As is well known, the West Riding of Yorkshire grew to dominate the British production of woollen and worsted cloths and yarns during the course of the eighteenth century eclipsing the older centres of East Anglia and the West Country. Spatial concentration of much of an entire sector of industry within a clearly defined industrial region was to become a major feature of British industrialisation, one which lasted into the twentieth century. Sectoral concentration must therefore play an important part in analysis of the dynamics of the industrial revolution but it has largely escaped much of the recent literature on this subject which has concentrated on national aggregates and their interaction. The rapid growth of the Yorkshire textile industry proved to be the first example of major new concentrations of production occurring at this time and, as such, it is important to consider the foundations of its success. What influences conditioned the emergence of dynamic forms of pre-factory and early factory manufacture and why were these influences so bounded in space that it is possible to be quite specific about the geographical extent of activity for a century or more? Put another way: what made this industrial region? On what foundations did its continuing success rely? And how did the network of social and economic relationships at regional level get formed and reformed in the process of economic growth?

This chapter concentrates on networks of credit and capital supply which were important in cementing diverse and dispersed manufacturing localities into a more integrated region.