Replica Arkwright water frame

Replica Arkwright water frame, made by Severn Lamb Ltd, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1983.

Developed by Richard Arkwright in 1767, the water frame was an ingenious invention. It used moving rollers to draw out cotton fibres, then its rotating spindles twisted them into thread. Arkwright took out a patent for the spinning frame initially as a small machine powered by hand or horse, but he soon adapted it to be powered by water, so it became known as the Arkwright water frame.

Powering the machines with water meant spinning moved from worker’s homes into brand new multistory, machine filled mills powered by water wheels. In 1771 Arkwright built the world’s first water-powered cotton spinning mill at Cromford, Derbyshire. For workers, this meant long days of hard, heavy and sometimes dangerous toil in noise-filled conditions.

As well as the revolutionary machines being able to spin cotton thread more quickly and in greater quantities than ever before, they spun cotton strong enough to be used for the warp (lengthways)

threads of cloth. This meant making 100% cotton cloth possible for the first time in the UK, something that had been done successfully in India for a long time.

Running the machines depended on the organisation and exploitation of human labour on a local and a global scale. At the time of Arkwright’s death in 1792, he was one of the wealthiest people in England.