HISTORIC TOWN

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31150, 29 August 1966, Page 17

HISTORIC TOWN

Aranui Link

With Tiverton

For at least one reader of “The Press,” who signs himself Otakou, the article printed on the front page on August 24 about a new £250,000 factory at Aranui. stirred an odd association of memories.

The yarn-bulking factory is to be jointly owned by Lane, Walker, Rudkin, Ltd., and John Heathcoat Company, Ltd., of Tiverton, England. “Fifty years ago,” writes Otakou, “1 went as a firstyear scholar to the Otago Boys’ High School, the then rector of which was Mr W. J. Morrell, M.A. (Oxon.) father of Professor W. P. Morrell, who is I think, the present chairman of the school’s board of governors. Mr Morrell, I was told, was an old boy of Blundell’s School, founded in 1604 at Tiverton. “John Ridd, the hero of ‘Lorna Doone’ was a scholar there: so also was the author of ‘Lorna Doone,’ R. D. Blackmore, Of Tiverton borough, one authority says: ‘Tiverton was a great seat of the woollen trade from 1353 till 1700 and afterwards: but lace-making became its staple industry, the lace factory having been established in 1816 by John Heathcoat (1783-1861), inventor of the bobbinnet frame.’ “So when the bus from South Brighton, where I live, takes me past Aranui I shall surely have an odd group of interesting facts from literature, history, and industry to think about.”