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

Stokesley 1832-1841: the New Mill on Levenside

This follows the post Stokesley 1823-1834: the flax-spinning mill behind the High Street

1960s aerial view looking towards the New Mill buildings (now Millbry Hill country store).  

Thomas went into partnership in his new venture of building a flax-spinning mill on Levenside with James Blacket. 

James and John Blacket

Some accounts (such as the Wikipedia page for Edmund Thomas Blacket) state that this was James Blacket senior, who was a Wesleyan draper in London, clearly in a good way of trade and widely respected.  He was born in about 1786 in West Smithfield and married Margaret Harriet, daughter of the Rev Edward Ralph; I suspect this was the Rev Ralph who was the minister of the Independent congregation at Maidstone. 

Other accounts (for example, the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol 3, 1969) suggest that Thomas's partner was James Blacket senior's son James.  I rather think this is the most likely, for two reasons.  Firstly, that it seems unlikely that James senior would risk his standing and his large family's financial future in a speculative endeavour in the far-off North Riding, where he wouldn't be able to keep an eye on proceedings and with a man he can have known only slightly.  Secondly, that I haven't been able to see any sign that James senior was affected when the Stokesley enterprise failed, as will be seen later.  James senior continued in his prosperous business as a draper.  Notices in the newspapers show that he was for several years in the 1840s one of the auditors of the Hope Life Assurance Company, and notices in the London Gazette show that he took his son Frank William Blacket into partnership in the drapery business in Islington and West Smithfield, before finally retiring at the end of 1856 before his death on 28 November 1858.

On the other hand, I expect James senior helped to fund his son's venture in the hope of setting him up in a good way of business.  One wonders, given his growing family and the number of his enterprises, how much of the money that Thomas Mease put into this new undertaking was borrowed. 

James Blacket junior was born, as recorded in the Nonconformist Registers, at 85 St Margaret's Hill, Southwark on 21 December 1808.  So he was sixteen years younger than Thomas.  At the beginning of 1832, Thomas was 40 and James was 23; James would have been very much the junior partner.

Thomas was now a significant figure in Stokesley, with the Paper War and the polemic against tithes and the Corn Laws to his credit, and the spinning factory and the grocery and drapery business.  The Poll Book of 1834 shows that he owned freehold houses and land, occupied by himself and tenants, while his father John owned and occupied his own freehold house.  Their houses were Number 42 High Street and the house next door, and were described in the auction notices in 1838 (for example, the Leeds Mercury, 26 May 1838) as

Two substantial Freehold dwelling-houses situate in the North Row of the Market Town of Stokesley aforesaid, with a Four-stalled Stable, Granaries, Coach-House, and other Out-offices, and a good Garden well stocked with Fruit Trees, behind the same, late in the several Occupations of Messrs John Mease, the Elder, and Thomas Mease.  The above Premises are well adapted for a wholesale or retail Business.

It seems likely that the "substantial" house next door to Number 42 was the one immediately to the east, described in Buildings of Stokesley as "a double fronted house of some distinction" obscured from view for us by the fact it is now divided into two shops:  "Behind the two shop fronts lies the clue, an attractive doorway which led to an elegant hall and staircase.  The upper floors with their large canted bays on three levels made a handsome town house for a man of means."

I don't know – and I don't know if it is known – how the Blacket family came to meet Thomas Mease.  It may somehow have been through their shared Wesleyan Methodism or because both Thomas and James senior was in the drapery business.  However it came about, both James junior and his brother John were established in Stokesley by the spring of 1832.

That May, John Blacket "of Stokesley" married Elizabeth Stephens in the parish of St Matthew's, Brixton.  John was then 24 years old (he was a year older than his brother James) and a solicitor.  He went into partnership with William Garbutt and William Fawcett of Yarm in the Stokesley office of the practice.  Again, it is probable that his father must have helped him buy into the practice and set himself up.  John and Elizabeth's first son, John Stephens Blacket, was born in Stokesley on 16 April 1833 and Mrs Mary Mease, Thomas's wife, was present at the birth alongside Dr Allardice.  A second son, Edward Ralph, was born in spring 1835 and a third, William Russell, in spring 1837 – Mary Mease was present then, too.

John and James Blacket soon became part of the town, and in particular the life of the Wesleyan chapel.  John Blacket's sons were baptised by the Wesleyan minister, Robert Newton.  The Durham Chronicle of 25 November 1836 report of the "Half-Yearly Meeting of the North Riding Association of the Independent Ministers and Congregations" held at Stokesley in October shows that James Blacket was in the Chair.  

Notices in the York Herald (19 December 1835) and the Northampton Mercury (25 February 1837) tell the story of James' sadly brief married life in these years.  He married Hannah Nunneley of Market Harborough at the end of December 1835; in February 1837, little more than a year later, she died at the age of 24.

Thomas Mease & the Broughton Bridge Bleach Mill

Thomas Mease and Mary Mellanby, meanwhile, now had six children and he was still looking outward to new possibilities for improving his business.  In 1818 he had been eager for a canal to link the River Tees to the Durham coalfields; the Durham Chronicle of 6 May 1836 shows that he was in the list of County Subscribers to the South Durham Railway which was to link the Clarence Railway to the collieries in Weardale.  He had been giving his occupation as "manufacturer" since at least 1827 when his son Joseph Mellanby Mease was baptised.  

