How towering influence of mill endured across the centuries

The mill buzzer, with its bull-like roar, controlled the ebb and flow of hundreds of workers and was an unofficial timepiece for the town. .

When I think of Dewhurst’s Mill, my first mental picture is of Billy Gelling, a stunted little chap who moved with a conspicuous swaying movement. Wearing a top hat and waistcoat but no shirt, as part of his attire, Billy displayed a hairy chest. Kindly folk took pity on him and provided him with new shirts – which he never wore.

How did Billy fit into the Skipton industrial scene? He commuted to the bank of the Leeds Liverpool Canal at the back of Dewhurst’s Mill with a home-made barrow – a big box on small iron wheels.

Using a bucket attached to a long pole, he dredged the canalside for coal at the point where the stuff was discharged from canal barges to the mill boilers. With an annual delivery of 7,000 tonnes of coal, a goodly amount fell into the water. Billy made a living of sorts by recovering it.

Holes in the side of the bucket permitted water to drain away. Any coal – and whatever else the bucket encountered – was collected. Working deftly, with his tongue lolling from his mouth to indicate concentration, he might half fill his barrow with coal, then trundle it into town to make a bob or two selling it.

He was one of many interesting folk I associate with the town’s major industry. I tend to think of the mill folk rather than the advanced industrial processes, while acknowledging that Belle Vue Mills, to use its posh name, became a much respected unit in the world of King Cotton.

In my young days at Skipton, the bull-like roar of the mill buzzer was the local equivalent of the six Greenwich pips we heard regularly on the radio. They marked the close of a working day. At precisely 5.30pm, Walter Horner, timekeeper at Dewhurst’s Mill, signalled across the yard outside his office to Arthur Metcalfe at the boiler house. Arthur activated the steam buzzer. It roared like a bull with stomach ache.

Housewives glanced at their clocks and adjusted them to the time of the buzzer before turning up the gas under the family’s evening meal. Bus drivers stamped on cigarette butts and climbed into the cabs of their vehicles. The buzzer was heard by farm folk living miles around.

The Dewhurst story began in the Craven Dales in 1789. Thomas Dewhurst arranged for cotton to be spun at an old mill in Elslack, the machines being powered by waterwheel. John Dewhurst & Sons grew at speed, absorbing Millholme, at Embsay and taking on the lease of Scalegill Mill, near Malham. The firm then bought the old mill at Airton. Development at land adjacent to the Broughton Road at Skipton began with the opening of a mill in 1829.

It was a shaky start. After operating for only two years, the mill was gutted by fire. So promptly was the reconstruction put in hand that the premises were in use again that same year. Another nerve-wracking time was an August day in 1842, when plug-drawers – several thousand aggrieved workers from Lancashire – stormed into Skipton and let off water from mill boilers, stopping the work.

In the 1850s and 1860s, a large mill was opened. Then, in March, 1867, the corner stone was laid of the multi-storied building which dominates Broughton Road to this day. The mill’s lofty redbrick chimney was built in 1902, replacing one made of stone. The new chimney was visible at a distance from whichever direction the town was approached.

When I was young, a favourite family walk was down the steps at Mill Bridge and along the towpath between the castle – on its immense rock – and Eller Beck. From here it was a short distance to Skipton Woods and the Long Dam which, as its name implies, was more use than ornament.

Water from the dam flowed down a sandy goit to a dam near Skipton’s old corn mill, then to a dam behind what used to be the spindle shop at Millfields. From here, water was piped to Dewhurst’s Mill.

Two swans were in residence; they kept down the weeds by eating them and were, therefore, regarded as being on the mill staff. The birds received an allowance of corn, fed to them by Norman Oxley. When Norman was absent for a few days through illness, a substitute from the mill staff was given the task of feeding the swans, which – missing Norman – had migrated to Broughton Hall.

In the 1950s, chatting with WA Boardman, general manager, I heard that 523 people were on the payroll and that almost 100 retired mill workers received long-term pensions. The mill council sustained a sporting life – bowls, tennis, badminton, table tennis and dancing.

Dewhurst’s Mill, eventually a branch of the English Sewing Cotton Company, had a special product called Sylko. This thread gave Skipton wide renown. In its manufacture, the thread passed through 30 stages and was being produced in over 500 different shades. It consisted of three spun yarns run together on assembling winding frames in two stages.

Twisted while wet to create a three cord thread, it had great strength related to its thickness. Before mercerisation, the thread was “gassed”, removing numerous little whiskers from its surface without damaging its strength. Other processes were put in hand before the cotton was wound on to bobbins.

Massive changes have taken place since the 1950s when, visiting the auction mart in Broughton Road to collect the latest prices for the Craven Herald, I might be walking back as the Dewhurst’s Mill buzzer was roaring and a host of mill workers headed for home.

I sometimes thought of days before 1829, when handloom weavers worked where they lived in Union Square.

That year was fateful for their occupation. Power looms were brought into town, quietly and securely boxed up so that the weavers could not identify the machines that would bring an end to those used in their ancient craft.