Kemps at Garden Place
Subject: Business and Industry
Gallery: Up to 1970
Catalogue ref: pa749
Kemps were silk manufacturers who at various times occupied a number of different premises in the town. Here we are inside their factory at the lower end of Garden Place, overlooking the channel which carries water away from the mill pond. The spinning wheel and hand loom show the persistence of hand processes although power driven machinery had arrived in other local factories. About 1904 – posters for Joseph Chamberlain’s Tariff Reform campaign on the wall.