Hutton Rudby 1876 to 1877: the Albion Sailcloth Mill

This follows the post Hutton Rudby 1859-1908: the Cleveland Sailcloth Mill

It has always been remembered that William Surtees, who lived in Eden Cottage at the time of the 1871 census, established a linen manufactury in Albion House, at the corner of Doctors Lane and Garbutts Lane.

This is his story.

I have come to the conclusion that William was the grandson of the William Surtees and Eden Dodds who married on 7 December 1797 in Hutton Rudby – not least because he used the name Eden for his house and as the middle name of one of his daughters.

William Surtees and Eden Dodds had several children (see here).  Their daughter Margaret Surtees married Edward Hansell of Kirklevington in 1830, while daughters Jane and Sarah had children outside marriage.  The Guisborough registers record the baptism on 15 August 1825 of William & John, illegitimate sons of Jane Surtees of Guisborough.  This was the William of Eden Cottage.  

By 1832 Jane was back in Hutton Rudby where her daughter Elizabeth was baptised on 25 July.  The Memorial Inscriptions transcription shows that Jane died the following year aged 34.  Eden and William Surtees were left with the care of Jane's 7 year old twin boys and baby daughter.  William died four years later and was buried at Hutton Rudby on 12 March 1837, aged 66.  The 1841 census shows Eden was still at work – though she was now 70 years old, she was listed as an agricultural labourer.  With her were Elizabeth, aged 10, and John, a stonemason's apprentice aged 15.  Her house must have been at the top of Enterpen; it appears directly after Hutton House in the enumerator's round of the village.  

The twin boys had both been apprenticed as stone masons.  While John was with their grandmother, the 1841 Census found William in the household of John Souter in Stockton; there was a family called Souter in Hutton Rudby, so John Souter may have been a friend or relation (see here).  Ten years later, in 1851, William Surtees, stonemason aged 25, birthplace Guisborough, was visiting Henry Fletcher in Hartlepool.

Meanwhile, his grandmother Eden lived on in Hutton Rudby.  She was still alive and still working as a farm labourer at the time of the 1851 census, but she was also described as a pauper and she was living on her own.  She died in 1854 aged 84.

By the early 1850s William was in partnership with Robert Todd of Marton-in-Cleveland.  This was just before the village was changed by the building of Marton Hall by Henry Bolckow; at the time of the 1840 White's Directory it "had in its parish 363 souls".  Marton Lodge ("a large stone mansion") was still in ruins after a fire in 1832, and St Cuthbert's church had not yet been modernised and was described as a "small ancient structure".   

Robert Todd was born in about 1820 in Shadforth, Co Durham.  He had married a Marton girl called Jane Ord of Marton and settled there.  The 1851 census shows that they had three small children and were living with her widowed father William.  

The Todd-Surtees partnership ended in 1853:

Yorkshire Gazette, 4 June 1853 

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN, that the Partnership heretofore subsisting between the undersigned WILLIAM SURTEES, of Hutton, near Rudby, in the County of York, Stonemason, and ROBERT TODD, of Marton, in the same County, Stonemason, carrying on business as Stonemasons and Contractors at Marton aforesaid, under the firm of "ROBERT TODD," was this day DISSOLVED by Mutual Consent. 

All Debts due and owing to or by the said Partnership will be paid and received by the said ROBERT TODD, who will complete all existing Contracts on his own account.  As witness our hands this Twenty-Seventh Day of May, 1853. 

(Signed) WILLIAM SURTEES
ROBERT TODD
Signed by both parties in the presence of
J PEIRSON HOLT,
Solicitor, Middlesbro'

After the end of his partnership with William Surtees, Robert and the family moved into the new and growing town of Middlesbrough, to live in Corporation Road.  

William must have gone to work somewhere near Darlington, because when he married in the spring of 1856, it was registered in that district.  His wife was Hannah Thorburn.  I think she is the girl who can be found in the 1841 Census for Haggbeck, seven miles from Longtown, north of Carlisle.  She was then aged 8, the youngest child of Hannah & Thomas Thorburn, a joiner.  My conjecture has some support from the fact that the record of her death states that her father was called Thomas and that the birth of a William Surtees was registered at Longtown at the end of 1857.  As was quite common, Hannah had been near her family for the birth of her first child.

A little more than a year later William and Hannah had come across the Pennines to Hutton Rudby, where their second son Thomas was born on 14 January 1859.  William's occupation is given on the birth certificate as stonemason.

Before very long, William, Hannah and the two little boys had sailed for Australia.

They must have hoped and planned for a successful new life there.  It began with a birth, when another baby boy, Elijah, was born to them on 28 March 1862 – but the bright start did not last long.  Elijah died only weeks later on the 9 May.  His death was registered at Newtown, New South Wales and he was buried in the Camperdown Cemetery, Newtown, City of Sydney 

On 6 May 1863, less than a year later, Hannah died.  She too was buried in the Camperdown Cemetery.  And then, only a few months later on 20 January 1864, six year old William died.  His father buried him in the same cemetery as his mother and baby brother.  Only William and Thomas remained.

On 22 August 1866 William remarried.  His second wife was Clara Susan Louisa Graham of Liverpool, New South Wales. 

Clara – as can be seen from her obituary at the end of this piece – came of a family that had lived in Liverpool for a long while; their oldest family tombstone was dated 1809.  Her mother was a sister of the Lieutenant Wilson who first sighted the promontory on the southern coast which was named after him (Wilsons Promontory?).  Her brother George Graham was a Sydney solicitor; her cousin George Smith was the first Mayor of Manly.  Clara was born in Liverpool in 1834 and her memory stretched back to the dark past.  She could remember "when the present asylum was used as a military barracks, and the stocks and triangles were employed to punish rebellious convicts".  The last convict ship had arrived in New South Wales from London on Christmas Eve 1849, a dozen years before William Surtees and his family arrived.

Collingwood Paper Mills

William is described in Clara's obituary as having "built the Liverpool paper mill."  This was the Collingwood Paper Mill which, according to the website of the developers who are even now working to turn it into Liverpool's new premier destination, could produce 20 tonnes of paper per week and was the biggest employer in the Liverpool district.  

William and Clara had a little girl, Eva Eden, born in 1867.  Then, the work on the paper mill finished, William and his little family left for Yorkshire, sailing from New South Wales for London on La Hogue at the beginning of January 1868.  The passenger list in the Sydney Morning Herald of 8 January 1868 names "Mr and Mrs Surtees and child"; I expect Eva was too young to be counted.  

William returned, local boy made good, to Hutton Rudby.  Perhaps he longed for the familiar; perhaps he felt the need to show how well he had done.  He built himself a house beyond the edge of the village, in the fields between the Station Hotel at the corner of Doctors Lane and the Vicarage on Belborough Lane, and named it Eden Cottage.  There is no sign of a house on this spot in the 1861 census, so I think we can safely assume that William built it and named it after his grandmother. 

Eden Cottage & the Thorman family, 1880s
Courtesy of Sue & Bob Hutchinson

In 1869, Clara gave birth to another baby girl.  She was baptised Amy Louisa Victoria on 29 March by the Revd R J Barlow, and her father's occupation given as Builder.  The 1871 census finds them all at Eden Cottage: William, Clara, Thomas (now aged 12), Eva (aged 3) and 2 year old Amy.  Clara was by then pregnant with Laura Adelaide, who was born a short while after the census was taken and baptised on 7 August.

