My name is Stanley Graham and I’ve lived in Barlick since 1959 when I bought Hey Farm and lived there until 1978. I admit to being besotted with local history, I find it fascinating to delve into the past and get a better understanding of the place where I live. This has enriched my life beyond measure and the paper that follows is an example of the sort of activity I delight in.
This is not finished work, enquiries like this are never complete, there is always something new to learn. Some of the assumptions I have made based on the evidence I have found will be wrong. There is no shame attached to this, the only time a local historian goes to the bad is when he or she is certain that what is written down is right. There are no undeniable facts in this sort of work.
All I ask is that you read what I have written, look at the evidence and go out and make your own mind up about my ‘facts’. I promise that in the process you will gain much enjoyment and get some healthy exercise! If you need any help or want any pointers as to how to proceed ask the library staff or contact me on 813527, email stanley@barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk. I can’t promise you the right answer but I may be able to give you some clues as to where to look. Have a go and enjoy!
1580 MAP OF WHITEMOOR
I came across this map by accident in 1977 while doing some other research and obtained a full size copy of it in black and white. I have looked at it on and off for many years but never actually done any work on interpreting it. Earlier this year I got it out and had a closer look at it. My purpose was to take a rest from the writing I was doing and do a little light research into the map as a diversion.
On first inspection the map looks crude and my initial conclusion was that it was not accurate in that there seemed to be a segment of the moor missing to the north of Weets. However, I soon realised that this impression was wrong. The map is very accurate indeed, I can only find one fault and that is that the valley below Weets that contains Near Weets Clough is squeezed into far too small a space. I suspect the surveyor was under pressure and short of time and paper! Having said this, and considering that he only had his eye and local opinion to go on, the map is remarkably accurate in respect of the relationship between identifiable elements on the ground.
DESCRIPTION
The original of this map is held in the Public Record office in London. Catalogue reference: Page 507. 3437 Barnoldswick 1580/81. (DL 31/106). There is a copy in both Colne and Barnoldswick libraries.
The DL31 class is an original collection of maps from the Office of the Duchy of Lancaster. It is not certain which records this map relates to but there is a contemporary endorsement which implies that a lawsuit was involved. There is a much later endorsement which suggests it was drawn as evidence in a suit between the Tenants of Foulridge and the Tenants of Barnoldswick. In the Calendar of the Duchy Chamber Proceedings there is mention of a suit in 1580/81: Tempest et al. Tenants of Barnoldswick versus Bannester et al. Tenants of Foulridge. [DL31/123 T.1]
I looked at some transcripts I have which were done by Doreen Crowther and found that she had uncovered much of the pre 1580 history from various sources, Warner’s History of Barnoldswick, Aiken’s History of the Deanery of Craven and various old wills, deeds and Court Rolls. Briefly, what follows is the history of the dispute.
In 1147 Henry de Lacy was a great landowner in the North of England due to grants to his family by the king after the Norman Conquest. In this year he granted Barnoldswick to Abbott Alexander of Fountains Abbey to enable his monks to build a monastery there. Warner quotes the account of the perambulation of the boundaries by Henry and his men before granting the charter of 1147 and noted that Admergill was part of Barnoldswick. This ancient boundary ran along the line of the modern Rural District boundary as marked on the 1914 edition of the OS 6” map for the area. From Pasture Head it goes straight forward to Blacko Tower departing from the line of the modern Barnoldswick UD boundary where it crosses Black Dyke. From Blacko Tower it heads straight forward, along Wheathead Lane and then follows Ox Gill which we know nowadays as Claude’s Clough and Jackson Slack to the top of Burn Moor which Warner says was known then as ‘Alainsete’ (Alan’s Seat). This name probably derives from Alan de Percy who owned the Percy Fee in Craven by grant from Henry the First as it would be where he rested during a perambulation of his boundaries. Henry was the youngest son of William the Conqueror and reigned from 1100 to 1135 so this would fit the fact that the name was in use in 1147. From the summit of Burn Moor the boundary turned east and headed up towards the top of Weets where it followed the line of Coal Pit Lane almost to Gisburn before turning east again.
I have converted the names used in the original charter to modern names but we would do well to look at the names Henry de Lacy used. “By the stream called Blackbroc up the moor to Gailmers and so directly to Ellesagh, across Blacko Hill to Oxgill and up Oxgill to the pikelaw called Alainsete and thence to the ancient ditch between Middop and Coverdale”. Looking at the 1580 map and following Henry’s course the first thing we come across that coincides with the old names is the Moss in the corner of what is now Whitemoor reservoir. It is noted on the map as ‘Gail Mose’ by the plaintiff and ‘Fail Mire’ by the defendant. Gail Mire or Moss is too close a coincidence to ignore as the location for Gailmers. Further up towards Lister Well, there is a note ‘Elshay’ by the plaintiff. Surely this has got to be Ellesagh. We have no problems with Oxgill from Wheathead up to Burn Moor top. What interests me is the reference to the ‘ancient ditch between Coverdale and Middop’ which is the line of what we now know as Coal Pit Lane. I have never walked this but it is high on the agenda from now on!
