I need to correct a mistake. When I was talking about Stone Trough Farm I said it used to be called the Wilson Arms. This is wrong, it was the new pub on the present main road that was so named on the 1853 OS map.
When I look at Kelbrook I don't see it as the modern village but how it was in 1853. What we now know as the main road from Foulridge to Earby started life as the Colne to Broughton Turnpike Trust. In 1853 it had reached the outskirts of Kelbrook where the roundabout is today at the end of the Barlick road. From Earby it existed as far as where Vicarage Road meets the present day main road but the stretch from there to the Barlick road end hadn't been built. The 'main road' was just as it had been in medieval times, past the church, up Main Street and out towards Barlick. The route to Foulridge and Colne was up Waterloo Road and forward on the old lane. At the church a road struck off eastwards up to the hamlet of Dotcliffe where there was an early watermill. The stretch of road from Berry's Wood-yard up to the Craven Heifer didn't exist. Kelbrook was the furthest flung village in the Parish of Thornton and over the years the research has flagged up that it probably had stronger links with Lothersdale than Earby. This was partly because the route from Lothersdale to Colne was via Stony Bank and then along Mill Foot Lane and Long Lane straight into Dotcliffe, by-passing Earby.
One of the main names that crops up in Kelbrook in the early 19th century is the Smallpage family. Originally from Middleham in the Dales, by the early 1800s they were active in the textile trade in Burnley, Billycock Bracewell was in partnership with them in his early days and there were marriage links between the two families. By 1836 Nathan Smallpage was noted as running Dotcliffe Mill but it burned down in 1857 and was rebuilt. In 1866 Nathan was the main promoter of the Kelbrook Bridge Mill Company which built what became to be known as Sough Bridge Mill. The Kelbrook Bridge partnership owned the mill at various times until they sold out in December 1898 so for about sixty years they were associated with the two mills that provided most of the employment in Kelbrook. After 1898 the Smallpage firm moved all its looms to Foulridge.
There are other links with Lothersdale. In 1792 Dale End Mill was built on a former corn mill site in the village and in 1835 converted to worsted spinning. Labour was short and John Wilson who was running the mill popped over to Kelbrook and persuaded John Riddiough, a warp dresser, to leave Smallpage and go to work for him. I don't think he would have been very popular! The Riddiough name was connected with the mill till it closed.
Most of the migration was the other way. As the steam mills took off in Barlick, Kelbrook and Earby one family in particular saw an opportunity and moved from Lothersdale to Kelbrook, the Pickles'. George Pickles of 7 Main Street Kelbrook was born in Lothersdale in 1828 and became a cobbler. He moved to Kelbrook around 1850 to pursue the same trade and by 1889 had done well enough to be one of the promoters of the new Kelbrook Bridge Mill Company. He had three sons, Daniel who returned to Lothersdale, James who became the engineer at Sough Bridge Mill and William who I think followed his father in the cobbler's trade. William had a son John Albert, born in 1885 and marked out for a career in management. When he left school in 1899 aged 14 his father got him a job in the office at Sough Bridge Mill but Johnny was more interested in the engine his uncle Jim ran at the mill and spent all his time in there. Eventually things came to a head when he ran away from home to his uncle Daniel at Lothersdale, in the end William had to let him have his own way and he was apprenticed to Henry Brown, engineer, of Earby. Thereby hangs an entirely different tale I have told before, Johnny eventually became owner of the biggest engineering firm in Barlick with over 150 mill engines on his books. He got his own way in the end and I think old William would have been proud of him. Johnny is buried in Kelbrook church yard and his epitaph reads 'Engineer and Master Craftsman', accurate and well-merited.
In later years I had another connection with Kelbrook. John Harrison farmed Old Stone Trough and was a cattle dealer. He went to the same markets I did when I was driving the cattle wagon for Drinkall Brothers and we often travelled in tandem down from Ayr on a Tuesday. In those days drivers used to help each other and I remember having a heavily in-calf cow go down in a full box one day. John stopped, gave me a hand to get it out and brought it down home in his box because he had more room. You don't forget good deeds like that. He was a good driver for an amateur, if he reads that he'll hate me suggesting he wasn't a professional but he didn't drive full-time, he was only an honorary member of the profession! His wagon was slightly lighter than mine and he could always pass me on the long drag up to Shap Summit from Penrith. I could just imagine the car drivers watching him and muttering about wagon drivers 'racing'. Nonsense of course, he was just doing his job as well as he could.
I think you've got the picture now. If I could have had the choice I would rather have run the local shop in Kelbrook than Sough because it was a proper village. I'm glad the Heifer is still a pub and the village is still alive and well. Pity the Co-op didn't survive but you can't have everything. One last curious fact about Kelbrook church. Johnny Pickles was into turret clocks and he once pointed out to Newton that the church clock was very unusual, apart from the fact it had a chime, it has four faces and so you can tell the time from every side. John Albert said that this was very unusual.
Caption reads: John's cattle wagon at Old Stone Trough in 1979.
