Last month I wrote about the Newall family of Bower House, Eastby, their sheep farming activities on the Isle of Lewis, and their involvement in the Crofters Riots of 1888.

In the year following the riots, Samuel Albany Newall, who was born at Bower House in 1860, married Jessie Flora Mackay the daughter of Revd Donald Mackay, Minister of the Church of Scotland in Stornoway, and over the next decade they had five sons and a daughter, all born on the Isle of Lewis.

However, he retained an involvement with the farm at Bower House and visited Eastby regularly. The photograph, taken in Ilkley in 1893, shows Samuel Albany Newall, his wife Jessie and their three elder children. After the death of his father Samuel in 1897 he took over the tenancy of Bower House Farm where he and his wife and children were living at the time of the 1901 Census. The farm was managed by his elder unmarried half-brother John Myers Newall, as Albany’s main activities were on the Isle of Lewis where he had moved into the butchery business with premises at 39 Kenneth Street, Stornoway. More significantly he later became involved in the Harris Tweed industry.

At the beginning of the 20^th century the production of Harris Tweed was still a cottage industry with all the processes of carding, spinning and weaving carried out in remote crofts throughout the islands of Lewis and Harris, North and South Uist, and Barra. It was also a very self-contained market with garments used primarily by local people. But as the market began expanding beyond the Hebrides, the Harris Tweed Association was set up in 1909 to protect the brand of wool handwoven in the Outer Hebrides and the famous Harris Tweed Orb was created as a registered trademark in 1910 to safeguard the purity of the cloth.

The process also began to be partly mechanised and in 1912 Samuel Albany Newall bought a former mill in Stornoway and the first carding machine was developed at Newall’s Patent Slip Wool Mills.

Also in 1912 his eldest son Samuel Donald Albany Newall, who was 21, travelled to Sydney, Australia and was listed on the ship’s manifest as a farmer. Presumably the Newall’s were looking into setting up a sheep farming enterprise in Australia. But then came the First World War in which all five Newall sons served, including the eldest who was enrolled in the Australian Army in 1916 and his army records show that he spent over two years on active service abroad. He was demobilised on 18 August 1919, returned to Britain and became involved in the Harris Tweed business with his father and brothers.

By 1918 the Newall’s mill was one of the first to move from hand spun to mill spun yarn, and they had also become involved in dealing in finished Harris Tweed cloth and goods. With the end of the war and his elder sons in their late 20’s, the company of S A Newall & Sons Ltd was registered and opened a trading office in London at 407 Ulster Chambers, 168 Regent Street, London, W1.

The Newall’s had finally given up the tenancy of Bower House Farm in 1902 when it was taken over by Robert Carr who had formerly farmed Catgill at Bolton Abbey with his father. But the Newall’s still retained their connections with Eastby and in the 1921 Census Samuel Albany Newall and his youngest son Roderick, aged 22, were staying at Croft House, the home of his sister Ada who had married John Heyworth of Eastby back in 1889.

In the late 1920’s the elder son Samuel Donald Albany Newall took over the Harris Tweed business as Managing Director, and in 1929 the company of ‘S A Newall Ltd of London’ was listed as one of the exhibitors at the British Industries Fair at Olympia, London, and Castle Bromwich, Birmingham.

The Newall’s business was clearly prospering as Samuel senior had houses built in Stornoway at Balone House, Matheson Road, and in London at 28 Strawberry Hill Road, Twickenham. The London house was called ‘Bracondale’ and had 8 bedrooms and three bathrooms. His wife Jessie had died in 1908, and he lived between the two with his unmarried daughter Mary Adelaide.

Of the five brothers, Samuel Donald Albany Newall promoted the business by travelling abroad extensively as did his youngest brother Roderick Alexander Newall. Their brother Donald Norman Newall was the Manager of the London office, and John Poytress Newall looked after the business in Stornoway. The remaining brother Frederick James Newall became a doctor and moved to Ashford in Kent in 1935.

Their Eastby born father died at the house in Twickenham on 22 June 1932, aged 71, and was buried at Sandwick Cemetery, Stornoway, but the Newall’s Harris Tweed business continued to expand. On the 18 November 1938 the Stornoway Gazette published the plans for the Newall’s proposed offices. The Art Deco building at 7 James Street Stornoway was built in 1939 and is now a listed building.

The Newall’s also progressed into innovative colours of Harris Tweed as seen here on the front page of Tailor & Cutter magazine dated 29 March 1946.

In 1957 the second youngest son John Poytress Newall died, followed over the next 10 years by his four brothers, the last being the eldest Samuel Donald Albany Newall who died in 1967. Their sister Mary Adelaide Newall died in Eastbourne in 1971. The next generation of the family continued to run the business but in 1970 the company of S A Newall & Sons Ltd amalgamated with Thomas Smith (Stornoway) Ltd. They subsequently became part of Clansman Holdings which went into receivership in 1989.

And so came to an end the remarkable enterprises of a farming family from Eastby.

David G Turner, Embsay with Eastby Historical Research Group

SOURCES

Photograph of the Newall family courtesy of Wendy Mills
Harris Tweed Authority website
Angus Macleod Archive website
Grace’s Guide To British Industrial History
British Newspaper Archive
National Probate Registers
Census Returns
Database of the Embsay with Eastby Historical Research Group

This article is available in audio format, please click on the play icon below to listen.