By 1914 Barlick had made up all the ground it lost under the stultifying influence of the Bracewells whose time was over because they had stuck to the old vertical model of running mills. It's worth noting that in the same year, 1885, the Bracewells in Earby hit the same problem and failed. The new model weaving sheds and the room and power system was triumphant, the Calf Hall Company was so successful its shares were virtually unobtainable and tenants who had made enough money to want to take over the mills couldn't get a look in so they built their own sheds. By 1914 the new sheds were in production and the last one, Bancroft, was being built.
There was one fly in the ointment, the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo triggered the Great War and this stopped progress dead in its tracks. By 1920 the war was over, the new Bancroft Shed was open and weaving and all the other mills were working flat out to make up the stocks lost during the war. Happy days were here again but in July 1920 the bubble burst and even though it wasn't fully realised at the time, the cotton trade in Barlick went into terminal decline. By the time the Second World War broke out there had already been major mill closures and industrial unrest. At this point Barlick found it had an unlikely saviour, Adolph Hitler!
For years before the war the Ministry of Aircraft Production had been looking for 'shadow factories' in areas relatively safe from enemy bombing which could be used to carry on essential war production. Barlick, Earby and Clitheroe were ideal, plenty of empty industrial premises and there was a skilled and disciplined workforce ready to re-skill. First the Rover Car Company and then Rolls Royce came in and Rolls are still with us today. The other modernised factories left empty when most of the aero industry left after the war were ideal for new start ups and we got Silentnight, Carlson's and other new industries. What has always intrigued me is that all this was totally by chance. There was no government plan to help Barlick in decline, it was Hitler who forced the change.
What of the town itself? During the whole of the inter war years development was at a standstill. Apart from a few in-fills, there was no house building in Barlick between 1914 and the end of WW2 when there was a council house building programme as the population started to increase. The local retailers and service industries managed to survive but only just, occupying the same premises and working in the same way that they always had. With the benefit of hindsight, something had to change but as an outlier, Barlick missed out on the post war re-development. Once more, Barlick was a one-off, virtually ignored by the outside world. Apart from a new Post Office and a Labour Exchange on the site of the old St James' church everything stayed the same.
Bankfield became the most important aero industry site in England.
