SOUND ARCHIVE

Living Linen Interview LL2_R00/33

Sound Recording : Magnetic Tape, Reel

Orr, George (Mr) (Primary maker)
Orr, George (Mr) (interviewee)

02/05/2000
02/05/2000

Sound Recording on Reel: Barbours - Linen Thread Company. Library Transcript: Transcript. Summary: George's first job, aged 14, was with William Barbour & Sons - Hilden Mills in 1941. Mr Orr's father, Charlie - a manager in Lambeg Weaving Co, was a friend of Barbour’s manager - William Long. During WWII Barbour’s produced a lot of netting for military use and threads which were used for shoes and uniforms. Barbour's was part of the Linen Thread Co, (LTC) a large group that included several other spinning mills and thread works in Northern Ireland and Scotland. Barbour’s employed their own flax buyers in Courtrai. Hilden spun yarn of up to 35 lea. For finer threads, such as surgical sutures, yarn was purchased from Andrews in Comber or Jennymount in earlier years. Flax and yarn quality was extremely important when it came to thread manufacture. Hilden not only bleached and dyed their own yarns, but also carried out a lot of work for the other LTC companies. George was appointed foreman in the spinning section under Walter Tench (manager). Barbour’s had their own R & D and testing facilities. Threads could be rot proofed or given a flame resistant finish in Hilden. They had little contact with LIRA except in relation to customer complaints. In such cases LIRA tested the produce and gave an impartial ruling - acceptable to manufacturer and customer alike. Barbour's also had a synthetic thread plant, manufacturing bonded threads for seat-belts and car roof-linings. The synthetic division grew as the demand for, and application of, linen threads diminished. The synthetic threads were not necessarily superior to linen threads but they were considerably cheaper. Thread manufacturing was clean but noisy. Mackies supplied 85% of the thread making machinery. George was promoted a number of times within the company. He became assistant manager and then manager of the spinning section. After the company was split into a linen and a synthetic division George was appointed linen manager and then later production manager over the entire plant. He was ultimately made Production Director with a seat on the Board in 1977. When George Orr first joined Barbour's they employed some 2,000 people. This would ultimately fall to 450. Barbour's owned a large number of houses in Hilden Village. Although 60% or so of the workforce lived locally, significant numbers of people travelled from Dromore and Belfast - particularly after the large Belfast mills began to fold. Barbour's provided a school, a playground and recreational clubs for the residents of Hilden village. Barbour's threads were exported world-wide and the firm had an extensive network of overseas agents and offices. Labour costs became an increasingly significant overhead, along with water charges. Despite this Barbour's always maintained good labour relations and experienced little strike action. When George joined the firm thread production was 100% linen; by the time he left it was 80% synthetic. In 1985 George went to Campbell's mill in Mossley (still part of the same group) as Managing Director. Campbell's had been linen and synthetic thread producers, but in an attempt to rationalise, thread-making was concentrated in Hilden and spinning in Campbells. George was also Managing Director at Dunbar McMaster. George retired from Campbells in 1989. The mill has since been sold to Herdmans and closed. George acted as an agent for Wigglesworth selling flax for a number of years, drawing on the flax grading knowledge he had built up at Barbours. This work dried up with the closure of the independent mills in Northern Ireland.

HOYFM.R2000.73

National Museums NI