BURY is one of the active manufacturing towns of Lancashire. The manufacture of woollen cloth became a staple article of trade in this place so far back as the fourteenth cen tury, and flourished to such an extent that in the reign of Elizabeth one of her aulnagers was stationed in the town to stamp the cloth. Up to a much later date woollens were almost the sole manufacture of the place ; but upon the introduction of the cotton trade into the county many of the inhabitants became weav ers of cotton fabrics, and the woollen trade has been gradually retiring into Yorkshire and other parts of the country where the cotton ma nufacture is less paramount. The different branches of the cotton manufacture, owing to the vicinity of Bury to the Manchester mar ket, and the abundant supply of coal and wa ter, are carried on to a considerable and in creasing extent in this and the adjoining township.
Several important improvements in the cot: ton manufacture took their rise in this place. A new method of throwing the shuttle by means of the picking-peg instead of the hand, and thence called the fly-shuttle, was invented by John Kay, a native of the town : and in 1760 his son, Robert Kay, invented the drop box, by means of which the weaver can at will use any one of three shuttles—an inven tion which led to the introduction of various colours into the same fabric, and made it al most as easy to produce a fabric consisting of different colours as a common cloth of only one. Bury is indebted for one branch of its
present trade to the father of the late Sir Ro bert Peel, who established his extensive print works on the banks of the Irwell, near this town ; he resided at Chamber Hall, in the immediate vicinity, where, or at a smaller house close by it, the late Sir Robert Peel was born.
There are at the present time in Bury more than a dozen large factories for spinning and manufacturing cotton, several large woollen manufactories, two calico-printing and bleach ing establishments, and two dye-works. Be sides the different branches of cotton and woollen manufactures, there are three large foundries, several smaller ones, and manufac tories of hats and other articles.