Harle Syke is a small village within the parish of
Briercliffe
Briercliffe (historically Briercliffe-with-Extwistle) is a civil parish in the borough of Burnley, in Lancashire, England. It is situated north of Burnley. The parish contains suburbs of Burnley (including Harle Syke and Haggate), and the ru ...
, situated three miles north of
Burnley
Burnley () is a town and the administrative centre of the wider Borough of Burnley in Lancashire, England, with a 2001 population of 73,021. It is north of Manchester and east of Preston, Lancashire, Preston, at the confluence of the River C ...
,
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly.
The non-metropolitan county of Lancash ...
, England. It was the home to eleven weaving firms, working out of seven mills.
Queen Street Mill
Queen Street Mill is a former weaving mill in Harle Syke, a suburb to the north-east of Burnley, Lancashire, that is a It was built in 1894 for the Queen Street Manufacturing Company. It closed on 12 March 1982 and was mothballed, but was ...
closed in 1982, and was converted to a textile museum, preserving it as a working mill. It is the world's last 19th-century steam powered weaving mill.
Location
Harle Syke lies at the edge of the Burnley urban area connecting it to the village of
Haggate
Haggate is a small village within the parish of Briercliffe, situated three miles north of Burnley, Lancashire. The village is mostly built around a small crossroads, with routes towards Burnley, Nelson and Todmorden. The first buildings in the ...
. The main road climbs from the Burnley border to the small crossroads in Haggate, with a road between
Nelson
Nelson may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Nelson'' (1918 film), a historical film directed by Maurice Elvey
* ''Nelson'' (1926 film), a historical film directed by Walter Summers
* ''Nelson'' (opera), an opera by Lennox Berkeley to a lib ...
and
Todmorden
Todmorden ( ; ) is a market town and civil parish in the Upper Calder Valley in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, England. It is north-east of Manchester, south-east of Burnley and west of Halifax. In 2011 it had a population of 15,481.
Todm ...
. The village dates from the late 19th century, when most of the weaving mills were built.
The origins of the name Harle Syke, first used for a farm nearby, are descriptive; ''Harle'' is a person's name, while ''sike'' or ''syke'' is a local word meaning 'ditch'.
The village itself is relatively flat rising to 800 feet above sea level. To the south is the valley of the
River Don or Thursden Brook and to the north is hill of Marsden Height, () in
Brierfield. The buildings in the village are predominantly stone-built.
All the public houses are open as of 2015, and it has a social club (Briercliffe Social Club). There is a
Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britai ...
church
Church may refer to:
Religion
* Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities
* Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination
* Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship
* C ...
.
Harle Syke has direct road links with Burnley and Nelson, and is served by local bus services (4,5) operated by
Burnley Bus Company
The Burnley Bus Company operates both local and regional bus services in Greater Manchester and Lancashire, England. It is a subsidiary of Transdev Blazefield, which operates bus services across Greater Manchester, Lancashire, North Yorkshire ...
.
History
Briercliffe was named in the
Charter of Freewarren granted to
Edmund de Lacy the Lord of
Blackburnshire
Blackburn Hundred (also known as Blackburnshire) is a historic sub-division of the county of Lancashire, in northern England. Its chief town was Blackburn, in the southwest of the hundred. It covered an area similar to modern East Lancashire, in ...
in 1251,
[A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 6 (1911), pp. 468–47]
Extract at British History Online
Accessed 2011 allowing him to use the area for hunting
hares,
rabbits and
foxes.
In the 18th century, the people of the area worked mostly as farmers and were major producers of
wool
Wool is the textile fibre obtained from sheep and other mammals, especially goats, rabbits, and camelids. The term may also refer to inorganic materials, such as mineral wool and glass wool, that have properties similar to animal wool. ...
. There was also a coal mine (which remained open until the middle of the 20th century), that supplied coal to the rapidly growing
cotton mill
A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system.
Although some were driven b ...
s in
Burnley
Burnley () is a town and the administrative centre of the wider Borough of Burnley in Lancashire, England, with a 2001 population of 73,021. It is north of Manchester and east of Preston, Lancashire, Preston, at the confluence of the River C ...
. In 1850, a group of men from
Haggate
Haggate is a small village within the parish of Briercliffe, situated three miles north of Burnley, Lancashire. The village is mostly built around a small crossroads, with routes towards Burnley, Nelson and Todmorden. The first buildings in the ...
founded the first cotton mill in Briercliffe, Harle Syke Mill. They chose a site on farmland next to the road to Burnley, near a natural
spring
Spring(s) may refer to:
Common uses
* Spring (season)
Spring, also known as springtime, is one of the four temperate seasons, succeeding winter and preceding summer. There are various technical definitions of spring, but local usage of ...
and constructed workers housing close by.
The success of Harle Syke Mill (today known as 'Oxford Mill'), which operated as a '
room and power mill A room and power mill was a type of textile mill found in Lancashire, England, in the 19th century. Small businesses paid the owner rent for space for their machines and power from the mill engine or waterwheel.
The system
In, for example Nelson, ...
', renting out the space and power from line shafts to manufacturing companies, led to further construction. The new village of Harle Syke expanded steadily until
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. Harle Syke became the base of many Burnley cotton firms during the time when Lancashire was the cotton capital of the world.
Harle Syke children went to Haggate School, originally a
Sunday school for the Baptist Church, which was built on the site of the Haggate cricket pitch in 1882. Most at 12 would become part-timers at one of the mills, or stay on until 13. The school later became the village
primary school
A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary e ...
, and was more recently used by
Burnley College.
