Peter Atherton (manufacturer)
[1] Renowned for his pioneering work as a designer and manufacturer of textile machinery during the early Industrial Revolution,[2][3] Atherton began his career by assisting Richard Arkwright and John Kay in developing the ground-breaking spinning frame in the late 1760s.
[4][5] Subsequently, Atherton developed methods to elongate cotton, wool, and silk fibres, resulting in stronger, smoother yarn and finer quality fabrics, representing a notable progression in textile manufacturing.
[8] He engaged with policymakers and advocated for the interests of the British textile industry, notably participating in a delegation that met with Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger in 1788 to safeguard domestic production against the encroachments of the East India Company.
[11] The Atherton family had longstanding connections with the ancient Lancashire parish of Prescot, which, by the eighteenth century, had become an important centre of the British clock and watchmaking industry.
His proficiency in working with hand tools, honed in clock and watchmaking, enabled him to transition into manufacturing the precise moving parts of early machinery, notably in the burgeoning cotton industry.
[14] Atherton, then based in Warrington, was approached in January 1768 by John Kay and Richard Arkwright (who at the time was an entrepreneur) for both financial,[15] and technical assistance in creating a model of a spinning machine.
[16][17][18][19] Initially hesitant due to Arkwright's impoverished appearance, Atherton quickly relented and agreed to provide Kay with a skilled smith and watch-tool maker to construct the heavier parts of the machine.
The spinning frame laid the foundations for subsequent advancements in textile machinery and played a crucial role in the development of the factory system.
As historians Musson and Robinson have noted, ‘Inventors such as Kay [not to be confused with the aforementioned clockmaker], Paul, Wyatt, Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton and Cartwright appear to have had little or no scientific training, though they often utilized the knowledge and skills of clock- and instrument-makers.’[24] In the 1770s, Atherton entered into a commercial partnership with John Hewitt, establishing their business at 49 Red Lion Street (later renamed Britton Street) in Clerkenwell, London.
[26] John Smalley of Preston, Lancashire, one of Sir Richard Arkwright’s original partners, erected the first cotton mill in the Greenfield Valley near Holywell, Flintshire, in 1777.
[29] Following Smalley’s death in 1782, his interests at Holywell passed to his widow, Elizabeth, who entered into a partnership with the brothers William and Thomas Douglas, and Daniel Whittacker of Manchester.
[31] Atherton’s role in establishing Smalley’s earlier manufactory can only be conjectured; however, there is no doubt that he played a significant part in the construction of the Upper Mill.
Atherton designed the mill, which was apparently financed by his friends William Harrison and John Dumbell, both later admitted as partners of the reorganised Holywell Cotton Twist Company.
[42] Another coin, marked HCTCo (likely representing the reorganised Holywell Cotton Twist Company), is preserved at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
The first, Patent 1179, sealed on 5 February 1778, was granted to William Harrison and Peter Atherton, residents of London, for a method of making screws and machines used in producing mathematical instruments.
In 1787, the Espiritu de los Mejores Diarios Literarios que se Publican en Europa of Madrid, in Spain, reported Atherton’s latest invention, a revolutionary spinning machine.
This partly accounts for the popularity of the Holywell partners’ cotton thread, including major sales to weaving factories in France, especially at Rouen, and in Switzerland at St. Gallen and Zurich.
[51] The partners also possessed a ‘secret’ machine, likely a mule, capable of spinning threads with counts of 230 and 250, all of which, in the words of historian Chris Aspin, ‘point to the work of Atherton’.
[54] Atherton is also credited with designing ‘the first really successful’ taller, and generally steam-powered mills of the 1790s, though their widespread adoption was limited during his lifetime due to the higher cost compared to waterpower.
The sales notice for the contents of Atherton’s Liverpool workshop, which appeared in the press following his death, provides further evidence of the high regard in which his contemporaries held his work.
Douglas subsequently supported various anti-French initiatives,[67] and in September 1789, amidst market volatility partly caused by events on the continent, Peter Atherton and Company garnered praise in Britain for grinding corn for the poor, ‘free of toll, and every other expense’, in response to rising prices.
In 1794, the six-storey mill he constructed in Nottingham for Robert Dennison and Samuel Oates was, in the opinion of one eyewitness, ‘not surpassed, perhaps not equalled, by any structure of the kind in respect of strength, commodiousness, and beauty’.
His employee, millwright Henry Gardner, facilitated the millwork for Hodgson and Capstick’s Caton mill (near Lancaster) and Thomas Ridgeway’s factory at Horwich, near Bolton.
[77] Together, they erected a five-storey cotton mill in Salford powered by a Boulton and Watt steam engine, extending from the banks of the River Irwell to Chapel Street.
[79] In 1792, George Augustus Lee, a pioneer in implementing gas lighting in industry and a fellow innovator in steam-powered cotton manufacturing, joined the partnership.
[84] On 25 June 1789, Kirk Mill was auctioned at Preston, Lancashire, where the high-bidder was Ellis Houlgrave, Peter Atherton's son-in-law, a Liverpool-born clockmaker, recently returned from London.
