FIRWOOD: BIRTHPLACE OF CROMPTON. The most interesting places in Bolton are—to speak in paradox—just outside it. On the Bury road, where the electric tramcars race, you may with some difficulty find the little turning at Firwood, where the humble birthplace of Samuel Crompton still stands. Along the main road the modern houses march prosaically on to Bury, but down this little turning, which descends steeply and has the most extravagantly uneven paving anywhere in the neighbourhood, you find a nook very much in the condition of the whole countryside Birthplace of I look at that humble, stone-built cot with something of reverence. It did not, however, witness his bringing-up, for when he was but five years of age, his parents removed to Hall-i’-th’-Wood, an ancient mansion from which the owners had migrated to a more modern residence. Here HALL-I’-TH’-WOOD Hall-i’-th’-Wood (the Lancashire pronunciation may be written down “Hauleythwood”) stands in a situation still romantic, in the parish of Tonge, one mile from Bolton, on the Blackburn road. The great and ancient woods of oak that once surrounded the old house are gone since then, but the Eagley Brook yet comes foaming down in little cascades amid the rocks of the picturesque gorge above whose crest the Hall is situated; and there are patches of woodland remaining to inform the scene with sylvan beauty. It is, frankly, a surprise, set as it is at the very edge of the roaring traffic of a high road with shops where housewives are bidden by leather-lunged butchers “Buy, buy, buy”: and as delightful as surprising. The Hall in the Wood is not only interesting as the place where Samuel Crompton invented the Spinning Mule: it is one of the finest examples among the many ancient Halls of Lancashire, and is singularly varied in its architecture; having been built in two separate and distinct periods, and in each period of entirely different materials. It was one Lawrence Brownelow who built the original half-timbered portion, in 1591, as appears by the initials of himself and his wife Bridget, and the date, B carved on a stone mantel. In 1637 the property was sold to Christopher Norres, woollen-draper, of HALL-I’-TH’-WOOD. SAMUEL CROMPTON It was a neglected and dilapidated old house to which the Cromptons came in 1758. For economical reasons—the window-tax then prevailed—all the unnecessary windows, and some that really were necessary, had been bricked up, rain came through the roof, and rats ran unchecked from room to room. There, in a house a world too large for them, the widowed Mrs. Crompton and her little lad lived upon the proceeds of a small farm and the insignificant gains she made from spinning yarn, by hand, as all yarn then was spun. Samuel helped in the spinning, much, it may be supposed, against his will; and in the drudgery of it his inventive powers were wakened, in the direction of labour-saving. Hargreaves’ spinning-jenny of 1768 and Arkwright’s invention were new when he began to plan, and his machine took the form of an improvement combining the principles of both. He was twenty-one years of age before he began the work, and not until five With this sum Crompton established his sons in the bleaching business; but the establishment failed, and the inventor was again in straitened circumstances. A second subscription was raised, and a life annuity purchased for Crompton, producing about £63 per annum. He enjoyed it only two years, for he died in 1827, aged seventy-three, and was buried in Bolton parish churchyard. The last stroke of cynic fortune was not dealt until 1862, when the hapless inventor had been thirty-five years in his grave. Then the town of Bolton, whose manufacturers had, living, denied him a livelihood, set up a statue to the man who had made their town, and twenty other towns, great and prosperous. Among those present at the unveiling, and shrinking in his poverty from the robed and finely apparelled magnates, was Crompton’s surviving son, then aged seventy-two, and in the poorest circumstances. Palmerston RELICS OF CROMPTON If the spirits of the departed can know what goes forward in the world they have left, there must be bitter ironic laughter in the Beyond. Plundered and neglected in life, Crompton is tardily honoured in death. The darkling, mouldering old Hall has, through the munificence of Mr. W. H. Lever, been purchased from the representatives of the Starkie family, finely restored, stored with personal relics of Crompton, and presented, as a lasting memorial, to the town of Bolton. It is open, freely, every day. There you see Crompton’s old violin, his Bible, and chair, and a model of his Spinning Mule. But there is much else besides. Old portraits and old prints decorate the panelled walls, and ancient furniture fills the room. Panelling has been brought from an ancient house at Hare Street, near Buntingford, and a finely moulded plaster ceiling copied from the “Old Woolpack” inn, Deansgate, Bolton, pulled down in 1880. From the stone-flagged terrace of the garden you look across to Bolton itself and the clustered chimneys whose murk affronts the sky. |