HOUSING IN BARLICK

[Stanley]

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT HOUSING PROVISION IN THE INTER-WAR PERIOD.



In January 1919 Councillor Emmanuel Shinwell addressed a meeting of the Glasgow Trades and Labour Council and called for a general strike in the city to take place on the 27th January. The purpose of the strike was to support their claim for a forty hour working week. On the 29th of January ‘Red Clydeside’ was on the march with Manny at their head. Some marchers carried weapons which they had brought back from the war. By the 3rd of February the government had moved troops in and had a squadron of tanks parked in the cattle market on the Gallowgate and they were prepared to use them.

Whatever else Manny and his army achieved, they got the government’s attention. This was concrete proof that the Red Tide had reached Britain from Russia and ‘steps had to be taken’. One of the measures to emerge from this collective frisson was the Addison Housing Act. This enlightened measure offered Treasury funding on all housing costs that could not be met by rents or the equivalent of a one penny rate. Although soon repealed as evidence of unrest receded, the Addison Act established the principle that Local Authorities were responsible for assessing and planning housing and that Treasury funding would help to finance the work.

Beyond this, the act alerted local authorities to the possibilities of housing provision, it stimulated planning and building industry capacity and the net result was that by the advent of the Second World War, Britain had a large stock of new municipal and private housing. Many of the old city slums, a hangover from the jerry building of the late 19th century had been done away with.

So there we have it. The basic structure of inter-war housing pared down to three paragraphs. It is a good broad picture of what was happening in the country as a whole. However, like many broad pictures, it fails to describe what happened in every local authority and district. In some cases, even though there was a need for housing improvement, local officials were reluctant to open up what they saw as a whole new field of local authority enterprise. Echoes of ‘Municipal Socialism’ still hung on from the late 19th Century. In other cases, new housing wasn’t needed.

Let’s have a look at a specific case and see what the factors were that were at work there and what resulted. I want to look at two aspects, the quantity of housing and the factors which provided it and, perhaps more important from the point of view of the population, the quality of life it afforded.

TOWN GROWTH AND HOUSING IN BARNOLDSWICK, YORKSHIRE, 1890 TO 1930.

The first thing to note is that I have had to stray outside the inter-war period. This is because what happened between 1890 and 1914 governed the events in the inter-war period. The fact that this is necessary flags up the complexity of the factors involved. This is not a simple story of masses of slum dwellings crying out for renewal.

Barnoldswick in 1890 was a small single industry town on the boundary of the West Riding of Yorkshire situated midway between Skipton and Burnley in Lancashire. Until 1800 it was a small village that divided its economy fairly equally between agriculture and a water-powered cotton spinning industry supporting a domestic economy of hand loom weaving. The advent of the Leeds and Liverpool canal in 1800 which passed through the centre of the town opened a transport link with both Lancashire and Yorkshire. Loads of 50 tons could be moved economically by one horse. This allowed Barnoldswick to exploit the fact that it was the nearest source of high quality lime to Lancashire and allowed the import of cheap coal.

By 1815 one of the old established water powered mills in the town, Mitchell’s Mill, had installed a steam engine and was expanding. A local entrepreneur, William Bracewell built two large steam mills, promoted a branch railway line, bought a colliery at Ingleton and by 1885 controlled most of the town. In that year he died suddenly, the bank foreclosed and the Bracewell empire crashed in a welter of court cases and forced sales. Labour flooded out of their rented accommodation into Lancashire and in September 1888 the Craven Herald reported that there were 300 houses empty in the town.

The workers had perfect freedom to move. The husband jumped on the train, found a job and a housing agent in one of the Lancashire boom towns, fastened a house and the rest of the family flitted by rail to join him. Owners of fixed capital in the town like businessmen, shop keepers and professional persons had no such luxury. They took action and by 1889 two ‘Shed Companies’ had been formed. The Long Ing Shed Company and the Calf Hall Shed Company. These were financed by local subscription, built brand new steam powered weaving sheds and let them out to individual entrepreneurs on the basis that the shed company provided the space and the power. The entrepreneurs provided the looms, preparation machinery and the labour. This Room and Power System provided an opportunity to start a business at very low thresholds of entry and was immensely successful.

The shed companies were very profitable and so was the cotton trade. By 1900 there was great unrest amongst the tenants because they resented the high profits the shed companies were making but couldn’t get hold of any shares because they were so widely scattered. Their reaction was to build sheds of their own.

This ushered in the next stage of expansion in the town, a wave of new shed building that started in 1900 and ended in 1920. Barnoldswick had developed from a sleepy village to one of the heaviest concentrations of weaving ever seen in the North of England.

So, to summarise, we have four stages of growth. First the original village, 1800 to 1885 the Bracewell hegemony, 1885 to 1900 the growth of Room and Power and the shed companies and 1900 to 1920 the expansion into new mills by the successful manufacturers who had made their capital in room and power.