In the 1871 census William described himself as a builder, and in the 1872 Post Office Directory as a builder and contractor.  We catch a glimpse of his activities in this advertisement which appeared through the months of June and July 1873 – in it we can see that, having come home from Australia, he named his business Albion, the ancient name for Britain:

Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, 24 June 1873 

For Sale by Private Contract,
The Albion Steam Crushing and Cutting Mills, occupying the space between Boundary-road and Dale-street, Middlesbrough, in full work, and open to inspection.
Apply, by letter, in the first instance, to William Surtees, Eden Cottage, Hutton Rudby, via Yarm.

Perhaps he was selling his Steam Crushing and Cutting Mills to finance his new scheme.  He was going to set up a sailcloth manufactury to rival the Wilsons' Cleveland Sailcloth Mill.  Why did he decide to sink his capital into this rather unlikely business?  Was he really likely to succeed?  Nobody now knows.

He called it the Albion Sailcloth Works and built it on land he had bought on the edge of the village at the corner of Doctors Lane.  This was not far from the village pond (on the opposite side of Garbutts Lane) and it had a good water supply.  Malcolm McPhie, when a boy, was shown the well that supplied a house on that corner – when the lid was lifted, he could see running water at the bottom of the well.  Surtees equipped his mill with a horizontal steam engine driving six Parker's Patent Mathematical Looms.  This was a loom for weaving Navy sailcloth and other heavy fabrics; it was developed by C E & C Parker, Dundee and was exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851.

As for his other activities in the village, there is an interesting report from the magistrates' court in Stokesley in early January 1876:

York Herald, 15 January 1876 

Stokesley Petty Sessions
William Surtees, of Hutton Rudby, stone mason, was charged by Police-constable Thompson with being drunk on licensed premises, occupied by Eliza Raney, of the Wheat Sheaf Inn.  Defendant said that he was quite capable of talking on scientific subjects and transacting business.  Fined 5s. and costs

What can have been going on?  Mrs Elizabeth Raney was an experienced publican.  Aged 64 at the time of this incident, she had been running the Wheatsheaf since her young husband Jeremiah died in 1842.  William's scientific discussion and business transactions must have been getting rather noisy if she had to call the village policeman!

That summer, on 14 August 1876, William's son Thomas became a Merchant Navy apprentice, bound for a term of four years.  (He can be found in the Register of Apprentices available on Ancestry.co.uk).  Perhaps the voyages to and from Australia had inspired him; perhaps a love of heavy machinery was kindled in him by the equipment his father was buying.

Then, eighteen months later on 3 September 1877, William Surtees died at the age of 53.  Thomas, who was able to be at his deathbed, went to the registrar Joseph Mellanby Mease to register the death.  He gave his father's occupation as Contractor.  The cause of death was certified by Dr M C Hopgood as "Anasarca".  This is a general swelling of the whole body, probably caused in William's case by liver, kidney or heart failure.

He had hardly had time to get his enterprise up and running.  The machinery was scarcely used.

His widow Clara and Thomas Milestone, the gardener at Skutterskelfe, were his Executors and they took out Probate promptly on 28 September.  Clara then put the business up for sale – and the solicitor she chose was John George Wilson, brother of Allan and Thomas, who ran the rival business at the Cleveland Sailcloth Mill.

This notice of an auction sale to be held on 25 October 1877 gives us a great many details of this fleeting business:

Northern Echo, 13 October 1877 

Hutton Rudby, in Cleveland – Albion Sailcloth Works and Freehold Land 

TO BE SOLD BY AUCTION, at the Wheat Sheaf Inn, Hutton Rudby, in the County of York, on Thursday, October 25th, 1877, at Two for Three o'Clock in the Afternoon (subject to such conditions as shall then agreed),
Mr J J HANSELL, Auctioneer 

All that newly-erected FREEHOLD SAILCLOTH FACTORY, situated at the north end of the village of Hutton Rudby aforesaid, together with the adjoining Field of Old Grass LAND, containing 1a. 1r. 15p., or thereabouts, be the same more or less. 

The Factory comprises a large Manufacturing-room, measuring 64ft by 24ft 9in, together with Office, Storeroom, and Engine-house, and contains Six Parker's Patent Mathematical Looms, with all the necessary Preparing Frames and Finishing Machinery; also Paper Calendar, Horizontal Steam Engine, Boiler, and Cold Water Pump.  The Machinery is of the best description; it has all been recently fitted up, and is in good condition, having been but little used.  There is a capital supply of Water. 

The Land is known by the name of the "Town End Field," and is splendidly situated, with a commanding view of the Cleveland Hills and surrounding district, and having extensive frontages to high roads on the North and East boundaries thereof, it may be easily sub-divided into excellent sites for the erection of Villas or other Residences. 

Potto Station, on the North Yorkshire and Cleveland Branch of the North-Eastern Railway, is within the distance of One Mile from the Property. 

A considerable portion of the Purchase Money may be left on Mortgage of the Premises on terms to be stated at the time of sale. 

The Property will in the first instance be put up for sale in One Lot, and, if not sold, it will then be offered in such Lots as may be agreed upon. 

Further particulars may be obtained on application to Mrs WILLIAM SURTEES, Hutton Rudby, near Yarm, Yorkshire; or to 

Mr JOHN GEORGE WILSON, Solicitor,
Hutton Rudby and Durham.
Hutton Rudby, October, 1877

The Sailcloth Works came to an end and it is said that the buildings were used as a laundry and a dyeworks before being converted into the Albion House and Albion Terrace that we know today.  In a decorative detail above the windows of the Terrace is the date 1881, so this happened within a very few years of William Surtees' death.  Perhaps the conversion was the work of the builder Matthew Bewick Bainbridge, who lived in Albion House at the time of the 1881 census.

Albion Terrace in the 1930s

Clara went back to Australia with her three little girls.  I wonder when she sailed – probably as soon as she could sell up, as all her family were in New South Wales and there was nothing to keep her in England.  Thomas stayed behind, but he saw Sydney again at least once.  The crew list of the Parramatta out of London shows that he came back into Sydney harbour on 8 December 1879.  One would think he must have gone to see his stepmother and half-sisters.

His time served, Thomas can be found in 1881 working as a fitter and boarding with his father's cousins, Margaret, Thomas and William Hansell, middle-aged unmarried siblings living together at 32½ Brunswick Street, Stockton.  He married Margaret Adamson in the spring quarter of 1881 soon after the census was taken, and worked as a Marine Engine Maker.  He might well have worked for Messrs Blair & Co, the company founded by George Young Blair of Drumrauch Hall, Hutton Rudby.  By 1891 he and Margaret were living in Mount Pleasant Street, Norton-on-Tees and had four children between the ages of three and nine.  By 1901 they were at 6 Trent Street, Stockton-on-Tees with their children Annie, William, Thomas, Margaret and Eva.  William was apprenticed to a joiner and young Thomas was a junior clerk.  Thomas died in the April-June quarter of 1907 aged 49.

His stepmother Clara outlived him.  She died in 1922, the oldest resident of Liverpool, and her death merited a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Sydney Morning Herald, 11 October 1922 

MRS C SURTEES
Mrs Clara Surtees, Liverpool's oldest resident, died suddenly at her home, George-street, Liverpool, on Thursday last, at the age of 87 years and was buried on Saturday.  

She remembered Liverpool when the present asylum was used as a military barracks, and the stocks and triangles were employed to punish rebellious convicts.  Among her recollections were the scenes when hundreds of Chinese were to be seen marching through the town on their way to the diggings; another was the time when George's River was navigable as far as Liverpool.  She had seen steamers conveying supplies to the town and unloading at wat at present is the dam.  

