J.D.Marshall

It cannot be too often repeated that we have, in the old parish of Warton, one of the most remarkable chroniclers and observers ever to write on local matters. Since hard-working teams of researchers have been at work, over the past twenty years or so, John Lucas has naturally attracted more attention than he did before the foundation of the Mourholme Society. One thing is certain; we cannot afford to neglect his History of Warton Parish, compiled between 1710 and 1740.

I am one of those lucky beings who got hold of a stock copy of the 1931 edition of Lucas, kept in store by Messrs. Titus Wilson, and it is among my most cherished possessions, frequently used as it is. Our Seventeenth Century research team has examined Lucas’s commentaries on many occasions, because his life extended back into that century, of course, and we are again fortunate that his remarks can be used as evidence for Seventeenth Century customs and traditions.

Lucas gives a vivid description of Leighton Iron Furnace¹. He commences rather unpromisingly by writing that “Soon after the beginning of this century, the proprietors of the iron works in Furness erected the furnace”. This rather vague reference is in fact one to the Backbarrow Company, formed in 1711, which erected a now famous furnace (the remains of which are still to be seen) by the River Leven near Newby Bridge, and which soon afterwards promoted the building and operation of Leighton Furnace. That the Backbarrow proprietors, with their headquarters at that place, could calmly contemplate this second enterprise, at a distance of a good fifteen miles away by land and sea, says something for their faith in water transport over the Bay.

There was a flourishing shipping traffic in Morecambe Bay and along the north-western coastline at that time, and it is thanks to the records of the iron industry that we know something about it. The Backbarrow Company kept a Day Book and General Account Ledger for 1713-15 (with thousands of entries in it), now preserved at King’s College, Newcastle, with a hand-written copy at Barrow Record Office. It is through scores of entries that we learn something about the building of Leighton Furnace. The latter was erected near a large supply of charcoaling wood, Leighton Wood, which the company bought in October, 1714, for £1,115. It was immensely important to secure supplies of fuel in this way.

To return to Lucas, he shows² that the Leighton estate had descended to one Albert Hodgson, who, as we know from Alfred Fell’s Early Iron Industry of Furness and from the Day Book, sold the wood to the company. Meanwhile, iron ore was easily shipped for smelting from “the Furness- side of the Sands to Leighton shore” (1714) at 2s.6d. a ton. The iron ore, or haematite, was mined near Dalton-in-Furness and dumped on the nearest shore, and then loaded into sixty or seventy ton vessels at low tide. It is an arresting thought that much of the ore mined in Furness was actually used at Leighton for a number of years, i.e. until about 1728.

If readers look at my edition of The Autobiography of William Stout³ they will find a long list of commodities sold by Stout to the Backbarrow Company for the building of Leighton Furnace in 1713. This list is of interest because it shows what a great range of items an ironmonger might stock in those days, mainly in the form of different types of nails.

The canniness of the Backbarrow partners is displayed in another matter. They had a gin (horse driven winding device) constructed at Leighton, and carried back to Furness in one of their vessels. This presumably solved the problem of a return cargo, but also enabled them to turn the local timber to good use. Meanwhile, Leighton Wood was used to prepare a great variety of timber products which were exported and, since the Leighton Furnace used peat (or ‘turf’⁴) as well as charcoal for fuel, loaded charcoal sacks may well have gone in the empty ore boats to Furness, where charcoal was more consistently used.

One should remember that this great site of rural industry ceased operations nearly two hundred years ago. Very little of this site now remains, although the converted barn near the Silverdale road is the structure of a very fine original charcoal barn. Ten or so years ago one could see the black staining in the soil near a loading aperture which was once used for the six-foot charcoal sacks. Industrial archaeologists, like Mrs Anne Hillman, have thoroughly surveyed the site. An immense amount of peat must have been taken out of the moss which is upstream along the Leighton Beck.

What is the real point of all this? It is that we have to look outside our own area for significant matters affecting our own local history.

Notes

1. J Rawlinson Ford and J.A. Fuller-Maitland (eds) John Lucas History of Warton Parish 1931 p55-60 ↩︎
2. ibid, p.74. ↩︎
3. J.D.Marshall (ed), The Autobiography of William Stout of Lancaster 1665-1752, 1967, p295 ↩︎
4. J Rawlinson Ford and J.A. Fuller-Maitland (eds) John Lucas History of Warton Parish 1931 p58 ↩︎

Published in Mourholme Magazine Issue 29 1997

Neil Stobbs et al.

Much of the history of mills depended upon the effect of the Dissolution of the monasteries in 1563, when all the many monastic mills passed into the King’s hands. They became known as King’s Mills. The story emerges clearly in a classic four volume “History of Corn Milling” compiled at the beginning of this century.¹ Many of the quotations in this article are from that source.

