A Shipley weaving company is close with the loss of 130 weaving jobs only 15 months after it was bought by textile group Worthington.

The strength of the pound abroad and the slump in high street stores sales of clothing have been blamed on the job losses.

Worthington bought worsted weavers S Jerome in Victoria Mills in October, 1998, for £7 million but a drop in sales means the firm will be left with 30 workers from the former Jerome business after the 90-consultation period ends.

The remaining design and administrative staff will be moved to the group's finishing company H Armitage at Eccleshill which is expected to be the new group headquarters.

The job losses follow others at the firm. Nearly 50 jobs were lost just before the former London-based Worthington took control at S Jerome in October, 1998. A further 20 redundancies were announced at the 100-year-old mill last November.

Worthington, which moved its headquarters from London to Shipley last year, will still use the well-known Jerome name but weaving will be done by commission weavers including its own West Yorkshire Weavers based in Keighley.

Ian Martin, Worthington's company secretary, said: "We are having to make these job cuts because of the high value of the pound which has led high street stores to buy clothes in Europe from manufacturers who produced cloth overseas.

"This is a sad day for us, but there is nothing we can do about it. We are going into a 90-day period of consultation with the workforce," he added.

Worthington directors have already been approached by other firms interested in buying the 225,000 sq ft mill but Mr Martin was unable to say who the interested parties were.

The Victoria Mills was the home of weavers Henry Mason for many years before the firm was bought out by S Jerome in 1958. The group, whose chairman was Alan Jerome until the firm was bought in 1998, acquired a number of other firms - including electronics companies - in the Yorkshire area and Scotland over the years.

Mr Martin said another Worthington group company, London button wholesaler Louis Goldstein, had also been sold for £880,000 by the firm.

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