Her husband, Mr William Surtees, built the Liverpool paper mill.  He was a Yorkshireman, and after completing that work he went with his wife and one daughter to England, residing there until his death.  Mrs Surtees then returned to her native town of Liverpool.  

Her eldest brother, the late Mr George Graham, was a well-known solicitor of his day in Sydney, and took a team of aboriginal cricketers to England so many year ago that the occurrence is well nigh forgotten.  His son, George Graham, lately retired from the position of secretary to the Government Printing Office.  Mrs Surtees's mother was a sister of Lieutenant Wilson, who first sighted the promontory on the southern coast which was named after him [Wilsons Promontory?].  A cousin, Mr George Smith, of Undercliffe, Manly, was the first Mayor of that borough.  In the Liverpool cemetery the oldest family tombstone bears date 1809.  When Mrs Surtees was 81 years of age she sustained an attack of double pneumonia, and although she recovered from it, her health was permanently impaired.

Eden Cottage, Albion House and Albion Terrace remain – a reminder of an unusual man.  The Mease brothers, the Blacket brothers and George Wilson all came from backgrounds that gave them advantages that William Surtees never had; his achievements were hard-won and cut short by his untimely death.

Hutton Rudby 1859-1908: the Cleveland Sailcloth Mill

This follows the post Hutton Rudby 1834-1849: the Flax-Spinning Mill by the bridge

George Wilson was born in Newcastle in 1810, the son of James Wilson and Mary Straker.  He was one of a large family – I have found the names of three daughters (Jane, Matilda and Mary) and six sons (William, James, John, Henry, George and Edward) and there were possibly more.   There is an account of his family, including a portrait of his father James here, 

George Wilson comes to Hutton Rudby

George arrived in Hutton Rudby as a very young man in the 1830s.  His father worked for Messrs Clarke, Plummer & Co, linen manufacturers & spinners, for 37 years at their Northumberland Flax Mill at Ouseburn.  George himself came to Hutton Rudby as a clerk to the company.  His job was to put out work to the local handloom weavers, have the cloth bleached and send it north to the firm's warehouses in Newcastle.

As R P Hastings explains in Hutton Rudby: An Industrial Village c1700-1900 (1979) handloom weavers worked in shops or sheds attached to their cottages or rented nearby.  Generally, they were supplied with yarn by the manufacturer, to whom they returned the finished cloth.  Some linen went to the nearby markets, or to the ports at Stockton or Whitby, and some was sent by pack mule up to the Bigg Market in Newcastle.  It is said that there was stabling for 50 pack mules at the top of Enterpen.  

Bleaching needed plenty of water and stone troughs and, as the 18th century went on, more and more equipment and machinery.  Several local bleach grounds are known – there was one in Potto by 1700 and one in Hutton Rudby by 1727.  A bleach yard was marked near Sexhow Hall in the Sexhow Tithe Map.  A big bleaching enterprise existed at Crathorne, described by the Rev John Graves in 1808 as 

an extensive bleach-ground ... with a bleach-house, situated on the eastern brink of the Leven, (over a stone bridge of one arch,) at a little distance from, and nearly opposite to the village; which consists of two beetling mills, and a variety of other machinery, where linens are made up similar to the Irish.

In 1838 the cornmill at Rudby was also bleaching and dyeing yarn and thread.

Life in the village in the early 1830s can be seen very vividly in the story of the disappearance and supposed murder of the weaver William Huntley.  It can be found here in my book Remarkable, but still True: the story of the Revd R J Barlow and Hutton Rudby in the time of the cholera at Chapter 6: 1830: Suspicions of Murder and, as I say in that chapter, 

In the newspaper reports of the trial we can hear the actual voices of the villagers themselves, and their testimonies reveal a vivid picture of life at the time – lived under the scrutiny of close neighbours, often outside the houses, in the street. 

The past is brought alive: rising at dawn; shared loomshops in the yards; men drinking late at night in the kitchen of a public house; a labourer breaking stones at the roadside in return for parish relief; the local habit of poaching in the Crathorne game preserves; the little shops run by the women of the village in their own homes; the long distances people were accustomed to walk; the clothes they wore; how the village governed and policed itself; the emigration ships sailing from Whitby.

 In 1837 George Wilson went into partnership with a Mr Robinson and they took over the business in Hutton Rudby:

Newcastle Journal, 28 October 1837 

ROBINSON & WILSON,

(SUCCESSORS TO MESSRS CLARKE, PLUMMER & CO. AS) 

LINEN MANUFACTURERS,

AT HUTTON RUDBY, YORKSHIRE, AND NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE; 

BEG respectfully to acquaint their Friends that they have REMOVED their Stock from the Warehouse at the Northumberland Flax Mill, Ouse Burn, to a newly erected and commodious one at

No. 79, PILGRIM-STREET,

Where they intend to keep an extensive Assortment of every kind of LINEN GOODS OF CLEVELAND MANUFACTURE, for the accommodation of their Customers in this District, and where all Orders will be received and attended to from this Date.

Newcastle, Oct. 11th, 1837

George still had a warehouse in Pilgrim Street in 1864 – it is mentioned in the Shields Daily Gazette of 11 May 1864, when it was reported that his bookkeeper and manager had absconded after 26 years with the firm, taking with him at least £600 from the till.

On 9 June 1836, George Wilson married Ann Hutton in Newcastle; their son James Alder Wilson was born in 1837, followed by Allan Bowes Wilson in 1839.

Hard times for the handloom weavers

During the 1830s, the condition of handloom weavers was rapidly deteriorating.  Unemployment, falling wages and severe distress were feeding into growing political unrest and radicalism.  Resentment was increased by passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 which put an end to relief to the poor being paid through the parish and obliged them to enter the workhouse.  So a Royal Commission was set up in 1837 to enquire into the industry.

Sixteen Hutton Rudby operative weavers gave evidence, saying that, when the cost of winding, loom and shop (ie workshop) rent, sizing, grease, candles, brushes, shuttles etc had been deducted, an average weekly wage of 11s 6½d was reduced to 9s 6d.  This was higher than the average wage in many neighbouring linen villages and at least Hutton still had 157 looms at work making “linen cloth, ticks, drills, checks, and diapers” [R P Hastings:  Hutton Rudby, An Industrial Village]

All the same, conditions were bad and it is not surprising that in the spring of 1839 one of the leading Chartists, Peter Bussey, decided to visit the North Riding and urge the people to support  Chartism.  This was a radical, grass-roots, nationwide, working class movement calling above all for Parliamentary reform in the conviction that only when ordinary men had the vote would their voice be heard.

The Chartist newspaper the Northern Star & Leeds General Advertiser of 30 March 1839 gave an account of Mr Bussey's arrival in Stokesley:

The inhabitants of this place, met Mr Bussey on entering the town with a procession and banner; the banner being a white ground – motto – "England expects every man to do his duty."  He was conducted to the Black Bull Inn, in the Market-place, from one of the front windows of which he addressed the people with considerable effect; after which resolutions were passed, adopting the petition and pledging themselves to support the Convention.

(White's Directory 1840 lists 17 inns and taverns in Stokesley; the Black Bull was run by John Smith.)

