In a previous article about the Whitfield Syke Mill, which used to stand to the north of the village of Embsay, at the foot of Embsay Moor, we told the story of the struggle to supply the mill with water power. But another interesting aspect of the mill’s history is the row of cottages built to house the workers and the people who lived in them. Upper Wharfedale Heritage Group member Jane Lunnon investigates.

All that you can see of the cottages now are a series of blocked up windows set into the wall at the bottom of the moor. And if you look carefully you may even see part of a garden path hidden in the grass.

When the government’s factory inspectors visited Whitfield Syke Mill in 1833, they interviewed the mill owner William Oldridge about working conditions.

At that time he employed 26 people, including 10 children and adolescents. The children included one boy under the age of 10, five children aged between 12 and 14, and four in their later teens.

The early cotton mills were notorious for their ill-treatment of child workers, but many of the smaller rural mills provided much better conditions for their workers than the larger, better-known urban mills of the “dark, satanic” stereotype.

At Whitfield, William Oldridge was proud to declare that he never exploited the child labour of the workhouses (many of his contemporaries used orphaned and pauper children as cheap labour).

Instead, he allowed families to work together. All his child workers lived and worked alongside their parents – and he left the matter of discipline entirely to the parents.

The 11 adults included five men working on piece rate for an 11-and-a-half hour day, earning on average £1 11s 6d per week; seven men on a fixed weekly wage of 14s 6d; a young man on a fixed weekly wage of 15s 6d per week; and three women earning just 6s 6d per week.

Although the workers on fixed wages earned less, they did have the extra perks of paid sick leave and holidays and were still paid if the water supply dried up causing work to stop. There was no night shift, and work stopped early on Saturday afternoons at 4pm. By the standards of the day these were generous terms.

Perhaps the best perk was being able to live in the cottages which lay just a few yards from the mill – with their large front gardens, these were significantly more attractive than the bleak slums of the urban textile towns, and as Oldridge pointed out, very convenient for meal breaks.

He was also very proud of his health and safety record which was exemplary – again, in stark contrast to the infamous mills of the towns where it was commonplace to find workers with missing fingers and other more serious injuries.

It is also interesting to note that William lived as a neighbour to his workers, as his house was right in the middle of the terrace of cottages.

Between 1841 and 1871 the census returns give us some insight into the people who came to work at the mill and lived in the cottages (sometimes known as the “hamlet of Moorfoot” or “High Mill”).

Most of them came from Lancashire and Yorkshire, although a few others came from further afield, such as Cheshire, Derbyshire and Scotland.

Some of them moved on between censuses, but others stayed for many years. Among them was the Parkinson family. John and Betty Parkinson had been at Whitfield since the early 1850s. John was a factory worker for many years before setting up his own business as a carter. Some of his children had also worked in the mill. By 1891, although the mill had long since closed down, the ageing couple were still living at Whitfield, now with three of their adult grandchildren.

One of John and Betty’s sons, Thomas Parkinson (1844-1921) became responsible for giving the old mill a new lease of life.

A self-made man, and a pillar of the local community, Thomas had worked in the mill himself as a teenager, but later joined the carrier business that his father had set up.

Thomas was an enterprising man, running the village post office and grocer’s shop, his own coal merchant business, and a small farm, while also being a Sunday School teacher, and active member of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, the Skipton branch of the Liberal Association, the Board of Poor Law Guardians, the Temperance Movement, the parish council, the Skipton Rural District Council and the Skipton Old Age Pensions Committee.

In 1892, Thomas bought up the old mill site and turned it into a tourist attraction. Several of the old workers’ cottages were turned into holiday homes, and Whitfield became a popular site with visitors from cities and towns including Skipton, Bradford and Manchester, for charabanc parties, picnics and religious gatherings.

The fresh, bracing nature of the air up here was becoming well-known – indeed, it was for the same reason that a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients was opened in 1903 at the other end of the parish, above Eastby (it later became a holiday camp).

There were also early holiday houses available for rent in Eastby. In 1901 the Craven Herald reported that Whitfield had “for many years past been patronised by those whose health has given way, and a short residence there has in every case mended them, and in some completely cured them”.

The spinster sisters, Mary and Betsey Tattersall, who lived in the double-fronted house at Whitfield (where William Oldridge had formerly lived), served home-made teas and refreshments to the tourists, and ran a guest house.

Two other cottages at Whitfield were still lived in as homes.

Thomas’s old father lived here with his granddaughter, Elizabeth.

His neighbours were the Smith family – quarry labourer William, his wife Mary, and their adult son with his wife.

But by the turn of the century the days of the health retreat were numbered.

Thomas Parkinson eventually retired, selling his farm and the mill complex for use as offices, store rooms and living quarters for the contractors and navvy workers during the building of Embsay Reservoir between 1904 and 1910.

One by one the buildings were demolished until the last cottage was pulled down in 1910, leaving just one lonely building which still stands there today – this was left because it had been consecrated for use by the navvies as a chapel.

And that will be the subject of our next article on Whitfield.

l Copies of the full report on the Upper Wharfedale Heritage Group’s archaeological and historical study into the Whitfield site at Embsay can be ordered for £12 via the webiste, uwhg.org.uk, or by contacting Jane Lunnon at jane@cjlunnon.plus.com.