Barochan Cross

In my childhood Barochan Cross was an imposing sight standing on the flat topped summit of Corslie Hill, east of the road from Houston to Langbank. Visiting the stone was a popular day trip for local families from Houston and the other surrounding villages. Today, only its large socketed base stone is in situ. In the late 1970s Barochan Cross was removed and taken to Edinburgh for repair and renovation. Once restored it was decided that, to prevent future degeneration, the cross should not be exposed to the elements. Since 1981, Barochan Cross has been on display in Paisley Abbey. But  this was not the first time the monument had been moved. Barochan Cross had previously been situated on the road side, just south of Barochan Mill. The lands of Barochan had been owned by the Flemings of Barochan for centuries. Before 1818, Malcolm Fleming, the rich and powerful landowner, decided to move the cross to a more prominent position on nearby Corslie Hill, where he would take the opportunity to impress his friends when out hunting in the surrounding area. 

Barochan Cross is carved on all four sides with interlace. A large panel on the front of the cross shows three possibly related themes  –  a figure on horseback carrying a spear approaching a figure on foot carrying what may be a drinking horn; three figures, one holding an axe and another perhaps holding something above the  head of a third much smaller figure; and  two opposing animals. There are two smaller panels on  the back of the cross. The upper panel shows four identical stationary figures, wearing long apparel, standing in line, and the lower panel shows four, possibly marching, identical figures blowing trumpets and carrying long spears. The interpretation of these figural scenes appears to be secular rather than religious.

Click to enlarge

Family visit 1936.

© Helen Calcluth 2023, Renfrewshire Local History Forum

The Linen Thread Company was founded in 1898. It was an amalgamation of like-minded, successful linen thread manufacturers with mills in Scotland, Northern Ireland and USA. Finlayson, Bousfield & Co. was a founding member, and William, Archibald and James Finlayson (the three sons of James Finlayson, who established Finlayson Bousfield in 1844) were appointed to its first Board of Directors. The other founding members were the Finlaysons’ Flax Spinning Mill in North Grafton, Massachusetts; W. J. Knox Ltd. of Kilbirnie, Ayrshire; Wm. Barbour & Sons Ltd., Hilden Mill, Lisburn; Barbour Flax Spinning Co., Patterson, New Jersey; Barbour Brothers of New York  and Marshall Thread Co. of Newark, New Jersey. They were soon joined by seven other flax companies from Britain, Ireland and USA., including Crawford Brothers of Beith, Ayrshire.

The Linen Thread Company grew and expanded into a huge international concern,  with mills in Europe,  Australia  and South America.  Its Board of Directors insisted on the use of high quality flax, opened  scientific laboratories to ensure quality and innovation, and established a very productive and unrivalled world-wide sales organization through local agents. Throughout its existence, successive members of the Finlayson family from Johnstone, the Knox family from Kilbirnie and the Barbour family from Lisburn (the Barbours were descendants of the Kilbarchan Barbour linen merchants) were on the Board of Directors. The dedication and entrepreneurial skills of the directors ensured the success of the company, and was of significant advantage to the financial success of each independent member company. The UK head office was in Glasgow.

To manufacture quality thread, it was deemed essential to start with quality raw flax plants. In Finlayson Bousfield’s Johnstone mills quality raw flax was purchased from the Courtrai district in Belgium or from Ireland. It is likely that the  ponds on the north bank of the Black Cart (shown on OS Maps, Renfrewshire XI.8, 2^nd ed., 1897 and later) were used as the retting ponds, although in some other of the Linen Thread Co’s flax mills, the soaking of raw flax was undertaken indoors. The flax was then taken to the drying room before the next processing stages of heckling and scutching, were undertaken by machine indoors. The processed flax was then ready to be sent to the spinning mill. The Finlayson Mill in North Grafton, USA, operated only as a spinning mill of  already processed flax.

In Johnstone, Finlayson Bousfield manufactured a wide variety of quality threads and cords, including hand and sewing machine threads, saddler’s threads, bookbinder’s threads, carpet thread, crochet thread, flourishing thread (for embroidery), glove thread, lace thread, and shoe thread. Samples of their finished products can be viewed locally in Johnstone Museum.

But all was not always plain sailing. In February 1902 at one o’clock on a Wednesday morning, a dramatic fire broke out in the company’s Napier Street Mill, which contained a large stock of finished thread ready for the market. At one end of the 200 feet long building, the fire burnt through the floor of the second storey and machinery fell into the burning mass below. Luckily, manufacturing was unaffected as the building was primarily used for storage and, due to a prudent insurance, the building could be repaired.

Despite this setback, Finlayson Bousfield continued to flourish for another 50 years. William’s son, Charles Kay Finlayson joined the company in the early 1900s and played an active part. His sons, too, later joined the company. William was Head Sales Director and Charles was Head Manufacturing Director of the Linen Thread Co. in the 1950s.

Although flax was the strongest natural fibre in the world, linen production declined in the 1950s when man-made fibres were introduced to the market. Both Finlayson Bousfield and The Linen Thread company ceased trading in the next decade and the main Johnstone flax mill site was later demolished.

Finlayson Bousfield’s main  Flax Mill site in Johnstone

© 2022, Helen Calcluth, Renfrewshire Local History Forum

Little has been written about Mr Bousfield, who went into partnership with James and Charles Finlayson to form Finlayson, Bousfield & Co, in Johnstone in 1848. The only indication of his origin is found in an article by the Paisley Correspondent of the Glasgow Citizen describing the Johnstone Grand Industrial Exhibition, held in the town in 1853. Mr  Bousfield had contributed  specimens of silk tabaretts, and silk damask and tissues, for display at the exhibition and these had been manufactured chiefly at Spitalfields. This information indicated a possible clue to his past and merited further investigation.

Recent research has revealed that Charles Holehouse Bousfield was born in London on 9^th of February, 1822, and baptised in St. Olave, Old Jewry, London. His mother was Sarah Holehouse and his father, Charles Pritchett Bousfield, was a silk manufacturer in London. As children, Charles and his siblings are likely to have lived in a very busy household, which may have included on the premises his father’s indentured weaver apprentices.

In 1836, at the age of fourteen, Charles was indentured as an apprentice to his father to learn the Art of a Silk Manufacturer. In 1843, on completion of his apprenticeship, young Charles was admitted as Freeman of the City of London. In the late 1840s, when he came to Scotland, possibly on business for his father who was a partner in Lea, Bousfield & Co., silk manufacturers in Cheapside, London, he appears to have been well-respected in Glasgow business circles. Presumably, with an eye to the main chance, he saw in James Finlayson the potential of future success and went into partnership with him to form Finlayson, Bousfield & Co. In 1851, and possibly earlier, he is known to have lodged with William and Helen Finlayson, the Finlayson brothers’ parents, beside the mill at Johnstone Bridge in the  High Street. He is listed as a proprietor of Finlayson Bousfield in Johnstone in 1855 and1865. But, unlike the Finlayson brothers, little of his personal life or social involvement in Johnstone is recorded.

In addition to his contribution of silk goods on display at the Johnstone Grand Industrial Exhibition (1853), he is known to have hosted a meeting in the Public Hall in Johnstone in November, 1873, when Sheriff Clerk of Glasgow gave a history lecture to the Johnstone Working Men’s Institute. One perhaps more significant mention of him is contained in the text of Charles Finlayson’s address to the guests at the opening of  Finlayson Bousfield’s Lilybank Bowling Green in 1874. In the address it is mentioned that Mr Bousfield, although a partner in the firm, was not well known to the Flax Mill employees. This may be explained by the fact that by the late 1860s he was living in Glasgow.

Despite the success of the company, Charles Holehouse Bousfield ended his partnership in Finlayson, Bousfield & Co. on 13^th November, 1876. It is documented that he would have no further interest in the business which would be carried on under James Finlayson, Thomas Coats, and James’s three sons, William James Finlayson,  Archibald Watson Finlayson and James Finlayson, Jun.

Charles Holehouse Bousfield appears to have had returned permanently to London where  his main residence  was 40 Elvaston Place, Queensgate, Kensington. In London he was a member of the prestigious gentlemen’s club, the National Club, London, and had involvement in charities and mission work.  He died at 29 Ashburn Place, on 12th March, 1906, and was buried in Norwood Cemetery, Lambeth, leaving a considerable fortune of £497,962. 17s. 2d. to his sister, Cornelia, the widow of Hugh Huleatt, and £45,885.12s. to her daughter, Frances Emma Huleatt, widow of Archibald Mungo Muir. But how he accumulated this substantial estate is a mystery.

© 2023 Helen Calcluth,

In the mid-eighteenth century, long before Kilbarchan was renowned for the weaving of tartan, a number of Kilbarchan entrepreneurial families, the Speirs, Barbours, Hows and Houstons, became prosperous linen merchants. They engaged local weavers, most of whom worked looms in their own homes, and marketed the finished textiles. By the end of the century, these early manufacturers of quality linen, had diversified their interests, and  their weavers worked  mainly in silk and cotton.

By the1740s Alexander Speirs and his brother Allan had built up a successful manufactury as linen merchants and bleachers. In 1742 Allan Speirs was the first of the village merchants to introduce the fine lawn and cambric, woven in Kilbarchan, to Dublin markets. The partnership also carried out bleaching work for local cloth manufacturers, including Kerr, Pollok & Co. in Paisley.

Alexander married Margaret Barbour, the sister of another Kilbarchan linen merchant, Baillie John Barbour. After the deaths of Alexander Speirs and his brother Allan, Alexander’s sons Allan and Alexander continued to run the family manufactury, and business continued to prosper. This Allan, like his uncle of the same name, attended to the sales and export side of the business. Sadly, he had an unfortunate end, breaking his neck in a fall from a horse in Paisley. He was succeeded by his younger brother, Alexander. It is said that Allan left, a very considerable inheritance, to his younger brother, making Alexander (jun.), the sole owner of this very successful business.  At the age of thirty Alexander Speirs was a wealthy young man. In 1775 he bought the lands of Glentyan and Glentyan Corn Mill from James Black of Penneld.  

Under this Alexander Speirs, the family textile manufacturing business continued to prosper and by the 1790s his weavers were working mainly in cotton. Alexander was an ambitious man and was keen to improve the quality of his muslin. In 1792, he purchased fine finished quality cotton yarn from Robert Owen (later of New Lanark), the manager of Mr Drinkwater’s cotton spinning factory, Bank Top Mill, in Manchester. Alexander Speirs’s first woven piece of exceptionally fine quality muslin, regarded as ‘the greatest curiosity of British manufacture’, was sent as a present to Queen Charlotte, the wife of George II.

In the1790s Alexander Speirs was a very wealthy man. He built Glentyan House, the prestigious mansion house which stands on the estate today. He was also keen to diversify his interests and invest in the new cotton spinning industry. This appeared to be an astute financial move and would guarantee a supply of cotton yarn for his weavers. In 1792 in partnership with Robert Barr, a Paisley muslin manufacturer, and brothers James and John McIlwham, manufacturers in Anderston, Alexander Speirs invested in the establishment of a large cotton spinning mill at Crosslee. The building of Crosslee Mill was an ambitious project. It was to be the largest cotton mill in Renfrewshire and took three years to build, partly because of the length of the lade. This 2000 metre long lade can still be followed along the north bank of the Gryffe from Bridge of Weir to Crosslee.

       Crosslee Mill Lade

But his fortunes were about to change. His untimely and over-ambitious investment in Crosslee Mill and the vast expense in the rebuilding of Glentyan House resulted in his financial ruin, and he died a poor and broken man. He did not leave a will and there is no known gravestone erected to his memory in the village.

©2022   Helen Calcluth

Further information on the Speirs, Barbours, Hows and Houstons is contained in “Kilbarchan and the Handloom Weavers” (Chapter 3, pp 31-42)  available on the website Publications.

The first Barbour manufacturer and linen merchant in Kilbarchan was Baillie John Barbour (1701-c1770). He married Janet Fulton in 1726 and had three sons and four daughters. Their first house was in Church Street. (See image above.)

As a Baillie (judicial officer of a Barony) John Barbour was a man of importance and influence in the village. John’s brothers, William and Robert were partners in the family concern.

John  was also an entrepreneurial businessman and his linen manufactury was not his only commercial enterprise in Kilbarchan. In the 1740s he owned a candle factory in the village which exported large batches of candles to the West Indies in the 1740s.

By 1739 Baillie John Barbour had built a weaving manufactory in the village, originally for the manufacture of thick linen, and soon after built a bleaching factory. He engaged local weavers, who worked looms in their own homes, and business prospered. The Barbours, like the Speirs, exported their fine linen goods to Dublin and London. In the late 1750s Robert Barbour, John’s brother, was responsible for the export trade. As a packman or commercial traveller, Robert conducted business, not only for the Barbours, but also for other Kilbarchan and some Paisley manufacturers.

Baillie John’s  sons,  John, William and Humphrey, joined the family business and after the death of their father, the three brothers expanded the family business. The Barbours, like the Speirs, had established premises in Dublin. Both Baillie John’s eldest son, known locally as John of Law, and the youngest son, Humphrey, divided their interests between Kilbarchan and Ireland. William, the second son, attended to the weaving and bleaching business at home.

Although the Barbours’ main exports were finished textiles, from the 1770s Humphrey Barbour was also a thread (as opposed to textile) manufacturer in Kilbarchan. Humphrey used superior linen yarn imported from Ulster and the Barbours exported the finished thread back to Ireland. One large consignment of 276 lbs. of unrated Scotch thread and 12 lbs. of filler thread, along with 4848 yards of plain lawns, leno, cambric and catgut, 152 yards ornamented with cotton, was shipped to Dublin by the Barbours in November, 1784.

By the 1780s, with the gradual demise of the linen trade in Scotland, the Barbours continued to concentrate their main interests in Ireland and a third generation John Barbour moved to Lisburn where he set up a factory settlement for spinning thread on Plantation Stream in 1784. A  dam was built on the stream, and his twisting mill, driven by animal powered machinery, was a large circular building 33 ft. in diameter and seven to eight feet high. Two factory  buildings, two factory houses and two blocks of workmen’s houses completed the site.

The Barbours’ commercial interests in Kilbarchan had ended by 1800. Humphrey had moved to Glasgow as a wine merchant; John died in 1794; and William’s bleaching business in Kilbarchan failed in 1799. However, that is by no means the end of the Kilbarchan Barbour story! Humphrey’s family founded very successful businesses in Manchester and  Liverpool; William Barbour, the son of the John Barbour who built the thread mill at Plantation in Lisburn, was the founder William Barbour and Sons, which became a world-wide concern, and rivalled Coats of Paisley.

© 2022  Helen Calcluth

Further information on the Speirs, Barbours, Hows and Houstons is contained in “Kilbarchan and the Handloom Weavers” (Chapter 3, pp 31-42). Available on the website Publications.

In Ireland John Barbour (1752?- 1823), a younger member of the Kilbarchan Barbour family, built Plantation House and set up a linen thread manufactury at Ballymullen, near Lisburn, Co. Down, in 1784. His son, William, built Hilden Mill (see image above) in Lisburn, Co. Antrim, in 1824,  and later built workers’ houses and a school for workers’ children at the factory gate. His firm, William Barbour and Sons, operated for almost 200 years. It closed in 2006.

In the 1850s William sent his sons, Thomas and Samuel, to America as import agents for his threads manufactured in the Hilden Mill. This venture met with considerable success, and the Barbours bought large mills in Paterson, New Jersey. Business prospered and expanded. By 1888 William Barbour and Sons had become ‘the largest manufacturer in the world of tailors’ thread and shoemakers’ thread for hand and machine sewing’. The American Barbours became millionaires. However, they appear never to have forgotten their Scottish roots. In 1910 Robert Edwards Barbour, a grandson of William Barbour of Hilden, built a 42 room mansion house on his estate in Paterson, New Jersey, and  named it ‘Kilbarchan’.

Kilbarchan Mansion House, Paterson, New Jersey

(click to enlarge)

The three sons of Humphrey Barbour (Baillie John Barbour’s youngest son) set up prosperous businesses in England. Humphrey’s eldest son, John Barbour, became a Liverpool shipping agent, and his second son, Robert Barbour, in partnership with the youngest son, George Freeland Barbour, became a cotton merchant in Manchester. Robert Barbour amassed a large fortune and is remembered as a generous benefactor to the city of Manchester. George Freeland Barbour later returned to Scotland and resided in Gryffe Castle in Bridge of Weir.

Around 1900 the Irish Barbours’ business interests later extended back to Renfrewshire in Scotland. John Doherty Barbour, the eldest son of William of Hilden, was the inspirational founder of the Linen Thread Co. Ltd. in 1898. This company was an amalgamation of thirteen firms in Ireland, Scotland and America. One of the three Scottish firms was Finlayson Bousfield & Co. Ltd. in  Johnstone.