 

Peter Bussey went on to an open air meeting at Swainby:

Mr Bussey addressed a meeting of the inhabitants of Swainby, a considerable village, six miles from Stokesley, in the open air, at four o'clock in the afternoon, when the inhabitants poured in from the surrounding places, namely, Osmotherley, Carlton, Faceby, Hulton, Rudby [Hutton Rudby], Potter [Potto, spelled phonetically], and Trugleby [probably Ingleby]; the whole amounting to many hundreds; a beautiful green and white flag floated in the air; the whole presenting an appearance of beauty calculated to inspire the ardent lover of liberty with a fresh impulse to go forward in defence of the rights of the masses.  

Mr Douglas, an operative shoemaker, occupied the chair, who, after a few preliminary remarks, read the National Petition to the assembly, and then introduced Mr Bussey, who was received with loud and continued cheers.  He addressed them at great length in a powerful and effective speech, which seemed to be well understood and appreciated by the intelligent but simple peasantry, of whom his audience consisted.  He was vociferously cheered throughout.  The Charter and Petition were unanimously adopted, and a vote of confidence and determination to uphold the Convention was enthusiastically carried. 

Some months later, the Chartist James Maw came to Hutton Rudby.  Maw makes a fleeting appearance in my book as he had a walk-on part as a witness in the story of William Huntley (see Chapter 6)

He held a Chartist meeting on the Green.  According to R P Hastings' Chartism in the North Riding of Yorkshire and South Durham, 1838-1848, (2004), the Revd Robert Barlow and Henry Bainbridge tried to bribe some women to disrupt the gathering.  They failed, but achieved the dismissal of Richard Joysey, a Methodist class leader who had given Maw hospitality.

The story of Henry Bainbridge and how he lost his wife and two children in the cholera epidemic of 1832 and his power and influence in village matters can be found in Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 of my book.

The situation was still bad when in 1842 Mr Harrison Terry, who was Hutton's Poor Law Guardian, was killed in a fall from his horse.  A public meeting was held and it was resolved to ask the Poor Law Commission for permission to nominate a replacement for Mr Terry for the rest of the year, and not to wait for the next elections 

since under the present depression of trade and the number of applications it is impossible to do without one ... The Paupers of Hutton require more attention than any other township

[R P Hastings' Hutton Rudby: An Industrial Village, p11]

The village was in decline.  In the ten years between the censuses of 1841 and 1851, the population of the township of Hutton was reduced from 911 to 771.  The census enumerators ascribed the fall to "the stoppage of a flax mill and the decline of handloom weaving ... which have caused the hands to migrate in search of employment".

George Wilson had come to the village when the population was at its 19th century peak of 1,027 in 1831.

George's next venture would bring back employment to Hutton Rudby.

George Wilson & the 'Cleveland Sailcloth'

Perhaps it was the opening of the North Yorkshire & Cleveland Railway Company's line from Picton Junction to Stokesley in 1857 that gave George Wilson the impetus for his bold new enterprise.  Hutton Rudby was now connected to the outside world – and the Durham coalfields – by Potto Station and the railway system.

On 18 February 1860 a rather excitable and inaccurate report appeared in the Newcastle Guardian & Tyne Mercury

HUTTON RUDBY SPINNING MILL 

This neat establishment, once the property of Messrs Blackett and Mease, and which stood so long idle, seems, in the hands of Mr George Wilson, likely to enjoy a good share of prosperity.  Gas has been attached to the premises, and eight sail cloth steam power-looms have been put into operation, besides a number of hand-looms that are dependent upon the establishment for employment.  The mill has been regularly at work during the past year, and there is every prospect of its future being still more successful.  It has been a great blessing to many poor families in Hutton and has found employment for a large number of hands in the locality.

The mill had never belonged to Blacket & Mease, and there was no gas.  However, the rest was true – George Wilson had taken a tenancy of the disused flax-spinning mill and was weaving sailcloth.  He was setting up in competition with the likes of Messrs Yeoman and Messrs J Wilford & Sons of Northallerton.  In the 1861 census he identified himself for the first time as a "sailcloth manufacturer".

Sailcloth from Cleveland Sailcloth Works.  Courtesy of Allan and Joy Barthram

His speciality was his "Cleveland Sailcloth" and he sent samples of it to the Great International Exhibition of 1862, the world fair held from 1 May to 1 November in South Kensington, on the site now occupied by the Natural History Museum

Newcastle Journal, 11 April 1862 

Hutton Rudby will be represented at the Great International Exhibition by the Cleveland sail cloth, manufactured by Mr George Wilson, and now so very extensively used and appreciated for its strength and durability.  On the 26th ult., two cases were sent off, containing eight sample rolls of splendid canvass, which will be placed on view, in a neat mahogany case with plate-glass front, made expressly for their reception in class 19 of textile fabrics.  Numerous visitors, who saw the canvass before it was sent off, were unanimous in their praise of beauty and quality.

Even his Scottish rivals, reporting on the flax and jute manufactures, praised George Wilson's canvas:

Dundee Courier, 3 July 1862 

Yorkshire comes out particularly strong in Canvas, as well as in many other kinds of Linens and Linen Yarns, and we shall notice them first.

(The report lists Messrs Wm Booth & Co, Leeds; Messrs Carter Brothers, Barnsley; Mr C J Fox, Doncaster; Mr J Gill, Headingley; Messrs W B Holdsworth & Co, Leeds; Messrs Marshall & Co, Leeds; Messrs J Wilford & Sons, Northallerton)

Messrs J Wilford & Sons ... have a beautiful display of Linen Drills, adapted for Trouserings, Vestings, &c., Bleached, Dyed, and Printed.  The patterns are very pretty, the cloth of most superior quality of material, and well woven, and the goods finished in fine style.  The goods are worthy of high commendation, as they are both very sightly, and of real merit 

Mr G Wilson, Cleveland:  Exhibit "The Cleveland Sail Cloth."  It is from extra long flax, tied up with the yarn of which it is made to shew the quality, which is most superior.  The cloth is firm, well drawn up, really good, and deserving of high praise.

Cleveland Sailcloth stamp.  Courtesy of Marie Wray

Messrs Yeoman & Co, Northallerton:  Show a neat case of Yarns, Ducks, Drills, Huckabacks, &c.  The Yarn is level and well spun, and from fine material.  The Ducks are well made, superior cloth.  The Huckabacks are good, useful cloth, and the Drills are of various finish – brown, bleached, dyed, and printed.  They would make beautiful trouserings and vestings, and are of very nice shades of colour, and admirably finished.

The Yorkshire Drills are especially deserving of notice, being very handsome, strong goods, and most suiitable for the purposes intended.  They show very favourably with similar character of Irish goods.

(The other English exhibitors of Linens are: Mr T Ainsworth, Whitehaven; Mr A Cleugh, Bromley; Messrs Costerton & Napier, Scole, Norfolk; Messrs Faulding, Stratton & Brough, London; Mr Harford, Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Mr W F Moore, Douglas IoM Mr John Morison, Norton Tolgate, London; Messrs Stephens, Hounsells & Co, Bridport; Messrs Wilson Brothers, Whitehaven, Messrs Wilks, Brothers & Seaton, London)

Hutton Rudby church and mill
The chimneys of Leven House can be seen at the right

It was a business which required skilled hands and advertisements for the Hutton Rudby Mill can be found in newspapers through Yorkshire and Cheshire and into Scotland, for example

Leeds Mercury, 22 December 1873
WANTED, WOMEN WINDERS for heavy flax yarns; piece work, good wages and constant employment.  Apply personally or by letter to George Wilson, Sailcloth Works, Hutton Rudby 

Dundee Advertiser, 28 January 1881
TENTER (Competent) Wanted for Sailcloth Looms.  None but Steady Men Accustomed to Sailcloth need apply.  Address Cleveland Sailcloth Works, Hutton Rudby, near Yarm, Yorkshire

A tenter was the mechanic responsible for running and maintaining the power-looms, as can be seen from this letter from a Power-Loom Tenter to the Glasgow Mechanics' Magazine 1832.

