Accidents at the Stokesley Gas Works, 1846 & 1866

I have found two instances of accidents with the Stokesley Gas Works; one is dramatic and potentially tragic while the other must have caused fury amongst fishermen. 

The first gasometer in Stokesley is said to have been erected near the New Mill of Messrs Mease & Blacket on Levenside (now the premises of Millbry Hill); I think a later gas works was built elsewhere in the town.  Until the 1970s gas was made from coal, so advertisements like this can be found:

Durham Chronicle, 18 September 1863 

TO COAL-OWNERS

THE STOKESLEY GAS COMPANY are desirous of receiving TENDERS for the Supply of good GAS COAL, to be delivered at the STOKESLEY STATION.  Tenders to be sent on or before the 30th day of SEPTEMBER, 1863, to the SECRETARY, at Stokesley.

In September 1846 the Agricultural Show at Stokesley was going well.  It had celebrated its 13th birthday with a "brilliant meeting of its members and friends and by a most excellent exhibition of horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry, on Friday, the 11th inst." and beautiful weather promised another successful day:

Yorkshire Gazette, 19 September 1846 

The Cleveland District Agricultural Show 

We understand that the entries for the present show were, on the whole, more numerous than those of the preceding year.  

We believe that the cattle and sheep did not occupy so great a space of ground in the show field, which, as in 1844, was kindly lent for the use of the society, by Col. Hildyard; but in the horses – the beautiful Cleveland bays – so celebrated in our own country and so great favourites with the foreigners who attend our fairs, – there was a manifest improvement, both as regards quality and quantity.  

The same remark applies to the pigs, to the implements, and the poultry.  The latter class combined great beauty and variety, and attracted the especial attention of a large and fashionable assembly of ladies.  We noticed that the show of pigeons was much greater than in former years, and it will be seen that premiums have this year been awarded to the exhibitors of rabbits.  We heard that encouragement to the breeding of rabbits had been objected to by some, principally on the ground that it would lead to trespassing in the turnip and clover fields, and perhaps there may be something in this suggestion; nevertheless we think it may be fairly urged that the interest which will be excited among the rising generation in these exhibitions will sufficiently counterbalance if not outweigh any small inconvenience that may arise in this respect ... 

The day throughout was beautifully fine, and the harvest being all but at an end in this district, the concourse of visitors to the town of Stokesley was immense.  We suppose that at one part of the day there could not be less than from two to three thousand persons in the show field.

"The only drawbacks to the complete success of the meeting" were the unavoidable absence of the year's president Lord Feversham and "the occurrence of an accident, the consequences of which might have been most frightful."

The committee had decided that the dining hall should be lighted with gas – but 

about noon the town was alarmed by two most tremendous reports, resembling those of the discharge of heavy cannon

There had been an explosion at the Stokesley gas works.

It appears that Mr Simpson, the manager, and his son, two persons of the name of Carter, from Sunderland, who had been engaged in fixing the gasometer, which has recently been removed, two labourers named Gray and Caldwell, and some other persons who had been brought to the spot through feelings of curiosity, were mounted upon the top of the gasometer.  The object of those who had business there was either to try the amount of pressure, or to discover if there was any foul air in the tank.  We were told both, but whichever was the object matters not to our purpose, for the result would not have been different.  

In order to ascertain one or both of these facts, a lighted match was applied to a hole in the top of the gasometer, and a jet of light was, of course, immediately produced.  When the necessary observation had been made, one of the men, instead of blowing the flame out, suddenly placed his finger over the hole, and thus forced the flame within the gasometer.  

An instantaneous explosion was the consequence, the gasometer being forced completely out of its place, and the parties being thrown from the top in all directions.  They were all more or less injured, and Caldwell so much so that when we left Stokesley on Saturday, we were told that his recovery was very doubtful.  He was much hurt about the head and back.

I don't know what happened in the end to poor Mr Caldwell, but I haven't found an entry in the deaths registers for anyone of that name in Stokesley for the period from the accident to the end of 1847.

The second incident spared human life but caused enormous damage to fish:

Teesdale Mercury, 23 May 1866 

Wholesale Destruction of Fish 

The river Leven has long been noted as an excellent trout water, but we regret to learn that from Stokesley to where the Leven falls into the Tees, below Yarm, the fish have been totally destroyed.  The water in the gasometer at Stokesley being pumped, the tank having to be emptied, the water through which the gas was purified for years past, about 350 tons, was allowed to flow into the river.  The consequence has been that all the fish are killed from Stokesley to the end of the Leven.  Large quantities of trout and other fish were taken out of the water dead, and dying, on Tuesday last.