Throughout the whole of the Middle Ages a favourite form assumed by the practical piety of men of wealth was the bequest of a mill, with all its rights, to a religious house, and long before the Dissolution of the Monasteries “the whole of these centres of civilisation and learning were, to a greater or lesser extent, endowed by founders and friends with revenues from corn mills”². Much of our knowledge of early milling comes from the careful ledger books of religious houses. The information is relevant to lay-held mills, since monastic mills, like all other mills, were generally maintained on the soke system. That is to say under customary, non-statutory local jurisdiction, such as ruled manors. By such Ancient Custom it was usual for the owner of a mill to have two especial privileges. He could compel all who dwelled within the soke to bring their grain to be ground at that mill and no other, and he could forbid the building of any other mill within the soke. In return the mill owner was bound to consider “the Convenience of the tenants’³

The grant of a mill was often made on the understanding that defined charitable acts would be carried out by the recipient monastery. There are cases where the descendants of donators of mills brought suit because the abbey was not carrying out the charitable acts laid down in the deed. Certainly many monasteries did spend much on charity. An eighteenth century writer describes the situation, as he reconstructed it, at Furness Abbey, shortly before the Dissolution:-

“…the tenants, sometimes with twenty or thirty horses, resorted to the monastery weekly. Each one received a dozen loaves of bread. Children and servants at work in the fields had dinner and supper in the abbey…The tenants did weekly receive out of the said monastery, over and besides the relief and commodities afore rehearsed, out of charity and devotion to the value of forty shillings sterling”⁴

In Bennet and Elton’s History an even more flattering picture of these pre-Dissolution monastic millers is drawn:-

“The monks had exercised charity; had controlled farms, markets and mills; and by leasing these latter, at fair rents, and ensuring good and fair service on behalf of the miller had exerted a beneficial control over the bread of the poor, which the latter were not slow to recognise…We believe, indeed, the monks never failed to recognise the vast moral power placed in their hands by the donors of the mills, nor overlooked their good-fortune in being thus enabled to benefit and gain the goodwill of their people. The influence of milling upon even religion in those early days may therefore have been less imaginary than might be generally supposed”⁵

Bennett and Elton admit that many recorded milling disputes appear between religious houses and their tenants. There were probably as many between lay owners and tenants, but as the religious houses kept records of every dispute, and these have become available to historians, whereas those of lay owners have not done so in such great numbers, it appears that the religious houses were worse landlords than the lay ones. They did apply the law in its full vigour and were reviled for doing so, but probably no more than lay owner.

After the Dissolution a “King’s Mill” would be retained as a valuable source of revenue for the royal coffers until it was found necessary to sell it to raise cash for various needs. The crown already owned other mills either by purchase, or by the fact that they lay on crown land. Such mills would either be leased to millers or run by ’sworn keepers’. They had no special privileges over and above other soke mills.

Kings had always found mills useful as gifts to bestow on those they wished to reward. The recipients would not usually act as millers themselves, but could hope for a reliable income from the rent paid by the working miller. In 1609 King James 1, short of money as always, began selling off mills in a big way. A list of all crown mills (except those belonging to him as part of the Duchy of Lancaster) was made by order of the Earl of Salisbury, the Lord High Treasurer and of Sir Julius Caesar, Chancellor of the Exchequer. The list is still to be found among the Lord Lansdowne manuscripts in the British Library. The total value given there was £l,483- 7s-7d. Two of the mills were offered for by the millers themselves. One miller offered £30 for a mill with an annual rent of £4-2s. In the other case the rent was £5-8s-8d and £45 was offered. The sums give some idea of the value of individual mills.

A large percentage of the mills sold in 1609 were bought by a couple of seventeenth century entrepreneurs, Edward Ferrars, a London mercer, and Francis Phillips, gentleman, also of London. The two “became the most extensive mill-owners the Kingdom had ever known”⁶. They went on purchasing King’s Mills in the years following 1609. They obtained, among many others in the Duchy, a mill at Skerton with an annual rent of £5-6s-8d and one at Slyne with a rent of £l-6s-8d⁷.

There were a number of forces at work during the latter part of the 16th century which caused changes in the design of mills. One of the most important of these was that a growing proportion of the miller’s customers began to rely on purchasing meal or flour, rather than grain which then had to be taken to the local mill. (There had always been a get-out for tenants in some sokes. There had been successful challenges where the tenant bought grain elsewhere and claimed he could have this ground where he chose, but this was only possible where Ancient Custom, by chance, limited the soke to tenants bringing their own grain to be ground). The growing custom of buying ready ground meal or flour had more far-reaching effects. It led to the development of a new trade, and the appearance of the ‘meal man’. This gave the miller a chance to combine the new trade with their own. They became ‘Merchant Millers’. One effect of this form of trade was the grinding of very large batches of corn, instead of small ones.