He was also in the bleaching business, possibly from his early days in linen manufacture.  Operating your own bleach works saved the cost of sending your unbleached, brown linen elsewhere.  Thomas was a partner in Messrs Benjamin & John Claxton & Company, operating a bleach mill with a steam engine of 16 Horse Power at Broughton Bridge.  (Broughton Bridge is outside Stokesley, on the left of the road going towards Great Broughton, about 200 metres past the turn-off onto Ellerbeck Way, the entrance to the Industrial Estate.  The Bleach Mill was sited on Broughton Bridge Beck, which becomes the Ellerbeck; this flows through the Industrial Estate on its way to the Leven.)  The road from Stokesley to Great Broughton runs from the top left of the O.S. map 1888-1913 shown below, and obviously Old Beach Mill means Old Bleach Mill!

O.S. map 1888-1913, reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland from their website

Bleaching linen in the traditional way had been a lengthy process but experimentation with chemical methods had speeded things up enormously.  This saved money and time – and sorted out the perennial problem of people stealing the linen while it was laid out on the bleach grounds.  I believe it also dealt with the increasing problem that the rise of industrialisation and the growing number of factory chimneys meant that it was becoming hard to find somewhere where linen could be laid out to bleach for long periods without being spotted by soot.  There is a description of the bleaching process – which was far from environmentally friendly – in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica and in The Archaeology of Improvement in Britain, 1750–1850, by Sarah Tarlow

I haven't been able to find a description of the use of the steam engine in bleaching in the 1830s, but I think it may have been used, for example, to power the beetling engine.  Traditionally, linen had been given a smooth and shiny finish by being pounded over the stones of a riverbed with wooden blocks, but a machine had been invented in 1736 to do this much more effectively and quickly (see this explanation).  We know that the Broughton Bridge mill had beetling equipment as it features in the auction sales notices in 1839.

Thomas's partners in this business were Benjamin and John Claxton.  In Baines' Directory 1823, Benjamin Claxton had, like Thomas, been listed among the grocers & tea dealers and linen & woollen drapers.  He left that trade and with John Claxton – possibly a much younger cousin or brother – became a Linen Bleacher at Broughton Bridge and at Easby.  (This can be seen from his description in a notice in the London Gazette of 6 February 1838).  He must be the Benjamin Claxton born c1785 in Yarm who appears later in the Kildale census of 1841 and the Easby census of 1851 as a bleacher. 

The partnership between Thomas and the Claxtons may have begun at the very start of his manufacturing enterprises and must certainly have been in place in 1830 when he and his sister Rachel were witnesses at the marriage of John Claxton and Mary Ann Geldart, both of the parish of Stokesley, on 16 March 1830. 

(John Claxton and his wife Mary Ann can be found later in the 1851 census in London.  John was born in about 1806 in Yarm, and Mary Ann in Sunderland.  The Bishop's Transcript of the Sunderland registers shows that she was born on 2 February 1804, the daughter of William Geldart, butcher, and Hannah Fleck; Pallot's Marriage Index 1780-1837 shows that William and Hannah were married in Marske by the Sea and that Hannah was from Upleatham.)

So Thomas was a very busy man, perhaps a little too busy and rather over-stretched – and his timing was unfortunate because, as the 1830s went on, the linen industry came under increasing strain, particularly from the competition with mechanised cotton production.

Thomas Mease goes bankrupt

By the summer of 1837 the Mease and Blacket partnership was not going at all well.  On 1 August the London Gazette carried a notice that the partnership was dissolved and that James Blacket would carry it on alone. 

The wikipedia page for Edmund Thomas Blacket states that the Blackets ended the partnership "as they were unhappy about certain financial matters, and by March 1838, the issue was in Chancery", citing John Walker Ord's History & Antiquities of Cleveland (1846).  However, this is not stated by Ord, who confines himself to a tactful mention of "manufactories" which were established by

men of sufficient enterprise and ability, and prosecuted with ardour and determination; but whether from the cost of coals, the remoteness of markets, the expense of carriage, or the unpropitious state of trade at the time, it was found necessary to close the speculation, and the buildings and machinery were accordingly put to the hammer [ie sold at auction]

We can make a good guess at why James Blacket parted ways with Thomas Mease when we find that four months later on 1 December 1837 Mease was made bankrupt. 

This must have had a shocking effect on the town.  Apart from the debts around the town that Thomas could not pay, the factory behind the High Street was still fully equipped (as can be seen from the auction notice a few months later) and was probably still in operation; the employees would be out of work.  If the grocery & drapery shop was still a going concern, those working there would be unemployed.  The trustees of the Methodist Chapel found themselves embarrassed for funds because Thomas had donated an organ but hadn't paid the cabinet maker who installed it (cf The Methodist Chapels of Stokesley 1765-1994, T Berry).  

Others went down with Thomas.  By the spring, the York Herald was reporting on 28 April that

The Commissioners under the bankruptcy of William Stephenson of Stokesley, linen manufacturer and grocer, sat today at Ludley's Hotel, Stockton for the proof of debts, and choosing assignees.  It appeared that Mr Stephenson's bankruptcy was occasioned by his accepting accommodation bills for Thomas Mease, late a flax-spinner at Stokesley, to the amount of upwards of £5,000. 

((It is notoriously tricky to establish current equivalents, but the Bank of England historic inflation calculator puts £5,000 at nearly £560,000 in 2019.  There is a useful explanation of bills of exchange here)

Mr Stephenson's fate must have caused a great deal of ill-feeling in the town.

