Biography

Crossley was one of three brothers who "took over the Dean Clough carpet mills after the death of their father, John Crossley, and spent many busy years building up the business until it was a huge concern, employing some 4,000 workers in its heyday and sending large quantities of carpets overseas as well as across the length and breadth of Britain. Each of the brothers saw to a different aspect of the business and they employed a talented designer and inventor, George Collier, who spent some years on research and trials before finally producing his new power loom for weaving carpets which was to revolutionise carpet manufacture. It was largely the patent rights accruing from this invention, which was owned by the Crossleys, which earned the family's great income. John built a mansion at Manor Heath." From JosephCrossleyshomes. William Seward visited Crossley Carpetworks in 1859, writing his daughter Fanny on July 10, 1859,

"Leaving Leeds at ten oclock ^yesterday^ I came ten miles to Bradford when I stopped to examine Crossleys Carpet works. Two young men of low and humble life have built up a manufactory in which they are making three hundred pieces ofor 150,000 yards of costly carpeting a day and employing besides vast engines and various machines four thousand persons. And these too enterprising men too are humanitarians."