A History of the Steel Family of Silsden & Merseyside

A HISTORY OF THE STEEL FAMILY OF SILSDEN AND MERSEYSIDE by T.M. STEEL 12 November 2016 1 1. INTRODUCTION We begin this account by tracing the descent, as far as has been found possible, of five Steel siblings, all born on Merseyside in the third quarter of the nineteenth century: Joseph (1861–1941); Benjamin Joseph (1864– 1944); Mary Alice (1868–1891); Thomas Mather (1869–1958); and William Eaton (1872–1942).1 They were all children of Joseph Steel (1817–1874) and of his second wife Mary Hodgkinson (1829–1903). Although all five began life on Merseyside, their father Joseph was born into a farming family at Braithwaite, near Keighley in Yorkshire’s West Riding. Joseph’s father was Benjamin Steel (1775–1818), whom we shall call ‘Benjamin Steel junior’, born at Holden Beck House, the family’s freehold farm (of which, with his brothers and cousins, he was to be a part inheritor) at Holden Park, in Silsden, some three miles north-east of Braithwaite. Joseph’s mother was Benjamin’s second wife, Lydia Laycock (1785–1828). Benjamin junior’s parents were Benjamin Steel (1718–1793), whom we shall call ‘senior’, also born at Holden Beck House and inheritor of a half share in the farm from his father; and Benjamin senior’s wife and first cousin Elizabeth Steel (1735–1814). Benjamin senior’s parents were Richard Steel (1683–1758), whom we shall call ‘Richard Steel junior’, born at Upper Holden in Holden Park, who first leased and then purchased the family farm at nearby Holden Beck House; and Richard’s wife Anne Heaton (died 1751). Elizabeth’s parents were Richard’s youngest brother David Steel (1696–1746); and his wife Margaret Gott (1702–1788). The parents of Richard junior and David were Richard Steel (c.1636–c.1712), whom we shall call ‘senior’ (a leasehold farmer and tailor at Upper Holden, who seems to have been born elsewhere); and Richard’s second wife Grace Forton, née Mitchell (1650/1–1728). 2 2. UPPER HOLDEN: RICHARD STEEL senior Holden Park The family’s connection with Liverpool began c.1845, but their direct descent is traced from Richard Steel senior who was born c.1636, arriving in Silsden by 1662 and at Holden Park by 1677. The first 150 years of this account are set in and around Holden Park, an area of a little over one square mile beside the River Aire at the southernmost tip of the small township of Silsden in Yorkshire’s old West Riding. Silsden was by far the most populous of the seven townships then making up the ancient parish of Kildwick.2 Holden had been in medieval times a demesne park of the manor of Silsden, in Skipton lordship: a walled deer park, partly forested, and held by the lord of the manor for his own purposes. Holden, which means ‘deep valley’ or ‘hollow bottom’ is the lowest point in Silsden (‘Siggel’s valley’).3 It is an area of rich pasture land rising from the river through woodland towards the wastes and millstone grit outcrops of Ilkley and Silsden moors to the east and north. The Holden Park of today is a curious survival: a long strip of land containing dairy farms and a golf course, squeezed between moor and river and between the towns of Silsden and Keighley to the north and south, and bisected by the Leeds and Liverpool canal, but cut off by the river from the railway and the roads which use the valley.4 The medieval deer park was disparked in the early seventeenth century and converted to farming use (and eventually in some degree to the associated worsted trade). The tenure pattern which began then and stabilised by 1705, has hardly changed to the present day.5 Large scale maps of Silsden as it appeared in 1612/13 and 1757 survive among its manorial records: both show Holden Park in detail.6 The Park is also shown on John Speed’s 1610 map of Yorkshire and Robert Morden’s of 1701. Origins of the Steel(e) family in Silsden and district The name Steel occurs first on the eastern side of Britain and is clearly of Scandinavian origin, probably meaning ‘true as steel’.7 The only Steels paying tax in the entire Craven district in the sixteenth century were at Keighley: there in 1545, Thomas and John were assessed for 40s 2d and 20s 1d.8 The presence of the family at Keighley in the seventeenth century is uncertain, since the editor of the parish registers, concluding that the families of Steel/e & Stell were one and the same, transcribed and indexed both as ‘Stell’, a separate family which later became prominent in Keighley history.9 The Keighley hearth tax returns for 1664 include John Steele and Dennis Stell with one each and two John Stells with one and three. The