A Tangible Connection

….the ordinary story of a SHOVEL

This might be the oldest object we have in the Museum & Archive. Today, this shovel is quite hidden away, sitting behind the section of shelving where we keep our beautiful marble-paged cashbooks, just next to the big chest freezer that we use for treating moth-damaged fabrics. I’ve always been attracted to how characterful it is. With its smooth wooden handle and its wide steel pan, it testifies to decades of use heaping coal into the boilers, powering the steam engines that kept the mill running. You might also notice the letters carved into the handle, reading ‘R . R & C^o F’. That stands for ‘Roberts, Ross, & C^o., Farsley’, and takes us back to the origins of Sunny Bank Mills in 1829.

That was the year when cloth manufacturers James Roberts, Jonathan Ross, John Hainsworth, Jonathan Marshall, Nathan Overend, John Gaunt, and William Wade came together as the company’s trustees, bought some land, and built a mill. Here, using revolutionary new steam technology, they undertook the scouring, scribbling, and fulling processes on an industrial scale. This was no abrupt break from tradition though: as they had since at least the Middle Ages, they still bought their own raw wool, still did their spinning and weaving at home, and still sold their wares independently in the Leeds cloth halls; working together at this “club mill” just streamlined some of textile manufacture’s more labour-intensive aspects and helped them to prepare more yarn in less time.

Looking through newspapers of the period, it seems the mill had soon become quite a high-profile institution: in May 1841, the Leeds Times prominently listed ‘Roberts, Ross, and C^o., Farsley’ as one of the significant ‘manufacturing establishments’ of Leeds and Kirklees that submitted petitions to the government against the highly unpopular Corn Laws.[i] The mill was also apparently a centre for Farsley society, hosting ‘a very excellent and substantial dinner’ in January 1858 to celebrate the wedding of Victoria, Princess Royal, to Prince Frederick of Prussia.[ii] In 1872, when important companies from across the area met to standardise workers’ wages, Roberts, Ross, & C^o. were among those represented.[iii]

This should come as no surprise, as the mill employed lots of important local people, pillars of Farsley society. Through the nineteenth century, the newspapers announced the deaths of ‘Mr. John Turner, cloth manufacturer, of the firm of Roberts, Ross, and C^o. […] and a trustee of [Leeds] Coloured Cloth Hall’, ‘highly esteemed, Mr. Joseph Ross’, and ‘much respected […] Mr. William Roberts’, both of whom were also of the company.[iv] The deaths of some of the company’s original trustees were reported too: in 1844, ‘much respected, aged 71, Mr. Jonathan Marshall, cloth manufacturer and drysalter’, and in 1853, ‘aged 54, Mr. Jonathan Ross’.[v]

In 1878, an advertisement indicated that shares in the mill were beginning to change hands: at seven o’clock on 13^th November, just over the road at the Bay Horse Inn, one share in the Sunny Bank Mill Company would be sold by auction.[vi] ‘The property is situated at the centre of Farsley, substantially built, well roaded, let to respectable tenants, supplied with gas and water, and offers the most desirable opportunity to small capitalists for investment’.[vii] But as the founding shareholders died or moved on into other enterprises, Sunny Bank Mills began to decline. In 1881, it was said that ‘the two mills have been for a long period only partially run’, and it looked as though this venture into industrialisation had failed.[viii]

As such, readers of the Leeds Times may have been surprised to see the report of ‘GOOD NEWS FOR FARSLEY’ on 19^th November that year.[ix] Edwin Woodhouse, local councillor and owner of nearby Belle Vue Mills, had already been leasing one of the Roberts, Ross & C^o. buildings, but now he was offering to buy the whole site.[x] At a well-attended meeting on the previous Tuesday, the shareholders had agreed to accept £9,540 for the premises, and everything was set for a formal transfer of ownership on New Year’s Eve.[xi] The deal was viewed ‘with approval’: Mr. Woodhouse had already been employing about 100 people while holding just the one building on lease, so ‘when the second mill has been altered to suit his requirements, he will probably employ about another 100 hands.’[xii]

As 1882 began, Roberts, Ross, & C^o. disbanded, but remarkably, the shovel that bears the company’s initials remained in continuous use until the boilers were closed in 2006. That’s what I really love about historic objects: just as our own possessions all hold memories and associations, things like this shovel provide a real link to generations of ordinary people, carrying something of their experiences into the present. To explore many more objects and personal stories from Farsley’s textile heritage, why not join one of our Saturday tours? Copies of A Short History of Sunny Bank Mills are also available to purchase from the Museum & