The Crompton family's move from Firwood Fold to the almost palatial Hall'i'th'Wood was not as surprising as it may seem for a relatively poor family. They did not occupy the entire house, but shared it with other families, with George acting as caretaker until his death. It was a sort of early apartment block.

Young Samuel demonstrated an early interest in mechanics and at the age of 15, just three years after Hargreaves had built his Spinning Jenny, Crompton was operating one of the machines under the supervision of his mother.

But whereas others were content to use the Jenny to spin weft, Crompton tried desperately to make it produce the far more difficult warp threads, too. He had only limited success, and five years down the line, he was growing increasingly irritated by the Jenny's limitations and becoming convinced he could do better. So, after improving himself at evening classes, he locked himself away in one of the empty rooms at Hall i' th' Wood and set to work.

After the 1779 disturbances, Crompton reassembled his machine - later dubbed the Mule because it was a cross combining the jenny's twist action and the water frame's draw rollers - and began to operate it.

Though crude and built mainly of wood, with metal pieces constructed for him by a blacksmith friend, the machine proved immediately successful.

Crompton had intended to use it to provide yarn for his own weaving, but he soon discovered it paid better to spin for other weavers. He earned 70p a pound for what was known as 40s. This figure represented the number of hanks of thread that could be spun from a pound of cotton - the higher the number, the finer the thread. As his skill increased, he produced 60s that sold at £1.25.

Soon, he was producing 80s - a count that had been considered utterly impossible to achieve in Britain, with a thread so fine that a pound of it would have stretched the 36 miles between Manchester and Liverpool and part way back again.

For this, he was obtaining the staggering sum of £2.10 a pound. It meant he was earning four or five times as much from spinning thread on his machine than he could by weaving.