The 1850 Ordnance Survey map identifies the area around the Cavendish Pub (then called the Rampant Lion) as Mill Holme. The bridge over Embsay Beck is called Mill Holme Bridge. Holme is an Old English or Norse word for a field that is often flooded, a water meadow. The name will therefore be derived from ‘the mill close to (or in) the watermeadow’. Thus, the Mill would have been alongside a river, and subject to regular flooding. The fields between the Skipton Road and the railway embankment were called Mill Holme in the 1847 Tithe Apportionment map. (Before the embankment was built Haw Beck would have been able to flood these fields) But which Mill does the name refer to?

In 1793 Mary Bell, the daughter of John and Margaret Bell, was baptised at Holy Trinity Church in Skipton. John’s occupation was given as ‘gardener of Millholme’. This is the earliest record of a named person in Mill Holme. Three spinning mills had been built in Embsay by the 1790s; Primrose Mill (which later became the Tannery); Sandbeds Mill, now known as Embsay Mills; and an un-named Mill to the south of the Skipton Road. Other families at Mill Holme appeared in the church registers at about this time so it is probable that people lived very near to the cotton mills. But the name Mill Holme pre-dates any of these cotton mills.

In the reign of James II (1685 – 1688) the bridge next to the Cavendish was indicted at the Quarter Sessions court for being in disrepair. It is just possible to see the names ‘Milneholme Beck’ and ‘Bow Bridge’ hand-written into the indictment paper.

In the 1680s the mill was further upstream on Embsay Beck, built  where the beck cuts a deep valley behind the modern-day Primrose Mill housing estate. In 1665 the death of an Ann Alcock ‘off the Mill dam heade in Emsay’ was recorded in the burial registers from Holy Trinity, Skipton. Dam Head was the original name for what is now called the Manor House on Pasture Road.

The Alcocks were a long-established and wealthy Embsay family. The name was first mentioned in Bolton Priory records in 1310 and in 1473 a John Alcock paid 53s 4d rent to the Priory for the manor of Embsay. Thomas, Robert and Cristoffer Alcock appear close to the head of the list of people paying rent to Bolton Priory at the Dissolution in 1539, when the Cliffords of Skipton Castle bought the Priory estates, including Embsay. In 1615 the Cliffords sold a lot of land in Embsay and it is probable that the Alcocks bought the land where the ‘Manor House’ stands.

It is not known if there was an earlier house, but a Thomas Alcock built the stone ‘Manor House’ in 1636, his son probably adding the porchway in 1652.

It is probable that the Alcock family constructed the upper mill pond and built a corn mill in the deep valley in front of the ‘Manor House’. They would have bought the rights to use the water in Embsay Beck when they bought the lands from the Cliffords. It is possible that the income from the corn mill enabled the Alcocks to build the ‘Manor House’.

Alcock’s corn mill made good use of the steep sided valley (called Mill Gill in the 18^th century manor court documents) probably building the most efficient type of water mill using the over-shot supply of water. But Mill Gill is quite a distance from Mill Holme and it is likely that the Mill Holme name derives from a different source.

The earliest available records from Bolton Priory recorded a corn mill in Embsay. Between 1310 and 1324 Bolton Priory received an annual income of £6 from the mill. In 1473 a John Mallom paid 40s in rent for ‘the water mill of Emsay’ and in the  Bolton Priory Dissolution rental of 1539 it is recorded that a Thomas Jolly operated the corn mill at Embsay. The location of the mill is not revealed in the records, but a different piece of Bolton Priory history reveals the location of this early corn mill.

Opposite the entrance to Brackenley Lane, near to the bus shelter is a small gravestone-like stone marker carved with a cross. It is very likely that this marker was erected between 1530 and 1539 to mark the end of a causeway leading up to the bridge by the Cavendish Pub. An Act of Parliament in 1530 specified that the owners of bridges should be responsible for ‘up to 300 feet’ of the roadway leading to the bridge. Bolton Priory and Fountains Abbey decided to mark those limits with stone markers. Almost identical markers can be seen at Bolton Bridge, Barden Bridge (both probably originally built by Bolton Priory) and bridges built by Fountains Abbey in Upper Wharfedale. Bolton Priory owned Embsay from 1120 to 1539 and probably built the bridge next to the Cavendish. The road leading westwards from the bridge ran along the top of a dam which acted as a mill-pond for the early corn-mill which stood to the south of the Skipton Road. The outline of this mill-pond can still be seen in the 1847 Tithe Map when it was being re-used to supply water to the cotton mill built on the site of the original Medieval corn mill, a common practice for early industrial mills. The outlet of the mill pond was at its western end directly across the road from the stone cross marker. The leat supplying water to the corn mill would have run across the road at the end of the mill dam. The stone cross marker would only have been placed where it stands if the mill pond dam already existed in 1530. The dam must, therefore, have been built by Bolton Priory and had stood there for a number of centuries. It is, very likely that this part of Embsay has been known as Mill Holme since the earliest record of a water mill in 1310, and possibly before.

Chris Lunnon, Embsay with Eastby Historical Research Group. September 2025.
With thanks to David Turner for the information on the Alcocks and the Manor House.

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