For most of the 20th Century, Spence Bryson Linen Mill provided work for many people in and around Markethill. It continued a fine tradition of linen manufacture in the area.

The linen industry in Markethill and district was largely a domestic endeavour until the Victorian era. Linen production was copied in Britain and Ireland from the exiled French Huguenots. It was accepted as a means of augmenting the family income and provided a little more stability than exclusive reliance on agriculture.

A Linen Board was established in 1711 to advance the linen industry in Ireland and did much to aid a move from cottage beginnings to factory surroundings. In the 1888 DH Sinton purchased a plot of land adjacent to the railway station in Markethill and established a linen factory with twenty looms in operation. The tenants in the area largely welcomed this as it provided much needed employment and a means of survival and advancement. Sinton lived in Paxton House in Markethill until his death in 1909.

The chimneystack of the factory was eighty feet high and was built by Peter McLarnon of Belfast. Tradition within the town says McLarnon left an ounce of tobacco at the top of the stack for anyone brave enough to climb to the top. The tobacco was never claimed!

The factory was purchased by the Spence Bryson partnership in 1909 for the sum of £1,500. The partnership of Thomas Henry Spence and John Bell Bryson was commenced in 1884 and for the duration of their lives no formal deed of partnership was ever written up. Originally they operated in their native Portadown buying yarn for the cottage weavers to work with. They established Clonavon Factory in Portadown prior to extending their concern to Markethill. The first employee of the Spence Bryson Factory in Portadown was one D'Arcy Wentworth Sinnamon who operated as a bookeeper and had a habit of throwing ledgers about when the accounts failed to tally.

When Spence Bryson took over the factory in 1909 they appointed John Dawson as manager and he gave the company fifty years of loyal service. The venture quickly flourished with the factory advancing sufficiently to be in a position to sell directly to American concerns such as Marshall Field and Acheson Hardy. By 1910 the capital of the firm totalled almost £100,000.

The factory certainly made its presence felt in more than the employment sphere. Workers commenced work in dim and damp conditions at six each morning and the noise when the power looms were started was almost deafening. In the early days belts suspended from overhead shafting operated the looms. A shuttle made of hickory wood and tipped with metal was driven across the 'sley' (area between the weft threads) up to one hundred and sixty times each minute. Steam was released to prevent dry linen yarn from breaking and no doubt this exacerbated chest conditions, as did the practise of many employees of smoking woodbines, otherwise known as 'coffin nails'.

Spence Bryson was famous throughout the country and beyond for producing exceptional quality in its products. They produced Linen sheeting, white dress suiting, handkerchiefs, artists cloth and even aero cloth for use in the wings of planes. Mush talked of was the Tenter Tom Freeburn whose ability to set a loom was legendary. Such was the progress of the factory that during the depressed thirties when other mills and factories were closing their doors Spence Bryson was in fact working two shifts, twenty-four hours a day, with almost two hundred employees to complete their workload.

Weavers in the factory commenced work as soon as they left school aged fourteen. No references and interviews were required as jobs where attained through relatives already employed at the factory. New employees filled batteries for seven shillings (35p) per week but as they progressed to weaving they could hope to earn twenty-one shillings each week. There was no accepted retirement age and many workers continued to work into their eighties.

In 1958 George Chamber succeeded John Dawson as manager but he died prematurely at aged fifty-one. He was succeeded by Horace Adams who introduced the Rapier loom. Having no shuttle their looms were much more efficient and made significantly less noise. The downside of efficiency was of course that manual labour was usurped by technology and by the 1980's Spence Bryson employed only eighty workers.

On the 28th August 1991 Markethill was devastated by a terrorist bomb and the Spence Bryson Factory was destroyed. Amazingly a new factory was established within two days and only one order was lost.

REFERENCES
Greig, W, General Report on the Gosford Estates in County Armagh with an introduction by FML Thompson and D Tierney (Belfast, 1976)
Hill, P, The Linen Valley (Belfast, 1992)
Marshall, P, "Spence Bryson and Co. Ltd. Linen Weaving Factory, Markethill in Before I Forget...", Journal of the Poyntzpass Historical Society (October 2000, No.8)
Additional material provided by Irene Grey, History Dept., Markethill High School.