4 - LAND AND INDUSTRY

Summary

We have seen that the growth of textile production in the West Riding before and during the eighteenth century involved a symbiosis between landholding and agriculture on the one hand and industry on the other. This relationship had many important implications for industrial finance.

The structure and pattern of landed wealth in the West Riding was important in raising finance for production and trade, particularly so in the case of the older-established woollen branch of the industry. From the earliest fulling mills of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries this process became a manorial monopoly and was undertaken in premises owned by the local landed magnate alongside the traditional monopolies of corn mill and oven. As the centuries progressed and the monopolies died out many mills remained the property of landowners and continued to full cloth for the locality on commission. It is thus not surprising that when scribbling and carding was centralised alongside fulling from the 1780s a proportion of the finance for the extension and erection of these larger mills was provided by landlords. Even some of the later more integrated mills were built by landowners who either ran them or, more often, hired them out. Sometimes old agricultural premises were let out for industrial purposes at low rents in return for rebuilding, modernisation and improvement and landowners also commonly leased smaller workshops and working dwellings with garden plots for use by domestic artisans.