Leading up to 1861, George Clegg, J. P. was a worsted manufacturer's clerk,working for John Murgatroyd and Sons Ltd. at Oats Royd Mills, a job he had started sometime after 1851. The overlooker or manager at the mill was Abraham Hollingrake. Abraham lived very close to the mill and George lived a little way away at Mount Tabor. The two men must have worked closely together and Abraham, living on the mill premises, will have introduced George to his family. We can't be sure of the order of events, but George hit it off with Abraham's daughter, Sarah.
In April 1861 Abraham had moved to Lumb Mill in Wainstalls and by the time George and Sarah were married, in October 1861, both George and Abraham were describing themselves differently. George was no longer a bookkeeper and Abraham wasn't an overlooker. They were both "worsted spinners".
The conjecture is that during the summer of 1861, George Clegg and Abraham Hollingrake were beginning manufacturing in their own right at Lumb Mill. There was another Murgatroyd, William, who had been manufacturing at Lumb - possibly a cousin of John Murgatroyd of Oats Royd. What the business arrangements were in the intervening years is unclear, but in 1868 Hollingrake and Clegg apparently bought an interest in Lumb Mill for £1600 and also borrowed £1000 from a private investor, Mary Jane Staniland. This information comes from a piece in the Halifax Courier by the Halifax Antiquarian Society in 1953, but there are some inconsistencies and inaccuracies in it so it needs some further research and verification.
The business was clearly successful though, because within a few years Hollingrake and Clegg were manufacturing at Sun Works, Wade Street in the centre of Halifax. Not only that, they were building their own purpose built mills on a plot of land they acquired just off Pellon Lane - Miall Street Mills.
Miall Street Mills were completed in 1874 with financial help from John Murgatroyd & Sons and continued to manufacture worsted botany yarns until the 1970s