Minor industries 37

Minor industries

Leather The industry's three major requirements were sources of In pre-industrial societies leather was one of the most hides, water and tannin, all of which West important of all manufactured articles, being the basic raw possessed in abundance. Until the introduction of synthetic material from which, amongst other things, boots, shoes, alternatives in the nineteenth century, the tannin used to saddlery, harnessing and bookbindings were made. In the cure the hides was derived from the bark of the oak tree. Middle Ages, had a flourishing leather The bark was usually culled in the late spring by men industry. By the fourteenth century the boroughs of known as peelers. In May 1740 Sir Walter Calverley noted Bradford and Wakefield had established themselves as in his diary: centres of the trade. In 1379 a quarter of the taxable It is usuall to pay for pilling barke ninepence or ten­ inhabitants of Wakefield township were tanners, the pence a day, and if you side bark by the Wuarter in majority of these probably following their trade at the the long, it is worth about three shillings or three and bottom of Kirkgate. sixpence ... 1

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Figure 25. Field-names with leather elements 38 West Yorkshire: 1500-1830

The hides themselves were then steeped in strong tannin Pottery solutions. This was done in what were locally known as 'ouse pits'. The probate inventory of one early eighteenth century tanner, Benjamin Empson of Sandal, mentions no In the Middle Ages pottery was made in West Yorkshire less than eleven of these pits: wherever suitable deposits of clay were available. The most extensive group of early post-medieval potteries to have Itm In Two Ouse Pitts 19 Hides and 15 Calfe been so far recorded in the county was that located on the Skins ... edge of the Wakefield Outwood, in and around the village Itm In One Ouse Pitt Six Bend Leather Hides ... of Potovens (Stanley-cum-Wrenthorpe). Potters came into Itm In Other Ouse Pitt twelve Bend Leather that area and set up their kilns there sometime around the Hides ... middle of the sixteenth century. In 1608 a survey of the Outwood mentions: Itm In Two Ouse Pitts fourteen Hides ... Itm In One Ouse Pitt 12 Hides .. . certain clay-pits digged by ye Cuppers or Cupmakers inhabiting there, namely Ric. Andrew, Henry Itm In One Ouse Pitt 21 Hides .. . Glover, Henry Gill, Thomas Oliver and Ric. Itm In One Ouse Pitt 21 Upper Leather Hides and Eshall. 7 21 Calfe Skins ... By the second quarter of the eighteenth century, Itm In One Ouse Pitt 34 Hides 16 Skins .. . however, these small craft potteries were in decline, facing Itm In One Ouse Pitt 29 Hides 7 Skins ... 2 as they did increasing competition from the larger factory potteries of , Rothwell and Staffordshire. One of the As was the case in many industries at this period, a number earliest of the new generation of factory potteries was that of the practitioners also followed the secondary occupation established in the disused glass house at Rothwell in 1767. of farming. Evidence for the location of tanneries in this period is difficult to come by, though indications of the presence of the industry in particular locations is provided by field names with a leather connotation, i.e. in which the elements 'bark', 'tan' or 'cawker' appear (see Fig. 25).3

At the beginning of the ninenteenth century the manufacture of leather was Britain's second largest industry, and the leather-dependent trade of shoemaking the second largest employer of artisans, weaving being the first. By this time Leeds had replaced Wakefield as the county's principal leather manufacturing town. In 1817 Leeds had six fellmongers, 10 curriers, 66 bootmakers and nine tanners within the borough. By the 1820s it had become a leather-producing centre of such importance that it was decided to hold a regular market for its sale. In October 1827 the first of these was held, the Leeds lntellingencer reporting that:

The situation is the best that could possibly have been selected, both from the great internal con­ venience of the place, and also from its being so Plate 22. The Leeds Pottery contiguous to the river. where purchasers may readily despatch their goods to any part of the King­ dom. Early in the morning the market place was By 1772, this pottery itself was running at a loss, and in the exceedingly full of leather of all descriptions, following year was advertised for sale in the Leeds Mercury. indeed it was perhaps. the largest show that has been This advertisement gives an idea of the extent of the seen out of London, and some say in the Kingdom concern: at any one time ... nor should we probably exag­ gerate in saying, that there was above £100,000 Rothwell Potworks, in the county of York, situated worth offered for sale.4 within 4 miles from Leeds and 5 miles from Wake­ field, 1 mile from the turnpike road leading to Wakefield, and within a small distance from the Leeds' rise to importanc~ as a leather centre was due to the navigable rivers, Aire and Calder, the neighbour­ fact that it best fulfilled all the criteria necessary for the hood of which Pottery abounds with a great variety large-scale manufacture of that product. Not only was it of clay and coal. The buildings consist of a large possessed of a more than adequate supply of both water and hovel containing three kilns, and capable of con­ oak bark, but it also had an ever-growing source of hides, taining 4, with all proper conveniences; two large coming as they did from the slaughterhouses which catered warehouses, and other convenient houses, for for the needs of the town's increasing population. carrying the pottery business in the most corn- Minor industries 39

