The weaving of linen has been practised in Great Britain for a very long period, beginning with the Anglo-Saxon times, but though the manufacture has been much extended since the introduction of machinery, its expansion is lim ited by the greater cheapness and convenience in many respects of cotton. The English linen industry owed much to Flemish weavers, who settled in England at various times from the 11th or 12th century onward. Flax-spinning machinery was introduced by John Kendrew and Thomas Porthouse, at Darlington, in 1787, and a mill was opened at Olamis in Forfarshire in 1790. The chief seat of the English linen manufacture is Leeds and its neighborhood, where spinning is done on a very exten sive scale. A single room in one of the facto ries at Leeds is said to cover two acres. Ireland and Scotland, however, are much larger manu facturers of linen than England. Of the $40, worth of linens exported from the United Kingdom in 1913 four-fifths were from Ireland.
Linen was woven in Ireland as early as the 11th century. The manufacture was improved by the refugees who left France on the revoca tion of the Edict of Nantes and settled at Lis burn and Lurgan on. the invitation of William III. The manufacture never really flourished till
it was carried on in mills, and by the aid of machinery. The value of linen goods now ex ported from Ireland to Great Britain is esti mated at $40,000,000.
Dundee, Dunfermline and Perth are the seats of the Scotch linen manufacture.
The introduction of machinery in the linen manufacture is of recent origin. It followed the adaptation of machinery to the manufacture of cotton, but as there were some special diffi culties to be overcome — such as the want of elasticity on flax yarn — an interval took place between the invention of the various cotton machines and their adaptation to the linen manufacture. The machinery used both in spinning and weaving linen is in general, how ever, the same as that used for cotton. See TEXTILE INDUSTRY, AMERICAN; TEXTILES Or TEXTILE FABRICS.
Consult Charley, 'Flax and its Products> (Belfast 1862) ; Gibbs, G. M., 'Household Textiles) (Boston 1912) ; Leggatt, 'The Origin and Practice of the Art of Weav ing' (London 1893) ; Moore, A. S., 'Linen' Ob. 1914) ; Warden, 'The Linen Trade, Ancient and Modern' (lb. 1867) • Woodhouse and Milne, 'Jute and Linen Weaving' (2d ed., London 1914).