ROSSENDALE was today hit by the news that one of the last slipper manufacturers has gone into voluntary liquidation with the last of 32 jobs.

R Spencer (Cosy Comfort Slippers) Ltd, at Glentop Works, Stacksteads, was already operating on short time.

Owner and founder of the firm, Richard Spencer, said today: "It is a sad occasion. We have quite good order books but you cannot work without capital.

"I feel very sorry for the staff. I could have closed down when I retired in 1987 but I did not want to put the sixty-odd workers we then employed on to the unemployment scrap heap.

"My retirement coincided with the recession in the industry and unfortunately the industry has not recovered. Other firms have gone, names that you would have expected to carry on until doomsday.''

Mr Spencer began as a market trader after coming out of the army in 1950.

He said: "I was selling slippers but then started manufacturing in a very small way, 100 pairs a week was a big production then.''

Orders began to build up and the time came when he had to decide whether he was a market trader or manufacturer.

He chose manufacturing and at its height the company was employing more than 70 and producing about 30,000 pairs of slippers a week.

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