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