Chapter 31

Industrial sites on Tom Rudd and Bitter Becks

We turn to a consideration of the industries which thrived along the banks of the two streams which were “a great convenience to the manufacturers”. Tom Rudd Beck, rising in the low fells south of Embleton, flows through the cemetery and under the former railway, then immediately passes the ruins of two tanneries. Wood’s 1832 map records that the upstream building belonged to George Beeby at this date (it was extended before the t863 OS map) and the downstream tannery to Joshua Threlkeld. In Beeby’s building could be seen, until demolished in 1979, the culvert which took the race from the Beck and the mill house with ornamented door pillars. One or both of these buildings were known as High Tom Rudd Tannery or Long Croft Tannery. A licence was granted in 1906 to In. Johnston of Skinner Street to carry on the offensive trade of gut scraper at Long Croft Tannery, Windmill Lane. [1]

Cockermouth’s second windmill stood on Windmill Lane at the corner of the roadway to the tanneries. (Fig. 34). All traces have disappeared but its position is shown on early maps. The earliest known reference to it was in 1823 [2] and an article in the Carlisle Journal in 1829 stated that the Cockermouth Independent Chapel (now the United Reformed Church) possessed Ha powerful and fine toned organ built by Mr. Mark Hall, a poor man who resides at the Windmill, near this town”. [3] Bolton commented in 1912 that the windmill “will be remembered by many of middle age in the town”. [4]

Across Tom Rudd from the two tanneries stands Little Mill. This was probably the corn mill referred to in the pre-I215 charter of Alice de Rumelli and the fulling mill of the Minister’s Accounts of 1437/8. By the 1578 survey it was the “corn mill on the Lord’s waste”, near Long Croft (the old name for Windmill Lane). There are numerous references to it during the next 300 years.

The lease of Little Mill was often linked with other matters. Thus when it was let in 1667, for 21 years at a rent of £12, there was reference to small tithes, parcels of demesne land, stints, small tolls and the office of Scavenger.

In 1763 came a change, when the mill was leased to a tanner for grinding bark. It continued as a bark mill until Daniel Dunglinson moved in, tired of his difficulties at Rubby Banks. He took it for 28 years at £17 a year, and although the previous tenants should have restored it for corn, it was Dunglinson who agreed to demolish and rebuild the premises. John Mackreth’s estimate for the mason’s work was £321. A further £20 was spent on clearing the old building and sinking the tail race and £40 was deducted for old materials reused. In addition there was the millwright’s estimate of£315 for wheels and machinery. Shortly afterwards, in 1814, another £205 was spent on two new waterwheels and repairs to buildings and the floodgate. [6]

Unfortunately Dunglinson ran into difficulties and an inventory was made (including crops growing near the house) for distraint, the total value being £71-4s. This was in 1824 and presumably he remained, for it was not until 1828 that the mill was re-let, not by auction but in the light of proposals made for the “Earl’s Water Corn Mill Little Mill at Head of Kirkgate” with the house and closes. It went to an Ambleside miller, Thomas Townson, for £60 a year. but he proved an unsatisfactory tenant and as his seven-year lease was ending he was told by the Lord’s agent, Robert Benson, that unless he put the buildings and equipment into good condition proceedings would be taken against him. [7] He stayed on another two years and was then followed by a succession of millers and flour merchants. The mill is shown as disused on 1923 and 1938 maps, but became a saw mill. The large mill pond is filled in and grassed, and has now been used for modem dwellings. The mill stands derelict. As ‘farmer’ of the tolls the lessee of Little Mill used to keep a boar for the benefit of the town. In 1754 a statement was made by John Meales, then nearly 70 years old, that he remembered

• “Thomas Stoddart who was fanner of the Little Mill and Tolls in Cockermouth about 60 years ago; and that the said Thomas kept a Boar, and commonly received the Tyth Piggs from the Inhabitants of Cockermouth. their usual method oftything was, for the Owner of the Piggs to take one out of the whole, and then Stoddart had his choice of the remaining number.” [8]

Later a shilling might be paid instead of the pig and another record, dated 1 752, said that one pig was taken out of every litter of ten and that for smaller litters a proportionate money payment was made. [9] The same record also said that no boar had been kept for some time.

Below Little Mill stands Low Tom Rudd Tannery, now converted into dwellings. Looking down from Lorton Road one may see the blocked-in recesses of the former louvered openings which were a feature of tanneries and the large garden area once filled with pits. An early nineteenth century map names it as Mr. Atkinson’s tannery, Wood’s map as John Threlkeld’s.

Passing under Lorton Road into Skinner Street we are, as the name implies, in an area of skinneries and small tanneries, one of which was still operating in 1914.