There are still stories in the village of men waiting at Potto station to see girls arriving from Scotland in response to the advertisements, hoping to spot a future bride, and several men did find wives among the Scottish girls.

Hutton Bleach Works

There was a Bleach Works associated with the Sailcloth Works, It lay on the Hutton side of the River Leven but the access road was from Rudby.  This O.S. map dated 1888-1913 shows its position clearly – it is marked as The Holmes, the bleachyard having closed by then.

Reproduced with permission of the National Library of Scotland from their website https://maps.nls.uk/index.html

I don't know if this had always been the site of the Hutton bleach grounds, but it seems very likely.  I was once told that there were the remains of machinery at the bottom of North End, where the linen manufacturer George Bewick once lived, that had been used for winching bales of cloth down to the bleach ground below.  It isn't clear whether the Bleach Works was exclusively used or operated by the Sailcloth Works nor whether it was owned by the Wilsons.  Very little is known of the Works, but there are several photographs showing the buildings with yarn hanging out on the long lines in the field in front.  According to Bulmer's Directory, twelve hands were employed at the Works in 1890.

The Bleach Works, Hutton Rudby

Men at work at the Bleach Works, Hutton Rudby

The Wilsons & the village

Meanwhile, George and his wife Ann Hutton raised a family at Hutton House, on the Green.  In 1856 their youngest child was born.  They now had four sons and a daughter: James, Allan, Thomas, John and Annie.

George was – naturally, given his position – involved in village life from the beginning.  He was a churchwarden in 1838 and it's clear he took very wisely charge of the Revd R J Barlow's accounts – for the church and the Bathurst Charity – Mr Barlow was rather slapdash about money and paperwork.  Secondary in importance to the Falkland and Ropner families of Skutterskelfe Hall, the Wilson men were significant as employers and charitable donors and their involvement can always be seen in the celebrations of royal occasions.  When the Prince of Wales married Alexandra of Denmark on 10 March 1863, the mill was very much part of the village celebrations (for a full account see here) 

A correspondent says that on the wedding day the British and Danish flags were seen waving in the air from the summits of the Cleveland Sailcloth Manufactory, and in various prominent places of the village.  The Hutton brass band sent forth its animating and melodious strains, and Mr George Wilson provided a liberal banquet for all his workmen and their wives, in which the band joined them, and all enjoyed themselves most heartily.  

Of course there were plenty of grumbles about them – and there was plenty of time for this as the Wilsons lived in the village until after the Second World War.  It has still not been forgotten that the houses at the east end of South Side and the houses of Barkers Row have little or nothing by way of garden because the land was absorbed into the own gardens and orchards of Hutton House.  For many years the cottages of Barkers Row only had windows opening onto the Green, as Mr Bowes Wilson objected to the occupants looking into his gardens.  When Mr Robson of Robsons, Painters & Decorators had an advertisement painted onto a nearby gable end on South Side – one that happened to face directly towards Hutton House – Mr Bowes Wilson objected and it was painted over.  The black paint has been washing off the brickwork for many years now.  The well which was once reached by the footpath called the Wellstand seems to have disappeared when the gardens of Hutton House were enlarged.

Three of George and Ann Wilson's children made their homes in the village.  George took Allan and Thomas into the business with him while Annie stayed at home, unmarried.  (I was told that a descendant once said that "she wasn't allowed" to marry.)  James and John both went to Oxford, James to Wadham College and John to Worcester.  James was a clergyman, becoming Rector of Crathorne in 1878; John George was a solicitor in Durham and an eminent figure in the civic life of the county.

In the summer of 1876 their father died

York Herald, 10 July 1876
Wilson. - On the 8th inst., at Hutton Rudby, Mr George Wilson, aged 66 years

and less than a fortnight later, John Mease died at Leven House.  It must have seemed like the end of an era.

Allan Bowes Wilson was then 37 years old and his brother Thomas Bowes Wilson was 31 and newly married:

York Herald, 15 June 1876
Wilson - Hutton.  On the 13th inst., at St Andrew's church, Newcastle, by the Rev Marsden Gibson, M.A., Master of the Hospital of Mary Magdalene, Thomas Bowes, third son of George Wilson, of Hutton Rudby, Yorkshire, to Maria, only daughter of John Hutton, of Claremont-place, Newcastle-on-Tyne

The brothers continued to run the mill.  The following year, because of a Chancery case in the estate of John Mease, his property in Hutton Rudby was offered for auction and the Mill was included:

A Building called the “CLEVELAND SAIL CLOTH FACTORY,”
WORKED BY STEAM POWER,
In the occupation of the Executors of the late GEORGE WILSON. 

A WATER CORN-MILL,
With Iron Water-wheel, Three Pairs of Millstones, Hoist, Corn-screen, Flour Dressing Machine,
Large Granary, Cart-house, Stable, Outbuildings, Dwelling-house, and Office and Yard,
In the occupation of WILLIAM KETTON and the Executors of the late GEORGE WILSON.

I don't know what happened at the sale and whether the Wilson brothers decided to buy the freehold of their premises; I believe the Mease trustees still owned land in Hutton Rudby in 1928.

A notice in the York Herald of 28 October 1878 shows that their mother Anne died on 25 October, a couple of years after her husband.  Allan and Annie continued to live at Hutton House for the rest of their lives.  

Allan Bowes Wilson in Hutton House

There is a photograph of Allan at ease with a book with the light pouring in through the window.  He and his brother John were keen collectors of the paintings of Ralph Hedley 

Meanwhile, Thomas built Enterpen Hall for his family (see Stately Homes of Hutton Rudby)

But by 1890, the sailcloth business was beginning to slacken and neighbouring sailcloth factories closed:

Newcastle Chronicle, 17 May 1890 

Dead Industries at Stockton. - Harker's sail cloth factory, near the railway station at Stockton, which was established many years ago, and where a lucrative business was carried on for a long time, was recently closed, and the buildings are now being pulled down.  On the site of the factory, and on the bleaching field behind, a large number of superior artisan dwellings are to be erected.  Building operations have been commenced, and already a number of houses are in course of erection.

The Wilson mill continued – and was fêted in the Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough in 1895 for having "the prettiest warehouse in England".

R P Hastings recounts (Industrial Village, p17) from local knowledge, that the mill remained viable by supplying markets in the Baltic, including the Russian Navy, and that one of its most valuable assets was a British Admiralty contract for its well-known blue-line sail cloth.  Working hours were from 6 in the morning to 6 in the evening in the summer months and from 6 in the morning until the light failed in the winter.  It was an intensely hot and noisy place and often at the end of a shift the workers would emerge covered with white lint.  

In 1900 the Wilsons installed electric lighting powered by a generator.  It was to commemorate the Relief of Mafeking – Thomas's son John Hutton Wilson was a professional soldier who served in the Boer War, where his life was saved by a sergeant later awarded the Victoria Cross.

John Hutton Wilson returns from the Boer War

This rather dark photograph shows mill workers pulling his open carriage through the village upon his return from South Africa.  (He died in the First World War, as did his solicitor brother George.  They are commemorated by brass plaques in the church)

The lighting was a "gift" to their workers because it gave them extra earning hours through the winter, but of course it was a very useful gift to the Wilsons themselves.

