Cuts, leats and races: water supply solutions in the Ingleborough area

David S Johnson
 JOURNAL 
 2021 
 North Craven 
 Heritage Trust 

Context

There will be relatively few people who have known anything other than being able to turn on a tap to get the water they need, though anyone brought up in a remote location may recall having to use a well or spring. A recent study of water supply within Settle has drawn attention to the number of ‘draw wells’ within the town, supplying individual properties; business such as brewhouses and tanneries, not to mention individuals, needed ready access to water though ‘ordinary’ folk relied on communal facilities such as Well Steps.1

Late nineteenth-century legislation made inroads into improving the state of health of the nation while reducing appalling death rates. Among the strategies enacted was the provision of public water supply under the Public Health Act 1875.2 Under this law the new rural district councils were required to provide suitable water supplies (and sewage systems) to as many people as practically possible.

If we press and hold the chronological rewind button and leave behind towns and villages and consider how water was sourced in remote farmsteads, a very different picture emerges, one which involved communal effort as well as engineering on an impressive though often now-elusive scale. During archaeological excavations or landscape interpretation outings this writer has often been asked where the people living ‘here’ got water, whether on prehistoric or medieval sites. The stock reply is ‘what did they need water for?’ Put aside thoughts of our wasteful consumption of water – flushing gallons every day down the toilet, showering or taking a bath every day, for example – and focus on the basics. Livestock were generally taken to where water was naturally available, at a spring, stream or wetland; if people bothered to wash themselves or their clothing, they similarly went to the nearest source. In essence the minimal amount of water was carried back to the farmstead, specifically for cooking: it is too heavy and time wasting to be carrying it time and again.

If one looks beyond our shores in times past there were networks of channels created to bring water from rain-blessed regions to where drought prevailed. The aqua ductus (from aqua – water – and ducere – to lead or bring) of Rome and its surroundings are well known consisting of hundreds of kilometres of channels contained by stone, tile or Roman cement. Without this network Rome could not have achieved its prominence. Coeval with these were the aqueducts and ‘gutter’s that brought spring water from the mountains and from massive cisterns hewn out of solid rock to the Nabatean capital that we call Petra. At a maximum the needs of 30,000 people were met by the rock-cut and clay-pipe channels running through the city’s natural gorges.

Of more recent vintage are the suonen (in German) or bisses (in French) in the Swiss canton of Valais which form a network some 1800km long carrying water from glacial outflow streams to the drier valleys below: the earliest of these date from 800 years ago. Very similar is the levada system in Madeira which totals about 800km in length still bringing excess rainwater from the north-west to the parched but fertile south-east; these have their origins in the fifteenth century. (Levada means lead/led in Portuguese).

What all these systems have in common is their impressive engineering given the ‘primitive’ nature of technology available to their creators and builders. All used gravity-fed channels with gradients designed to ensure regular but controlled rates of flow.

It is not necessary, however, to venture abroad to see such engineering marvels: they can be found here in North Craven albeit in scaled down versions.

Definitions

In the Ingleborough area we have water channels variously called cuts, leats and races. A cut – a watercut – is an open, artificial channel that, typically, conveyed water to a watermill. A race broadly carried water to a watermill or a water-powered mine: ‘race’ is a generic term; a ‘headrace’ fed the conveyed water directly to the wheel, often from a milldam or pond whereas a ‘tailrace’ carried it from the mill back into the nearby stream. The word ‘race’ derives from the Old English rǣs or Old Norse rás, both of which meant ‘channel’. The term ‘leat’ was originally applied to an open channel carrying water to a watermill, deriving from the Old English gelæt from the verb to ‘lead’ or ‘conduct’.

In the area under review here six such channels have been identified from fieldwork or historical mapping, and all are visible to varying degrees on the ground today (Fig. 1). This writer has traced the course of all six on the ground. All were constructed to carry water from the fells and moors to lowland sites, and three have surviving names: ‘Mill Race or Water Cut’ in Kingsdale, Broadrake below Whernside, Scales Moor, Philpin near Chapel-le Dale, Grey Wife Sike on Wetherpot Heath above Newby Cote, and Know Gap Sike above Clapham which is erroneously labelled ‘Drain’ on Ordnance Survey mapping. The dialect word ‘sike’ derives either from the Old English sïc or Old Norse sïk both of which meant a ‘slow-running stream’.