By 1586 this trade had become so large, even though it was against the law, that there was an Order in Council, dated 2 January 1586, which expressed an order for the suppression of this ” very corrupt Trade“. It was contained in certain “orders devised by the especiall commandment of the Queen’s maiestie for the reliefe and stay of the present dearth of graine within the realme”⁸. From 1623 onwards, a number of patents were granted for improved flour dressing machines. Flour had previously been sifted, or ‘bolted’, by the bakers rather than the miller. The introduction of such machines into mills was a new departure and did not come into common use till about the mid-eighteenth century

It would be interesting to fit the history of mills in the Mourholme area into this general background. It is known that a number of mills existed on the Keer from Capernwray to the mouth of the river, but only a little is known of their history, or even of their exact site. Members of the Society are currently working on the matter, and it is to be hoped that more detail may be available in a future issue of the Magazine. What follows is a summary of what has been found so far.

Warton mill was the only royal mill in the parish. There is a suggestion that it may have been one of those that came into lay hands at the Dissolution, having formerly belonged to the monastery of Syon, but the evidence is not conclusive⁹. It may simply have belonged to the crown because it was part of the crown manor of Warton. The mill was sold by James I. At least, when a rental of Warton manor, “late parcell of the possessions of Charles Steward late King of England” was prepared by commissioners for the Commonwealth government in 1649 it mentioned a mill that had been sold off by the crown at least twenty years before.

There is but one water Milne in the said Mannor of Warton which is held by Leon: Washington Gent who is now out of the Country but we are informed that the said Leo Washington did purchase the rent of the said Milne which formerly was about £4 per annum of the King but…the rent hath not been paid these 20 years”¹⁰

Nothing is said in the rental about what the existing arrangements for running the mill were. Presumably it did not interest the commissioners since, the mill having been sold, privileges and all, was no longer part of the assets of the crown manor.

In 1668 a certain Christopher Charnley was found to have converted Warton Mill into a cottage. An order was made by the Manor Court “that he Remove his wife, children, and goods from thence ….upon paine of offending therein Five pounds”¹¹ In the same year there had been “severall sad, and grievous complaints” against Charnley for taking excessive toll. It was therefore ordered that in future the miller was only to take one peck of grain in every twenty from Warton tenants. Presumably he could charge more to outsiders. According to Lucas the going rate at the beginning of the eighteenth century was one sixteenth part¹² There was still a mill at the end of the century. In 1699 “Myles Covert millner” was fined £1-19s-1d for “delveing and carreing away soddes…” from a manorial meadow¹³. The year before a Thomas Chorley, milner had died. He left goods valued at only £8.12s. This does not suggest that he had found milling profitable, but he had perhaps retired from the trade earlier, because in his will he speaks of goods previously disposed of.

No trace of a mill remains in Warton today. According to Lucas, Warton’s eighteenth century historian, it lay on the flat lands below Milnhead. The river Keer was diverted by a mill dam at ” The Launds” (meadows down near where the railway now crosses the Keer) and was then “”brought down the Meadows to the Mill in a Chanel above half a mile in length… “¹⁴.

Even less is known of Carnforth mill. Lucas is again the source of our information. He says that it stood very near the Keer¹⁵, presumably on the south bank, but was not turned by the river. It drew the necessary water from three springs. They were inadequate it seems for, at the end of the seventeenth century, the Miller, one Thomas Ward, made two attempts to improve the water supply. He thought first of an aqueduct over the Keer to bring the water from the Carlepot, a fast-flowing spring in Warton. His second idea was to draw a “goit”, a water-course, from the Keer above the mill. That project too failed¹⁶. Nevertheless in the eighteenth century Mr James Lucas, cousin of the historian, thought it worthwhile to buy the Carnforth mill as well as the Warton one.

Yealand tenants had to use the mill at Tewitfield on the Whitbeck. When the Ancient Custom of the manor was legally formalised between Sir George Middleton, Lord of the Manor, and his tenants in 1658 it was laid down that the tenants “...shall grind all such come as did grow upon their several! Tenements and which they spend in their howses at the Lord’s Milne called Whitbeck milne”¹⁷. This wording would seem to have left the tenants free to use other mills both for corn they had bought in and for their own corn if they were going to sell it outside the manor, but if they did so there is no record of it. The 1658 agreement gave explicit protection against a dishonest miller. If he did not serve the tenants in due time, or was dishonest the tenants could go to other mills “till the Lord have reformed what is amisse, & then to return againe“. The mill actually lay in the township of Priest Hutton and had been a possession of the Bindlosses, Lords of the Manor of Borwick and Priest Hutton. In 1605 the Middletons acquired it for the sum of £80 down and an annual payment of £3 a year¹⁸. The probable site of the mill can still be traced on the ground today, quarter of a mile west of Coat Green (NGR.528749). The course of two of the lades can be seen, though all signs of the mill are gone.

