Patons and Baldwins
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Patons and Baldwins was a manufacturer of knitting yarn which was established in Britain in 1920.
The business began as two separate companies, founded in the late 1770s by James Baldwin of Halifax, England and John Paton of Alloa, Scotland. Both individuals had separately formed their businesses using the spinning mule developed by Samuel Crompton. Both companies produced mainly yarns for commercial knitting machines.
The Paton family were regarded as generous benefactors in the town of Alloa, where they provided funding for a significant range of public building projects, including the town hall, public libraries, a swimming pool and numerous churches, schools and Sunday schools[1].The company provided welfare facilities, housing and sports teams for its workers.
The two companies merged in 1920, and diversified into producing wool for home knitters, as well as publishing knitting patterns. It also purchased woollen mills in Canada and New Zealand, operating them under the company name and using the familiar beehive logo.
By the mid 1930s, the company was one of the world's largest producers of yarn, with factories across Scotland and the North of England, including factories at Billingham, Jarrow and Wakefield. After World War II, the headquarters of the business was relocated from Halifax to Darlington, where a large single storey factory was developed at a cost of £7.5 million which, at its peak, would employ 3,500 workers. The company branched out into various related lines of business, including the running of an angora farm in Staffordshire [2] between 1932 and 1934 and being involved in the development of new products such as nylon and Terylene.
The company was merged with J & R Coats Limited in 1960. Parts of the business were then broken up, with the production of knitting yarns transferred to Alloa in 1980, before closing the plant in 1999. Although no longer listed as a separate company, the Patons / Patons and Baldwins names have been used on various products since the merger.
