FURNESS VALE HISTORY SOCIETY: The Clegg Family and Furness Vale Printworks.

Rosemary Hurley has been researching the Clegg family which had connections with Furness Vale. Ernest Bernulf Clegg managed the Printworks and lived at Furness Lodge. He became President in 1912, of the newly opened Institute.

William Clegg

The Cleggs were an extensive family living in and around Oldham in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. William Clegg of Westwood, Oldham, a cotton manufacturer, had a son also named William Clegg who became a cotton manufacturer and merchant. William Clegg junior’s early working life was unusual in that he moved away from Lancashire and as a young man was a business associate of Robert Owen in New Lanark, Scotland. Robert Owen was the philanthropic and socialist Welsh textile manufacturer who is credited with founding the cooperative movement. William Clegg married Isabella Grindlay while he was living in Scotland. A few letters survive between Robert Owen and William Clegg in the New Lanark collection and in the National Cooperative Archive but it has not been possible to identify what exactly was William Clegg’s employment status in New Lanark, nor his relationship with Robert Owen.

William Clegg returned to Lancashire and eventually settled in Pendleton near Manchester. He was in partnership in textile businesses with various others during his career and according to his great-granddaughter he ‘lost three fortunes’. He left under £1000 when he died intestate in 1866.

William and Isabella Clegg raised a large family of which there were two sons, Benson William, born in New Lanark, and Neville, born in Hollinwood near Oldham.

Neville Clegg

William Clegg’s younger son Neville Clegg married Lucy Bellhouse. William and Lucy and their family lived in a large house named Oldfield Brow in Bradgate Road, Altrincham. The house has been demolished and the name Oldfield Brow is now applied to a particular area of Altrincham. They were one of the many families of textile merchants, manufacturers and other wealthy businessmen who bought or leased the villas built in Bowdon on the edge of Altrincham from the 1850s onwards. Neville Clegg became an established member of the community, serving on the boards of various public and charitable institutions including Manchester Royal Infirmary, Cheadle Royal Asylum, the Altrincham Provident Dispensary and Hospital, Manchester University Council, and the Hallé Concerts Society. For more than 60 years he was on the council of St Margaret’s Church, Dunham Massey.

Neville Clegg was apprenticed and spent his long working life as a calico printer, working primarily for F W Grafton and Co, of which he became a director. Neville and Lucy Clegg had four sons, all born in Altrincham and all of whom went on to work in the textile industry like their father.

F W Grafton and Co, and the Calico Printers’ Association

Historic England describes F W Grafton’s printworks:

Broad Oak Printworks was the most important calico printworks of Accrington, founded in 1792 as bleaching crofts by Taylor, Fort, Bury & Co of Oakenshaw. James Bury withdrew in 1794 to run Sabden Printworks, and in 1811 Taylor & Fort dissolved the partnership. In 1812, the works were taken over by Thomas Hargreaves, previously a manager for the firm, and Adam Dugdale. A plan of the works dated 1813 illustrates a typical layout of an early printworks. The most striking feature is the series of separate shops or departments along the stream from east to west: a wash house, two dye houses, sour house, bleaching house, blue dyehouse and singeing house, dry house, stove house, large print house, block shop, machine room, and old print shop. Power was provided by seven waterwheels and the cloth moved downstream from one end of the works to the other as it was processed. The works expanded greatly after 1816, steam power was introduced, and new print shops erected.

Further extensions, including new raising and finishing rooms, turbine engine and boiler houses were added in first years of the twentieth century. Major modernisation and reconstruction scheme after 1920, and new printshops were built in early 1930s. The works contracted after World War II; machine printing ended in 1958, engraving ceased in 1960, the screen printing department closed in 1966, and the finishing operations were transferred to Loveclough in 1970. Warehousing and some minor operations continued. Demolition of portions of the works occurred in the 1960s, principally the older printshops on the eastern perimeter of the complex.

Manchester Archives record that:

F W Grafton & Co benefited from the management and scientific expertise of John Emmanuel Lightfoot, his brother Thomas Lightfoot and Thomas's son John. The dye, aniline black, was discovered by John Lightfoot. Broad Oak Printworks was also the site for experiments by John Mercer, works chemist, and later partner at Oakenshaw Printworks, whose 'mercerisation' process improved the finish of cotton fibre.

By the end of the 19^th century intense competition was leading to a decline in profits in the calico printing industry. To try to counteract this decline a number of organisations combined into the Calico Printers’ Association. They established offices in Manchester and the company was registered in November 1899.

Grace’s Guide to Industrial History records that the Association

was formed by the amalgamation of 46 printing concerns and 13 merchanting concerns, some with weaving and spinning interests, the total number of vendors being 128. The company was registered on 8 November, for the purpose of acquiring and amalgamating various companies and firms engaged in the calico printing industry and further businesses have since been acquired.

F W Grafton and Co was one of the original members of the Calico Printers’ Association and Neville Clegg was at various times a director and a vice-chairman of the association.

Children of Neville Clegg

Neville and Lucy Clegg’s eldest son was Assheton Neville Clegg born in 1867. He became a calico printer and cotton merchant, working for F W Grafton and Co like his father. He married Norah Behrens, the daughter of Charles Behrens who was the son of Sir Jacob Behrens the German founder of cotton merchants Jacob Behrens and Sons.