When you’re looking at place names like this you are always allowed a flight of fancy. ‘Elleshagh’ and ‘Elshay’ intrigue me and I’m struck by the similarity to another local name, Elslack which is analysed in Eilert Ekwall’s Oxford Dictionary of Place-names as Elesa’s stream. An Elesa was born in 439 in Saxony , in Northern Germany. His son Cerdic became King of Wessex and his line can be traced directly to Egbert, first King of all England (827-839). We don’t know that the Elslack Elesa was the same as the forbear of the king but at least we know there was an Elesa in the district. Could Elshay or Elleshagh be connected with the father of Cerdic? No proof either way but a nice little stab at the place name we have lost!
All we know for certain about the stay of the monks in Barnoldswick is that it was short and troubled. By 1152 they had left and moved across to Kirkstall where they founded a more successful abbey and Barnoldswick became a grange of Kirkstall and remained so for the next 400 years. During the whole of this time, the boundary with the Forest of Blackburnshire was in dispute. The charter of 1147 makes it clear that Admergill was regarded as part of the grant of the Manor of Barnoldswick at that time but what seems to have been in dispute in subsequent court actions was whether this charter made Admergill an indivisible part of Barnoldswick. The Crown’s case seems to have rested on the fact that as Admergill was rented from the Crown, it was not in Henry’s gift when he made the charter. There is a record of a case sometime round about 1330/40 which dragged on for more than 13 years and resulted in a verdict which said that Edward III and his mother Queen Isabella must return lands they had claimed on the boundary to the Abbott and Convent of Kirkstall. I presume that this was an attempt by the Crown to claw Admergill back, it says much for the power of the courts that the Crown lost and one would have thought that this was the end of the matter.
Despite this, the land was in dispute again in 1374 with Edward III and in 1395, Whittaker, in his History of Whalley records that Richard II granted the ‘Vaccary of Admergill’ (a vaccary was a stock-raising farm) to William, son of John de Redcliff(?)so the king must have regarded himself as being in possession then. It seems clear that Barnoldswick was regarded as a royal manor in the time of Henry VIII (1509-1547) and Kirkstall’s interest in the area had diminished to the extent of the Gill Church, the tithes and a few acres of land. This of course is to be expected as between 1536 and 1540 the Dissolution of the Monasteries was in full swing. Henry was appropriating monastic lands and re-distributing them to whoever could pay for it. Warner’s History Of Barnoldswick is the source to go to if you want the full story of the early church in Barnoldswick. He has read the history written by the monk Serlo and obviously researched the contemporary documents as far as he was able.
I think the main lesson we can learn from this history of the boundaries is that it was turbulent and in a sense, could be seen to be up for grabs. The dissolution had resulted in a mass of land transfers and many boundaries and rights which had been, in effect, policed by the ecclesiastical authorities were now unprotected and ownership needed to be defined in law.
So, in 1580 we come to our dispute between the Manors of Foulridge and Barnoldswick.. Luckily, Doreen Crowther has picked up this case from the Duchy Court Rolls in her researches on Admergill. The dispute was between Tempest et al., tenants of Barnoldswick and Bannester et al., tenants of Foulridge. If I have my legal conventions right, this wording means that Bannester, who was the Lord of Foulridge was bringing the case on behalf of his tenants against Tempest, who was the Lord of the manor of Bracewell and Barnoldswick who acted on behalf of his tenants ‘Michael Lyster of Brockeden in the Lordship of Barnoldswick, Gent., Allen Edmundson the Younger, Yeoman, William Brockden of Barnoldswick, Yeoman and Richard Lacocke of Barnoldswick, Yeoman. The map seems to be quite clear on the fact that Admergill was not regarded as part of Whitemoor as the Black Dyke is noted as the boundary between the two. Evidently the Crown had, in the end, won Admergill back.
The subject of the 1580 dispute was the Common Rights of Black Brook. The Barnoldswick tenants had the [water] rights as far as Wanless Water between Foulridge and Colne and the right to cut turves and pasture their cattle on the waste called Whit Moore. (The more I look at this map the more convinced I am that ‘Whyt Moore’ is a corruption of ‘Weet Moor’ and that Weets itself is a corruption of wet. The whole of the moor is a sponge and full of water for most of the year.) They evidently won the case insofar as the moor was concerned because when it was enclosed in the early 19th century it was all done for the benefit of the Barnoldswick tenants.
On the grounds of common sense, the outcome is not surprising really because the geographical argument, that all the water from the land in dispute flowed to the east of the watershed seems to me to be a powerful argument that the rights should go to the Yorkshire side. What surprises me is that Wanless is mentioned as it flows to the west of the watershed. Perhaps it was simply a boundary and what we are really talking about is the watershed. The land was important but as we will see, County Brook was an important source of water power supporting three mills in all.