All six share common characteristics though they vary widely in length, chronology and end use. In their own way, each is as impressive in concept and engineering as the levadas, suonen or aquae ducta.

Mill Race or Water Cut

Mill Race runs for a total distance of over 10km and is one of only two of the local channels with any known documentary evidence. It starts as a natural resurgence in Turbary Pasture at Kingsdale Head and terminates at a former corn mill in Burton in Lonsdale.3 Initially it drops quite steeply from the source (from 478m above sea level [ASL] to 465m) with a gradient of 1:4. It then contours between 450m and 460m below Swinsto Brows to the top of North End Scar, a distance of about 3300m, giving a gradient of only 1:330. It is quite remarkable to follow its course – here very clear and obvious, there silted up or masked by soft rush and moss but still just discernible – as it describes a slightly sinuous course to maintain the angle of slope required to keep the water gently flowing. In places it tapped into minor streams adding to the level of flow. Walking its course over these 3300m leaves one thinking it was dead level, such was the skill of those who dug it. When level with the Scar its course steepens markedly as it drops down to a modern water pumping station and gradient reduces somewhat between there and Masongill Hall farm at which point the race is at 180m ASL. Up to the top of the Scar the race intermittently carries water today but thenceforward it is more like a natural stream than an artificial channel.

From Masongill the race flows across enclosed pasture land through Galegreen beyond which it describes a broad sweep westwards before turning back on itself to Bideber Mill (Fig. 2). Between Masongill Lowfields and Bideber the latter part of its original course was more direct but construction of the Clapham Station to Tebay railway in 1846-49 led to its being diverted southwards. It may have been at this time that the original line after High Threaber Farm was also realigned: rather than following the parish boundary, where the old and now dry channel can clearly be seen, it was sent through Low Threaber. Beyond that point the cut is subsumed within a natural stream flowing into the milldam at the old mill above Bogg Bridge (formerly Mill Race Bridge). Water was fed from the dam through the watermill with the tailrace running under the bridge to enter the Greta a short distance above the road bridge. Overall, the average gradient is 1:25.

What is known of Mill Race’s history? It is not known for certain whether Mill Race was created just to serve Bideber Mill, terminating there, or at what in the nineteenth century was known as Burton Flour Mill. If the former, there was no nearby stream into which the water could have been fed from the tailrace. Bideber Mill was a manorial corn mill within the manor of Masongill and, as such, would have had medieval origins. A legal case from 1527 saw William Redmayne of Twisleton and other prominent local personages set against Sir Thomas Wentworth and his son and heir, also Thomas.4 The case involved thirty messuages and a water mill in the manor of ‘Massyngyll’ along with lands and properties across Masongill, Burton in Lonsdale and Thornton in Lonsdale. The mill in question was Bideber. Before the course of the Race was realigned in the mid 1840s water was impounded in a small mill pond next to the mill and fed over what must have been, from ground evidence, an overshot wheel. Ordnance Survey (OS) mapping, surveyed in 1848, does not mark a pond or a tailrace so it is likely the mill had already ceased production. The map shows no link from the realigned channel to the mill.

Burton Flour Mill has a rather shadowy history but the size of the building and the milldam, and the Mill Race itself, testify to a concern far more industrial in scale than Bideber (Fig. 3). Evidence on the ground, especially below Swinsto Brows, shows that the lower side of the original cut had slumped in various places where it contoured along steep slopes. These sections were reinforced by channelling the water in half-section, broad-diameter glazed ceramic pipes of a type not manufactured before the mid to late nineteenth century. This was clearly done to keep Mill Race – and Burton Flour Mill – in operation. Anecdotally, the cut was maintained up to 1956.

