Fond memories of ‘Carpetfield’
Mine of information
I looked from my window one black night and saw the Stoddard carpet works framed by trees and shrouded in grey mist.
Darkness and silence veiled the massive factory where the 24-hours-aday clack of looms, milling multitudes of workers, and the scintillating spectacle of nocturnal lights were part and parcel of Elderslie’s industrial landscape for decades.
But now the curtain has come down on carpet creation at the doomed factory. Stoddard is closing and the final phase of a saga of success which began 150 years ago is unfolding.
The dwindling workforce has been transferred to the company’s Kilmarnock base and only a skeleton staff remains. Demolition of the factory is expected to start next month. Soon only melancholic memories will linger.
Cawing cavalcades of seagulls have now colonised the Stoddard rooftops. They fly phantom-like through the night like the grey ghosts of thousands of weavers, darners, packers, engineers, electricians, dyers, beamers, winders, designers, Derek Parker knew many of Paisley’s secrets — the grimy and the good.
He wandered every corner in search of the clues that would unlock Renfrewshire’s rich history.
These tales were shared with readers in his hugely popular Parker’s Way column.
We’ve opened our vault to handpick our favourites for you.
fork-lift truck drivers, sweepers-up and labourers who spent their entire working lives at the ‘Carpetfield’.
At the head of the spectral workforce is American expatriate Arthur Francis Stoddard, complete with top hat, stick, pocket watch, waistcoat and suit.
He was the enterprising magnate who, in 1852, founded the company which was to become world-famous, after purchasing the Patrickbank Printworks, and bringing in carpetweaving machinery and employing 24 staff.
Within a few months, the workforce multiplied and Stoddard built up a lucrative export market to the United States.
The way to wealth was paved for the supply of carpets and rugs for the ill-fated Titanic ocean-liner, the Concorde aircraft, Indian palaces, African embassies, Middle Eastern mosques, Australian office-blocks, Holyrood House, Edinburgh Castle, hotels all over the world and, most celebrated of all, the carpet specially installed at historic Westminster Abbey for the Queen’s wedding to the Duke of Edinburgh in 1947.
As a former employee, I cherish marvellous memories of working on the Stoddard factory floor with wonderful people like Donald McCrae, Jim Hair, May Kirkwood, Isabel
Kenny, Hughie Blackburn, George McLaughlin, Margaret Reilly, David Tourish, Walter Allwood, Charlie Allan and many others who demonstrated that a nation’s true wealth is its workers.
The web of life is woven from many threads. Those of us who worked in Elderslie’s carpet-weaving industry are privileged to have been part of its proud pattern – and embittered by its sacrifice on the altar of capitalism.