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1 Rothwell Pottery 26 Bate Hayne, Northowram, Halifax 2 The Leeds Pottery, or Leeds Old Pottery 27 Pule Hill, Northowram, Halifax 3 Leathley Lane Pottery, Leeds Union Pottery, Hunslet New Pottery, 28 Howcans, Northowram Stafford Pottery, Leeds Art Pottery 29 Keelharn Pottery 4 Cartledge's Pottery, Hunslet Hall Pottery 30 Denholrne Pottery 5 Allison's Pottery, Jack Lane Pottery 31 Soil Hill Pottery, Ovenden, Halifax 6 Taylor's or Hunslet New Pottery 32 Small Clues Pottery, Bradshaw, Halifax 7 Hunslet Carr 33 Bradshaw Row, Bradshaw, Halifax 8 Tenter Croft Pottery 34 Old Lindley, near Huddersfield 9 Wilson and Haist's Pottery 35 Lindley Moor Potteries, Salendine Nook, Huddersfield 10 Moor Pottery 36 Potterton 11 Holbeck Moor Pottery (assumed grid reference) 37 Lane End Pottery 12 John Mill's Pottery 38 Manor House Pottery, Eccleshill, Bradford 13 Pontefract Lane Pottery 39 Bretton Pot House 14 William Ingham and Sons, Wortley 40 Lindie Lane 15 Pottery 41 West Hall Pottery, Stanley, Wakefield 16 Woodlesford Pottery 42 Silcoates 17 Bridge Pottery 43 Robin Hood Farm 18 Ferrybridge or Knottingley Pottery 44 Upper Heaton, near Huddersfield 19 Pottery Holes, Knottingley 45 Potovens, Wrenthorpe 20 Castleford Pottery 46 Cinderhills, Southowrarn, Halifax 21 Mere Pottery, Castleford-Parts I, II and Ill 47 Ainle-y Top Pottery 22 Allerton Bywater Pottery, Castleford 48 Haigh's Pottery, Blackley 23 Russell's Pottery, Whitwood Mere 49 Wibsey Pottery, near Bradford 24 Bateson's Pottery, Castleford 50 Russell's Pottery, Meadow Pottery 25 Garrett and Fletcher's "Castleford Pottery" 51 Hunslet Hall Pottery, Petty's Pottery,

26. Distribution of potteries 40 West Yorkshire: 1500-1830

Plate 23. Bottle cone, North Bierley

modious and extensive manner; wherein are a large they have lately made at , to be de­ quantity of Devonshire clays, and all tools and livered ... frank and free into the kilns where they utensils necessary for workmen, with a great usually burn them in the said ground ... 10,000 variety of original and working moulds in the newest before 28 May the other 100,000 before 28 August, taste.s ... to be paid £33 6s. 8d., viz £4 at digging of clay, £4 at first turning and tempering, £4 at second, and In the late eighteenth and early ninetennth centuries the 40s. every fourteen days ... 5 county's pottery industry was becoming increasingly concentrated in the Leeds and Castleford areas. In the In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brick kilns were former the majority of the new potteries were established in relatively small and impermanent structures. Some idea of the townships of Holbeck and Hunslet. The only reminders the scale of the industry in those centuries is the in those townships today of this once-important industry are deposition made in 1721 by John Thompson, of Newsome such names as Pottery Fields in Hunslet. Green (Temple Newsam): ... Newsome inhabitants ... made bricks and gott turfs all over the said Green . . . And also this Brick deponent saith that he hath for thirty years past made several kilnes of bricks upon the said Green . . . Brick was first used as a building material in West Yorkshire and the said Sr Wm Lowthers hath several times in the early seventeenth century, notably at Temple bought some of those bricks of this deponent. This Newsam, in the 1630s, and at Clarke Hall (Stanley-cum­ deponent alsoe remembers Newsome people making Wrenthorpe ). The former house was the largest brick waterpitts and claypitts in the beck that runs down structure to be built in the county in that century. A bond by the East side of Newsome Green and which sepa­ dated October 1636 gives some details of the cost of making rates the said Green from Swillington Inclosures ever since the deponent can remember anything. And the bricks of the type from which that house was built: that when this deponent was a boy he remembers his Richard Fisher of York, brick maker and father who lived at Newsome carry'd clay up out of Christopher Walker of , ... to make ... the said beck onto Newsome Green and maid bricks 200,000 bricks at the rate of ¾d per 1,000 good, there with that clay by the authority of the then Lord hard, well-burned merchantable brickes of the size of Temple Newsome ... 6 Minor industries 41

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Figure 27. Field-names with brick elements

The name 'Red Hall' usually indicates an early brick By 1696, however, a glasshouse was in operation near building and there are a number of such appellations to be Ferrybridge, probably at present-day Glass Houghton. This found in the central and eastern areas of the county. In the township was then known simply as Houghton, the prefix west, where local stone was more freely available, brick was 'Glass' being added in the following century presumably little used as a building material until well into the because of its association with that industry. On maps nineteenth century. dating to 1774 and 1792 respectively there are sketches of the glasshouse cones then situated in that township. There are no surviving glasshouse cones in West Yorkshire, the Glass nearest one being located at Catcliffe (South Yorkshire). In 1726 Joshua Ferry, who seems to have been the brother In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the glass of the founder of the Catcliffe concern, leased a glassworks industry developed in the east of the county, particularly in at Rothwell Haigh. Soon afterwards he announced his the Rothwell and Knottingley areas. The growth of the tenancy of the works in an advertisement in a London industry before this date was probably dependent on the newspaper, the Daily Post; in this he also made a point of demand for window glass, one of the industry's principal stressing its proximity to the Aire and Calder Navigation, a products. The rebuilding of hundreds, perhaps thousands, factor which, he claimed, made it possible for him 'to send of yeoman houses in the seventeenth century involved the bottles or flint glass to London'. 9 incorporation of many comforts which had previously been confined to the gentry; glazing was one of these improvements, and the demand for domestic glass stimulated the growth of the industry.