Broadrake

The channel that issues below the ridge of Whernside is different in every way from Mill Race: it is hardly more than 1km long, falls very steeply from the fell and was cut just to meet the needs of Broadrake farm. It rises below Combe Scar at 500m ASL and drops to 330m in no distance at all, tapping into several natural rills on the way. After it flattened out on the edge of Broadrake’s inbye land it displayed its remarkable character. For about 150m it was cut across limestone bedrock which is either very close to or at ground level. Immediately before reaching the former farmstead it was channelled on a sinuous course between large limestone pavement clints: the only way water could have been prevented from seeping below the surface would have been by lining it with puddled clay. At two points it is intercut by small shakeholes which obviously were not there when the cut was in use. Behind the farmhouse water was led off the cut into a large trough made of Helwith Bridge flagstone though the channel itself continued beyond the farmstead and petered out in the field immediately south of it, in what 1846-48 and 1893 OS mapping labelled ‘Spreads’. That field and its direct lower neighbour were (and still are) meadows and it is possible that surplus water was used to flood these meadows in late winter, an agricultural practice that was common from at least the sixteenth century. Watering had two clear benefits: the water replenished nutrients thereby improving the quality of the pasture and allowed warmer flowing water to reach the grass roots in the still-cold soil early in spring provoking the grass into earlier growth than would otherwise happen. For those farmers who used watering it was a win-win scenario.

Philpin

This channel starts at the foot of Souther Scales Fell as two discrete cuts, originating at natural springs, which soon merge to form a feature 2km long. Like the Broadrake cut this one also fed just one farmstead – Phillipin farm, or Philpin in its modern guise; it also closely parallels Broadrake’s in concept. Initially contouring round a natural hillock it then drops quite steeply before flattening out as it crosses Douk Cave Pasture in a slightly sinuous line before contouring round a limestone outcrop at Little Douk Cave and heading over Keld Bank. Like Broadrake’s cut, it is remarkable in that for a length of at least 300m it runs across limestone bedrock so must also have had a puddled-clay lining. The cut originally crossed the B6255 at the modern water board pumphouse before dropping downslope to Philpin and just beyond to the south-west where it, too, terminated in a ‘Spreads’ – no doubt for the same reason as at Broadrake. OS mapping from 1893 shows the cut terminating at the pumphouse; in modern times the open cut was replaced, part-way onto Keld Bank, by a buried water pipe which still carries water from a spring.

Scales Moor

An open channel formerly supplied water to Low Scales and Scales Cottage on the edge of Scales Moor. Its course can still be followed though in places it has been cut by small shakeholes and in places its exact line is very indistinct. It tapped water from Ellerbeck Gill where the stream enters an underground passage. It then runs south-westwards on a gentle incline across the flanks of Blake Bank before crossing Blake Bank Moss on a south-easterly line running through an impressively deep man-made cutting through glacial deposits on High Scales Rigg to tap a natural rising, from which a modern pipe draws water. It enters inbye land then runs underground and diagonally through three fields towards the two former farmhouses.

The channel starts at the gill at an altitude of 362m and descends across the flanks of Blake Bank to cross Kirkby Gate bridleway at 352m: it loses 10m height in a lateral distance of 500m giving it a gradient of 1:50. It enters the Scales enclosures at an altitude of 332m and terminates at a ‘well’ at a height of 320m. It has a total length of c. 1800m and a total height drop of 30m giving an average gradient of 1:60: this surely ranks it is an impressive engineering feat as much as the glacial cut is a testament to human endeavour on a massive scale.

The fact that it is now cut by shakeholes and is more or less filled up in places might suggest that it is of considerable age. It is marked on the OS First Edition map, but not on the Second Edition of 1896. The earlier map shows it terminating at a ‘well’ adjacent to the access gate into The Rake, between Scales Cottage and Low Scales.

Know Gap Sike

Also originally serving two farmsteads, Know Gap Sike starts as a natural resurgence high on Clapham Bents below Little Ingleborough and flows downhill across Seat Haw and Herningside. Up to the point where it first comes close to a wall it is now very difficult to follow the Sike’s exact line as it interconnects with a number of rills and navigates across a very boggy area and avoids several shakeholes. As it runs around the western side of Clapdale Scars, sticking close to the wall except where it contours inside the Scars maintaining a level course where a dry valley forces it to leave its north-south alignment. As with all the other cuts, the channel passes under the wall through a water smoot (Fig. 4). Whereas between Herningside and Little Knott the sike could be mistaken for a natural stream, from the first smoot it is confined within an obvious cut, averaging 500mm wide. Either side of the second (southern) smoot the cut is lined with half-section, glazed ceramic pipes to ensure free-flowing water where limestone bedrock is close to the surface (Fig. 5). The channel passes north of the now totally ruined Know Gap Farm, which was linked to the sike by a side channel, and contours along the southern edge of Clapdale Scars, finally dropping downslope to Clapdale Farm. Overall, Know Gap Sike has a gradient of 1: 20 but for the final 1000m 1:50. According to 1846-47 OS mapping the sike continued to join Clapham Beck a short distance upstream of the footbridge, though the 1893 edition shows it terminating at Clapdale Farm.

