Spen Valley Magazine Spen Valley Magazine (draft) | Página 6

P. & C. Garnett Ltd
The Otley paper-maker Peter Garnett, visiting the Great
Exhibition in 1851 was intrigued by a machine for opening
textile wastes being exhibited by one Francis Alton Calvert.
Within a few weeks of their meeting, Mr. Garnett had
purchased Calvert’s patent, set-up a partnership for his
son Peter and Mr. Calvert and secured land on Stone
Street, Cleckheaton to build Wharfe Works to house
“Calvert & Garnett”.
The business-plan was successful! Modestly priced machines
attracted customers who then had no alternative but to
clothe their machines with Garnett’s unique, patented saw-
tooth wire - which came at a price!
Francis Calvert withdrew in 1854 leaving the renamed
business of P. & C. Garnett with the Garnett family until
acquired by the Leathers in 1897. Garnetts became part
of the Spooner Industries Group in 1968 and finally closed
in 1984. Robert Thompson, the “Mouseman of Kilburn”
learned his woodworking skills as an apprentice pattern-
maker at Wharfe Works in the 1890s.
Over the years Garnetts expanded and acquired subsidiaries
For most of its 117 years, exports accounted for over 50%
of turnover and in the 1970s produced some of the largest
textile machinery ever built. 
Little remains of Wharfe Works but the result of Peter Garnett’s
visit to Hyde Park is well recorded in good dictionaries -
Garnetting (noun), Garnett (verb) and Garnetted (adjective).
Pitt Brothers
In March 1851 Isaac Singer patented the world’s first
commercially viable sewing machine. Four Cleckheaton
brothers, James, Joseph, Edward and William Pitt immediately
set-up in business at the new Brookhouse Iron Works on
Balme Road to make a British-made version!
The Pitt Brothers sold their first sewing machine in 1852: no
known example survives but the London Sewing Machine
Museum think it probable that the attached woodcut depicts
an early Pitts’ machine. Pitts claimed that their machines
could sew anything from “…. the finest fabrics to the thickest
leather”. Whether or not the spiel was justified, the Pitts
opted to concentrate on heavy sewing machines for the boot
and shoe trade. By 1870 Pitts’ sales to the US shoe- trade
justified their employing a local salesman.
A family rift was revealed in a terse, May 1873 London Gazette
announcement: the youngest Pitt was to retain the sewing
machine business in Cleckheaton leaving his siblings to
manufacture machine tools at Alma Foundry in Millbridge.
The sewing machine business waned and eventually
collapsed in 1887: the machine tools started off well enough
with some spectacular Government contracts but the oft’
repeated change of company names soon suggested
financial problems: there is little evidence of trading after
1908 but it wasn’t until 1927 that the business was finally
struck off.