At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the county of Renfrewshire had a modest coarse linen manufacture. By the end of the century it had become one of three principal cotton manufacturing regions in Britain, and one of the first factory-type industrial regions in the world.

This was achieved by taking a different direction from the coarse textile manufacture in most of Scotland and concentrating on quality weaving. By mid-century the region was evolving into a mature agricultural and manufacturing region, centred around fine quality, hand-based weaving and supporting trades, including bleaching and printing. Success depended largely on contacts with English towns, particularly London, for markets, technology and credit.

Within this weaving base, powered, centralised and capital-intensive processes were gradually introduced using a wide variety of textile raw materials. Linen was not the full story and the region concentrated further on quality goods, really beginning to stand out with the establishment of silk manufacture from the late 1750s. Cotton had also been used in a variety of goods since the beginning of the century, but came to the fore with the large powered cotton spinning mills founded from the late 1770s. Quality weaving also continued to succeed, with the manufacture of the finest quality muslins from the 1780s, which competed on the London market with the Lancashire variety.

There were also wider signs of the region’s strengths resulting from fine textile manufacture, and in the 1755-1790 period it had by far the highest population increase in Scotland. By the late eighteenth century the dominance of Renfrewshire within Scottish textile production was complete, whether measured by fine textile output in 1780 (exceeding half of the Scottish linen output), by numbers of bleachfields (up to half of the Scottish bleachfields by the 1790s), by numbers of large powered cotton mills (half of Scottish mills by the 1790s), or by the scale of the overall cotton industry in the region as a whole.

Renfrewshire was also significant on a British scale, with up to ten percent of British cotton spinning mills and as much as eighteen percent of national cotton weaving and finishing.

Primary Sources
Birmingham City Archives: Boulton & Watt collection, Incoming & Outgoing Letter Boxes (1770-1800), correspondence with Renfrewshire mill owners; also portfolios of engine drawings, eg No177: Underwood Co, Paisley, 1798 (14 Drgs)

Glasgow City Archives, TD/263, Houston of Johnstone Papers (especially papers relating to Johnstone Old & Laigh Mills)

Guildhall Library, London: Sun Insurance Fire Insurance Policies for Scottish cotton mills (c1770-1800)

John Rylands University Library, Manchester MCK/2/1/1-3 McConnell & Kennedy Archive, correspondence with Paisley cotton manufacturers and yarn agents (1790s)

Mitchell Library, Glasgow: advertisements in eighteenth century Glasgow Press: Glasgow Journal (from 1741); Glasgow Mercury (from 1778); Glasgow Advertiser (from 1783); Glasgow Courier (from 1791). A major source for mills and bleachfields

Mitchell Library, Glasgow: Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Papers: Vols 1 & 2 (1783-1802)

National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh: Court of Session Papers, many examples, eg CS96/ 257; 3746-7 Crosslee Cotton Spinning Co, Houston (1793-1804)

National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh: CH2/275, Neilston Kirk parish records; HR 706, Heritors Records

Public Record Office, Kew, London, BT6/140: Petition of Proprietors of Cotton Mills in the West of Scotland (8 April 1788)

Signet Library, Edinburgh: Court of Session papers, numerous examples, eg 264/2 Corse, Burns & Co, Johnstone(1790)

Books and Articles
Butt, J, ‘The Scottish Cotton Industry During the Industrial Revolution, 1780-1840’ in Cullen, L M & Smout T C (eds), Comparative Aspects of Scottish & Irish Economic and Social History (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1977)

Chapman, S D, ‘The Arkwright Mills: Colquhoun’s Census of 1788 and Archaeological Evidence’, Industrial Archaeology Review VI, 1 (1981)

Crawfurd, George, The History of the Shire of Renfrew, (Paisley: Alex Weir, 1782)
Includes rich detail of early industrialisation in the edition which includes an additional section by William Semple, covering the period from 1710.

Durie, A J, ‘The Fine Linen Industry in Scotland 1707-1822’, Textile History (1976)

Fitton, R S, The Arkwrights: Spinners of Fortune (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989)

Harley, C K, ‘Cotton Textile Prices and the Industrial Revolution’, Economic History Review (1998)

Nisbet, S M, ‘Eaglesham Cotton Mills’, Renfrewshire Local History Forum Journal, Vol 7 (1995)
An early account of a specific mill.

Shaw, J, Water Power in Scotland 1550-1870 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1984)
First source to acknowledge Renfrewshire’s importance in
the early cotton industry.

Tann, J, The Evolution of the Factory (London, 1970)
Best illustrated book on the early powered factory.

Whatley, C A, The Industrial Revolution in Scotland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
Concise modern account.

Websites
Statistical Accounts of Scotland - http://edina.ed.ac.uk/statacc/