Hutton Rudby Sailcloth Mill seen from upstream of the bridge
Courtesy of Joyce Walker

The closure of the Mill

However, by 1908 the mill was no longer viable and it had to close.  Hastings records that a handful of families migrated to find work in Dundee and the mill machinery was sold to a firm in Leven in Fife.  The mill buildings once again were used only for meetings, until finally they were demolished in 1937 when the road was widened so that the dangerous approach to the bridge was made safer.  

Thomas's wife Maria had died on 16 April 1904 at Newcastle aged 55 (according to the National Probate Calendar); after the mill closed he left Hutton Rudby to join his daughter in Scotland.  The old mill was used as the venue of the auction of the furniture, glass, pictures and ornaments that had once graced Enterpen Hall:

Whitby Gazette, 9 July 1909

HUTTON RUDBY

One Mile from Potto Station, N.E.R.

Highly Important Unreserved Sale of Valuable Chippendale, Oak and Cabinet Furniture; Carpets, Oil-paintings, Engravings, Water-colours, Antique China and Glass, Books, etc.
MESSRS HODGSON & FARROW, honoured with instructions from T BOWES-WILSON, Esquire (who has left the district), will SELL BY AUCTION, in the old SAIL-CLOTH FACTORY, on THURSDAY & FRIDAY, July 22nd and 23rd, 1909, the FURNISHINGS & APPOINTMENTS of dining, drawing, and morning rooms, library, bedrooms, entrance hall, kitchens, and outside effects, removed from Enterpen Hall.
On View on Wednesday, July 21st, by Catalogue only, price threepence each.
Auctioneers' Offices:
Market Place, Stokesley.
Established 57 Years

Thomas died on 29 June 1929 at St Andrews.  Allan died three years later.  His death notice appeared in the newspapers after his quiet burial:

Leeds Mercury, 8 July 1932
Wilson - July 4, at Hutton House, Hutton Rudby, passed peacefully away, aged 93, Allan Bowes Wilson.  His wish was for a quiet village funeral – no mourning or flowers.  He was buried in Rudby-in-Cleveland Churchyard July 6, 1932

Allan had been a generous benefactor of the church and his last gift was the lychgate.  It was dedicated by the Rev A L Leeper in May 1933.

Lychgate at All Saints', Hutton Rudby soon after it was built by Jim Barthram. 
Courtesy of Allan & Joy Barthram

The mill buildings were demolished in 1937 so the narrow road up Hutton Bank with its dangerously tight corner could be widened and straightened.

Cottages on Hutton Bank

The photograph above shows the blind corner on Hutton Bank before the Mill and the cottages were demolished.  Leven House is to the right of the picture.

Demolition of the Mill
from the Stockton & Teesside Weekly Herald, 22 Jan 1937

The last part of the Mill to be demolished was the chimney.  The schoolchildren were taken down the bank to watch it fall.  Go to the Hutton Rudby & District Local History Society's Facebook page to see Maurice Atkinson's sketch capturing the moment when it fell.  The base had been weakened by removing courses of brickwork and a rope attached partway up the chimney. The rope was tied to a steel stake, anchored in the hillside, and four men swung on the rope until the chimney started to rock, eventually falling to much cheering from the children.

Many thanks to Malcolm McPhie and the Hutton Rudby & District Local History Society's Facebook page for the photographs

Next post: Hutton Rudby 1876 to 1877: the Albion Sailcloth Mill

Hutton Rudby 1834-1849: the Flax-Spinning Mill by the bridge

This follows the post Stokesley 1832-1841: the New Mill on Levenside

I last mentioned John Mease as he appeared in Pigot's Directory 1834 where he was listed as a Linen & Damask Manufacturer on Beck Side, Stokesley.  He was 32 years old when he and Thomas ended their flax spinning partnership in 1831 and he had evidently decided to carry on with the linen weaving business that had been their earliest venture.

However, he also had his eye on a new opportunity.  It was at this time that he first invested in land in Hutton Rudby.  He bought the water corn mill and its goit (the artificial watercourse that supplied it) and a couple of closes of land on either side of the road near the bridge on the Hutton side of the river; this also included the buildings of the paper mill, disused for the previous few years since production moved to Yarm in about 1829.  By the time of the Tithe Map (drawn up after the Tithe Commutation Act 1836) he owned a little over three acres of land by the river.

He decided to equip the mill buildings with machinery and set up his own flax-spinning factory.  An auction notice of 1843 (see below) shows that the mill was to be water-powered, so saving the costs of a steam engine and coal. 

His new venture is quite a curious decision, really.  John would be in direct competition with his brother Thomas.  Perhaps they were not on good terms at this point – perhaps that lay behind the end of their partnership – or perhaps they were both extremely confident that there was plenty of money to be made.  But in the short term John was short of funds and so, probably in order to buy his machinery, he borrowed money in 1836 from the Darlington Banking Company, whose director was Joseph Waugh of Haughton-le-Skerne.  The mortgage deed must have been the Deed mentioned in R P Hastings' Hutton Rudby: An Industrial Village (p10) in which it is interpreted as a sale.

In 1835 John was still living in Stokesley – the York Herald of 19 September 1835 included the name "John Mease, jnr., Stokesley" in its list of people who had obtained game certificates for the year.  By 1837 he was dividing his time between Hutton Rudby (where he appears in the game lists in the Leeds Mercury of 21 October) and London where, on 26 July, his son Edward was baptised at St Dunstan's, Stepney.  John described himself in the register as a flax spinner.  A few months later, his brother Thomas would be bankrupt.

John's wife was Hannah Maria Geldart.  Unfortunately I haven't so far been able to find their marriage in the records.  The 1851 census combined with her memorial in the church at Hutton Rudby show that she was born in Redcar in January 1799.  She was very probably related to the Mary Ann Geldart who had married Thomas Mease's partner, the bleacher John Claxton, in Stokesley in 1830. 

It must have been in around 1837 that John decided to give up managing the flax-spinning mill himself; by late 1839, when his daughter was baptised, his occupation in the register was recorded as merchant.

Instead, his nephew Thomas Pilter took a tenancy of the buildings.  He was the eldest child of John's sister Isabella and her husband, the Wesleyan minister Rev Robert Pilter.  The Methodist Register shows that he was born at Pontefract on 1 October 1816, so he was a very young man at this time.  John was now able to benefit from the rent he received, while Thomas Pilter, who was to prove himself an able engineer and inventor and who later built up a successful business, ran the mill.  Perhaps John felt that buying and selling was his forte, and that was why he established himself in London as a hop factor, sourcing hops for the huge London brewery market.  

Thomas Pilter installed machinery of his own in the mill, alongside the machinery that belonged to his uncle.  Then, in the summer of 1839, with a severe economic depression beginning to make everybody's lives very difficult, John failed to pay off the mortgage due to the bank.  Mr Waugh sent in the bailiffs to seize the mill – and at least one of them, as it turned out, was armed.  

Their arrival took Thomas Pilter completely by surprise, because he had received no notice that they were coming.  They took possession of John Mease's machinery and with it they seized machines that belonged to Pilter.  It must have been quite a scene down by the river as he tried to recover his property.  He managed to get some of it back but at that point a bailiff called Butterwick swore that "he would shoot the first man who attempted the removal of more".  Thomas Pilter wisely gave up trying.  Instead, he went to law to recover the value of his "exceedingly valuable" machinery and it is from the report of the case in the Yorkshire Gazette of 27 July 1839 that I have taken this story.  