This page from the website of the National Gas Museum explains how gas was made from coal in the days before gas from the North Sea, and this one explains how gas was stored in 'gasometers'.

The Mease sisters of Stokesley

A footnote to the story of the linen mills of Stokesley & Hutton Rudby: 1823-1908 and the Mease brothers.

Thomas and John Mease had three sisters: Isabella, Rachel and Mary.  

Rachel and Mary were the youngest children of the family, born in 1807 and 1810.  They spent their lives together in Stokesley, where Mary was the town's postmistress and Rachel her assistant.  Rachael died in 1882; Mary outlived her by ten years.

Isabella was the second child of the family, born in 1794 a couple of years after Thomas.  She was the only daughter to marry.

Leeds Mercury, 9 December 1815

On the 22d ult. at Stokesley, the Rev Robert Pilter, of Pontefract, Methodist minister, to Miss Mease, of the former place

The Rev Robert Pilter was a widower and a highly respected figure in Wesleyan Methodism.  Isabella and Robert had a large family together, and the birthplaces of the children show how frequently they moved about following Robert's calling – Pontefract, Darlington, Rochdale, Stockport, Rotherham, Doncaster, Macclesfield. 

Their eldest child Thomas was the tenant of his uncle John Mease's flax-spinning mill and had an interesting encounter with the men who had come to repossess it following his uncle's failure to pay off his debt to the Darlington Bank (see Hutton Rudby 1834-1849: the Flax-Spinning Mill by the bridge)  He moved to France, where he had a successful business career.

It was in France that his father Robert Pilter died.  According to A Dictionary of Methodism he went to Lisieux for the sake of his health but died there on 27 February 1847.

Isabella and her four unmarried daughters were left in the necessity of earning their own living. 

Four years later, the 1851 Census for the east side of Howard Street, North Shields, shows that the eldest daughter, Mary Isabella Pilter (aged 28) had set up a school in which her mother and sister Margaret (26) worked as school mistresses.  Their brothers William (aged 20, a shipping master's clerk) and Richard (aged 17) were also in the household, together with the youngest sisters Elizabeth and Isabella (15 & 13), who were still at school.

Miss Mary Pilter's notices in the Newcastle papers show that she used her father's name in her advertising.  His reputation must have been of considerable advantage to her in establishing her respectability and in attracting pupils:

Newcastle Guardian & Tyne Mercury, 15 January 1853

Misses Pilter (daughters of the late Rev. R Pilter), gratefully acknowledge the continued liberal support of their friends, and respectfully announce that the duties of their Establishment will be Resumed on Tuesday, January 18th.

Howard Street, North Shields

Three years later she moved the school to a mill-owner's mansion house in an area ideal for middle-class parents in the growing manufacturing towns of Lancashire and the West Riding.  Her advertisement is confident and reassuring:

Leeds Mercury, 18 November 1854

WILLOW LODGE, NEAR SOWERBY BRIDGE

THE MISSES PILTER (daughters of the late Rev R Pilter), beg to announce that they intend to open the above Establishment for a limited number of Pupils immediately after the Christmas vacation.

Willow Lodge (lately the seat of J F Sutcliffe, Esq.) is a most commodious mansion, in a beautiful and salubrious situation, and surrounded by extensive pleasure grounds.  Its proximity to the Leeds and Manchester Railway renders it easy of access from all parts of the kingdom.

The constant aim of the Misses Pilter will be to ensure the health, happiness, and intellectual improvement of their pupils, by granting them every indulgence consistent with a well ordered household, and by imparting sound instruction in English and Continental literature.

For terms, apply to Misses Pilter, Howard-street, North Shields

It seems the proper name of the house was Lower Willow Hall as it was named as such in a notice in the Leeds Mercury of 16 June 1821 ("the Mansion-House of Mr John Sutcliffe, called Lower Willow Hall"). 

The following July, the advertisement in the Leeds Mercury that announced the new term ("the Duties of their Establishment will be Resumed") continued the reassuring theme, so encouraging for nervous prospective parents:

Every attention is paid by the Misses Pilter to the Health and happiness as well as the moral and intellectual improvement, of their pupils ... Mrs Pilter superintends the domestic arrangements ... Terms and highly respectable references on application.