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Given the choice between spending hours immersed in documents in an archive and actually getting out on the ground and using my eyes I will always plump for the latter. However, there seemed to be much to commend taking advice from a wiser head than mine so I went to see Doreen Crowther of Higherford whose knowledge of the more esoteric aspects of local history is far better than mine. I knew that Doreen had already seen the map and had deciphered many of the notations on it. So, in the explanation that follows Doreen deserves much credit for putting me on the right course from the beginning.
I got A3 copies of the map made so that it was more manageable and traced the major features. Once this was done I added the notes and comments which I understood from the map to the tracing and thus armed, went to see Doreen. We sat down with it and compared notes and between us identified all the names on the map.
It is worth noting at this point that the map does not show any roads beyond the three occupation roads through the old enclosures to give access to what was then the waste or common. The features shown on the map are, with these three exceptions, all watercourses or boundaries. I suppose this is understandable because, if my assumption is correct, this map was made as evidence in a dispute as to who had the rights to Whitemoor. I feel I would like to go further than this and mention here that I have an idea at the back of my mind that the watercourses and the rights thereto were probably as important as the actual land at variance. I have no evidence for this, only an instinct.
OBSERVATIONS.
The first thing that struck me when I saw the map in 1977 was that there were ‘improvements’ shown attached to Barnoldswick. These are very early enclosures of the waste and are a sure indication that there was pressure on resources and more land was needed to support the local population. This in turn is an indication that the population was rising in the area which is surprising because on the whole, the population of England was in a decline for much of the 16th century due to disease and hard times. It is a long time since I read any demography but seem to remember that there is evidence that other parts of the north west of England were also bucking the trend at that time. This is usually ascribed to the fact that because of the availability of work in the domestic textile system it was possible for young people to gain their independence earlier than would have been the case if they were waiting for parents to die so they could take over the family holding. This independence led to earlier marriage and a rise in the birth rate because the partners were more fertile and had longer to raise a family. If this theory is correct, the map is valuable evidence that Barnoldswick was developing faster than Salterforth, Kellbrook and Foulridge. This raises some interesting questions for further research, why did this happen? Personally I think the answer lies in the availability of water power resources.
Whatever the reasons were, the map shows considerable ‘improvements’ connected with Barnoldswick and I should say that these increased the amount of land under cultivation by about 50%. The improvements on the east side of the map are those which lie below what is now known as Higher Lane from Standing Stone Gate to Upper Hill in Barnoldswick. and on the north, those which line the side of Near Weets Hollow from Brown Hill down into the town. The crucial point is that these existed before the map was drawn and therefore pre-date 1580.
Barnoldswick, Salterforth and Foulridge are clearly marked on the map as are the three lanes up through the improvements. Salterforth Lane is marked as such. This is the road out of Salterforth up through the quarries to meet Higher Lane near the Lane Head (or Fanny Grey) public house. I have described this as an occupation road but this is not totally accurate. It served this purpose but was an extension of the medieval road from Earby which connected into Higher Lane. Another branch headed off from Salterforth towards Gill Church. Remember that what we now know as the New Road wasn’t built until the 1930’s and was a project to make work for the unemployed.
The next lane in the series is rather more obscure. I tend to the opinion that it is Hodge Lane which is the green lane that starts opposite Lister Well Road end and heads down towards Hurst Hill and Barnoldswick Park. The third lane could be Barnoldswick Lane, now known as Manchester Road which branched off to the right from Higher Lane which proceeded towards the old town and is now Gillians Lane. It’s as well to mention here that the centre of gravity of the town was different when the map was drawn, Barnoldswick was essentially the area we now know as Town Head. I have no doubt that there were other buildings further down the hill but the centre was half way down Gillians at Town Head.
Below the town, in the area now occupied by Barnoldswick as we see it today, there is the notation ‘Several of Barnoldswick’. This refers to the old closes or fields which were the original farmland enclosed in earlier times.
If we take the line of the edge of the improvements on the east of the moor as the line of Higher Lane, this fits well with the line of the road we know nowadays. The proof of this is the fact that it ends at ‘Standing Stone on Harrock[?] Hill’. This roughly equates to what we now know as ‘Standing Stone Gate’. Originally this would be ‘gait’ which was the name for a road. The standing stone referred to was almost certainly a boundary stone and probably marked the point where the county boundary swung to the west from County Brook. On the 1914 Ordnance Survey map this deviation is shown behind the bungalow ‘Staniston’ that stands opposite Standing Stone Gate Farm.
The day after I wrote this paragraph I went to look for the standing stone and found it in the field behind the bungalow opposite Standing Stone Farm. It is at the east end of a short piece of disused medieval road and what looks like a ford over a small stream running away down the hill towards Slipper Hill Bottom. It is a short standing stone next to a larger marker and it was nice to find it still in place. Clearly this is a far older boundary marker than 1580 and one can only guess when it was first agreed and erected.
As I came out of the field I noticed the wall on the east side of the lane leading down towards Slipper Hill. This is a medieval wall, the stones are larger and more rounded. Looking back towards Slipper Hill the abundance of holly in the banks is a dead give-away as to the age of the road. I am becoming convinced that if you plotted all the holly trees in the district, the heaviest concentrations would mark all the old roads!
