Bygone Burnley: Butterworth and Dickinson, with historian Roger Frost, 27-1-25
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00:00This morning we're on the canal bank at a relatively new factory although it's
00:05a hundred years old now. It's occupied by Futaba which is a modern company working in the motor
00:14industry but it started its history as the home or the new home of Butterworth & Dickinson's
00:22one of Burnie's oldest industrial firms. They started in 1780 on
00:29Potterley and it was a wool warehouse started by a man called Jeremiah Wilkinson. They made
00:39machinery for the firm that he operated because in those days machinery companies came along
00:49after the firms that made the textiles, cotton or wool or linen, whatever it was, the machinery firms were later on. After a number of years undertaking both
01:01things that is machinery making and textiles he concentrated on textile machinery making
01:09especially for the cotton industry although he did make machinery in the early days for the
01:15wool industry. In the early days when the firm was on Potterley they occupied a large building between
01:24Saunderbank and Elizabeth Street. People will remember it because part of it became Ribble
01:32Motor Social Club and it was a very sizable building and used for making textile machinery
01:43on a large scale. The firm expanded and had a property on Trafalgar Street which was connected
01:51directly to the railway and when the firm continued to expand in the late 19th century
01:57they looked for another site and this one was chosen. It had the advantage of being right next
02:04door to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and also it was adjacent to the railway. Two lines, the
02:14Burnley-Blackman line and the Burnley-Great Harwood line were in very close proximity and so they had
02:21very good transport links to the left of the country particularly Liverpool. The Wilkinsons
02:30ran the business for about five generations. Jeremiah gave way to his son and it took five
02:40generations to get to Samuel Wilkinson and he made the firm into major suppliers of weaving
02:52machinery, particularly power looms. They also made slasher sizing machines as well. But the
02:59company expanded and ultimately found this site. However, the Wilkinsons died out in the male line
03:10and two nephews of Samuel, one was called Butterwoody and the other was called Dickinson, took over the firm and changed his name and it's in the days when
03:21Wilkinsons and Dickinsons were making the machinery that it became the best weaving machinery ever made in Lancashire. They were the Rolls-Royce of textile machinery makers.