Yahoo News The 'hidden' legacy which proves Rossendale was once the heart and soul of the world's footwear
Few people know that Lancashire is responsible for inventing slippers - and fewer still are aware of the leading role it once played in footwear manufacturing.
In the first few decades of the 20th century, as Lancashire's cotton and wool industries began to decline, a new forerunner started to take over: footwear manufacturing.
The vacant cotton mills represented an opportunity to diversify and in Rossendale, where jobs were scarce, it was the felt industry which answered the call and inspired a new generation of manufacturing.
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At its peak the shoe industry employed around 60,000 people in Rossendale and its beginnings come from the felt carpets made in Leeds which were sent to Myrtle Grove Mill in Rossendale for dyeing and printing. The mill was eventually adapted to produce its own felt and the region's footwear focus followed soon after.
Felt block printers started to make rough wrappings out of used pieces of felt to cover their feet when they were walking over the felt pieces to avoid spoiling the work. Those haphazard shoes were what we now know as slippers.
John William Rothwell was the first to start producing slippers in Rossendale in 1874 after collecting remnants of felt from his uncle Henry Rothwell’s Bridge End Mill. John later helped to set up a number of other footwear companies in the Rossendale area.
In 1879 John Rothwell went into partnership with James Gregory - their firm employed Henry Whittaker Trickett from 1881 to 1883 who went on to set up his own mill at Gaghills. By 1900 Trickett was employing over 1,000 people and producing 72,000 shoes a week.
In 1887 Lambert Howarth and his wife Betsy set up Lambert Howarth & Sons in Whitewell Bottom and at its peak Lambert Howarth Group produced 10 million pairs of shoes a year and employed 2,500 people.
However, with cheap imports from the Far East flooding the UK, Rossendale’s shoe industry began to decline in the 1980s. But not all Rossendale shoe manufacturers are consigned to the history books.
R&M Heys Footwear Manufacturers was set up in 1979 and in 1997 moved to Haslingden’s Old Market where it is now run by the founder’s son Steven and his wife Diane who live in Accrington.
The business has grown from a traditional slipper manufacturer to a leading provider of fabric-constructed and semi-orthopaedic footwear. Although R&M Heys is relatively small in terms of its workforce its 24 employees have, between them, a combined 400 years’ experience.
And it wasn't just shoes and slippers which Rossendale became known for. The Lancashire Sock Manufacturing Company, in Bacup, was set up in 1917 by William and his wife Mary Ormerod, manufacturing insoles for shoes and boots.
In 1926 the company moved to Britannia Mill which had previously been used for manufacturing cotton. The site's first hand-powered spinning mill - Mount Pleasant Mill - dates back to the 1790s and the Lancashire Sock Manufacturing Company is still run by the Ormerod family.
Although only a few shoe companies still exist in Rossendale a short drive along Bacup Road in Waterfoot gives a clear indication of its legacy.
The road is lined with footwear companies and although some of the former mills are now used for other purposes, many still remain, and the signs painted on the sides of buildings in Bacup Road show that it was only a generation ago that Rossendale was at the heart of the UK’s shoe-making industry.
This article was compiled from a combination of excellent sources, including the Rossendale Heritage Footwear Project, the Lancashire Sock Manufacturing Company and Kenyons Footwear.