One more look at the basics and then we can actually look at the housing. Two major inputs are needed to fuel the growth of any industry. They are capital and labour. My research into the town has never identified any difficulty in obtaining capital. When the Calf Hall Shed Company was founded, £6000 of the £10,000 starting capital was raised in a fortnight in the town and surrounding district. The majority of this came from small purchasers by workers. (This spread of ownership plus the effects of partiple inheritance was the reason why the manufacturers couldn’t get hold of the shares later on) A contributory factor was that there was no bank in the town and workers not only bought shares but lent money to the shed companies at 1% below bank interest. The factor in short supply was weavers and these were attracted to the town by two things, the availability of work for all members of the family old enough to work and cheap rented accommodation built by the manufacturers.

Here are some statistics which put a scale on these stages of growth.

Year Population houses looms
1811 1946 318 ----
1851 2985 535 500 (estimate)
1861 3618 575 1000(est)
1871 4000(est) 950(est) 2000
1881 4733 979 2000
1891 4938 1040 3500
1901 6500 ---- 7000
1911 8000 ---- 15000
1920(est) 12000 ---- 25000

These figures are not complete but suffice to illustrate the factor which governs Barnoldswick’s need for housing during the inter-war years. The explosion in activity from 1891 to 1920 is the key. Fuelled by buoyant demand and high prices, the town expanded by almost 200%.

THE PROVISION OF HOUSING IN BARNOLDSWICK.

During the Bracewell phase, housing in the town needed a kick start by the manufacturers. Whilst Bracewell was by far the major employer there were others and they all built housing to attract workers. This phase had largely died out by the mid 1860s because the workers were starting to build for themselves. Where did they get the capital?

One of the key features of the textile industry was the ‘Family Wage’. Children could start work half time at ten years old in 1892 and the practice in Barnoldswick was that they ‘tipped up’ their wage until they were 21 years old. This is to say that they gave their wage to their parents and received pocket money. From 21 years onwards they ‘boarded’, paying what was in effect rent and clothing themselves. An example, in 1896 William Clark, his wife and three of his daughters were all working and the family wage was £7 a week. The average weekly wage for a four loom weaver then was 25/-. To make a crude but effective comparison, the average wage for a weaver in 2003 is £250 to £300 a week. This puts the Clark family on the equivalent of £1,250 a week. This is a gross simplification but illustrates the point that such a family was well able to finance not only a new house but house building for provision in old age. The great fear was poverty in old age and the workhouse. The pension fund was to build a row of houses with a bigger ‘landlord’s house’ on the end and often a shop at the other. There are many examples of this type of enterprise in Barnoldswick.

Another factor we should take into account is the disparity between the weaver’s wage and the overlookers or tacklers. They had a very strong union and were essential to the running of the mill and commanded high wages. Many opened shops, built houses and eventually started as manufacturers or invested in new shed building.

This concept of working class capital resources is reinforced by the ease with which the shed companies and manufacturers raised capital in the 1890 to 1920 phase of activity. From 1900 to 1920 there was a massive surge in house building and the physical area of the town increased 200%. This was composed of terraced housing built for rent and a large proportion of large semi-detached and detached houses for the working class aristocracy and the manufacturers. The local Co-operative Society was doing so well that when it needed a new shop it tended to build a row of houses with a shop on the end and either sell or rent the surplus. All this housing was privately financed, none was state sector. The only investment the Local Board and later the Urban District Council put in was to finance and provide the gas, water, and sewage services which they financed by loans initially, but by profits from charges thereafter.

By 1920 the town of Barnoldswick was as we see it today if we ignore post World War Two council housing. There was a very high proportion of owner occupiers and apart from a small number of sub-standard houses in the oldest part of the town, all the housing was of adequate or above average standard.

Barnoldswick is a stone-built town. It had wonderful quarries which were in full production up to the Second World War and there was no local source of bricks. All the building I have described, even the earliest, are of stone. The result of this has been that even the oldest buildings which survived road widening in the town centre were too sound to demolish and have proved attractive to modern developers. They have all been renovated, they have ceased to be slums and become cottages.

In 1920, when the town had reached the peak of its development, the cotton trade cracked once the post war re-stocking boom had finished. On the surface all looked well but the manufacturers margins were squeezed and they entered into the long inter-war conflict in the cotton industry to lower wages and introduce the ‘More Looms System’. Levels of workers employment started to fall. Workers incomes were squeezed and many people left the town to seek work in the hot spots of the Midlands. This reduced demand for housing and in the inter war period Barnoldswick had a surplus of good quality houses.