Neville Clegg’s second son Henry Gordon Clegg was a stockbroker who went into partnership with Philip Ernest Power, the son-in-law of Neville Clegg’s brother Benson Clegg. Benson Clegg was a textile merchant living in Altrincham, and it was Benson’s daughter Mabel Grindlay Clegg who married Philip Ernest Power. Power committed frauds which led to him being imprisoned for five years and bankrupted. As a consequence Henry Clegg was also bankrupted but he was discharged soon afterwards as it was judged that he had no knowledge of his partner’s frauds. After this Henry Clegg went into partnership with another brother-in-law as a silk manufacturer. He married Maud Field, daughter of Joseph Nash Field, who was the brother and business partner of Marshall Field who founded the Marshall Field department stores in America. He was effectively Marshall Field’s presence in Britain, arranging the purchase and supply of British goods to the stores in America. He lived in Altrincham.

After the fraud case, Neville Clegg’s brother Benson Clegg, Benson’s daughter Mabel Power and her three daughters Eileen, Rhoda and Beryl moved away from the Altrincham area permanently. All three girls went on to have highly successful careers. Eileen Power became a renowned academic and historian of the medieval period, Rhoda Clegg became a BBC broadcaster and children’s writer, and Beryl Power was a senior civil servant.

Neville Clegg’s third son William Gavin Clegg born in 1869 worked as a manager in a calico printing works, location unknown.

Neville Clegg’s youngest son was Ernest Bernulf Clegg, born in 1871, see below.

E Bernulf Clegg

The name Bernulf, and his sister’s name Guenilda, refer back to the first recorded Cleggs of Clegg Hall in Lancashire, a medieval Bernulf Clegg and his wife Quernilda. Whether they actually existed or are a romantic story is unclear. Certainly there is no proven link between Neville Clegg and Clegg Hall, though he may have believed there was.

Bernulf attended Uppingham School and New College, Oxford. At the time of the 1891 census, aged 20, he was tutoring with a family in Bournemouth, perhaps in the Easter holidays from university. From Bournemouth he wrote a letter to Oscar Wilde which read:

Dear Sir

As I have found much help and guidance in your teachings about Art, I venture to write and ask in which of your works I may find developed that idea of the total uselessness of all Art, as you expressed it in your interesting 'Preface to Dorian Grey.’ I should not venture thus to trespass upon your time did I not know your unfailing kindness to all who strive to follow after your high Ideals.
Apologising for the trouble I may be giving you,
I remain very truly yrs
Bernulf Clegg

Oscar Wilde replied:

My dear Sir

Art is useless because its aim is simply to create a mood. It is not meant to instruct, or to influence action in any way. It is superbly sterile, and the note of its pleasure is sterility. If the contemplation of a work of art is followed by activity of any kind, the work is either of a very second-rate order, or the spectator has failed to realise the complete artistic impression.
A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our relations to flowers. Of course man may sell the flower, and so make it useful to him, but this has nothing to do with the flower. It is not part of its essence. It is accidental. It is a misuse. All this is I fear very obscure. But the subject is a long one.

Truly yours,
Oscar Wilde

Both letters are now held in the Morgan Library and Museum in New York and Oscar Wilde’s reply is considered important for setting out his views on art.

After graduating, Bernulf worked in the textile industry like his father and brothers. In 1900 he was a works manager in Swansea (name of business unknown). On 1 January 1903 he married Edith Jane Worrall, daughter of a bleacher, dyer and printer, and alderman, from Salford, who by this date lived at West Hall in High Legh in Cheshire.

Bernulf’s career took him to varied locations. He and Edith’s eldest daughter Lucy Guenilda was born in 1904 in Japan, his second daughter Edith Beatrix in 1905 in London. 1911 he was manager of the Furnace Vale Printworks in Derbyshire, where his daughters Penelope and Diana were born in 1909 and 1911 respectively.

The Cleggs were still at Furnace Vale in December 1913 when it was reported that John Smalley and Bernulf Clegg had patented a device to avoid the unhealthy practice of 'kissing the shuttle'. This was the practice whereby weavers pulled the thread through the eye of a shuttle with their mouth. Shuttles were shared by several weavers and this unhygienic practice caused the inhalation of dust and dirt and was thought to spread diseases such as tuberculosis. It was outlawed first in Massachusetts, USA in 1911, but was not banned until 1952 in Britain. In response to Smalley and Clegg’s patent, Thomas Pickles of the Cairo Mills, Burnley is reported as saying that he had already patented a shuttle-threading invention in 1911 but it did not work well. He also thought that there was no need to end the practice of shuttle-kissing which was not a risk if the operative kept the shuttle 'as clean as table utensils are kept at home', and that it was a system which 'comes naturally to the operative'. Whether Smalley and Clegg’s invention had a future is not known.

John Smalley was the foreman mechanic at the Furnace Vale printworks. He was originally from Preston and was married with eight children. In 1911 the family lived at Bank View, a row of houses near the printworks. According to the places of birth of his children, they had lived in Todmorden, Whittle-le-Woods near Chorley, Oldham, Pendlebury and Reddish before moving to Furnace Vale.

In 1921 the Bernulf Cleggs were living in Southport in Lancashire. There are passenger records of Bernulf Clegg travelling to Canada, New York and Buenos Aries in the early 1920s on business as a calico printer.

In August 1923 Bernulf, his wife Edith, their four daughters and a maid, Rachel Buckland, emigrated to Canada, settling there permanently. Bernulf’s intended occupation was ‘Agent’. His religion was recorded as Unitarian, which is unexpected as his parents were closely involved with St Margaret’s, the Anglican church near their home in Altrincham. Perhaps Bernulf’s wife Edith was Unitarian. Bernulf Clegg lived only a few years in Canada, dying in Vancouver in 1931. Edith lived until 1962.