Following the arrival of tens of thousands of weavers fleeing religious persecution in 16th and 17th century France and Flanders, bringing superior handloom weaving skills and expertise in achieving Paris fashions, Britain became a major silk-producing nation, its manufactures rivalling the quality of French silk textiles. Fine silks – fashionable alamodes, brocades, ducapes, lustrings, watered (moiré) silks and velvets – were the most prestigious and desirable materials of the early to mid-18th century, requisite for formal dress, favoured for elite household and carriage furnishings and palpable symbols of wealth and social status.

Huguenot immigrants settled in Canterbury, Norwich and East London, especially in Spitalfields, where whole streets became occupied by the silk handloom weavers and entire households participated in the work. Some Huguenot weavers were also brilliant silk designers, like James Leman (1688–1745), who rose to high office in the Weaver’s Company, although perhaps the most celebrated Georgian silk designer was English-born Anna Maria Garthwaite (1688–1763), who created stunning floral patterns for textiles handwoven in Spitalfields. Luxury Spitalfields silks designed by Leman, Garthwaite and others were exported far and wide, many original sketches and fabric samples surviving in major art and textile collections today. So significant was the rise of the British silk industry that by 1713 output was over 20 times higher than that of 1664.

A further boost came with imported technology: historically British silk throwing (cleaning and twisting the raw silk into thread or yarn, ready for weaving the cloth) was a laborious hand process, but in 1719/1721 Thomas Lombe constructed a water-powered throwing mill at Derby, installing advanced throwing engines imported from Piedmont, Italy that would revolutionise efficiency. In the 1730s Lombe relinquished his exclusive rights to the machinery and more water-powered silk throwing mills were established, initially mainly in the north-west, in Macclesfield (1743), Stockport (1752) and Congleton (1755); by the end of the 1700s over 100 silk throwing mills existed in Macclesfield and neighbouring districts.

Some early mills employed c.300 staff – an unprecedented workforce all operating in the one place. In addition, the buildings were also constructed along similar lines: three to five storeys high, to rectangular plans, with regular placing of windows, a waterwheel typically 7 m high, and separate machine-filled rooms for each process, from spinning, twisting and sorting, to the warehouse. Everything involved in raw silk preparation was carried out in this way, the thrown silk then sent to weaving centres like Spitalfields, Manchester and Norwich. These fully mechanised silk throwing mills effectively became a blueprint for many future textile mills and factories (see our earlier columns on wool, linen and cotton). Lombe is therefore sometimes credited with pioneering the factory system that was integral to the success of the Industrial Revolution. {