So, what lesson can we take from this gallop through Barnoldswick history? Certainly nothing that can be employed as a general model, but that actually is my case. Manny and his Brothers got the government’s attention and far reaching changes occurred at central and local government level which were the precursors of the inter war housing policies. However, none of this had any bearing on the specific case we have looked at, the Barnoldswick experience was totally different. General theories are fine and have their place, but the historian who assumes that a general case can be applied to the particular is digging a very deep hole. Housing in Barnoldswick during the inter-war period is a negative report, there wasn’t any. We should note the broad picture but take note of local factors when applying it to specific cases.



THE STANDARD OF HOUSING PROVISION IN BARNOLDSWICK AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE OF THE INHABITANTS.

Numbers of houses, the availability of a roof, is a poor measure of housing standards. The factors that affect the inhabitants are the soundness of the structure, availability of services and utilities, the density of occupancy and income. The level at which these factors shift from privation for the occupants to acceptable levels of comfort depends on the workers expectations. When we assess these criteria we should remember that if we really want to understand the quality of life at the time we must look at them through the contemporary frame of reference.

In 1890 Barnoldswick had a water and gas supply, most houses were connected to a rudimentary sewage system but the majority of houses still had bucket toilets which were emptied once a week by the scavengers. All other household refuse was dealt with by burning it on the open fire in the house and throwing the ashes into a stone compartment in the backyard which could be emptied by opening a low level door in the back street, raking the detritus out and shovelling it into a cart. This was done approximately every fortnight. By 1910 all new housing was provided with flush toilets connected to a true water carriage sewage system and dustbins were replacing the ash pits. Most of the older houses still worked on the old systems.

The streets were dry macadamed, in winter they were muddy and in summer the dust flew in clouds. This dust contained dry horse manure, the droppings from the scavenging and night soil carts and all the other nastiness that fell in the street. Food storage in shops and houses was at room temperature and largely uncovered. Milk was delivered twice a day because in summer it would go sour in six hours. All milk was untreated and carried infection. Tuberculosis and brucellosis (Contagious abortion in cattle and undulating fever in humans) were common. The whole community was under siege from airborne infection and almost everyone was prone to low levels of diarrhoea. A very good example of our frame of reference compared to the average Barlicker in 1890 is that if we were exposed to these levels of infection we would drop like flies, our immune systems would be overwhelmed.

All the housing stock, apart from the grandest manufacturer’s houses, was poorly heated. There would be one open fire in each house in the kitchen, these usually had an oven on one side and a set boiler on the other. All the cooking and baking was done on this fire. The set boiler provided hot water as long as you remembered to top it up from the one cold tap in the house every time you drew water off.

Most, but not all of the houses had gas light downstairs but none upstairs. Some had incandescent mantles but most were simple fishtail jets. There were some gas lamps in the street, usually on the corner so they lit more than one thoroughfare.
It all sounds pretty horrendous doesn’t it, and in point of fact, levels of infection and mortality were very high. Medical care was rudimentary but one peculiar effect of this was that mortality in childbirth if you were poor was lower than if you were rich. It seems that the lower the level of intervention, the better your chance of survival because the doctors were less competent than the midwives.

The point is that everything I have described was the norm in 1890. Things could only get better. A poor person graduating from a set boiler to a gas boiler or a bucket toilet to a tippler was a king! I have talked to people who lived through these years and the only time they felt deprived was when they were short of work and hungry. None complain about day to day life, indeed, the passing of some aspects is regretted. In those days, in the body of the town, you were never more than 100 yards from a corner shop. Most of these worked on ‘shop books’, a rudimentary form of credit. There was a well frequented pawnshop, Isaac Levi’s in the main street. Isaac would lend money unsecured and I have never heard one complaint against him or his interest rates. Everything you needed could be procured within walking distance.

This walking distance often encompassed the surrounding fields. It was common for people to walk out and harvest berries and nuts from the hedgerows, water cress and earth nuts from the fields and firewood. Hunter gathering persisted far longer than many historians imagine. There was of course a darker side to hunter gathering, poaching of game and salmon was common. My mate Ernie Roberts was very poor. He lived with his mother and three siblings in a one up one down back-to-back house with virtually no income. His father died after being gassed in the Great War. His youngest brother was small enough to be inserted through the bob hole of a locked hen hut to collect the eggs. These people were living on the margin but they survived and looked back on the struggle with some regret but a great deal of good humour.

I think we now have a rudimentary picture of what life in Barlick was like around 1900/1920. Things were starting to change but in the context of our enquiry, how did things change in the inter-war years?

Everything is relative and the first thing to say is that after the horrors of the losses endured in the Great War, things could only get better. Or so everyone thought. In the event, things got worse for a time. A chance mutation of the flu virus with a pig disease on a farm in Iowa in 1917 sparked the biggest epidemic the world had ever seen. They called it Spanish Flu and it hit Barlick in 1919. More people died from this in the town than were killed in the war. The net effect was that it was 1920 before people felt they were climbing out into normality again. This was reinforced by the opening of a new weaving shed in March 1920, 450 new jobs in the town. As we have already noted this was the beginning of the terminal decline in the single industry that the town relied on but it was not immediately evident.