When the affairs of Thomas Mease and William Stephenson went crashing about their ears, they could go bankrupt – they qualified because they bought and sold goods for a living.  It was an expensive process, so they would need friends to rally around, but they avoided imprisonment for debt (see this article in the London Gazette online) 

When Messrs Benjamin & John Claxton & Company went under in Thomas Mease's crash and the Claxtons were unable to pay their debts, they became "insolvent debtors".  They seem to have been in London when the crisis came, as the notice in the London Gazette of 6 February 1838 shows that at first they were both lodging at Number 7 Falcon-street, Falcon-square in the city of London.  I think this may have been a sponging-house where debtors could be temporarily confined.  John Claxton's next address was given as No 347 Rotherhithe-wall in the county of Surrey.  Then, after a notice that the creditors would be meeting at the offices of Garbutt, Blacket & Fawcett in Stokesley on 20 April 1838, John disappears from sight.  He and Mary Ann went on to live in London, where he was in 1851 a coal merchant, but by 1861 they had moved out of the city to New Brentford, where he describes himself in the census as a Commercial Clerk.

Benjamin's position was worse.  The addresses given for Benjamin in the notices in the London Gazette show that, after being with John at Falcon Street, his next address was Number 6 Soley-terrace, Pentonville.  Then the London Gazette of 26 June 1838 shows that he was "lately discharged from the Fleet Prison."  So he suffered the fate of Charles Dickens' father and his great creations Mr Micawber and Mr Dorrit, and found himself in the horrid conditions of debtors' prison – and of the notorious Fleet Prison at that.  He was finally able to return to Cleveland and to work as a bleacher again; the parish registers of Ingleby Greenhow show that he was buried there on 20 October 1864 at the age of 79.

This notice from the Leeds Mercury of 26 May 1838 shows that not only was Thomas Mease's property up for sale, but also his father's – perhaps to pay for the bankruptcy and raise money for Thomas's family:

STOKESLEY, - By Messrs Appleton and Farrow, on Tuesday, the Nineteenth Day of June, 1838, at the House of Mr William Naylor, the Sign of the Golden Lion, in Stokesley, in the County of York, at Three o'Clock in the Afternoon, either in the following or in such other Lots as may be agreed upon at the Time of Sale, and subject to the Conditions to be then produced: 

Two substantial Freehold dwelling-houses situate in the North Row of the Market Town of Stokesley aforesaid, with a Four-stalled Stable, Granaries, Coach-House, and other Out-offices, and a good Garden well stocked with Fruit Trees, behind the same, late in the several Occupations of Messrs John Mease, the Elder, and Thomas Mease.  The above Premises are well adapted for a wholesale or retail Business. 

Also all that extensive Flax and Tow Spinning Mill, conveniently situated behind the said Dwelling-Houses, late in the Occupation of the said Thomas Mease, comprising a capital STEAM-ENGINE, 28 Horse Power, with Two Boilers complete; Nine Spinning Frames, containing 406 Spindles; Two Double and Two Single Carding Engines; several Drawing and Roving Frames, Shafts, Wheels, Drums, and other Requisites.  Also a Counting-House and several Warehouses contiguous to the same.  The Mill is sufficiently large for containing Four Times the Quantity of Machinery. 

Lot 2.  All that capital FREEHOLD BLEACH MILL, with the Water Power and a STEAM-ENGINE, 16 Horse Power, and all other Requisites for carrying on the Bleaching Business on an extensive Scale, and Two Closes of excellent Grass Land, situate at Broughton Bridge, near Stokesley aforesaid, containing together, by Estimation, 13 acres and 2 roods, or thereabouts, be the same more or less, late in the Occupation of Messieurs Benjamin and John Claxton and Company. 

Immediate Possession may be had of all the Premises (except the House lately occupied by Thomas Mease), and if the same be not sold they will be let.

Tenants were found for the houses on North Row (the High Street) but, perhaps unsurprisingly given the economic conditions, buyers could not be found.  In September there was another attempt to sell the machinery.  On 14 September 1838, the Durham County Advertiser carried a notice that Flax Spinning Machinery was to be sold by auction on 3 October 1838 "in the Thread Warehouse, adjoining the New Mill, at Stokesley" and that "Part of the above Machinery has never been in use, and the rest of it is nearly as good as new.  All the Frames are constructed for Hot Water Spinning, on the newest principle."

But it seems that there were still no buyers.  On 5 October 1838 the Newcastle Courant advertised the Spinning Mill "with the Steam Engine, Twenty eight Horse Power and Machinery, ... If the Premises be not sold or let for a Spinning Mill, they will be let as a Flour Mill, for which Purpose they were heretofore used" and the Bleach Mill and Grounds were all "to be sold or let with immediate possession."

Still there were no takers.  There was another try in May 1839.  The Durham County Advertiser of 10 May 1839 carried the notice of an auction to be held at the Golden Lion (nowadays called Chapters) that would include, as well as the freeholds of the houses (Mr Strother the surgeon occupying one and Mr Taylor the druggist the other), the remaining property in separate lots:

Lot 3 All that Extensive Building, lately used by Thomas Mease, a Bankrupt, as a Flax and Tow Spinning Mill, with the Out-Offices attached thereto, situate behind the said Dwelling-Houses
Lot 4 All that Four-stalled Stable, with the Saddle Room, Granaries, & Coach-house, adjoining the last Lot
Lot 5 A freehold dwelling house and building, lately used as a Bleach Mill, immediately adjoining a good Stream of Water, with the Mill Dam and Race and 2a 2r 21p of Land, siuate at Broughton Bridge, near Stokesley aforesaid, late in the occupation of Messrs Benjamin and John Claxton and Company
Lot 6 A close of grass land, adjoining Lot 5 and containing 5 acres
Lot 7 A close of grass land, adjoining Lot 6, and containing 8a 2r 11p.

