Why did cotton spinning move out of cottages and into Britain's first factories?

Cotton spinning left the cottage because the best new spinning machine was too big, and too hungry for power, to run at home. Once spinning needed a water wheel, it needed a factory.

The squeeze started at the loom. In 1733, John Kay's flying shuttle doubled how fast a weaver could work. Home spinners could no longer make thread fast enough. Around 1764, James Hargreaves, a weaver near Blackburn, built the spinning jenny. One wheel turned many spindles, so one spinner could work eight threads at once. Yarn prices fell. Angry local spinners broke into his house and smashed his machines, and in 1768 he fled to Nottingham.

The jenny still fit in a cottage, but its thread was weak. It couldn't serve as warp, the strong lengthwise threads of cloth. Richard Arkwright, a former barber and wig-maker, fixed that. In 1769 he patented the water frame, which twisted thread between rollers instead of fingers. It needed real power: first horses, then water. In 1771, Arkwright and his partners opened a water-powered mill at Cromford, in Derbyshire. It is often called the world's first true factory.

Cromford put carding and spinning under one roof and employed 200 people from the start. The village was too small, so Arkwright brought in workers and built cottages for them. Work ran in two 13-hour shifts. A bell rang at 5, and the gates shut at 6 sharp. Latecomers lost the whole day, plus an extra day's pay. No cottage spinning wheel had ever kept that kind of clock.