BRACEWELL VILLAGE 05
This week's picture is another excerpt from the 1717 Weddell Estate Map. Lots of useful information to go at here! Remember me talking about the manorial Mill? You can see where the head-race starts at the weir in Corn Cross Field on the Barlick side of the village and wends its way through the fields to Mill Hill where the mill is marked on the top right. You can see the road going out across Mill Hill through Johnson Field to Bracewell Lane. Notice that in 1717 the road in to the hall was on the Barlick side of the churchyard. When Hopwood built his pile he blocked this entry by building Hopwood House on it and created a new drive on the far side of the church.
Notice that opposite the church there is a lane going off down the hill, over the Stock Beck and forward to Stock Town. This is Hall Lane and still exists today. If you look at the Institute from the road, on the left hand side there is what looks like a barrier of scrub and trees. Look more carefully and you will find the lane with its boundary walls. Over the years it has been worn into the ground and in wet weather these days becomes almost a stream bed. There is a public footpath to Stock down the far side of Hall Lane and you can follow it right down to the beck where there is now a footbridge but if you look in the stream bed you'll see a ford paved with good quality stone setts.
From the ford the original road bed still exists and winds its way up the hillside skirting a large hole on the Barlick side of the track. This is a quarry that has healed over with the years and I have little doubt that the stone for the church, the old hall and most of the other old buildings in Bracewell came out of there. Stock Village was at the top of the hill but all that remains today is some scattered farmsteads and signs on the ground of house foundations and the site of a windmill that pumped water up from a bore in later years. (On the 1853 first edition of the OS 6” map it's marked as Taylor's Well)
Stock has always fascinated me, there is something very evocative about lost villages. Many villages died after the Black Death in the mid 14th century but this doesn't apply to sites like Stock and Wycoller which both survived until after the mid 19th century. In Baine's Directory for 1822 John Carr and Christopher Hornby are noted as shopkeepers. In the 1851 census we find James Howarth, 54, builder and farmer with 155 acres. Sarah Edmondson, pauper. Margaret Clark, hand loom weaver. John Broughton, builder. Henry Watson, agricultural labourer. Christopher Waite, farmer of 75 acres (still there in 1871 aged 54 with 163 acres) and William Edmondson, 67, farmer of 42 acres . In 1871 we find Thomas Ayrton, 24, farming 110 acres at 'Stock House'. The question for us is what triggered the decline of Stock between 1822 and 1851?
From the late 18th century the development of the textile industry in Barlick created new jobs and by the mid 19th century the new, larger steam mills were sucking in labour from the surrounding countryside. This was how Harold Duxbury's parents came to the town and I have many more examples. The crucial thing about the early mills was that they offered employment for the whole family including the children and the combined family wage killed subsistence jobs in the rural economy. At first I have little doubt that the families walked to work each day but soon realised that they were better off renting a cottage and living in the town. This is what de-populated both Stock and Wycoller. By the time of the 1874/75 sale of the estate we have direct evidence that all that remained at Stock was about three farms and the remains of a deserted village. As the cottages fell into disrepair they would be quarried for stone for field walls and outbuildings and vanished forever.
Look at the top right hand side of the map and you'll see the beginning of a system of small fields. There were two of these, the Haber and the Mither Close and they were medieval strip field system still surviving in the 18th century. I suspect that the new owner, Thomas Weddell, did away with these as the population fell towards the end of the 18th century as part of his ongoing management of the estate. We know for sure that by 1874/75 they were gone.
Notice as well that just round the sharp bend that Bracewell Lane takes as it exits the village going out towards Horton on the site of the present New House Farm there is an older farm building. The 1717 map has the names of the major tenants and so we know a man called Christopher Varley farmed it but we have no clue to the original farm name, it was almost certainly renamed New House after a late 18th or early 19th century rebuild. Incidentally, though marked on the map Yarlside Farm isn't named.
I have one last snippet for you, a sad story. Note that it was in January and quite possibly the Stock Beck was in spate. Remember that there was no footbridge at the time, the crossing was by the ford. From the Craven Herald, 17th of January 1930. 'A verdict of 'found drowned' was returned at an inquest in Skipton on William Henry Garlick (59) stone quarryman of 30 Arthur Street Barnoldswick. His body was found at 2pm on Friday January 10th in the Stock Beck near Bracewell. He had gone to Stock Farm for eggs and butter and never returned. John Smith Thompson of Carr's Farm had seen him at 11am on Thursday near the Fever Hospital (Banks Hill) and had spoken to him. Joseph Garlick of 10 Arthur Street gave evidence of his father leaving on Thursday.
Not the sort of danger that we have to contend with today when we pop to the Cathedral of Choice for a bit of shopping!
Bracewell and Stock from the 1717 Weddell Estate Map.
