It is remarkable how a population of weavers, in one generation, became a population of souters (shoemakers) or curriers.  All my great great grandfathers were weavers, all except one of my grandfathers were souters or curriers.

In 1838, John Gray & Co. began producing hand sewn footwear using local outworkers to stitch pre-cut soles to uppers.  He had a place in Inches Close, now the entrance to Safeway car park, where he would employ boys at 6^d a week.  They brought their own stools legend has it, and when opportunity arose they liked to slip to Ballochbrae to help Mr Brackenridge for a few coppers and occasionally a meal.  In any case, in the beginning the manufacture of boots was influenced by the practices of the weaving industry.  A lot of the work was done in the workers houses at so much a dozen pairs.  The competition for work was keen, and whoever was first to deliver their dozen pairs in the morning got the first dozen to be given out again.  I understand that this practise reached the stage of people taking their dozen to the factory stair-head at 3 a.m., hanging them on the rail and covering them with a shawl, and returning at 6 a.m. to claim their place in the queue.  Thus a generation of shoemakers was born - driven by desperation!

There was an old mill and a row of weavers’ cottages at the foot of the bog steps beside a burn - known inelegantly as the keechie burn. One night in 1869 an old wife called Sarah Cavey was running a lighted candle round the seams of the built-in bedstead to kill the bugs.  She set the bed alight and the cottage was gutted.  John Gray & Co. bought the property and built the Ladywell Tannery and Boot Factory.

Ladywell Tannery & Boot Factory

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For more on boot and shoemaking in Maybole see Maybole's Shoe Factories , John Lees & Co. Limited Shoe Factory, Our Shoe Factories by Rev. R. Lawson,  A Day in the Life of a  Shoe Factory Worker, When Maybole Had Boot Power by Edwin Lawrence and Dick Goudie: Last of the Maybole shoemakers.