A possible sweetener was offered:

Two thirds of the Purchase Money of each of the above Lots may remain on Mortgage, if required.

Meanwhile, in the Spinning Mill another auction was to be held "without Reserve" offering the steam engine from the flax-spinning mill behind the High Street (28 horse power).  At the Bleach Mill, all the equipment was to be sold:

A Steam Engine, 16 Horse Power, a Water-wheel, two Wash-Mills and Shafts, Metal Pump, three Lead Pumps, Boiler, Bars and Starching Kettle, two Souring and one Booking Tub, Crane, Shafting and Wheels, two Beetling Engines, one Dutch Calendar, Press, five Tables, Leaden Retort, two Cisterns & Pan, rolled Iron Pan, two broken Metal Pans, and all other the Bleaching Utensils.

In the meantime Thomas and his family had been continuing to live in Stokesley, occupying (as can be seen from an advertisement in the Durham Chronicle of 9 November 1839) a 

Freehold Mansion-House, substantially built of Brick and beautifully faced with Free Stone, suitable for the residence of a genteel family, eligibly situated at the west end of Stokesley aforesaid and late in the occupation of Mr Thomas Mease, Flax Spinner.  

Next door to it was the 

Freehold Shell of a Mansion-House, adjoining to and built in the same style ... This Shell may, at a trifling expense, be completed and rendered fit for the reception of a large family.

Adjoining the Shell were three lots of Garden Ground suitable for building plots.  I don't know where these houses stood.

It seems likely that it was soon after this that Thomas went with his family to live in France, either because it was cheaper or because he couldn't immediately find the funds to pay his way in Stokesley.  He may in fact have made the move more than once.  His son Joseph Mellanby Mease (1827-1928) at the end of his life spoke to a journalist (Leeds Mercury, 14 September 1927) about travelling by stagecoach to his school in Doncaster, and said that it was while he was at school that his parents went to live in Paris.  He went to join them there when he was about fourteen, travelling by paddle steamer from the Thames to cross the Channel to Boulogne, and thence by "an old fashioned diligence" to Paris, "which took him 24 hours".  The journalist reported that his father was then English representative for "Blood's Bank" but I can find no bank of that name.

The Blacket brothers leave Stokesley

All this time the Blacket brothers had remained in Stokesley.  Now John Blacket decided to make a career change.  The London Gazette of 6 August 1839 carried the notice of the dissolution of partnership between him, William Garbutt and William Fawcett.  He appeared in White's Directory of 1840 not as an attorney but as Receiver General of Crown Rents for the Northern District.  In effect, he was now a member of the civil service; the profits from the monarch's Crown Estate were surrendered to Parliament in return for a fixed civil list payment in 1760.  That year, John moved his family to 20 South Street, Durham (according to the autobiographical note in Durham University Archives for 94 letters written from India where his eldest son John Stephens Blacket was with the East Indian Railway as a surveyor during the period of the Indian Mutiny here)

At the time of the 1841 census, John and his wife were with his parents at Grecian Lodge, Brixton Hill, Lambeth but within months they had left for Ireland.  He was described as the "new agent of the Bessborough estate" in newspaper reports in the last week of November 1841 when he was sworn in as a magistrate of the County Kilkenny.  He and his family lived at Balline House (also spelt Ballyne, Bolline, and now Belline), Piltown.  This was the house always occupied by the Earl of Bessborough's agent and a photograph of it can be seen here.  He died there on 4 February 1881. 

The three boys who were born in Stokesley were John Stephens Blackett (1833-1922) who became a Civil Engineer and Land Agent; Edward Ralph Blackett (1835-93), who was a doctor who was a surgeon in India before practising in Suffolk, where he is remembered today for having been (wrongly) suspected of writing an anonymous satirical novel about his neighbourhood and as an amateur artist; and William Russell Blackett (1837-93), an Anglican clergyman who "held for some years an important educational position in India under the Church Missionary Society, and has served as a member of the Indian Government Commission on Education" [The Graphic, 12 September 1891] and was principal of the Home and Colonial Training College.  All of them spent time in India.

James Blacket must have been hoping to ride out the economic difficulties but he was struggling to make a go of the New Mill.  In Lambeth in early 1839 he married again.  His new wife was Sarah Ralph, presumably a relation through his mother, and he brought her back north to Stokesley.  In White's Directory 1840 he is listed as a Flax spinner and Patent Thread Manufacturer.  Unfortunately within a very short while his business failed and he was made bankrupt on 15 December 1840.

James also had a warehouse in Leeds – we do not know whether this was part of his attempt to make a success of the business, or whether he had been operating this warehouse when he went into partnership with Thomas Mease – and on 20 March 1841 the Leeds Mercury carried a notice that the yarns, tow, threads, linens etc that was his stock in trade in Leeds were to be sold by auction.  At the same time, "the machinery and effects of Mr James Blacket, a Bankrupt" were to be sold at the New Mill in Stokesley – the machinery was described as valuable and "nearly new and upon the most improved Principles".  Even the Mill Clock was listed in the advertisement.  It is interesting to note that the New Mill buildings were not put up for auction and I don't know who owned them either before or after Blacket's bankruptcy.  Later on in the day, after James Blacket's machinery was sold, "the Proprietor" of the New Mill was offering spinning frames and other machinery for sale; it seems that whoever had bought the mill buildings was not going to attempt to carry on the flax spinning business.  It was afterwards a steam-powered flour mill for many years.

So steam-powered flax-spinning in Stokesley came to an end and the effect on the town must have been very great – according to the Parliamentary Gazetteer of England & Wales 1845-6, the flax-mill had employed 139 hands in 1838. 

