Powys Digital History Project

Llanidloes
From wool to leather

  New life for the flannel mills
Following the almost total collapse of the Montgomeryshire flannel industry, the Spring Mills factory was purchased in 1906 for conversion into a tannery.
The buyer was Edward Hamer, a very successful businessman who specialised in Welsh mutton and held the royal warrant. The "Municipal History of Llanidloes" published in 1908 noted that "His industry has now become so extensive that it is able to supply a large portion of the British aristocracy, and a special van is employed on the railway between Llanidloes and the Metropolis".

Tannery at the
former flannel factory
at Spring Mills

Photograph by
kind permission of
Llanidloes Museum

Spring Mills tannery,c1908 
  The tannery at Spring Mills opened in 1908 under the management of Edward Hamer's son, T.Pryce Hamer, who was later killed in the Great War. The photograph above shows the former flannel mill premises in operation as a tannery.
Another son, George Frederick Hamer, purchased another former flannel mill, the Cambrian Factory, in 1931 for conversion to the leather trade
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