_{1.13                 BIN 1853 KNI   BHM 1796 B27}

_{Material: Paper booklet             Scale: 20ft: 1in}

_{Size: 26*38cm                         Condition: Fair}

_{This is a detailed sale plan of steam-powered corn mill adjacent to the Leeds-Liverpool canal. I have used the plan before in an earlier series known as ‘Map of the Week’, but this older work may not be so easy to access now, and in any case Bingley needs more representation among these online maps. After its initial publication Mr Rod Moulding kindly helped me with a detailed history of the premises, although I have simplified the account here. Gratifyingly, this map has a date and a clear purpose. It was drawn by E.S.Knight in 1853, when the freehold property was to be sold by auction at the Fleece Inn. Knight was a land surveyor of Queensgate in Bradford. The main building, clearly labelled Dubb Mill, shows a steam powered corn mill with an adjoining residence. The various sub-units are easy to make out as are the canal, tow-path and bridge. Adjacent to the bridge is a ‘sand pond’, but I don’t know what purpose this served.}

_{The auction was advertised in the Leeds Mercury. The mill was apparently three stories high, and the corn grinding was undertaken by six pairs of ‘French stones’. The house, stables, mechanic’s and blacksmith’s shops were also listed for sale. The benefits of the location, close to the canal and railway, were made clear.  Particulars concerning the property are said to be obtainable from George Beanland of Great Horton. (George Beanland of George, Joseph, and John Beanland, corn and flour dealers of Beckside, is perhaps most likely to be the man involved.) Unfortunately, no owner or vendor of the corn mill is mentioned by name. At the time of the sale the yearly tenants were William England & Son, and the under-tenant one Jonathan Cryer. (According to the London Gazette in the following year the partnership of William England & Son of Bingley was dissolved, and the assets were transferred to brothers Abraham and William England.) Interestingly the newspaper advertisement promotes the idea of converting the corn mill to cotton or worsted spinning. It was by no means unknown for corn mills to be converted to textile mills in the Bradford area, although it was rare for conversions to move in the opposite direction.}

_{We can be sure of its earliest possible date of construction since the mill is so accurately aligned on this section of the canal, which was completed by 1774. The shape of the site, and its position adjacent to a canal bridge, makes it easy to identify in other maps, even if the buildings are unnamed. There is no doubt that the mill is included in the earliest source available to me, the 1819 Fox plan of Bingley, but if Dubb Mill was always powered in the same way it cannot have been as old as the canal since the first steam powered corn mill was only built in Bristol some five years after the date that the canal was opened. Moreover the 1819 building block plan does not seem to allow space for the engine and boiler house, yet what other power supply could there have been in this situation?}

_{A few years before our plan, in the first OS map (surveyed in the late 1840s), the older Dubb Mill is present although no indication is given of its function. Then, 35 years after the mill sale, in the OS 25 inch map of 1889, there is simply a warehouse at this location which appears to be part of Britannia Mills. But in 1889, if you crossed the bridge and walked along the towpath on the opposite side of the canal in the direction of Bingley town centre, you would pass Ebor Mills (worsted) to reach a second worsted mill by then itself confusingly called Dubb Mill. In the first OS map, at the position where in 1889 there was to be one day what I might call ‘new’ Dubb Mill, there were then three buildings identified as cotton mills. A later map suggests that these units were also called Dubb Mills, which must surely have caused confusion. It may also come as a surprise that cotton is being processed in an area so strongly associated with worsted but in fact nearby Keighley seems to have been a centre for the cotton industry in the early nineteenth century.}

_{Harry Speight (Chronicles and Stories of Old Bingley, 1898) mentions a man called Robert Ellis, who seems to have been the brother of Bradford Quaker James Ellis. Robert took ‘the old Dubb corn mill’ about 1818 and was joined there by James in 1822. I assume that this was the same Quaker James Ellis who was so active in famine relief in Connemara in the late 1840s. Speight also describes the construction of an ‘early worsted mill’ with an attached residence by Joseph and Samuel Moulding. This would certainly be an accurate description of the building on our plan in all respects. Speight wrote that about 1825 William Anderton took part of this mill but soon began building premises of his own in Dubb Lane for wool combing and spinning. These later buildings, he wrote, were later occupied by ‘the Ellises’ who raised and enlarged them for cotton spinning, and a new mill was built on the opposite side of the road which for some years (in the late nineteenth century this would be) was occupied by Samuel Rushforth JP.}

_{It is really hard to fit all these statements together, however a good deal is known about William Anderton (1793-1884) who came from Cullingworth since his Bingley enterprise features in the Factories Inquiry Commission of 1834. His premises were described as steam powered and undertaking worsted yarn spinning. There were 56 people employed (16 under 12 years of age) which seems reasonable for a small mill. The employees’ hours of work were 6 am – 7.30 pm. The machinery was stopped for a dinner break of 45 minutes at noon. There were six holidays per year (8 days in total) when the whole factory ‘stood’ and no wages were paid. Anderton’s mill is described as Dubb Mill, Bingley ‘a mill erected in 1819’ so I am reasonably sure this is the mill in our plan. Life at William Anderton’s mill was not without incident. In 1850 the Bradford Observer recorded an assault on one Fanny Broadly which arose from a ‘dispute over bobbins’ at Dubb. In the census of 1851 William Anderton is living at Wellington House, Wellington Street. He describes himself as a worsted spinner & manufacturer employing 240 males 265 females. This sounds like a reasonably large operation and must surely indicate new premises. Remarkably 30 years later William Anderton was still alive, at the age of 88, and living with his daughter Mary and son in law John Brigg at Broomfield House, Keighley.}

_{We seem then to have four mills to explain: the old Dubb corn mill, an early worsted mill constructed by the Mouldings, the Anderton-Ellis mill, and the Rushworth new mill which is perhaps the ‘new’ Dubb Mill. I’m not claiming that they all were in in operation simultaneously, nor that they retained one function during the full periods of their existence. I have tried to pull this together. There must have been an old corn mill in Bingley, possibly close enough to the river Aire to use water as a power source. In 1818-19 Messrs Joseph & Samuel Moulding constructed the first Dubb Mill. If it was a worsted mill then hand-combing and weaving would have been employed. William Anderton may have later been involved with this mill but by 1825 he was building his own nearby in Dubb Lane for wool-combing and spinning. William and James Ellis took this over for cotton spinning and Anderton must have found other premises. In the later nineteenth century Samuel Rushforth, who had started life working for Anderton, adapted the cotton mills and rebuilt a new Dubb Mill. My guess is that once steam power was introduced at the old Dubb mill it could function either as a corn mill or worsted mill and performed as both at various times. It clearly survived until 1865 but was later converted into warehouse by 1889.}