By the spring of 1842, James and Sarah had moved to Newbury, Berkshire, where their eldest son Walter James Blacket was born.  Five years later Sarah died, leaving James once more a widower, and this time with three little boys.  He was now a bookseller & printer and by 1851 he employed four hands.  In that year he married for a third time, to Mary Pashley.  The wedding, according to the Nottinghamshire Guardian of 26 June 1851, took place at the Independent Chapel, Worksop and Mary was the daughter of the late Mr Pashley of Worksop, wine and spirit merchant.

James's son Walter followed him into the business and by 1871 was evidently very successful, employing six men and five boys.  James died on 19 May 1877.

In the last few years of his time in Stokesley, James had been joined at the mill by his younger brother Edmund Thomas Blacket (1817-83).  Unsurprisingly – it was only a small market town – Edmund met Thomas Mease's daughter Sarah and the young couple fell in love, much to the annoyance of both families.  The Blackets may well have blamed Thomas for profligacy or carelessness with money or deceiving them as to the prospects of the venture, while the expense of James's bankruptcy and the loss of the family's investments in his business – which perhaps lay behind John Blacket becoming a land agent – must have made relations between the two families increasingly bitter.  Finally Edmund and Sarah married in Wakefield on 27 April 1842.  Their parents boycotted the ceremony.  Some weeks later they left for Australia where Edmund became a well-known architect. 

It is said that before leaving home, Sarah engraved her name with a diamond ring on the window of a Mease family house in Stokesley, and apparently also in a family house in Hutton Rudby and that the window was last seen during the Second World War by a member of the Australian family, who was staying with Jennie Mease in Hutton Rudby while on leave.  Unfortunately we don't know where these windows might have been found.

A final note on the Blackets – the family in England took to spelling their name with a final double 't' and this is sometimes to be found applied to the earlier Blacket generations.

Thomas Mease & his family after 1847

In the summer of 1847 Thomas and the family were living in Hutton Rudby.  This can be seen from a report in the Leeds Intelligencer of 21 July which shows that Thomas was one of the jury at the trial of Patrick Reid for the Mirfield Murders at the Crown Court, York Castle.  Once more Thomas was taking part in high drama.  Reid was accused of the murder of Mr and Mrs Wraith and their servant Caroline Ellis and the case created a huge sensation.  People flocked to York in the hope of seeing the trial and the newspaper reported that "hundreds of persons were excluded for want of room."  It is probably better remembered today because of the drawing made by Branwell Brontë of "Patrick Reid turned off, without his cap."  It is shown on this website, with an account of the case and the explanation that Branwell's drawing was in fact a self portrait.

On 5 May 1849, old John Mease died in Stokesley at the age of 82.  He had been a widower for many years, as his wife Isabella had died on 1 January 1825.  Thomas was evidently back in Stokesley that summer, and possibly even back in one of the houses that he and his father had once owned.  An auction notice in the Yorkshire Gazette of 8 September 1849 includes a dwelling house "now occupied by Mr Thomas Mease" on the North Row.  Next door, to its west, was a house with a "Capacious Building attached, now used as a Warehouse, Gighouse and Stable" and the two houses shared a yard.  The house occupied by Thomas and his family was very comfortable, having "Dining and Drawing Rooms, Library, Two Kitchens, Cellar, and other requisite Offices, with Four Bed Rooms, and an Attic."

Two years later, by the time of the census of 1851, Thomas was 59 years old and now described himself as an "agent for the sale of Linen Yarn".  He, Mary and their daughter Isabella now lived in the West End of Stokesley some five households away from John Hepburn Handyside, the doctor.  The announcement in the Yorkshire Gazette of 27 January 1855 of the death of his daughter Jane at the age of 21 shows that they had moved again, as he was named as "Thomas Mease, Esq, of Hutton Rudby". 

The 1861 census records him, now a "Mineral Agent", at Bank Bottom, Hutton Rudby.  This must be Leven House, or its precursor.  His wife Mary was with him and two of their children:  Thomas Turnbull Mease and Isabella Mease.  Both were unmarried and Thomas was described as "son of agent variously employed."

Thomas Mease died in Hutton Rudby on 16 July 1862 at the age of 70.  Mary stayed in the village, and died there two years later on 25 February 1864.

Perhaps the loss of his parents was a tipping point for their eldest son, Thomas Turnbull Mease.  His younger brother Joseph Mellanby Mease became a very well-known and respected local figure, but Thomas junior lost his way, as can be seen in a report that appeared in the York Herald of 17 December 1864.  Thomas, "corn miller, Hutton Rudby" was in gaol for debt, at the suit of Messrs Garbutt, corn factors, Hartlepool, for a debt and costs amounting to £32 10s 5d.  Altogether he owed about £80 and had £14 assets in book debts.  He attributed his losses to small profits, falling off in trade, and heavy expenses in working the mill. 

He never recovered from this.  The 1871 Census finds him lodging at 7 Nelson Street, West Hartlepool, and working as a labourer in a sawmill.  The census of 1881 finds him lodging at 12 Grace Street.  Now aged 60, he worked as a Day Watchman.  He died aged 75 in early 1896.

Isabella married Francis Morritt, a Whitby-born hay merchant of Halton near Leeds, at Hutton Rudby on 5 November 1868.  She was 45, though they tactfully entered her age in the parish register as 30, and he was half a dozen years older than she.  He was a widower and his youngest child was five.  She died less than three years later on 14 October 1871.

