| Administrative History | According to the centenary history booklet produced by the company in 1955, corset making started in Ashbourne in 1855 with the establishment of a partnership between two men who had moved to Ashbourne from Manchester, Richard Cooper and Charles Smith.
Richard Cooper was said to have moved to Ashbourne in 1850 due to ill health, but this is not supported by the evidence. Baptised in 1827, Richard was the son of William and Betsy Cooper of Caverswall, Staffordshire. William Cooper was a farmer and in the 1851 census Richard was still living on his father’s farm in Staffordshire, but that year he presumably moved to a farm at Clifton, just outside Ashbourne, following his marriage to Sarah Hill, the daughter of a Brailsford farmer. Sarah died in early 1855, shortly after the birth of their only child, William Hill Cooper.
Charles Smith was born in 1822 in Askern, Yorkshire. There is again no proof that he lived in Manchester, but in the 1851 census he was working as a draper’s assistant in Chester. By 1861 he was established in Ashbourne where he was recorded on the census as a stay maker. In 1863, Charles married Sarah Ann Morton in Sheffield and by 1871 the couple had four young sons.
Messrs Smith and Cooper’s corsets were sold under the brand name Excelsior and by 1859, advertisements mentioning the Excelsior corset can be found in newspapers. In that year, Richard Cooper married Anne Marson, a farmer’s daughter from the parish of his birth, Caverswall. In the marriage register his profession was given as farmer so it may be assumed that he was investing in the corset business at this time but still maintained his farm. In the 1861 census, however, his profession was recorded as stay manufacturer.
After outgrowing their first two sites, the firm moved to a new purpose-built factory, Cooper's Mill, in 1864 and following Charles Smith’s death in 1877, Richard Cooper became sole owner of the business. The success of the business over the next twenty years is evident in the 1881 census, where he was recorded as a corset manufacturer employing 11 men, 4 boys and 113 women and girls. By 1898 the company had 500 employees.
After Richard Cooper’s death in 1885, his son, William Hill Cooper, took over the business, which continued to flourish. High demand led to the opening of additional factories in Uttoxeter in 1890, and in Derby in 1892. Following a serious accident whilst on holiday in 1890, William’s health suffered and in 1895, George Gather was taken into partnership. He had begun working for the firm in 1863 at the age of 13, and had rapidly progressed, becoming Works Manager and later General Manager. In 1905, following the death of William Hill Cooper in the previous year, the business was incorporated as a limited company, Richard Cooper & Company (Ashbourne) Ltd, and George Gather was appointed Chairman and Managing Director. Following an illness, he resigned as Managing Director in 1908, but remained as Chairman until his death in 1928. Lewis Rose, became Managing Director in 1908 and Chairman in 1928. The company continued to do well, opening an additional factory in Buxton in 1954.
By the 1960s textile manufacturing was on the decline in Britain. In 1963, Richard Cooper & Company (Ashbourne) Ltd, with its subsidiary Knitted Garments Ltd, was acquired by Standard Industrial Group, a holding company which had purchased a rival maker of foundation garments, Spirella Company of Great Britain Ltd, the year before. Spirella became a holding company, Spirella Group Ltd which also included another rival brand, Leethams (Twilfit) Ltd. In the 1970s, Spirella merged with Valtona Ltd and became known as Valtona Group Ltd. Following Valtona’s takeover of Carrington Viyella, the group became known as Valtona Viyella plc in 1983. In 1986 Coats Patons was acquired and the Valtona name was dropped, becoming Coats Viyella plc.
Production ended at Cooper's Mill in 1980, although a successor company, Coopers Textiles (Ashbourne) Ltd, was established by Tim Rose in a new factory on a new site in Ashbourne where traditional corsetry and lingerie continued to be manufactured. The firm was dissolved in 2005. |
| Custodial History | These records were deposited in Derbyshire Record Office in 1999 and 2001. |