TEXTILE production in West Craven will come to an end next year with the announcement that Johnson and Johnson Medical is to cease weaving cotton gauze at its Victoria Mill site in New Road, Earby.

Last year saw the closure of Lontex Industries Ltd, which produced specialist carpet yarns at Fern Bank Mill, Barnoldswick.

Now Johnson and Johnson has announced that its weaving operation in Earby will cease around the middle of the year 2000, finally letting the curtain fall on West Craven's once great textiles industry.

Alan Robertshaw, director of personnel at Johnson and Johnson Medical's Gargrave facility, confirmed the news, previously announced to the workforce at Earby.

However, he added that he was very optimistic that over the coming 18 months the 33 workers involved in the weaving operation there could be absorbed into the much larger workforce at the company's Gargrave plant, which now employs around 900 people.

In future, the company will buy in its cotton gauze from external suppliers rather than produce its own.

Mr Robertshaw added that the company was still considering the future of the Victoria Mill site at Earby. It is also used for storage and distribution, and may well be retained by the company for those or other uses.

The site also boasts Earby's last remaining mill chimney, a local landmark and a reminder of the years when the textiles industry was booming across West Craven.

The building of large textile mills leading up to the turn of the century, housing row after row of looms, transformed Earby and Barnoldswick from small rural villages into industrial cotton towns.

The mills led to rows of terraced houses for the mill workers, new schools for their children, churches to worship in, even municipal parks and gardens for their few leisure hours.

Now as the century - and the millennium - draws to a close, West Craven will say a final farewell to the industry responsible for so much of its development.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.