1924.
  Throughout the existence of the business, the influence of the Wesleyan Church in Oldham was substantial in the formation of the friendships and partnerships that were the engines for business success.
context_section_description: By the late 19th century, the company had established a large warehouse and office block on Cannon Street in central Manchester and a second warehouse at the junction of Union Street and Priory Street in Oldham. There were branch offices in Glasgow and Belfast and offices and warehouses in Melbourne, Bombay and Moscow.
  In 1890 Bagley & Wright's occupied Wood Top Mill to further complement their weaving capability at Cliviger Mill. On 28 December 1892, a memorandum was written by Ralph Bagley to 'J. Feilding Esq.' Secretary of the Operative Cotton Spinners Association (the spinners’ trade union) informing him that a forthcoming meeting had been cancelled. The heading of the memorandum lists the company’s mills as: Wellington, Industry, and Belgrave in Oldham and Wood Top Shed in Burnley. In the archives of Burnley library is a reference written on Bagley & Wright notepaper in 1895 for a Mr. John Watson who “has been in our company for over five years as an overlooker & have always been found him a steady hand & competent workman”. The reference is signed by R. Sagar for Bagley & Wright. In 1895, the company's sewing cotton business was still expanding and a considerable investment was made in the extension of the Belgrave Mill to provide greater manufacturing capacity. In 1895 several British producers of sewing cotton yarn opened discussions on how they might combine their assets and markets to protect themselves from increasing competition from overseas. The companies decided to form a 'conglomerate' through which they would be in a better position to cooperate on the purchase of raw material and the combined marketing of their products. The aim was to cooperate rather than compete.
  Around 1893, the company bought a mill at Crooklands to secure the supply of bobbins that they needed. The bobbin mill at Crooklands lay between Milnthorpe and Kendal. The English Lake District was a major centre for the production of bobbins because of the availability of trees to use as the raw material and water courses to drive water wheels to power the machinery. The Crooklands Mill was built some time before it was taken over by Bagley & Wright who certainly owned it between 1894 and 1897. In 1906 the mill had passed into the ownership of Messrs. A. Bell and Co., so it is possible that the mill was retained by Bagley & Wright until after Benjamin's death in 1905.
  The Bobbin Mill made use of an old horse-drawn tramway that passed closely by on an embankment. The tramway was originally built to serve a large gunpowder factory at nearby Gatebeck. The factory was owned by Wakefield and Co., one of the largest manufacturers of gunpowder in Great Britain in the 19th century. The tramway had horses pulling wagons of gunpowder from the factory to a wharf on the Lancaster Canal where it was dispatched to mines or to the military. The horses were shod in copper shoes so that sparks would not ignite the gunpowder. Before 1900, the tramway had been extended from the canal wharf to Milnthorpe where there was, by then, a railway station.
  In 1867, the Crooklands Mill had been powered by a water wheel with a mill stream taken off the nearby Peasey Beck. At this stage, the Mill consisted of about 3 buildings and bobbins must have been transported to the canal by horse and cart. By 1900, a spur line has been built from the tramway, across the Peasey Beck and into an open shed in the Mill grounds. There is evidence that the Mill stabled horses to be used in pulling wagons of bobbins onto the main tramway line and down to the canal or onwards to the station at Milnthorpe.
  In 1895 the Company's sewing cotton business was still expanding and a considerable investment was made in the extension of the Belgrave #1 Mill to provide greater manufacturing capacity.
  In 1897, fourteen companies involved in the spinning of sewing cotton combined to form the 'English Sewing Cotton Company Limited' (ESCC). In all cases, the Directors or Proprietors of each of the individual companies became Directors of ESCC. While some of the individual companies had previously only b
caption: Wellington Mill (Lower Left), Belgrave Number 1 Mill (Lower Right), Industry Mill (Centre) and Wood Top Mill (Far right) from an 1895 Bagley & Wright Memo heading.[29]
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