Joseph Mellanby Mease lost his arm in 1860 and lived until 1928, a much celebrated centenarian.  The story of how he lost his arm and his reminiscences in later life can be found here and here.

Joseph Mellanby Mease

Many thanks to Judy Kitching and Malcolm McPhie for the aerial view of Stokesley.  There are more to be seen on the Facebook page of the Hutton Rudby & District Local History Society.

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

Stokesley 1823-1834: the flax-spinning mill behind the High Street

This follows the post The linen mills of Stokesley & Hutton Rudby: 1823-1908

1823 was the year in which the spinning factory of Messrs T & J Mease was erected just off Stokesley High Street.

The Mease family had been a presence on the High Street since the early 1790s.  The head of the family was John Mease, a respectable Wesleyan Methodist shopkeeper; at the beginning of 1823 he was 56 years old.  He and his wife Isabella Turnbull had two sons and three daughters: Thomas, Isabella, John, Rachel and Mary.  

John Mease was in business as a grocer and draper, but he was also a butter and cheese factor and sold Cleveland's dairy products to the London market.  Twenty years earlier, in 1802, Bell's Weekly Messenger on 14 November had carried a report from the police office at Union Hall in Southwark which gives us a glimpse of John.  

He was in London on business and that morning was "returning from Westminster through Lambeth-road" when he was approached by a respectable-looking man who, asking him if he was from Yorkshire, fell into conversation with him.  The stranger invited Mease to meet someone he knew who was in the same line of business as himself at Woolwich, and doing very well as he had a contract to supply the Navy.  They went to a pub where they met the man, one William Hill, who asked Mease the name of the salesman he used in London and promised him an order.  This, however, was merely window-dressing – the men were confidence tricksters and were hoping to cheat Mease out of the money they guessed he was carrying.  When Mease proved too suspicious for them, Hill snatched the money and ran, but was caught by Mease and some passers-by and brought before the magistrates. 

We can see that John Mease was no country bumpkin, ignorant of the ways of the world.  And Stokesley at the time of the Revolutionary & Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815) was a lively, outward-looking town.  The poet William Mason described its "busy and active life"

in a day when your public houses included, in addition to the present thirteen inns, the George and Dragon, the Half Moon, The Masons Arms, the Chequers, the Raffled Anchor, the Ship Inn, &c; 

when the war of American Independence had only subsided, followed by the French Revolution, and the wars of the Bonapartes were at their prime; 

when your captains in the East India Company’s service, your sailors in the mercantile marine, your harpooners who had gone down to the sea in ships and struck the Leviathan in the iced waters, came back to lay up for the winter, as well as the Jack Tar on leave from the Royal Navy, who had gone either by impressment or accepted bounty; 

when your markets were great gatherings of the rurals; your butchers’ shambles were filled with meat; when coals stood for sale in front of the square at the Swan, and the turf-graver brought his wares in donkey carts from Osmotherley; 

when the farmer and his dame rode on the pillion seat to the steppings at the inn; when handloom weaving was good, and intelligence amongst that class of operatives was great; 

when all these met at the hostelries to hear tales of adventure from the sailors, and the sparkles of wit from the literati of the town 

(see Chapter 5 of Remarkable, but Still True) 

This was the world in which John's son Thomas, who was baptised in Stokesley in February 1792, grew up.  Thomas was remembered by his family (according to tradition in Hutton Rudby) as a gifted artist, inventive with his hands, a carver of objects in jet, a speculator and inventor who often had to take his family abroad to avoid his creditors.  His life history shows that he must have been a man of charm and charisma, who loved the public stage, was eager to take on arguments and controversies, and who made ambitious plans and entered into them boldly.

In or by 1800 (according to the Stokesley Flax Mill timeline on the Stokesley Heritage website, quoting Title Deeds research by Tom Berry), John Mease and an unnamed cabinet maker leased the house we know now as Number 42 High Street, Stokesley, "with shop and yard, garden and orchard behind".

Number 42 is the tallest building on the left

It stands on the north side of the High Street – known in the 19th century as North Row – not far from the Wesleyan Methodist Church (until 1883 this was the site of the Black Swan Inn) and was until recently occupied by Barclays Bank.  It is described in the Stokesley Society's Buildings of Stokesley as 

the jewel in the crown of the High Street.  Built of small bricks with handsome sandstone quoins and kneelers and a moulded cornice at the eaves ... retaining its bow windows, flat well proportioned sash windows and, best of all, its doorway under a wonderful shell canopy, the whole being completed with dormer windows in its Welsh slate roof.

In 1816 Thomas, aged 24, married Mary Mellanby in Whitby, where St Mary's parish registers describe him as a grocer.  A couple of years later, the Durham County Advertiser of 11 July 1818 records what must have been one of his earliest entries into public life when he and his father were among the many signatories to an address to the Mayor of Stockton requesting a meeting of the town and neighbourhood to consider forming a Canal to take cargoes such as coal and lime from Evenwood Bridge in County Durham to the Tees, for the benefit of trade.  (In the event, the Stockton & Darlington Railway was built).  Then in 1822 Thomas burst into print in the Stokesley "Paper War".

In the spring of that year Thomas's wife Mary and another lady had called twice upon the bookseller and radical Robert Armstrong for donations to the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society.  He took the view that they had been sent out to beg by their husbands and he was not in sympathy with their cause, telling them

I did not believe Humanity and Charity to be at all the object in view of their employers, and that in my humble opinion they had much better stay at home and cultivate the Heathen among their own sect.

