This article is available in audio format, please click on the play icon below to listen.

Of the seven mills built in Embsay and Eastby only two still remain; Embsay Mill and Crown Spindle Mill. Whilst Embsay Mill is clearly visible in the Millholme area of the village, Crown Spindle Mills is hidden away in the valley cut by Embsay Beck, below the reservoir dam. All most people see of the mill is the chimney.

The foundation date of Crown Spindle Mill is not known, but is assumed to be around 1800 when it was one of three mills founded on the upper reaches of Embsay Beck (the other two being the Good Intent and Whitfield cotton spinning mills). The reason for these three mills being built here echoes back to the seventeenth century.

In 1615 the lands in Embsay that the Clifford family at Skipton Castle had bought from King Henry VIII after the dissolution of Bolton Priory were being sold off with 3000 year long leases. The majority of the Embsay lands were sold to three people, and these three people each held one third of the water rights to Embsay Beck. William Baynes, to whom at least one the ’third’ rights had descended built Primrose mill in the 1790’s. It is probable the owners of the other two ‘thirds’ built Millholme (now Embsay Mill) and Sandbeds (a long-lost mill on the opposite side of Embsay Beck to The Cavendish pub. 

Entrepreneurs who were looking to ride the boom in mill construction in Embsay needed to find other sources for their water. Whitfield Sike was dammed to provide water for the cotton mill situated on land to the north of the modern reservoir. Good intent Mill (the site of which is now under the reservoir dam) was fed by Lowburn Gill which runs down from Crookrise Crag.

The founders of Crown Spindle Mill had to be a little more creative. They diverted an un-named stream which ran off the moor above Bondcroft farm across the fields to two small mill-ponds on the north-eastern bank of Embsay Beck. This unusual tactic probably had the blessing of the Baynes family as it fed additional water to their new mill downstream on Embsay Beck and it also relieved the occasional flooding around their new house at Embsay Kirk.

Crown Spindle mill was probably originally constructed with the 30 ft wood and cast iron water wheel that remains within the building now (although it was probably, originally, external to the building). The position of the mill-ponds enabled the water to be fed to the top and the middle of the water-wheel (breast-shot and over-shot), an unusual combination.

We know that the mill was manufacturing spindles in 1834, owned by the Shacklock family and it is very possible that they built the original mill. The Shacklocks were members of the Swedenborgian religious group in Embsay, and many of the members of this group seem to have been employed at the Mill. The little that is known about the owners and operators of the mill implies that the Shacklocks and one branch of the Mason family, linked by marriage, owned and operated the mill for probably 75 years. At some time, they built a weaving shed, to the south of the original building. Ordnance survey maps show that this was built between 1850 and 1890. Whilst the Shacklocks may have originally operated this themselves, others took over the weaving side of the business.

In 1886 the Bradford Daily Telegraph reported that an Isaac Northrop, who lived at Rockville in Embsay, ‘has been for some years a manufacturer or worsted coatings’ (woollen cloth for making coats). But business was not good. He ran up debts, wrote false accounts and then fled to America ‘without informing his wife or any creditors’.

In October 1886 advertisements appeared for the sale of ‘Crown Works, Embsay’, including ten Worsted Coating looms and other ancillary machinery. It seems most likely that two businesses were running on the Crown Spindle site. The original building probably housed the metalworking business and Northrop ran his business from the later weaving shed.

In 1902 the estate of the late Richard Shacklock sold all the machinery used for making spindles. The business and buildings were bought by the Elsworth family who suffered a major setback when in 1908 a catastrophic flood destroyed the weaving shed and the steam engine. 

Spindle making continued until the 1930s, the original stone-built mill. It was then used as an engineering workshop, and later as a recording studio and then a pottery. It has since been converted into living accommodation.

And the myth that the spindle mill made bayonets for the Crimean war?
In the 1902 list of machinery to be sold from Crown Spindle Mill in Embsay included ‘two Ryder forges’. This type of machine had been introduced at the Great Exhibition of 1851. 

It seems that at least one of these Ryder forges had been bought from a Manchester factory where it had been used in the manufacturing of bayonets for the British Army at the time of the Crimean war.

But these machines were used for manufacturing a variety of products, as seen in the following description published in the Manchester Courier newspaper (23rd March, 1852) of the Ryder Forge:- 

Each of these general purpose machines offered 5 locations where hot steel could be worked by mechanical hammers. These were perfect to make the tapered steel spindles. So machinery that had been manufacturing bayonets in Manchester were transferred to Embsay and easily adapted to make spindles.

They were certainly never used at Crown Spindle Mill for the purpose of making bayonets, as they did not have the other specialised machinery required for the manufacture of bayonets. This following extract if from an article in the London Illustrated News (26 January 1855), describing how the Ryder forge was just the first of several machines used in the process of bayonet-making:- 

The article continued by describing yet more machines that were necessary in the process of bayonet-making, which was apparently a very complex one, requiring a dedicated factory.

Clearly Crown Spindle Works, which throughout the 1850’s is known to have focused on making spindles for textile spinning machines, could not have also been involved in bayonet-making.  Sometime during the second half of the 19th Century, after the Crimean War was over, Crown Spindle Works had simply taken advantage of the selling-off of machinery which had formerly made bayonets. 

Note. A spindle is the steel pin that can be found in a weaving shuttle. A bobbin, containing cotton or woollen thread is loaded onto the spindle.  Additional information about Embsay’s Mills can be found in the “Millennium Project” local history files held in Embsay Library. 

Chris Lunnon. Embsay with Eastby Historical Group, July 2023.