The cotton mill at Low Westhouse

The small village of Low Westhouse just off the A65 main road west of Ingleton is an unlikely place to find a large cotton spinning mill, but there was one 200 years ago. Today there are just three farms, about a dozen cottages, the village Hall which had formerly been the school, a chapel, a modern joiners shop and The Trees, now a caravan site.

The Trees was for over three centuries the home of the Burrow family and was their working farmstead. Thomas and Elizabeth were living there in 1740: they had 11 children, all baptised at Thornton Church. Their eldest son Robert eventually inherited the house and farm and built and managed the cotton-spinning mill. Robert’s four younger brothers left Westhouse as young lads; three were apprenticed to trades people in Lancaster and became prominent citizens of that town as merchants, ship-owners, and mayors. The youngest, Christopher, joined the East India Company.

Robert married Ellen Thornton from Roeburndale and they appear to have moved into The Trees by 1770, after the death of his father. From the church records it is known that Robert and Ellen baptised twelve children and reared eleven. It was a very bold decision to build a new cotton mill, but eventually almost all these children became involved and inherited a share in the enterprise and the farm.

About 1780 cotton spinning mills were being established in nearly every town and village in the Lune Valley and the Craven district of Yorkshire. Most were started by partnerships between Lancashire cotton traders or merchants and local land owners and were usually sited near a river or an old water-powered corn mill. At Low Westhouse the enterprise was entirely started, built and operated by Robert Burrow and his family. The spinning of cotton was in operation by 1793, when ‘a Thomas Lee, engineer of Factory Westhouse, baptised his daughter Elizabeth at Thornton Church’, and it lasted for nearly 50 years, whilst all around other cotton spinning mills were going bankrupt.

The mill was built near the beck on their own land: the newly invented steam engine power was used as the water in the beck was inadequate to drive a water wheel. The beck was enclosed in a culvert for about 50 yards and an odd-shaped building was erected over the culvert to house the boiler, mill chimney and an engine, and a small stable for two horses. These buildings although altered are still intact with two large stone base blocks for the engine mounting in the floor. Two heavy cast iron bearing frames were recovered from the gable walls in the 1980s. The main mill building was attached to the east of the engine shed. It measured 90 feet by 45 feet, with a ground floor and two upper floors, with windows in bays between the beams. This building was demolished in 1920.

At the other side of the culvert a warehouse was built measuring 60 feet by 28 feet. This still exists and has windows in every bay -- ground and upper floor. It had a wide horse-cart door in the centre for inside loading. Two or three bays at the western end were partitioned off to form two cottages for mill workers. These are now the dwelling house for Trees Farm. The whole area was enclosed with a high security wall.

In 1795 a newly built cotton mill near Austwick went bankrupt and the mill and the entire contents were taken over by Robert Burrow who installed his son John as manager (Ingle, 1997). In 1814 came the first signs of ‘trouble at t’mill. Of the sons John had died and George offered his share for sale in order for him to buy land on the newly enclosed Thornton Fell. His share consisted of 10 mules with 3336 spindles and all the preparing machinery. This machinery never left the mill so the rest of the family must have bought it. By the 1830s after Robert and his brothers in Lancaster had all died George who had bought land on Thornton Fell (see the farm deeds) went bankrupt bringing disgrace to a wealthy proud family. Edward, George’s younger bachelor brother was manager of Austwick and Westhouse mills living in luxury with three spinster sisters at The Trees. Both mills eventually failed and all the old worn machinery was sold for scrap by 1835.

A young nephew, newly married, named Robert Burrow junior moved into the two cottages at the warehouse and called it Trees Farm and became a farmer, using some of the mill buildings for livestock. In the year 1877 almost all the Burrow’s properties had been inherited by Miss Anne Burrow of Buckstone House near Carnforth, the daughter of bankrupt George. She let the old mill to a partnership of Messrs Wrathall, Waterhouse and Hart for a period of 14 years to produce oil cloth and employment for the village people. This enterprise only lasted two or three years, then everything was burned in a huge bonfire. The small wooden cone seen in the picture was rescued by a young girl. She was my great great aunt. After the oil cloth enterprise failed the site was adapted as a farmstead, the large mill being demolished in 1920 and the stone and beams carted to Skipton.

Reference

• Ingle, G., 1997. Yorkshire Cotton: the Yorkshire cotton industry, 1780-1835. Publ. Carnegie Publishing Ltd., Lancaster.