It is as well to remember when looking at the map and comparing it with the modern map that the building of Whitemoor Reservoir in 1840 almost certainly covered the original line of the road. Maurice Horsfield, whose family have farmed at Sunnybank Farm for over 100 years tells me that when the reservoir is empty there are the foundations of a substantial building in the corner behind Standing Stone Gate Farm. I need to have a look at the Canal Company’s records to confirm this but suspect that the farm we see today was built in 1840 to replace the one lost when the reservoir was built. After writing this I found a map dated 1818, before the reservoir was built, and it shows roughly the same line as the modern road.
What we now know as County Brook was then called Black Brook. It sprang from two tributaries, one in ‘Gail Moss’ or ‘Gill Mire’ behind Standing Stone Gate and the other from Whinberry Clough which still feeds the reservoir. One of the elements which convinced me of the accuracy of the map is the fact that the tributary shown on the 1580 map which we call Whinberry Clough now points directly towards a cross marked on the boundary between Barnoldswick Common and Whitemoor. When I first saw the map I was convinced that this marked a holy site, probably a well and sure enough, when I walked the ground, the feeder for Whinberry Clough springs in the hillside behind Lister Well.
Lister Well lies on what we call Lister Well Lane. This is a relatively recent addition to the landscape as it is the occupation road for the 19th century enclosures. Perhaps I should explain that the term ‘occupation road’ refers to any road which gives access to enclosures of land which were under multiple tenancy. If a person owns a block of land there is no need for a road because access to all the fields can be gained by passing over land owned by the person. The enclosures were ‘allotted’ to various owners. When my wife and I owned Hey Farm we found that at one time The Hey had an allotment on Lister Well Lane. Therefore, a road had to be included so that the owners of the various allotments could have access to their land without trespass. I have heard it said that the name ‘occupation’ refers to the Roman Occupation of Britain. Sadly this is not the case.
We will come back to Lister Well later but it was the accurate alignment of the feeder to Black Brook from the well on the 1580 map which started to persuade me that it was far more accurate than I had at first suspected.
The next notation along this boundary, which I have accepted as the line of the road, is ‘Standing Stone on Slipper Hill’, evidently another boundary marker. On the way across to this stone the road we know nowadays takes a sharp bend at Pasture Head Farm before descending to Slipper Hill. This is quite obviously a very old piece of road. It follows Slipper Hill Clough from Pasture head and is heavily banked and has some very ancient hedgerow trees. These banks and trees are a sure sign of antiquity and continue down Slipper Hill towards Foulridge. In fact, if you want to get a good idea of what a medieval road looked like, go to Slipper Hill. Apart from the tarmacadam surface it has not altered much over the last 1000 years.
From Pasture House going up the hill the same road alignment becomes Gisburn Old Track and was originally the medieval road between Foulridge and Gisburn. If you compare the banked road down to Slipper Hill with the road from County Brook to Pasture Head Farm you can see that they are totally different, there are no banks or old hedgerow trees at all. This road was quite evidently re-aligned and widened in 1840 when the reservoir was built. Note the small pool at the side of the road at the bottom of the ditch coming down the road. If you look carefully you will see the that there were two ways out for the water, one going straight down the road on the original line of the ditch, the other at the side. There used to be small wooden gates over these exits and the waterman from Whitemoor could either let the water go directly down to Slipper Hill or divert it across the moor to Whitemoor if the need was greater there.
If we follow the old road on towards the Cross Gaits we run into a series of bends at what is now Hollins Hall. This looks like a fairly modern building to me and is certainly not marked on the 1580 map. However, the series of sharp bends can only mean one thing in the absence of any topographical reason for the diversion. It has to be an old boundary of a holding that forced these bends. In the middle of the bends there is a very curious thing.
When Doreen and I were first deciphering the names on the map I was amazed when I realised that the notation there reads ‘the thorn at Haynslack’. I told Doreen that I had been noticing a very distinctive bush at that point for years. I couldn’t believe that it was over 400 years old but I wanted to. I decided to investigate on the ground and went to have a look. The bush in question stands on an earth bank which I am convinced is an old boundary. I think the bush is a Myrtle and is certainly very old. I am trying to get an expert to have a look at it but I am almost convinced it is old enough to qualify as the marker bush. Even more interesting is the piece of wall to the left of the bush. It contains very old dressed stones and unless I am totally mistaken it is demolition stone from a medieval building. The combination of the road diversions, the old stone in the wall and the earthen bank with the possible ancient marker tree all point to very early occupation of the site. The road certainly post-dates the map and so we may be looking at a settlement site from very early times. Whatever the building that was originally on the site, it must have been quite high status because, from the evidence of the wall, it was built of stone. Until the 16th century most buildings were timber, only important houses were made of stone.
The name ‘Haynslack’ may be significant here but it seems to have disappeared completely. There is a notation further down the road ‘Haynslack’ so there was definitely a reason for it.
