Nostalgia with Margaret Watson: How Dewsbury became a thriving industrial town

Margaret Watson writes: Industry brought great prosperity to Dewsbury and provided thousands of jobs for its people, but there were sacrifices to be made.

Whole swathes of countryside, lush farmland and picturesque meadows were swallowed up to make way for the new factories and mills.

Who could have imagined that this sleepy little township would soon become the centre of the Heavy Woollen District of the West Riding?

The local invention of a rag grinding machine in 1813 by a Batley man, Benjamin Law, started it all.

This was revolutionary, for it enabled discarded woollen cloth to be reprocessed as shoddy and mungo, which was much, much cheaper than virgin wool.

Mills started springing up all along the banks of the River Calder, some becoming major manufacturers of quality blankets, coats and military uniforms.

But it was Thornhill Lees which became the industrial heart of Dewsbury with thriving factories being built on nearly every street corner.

The main attraction to this part of Dewsbury was the Calder which provided water for the steam engines that powered the mills.

Sadly, the smoke and soot from their chimneys rapidly blackened the golden sandstone of the developing town centre.

Three railway stations were built, the first in 1848, and new roads laid, waterworks opened and bridges erected.

Thousands of houses also had to be built to accommodate the growing number of people coming to the town looking for work.

Unfortunately, many of these houses were thrown up in a haphazard way, most of them back-to-back with no ventilation. You didn’t have to get planning permission in those days.

Despite the growing prosperity the town, little attention was paid to the housing of the poor in Victorian Dewsbury.

It would take well over a hundred years before the “slums” of Dewsbury would be demolished and new housing estates built.

Although the textile industry was always the major industry in the town, there were also many other thriving businesses opening up to support it.

One of these was J and J Horsfield boiler-makers whose premises were in Vulcan Road, Dewsbury.

It was founded in 1828 by John Horsfield who was making boilers, not only for local mills but also for coal mines and factories all over the country.

The transporting of these boilers in the early days was done by large teams of horses, sometimes as many as 30.

The boilers, some weighing as much as 30 tons, were so big and cumbersome it could take up to a week to get some of them clear of the town. What a spectacle that must have been!.

Following the horses were traction engines, soon replaced by the internal combustion engine and low-loaders now dealing with heavy haulage like boilers.

I remember as a child living just round the corner from where the Horsfield works were in Vulcan Road, and thinking what a dark and depressing place it looked.

It was a noisy, dirty place, and the blaze from the furnace lit up the sky at night.

There was always a lot of banging going on, sometimes throughout the night, and how the people in the area got any sleep I’ll never know.

I suppose they got used to it because most had been born into it because industry in those days could open up anywhere they wanted.

From its early days, Horsfields were well known and respected as boiler makers not only in local business circles but throughout Great Britain and the Continent.

And it was always run, from generation to generation, by members of the Horsfield family.

Like many of the major employers in the town, the Horsfield family involved themselves in matters concerning the town.

They were connected with the old Centenery Methodist Church where one of its members, Charles Horsfield, was an accredited local preacher in the Methodist circuit.

For well over a century, this church in Daisy Hill was never without a member of the Horsfield family playing some role in its affairs, many of them becoming Sunday school teachers.

Like most of the major employers, John Horsfield and his descendants would remain in the town to live near their workers and their factories.

In the coming weeks, I hope to write about some of those factories which sprang up in Dewsbury on the back of the Industrial Revolution.

These firms provided employment for thousands of local people and the goods they made were sold all over the world.

Mill owners also made generous bequests towards improving the town, helping build hospitals, schools and public buildings.

Most notable of these was mill owner Sir Mark Oldroyd, who also became MP for Dewsbury as well as being Mayor of the Borough.

There were other manufacturers who also left legacies to help house the elderly, sick and poor.

But it was always stipulated that those being helped had to come from

Dewsbury.

In 1898 The Fletcher Homes were provided by the Fletcher family at a cost of £8,000.

These were for elderly couples or single persons of good character who had resided in Dewsbury not less than 20 years.

In 1936 under the will of Alderman Greenwood, a sum of £3,000 was

bequeathed to Dewsbury Corporation for the building and maintenance of six houses for the poor at Earlsheaton.

The houses, situated in Town Street, Earlsheaton, were opened by Mrs William Greenwood in 1936.

Most of the mills I am writing about have been long closed, but they are still remembered by the people who worked there.

Who can forget Jas Smith’s dry cleaners in Ravensthorpe, or Wormald’s andnWalker’s in Thornhill Lees?

Or Austin’s steelworks, founded in the 1840s? Or Joshua Ellis’s and Mark Oldroyd’s?

I hope to write about them soon.