The defence argued that Mease was the real owner and occupier of the mill, but Thomas Pilter won his case and received damages of £370.

John Mease must have managed to recover his financial situation, because the land stayed in his possession and the mill continued to operate while he, Hannah Maria, Edward and Annie Maria lived in London.  The 1841 census shows that Thomas Pilter was then still a flax spinner in Hutton Rudby and that John, his wife and little Edward are in his household as visitors.  John's nephew Joseph Mellanby Mease told a reporter many years later that as a young man he worked at the mill for Thomas Pilter.  

However, the linen industry was hit particularly hard in these years.  It was squeezed by the effects of mechanisation throughout the industry, competition from cheap mass-produced cotton goods, an influx of cheap Scottish and Irish linens, and a high tariff imposed on imports to France.  It was not a good time to be in linen manufacture, and on 31 July 1843 John Mease went bankrupt.

This notice from the Newcastle Journal of 26 Aug 1843 describes the property that was sold on behalf of his creditors.  It may be seen that there is still no mention of a steam engine, and that John has evidently bought or rented more land.  I can only think that the value of the land was negligible – the village economy was in dire straits – and that was why his assignees in bankruptcy chose to sell the valuable machinery and the crops but not the land by the Leven, as I have found no evidence of an attempted sale and John Mease owned the land at his death.  

HUTTON RUDBY, NEAR STOKESLEY,

BANKRUPT'S PROPERTY FREE FROM DUTY.

TO FLAX-SPINNERS AND OTHERS. 

MESSRS T & W HARDWICK beg to announce that they are directed by the Assignees of Mr John Mease, Flax-Spinner, to SELL BY AUCTION, on Tuesday the 5th Day of September, at the Mill and Premises at HUTTON RUDBY, 

All the Valuable FLAX MACHINERY and EFFECTS; comprising 12 Double Spinning Frames, 3 Carding Engines, 3 Tow Drawings, 4 Tow Rovings, 5 Line Drawings, 6 Line Rovings, 1 Tow Lapping Frame, 7 Yarn Reels, 3 Thread Reels, 1 Fluting Engine, 1 Slide Lathe, Sundry Driving Belts, Joiners' and Smiths' Tools, Iron Sliver Cans, Vice and Bench, Guide Pullies, Bobbins, Files, Scales and Weights, Glass Lamps, and Sundry Implements of Trade and Manufacture; also 4 Acres of NEW HAY and 2 Ditto of GROWING OATS, with a small Lot of POTATOES, and other Property.
The Sale to commence at Eleven o'Clock in the Forenoon.
The Machinery may be viewed by making Application at the Mill.

We don't, however, know if anybody bought the machinery.  The owner of the Rudby cornmill saw a possible market with John Mease dropping out of the business and within months began to spin tow and line yarn.  The next year, the Rudby Mill Day Book (cited by R P Hastings) shows that he bought two spinning frames with 216 spindles at a cost of £43.  

By 1848, it's clear that there were still some spinning frames on the premises of the Hutton Flax-Spinning Mill and that somebody had installed a "steam apparatus":

Yorkshire Gazette, 22 July 1848

FLAX MILL

To be LET, for a Term of Years, or from Year to Year,

and to be Entered on Immediately,

AT HUTTON RUDBY, YORKSHIRE,

A NEWLY-ERECTED FLAX SPINNING MILL, on the Banks of the River Leven, 74ft by 38½ft, with 3 Floors, Warehouses, Boiler-House, Heckling Shops, and every necessary Building adjoining, and Steam Apparatus for heating the same, containing space for 12 Spinning Frames of 120 Spindles each, and all Preparatory Machinery; together with the Mill Fixtures, and the Use of 8 such Spinning Frames.  With a comfortable DWELLING HOUSE, Stable, Out Buildings, Garden, 2A. of Arable and 5A. of Meadow LAND.  Mr Robert Oates will show the Premises.
Hutton Rudby is 6 Miles from Yarm and Middlesborough [sic] and 4 Miles from Stokesley.
For Rent, &c, apply to GEO. SMITH, Solicitor, Ampleforth, near York.
July 21st, 1848.

Perhaps it was during those years that Thomas Mease became involved.  It is clear that, although it has been thought that Thomas was involved at an early stage in his brother's venture, this was not so.  But we also know that Thomas was living in Hutton Rudby in 1847 when the trial of Patrick Reid took place (see earlier), and that Thomas Pilter left England for France at about that time, where he began a new career.  So perhaps for a brief spell Thomas Mease tried once more to run a flax-spinning factory.  

The attempt to find a tenant for the mill in 1848 failed and at much the same time the Rudby cornmill gave up flax-spinning as well.  By 1849 Thomas was back in Stokesley and by 1851 the "large room" of the Mill was used as a function room for the village.  On 6 November 1851 some four hundred people gathered there to hold a grand celebration of the first anniversary of the Hutton Rudby Mechanics' Institute (see this account).  In 1859 it hosted a soirée

Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 4 May 1859 

HUTTON RUDBY MECHANICS' INSTITUTION. - On Thursday evening, a soirée in behalf of this institution was held in the Spinning Mill, Hutton Rudby.  Tea was prepared at five o'clock, and afterwards speeches were delivered by the Revs H Hebron, E Greenwood, Messrs Mease, Ainsworth, Heavisides, and others.  The chair was taken by the Rev R J Barlow, Vicar of Hutton Rudby.  The cake, &c., which was spared from the tea was bought by Miss Righton, of Hutton Rudby, and kindly given to the children of the National School and the poor of the village on Saturday afternoon.

Soon afterwards, George Wilson became the tenant and installed steam-powered sailcloth looms, beginning an industry that would last for nearly 50 years. 

Meanwhile, in London, Hannah Maria died on 24 May 1851, leaving John with Edward aged fourteen and Annie Maria aged nearly twelve.  

When Edward left school, he became a hop factor alongside his father.  A report in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph of 31 March 1860 shows that he married Elizabeth Ellen Smith on 28 March at Christ Church, Doncaster.  His sister Annie Maria married John Kidd, an Edinburgh wine merchant, at St John the Evangelist, Brixton on 29 August 1861.  

In 1864 John took Edward into partnership and began to take a back seat in the business.  Reports in the York Herald show that he took a deep interest in the Hutton Rudby Brood Mare & Foal show in 1864 and 1865.  At the dinner on the Green in 1864, he "proposed giving £5 towards a prize for Cleveland stallions."  In 1865 he took a third with a brown colt foal and a second for a one year old colt in the class called the Homoeopathist Stakes. 

Thomas Mease had come back to Hutton Rudby again.  By the time of the 1861 census he was living in the house known as Bank Bottom, and he died there the following year.  His wife outlived him by only a couple of years.  Not long afterwards, Bank Bottom takes on the name Leven House.

John's business in London and the income from his increasing property portfolio in Hutton Rudby must have enabled him to create the Leven House that we see today; at the back of the house, a keystone bearing the date 1811 is a survivor of the earlier house.  As we know from his involvement in the Brood Mare & Foal show, John Mease was a keen horse-lover and he built his stables at the top of Hutton Bank.  The rent paid by George Wilson's Sailcloth Mill must have come in very useful.  The cornmill, which had been successfully operated by his nephew Joseph Mellanby Mease until the accident when he lost his arm in 1860, was taken on by Joseph's brother Thomas – unfortunately without success.  Thomas ended up in gaol for debt, attributing his losses to small profits, falling off in trade, and heavy expenses in working the mill (see earlier).