The Urban District Council was busy. They bought Letcliffe Farm and made it into a park with a bandstand, a war memorial, lawns and flower beds and an old army tank on a pedestal. The sewage system was improved and the long process of eliminating bucket and tippler toilets started. The new housing stock had bathrooms, this signalled the decline of the tin bath in front of the fire on Friday night. Electricity reached the town in November 1932 and was, apart from the improvements in the sewage system, probably the biggest improvement to hit the town. Motor transport started to appear. You may wonder how this improved the housing conditions of the workers. I am sure it was not intended but this displaced horses and gradually reduced fouling of the streets thus lowering airborne infection levels. The old dry macadam roads were inadequate for the new vehicles and, starting in the centre of the town, stone paving was laid in the streets reducing mud and dust. Again, this improved air quality.

The Sanitary Inspector was a busy man. The Urban District Council strictly enforced regulation of milk dealers, food shops and slaughter houses. They inspected rented premises and places of work and forced landlords and manufacturers to install and maintain water closets and proper drainage.

Once standards rose in the infrastructure of the town it became easier to raise standards in the home. Because the Council were acting as retailers of gas and electricity they actively promoted the sale on easy terms of appliances to raise consumption of energy. Gas cookers and boilers, rudimentary washing machines, electric fires and lighting systems came within reach of all but the poorest people.

The elderly, the widowed and the infirm benefited from the great social security reforms early in the century and this awareness of what we could perhaps call ‘the benefit culture’ triggered people like Ernie Robert’s mother into asking awkward questions about some recompense for the loss of her husband due to war injuries. She found she was entitled to £2 a week and her life changed. They moved to a bigger house and her life did nothing but improve until she died in the 1950s.

The story in Barlick between the wars isn’t one of massive programmes of slum clearance and new house building. It is a cumulative improvement based on new technology, heightened awareness of public health issues and the availability of new products which eased burdens and improved the quality of life. The beginnings of Social Security, meagre though it may seem to us today was a quantum leap forward from the regime of outdoor relief and charity. The fact that three cinemas opened in the town after the Great War is cited by many old residents. They saw this as being just as important as a good sewage system!

In the case of the improvements to the infrastructure the Treasury played an important role. I haven’t come across a single case of the Council being refuse a loan by central government. The gas and electricity, the improvements to sanitation and even the building of a new road between Barlick and Earby in the early 30s to give employment were all generously funded by central government.

So, what have we to report about housing in Barnoldswick during the inter-war years? If we are talking about new build, the answer is zero. If we take a wider view and consider Central and Local Government investment in the infrastructure of the town with consequent benefit to an existing housing stock, the overall picture is one of steady improvement. Significantly, this improvement took place against the background of falling employment, diminishing profits and mill closures starting in the 1930s. Barnoldswick was bucking more than one trend.

Ironically, the biggest improvement of all was triggered by Herr Hitler. The government started looking for alternative sites for key war industries in the late 1930s, some forward planning was being done despite the appeasers. Barnoldswick had empty mills, skilled workers and was well off the beaten track. The Rover Company moved into the town in 1940 and in Bankfield Shed they found some space for a mad inventor who they were supporting. His name was Frank Whittle and he was developing the world’s first practical jet engine. In 1942 Rolls Royce took over the enterprise and changed the suffix letter of the engine type numbers from ‘W’ for Whittle to ‘RB’ for Rolls Barnoldswick. The town had a new industry and this sustained not only the economy but the addition of a large council estate to the housing stock in the 1950s. At last, Barnoldswick had municipal housing.

CONCLUSION.

Barnoldswick didn’t benefit from inter-war house building under any of the government measures. This was not due to any lack of enterprise by the Urban District Council but because of lack of demand. The rapid expansion of the town form 1890 to 1920 had triggered a housing boom financed by private capital. This raised the overall standard and availability of housing just at the time that the textile industry started to decline and demand for houses diminished. Therefore, during the inter-war years, the Council was able to devote their energies and capacity to draw on Treasury Funds to improvement of the infrastructure. These broad improvements and innovations allowed standards to rise in private housing. Interventions by the Sanitary Inspectors using new powers raised standards throughout the town. Improvements in social security cushioned the effects of recession and the end result was a town with as sound a housing stock as any other in the land but with no new build.

Barnoldswick was, as usual, out of step with national trends. The general course of housing provision by Treasury intervention left the town untouched until the 1950s. This does not invalidate the Treasury’s role as a valuable aid to improving housing conditions overall. It simply flags up a warning that it is a mistake to assume that generous government intervention is universally applicable or taken up. Specific case histories can throw up surprising discontinuities in national trends.

SCG/02 February 2003
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