The Tewitfield mill survived at least into the eighteenth century. In 1676 Dame Anne Middleton, Sir George’s widow, leased the mill for three years at £14 a year. Compared with some of the other rents quoted above this suggests the mill was doing well. It seems, in fact, to have diversified, for it was described as “Whitbecke milne and Kilne“¹⁹. In view of the known malting trade in Carnforth the development is not surprising. At an uncertain date later the mill was being described as a “water corn mill, kiln, malt kiln, malt house and malting’²⁰. White Beck Mill was still there in 1759 when it was the subject of a petition to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal²¹.

Of the history of the mills used by the townships Borwick, Priest Hutton and Silverdale, almost nothing is known. Sir Robert Bindloss of Borwick Hall. Lord of the Manor of both Borwick and Priest Hutton in the seventeenth century, is said to have owned 24 mills’²². They were not necessarily in the neighbourhood, for he was a rich man with extensive property, nor does it necessarily mean that he owned that number of mill buildings. A mill was essentially the two grindstones, so there might be two or more ’’mills” in one building. One mill at least must have been in Borwick township, for when a Thomas Chorley, miller of Warton, made his will in 1698 he made Thomas Chorley, miller of Borwick, an executor. It may very well have been Capernwray Mill which still survives as a dwelling house below the aqueduct over the river Keer, but nothing seems known of its history before the canal was built in 1792. Then the millrace from a weir on the river Keer had to be taken by pipe through the aqueduct. It survived as a corn mill till about 1913, and then continued for a few more years as a saw mill²³.

For Silverdale only one tantalising piece of information has emerged. Round about 1710 a document of “Charges to the Jury, Silverdale Manor Court” was prepared, apparently by the steward of the manor. It contains thirteen charges and between number 12 and 13 appear the words “Lords mill” – and then nothing’²⁴. In any case, whether there was a mill actually in Silverdale, the inhabitants would have had little difficulty in finding a mill to use, for what does emerge from this preliminary survey is how frequent small local mills were. With the coming of “the meal man” and the “master-miller” in the eighteenth century as described above demand could be supplied by fewer larger mills. Gradually the old mills disappeared, though the houses attached to them sometimes survived as has the house at Capernwray Mill.

Notes

1. Bennett & Elton, History of Corn Milling, 1900 Four volumes ↩︎
2. ibid Vol. III p47 ↩︎
3. ibid Vol. III p204 ↩︎
4. T. West History of Furness 1774 ↩︎
5. ibid Vol. III p50-51 ↩︎
6. ibid Vol. III p17 ↩︎
7. ibid Vol. III p18 ↩︎
8. ibid Vol. III p168 ↩︎
9. VCH Vol 2 1908 p564 ↩︎
10. Lancashire Reference Library “Custom of the Manor of Warton” MS230 ↩︎
11. Warton Manor Court Book March 30th 1668 ↩︎
12. John Lucas History of the Parish of Warton p129 ↩︎
13. Warton Manor Court Book, October 12th 1699 ↩︎
14. John Lucas History of the Parish of Warton p42 ↩︎
15. John Lucas History of the Parish of Warton p41 ↩︎
16. John Lucas History of the Parish of Warton p128 ↩︎
17. Lancashire Record Office “Arbitration between Sir George Middleton and his Yealand tenants 1658” DDTo/H2 ↩︎
18. Lancashire Record Office “Wilson and Others Against Towneley & Wife” DDTo/1/6 ↩︎
19. Lancashire Record Office “Lease by Dame Anne Middleton of Whitbecke milne 1676” DDTo/L/3 ↩︎
20. Lancashire Record Office “Lease by George Towneley of his water corn mill” undated DDTo/L/6 ↩︎
21. Lancashire Record Office”Petition .. concerning White Beck Mill 1759″ DDT0/L/6 ↩︎
22. John Lucas History of the Parish of Warton p114 ↩︎
23. James W.A. Price “The Industrial Archaeology of the Lunee Valley” 1983 p76 ↩︎
24. Charge to the Jury, Silverdale Manor Court, MMLH Vol II.I. 1983 p15 ↩︎

Published in Mourholme Magazine Issue 29 1997