Cash's Lane

Silk Weaving.  

Cash's (UK) is now known as one of the UK's quality weavers.But it was the Quaker brothers in Coventry last century who started the company.John and Joseph Cash were sons of a wealthy stuff-merchant. They began production of silk ribbons in the early 1840s.
At this time Coventry was already famous for its silk weaving. Skilled jacquard weavers called Huguenots who were escaping persecution in Europe had settled there and soon thousands of local people were employed in the cottage industry.
Workers owned their own jacquard looms and the Cashs, like other merchants, distributed the silk for them to weave in their homes. A fixed price was paid for each finished piece. The brothers Cash fast outgrew this system and instead became factory masters. They were among the in Coventry, pioneers of a more enlightened approach to employment. Soon, they planned to build a 'halfway house' which would allow their workers the independence of the old outworker methods while they themselves controlled output.
In 1857, work began on a site at Kingfield which Cash's (UK) was to occupy for the next 138 years. Above rows of weavers' cottages, the brothers created an upper storey with well-lit work areas housing jacquard looms powered by a central beam engine.
These were the famous Cash's Topshops. And the prizewinning silk ribbons woven there were used on the prettiest gowns, to the delight of fashionable society ladies.

The Free Trade Bill of 1860 allowed continental ribbons to flood the English market and many established Coventry firms collapsed.
But Cash's didn't. The brothers responded by switching production to narrow frillings, Victorian silk commemoratives and later to woven labels with which garment manufacturers.