Asa Lees was a firm of textile machine manufacturers in

Oldham Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, amid the Pennines and between the rivers Irk and Medlock, southeast of Rochdale and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, wh ...

, Lancashire. Their headquarters was the Soho Iron Works, Greenacres. It was second only in size to

Platt Brothers Platt Brothers, also known as Platt Bros & Co Ltd, was a British company based at Werneth in Oldham, North West England. The company manufactured textile machinery and were iron founders and colliery proprietors. By the end of the 19th century, ...

Early history

Samuel Lees founded a roller making works in the 1790s, it was called the Soho Works. His second son Asa Lees (1816–62) inherited the premises. He expanded the business, exporting

fustian Fustian is a variety of heavy cloth woven from cotton, chiefly prepared for menswear. It is also used figuratively to refer to pompous, inflated or pretentious writing or speech, from at least the time of Shakespeare. This literary use is beca ...

power loom A power loom is a mechanized loom, and was one of the key developments in the industrialization of weaving during the early Industrial Revolution. The first power loom was designed in 1786 by Edmund Cartwright and first built that same year. ...

s to St Petersberg. He abandoned looms to concentrate on manufacturing preparation and spinning machinery. The Soho Cotton mills was converted to a Mule carriage works. Asa Lees became a limited company in 1868, four years after Platts and the shares were quoted on the Oldham share market until the 1890s. It never published its accounts, though its dividends were consistently higher than Platts, and remained profitable in 1928 when Platts made a loss. They were conservative in their trading, dealing only with reliable firms. They did not push for exports. They experienced rapid expansion in the 1880s under the management of Robert Taylor (1823–1912) and production peaked in 1906 when they were employing 3000 men.

Later history

In the recession of the 1930s,

, Howard and Bullough, Brooks and Doxey, Asa Lees, Dobson and Barlow,

Joseph Hibbert Joseph Nathaniel Hibbert (1894 – September 18, 1986) was, along with Leonard Howell, Archibald Dunkley, and Robert Hinds, one of the first preachers of the Rastafari movement in Jamaica following the coronation of Ras Tafari as Emperor Haile Se ...

John Hetherington John Hetherington is a presumed apocryphal English haberdasher, often credited as the inventor of the top hat, which is said to have caused a riot when he first wore it in public on 15 January 1797. The story The common form of the story, as rep ...

and Tweedales and Smalley merged to become Textile Machinery Makers Ltd., but the individual units continued to trade under their own names until the 1970, when they were rationalised into one company called Platt UK Ltd. In 1991 the company name changed to Platt Saco Lowell.

The premises

*Soho Iron Works - Greenacres SD 939053 *

References

{{Authority control Industrial Revolution Companies based in Oldham Spinning English inventors Textile manufacturers of England Engineering companies of England Textile machinery manufacturers