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Up to the 1750's, clothing and other goods were produced by cottage industries, there were no factories, or the “mills” to drive them. Weavers worked at home and pack horses transported the rolls of cloth and the finished goods. Woollen cloth was an important export by 1400. Water power along the Tweed and Clyde, and in the Pennines, saw the beginnings of mechanisation. Flax was widely grown, and the linen produced was important in the family and village economy.

The drive towards the mechanisation of weaving began with John Kay's flying shuttle in 1733 and, for spinning, with the spinning jenny of James Hargreaves 1764. This was quickly followed by Richard Arkwright's spinning mule at Cromford, Derbyshire in 1771 and by the power loom of Edmund Cartwright 1785. The motive power for Cromford mill was merely running water, but the factory was the beginning of a new age.