Grey Wife Sike

A natural stream issues from Knoutberry Hole south-west of Little Ingleborough and eventually disappears down a shakehole. Shortly before this point Grey Wife Sike branches off the stream still carrying water in wet conditions for some distance, especially after a modern drainage grip spills its waters into the sike making it wider and deeper than hitherto. As with the cut at Broadrake, the line of the channel is now cut by a shakehole meaning the sike predates the shakehole’s creation. It soon bypasses another shakehole and then loses its definition in a scatter of shakeholes, becoming more defined beyond them with a width of 600mm and depth of 300mm. After a pronounced break of slope the cut is even more defined with a maximum width of 1m and depth of 600mm. The cut bifurcates just before a ruinous shooting box with one branch heading south and the other south-west. The south-west branch starts off with the same characteristics as the channel from here northwards but soon after passing below the building it is very different with long straight lengths and vertical, fresh-looking sides. The southern branch, however, is as sinuous as the main channel had been: it terminates c. 5m short of a shakehole. The south-western branch largely, but not completely, temporarily loses definition in a shallow limestone quarry and eventually reaches the inbye headwall above Bleak Bank Farm but there is no longer any sign of a water smoot in the wall.

The (single) northern section has a gradient of 1:15; the south-western 1:8 and the southern branch 1:5. OS mapping from 1846-47 marks and names Grey Wife Sike only from Knoutberry Hole running south to a point level with the first shakehole, but that from 1893 shows the Sike running as far south as the shakehole at the end of the southern branch with the south-west branch running only a few metres past the shooting box at which point it terminated.

Issues

Examination and contemplation of these six water cuts raises a number of pertinent questions and issues, not all of which can be conclusively addressed. 1. Why The rationale behind each cut being created has been covered above. 2. When Is it possible to state with confidence when each cut was initiated and abandoned? Cartographic evidence is perhaps the obvious source to consult. Mention has been made in the foregoing discussion regarding early OS mapping: all six were depicted on First Edition Six-Inch mapping, surveyed in 1846-48, and only the Scales cut was left off the Second Edition surveyed in 1893. Thus it can be said with absolute confidence that all were extant and recognisable in the 1840s but this does not necessarily mean they were all still in active use. Earlier mapping is very rare except for Know Gap Sike which ran across land owned by the Farrers’ Ingleborough Estate. Among the many hundreds of estate maps are two for 1814 and 1829, both of which include the Sike.5 The sike remained in use serving Clapdale until a hydraulic ram was installed on Clapdale Beck in 1929.6 None of this evidence, however, has anything to say about when each feature was first dug. Only Mill Race or Water Cut allows tentative dating to be hypothesised. From the manorial source mentioned earlier it is known that Bideber Mill was extant by at least 1527 and there is a strong likelihood that, as a manorial corn mill, it could well have had origins in the medieval era. Broadrake and Philpin were tenements within Furness Abbey’s vaccaries of Southerscales and Winterscales so could well have been first dug in the monastic period. The Scales tenements, Know Gap and Clapdale were not in monastic ownership but certainly Scales and Clapdale have origins within that period though this does not translate to these two cuts being that old.

