and another hat manufactory, which had been unoccupied some years, was transformed into a cotton mill at the same period.

Although the business of machine making had made great progress in Manchester and other large towns, yet in Oldham that branch of trade had not attained to a tithe of its present magnitude so late as 1820. In 1815 there were only four machine makers in the town, Messrs. John Garnett, William Jackson, John Watson, and John Winterbottom, and one iron founder, Mr. John Mackie. In 1816, Mr. Samuel Lees, of Holt's mill, near Lees, a native of the neighbourhood of Mossley, estab- lished a mill near Fowleach, for the making of rollers for the different processes of the cotton trade. In honour of the great establishment of Messrs. Bolton and Watt, at Birmingham, the new works were named Soho; and such was Mr. Lees's enterprise and industry that the concern became in single year the largest used for a similar purpose in any part of Lancashire. The quantity of work produced appeared to those engaged in the infancy of the business incredible. In 1822 the manufactory had become so large that the works and adjacent buildings appeared like a small village; the number of workmen then employed by Mr. Lees was 130. At that period the making of spindles had become a large branch of the business carried on. In 1830 the number of workmen was upwards of 200. In 1846, when the works had become the property of Eli and Job Lees, Esqs., sons of Mr. Samuel Lees, the number of hands employed amounted to 270, and the quantity of iron used weekly was 18 tons. In 1845, Mr. Asa Lees, another of the sons of Mr. Lees, established, in conjunction with his partner, Mr. Samuel Barnes, a considerable machine making mill and iron foundry adjacent to Soho works. In 1846 Messrs. Lees and Barnes employed 400 operatives, and consumed about 40 tons of iron and other descriptions of metal weekly. Samuel Lees, Esq., of Soho, was the principal contribu-

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