The school flourished – Mary Isabella was evidently an extremely capable woman – and by the 1861 census the four sisters and their mother had 17 boarding pupils from across Yorkshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire and Co. Durham – with the addition of one Mary Pilter, born in France and evidently the daughter of their brother Thomas.

Their advertisement in the Yorkshire Post of 27 January 1868 showed that they kept up with the latest developments in education:

Yorkshire Post, 27 January 1868

WILLOW HALL, SKIRCOAT, Near Sowerby Bridge – The Misses Pilter (Daughters of the late Rev R Pilter) have availed themselves of the Cambridge University Local Examinations as a test of the efficiency of their School, and have great pleasure in referring to the success of their pupils.  All the candidates from Willow Hall passed in every subject in which they were examined.  The NEXT TERM will commence on THURSDAY the 30th instant.

The Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate had been established by the University in 1858 to administer local examinations so that students who weren't members of the University could sit exams at centres near to home.  The aim of the Syndicate was to raise standards in education.  Girls had only been officially allowed to enter for the exams on the same basis as boys in 1863.  With pride, the Misses Pilter announced the following year in the Leeds Mercury of 10 July 1869 that

In each of the last three years a fifth of the whole number of pupils at Willow Hall

had passed and 

Honours have been taken in English, religious knowledge, French, music, and drawing

The 1871 census for Lower Willow Hall Boarding School, Skircoat showed that Isabella and her daughters now had 32 pupils, including Mary Sykes from Stokesley.  Their 18 year old niece Margaret Pilter from France was with them, perhaps as a visitor.

The school was clearly flourishing.  Then, only a few months after the census, tragedy struck the eldest and the youngest sisters.  On 20 April 1871, Mary died aged 48 and a couple of months later

Elizabeth died aged 35.

For a short while the survivors carried on with the school.  But Mary had evidently been the driving force behind the enterprise and it must have been very hard to have the heart to keep going.  Isabella and her daughters Margaret and Isabella sold the school and retired to live on their savings with their brother John Mease Pilter, who had followed his father into the Wesleyan ministry.  By July 1873, a new headmistress was advertising the school: "Principal, Miss Wilson, (late Misses Pilter)". 

Isabella Mease died in 1888 in Wales.  She had outlived all her siblings except the youngest, Mary, who was her junior by 16 years

Thomas Mease & John Wesley's umbrella

A chance find reveals that Thomas Mease of Stokesley (1792-1862) was once the owner of John Wesley's green silk umbrella:

Northampton Mercury, 31 December 1870

Kettering

CORN EXCHANGE, - On Tuesday evening a tea meeting, with a Christmas tree, took place in connection with the Wesleyan Society.  There was also in the room John Wesley's umbrella, with a leather case.  The umbrella was made of strong green silk.  Mr Wesley gave it to James Rodgers, and his son presented it to Mr Thos Mease, of Stokesley, who gave it to the Rev James Everett, of Sunderland by whom it was lent to Mr H Heighton as an attraction on this occasion.  A goodly number was present both at tea and at the sale of the various articles on the Christmas tree during the evening.  The proceeds were upwards of £20, which is to be devoted to the liquidation of the circuit debt.

For Thomas Mease's colourful life, start reading here

Thomas Redmayne of Taitlands

Thomas Redmayne of Taitlands has appeared on this blog before (you'll find him first mentioned in July 2014 and on several later occasions – here and here, for example), because he was married to the aunt of John Richard Stubbs.

(John's early life can be found at A Boroughbridge Boyhood in the 1850s: Introducing John Stubbs.  He became a solicitor in the new industrial town of Middlesbrough and his diaries from 1853 to 1907, though succinct, are of interest to students of Middlesbrough history because of the people he knew.  There are photographs of the diary pages, with some transcriptions,  from here onward.)

I had hoped, when I wrote about the Settle and Stainforth part of John Stubbs' life, that I would find out more about it from a local historian, so I was very pleased to be contacted by Catherine Vaughan-Williams.  And I was even more pleased to find that she was researching the life of Thomas Redmayne.  

Her article on Thomas Redmayne is appearing in this year's North Craven Heritage Trust Journal and should be available online before long.  In it you will find the story of his family, how he made his money, the personal tragedies that befell him and the fine country house he built, Taitlands, which Catherine describes here:

a luxurious country residence 'with spacious drawing, dining and breakfast rooms and nine bedrooms with dressing rooms', lavishly furnished with 'rosewood and spanish mahogany furniture, Brussels and tapestry carpets' and the usual accoutrements of early Victorian fashion. Attics, kitchens, scullery, butler’s pantry, cellars, and outbuildings, stables and coach house with pigeon loft, not to mention fourteen bee boles, completed the establishment. 