On Monday 2 June 1822, Thomas Mease gave a forceful speech to a Wesleyan Methodist Missionary meeting in which he attacked Armstrong and his beliefs.  He was so pleased with the reception of the speech that he arranged for it to be printed.  Armstrong responded, hostilities began and the Paper War was soon in full swing.  It lasted until the summer of 1824.  The full story, including the unedifying quarrels over the deathbed of old John Appleton in the workhouse, is told here. 

Tom Berry's research shows that by 1822 Number 42 High Street belonged to John Mease and Thomas Mease with two tenants, and that within a few years it was occupied by John and both his sons, Thomas and John junior.  They converted the garden, which lay behind the house, and the warehouse wine vaults into a "corn mill and spinning factory".

John senior had not been content with his shop but had branched out into selling butter and cheese to London.  Thomas had gone into the same line of business as his father and is listed in Baines' Directory of 1823 as a grocer & tea dealer and linen & woollen draper, but he expanded into the production of cloth.  

Stokesley, like Hutton Rudby, was a centre of linen weaving and one of Thomas's earliest ventures was into linen manufacture – which is to say, employing handloom weavers to produce cloth which he sent to a bleachyard and then sold on.  We catch a glimpse of this business, which was evidently running concurrently with the spinning factory, in a notice in the London Gazette of 22 May 1829.  This records the end of a linen manufacturing partnership between Thomas and John Mease and John Barr of Stokesley.  This had also been a side venture for John Barr, who was listed, like Thomas, as a grocer & draper in the 1823 Baines' Directory.  Evidently while he and Thomas had managed the Stokesley end of the business, John Mease was in charge of marketing their cloth in Manchester because he is named in the notice in the Gazette as "John Mease of Manchester".  

The "spinning factory" was a more ambitious venture.  Baines' Directory 1823 shows that Thomas and his brother had set up the business of "T & J Mease," flax & tow spinners.  (The subordinate position of the "J" in the firm name must mean that this was his brother John, who was seven years younger than Thomas and now about 24 years old, not his father John.)  

They were embarking on the mechanised spinning of flax and tow into yarn.  It had proved much easier to mechanise the production of cotton than linen, but linen manufacturing began to make up lost ground when in 1787 the first machine to spin flax was developed in Darlington by John Kendrew.  Flax and tow are produced when the flax plant is broken down, resulting in long line fibres that make a fine, strong yarn and short tow fibres that make heavier, coarser yarn.  (A succinct description of the processes can be found here).  

Flax spinning mill

Baines' Directory recorded that

A considerable manufacture of linen is carried on here, and that trade is likely to be extended, by a mill, which Messrs Thomas and John Meale [a typo for Mease] are now erecting, to be worked by the power of steam.  

The Mease brothers' plan was to power their frames of spindles with a steam engine and the machines in which they invested will have been later models than Kendrew's, developed in Barnsley and Leeds. 

Many of Thomas and John's employees are likely to have been very young.  R P Hastings' Hutton Rudby: An Industrial Village (1979) notes that in 1841 the Hutton Rudby mill was worked by two flaxdressers and ten spinners who were mostly girls and boys in their 'teens.  An advertisement placed by an Otley mill at this time shows the workforce they were seeking:

Leeds Mercury, 26 April 1823
Wanted, at a Flax Spinning Mill, Three or Four large Families of Children.  If the Fathers of such Families are either Hecklers, Weavers, or Husbandmen, the Whole can have constant Employment at good Wages.
Further Particulars can be had on Application to Mr Meek, of Knaresbro'; or Mr Howgate, at West-End Mill, near Otley

This excerpt from Historic England's website gives an idea of what happened when a child was not quick to learn the knack of the work

Samuel Downe, who was born in Shrewsbury in 1804, worked in Ditherington Flax Mill from the age of 10. He described working conditions in the factory during a Parliamentary Enquiry in 1832:
 "we used to generally begin at five o’clock in the morning till eight at night".  When asked had he received punishment he replied "yes, I was strapped most severely till I could not bear to sit upon a chair without pillows, and I was forced to lie upon my face at night. I was put upon a man’s back and then strapped by the overlooker".  When asked why he was punished he replied… "I had never been in a mill where there was machinery, and it was winter time, and we worked by gas-light, and I could not catch the revolutions of the machinery to take the tow out of the hackles; it requires some practice and I was timid at it."
Improvements followed, and in 1834 the 92 children working at Ditherington Flax Mill only worked part-time and had some schooling between 9-11 am and 3-5 pm.

So the noise of spinning frames and a steam engine and the smoke of a mill chimney were added to the general clamour of Stokesley.  Though the economy took a bad hit after the Napoleonic Wars ended, Stokesley was still a lively place with a broad sense of humour – as can be seen from this account, told as a ridiculous story and evidently picked up by newspapers across the country.  This is from the Sussex Advertiser 

Sussex Advertiser, 23 May 1825

Marriage Extraordinary

The 24th ult. a marriage was celebrated at Stokesley, in Yorkshire, of a pair who had passed the delightful, anxious period of courtship in the factory of Messrs T and J Mease.  

A fellow workman of the bridegroom's having accepted the important office of giving away the blooming bride, and all the necessary preparations having been attended to, the morning was ushered in by the ringing of the church and factory bells.  The town-crier officially announced the wedding to take place at half-past nine o'clock, and gave a general invitation to the inhabitants to attend.  

The important moment came, and Richard Chambers, sweet sixteen, led forth his blooming bride of fifty-five, "all blushing as Aurora from the East," to the hymeneal altar of the good old town of Stokesley.  All other business was now at a stand.  The town band preceded the nuptial procession to the sacred fane, playing, "Come haste to the Wedding," and other appropriate airs.  After the indissoluble knot had been tied, the "happy, happy, happy pair" were borne in triumph, in chairs, round the town, preceded by the musicians, and followed by a concourse of spectators and guests.  