Before we look at the next notation on the map moving down the road we need to retrace our steps and go up Gisburn Old Track to Sandiford which is marked on the map and probably refers to exactly what it says, a ford across the clough at Sandy Ford, in other words, sand in the beck. There is sand here and before the beck was culverted there would have to be a ford so we are fairly safe with this interpretation.
Maurice Horsfield lives at Higher Sandiford now and I asked him about the Black Dyke which is marked on the map as the boundary between Admergill and Whitemoor. There is a boundary wall which starts at Lower Sandiford and ranges in a dead straight line over the hill behind Peel House and Green Bank Farm on its way to the Cross Gaits via Blacko Hill Side and Burnt House. Maurice told me that it is a big drain which takes all the water off the moor from Peel House right down to Blacko Hill Side. He says that it runs from there down into Beverley Road at Blacko but could have gone straight forward to the pub originally. This interested me because on the 1580 map, Cross Gaits, which has the date stone 1717, is marked as Black Dyke Mill! So, there could have been enough water to drive a water wheel and, if the date stone is correct (they aren’t always!) the present building has replaced the mill some time before 1717.
Another thing that interested me about the Black Dyke between Sandiford and Peel House is that it is a massive bank and ditch and looks more like a defensive earthwork to me than a water worn feature. There is a large Bronze Age enclosure across the valley and so this might be somewhere near the truth. There was certainly activity in this area in Bronze Age times as we shall see later.
LISTER WELL.
This is a very good example of something which everyone who knows about it takes for granted but very few start to ask the questions. Why call it Lister Well? Why did many old Barlickers swear by the curative powers of a drink from it?
The 1580 map gives us a good clue, the well isn’t marked as such but with a crucifix denoting a site of religious significance. When you start to think about this, recognise that the early Christian church appropriated many of the festivals, objects of worship and beliefs of the earlier pagan beliefs. Important wells or springs have always been venerated because of their importance in supporting life. They were regarded as a gift from whatever deity you worshipped and as such were regarded as places of special significance. This is the reason why many were given specific names. There is little doubt in my mind that what we now know as Lister Well has had importance from the very earliest times.
Why Lister Well? Whitaker, in his ‘History of Craven’ mentions a John Lister of Barnoldswick and Middop who appears to have been buried at Sawley Abbey in the year ‘4, HenryIV’. Henry came to the throne in 1399 and so this indicates a date of 1403. (Don’t be too impressed, I looked this up in Whitaker’s Almanac, I can never remember dates!) The Listers were a gentry family, later becoming the Lords of Ribblesdale. The fact that John was buried at Sawley Abbey indicates that he was an important person. In 1614/15 Thomas Lister bought the Manor of Gisburn and died in 1619, he is buried at Gisburn. His son, Thomas Lister built a house in Gisburn in 1635 which is now the Ribblesdale Arms. In 1636 he bought Lower Hall in Gisburn and built Gisburn Park on some of the land that went with it. They were important landowners in the district. Lister Well lies in the middle of their empire so it isn’t too big a leap of faith to suspect that there is some connection between this important local family and the name given to the spring on Whitemoor. There is plenty of scope here for further research.
What follows now is pure conjecture but gives you some clues as to how I view history. We have this spring on the moor that has been seen as having curative powers from pagan times. This has been preserved in the folk memory so well that old Barlickers as late as the 20th century told me of having been taken up to the well to have a drink or, if they were ill, having a bottle of water from the well brought down for them in an attempt to find a cure. We can only surmise how this tradition started but you can get some clues if you read a book called ‘Religion and the Decline of Magic’ by Keith Thomas. He makes a very good argument for the definition that magic was the way people who had no control of events tried to influence those events. Disease and illness was a very important event and, with no medical science as we know it today, even a common ailment was life threatening. The only defence was resort to magic and water from certain wells was regarded as having curative properties. If we accept this argument we can begin to understand why a certain spring on Whitemoor could become important. Suppose that this well was on land owned by an important local family, it becomes very easy to see why naming the well after the landowner could be seen to be a good move, any status the well had would be rubbed off on the owner. There is one other curious thing about how the well is marked on the maps. All the modern maps show the well on the south side of the lane in the field. The 6” OS map surveyed in 1849 shows the well in the field on the north side of the road where the small brick cistern is now. No water flows into it, it has been diverted into a pipe further up the watercourse and flows into a rather utilitarian cast iron bath. I had a drink out of it anyway!
That’s as far as I can go with Lister Well without doing a lot of research. I have other fish to fry and so give you that puzzle to play with as you will. What is significant to me in my research of the 1580 map is that this small spring, rising on the moor is the source of Black Brook (now known as County Brook) and became part of the boundary between Lancashire and Yorkshire. It is the first watercourse on the moor that flows to the east of the watershed. It fed three mills on the way to Salterforth Bottoms, Midge Hole Mill, Wood End corn mill just above Stew Mill and Stew mill itself (also known as County Brook Mill, New Mill, Hey Mill and Mitchell’s Mill) and in 1840 became a very important feeder for the Leeds and Liverpool canal. Magic, status, legal significance, geographic importance and economic benefit all from one small spring on the moor, you can’t get much more romantic than that!
While we are looking at the Black Brook we might as well trace it down the hill and remark on the mills.
The first water mill, Midge Hole, is to be found in the clough just below Mount Pleasant Chapel on the road down to County Brook Mill. All that can be seen now is some old walls and traces of a dam and wheel pit. The first mention I have found of the mill is in Wilfred Spencer’s papers on the Midgely Estate. Ezra Sellers took the mill over from his elder brother Marshall sometime in the mid 19th century and ran it as a power loom mill with 24 looms weaving wincyette shirtings for the Bradford market but as this trade fell off they changed to dealing with Manchester merchants. Raymond Mitchell at County Brook has in his possession an advice note dating from 1876 which shows that Ezra was sending cloth to be finished at Messrs. Robinson & Co., who were cloth finishers at Greenfield near Saddleworth. This was found when Foulridge Station was being demolished and so indicates that Sellers was transporting goods by rail. The interest I have in this is that we tend to assume that when steam came in, water power went out. This was not necessarily the case and Midge Hole and County Brook are good examples of the continued use of water power. By 1882 Sellers found it impossible to carry on at the mill as the Canal Company’s new waterman was demanding too much ‘palm oil’ to let the water down from the reservoir to suit the working of the mill. (This must have affected County Brook as well.) They moved down to Nelson where they took space in Holmfirth Mill and eventually expanded to 162 looms.
Midge Hole was in existence before the Sellers took it over but I have no information as yet on when it was built. The only pointers I can give are that the same pressures that led to the pre-1580 enclosures and a warming up of the climate increased the demand for corn milling capacity around 1600 and many ‘pirate’ mills were built. Midge Hole could have been one of these. Alternatively it could have been built to take advantage of the end of the Arkwright monopoly when his patents were extinguished in 1785. If this was the case, and I think it the most likely, it would start life as a spinning mill. One final point which has been niggling at me is that old Mr Barrett of Hey Fold told Helen Spencer that when Midge Hole Mill was demolished it was the Canal Company that did it and used the stone for their own repairs. Did they buy the mill in 1840 when they built the reservoir? Another reason to research the building of Whitemoor Reservoir.
Further down the County Brook, just above the Stew Mill, there is a footbridge across the brook and if you look carefully above this point you can see traces of a building and a mill leat. This was the site of Wood End Mill and the first mention I have of this is in about 1694/5 in a letter written by Thomas Barcroft of Noyna Hall at Foulridge to Richard Moore of Ball House Foulridge. Thomas is complaining about the fact that Richard is threatening to take him to court over non-payment of rent for Burwains Mill, a corn mill which stood in the valley now flooded for Foulridge Upper Reservoir. He cites one of the reasons for bad trade at Burwains being because of Pollard’s recently built mill at Wood End. By implication he seems to suggest that Wood End was a corn mill and had a drying kiln which was a big advantage in a damp climate like the Pennines.
One useful tip about drying kilns connected with mills. The corn was dried on heavy cloth, sometimes made of a mixture of wool and horsehair supported by poles over a small fire. The poles were in turn located by grooves cut into stones surrounding the aperture over the fire. These are known as ‘rack stones’ and are quite easy to identify. If ever you’re looking at an old corn mill site, examine the walls adjacent to the site carefully because old stone was always re-used in the vicinity and the rack stones are quite easy to spot. If you find them you can be certain that there was a kiln on the site.
Finally we come to County Brook Mill. I rely heavily here on information from the Wilfred Spencer papers and from Raymond Mitchell, the present owner of county Brook Mill who wrote a splendid booklet about the mill in 1994. Helen Spencer, Wilfred’s widow, gave me other clues, largely connected with estate maps.
There is mention of Hullet Nest Farm and a mill in an indenture of 29th August 1785 in which the owners were Joseph Hartley of Cragg (Foulridge), Margaret his wife and Daniel Parker of Hague, yeoman. The mill has changed its name frequently. In 1828 it is Hey Mill, in 1838 New Mill, in 1910, Stew Mill and I have heard some call it Mitchell’s Mill. The first mention I have found of it is on a map of the Midgeley Estate in 1810 when it was described as a worsted mill, in other words processing wool. This was very early for power weaving and I would suggest it was a spinning mill then. Raymond Mitchell told me that when his grandfather took over the mill it was three storied and there was evidence of corn milling having been carried on there. The water frame for spinning came into general use round about 1785 so it may well have been a corn mill up to that point. Raymond has a sale notice in his possession dated June 1842 for the Hullet Nest Farm. A William Hewson and his wife Betty Hartley were the owners at the time. In the description of land and property ‘the cotton mill Hey Mill’ is mentioned. The vendor reserved the right to remove the ‘engine, boiler house and waterwheel’ unless the purchaser wished to keep them at a cost of £30. So, from this we know that Hey Mill had embraced change, had changed to cotton and was supplementing the water power with a steam engine. The buyers were William and John Midgley hat manufacturers of Colne and they paid £1440.
The practice of installing an engine to work in conjunction with a water wheel was common. What isn’t immediately obvious is that there were other advantages from this arrangement beyond simply increasing the power available. Any form of textile machinery works best at one particular speed. One of the major disadvantages of water power was the fact that it is very difficult to guarantee constant speed. Governors were fitted to them but were almost useless in that their response time was so slow. With the advent of steam, water power users soon realised that if they installed an engine in the power train and ran the water wheel at full flow, topping up the power with the engine, they could control speed far more accurately by varying the steam to the engine by means of a governor. This steadier speed would increase production, cut down on weft breakage and put profits up. Another surprising benefit which Dr Mary Rose proved in her work on Quarry Bank Mill at Styal is that steam power was cheaper than water power and so profits went up for this reason. Water power looks as if it ought to be free but in practice, the maintenance of the wheel and it’s water resource was very expensive.
The 1851 census records three families as living at Hullet Nest (now known as Owlet Nest) and all are connected with textiles, two of them as handloom weavers of wool. Two old women, one 65 and the other 69 are described as bobbin winders but this is almost certainly in connection with the domestic industry. In other words, no evidence that there was any activity at the mill.
In the 1861 census there is no mention of any trade connected with the mill. This was the time of the Cotton Famine and it may well be that the mill was disused for textiles then. However, in the same census a man called Edmund Riley of ‘Hullet Nest’ [Owlet Nest] is described as farmer of 27 acres and ‘Mordant Maker’. He was in partnership with a man called William Yates in this business. (Mordant is a term used in dyeing to describe a chemical which fixes the colour in the cloth.) This fits in with the name ‘Stew Mill’ because we know that this was coined when the site was used for charcoal making. The wood was ‘stewed’ in closed vessels and the vapour which came off was distilled and produced a range of chemicals from light fractions like wood alcohol and naphthalene through phenols to heavy distillates like Stockholm Tar. This process was a valuable source of chemicals before the advent of the petro-chemical industry. Raymond says that in 1928 there were still retorts in the mill and tanks containing liquor. His grandfather found millstones in the basement in 1907 and so it seems clear that it was also a corn mill at some time.
The waterwheel at Hey Mill was 34 feet in diameter and four feet wide. During the 1950’s the mill ran on water power supplemented by the steam engine. By the end of the decade the shed was electrified and it became uneconomic to use the original power. The wheel was demolished in 1960 and the shaft can still be seen in the mill yard.
THE MITCHELL FAMILY
On March 27th, 1876 William Mitchell was born at Ryecroft Bingley and he was to become owner of the mill at County Brook in 1907. There might be a connection here between the Sellers family and the Mitchells. There is a mention of Sellers in an electoral roll of Barnoldswick in 1841 and 1848 but his address is given as Bingley. It seems a large coincidence to me that two men with connections to Bingley should both finish up as cotton manufacturers on the same small watercourse on the boundary between Yorkshire and Lancashire. Suppose William Mitchell worked for Sellers at Midge Hole and when this finished in 1882 he went to Slaters at Salterforth where he became a tackler. (We know he worked there) By 1907 canal traffic was falling off and the irregular water supply that had dogged the mill ever since the Canal Company built Whitemoor would be easing. Perhaps this was just the time for an intelligent man to step in and take advantage of the low price of a disused watermill when everyone else was thinking steam power and larger units. Whatever happened, on Nov 11, 1910 the Nelson Leader printed a piece describing ‘Stew Mill’ as a weaving mill running 36 looms. Charcoal production was still being carried on and the article mentions the fact that production has not had to stop for shortage of water ‘for the last two or three years’.
The mill was subsequently enlarged and additional power obtained from an oil engine. It is now electrified and still, at the time of writing in 2000, still producing cloth and in the ownership of the Mitchell family.
Looking at the County Brook as a whole, its potential importance as a water power source was blighted in 1840 when the Canal Company took control of the water. The one thing that water powered industry needs above all others is an un-interrupted supply. The Company had only one interest, to let down the water when it suited them for the operation of the canal. This obviously conflicted with interests of the mills who needed continuous water day and night. By day it ran the mill, by night it filled the dam and gave a reserve for the following day. This single fact explains the chequered history of the mills on the watercourse between 1840 and 1907. The degree of success that William Mitchell achieved at County Brook Mill was almost certainly connected with the decreased usage of water by the canal as traffic dropped. If you want to speculate further about this, consider what might have happened if the canal hadn’t taken the water in 1840. County Brook would have had a bigger water resource than Kellbrook, Foulridge or Salterforth and might have developed into a small town. This may seem far-fetched when we look at the present-day rural setting of County Brook Mill but it could all have been much different.
Back to the Black Brook. The 1580 map shows it flowing away in the general direction of Kelbrook and Earby. It is joined by a tributary marked as ‘Mearclough Water’, this will be what is now known as Lancashire Gill which used to be the continuation of the county boundary. It rises above Mere Clough Farm on the original road between Foulridge and Kelbrook. The road in the bottom which is the main road today is relatively new. Mrs Tordoff, who was about 90 years old when she lived in Kelbrook in 1957 once told me that when she was a girl her Mother told her that this road used to end at the Stone Trough Inn and became a cart track into the fields.
I say the water ‘flowed’ towards Earby, this is a bit optimistic actually. The bottoms between Foulridge and Earby are on the watershed between Lancashire and Yorkshire and there is very little fall to get the water away. In 1580 this whole valley would have been a bog in all but the driest times. Sometime in the 18th century I suspect, Dutch drainage experts were brought in to construct the New Cut to improve the drainage of water towards Earby and away through Thornton bottoms. I have heard it said that this is the origin of the name Hague in the valley. I’m a bit wary of this as I’ve also come across an inference that it was called after the disease, ague, which was a fever contracted by living in wet areas. Place names can be very deceptive and until I have some better information I’ll keep my options open on that one.
What is certain is that in 1840 when the Canal Company built Whitemoor Reservoir and appropriated most of the water for the canal apart from a small amount they would have had to let forward down the original Black Brook by law, they would have improved the situation in Sough and Earby quite considerably as regards flooding. I lived in Sough in the late 50’s and can remember that Lane Bottoms at Earby flooded regularly. I wonder whether this was a reversion to the days before the canal because the Leeds and Liverpool was almost abandoned then, commercial traffic had almost ceased and pleasure traffic was only just starting. One can imagine that more water was coming down the bottoms than at any time since the canal reservoir at Whitemoor was built. One more comment before we leave the Black Brook, Sough is the local name for a drain.
BACK TO THE WEETS
I think the ‘improvements’ on the north side of the map are the old enclosures along Esp Lane up to Hollins. The whole of the moor was regarded as common land for Barlick in 1580 but of course this all changed with the early 19th century enclosures. Most of Whitemoor was enclosed and the only common left was what we now know as Weets. This is still a ‘gaited’ moor, the Commissioners of Common Lands gave a judgement on the gaits some years ago. I can’t remember the date but think it was about 1985. The farms adjoining the moor have so many ‘gaits’ apiece on the moor. I’ve forgotten what constitutes a gait on the Weets but it is something like this. One gait gives the right to graze one horse or one and a half cows or six sheep or twelve geese.
There’s one further thing about the moor that I want to bring to your attention but which isn’t marked on the map. We have to go back about 4,000 years to a time before recorded history. If you go across to Middop and do some searching you will come across one of the biggest Bronze Age hill forts in England. No, I’m not going to give its location, go and look for it yourselves. I’ll give you one clue, you can drive westwards towards it off Coldweather road if you open the gate.
There was extensive long distance trade in those times and one of the great elements of the traffic was gold being moved from Ireland to the Baltic States. The route was via the Preston area, up the Ribble Valley and out to the east towards the most northerly low level crossing of the Pennines at Kildwick. I think that the route came over Weets via the hill fort at Middop. The track down from Weets towards Barlick is the old M62. It goes down Folly Lane and where the road jinks sharply to ease the steep slope down to Folly Cottages for wheeled traffic. The pack horses and foot traffic didn’t need this luxury and went straight down the field through what is now Bancroft boiler house yard and across what we now call Forty Steps.
What makes me think this? Look on the 1914 six inch Ordnance Map and you will see that the field at the bottom of Folly is called Causeway Carr. Think about Forty Steps. It is obviously far older than any of the buildings round about. I used to puzzle about it as I ran the engine at Bancroft, why was it there when there was obviously no need for it when it was built? Several other pieces of information came together and in the end I decided it was the line of the Bronze Age track. If you follow the line straight forward it leads straight to Gill Church and beyond that to Kildwick. Since it was in existence long before Christianity it might show that the site of Gill church was important for other reasons, perhaps pagan. Could this explain why the church was built there, outside the bounds of the township? Nobody has ever proved why this was done.
Alright, I’ve not got any definitive evidence but it all fits and is as good a theory as any. If you don’t agree, find another explanation for the track on Weets, Causeway Carr and Forty Steps and why Gill Church is where it is. There’s plenty there for you to go at!
CONCLUSION
That’s about as far as I want to go at the moment with the 1580 map. I hope you like what I’ve worked out so far and that I have whetted your appetite to do some work on it yourself. Eventually I shall incorporate this work in the first volume of the story I want to write about Barnoldswick because I am convinced that if you want to understand Barnoldswick you have to understand the moor.
I couldn’t have got this far without the work of Wilfred Spencer and Doreen Crowther. I shall give a copy of this to Doreen and I know she will be as fascinated with my interpretation as I am with the process of trying to make sense of the map. Remember what I said in the introduction, I lay no claim to being right, what I have written is my opinion based on the evidence I have found. I shall carry on investigating it and modifying my opinions. I’d be fascinated to hear anything new that you turn up. The only thing that is certain is that there is no end to the enquiry, we are looking at 4,000 years of history and many thousands of people who have left their mark.
So, the next time you walk up to Weets or along Forty Steps let your mind drift back through time and imagine how the scene you are looking at has developed over the centuries. Observe the landscape, dig into the records and I guarantee you will very soon be as hooked as I am. Good luck!
SCG/April 4, 2000