Grey Wife Sike fits into a dating category all of its own. The Farrers bought manorial rights stretching over much of the Ingleborough massif which they developed into the Ingleborough Estate with a prime aim being to develop a shooting focus. Heather moors were managed for grouse, lines of shooting butts were erected and each shooting zone was provided with a ‘shooting box’, a stone-built cabin for the ‘guns’ and beaters. Those sited at Moughton Whetstone Hole, The Allotment and Gayle Beck had adjacent supplies of water from natural streams; the one on Wetherpot Heath had no such supply (Fig. 6). Estate records show that the years 1830-82 saw 21,241 grouse shot across Ingleborough;7 neither this shooting box nor the sike existed prior to the 1840s (as proven by OS mapping) but they were both there by 1893. It is likely, therefore, that Grey Wife Sike was initially cut to bring water from Knoutberry Hole to the shooting box, hence its terminating at that juncture. Anecdotal evidence suggests the major part of the south-west branch was only dug in the late twentieth century to improve water supply to Bleak Bank Farm. The southern branch makes no sense at all as a water supply feature as it ends in the middle of nowhere; rather it may have been cut to drain the sloping ground alongside a line of butts. Shooting estates, it should be added, were keen to promote their desire to pander to the ‘guns’. 3. Who There are several issues inherent in this short word. First, who ordered the various cuts to be dug? Presumably Mill Race was dug at the behest of the manor court given that Bideber was in the possession of the lord of the manor; it is probable that the Broadrake and Philpin channels were conceived by those in charge of Furness Abbey’s vaccaries; it is possible that the manor courts of Clapham and Twisleton-with-Ellerbeck were likewise responsible for Know Gap Sike and the Scales cuts; and we can safely assume Ingleborough Estate was instrumental in seeing Grey Wife Sike to fruition. Second, it can be taken for granted that all the cuts were actually dug – most of them by hand using wooden spades – by tenants and sub-tenants of the respective manor or monastic courts, probably as boon labour. A fourth question is impossible to answer convincingly: over what timescale was each cut dug?

Conclusion

Regardless of who ordered their creation, what reasons lay behind these orders, who carried out the almost superhuman tasks, in which period, and how long it took them, it is impossible to escape from the fact that all six of them are awe inspiring. The scale of the undertakings is massive considering the lack of available technology at the time. The ways in which natural obstacles were overcome – shakeholes, outcropping limestone bedrock, wetland tracts, mounds of glacial till – are impressive by any standard. The attention to detail of slope angle, maintaining just enough gravitational flow without causing gullying or too rapid a rate of flow, is difficult for us to comprehend. Nowadays there is a host of competing technologies and digital aids to solve such problems; it is important to remember that none of these was available centuries ago.

Notes

  1. Ball, G. and Slater, M. 2018. ‘Water under Settle’. NCHT Journal, pp. 18-20.
  2. Foxcroft, H. 2004. ‘Water, water everywhere’. NCHT Journal, pp. 5-6.
  3. Full route details with grid references and a photographic record can be found in the online version of this article.
  4. Greenwood, W. 1905. The Redmans of Levens and Harewood: a Contribution to the History of the Levens Family of Redman and Redmayne in many of its Branches. Kendal: Titus Wilson, p. 198.
  5. NYCRO. ZTW XI, mic. 2207, fr. 397-99, Know Gap Estate, 1814; fr. 411-20, Clapdale Farm, 1829.
  6. Johnson, DS, 2020. Ingleborough. Landscape and History. Lancaster: Carnegie (revised edition) pp. 153-53. The present hydraulic ram is a replacement of the 1929 installation.
  7. NYCRO, ZTW III; Johnson op. Ci.t, pp. 242-44.

JohnsonFig1.jpg
Fig. 1 Location map
JohnsonFig2.jpg
Fig. 2 Bideber Mill: a former store adjacent to the mill itself
JohnsonFig3.jpg
Fig. 3 Burton Flour Mill
JohnsonFig4.jpg
Fig. 4 A water smoot on Know Gap Sike
JohnsonFig5.jpg
Fig. 5 Know Gap Sike with a section of glazed earthenware pipe visible
JohnsonFig6.jpg
Fig. 6 The junction of Grey Wife Sike on Wetherpot Heath looking towards the shooting box



JohnsonFig1.jpg
Fig. 1 Location map


JohnsonFig2.jpg
Fig. 2 Bideber Mill: a former store adjacent to the mill itself


JohnsonFig3.jpg
Fig. 3 Burton Flour Mill


JohnsonFig4.jpg
Fig. 4 A water smoot on Know Gap Sike


JohnsonFig5.jpg
Fig. 5 Know Gap Sike with a section of glazed earthenware pipe visible


JohnsonFig6.jpg
Fig. 6 The junction of Grey Wife Sike on Wetherpot Heath looking towards the shooting box