page_title: Cotton mill
section_title: The Paul-Wyatt mills
hierarchical_section_title: Cotton mill / History / Successful modern First mills / The Paul-Wyatt mills
caption_attribution_description: English: Image of Marvel's Mill, Northampton, from Noble and Butlin's "A Plan of the Town of Northampton" of 1746
context_page_description: A cotton mill is a building housing spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system.
  Although some were driven by animal power, most early mills were built in rural areas at fast-flowing rivers and streams using water wheels for power. The development of viable steam engines by Boulton and Watt from 1781 led to the growth of larger, steam-powered mills allowing them to be concentrated in urban mill towns, like Manchester, which with neighbouring Salford had more than 50 mills by 1802.
  The mechanisation of the spinning process in the early factories was instrumental in the growth of the machine tool industry, enabling the construction of larger cotton mills. Limited companies were developed to construct mills, and the trading floors of the cotton exchange in Manchester, created a vast commercial city. Mills generated employment, drawing workers from largely rural areas and expanding urban populations. They provided incomes for girls and women. Child labour was used in the mills, and the factory system led to organised labour.
context_section_description: The first cotton mills were established in the 1740s to house roller spinning machinery invented by Lewis Paul and John Wyatt. The machines were the first to spin cotton mechanically "without the intervention of human fingers". They were driven by a single non-human power source which allowed the use of larger machinery and made it possible to concentrate production into organised factories. Four mills were set up to house Paul and Wyatt's machinery in the decade following its patent in 1738: the short-lived, animal-powered Upper Priory Cotton Mill in Birmingham in 1741; Marvel's Mill in Northampton operated from 1742 until 1764 and was the first to be powered by a water wheel; Pinsley Mill in Leominster probably opened in 1744 and operated until it burned down in 1754; and a second mill in Birmingham set up by Samuel Touchet in 1744, about which little is known, but which was sufficiently successful for Touchet later to seek the lease on the mill in Northampton. The Paul-Wyatt mills spun cotton for several decades but were not very profitable, becoming the ancestors of the cotton mills that followed.
caption: Marvel's Mill in Northampton pictured in 1746 – the earliest known pictorial representation of a cotton mill.[13][14]
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