The ludicrousness of the scene was greatly heightened, by the bridegroom, who is of a very diminutive stature, being publicly shaved by the celebrated tonsor of the place, with a gigantic razor, 30 inches long!  Rustic festivities followed, and mirth and humour drew the curtains of evening over the hilarities of the day.

Raucous days in Georgian times.  I wonder who wrote it (perhaps Thomas Mease?) and whether all the details are correct or whether the newspaper embellished the account.  It's interesting to note mention of the factory bell, the town-crier and the town band.  It's certainly true that the parish registers record the marriage of a Richard Chambers to Elizabeth Rodery on 25 April 1825. 

Things began to change at the end of the 1820s.  John Barr had retired from the linen manufacturing partnership in May 1829 leaving Thomas and John to continue the business together.  Then on 3 March 1831, a notice in the London Gazette shows that the brothers' flax-spinning partnership had come to an end and that Thomas took over the business.  

By 1834, according to Tom Berry's research into Deeds, 42 High Street was occupied by John Mease, grocer, and sons Thomas, flax spinner and John, linen manufacturer, along with "land and items behind Numbers 36 and 38".  Buildings of Stokesley records that a passage between Numbers 38 and 42 leads to outbuildings that have survived since the Meases' time "with their arches and loading doors with elegant stone surrounds".

The Stokesley Directory database records that Pigot's Directory 1834 lists John Mease jnr as a Linen & Damask Manufacturer on Beck Side, while Thomas was listed as a Flax Dresser, Spinner and Patent Thread Manufacturer on Front Street.

However, there is always a slight lag between the compilation of a Directory and its publication and by the time Pigot's came out, Thomas's plans for a greatly expanded business were well underway.

He bought land on the other side of the River Leven, not far from the packhorse bridge, and was building another flax-spinning mill there.  The building survives as the premises of Millbry Hill (formerly called Armstrong Richardson).  

I have not been able to find confirmation that he built a gas works next to the Mill, as is stated in the letter written to Michael Heavisides (author of Rambles in Cleveland, 1909) by Thomas's son Joseph.  However, that's not to say that he didn't – it would have been an obvious way to increase profits by ensuring long working hours and he would, as stated by Joseph Mellanby Mease, have been able to sell gas to the town under the Lighting and Watching Act 1833.

While Thomas was occupied with business, and with chapel attendance – he was a Wesleyan class leader – he was also engaged in politics.  When the Hon. William Duncombe visited Stokesley during his successful campaign to be elected Tory MP for the North Riding in the winter of 1832/3, the Tories claimed that Thomas had stirred up something approaching a riot when Duncombe tried to address the voters.  Thomas instantly denied the charge and subsequently produced a pamphlet entitled "Two Letters on Tithes and Corn Laws, addressed to the Hon W Duncombe, M.P."  In this Thomas addressed two urgent political questions of the day: reform of the system of tithes and the abolition of the Corn Laws and it was reviewed in the York Herald of 13 July 1833 in the most favourable terms, largely because the reviewer wholeheartedly agreed with Thomas's point of view: 

an excellent little work that has just issued from the press, and which we have perused with no common pleasure ... The author is evidently a man of considerable talent; he has condensed into a pamphlet of 80 pages, a collection of important facts and irrefutable arguments, which might easily have been expanded into a bulky volume.  His language is remarkably terse and perspicuous and the work throughout displays considerable elegance of composition.

The reviewer quotes a passage from the pamphlet to illustrate his point.  In this we can hear Thomas's voice – though we might not agree that this, the first sentence quoted, is so "remarkably terse":

If, then, the Church have no rightful property in tithes, and their compulsory enforcement, under existing regulations be an anti-christian exaction, injurious to both payers and receivers, by exciting bitterness and contentions – and oftentimes expensive law suits too – the only question for determination is, – whether at this crisis of agricultural and national distress, the Clergy of the establishment ought not to be placed upon the apostolical footing of voluntary maintenance; like the accredited Pastors of the general body of Dissenters, who, in learning, and talent and respectability, and usefulness – although certainly not in wealth, and titles, and worldly enjoyment – are by no means their inferiors; that tithes, for the public good, may be duly appropriated to the exigencies of the State.

Next post: Stokesley 1832-1841: the New Mill on Levenside

The linen mills of Stokesley & Hutton Rudby: 1823-1908

The next posts will tell the story of five mills: the two flax-spinning mills of Stokesley, and the flax-spinning mill and two sailcloth mills in Hutton Rudby.

It's also the story of three families – Mease, Blacket and Wilson – and an unusual self-made man, William Surtees.

I have been able to find a great deal of new information, some of which overturns previous assumptions and all of which, I hope, adds greatly to our picture of the people and events concerned.  This is above all thanks to being able to search the online London Gazette and increasing numbers of digitised newspapers.

I have tried to incorporate sources and references as much as possible into the text, hoping to tell the story in a readable fashion. 

One source I have not used is Michael Heavisides' Rambles in Cleveland (1909).  His information derives from a letter he received from Joseph Mellanby Mease.  Joseph was only ten when his father Thomas was made bankrupt and his information seems to me to derive from family anecdotes alone.  Some of it is demonstrably inaccurate and the rest I cannot corroborate, so I have decided to ignore the whole. 

The series begins with Stokesley 1823-1834: the flax-spinning mill behind the High Street