Interior. View of top floor flat at South end from North. Digital image of A 38499

Description Interior. View of top floor flat at South end from North. Digital image of A 38499

Date 3/1986

Catalogue Number SC 787421

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of A 38499

Scope and Content Top-floor 'preparing flat', Tay Works, No 2 Lochee Road, Dundee This is a view of the south end of a top-floor 'preparing flat' from the north. The roof trusses are made from cast iron, a fireproof material. There are windows set into the roof to provide as much light into the space as possible. This may have been where the jute, already softened by oil and water, would have been put through the carding machines to be 'teased' and mixed together to form even slivers. The majority of workers in the jute industry in Dundee were women, who were paid low wages. This affected the population statistics in the city: in c.1900 there were nearly three women for every two men aged 20 to 45. It was not so easy for the men to find work in a city dominated by the textile trade, so the young men often left the city to find employment elsewhere. The Tay Works in Lochee Road, Dundee, began as a business in 1849 when the Gilroy Brothers bought several mills from a bankrupt flax spinner. The works was extended further with the building of other mills and factories between 1851 and 1881. By 1877 Gilroy Sons & Co was the second biggest jute manufacturer in the world. By the 1970s the jute industry had declined, and in 1986 much of the Tay Works was converted into student residences. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/787421

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap