WALKING WITH DAVID 3

[Stanley]

WALKING WITH DAVID 3

First published 5 September 2000

One of the nice things about history is that you can never say that you have got the ‘right’ answer. This means that as long as you’re honest and don’t present your findings as ‘fact’ you need never worry about getting something wrong. I have to tell you that this happened to me last week, I told you that the first steam engine was installed in Clough Mill in 1846. Some new facts emerged this week and I can now tell you that I’ve got clear evidence that Mitchell put an engine into his existing mill before 1827. Thanks to a friend of mine, Dr George Ingle who wrote ‘Yorkshire Cotton’, I have the details of an insurance policy that Mitchell took out in 1827 which clearly mentions a ‘steam engine’ so we can confidently push the date of the earliest engine in Barlick back to at least 1827. Of course, some more evidence might turn up and I could have another revision to make!
Right, that’s the update out of the way, let’s get on with following David Whipp on his walk. We’re stood in the entrance of what is now Clough Park, looking up the hill towards Gillians and Forty Steps. The ground rises steeply to both left and right and it’s easy to see why this was called Ouzledale Clough. It’s very easy to lose sight of the natural contours of the ground in a built-up area but the demolition of the mill allows us to see very clearly the steep gully that starts below Butts and goes on up the hill towards its start high up on the side of Weets below Prospect Farm. It was water, running off the moor that cut this gully out, the same water that drove the early mills, Gillians at the top (but from a tributary, not the main flow), Ouzledale just below Forty Steps, Mitchells Mill above Lamb Hill, the Corn Mill after joining with Springs Beck and becoming Butts Beck and Old Coates Mill which used to lie between what is now Crow Nest and Bankfield Shed. It is very hard to overestimate the importance of this little stream to the development of Barnoldswick. We often complain about the rain and the steep hill up Manchester Road if we are carrying the shopping. It was this rain and that slope which gave Barlick such useful water sites.
When you’ve walked a few yards up the Clough, beyond the grill where Gillian’s Beck plunges under the mill, turn and look back at what remains of the mill. The first block you are looking at was the original Mitchell’s Mill, later renamed Clough in 1846 when Mitchell extended it. Originally, the culvert under the mill carried only the overflow water from the dam above and then the tail-race from the wheel below. There would be many times when the mill was stopped or when there was a lot of water coming down the beck when the surplus had to be allowed to get away. It simply ran over the cill on the dam and went down the culvert to join Butts Beck on the other side of Walmsgate. The water for the wheel that drove the mill was led off to the left of the mill down what is now a stone-flagged path. At the end of this path was a wheelhouse containing the water wheel. After turning the wheel, the water ran away across to the right of the site down the ‘tail race’ and rejoined the main beck before it left the mill site.
I never saw the Clough dam before it was altered and so I don’t know what the original height of the cill was. I suspect it was higher than it is now because there is plenty of scope for getting more head and the old millers were pretty good at getting the most out of a water site. Notice that the dam is full of mud. This is the silt which over time collects in the dam as the water is trapped, allowing sediment to fall to the bottom. This was always a big problem with dams and they had to be cleaned out regularly to increase the amount of water held in reserve. Opening a clow, or sluice gate in the dam to allow water to rush out down the culvert carrying silt with it as it went achieved this. If done regularly this got rid of a lot of silt, we used to manage the dam at Bancroft in this way.
Looking upstream towards the back end of Ouzledale Mill you will see that the beck emerges into the dam through another culvert under the end of the later redbrick building (built 1936). Further across the site towards Manchester Road are the remains of a stone building, this was the mill. The water wheel was at the far side of the mill and if you look carefully at the bed of the dam you will see that there are traces of a channel in the silt leading across to that corner, this was where the water ran out of the tail race at Ouzledale. The mill started life sometime before 1822 when there is a mention of a wood turner called John Mitchell in Barlick, almost certainly at Ouzledale. The first definite mention of the mill is in the 1851 census when John Robinson was working there as a joiner. On the 1853 OS map it is marked as a sawmill.
In June 1903 the Calf Hall Shed Company bought the ‘Ouzledale Saw Mill Estate’ with Butts Mill from the Craven Bank who were in possession because they had been the mortgage holders at the time of the liquidation of the Bracewell interests. The interesting thing about this is that there must have been a reason for Billycock to purchase the mill in the first place. I have a feeling that he might have seen it as being a strategic move to control the water supply above Clough Mill. Was he thinking of putting pressure on John Slater and Sons who owned Clough? I can’t stress too much how important the ownership of water rights was and I suspect that what stopped any plans that Billycock may have had was the fact that whoever owned Clough Mill also owned the riparian rights to Gillians Beck well beyond Gillians Mill. The reason why I say this is that Gillians Mill never used Gillians Beck but a tributary watercourse coming down from Lane Bottoms, they wouldn’t have done this had there not been some legal bar to using the better flow directly off the moor.
Walking up to the end of the path through the clough we come to Forty Steps and the ‘waterfall’. Look into the well behind the railings and you will see that we are actually looking at another mill dam and a very well made one as well, you can see a suggestion of an aperture at the bottom left-hand side of the masonry, this would be the original clow for emptying the dam for maintenance. The lodge behind the dam is silted up now but there used to be a large body of water trapped there which on the 1853 map was divided into two separate parts. The head race for Ouzledale Mill ran on the east side of these two bodies of water and the reason it was laid out like this was to facilitate cleaning out the dam without interrupting the workings of the mill. This is a very good water resource with plenty of fall and capable of driving a far bigger mill than Ouzledale. This puzzles me because if Mitchell’s Mill was the first on the beck, why didn’t he take advantage of this increased head? There can only be one reason, somebody had got to Ouzledale first and owned the water rights. As this was around 1800 it makes me think that either someone was very clever or Ouzledale is far older than we think. This is a puzzle and no doubt it will become clear over time.
Turning left up Longfield Lane, we are now on what I think is the course of the Old Track through Barlick from over the Weets. Notice that the road is made with what looks like lumps of old, rusty iron. This is slag from the time when Ouzledale was used as a foundry. Indeed, it was here that Ashby’s started what is now called Ouzledale Foundry down Long Ing. Notice how the road is sunk into the ground, this is certainly an old mediaeval road. A little further along you pass the lovely little houses in what we used to call ‘Crow Row’. William Atkinson says that these were handloom weaver’s cottages and were built in 1828. He had two uncles who lived on the row and both had hand-looms and bobbin engines (a machine for winding yarn) in the bedrooms. They also employed other weavers, this would be about 1855. He makes the interesting point that even though they aren’t back-to-backs they were built without back doors to stop through draughts, I’d never thought about this until he mentioned it but the farmhouse and two cottages at Hey Farm were the same, no back doors.
The end house in Crow Row was Mrs Brown’s shop right up to the late 70’s when I lived at Hey Farm. It was a wonderful little old general shop and was like stepping back into a time warp when you went in there for a pound of bacon. My children still talk about going round to Mrs Brown’s for a bag of sweets, we were poor then and this was a big treat. Funny, but I can’t imagine her ever selling Pokemon cards! The next interesting buildings are on Castle View. I can’t for the life of me understand why they are called this. They are built like many houses in Hebden Bridge with the doors opening out on to the street at first storey level and another house below. Again, only doors at one side of the house, no draughts.
Turning right up ‘Barnoldswick Lane’ to give it its old name we pass the Greyhound pub. Always known as ‘The Dog’, this pub is three storeys high and was one of the many places in the town that provided lodgings for out-of-town weavers during the week. Ted Lawson and I once caused a considerable stir in there when Lily Day was the licensee in the early sixties. Ted and I were hard up and used to give our wives, Joyce and Vera, all our money each week. In order to make a bit of beer money we went rabbiting every Friday evening up Malham way after work. I had a wonderful ferret called Winston and we always got a bag full of rabbits which we would either sell in the Dog or take home to eat.
One thing I have learned in life is that it doesn’t matter what you are doing, there’s always someone who knows more about it than you do. On the night in question we had sold the rabbits in the pub and old Sid Demain was telling me how he used to have the biggest ferret in Craven. I asked him to put his hands on the bar to show me how big it was and when he did I pulled Winnie out from inside my shirt where she lay asleep full of liver and draped it across his hands.
Well, you’ve never seen anything like it. Lily jumped on a bar stool and started screaming and every woman in the bar tried to get in the ladies toilet. Glasses were crashing to the floor and Old Sid was not happy, I don’t think he had ever been that close to a ferret, let alone one the size of Winnie. The upshot was it cost Ted and me fifteen shillings for broken glasses and we were barred for a month! As we used to say then, “We may be poor but we do see life!” I suppose nowadays we’d get prosecuted for cruelty to animals or something. Ah well, more next time when we follow David again.

5th September 2000