The small building which until recently spanned the beck a little lower down was powered by a water wheel beneath the floor. Marked ‘Mill John Threlkeld’ on the 1832 map it was probably used as a tannery, at one time crushed bark for the nearby tanneries of Skinner Street and more recently was used for a portable buildings and fencing business. For many years it was a warehouse for the shoe making business of the Rydiard family. Joseph Rydiard began business on Cocker Bridge in 1850, his son George crossing the road to build the shop in 1864 on the site of a lower building which had been the street frontage of Wilson’s hat factory. John F. Rydiard followed his father in the business and when he died in 1941 it was continued for the fourth generation by his daughter and her husband, Nora and John Quail, until it passed out of the family in 1972. The firm is a good example of Cockermouth’s self-sufficiency, for, although no shoes are made on the premises today, there was until 1939 a staff producing not only shoes but a very hard-wearing brand of farm boots. [10]

Between Tom Rudd Beck and the railway once stood the large mill of the Cockermouth Tweed Company – hence ‘Tweed Mill Lane’. The building was erected in 1872-4 at a cost of £36,000 and the 120 feet high chimney became a landmark. The ground floor was the warehouse and above it were fulling, scouring and drying machines, a hydraulic press and carding and twisting rooms, with 40 looms in the weaving room on the top floor. Other features were a Glover’s gas meter for 200 lights, a lift with a patent safety brake, steam piping for winter heating and a patent coal economiser, similar to one recently installed in Harris’s linen mill and which was to save its cost in 18 months. There were also a dyehouse and a scouring house. Water was brought by a 315 feet drift from the Cocker to a reservoir measuring 100 by 48 by 12feet. [11] The mill produced rugs and blankets, including imitations of leopard and tiger skins. The business was not a success. Already in the general depression of 1877 employees were being dismissed [12] and in 1883, less than ten years after completion, the mill was sold to William Brown and Company of Selkirk for £6,000. [13] At its peak between three and four hundred people were employed. By 1897 the premises were known as the Atlas Works [14] and occupied by A. and H. Rea, manufacturing confectioners.

Then in January 1913 they were leased by a syndicate newly formed to manufacture cycle cars, under the management of J. A. Forrester, son of a local coach-builder. There was a growing demand for these small three or four wheeled cars with motor cycle features and the Cockermouth firm planned to produce two models. ‘The Cycle Car’ of August 1913 commented

• “Far away in the little town of Cockermouth, on the West Coast of Cumberland, an old tweed mill has been converted into an up-to-date cycle-car manufacturing works, and is now engaged in turning out two cycle cars of unusual design. The first is chain-driven with an 8 h.p. J.A.P. gearbox by a Coventry silent chain and thence the rear axle … The clutch is of the internal cone type, lined with Ferodo, and fitted on the primary shaft. The brakes are of the external band type, one being operated by a side lever, the other by a foot pedal, and both working on the rear wheels …. the whole machine sells for 122 guineas.” [£128] [15]

The second model, of 6-8 h.p., was air-cooled and had a specially designed Sturmey Archer gearbox giving three forward speeds and reverse and sold for 97 guineas.(£102)

This new Cockermouth industry was presumably killed by the outbreak of war in 1914. As far as is known no ‘Cumbria’ car survives, only one wire-spoked wheel and it is not known whether this was made in the tweed mill or supplied from elsewhere. [16]

The mill was demolished about 1918, many of the slates, etc., being bought by the Council. [17] One block of single storey buildings was left and has been used for storage by a number of firms in the town Sealby Bros., grocers of Station Street, were there by 1925 [18] and in recent years Leslie Cleeland, furnishers of Main Street, have used it as a warehouse. The Angle American Oil Co. Ltd. and the Shell Oil Company have both had petrol stores in the tweed mill grounds, with a railway siding for tanker wagons. [19] Since they left, the area has been used by coal merchants, builders and agricultural machinery suppliers.

The first industrial site on the Cocker’s other tributary, Bitter Beck, was a brick works in the wood to the east of Wyndham House. The ‘frog pond’ formed by the diggings was a favourite skating rink until filled in by refuse from the castle. [20] Just above the town St. Helen’s Tannery stood on the Beck. This is thought to be a very early tannery site, possibly that known to be in Cockermouth in the 12th century. Certainly the stream was referred to as ‘Sketirbek’ in about 1442, a name given to it because of its polluted state from the tanning processes.· Until recently two buildings remained, with the typical slatted ‘windows’, but one was destroyed in February 1975 when four boys were playing cards by candlelight amongst the hay stored there. [21] The remaining building is in reasonable condition, though not the original 15th century structure, brickwork indicating a much later date.

There are the remains of a dam upstream and drainage holes in the bank of the beck which took waste from the tannery yard. The resulting name of ‘Skitter’ was eventually changed to the more respectable ‘Bitter’.

Just below the new footbridge from St. Helen’s Street are the remains of a small mill which was powered by the beck. This may have been a corn mill or may have been connected with the tannery.

The 1839 tithe map shows three weaving shops in the upper part of St. Helen’s Street, but these would have no connection with the beck and the next large industrial site was probably the hat factory at the outflow into the Cocker.