Cash’s One Hundred Cottage Factory

Cash’s One Hundred Cottage Factory was a development of 46 weavers’ houses built in 1857 in Coventry. A shared driveshaft ran through the upper-floor weaving studios, powered by a collective steam engine, allowing home-based silk weavers to operate power looms and therefore compete with their factory-based peers. Such buildings were called ‘cottage factories’. Arranged as a pair of 12-m-high terraces around a set of allotments, the larger 112-m-long block overlooked the Coventry Canal to the east, while the shorter, at 62 m, overlooked Cash’s Lane to the south. The scheme also included the Head Office for J. & J. Cash, Ltd., the silk weaving company that built the development and employed the resident weavers.