Tonedale Mills

Tonedale Mills
Pictured in 2010
Location in Somerset
General information
Location	Wellington, Somerset
Coordinates	50°59′05″N 3°14′40″W / 50.984828°N 3.244368°W / 50.984828; -3.244368
Opened	1790

Tonedale Mills, including Tone Mills, was a large wool factory in Wellington, Somerset that was the largest woollen mill in South West England. Owned by Fox Brothers, it was most famous for the production of "Taunton serge", and later the khaki dye used by the British Army. The mill was established in the middle of the eighteenth century, and thrived during the industrial revolution. At its peak, around 6,500 metres (21,300 ft) of material was produced at the factory each day. The cheap cost of producing fabric in third-world countries contributed to the factory mostly closing during the 1980s, but small-scale production continues on part of the site.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the Were family of Wellington began producing serge as a cottage industry. In the early 1700s, Edward Fox married Hannah Were, and soon took over the trade. The wool industry thrived in areas used for sheep farming, like Somerset, and Taunton serge was particularly popular due to its balance between being light-weight and yet sufficiently thick. The Were family established Tone Mills in 1754, and over the next seventeen years, the family's assets quadrupled as the industry thrived. Thomas Fox, after learning the trade in Germany and the Netherlands for three years, entered the business as a partner, and formally founded the company as Fox Brothers in 1772. The technological breakthroughs of the late 18th century revolutionised textile manufacture, In the 1790s, Fox Brothers purchased a complex of buildings in Tonedale known variously as the "Old Town Mills" or the "Old Flour Mills" to centralise their processes. This move facilitated an increase in both quality and quantity, while cutting costs as other production was brought in-house; basket weaving, joinery, book binding and metalworking was all carried out on the site.

The site is notable for having remains of each phase of power generation: water, steam and electricity, as when steam power was introduced, Fox Brothers opted to retain their water management system as it might prove useful. The site was continually growing through the nineteenth century, and at its peak employed around 3,600 people around Wellington, and produced 6,500 metres (21,300 ft) of material each day. At the Tonedale complex, dyers working for Fox Brothers developed a khaki dye which was used by the British soldiers in the Second Boer War. The complex was the largest woollen mill in South West England, and was rare in integrating ancillary processes on the same site. The mill continued to produce cloth on a large scale until it downsized in the 1980s. Most of the site is now abandoned, though parts are still used for small-scale production, and others have been sold off and converted into a small industrial estate. In 1994 the last Fox family house in Wellington Tone Dale House was fully restored by Ben and Victoria Fox; Ben is the Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandson of Thomas Fox. Tone Dale House (since 1996) is now run as an events and hire venue, for house parties, weddings and corporate events, through their company The Big House Co. In 2009, Deborah Meaden and Douglas Cordeaux invested in Fox Brothers, allowing production to continue at Tonedale, after the company had been in danger of falling into bankruptcy.