It seems that John and his family may have used Leven House as a country retreat – undeterred by the view of a factory chimney and the mill buildings tight against the narrow road.  His little granddaughter Ethel Geldart Kidd died there on 18 July 1869 at the age of two.  She is buried in the churchyard.

Leven House on the left & the Mill on the right,
taken from the bridge before the road was widened in 1937

On 9 July 1870, John retired and it must have been then that he came back to Hutton Rudby for good.  He left his son Edward to run the business.  Was it in a sound state when he quit?  Did Edward take on a poisoned chalice or did he encounter unexpected difficulties or make some disastrous decisions?  Or perhaps he had an unfortunate taste for the high life?  On 30 January 1871, six months after he took over the business, he was bankrupt.  And he simply ran.  Perhaps he couldn't face his family. 

Shipping and Mercantile Gazette, 17 March 1871 

The case of Edward Mease, hop merchant, of Calvert's buildings, Borough, also came before the Court.  Liabilities estimated at about £12,000; assets inconsiderable.  The bankrupt had absconded, and had filed no accounts.

(£12,000 is nearly £1.5m in 2019 terms according to the Bank of England calculator Bank of England inflation calculator)

People must have suspected that he took with him whatever money and valuables he managed to lay his hands on; perhaps he did.  He must have left the country, as I can find no further trace of him here.  

A few weeks after that newspaper report, on the night of 2 April when the 1871 Census was taken, John Mease had left London with his daughter-in-law and granddaughter.  He was staying with his sisters in Stokesley while the others were at Leven House with the housekeeper Miss Jane Winter.  Miss Winter had run John's household in London after Hannah Maria died; she was with the family at No 8 South Side Stockwell Park Road, Lambeth in the 1861 census.  Born in Greatham, Co Durham, she was now 51 years old and may have known Edward when he was a boy.  At Leven House she had the assistance of a local 16 year old, Elizabeth Bainbridge.  

Edward's defection must have been a terrible blow for them all.  Perhaps John was giving Ellen and little Edith some privacy – perhaps the air was thick with mutual recrimination – or perhaps the poor old man was simply staying over with Rachel and Mary rather than making his way home.  

He died at Leven House five years later at the age of 77:

Northern Echo, 22 July 1876
Deaths
Mease – July 20, at Leven House, Hutton Rudby, Mr John Mease.  Will be interred at Rudby Church on Tuesday, July 25th, at noon

He left no Will.  We don't know if the family was in touch with Edward, but I should imagine his absence and his scale of his debts must have caused difficulties for the Administrators of John's estate and perhaps that is what lies behind the Chancery action which occasioned this auction notice:

In the High Court of Justice. – Chancery Division

In the Matter of the Estate of JOHN MEASE, deceased.

Between JOHN KIDD, Plaintiff, and ANNIE MARIA KIDD AND OTHERS, Defendants

A Dwelling House, called “Leven House,”

With Garden, Orchard and Plantation, containing together 1A. 0R. 13P.

TWO CLOSES OF LAND,

CALLED

“Benson’s Bank,” and “Rhodes Garth,”

Containing together 4A. 3R. 3P.,

WITH A STABLE AND COW-HOUSE.

A CLOSE of LAND, called “CHURCH HOLME,”

Containing 2A. 0R. 35P.

The whole of the above is in the occupation of Mr JOHN KIDD.

A DWELLING HOUSE

(ADJOINING COW-HOUSE AND STABLE IN RHODES GARTH),

Situate at Banktop, Hutton, in the occupation of Mr KINGSTON HALLIMAN.

A Building called the “CLEVELAND SAIL CLOTH FACTORY,”

WORKED BY STEAM POWER,

In the occupation of the Executors of the late GEORGE WILSON.

A WATER CORN-MILL,

With Iron Water-wheel, Three Pairs of Millstones, Hoist, Corn-screen, Flour Dressing Machine,

Large Granary, Cart-house, Stable, Outbuildings, Dwelling-house, and Office and Yard,

In the occupation of WILLIAM KETTON and the Executors of the late GEORGE WILSON.

A DWELLING HOUSE AND SHOP,

With Yard, Warehouse, Stable, Cow-house, Cart-house and Out-buildings; and

TWO COTTAGES,

Situate at HUTTON BANKTOP and North side of MAIN STREET, HUTTON,

In the several occupations of GEORGE HONEYMAN, THOMAS STANLEY and JAMES HONEYMAN.

A Close of Land called “THE MILL BANK,”

Containing 2A. 0R. 38P.,

In the occupation of JOHN WATSON.

A Dwelling or Public House, known as the “BAY HORSE INN,”

WITH STABLES AND PREMISES.

A WORKSHOP OR WAREHOUSE,

AT BANKTOP, AND CORNER OF MAIN STREET, HUTTON,

In the occupation of JOHN WATSON.

Leven House, rear view, with the Hutton Rudby Brass Band in 1912
Bandmaster: Joseph H Grierson (in the boater)
Len Sidgwick is holding the euphonium on the left

Annie Maria's husband John Kidd died four years afterwards in 1880, leaving her with a large family.  At the 1881 census, five children aged between eighteen and four (Annie, Mina, John, Edward and Ada) were at home with her.  There was also a visitor – Miss Jane Winter, who had run John's households in London and Hutton Rudby.  The absent Edward's wife and daughter were also in Edinburgh; they did not return to London.

Annie Maria became a partner in Kidd, Eunson & Co, wine merchants, in her husband's place – unfortunately the firm failed in 1887 and she and her business partner Samuel Boe were made bankrupt.  The Mease family, it appears, was very prone to bankruptcy.  

Annie must have been on holiday or taking a rest cure when she died in Wales in 1915.  Her sister-in-law Ellen died in Brodrick on the Isle of Arran in 1895.  Edward's daughter Edith died in England, unmarried, in 1927.

The Mease trustees, as I understand it, finally sold the Hutton Rudby properties in 1928.

Thomas Pilter, however, went on to success.  After he gave up the mill at Hutton Rudby, he left England for France.  In time he set up an agricultural machinery business which gave him scope for his inventive genius – the Oxford Journal reported on 12 July 1879 that he had patented a new form of portable hay press.  A report on the Paris Exhibition in the Sheffield Independent of 17 June 1889 wrote that 

Mr Thomas Pilter, 24 Rue Alibert, Paris, who has been 50 years in France, represents, amongst many other firms, Messrs John Crowley & Co Ltd, Sheffield.

He had a "tastefully arranged show of their malleable iron castings" in the Exhibition and his experience of agricultural machinery "extends over a period of 25 years."  The Clifton Society of 16 January 1908 reported on a "complimentary banquet" given by the leading members of the British colony in Paris to Sir John Pilter on the occasion of his recent knighthood:

Sir John Pilter is the eldest son of the late Mr Thomas Pilter, who settled in France 60 years ago, and founded a prosperous business in agricultural machinery.  Sir John is the present head of the house.

Coloured postcard of Hutton Rudby church, Rose Cottage and Leven House
(the Mill having been demolished in 1937)

Many thanks to Malcolm McPhie for the photograph of Leven House and the Mill, which was lent to him for scanning by Margaret Atkinson, who was given it by Alice Barthram.
And also to Malcolm for the coloured postcard (above).
See the Facebook page of the Hutton Rudby & District Local History Society for many more photographs.

Next post;  Hutton Rudby 1859-1908: the Cleveland Sailcloth Mill