All About Pott Shrigley
The Other Shrigley
The Other Shrigley – Joyce Burton
Chris Hagan, a journalist and author of the book ‘Farewell to Old Shrigley’, contacted me recently to find out what knowledge the residents of Pott Shrigley had of their twin village Shrigley, in County Down, Northern Ireland.
There is, or was, a village, one mile from Killyleagh, named after Pott Shrigley. Two hundred years ago, John Martin, a friend of the Downes family and son of a Belfast merchant left our village and went to County Down where in 1824 he built a six storey weaving mill and developed a self-contained industrial village around it, calling it Shrigley in honour of the place he had just left. It was one of the first of what became known as “Model” villages, carefully planned with well-designed housing, a school, a village hall and plenty of recreational facilities. The mill, itself burned down in 1845 but he replaced it with, what was once one of the biggest spinning mills in the British Isles. In 1871, five years before John martin died, grateful villagers paid for a permanent memorial, a clock tower to be built in honour of the Martin family, in the centre of the village at the crossroads outside the mill gates. This is now the only building remaining on the site of the old village.
When the mill closed on the night of Hallowe’en 1930, nine years of severe hardship and poverty followed. However during the Second World War the derelict mill was saved by the Utitz brothers, Alfred and Jacob, from Czechoslovakia and Walter Weiniger from Austria, all Jews fleeing from persecution, who developed United Chrometanners, a leather tannery. When Jacob Utitz died in 1948 followed by his brother, Alfred, two years later, control of the firm passed to Erik Biss, who ensured that the tannery continued to develop and grow. It employed up to 600 people and became world famous for its production of light leathers and suedes, culminating in it winning the Queen’s Award to Industry in 1966.
In that same year the diggers moved in and began building a new village on the opposite hill. The mill and all the beautiful blue stone houses, that had been developed around the mill gates after it was established by John Martin, were destroyed but UCT continued and was eventually taken over in 1974 until tanning in Shrigley eventually ended in 2004.
However the lasting memories of the original village did not die and the Shrigley 200 society was formed. In May the village celebrated the 200th anniversary of Shrigley’s foundation. Even though all its streets have been bulldozed and every house has been knocked down, villagers threw an enormous birthday party in honour of the founders who built Old Shrigley. An official history of the model village, ‘Farewell to Dear Old Shrigley’, was published in May 2024 to coincide with the 200th anniversary and The National Lottery Heritage Fund Northern Ireland Committee sponsored a memory wall in Shrigley.
John Martin’s family apparently sponsored a window in Pott Shrigley church, the one behind the altar. The members of the society are keen to form links with Pott Shrigley. It’s a lovely idea to resurrect the connection between the two villages but the Council doesn’t want to start the process of an official twinning. If you have any suggestions of what we might do, please email me at clerk@pottshrigley-pc.gov.uk.
You find more images and comments on the Facebook page ‘Old Shrigley’.
Sources: Farewell to Dear Old Shrigley, The Down Recorder