Then & Now: Asiatic Cholera & Covid-19

Listening to the news of the coronavirus, it seems timely to look back on another rapidly spreading disease – the pandemic of Asiatic Cholera that reached Hutton Rudby in 1832.  

This was a very frightening pandemic, not because it was terribly contagious – it was noted in 1876 that out of nineteen people drinking from a infected vessel, only five contracted the infection – but because nobody knew how it spread or what caused it and because without treatment it is fatal in half the cases.  Nowadays it is very treatable; the website of Médecins sans frontières explains that it "can be treated simply and successfully by immediately replacing the fluids and salts lost through vomiting and diarrhoea – with prompt rehydration, less than one per cent of cholera patients die."  

The arrival of the cholera in Hutton Rudby was to prove pivotal in the life of the new vicar, the Revd Robert Barlow.  The story of the cholera and Mr Barlow is told in my book Remarkable, but still True: the story of the Revd R J Barlow and Hutton Rudby in the time of the cholera which I posted on this blog in December 2012.

Here are a few excerpts from Chapter 11. 1832: The year of the Cholera to entice readers back to the chapter itself (just click on that hyperlink to get there), with its account of the dilemmas faced by the authorities and the reactions of business interests and ordinary people:

Cholera had always been endemic in pockets of India, but now, perhaps spread by the new conditions of greatly increased trade and British troop movements, it broke out explosively, and soon produced on the minds of the medical attendants the strong conviction that it was a new disease – a most fearful Pestilence.   

It swiftly passed its usual boundaries and spread widely and rapidly along the trade routes of Asia.  An exceptionally severe winter prevented its further spread into Europe, but a second pandemic beginning in Bengal in 1826 spread rapidly across Asia and the middle East. 

By August 1830 it had reached Moscow, and helped by large numbers of refugees from a savage military campaign in Poland, it travelled rapidly along the complex of busy trade routes across Europe.  It carried with it a terrifying reputation, and even though its impact in Britain was far less damaging than had first been feared, it would cause over 31,000 deaths in England, Scotland and Wales in the years 1831 to 1832. 

The British quarantine regulations were developed from those devised to combat plague and yellow fever.

The 31,000 deaths were from a population of 16.54 million (this website explains the figures from the 1831 census).  I think the population of England, Scotland and Wales is now about 65.4m people.

Dr Simpson [who studied the 1832 outbreak] wrote in 1849: 

If quarantine could be strictly enforced, there cannot be the slightest doubt that it would be successful.  The difficulties, however, of enforcing quarantine, between countries where extensive commercial intercourse is constantly going on, would appear to be quite insurmountable.

Internal quarantine was considered:

The Board of Health had considered the possibility of internal quarantine to limit the spread of cholera once it arrived, but it was obviously impracticable.  Given the terrifying nature of the disease reported in Asia and eastern Europe, they recommended local isolation of the first cases and the separation of the sick from the healthy.  This was to be done by a network of local Boards of Health.  The Board envisaged the removal of the sick into cholera hospitals, and thence into convalescent homes, while their contacts would be taken into isolation houses; if all three buildings could be in the same enclosure, this could be conveniently guarded by the local military.  Their homes would be purified with chloride of lime and hot lime wash; the dead would be buried swiftly in ground close to the house for the infected.  Their first circular, published in the press, called for local Boards to be established,

There should be established a local board of health, to consist of the Chief and other Magistrates, the Clergyman of the parish, two or more Physicians or Medical Practitioners, and three or more of the Principal Inhabitants…

The Central Board advised the magistrates to prevent, as far as possible, intercourse with any infected town.  Magistrates and clergy were asked to improve the conditions in which cholera spread:

the poor, ill-fed, and unhealthy part of the population, and especially those who have been addicted to the drinking of spirituous liquors, and indulgence in irregular habits, have been the greatest sufferers from the disease…. 

This circular was published on 20 October 1831 shortly before the news of the first official case of cholera was confirmed in Sunderland in late October. 

Cholera came to Hutton Rudby at nine o'clock in the evening on Tuesday 2 October 1832, when the weaver John Cook came back from Newcastle to his home in the Bay Horse Yard.

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