Qualla: Lombe's Mill https://qualla.com/lombe-s-mill en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/v/lombe-s-mill-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Lombe's Mill https://qualla.com/lombe-s-mill Lombe's Mill: Introduction https://qualla.com/lombe-s-mill/ Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. John Lombe sailed for Piedmont in 1716 with a notebook and a plan. The plan, by any modern definition, was industrial espionage. Italian silk throwsters, the artisans who twisted raw silk into strong thread on water-powered machines called filatoios and torcitoios, had a monopoly on the technology that supplied half of Europe with luxury yarn. Lombe got himself hired into one of their mills, sketched the workings of the machines in secret, and slipped out of Italy with the drawings and a few sympathetic Italian craftsmen who came back to England with him. Within five years he and his half-brother Thomas had built a mechanised silk mill on an island in the River Derwent in Derby. It was probably the first fully mechanised factory in the world. Within six years John was dead, almost certainly poisoned, and the King of Sardinia was widely blamed.

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/v/lombe-s-mill-wp/gcqv-lombes-mill-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Lombe's Mill: The Spy and the Architect https://qualla.com/lombe-s-mill/ Photo credit Ashley Dace, CC BY-SA 2.0. Derby was already a place where ambitious mill ideas got tested. In 1704 a Derby silk merchant named Thomas Cotchett had built a small water-powered silk mill on the west bank of the Derwent, just upstream from the future Lombe site. Cotchett's mill failed, but it left behind som...

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Image: Ashley Dace | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/v/lombe-s-mill-wp/gcqv-lombes-mill-the-spy-and-the-architect.mp3 0:06 2 full Lombe's Mill: Patent and Vendetta https://qualla.com/lombe-s-mill/ Photo credit Nigel Aspdin, Derby, England, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1718 Thomas Lombe secured a 14-year royal patent protecting the design. The Lombes had not invented the filatoio or the torcitoio, those machines had been refined in Italy over centuries, with illustrations of similar circular hand-powered throwing machines surviving from 1487...

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Image: Nigel Aspdin, Derby, England | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/v/lombe-s-mill-wp/gcqv-lombes-mill-patent-and-vendetta.mp3 0:06 3 full Lombe's Mill: Heat, Stinks, and Noise https://qualla.com/lombe-s-mill/ Photo credit Daniel Case, CC BY-SA 3.0. Thomas Lombe took over the business after John's death and ran it until his own death in 1739. The mill was a brutal place to work. Silk would only twist properly in warm, humid conditions, which in Derby meant artificial heating that filled the rooms with steam and burning lubri...

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Image: Daniel Case | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/v/lombe-s-mill-wp/gcqv-lombes-mill-heat-stinks-and-noise.mp3 0:06 4 full Lombe's Mill: The 1833 Lock-Out https://qualla.com/lombe-s-mill/ Photo credit Aethonatic, CC0. Almost a hundred years after the mill opened, the same building hosted one of the earliest organized struggles in British labour history. In November 1833 a sustained industrial dispute broke out in Derby, with mill owners including Taylor's Silk Mill, then operating in Lombe's o...

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Image: Aethonatic | CC0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/v/lombe-s-mill-wp/gcqv-lombes-mill-the-1833-lock-out.mp3 0:06 5 full Lombe's Mill: The 1910 Fire https://qualla.com/lombe-s-mill/ Photo credit The original uploader was Chris Harris at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0. On 5 December 1910 at five o'clock in the morning, fire broke out in the Sowter Brothers flour mill next door. It spread into the silk mill and gutted the building. The east wall collapsed into the river. The borough fire brigade and the Midland Railway Company between them manag...

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Image: The original uploader was Chris Harris at English Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/v/lombe-s-mill-wp/gcqv-lombes-mill-the-1910-fire.mp3 0:06 6 full