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Kirriemuir - Wilkie's Factory

Wilkie's Factory - June 1957

This is Wilkie's Factory in Kirriemuir. According to Sir J. M. Barrie's novel The Little Minister the weavers of Kirriemuir (called "Thrums" in Barries' books) were always on the edge of rebellion. The setting of the Barrie novels is in the Industrial Age. Weavers worked in the factory, but there were still many Handloom Weavers) who worked in their home, earning a precarious living and using their own machines, as they had done for centuries.

"Those were cruel words, but they only mean that people who are seldom more than a day's work in advance of want sometimes rise in arms for food. Our weavers are passionately religious, and so independent that they dare any one to help them, but if their wages were lessened they could not live. And so at talk of reduction they catch fire. Change of any kind alarms them, and though they call themselves Whigs, they rose a few years ago over the paving of the streets and stoned the workmen, who were strangers, out of the town. ..... And though you may have thought the place quiet to-day, Mr. Dishart [Ed: Gavin dishart was the "Little Minister"], there was an ugly outbreak only two months ago, when the weavers turned on the manufacturers for reducing the price of the web, made a bonfire of some of their doors, and terrified one of them into leaving Thrums. Under the command of some Chartists, the people next paraded the streets to the music of fife and drum, and six policemen who drove up from Tilliedrum in a light cart were sent back tied to the seats."

According to Auld Licht Idyls by Sir J. M. Barrie (whose father was a weaver):

"There was a 'weavers' walk' and five or six others, the 'women's walk' being the most picturesque. These were processions of the members of benefit societies through the square and wynds, and all the women walked in white, to the number of a hundred or more, behind the Tillie-drum band, Thrums having in those days no band of its own."

Wilkie's Factory - 1940s

This is Kirriemuir as seen from the Seminary with Wilkie's factory (Garie Works) in the right foreground.

Wilkie's Factory now has its own Web site. "The company was established in 1868 by James and David Wilkie, and is one of Europe's leading manufacturers of industrial textiles. We specalise in synthetic filament and spun yarn weaving .....

"We are also the only UK company still producing both woven and non woven jute. J. & D. Wilkie has seen a lot of changes through the years with current products and processes probably unrecognisable to its founders ..... In the beginning Wilkie's was, like many textile companies, primarily jute weavers. Since then the jute industry in the UK has shrunk considerably. We helped transform the traditional cottage industry in to a centralised manufacturing plant utilising the modern technology of the time."

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