The mills
In a sense the village was built up around the cotton weaving sheds, or mills as they were also known. The word 'mill' can refer to the building, or to one of the manufacturing companies that rents space in such a mill. For example, Haggate Weaving Company shared the other half of a mill with Altham's of Heasandford Mill, Burnley. There, the buildings and engine were owned by a room and power company called Briercliffe Mill. Because of the availability of room and power, the Harle Syke sheds gave birth to many small companies who grew to build their own reputations and mills in the village, or Burnley and beyond.
The first steam-driven power loom shed in Briercliffe was a 400-loom shed at Lane Bottom set up by William Smith of Hill End in 1848, near his existing hand loom factory, the 1777 Hill Factory. The Extwistle Mill at Extwistle was a small water-powered mill with 100 looms, that eventually converted to steam. In spite of the 1826–1848 crisis, handloom weavers were still having work put out to them from outside the district, but the community was suffering extreme poverty. Smith's Mill, or Lane End Mill, took on both young women and young men, their parents sticking to hand loom weaving. The 200 paid jobs it provided set new expectations of income for teenagers in the district.
'
Harle Syke Shed, the next mill to open in 1858, has an interesting history, not so much for the architecture but the means by which it was financed over the 150 years of its existence. The Haggate Joint Stock Commercial Company was a collaborative venture set up under
Sir Robert Peel
Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet, (5 February 1788 – 2 July 1850) was a British Conservative statesman who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1834–1835 and 1841–1846) simultaneously serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer ...
's
Joint Stock Companies Act of 1844. 64 wage-earning men and women signed the deed of settlement and agreed to take up one £10 share paying a one shilling deposit. Two thirds of them were weavers. Though co-operative in name, the company structure was structured to make profit, and the companies like this that did make it through the downturn of 1857, and the severe recession caused by the
Cotton Famine
The Lancashire Cotton Famine, also known as the Cotton Famine or the Cotton Panic (1861–65), was a depression in the textile industry of North West England, brought about by overproduction in a time of contracting world markets. It coincided wi ...
of 1862–63, were more severe employers than the private family businesses. Shares were traded, and dividend paid, and the shareholders often contributed unpaid work to keep the business as well as having unlimited liability for the companies debts. In effect they were running two businesses, protecting the capital assets that were the buildings, boilers and engine, and then manufacturing and trading in cotton cloth. The five elected directors had a great deal of discretion on how and how long the business should operate.
In 1865, the company was reorganised. The Haggate Joint Stock Commercial Company became solely a room and power company. The looms were disposed of to the shareholders, each receiving a pro-rata allocation. In 1865, the property company appears to have achieved steady growth and was expanded in the 1860s and 1880s. The producer partnerships that were formed when the looms were allocated consolidated, and shares in the room and power 'walls' company were traded resulting in a smaller number of shareholders with larger investments. There were seven 'producer partnerships' in 1865.
Briercliffe Mill was a direct imitation of the reconstituted Harle Syke Mill. It was a pure room and power mill built in 1880 directly opposite it. It was occupied by two firms: Abraham Altham and the Haggate Weaving Company. The Briercliffe Mill Company and the Haggate Weaving Company were both taken over by Taylor & Hartley of Westhoughton, and the company closed in 1960.
The Queen Street Manufacturing Company was a later direct imitation of the Haggate Joint Stock Commercial Company. It took advantage of favourable trading conditions in 1894 to finance itself with 4000 £5.00 shares sold mainly to locals. It built and then extended
Queen Street Mill
Queen Street Mill is a former weaving mill in Harle Syke, a suburb to the north-east of Burnley, Lancashire, that is a It was built in 1894 for the Queen Street Manufacturing Company. It closed on 12 March 1982 and was mothballed, but was ...
having 1135 Burnley looms. At times it also rented space at the adjoining Primrose Mill, bringing its loomage up to 1500.
There was a lot of activity in 1903–1905. The Haggate Joint Stock Commercial Company went into liquidation on 28 February 1903 with the assets passing to the Harle Syke Mill Company. The Haggate £10 shares were valued at £25, and the 53 shareholders in the old company were paid in shares in the new company. The directors were the same. This was used as an opportunity to expand. A new larger engine was purchased, and a large new weaving shed designed by Joseph Keithley was built. The new company was a property company and a production company. The new shed accommodated 900 looms. Additional funding was found by issuing
promissory notes at a rate of 4%. A mortgage for £12000 was obtained from the Burnley Building Society.
Walshaw Mill was incorporated 5 January 1905. It was financed with 12000 £1 shares and recapitalised later with an additional 30000. It started with 586 looms which was later increased to nearly 1100.
Alongside Queen Street Mill were two other thousand loom sheds. Primrose Mill was built in 1906 by the West family so was not a joint stock company, and neither was the King's Mill.
Of the mills,
Harle Syke Mill, now called Oxford Mill, and Siberia Mill, are rebuilt as industrial units and there are plans for some housing. Briercliffe Mill is in use by various firms including for document storage, and similarly with Walshaw Mill. Kings Mill is now an antiques centre, Queen Street Mill is a textile museum, and Primrose has been demolished after a fire, when it was being used to make beds.
The mill engines
Harle Syke is unique in having preserved two of its mill engines. The first is in
Queen Street Mill
Queen Street Mill is a former weaving mill in Harle Syke, a suburb to the north-east of Burnley, Lancashire, that is a It was built in 1894 for the Queen Street Manufacturing Company. It closed on 12 March 1982 and was mothballed, but was ...
and has never been moved, but the second is preserved in the
Science Museum
A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in ...
in London, and came from Siberia Mill, it is a cross compound engine, of 700 hp. The Queen Street Mill engine is an 1895 single tandem compound of 500 hp Corliss valves driving a flywheel. The London engine which came from Harle Syke mill is a cross compound with Corliss valves driving an 18-ft, 6-inch flywheel. It was constructed in 1903 by Burnley Ironworks.
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
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Villages in Lancashire
Geography of Burnley