About this image
Demands of the international market caused a boom in the local lace trade. Tenement mills such as the one seen here sprang up all over the Erewash valley, primarily because of a local booming transport infrastructure of canals and railways, which supplied local coal for power, and an increasing population of workers already familiar with skills applicable to the textile and particularly the lace trade. Named after the Landowner, The Earl of Harrington, The Harrington Mills were built in the late 1880's. It contained 255 machine standings and was the largest of all Long Eaton's tenement factories. The standings were rented out, allowing smaller enterprises to flourish. At one point Harrington Mills housed 26 separate ventures of this type. Housing was also affected by the development of the lace trade here as factory owners built their houses along Derby Road, which at the time was separated from the town by fields. During the 1890s, after the Harrington and West End Mills were built, houses for the factory workers sprang up in the surrounding areas leading to the development of Leopold Street, Stanhope Street and the Breedon Street and Curzon Street areas by the turn of the 20th century. Today the mills are still used by lace manufacturers, as well as other diverse businesses such as furniture manufacturers, engineers and as offices. The municipal cemetery in the foreground developed as a response to the increase in population of the town during the Victorian period. Long Eaton Cemetery accepted its first burial in 1884 and was finally closed to new burials in 1998. (There is still room for ashes interments and burials in existing graves.) It has a grade II listed chapel building which is just out of view behind the camera. West park is to the right of the picture.