© 2022  Helen Calcluth

(Further information on the Barbours is contained “Baillie John Barbour and his Descendants”, available on the website “Publications”.

John How’s forebears had lived at Dampton in Kilbarchan Parish since the middle of the seventeenth century. They were renowned as surgeons, with eight family members in succession having practised medicine. John How, however, bucked the trend and set himself up as a linen merchant in the village.  He married Mary Barbour, the daughter of Baillie John Barbour, on the 14th February, 1767. They had five sons James, John, William, Thomas and Humphrey and two daughters, Janet and Mary.

John How was an influential man in the parish and beyond. He owned numerous pieces of land in and around Kilbarchan village and, as a heritor, he had the right to vote in Renfrewshire parliamentary elections and was a founding member of Kilbarchan General Society in 1765. He was also a founding member of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce in 1783 and is said to have been ‘much esteemed all over the county’.

The minutes of the Chamber of Commerce refer to a letter he sent to them in 1785 concerning the manufacture of silk and linen in Renfrewshire. This indicates that his weavers in Kilbarchan were working in both silk and linen in the 1780s. Like the Speirs, and Barbour families, John How exported his finished textiles to Dublin where he had established premises in the late 1770s.

In the early 1780s John How’s business had been in financial difficulties. In 1781 he sold part of his lands in Kilbarchan to the trustees of Milliken Estate and borrowed £200 in a bond from the Millikens. This appears to have saved his business which continued to operate for the next twenty years.

John How’s manufactury was a family concern, with his sons learning the textile trade. Three of his sons settled in Ulster where they prospered. James was a bleacher, John became a manufacturer in Belfast and Thomas built a large cotton spinning mill in Ballynure, County Antrim, in 1822 and  provided   accommodation for his workers. The mill operated until 1863 when the American Civil War made cotton unobtainable in Ireland. The imposing ruins of Thomas How’s cotton mill still stand on the outskirts of Ballynure today. (See image above.)

John How died in 1812 at the age of eighty-one and is buried with his wife and daughter, Mary, in Kilbarchan Parish Churchyard.

(click to enlarge)

© 2022 Helen Calcluth

Further information on the Speirs, Barbours, Hows and Houstons is contained in “Kilbarchan and the Handloom Weavers” (Chapter 3, pp 31-42). Available on the website Publications.

The name Houston is one of the oldest family surnames in Kilbarchan dating back to the early 1600s. John Houston, the Kilbarchan linen merchant, married Margaret Naismith from Lochwinnoch Parish in 1750 and had nine children. He was a leaseholder in the village with houses and a yard in Merchant Close, and in his later years lived in Old Hall in Shuttle Street.

John Houston’s linen manufactury in Kilbarchan was established in or before 1755 when he bought the land adjacent to the Barbours’ Auchinames Bleachfield. By 1779 some of his weavers were working in silk, producing quality silk gauze for export to Dublin. He was extolled as one of the principal manufacturers in the village and a ‘Dublin Merchant’ by Semple in 1782.

Like other of the Kilbarchan merchants, John Houston had business interests outwith the textile trade. He owned a large brewery in Kilbarchan. When the linen industry in Kilbarchan was in decline in the 1780s, John Houston must have felt the need to increase his income or consolidate his capital. In 1786 he placed an advert in the Glasgow Mercury – ‘To be let at Kilbarchan – a brewery and malthouse with every article necessary for carrying on the business, in good condition’ and a ‘large new still to be sold’. It is not known if a subsequent letting arrangement, or the sale of the still, took place.

Rather than concentrate on his Irish interests, John Houston entered into partnership with a Paisley manufacturer in 1789. This newly established Paisley firm, Dundas Smith & Co., specialised in plain and embroidered muslins. The business had a factory in Paisley and employed weavers, warpers, winders, tambourers (embroiderers) and clippers. From 1790 and until 1802 Dundas Smith & Co. marketed their goods in England and exported cotton and linen goods to Jamaica.  John Houston lived to a ripe old age. In 1807 he was described as ‘about 87; quite agile and strong; can walk to Paisley and return as cleverly as a man of twenty’.

© 2022  Helen Calcluth

Further information on the Speirs, Barbours, Hows and Houstons is contained in “Kilbarchan and the Handloom Weavers” (Chapter 3, pp 31-42). Available on the website Publications.