Chris Aspin

Christopher Aspin (1 February 1933 – 2 February 2024) was an English author, historian, and journalist. Among his published works are a biography of James Hargreaves, inventor of the spinning jenny, and The First Industrial Society: Social History of Lancashire, 1750–1850, a study of the social aspects of the industrial revolution. Aspin had a lifelong interest in local history and the history of the Lancashire textile industry in particular.

Life and career
Aspin spent his life in Helmshore, a small mill-town immediately south of Haslingden, Rossendale. In his 2003 memoir Just A Few Words: A Helmshore Boyhood he describes a friendly, polite, thrifty and hard-working community "...one half of the village being church and Tory, the other half chapel and Liberal". He writes warmly of his childhood memories, and how his family, friends and relatives were closely integrated into the discipline of the textile mills that provided most of the population with employment.

Aspin attended Helmshore Council School and, after a period during the war when he was often seriously ill, he passed a scholarship examination and started at Haslingden Grammar School in 1944. At school his passion for cricket developed, and Haslingden Cricket Club's ground was just a short walk away. Here he was able to see the international professionals who played for the club as part of the Lancashire Cricket League, which gradually became an important part of his life. He wrote on league cricket for Wisden for the past 40 years, and acted as the Secretary of Haslingden Cricket Club for more than 40 years; he has a suite named after him at the club.

After school Aspin undertook National Service in the RAF and, on completing this, he formed Helmshore Local History Society with his friend Derek Pilkington. In 1949 Aspin started work as a journalist, including the Lancashire Telegraph. Most of his working life was spent at the Manchester Evening News where he wrote on business, finance and music. He also acted as local correspondent for The Times, The Guardian, and The Daily Telegraph. He retired from journalism in 1993, but continued to research and write books. During the 1960s, with Derek Pilkington and others, he helped with the transition of Higher Mill, Helmshore, into its role as Higher Mill Textile Museum.

Aspin died after a short illness in Blackburn, Lancashire on 2 February 2024.

Writings
Throughout his writing Aspin returned over and over to the ways in which Haslingden and Helmshore have changed and developed over the last century. Both places grew enormously during the Industrial Revolution, and were famous for the production of woollen and cotton goods. Many of his books record the rise and fall of the mills, which once dominated the skyline; the move away from railways to motorways; and the overall changes of the last half century, in which time Haslingden and Helmshore have become large residential areas for people commuting to Manchester and other nearby towns. His The Water-Spinners, A New Look at the Early Cotton Trade, records his search for the sites of mills that used Sir Richard Arkwright's machines. The Golden Valley describes Rossendale's most important years. Aspin was also concerned with the civic and spiritual life of the community, as well as with sports (especially cricket) and other pastimes. His second book was a history of Haslingden Cricket Club in the Victorian Era, which was reviewed by John Arlott in Wisden. Aspin also wrote the popular Shire Publications guides to both the woollen and the cotton industries.

Aspin's research in the 1970s on poverty in working-class Salford, Manchester and elsewhere in Lancashire led to the journalist Stanley Graham's writings on cholera and sanitation in the slums. Aspin contributed articles on cotton pioneers James Hargreaves, James Thomson and John Bullough, to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

At the age of 70 Aspin wrote, Just a Few Words: A Helmshore Boyhood, remembering 50 years of thoughts and feelings of living in Helmshore throughout the 30s and 40s. He also authored, sometimes in partnership with another local historian, John Simpson, several books of historic photographs of the district. After retiring Aspin wrote over a thousand light verses, published by Royd Publications and Carnegie Scotforth.

As well as his writings on local and textile history and heritage, Aspin wrote a number of short books for children and young people. During his later years he also wrote booklets of ghosts and hauntings (typically taking place within Rossendale), and was a member of the Society for Psychical Research.