editor of the 1672 hearth tax returns treated all such entries as ‘Steele’ and thus found in Keighley: John, Margaret (widow) and Dinis Steele, all with one hearth; John Steele of Brigend, with three; Thomas Steel, with one; and William Steele (poor), with two.10 Hugh Steele and Margaret Girnewoode The first occurrence of the family in the registers of Silsden’s parish church at Kildwick is on 28 April 1600, when one Hugh Steele married Margaret Girnewoode.11 Their son Edmund was baptised in 1609, and William and Thomas Steele in 1617 and 1621. ‘Hugo Steele, pauper de Bradeleye’ was buried on 19 April 1627 and ‘Uxor Hugonis [the wife of Hugh] Steele de Bradeley’ on 5 November 1629. Edmund Steele and Isabel Smith Edmund Steele (born in 1609) married Isabel Smith on 24 August 1626, at the age of c.17: their daughter Mary was born at Bradley and baptised on 14 October 1627. ‘Edmund Steele, paterfam[ilias, father of a family] de Bradley’ was buried on 1 February 1634 (aged c.25) and ‘Isabel Steele, vidua de Bradely’ on 14 June 1637: all these were buried at Kildwick. Mary Steele was buried ‘at Bradely’ on 10 March 1646. 3 The name Steel does not occur again in the registers until 1662, after the civil wars and the restoration, but there are gaps in registration in this period and since the wars were waged particularly fiercely in these parts, there is every reason to suggest interrupted residence. The lords of Skipton were royalists, while Hugh Currer of Kildwick Hall and the owner of Silsden Mill was a leading parliamentary agent: the pressures on the tenantry must have been enormous, with the whole area experiencing great dislocation and local people pressured into joining one or other of the armies. Hostilities in the district were followed in the terrible winter of 1644/5 by a devastating outbreak of bubonic plague.12 Birth and marriage of Richard Steel senior Giving evidence as a witness in court cases in November 1673 and October 1712, Richard Steel senior gave his age as ‛35’ and ‘76’, so we may reckon his year of birth as c.1636/1638, making him too young to have fought personally in the civil wars, at least in the early hostilities. In his 1712 deposition Richard claimed to have known certain closes in Silsden for ‘60 years and upwards’, which suggests that he was born elsewhere, coming to Silsden c.1652 at the age of c.16.13 He certainly does not appear in the Kildwick baptism registers, which seem comprehensive for the years around 1636. It is clear that Richard Steel was a young child of only six to eight when the convulsions of the civil wars began in the West Riding area and it is quite likely that his father was involved in the fighting. Richard would have been 14–16 when combat ended in 1650. With the ending of hostilities in the area and the death of her husband Lord Pembroke in January 1650 Lady Anne Clifford was able to take full control of her estates as fourteenth lord of Skipton. She immediately began a review of all existing leases.14 It may have been as a result of these changes that Richard Steel’s family arrived as sub-tenants in Silsden. The average age at marriage for males in that region and period was 28.15 It seems likely however that Richard senior married his first wife Grace at a slightly younger age and during the commonwealth period, when very few marriages were recorded in the registers of Kildwick and the surrounding parishes.16 Whatever were the circumstances of the arrival of Richard and his family in Silsden, their move coincided with a very troubled period in the township. Recovery from the upheavals and depradations of the civil wars had begun, but so had Lady Anne’s determined campaign to bring all the tenancy arrangements under her control. Lady Anne had also erected a new water-mill at Holden and was binding all her tenants to grind their grain there instead of using Currer’s ancient mill at Silsden. These initiatives together had provoked uproar and bitter litigation. It was her defeat in the final suit concerning the Holden mill in 1667 which caused Lady Anne to leave Yorkshire nine years before her death in 1676 and brought some measure of calm to Silsden. The troubled time has been assessed by Spence: Those Craven folk, especially in Skipton and Silsden, who had lived through the Civil Wars and sieges and endured the Parliamentarian occupation deserved better than [Lady Anne’s] continued disruption of their lives. The entanglements of her properties and rights could have been resolved quickly and equitably by the arbitration of perceptive gentry.

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