SHUTTLEWORTH PAPER MILL

JOHN BROADBENT (1795-1860) Paper Manufacturer	JAMES HUGHES (1798-1877) Paper Manufacturer

This mill is believed to have been founded c1836 by James Hughes in partnership with John Broadbent as "Broadbent and Hughes."

In 1841 the Scottish land reformer John Murdoch visited this mill. He wrote "Just as I was thinking of giving up business on account of bad health, my promotion to a Ride in Lancashire arrived. And on June 30, 1841, I set sail from Londonderry on one of the steamers to Liverpool . . . . . I remained but a short time in Liverpool and that night was in Bolton. From Bolton I travelled to Bury and thence, in due course, by coach to Shuttleworth, four or five miles further north-west.
Shuttleworth was not even a town or a village. It was just a district which, until comparatively recently, was a badly formed rural mixture of plain, hill and moorland. The village was Banklane, consisting of some houses here and there on the sides of the road leading from Manchester through Bury, and on to Edenfield, Haslingden and Bacup, to Colne and Skipton in Yorkshire.
A busy road this was. All the raw cotton, rags, wool, dye stuffs and bleaching materials used up the country were conveyed northward in carts; and the yarn, the cloth, the bleached and dyed goods and paper were carried south to Manchester in the same manner, as there were no railways then in all that region.
I dropped off the coach at James Haworth's "Pack Horse," a big beer shop, the equivalent of an inn elsewhere. I was Scotch enough, and even Irish enough, to dislike my new location very much. It would take much time and space to write the half of what I felt among the rough, untutored and unmannerly 'Lankies.' The "Pack Horse" was typical of the rest - my meals on a bare table with sawdust for a carpet and my sleeping room in keeping.
However, I could put up with the place till I should see about me. I soon saw Thomas Lambert, whom I was to succeed, and soon after that I was taken to the paper mill which was to furnish my chief source of labour. This mill was not on a very large scale. But it was a castle to the establishment I had left behind in Dunnamanagh. The firm was Broadbent and Hughes.
Mr. Broadbent was an artificial-looking man with a shaven face and a dark wig - that is, he took off the hair where it was willing to grow and where it would not grow naturally he replaced it by artificial means. He was an active member of the Methodist body and his wife, who was very deaf, was a devout worker in the same connection. Although I formed the impression which I have mentioned, I do not remember that I found Mr. Broadbent to be anything else than a man of truth and honour. He had a large family who lived, I thought, fully up to their means and were above engaging in any kind of rough work.
Mr. James Hughes was a quiet, civil, unpretending man with a large family of daughters - four, I think - and no mother at their head. He made no profession such as his partner did; and he even went to the length of coming home from Manchester sometimes with a good cargo of strong drink on board. Martha, his eldest daughter, was a very excellent young lady in every sense that one would like to attach to the word. Alice, the second, was also a fine girl, just nearing 17 at that time. She was a pretty girl, too, and pleasant company. It would have been quite easy to cultivate more than the ordinary sentiment of simple gallantry towards her. But I did not. We were all on good terms and I derived a good deal of pleasure from the intercourse.
The pleasure was all the greater from the roughness of the majority of the people about. To me there was a positive contrast between these Lancashire folk and the more polite folk whom I had left behind me in the north of Ireland. Perhaps I was prejudiced. But I did feel that I had fallen among comparative savages after leaving the more polite Irish behind me - even in Ulster which is not by any means so refined as Leinster and Munster. So marked did I feel this difference between the two peoples that today I suspect I was guilty of a measure of intolerance towards my new neighbours.
Of course, some of my duties brought me in contact with some of the roughest people. Besides the paper mill, I had to visit public houses of different classes and a multitude of what are called Tom and Jerry shops [ i.e cheap drinking establishments ] - also toll gates, brick makers and a class of manufacturers who used soap in finishing their goods and who therefore got back the duty then paid on soap."

In 1848 the mill had an office at 141 Cannon Street, Manchester, Lancashire. About this time the "Broadbent and Hughes" partnership was forced into bankruptcy and the mill was then run by brothers Samuel Broadbent Ingham and James Broadbent Ingham from 1849.

The mill had an office and warehouse at 55 High Street, Manchester, Lancashire (at least from 1858 to 1869) and in 1860 was reportedly producing "browns, glazed browns, drabs, blues, and common colours."

On the death of James Broadbent Ingham the mill was run by his son Harold for about 12 years until its closure. The mill may have closed down about 1900 though a report of flooding in the "Manchester Guardian" of 25 September 1935 indicates that the buildings still existed.

Sources:

Bury Central Library Personal Communications

Hughes, Ian Alexander "Hughes, A Family of Papermakers" (privately published, Melbourne, Vic., 1979)

Hutchinson, Shirley Margaret Personal Communications

Hutchinson, Shirley Margaret "The Broadbent Family of England and Australia" (privately published, Melbourne, Vic., 1996)

Lancashire census returns (1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891).

Lyddon, Denis & Marshall, Peter "Paper in Bolton - A Papermaker's Tale" (John Sherratt and Son Ltd., Altrincham, Cheshire, England 1975)

Murdoch, John "For the People's Cause" (edited by James Hunter) (HMSO Edinburgh, Scotland, 1986)

"The Paper Mills Directory" ("The Stationer", London, England 1860)

Newspapers:

Lancashire "Manchester Guardian"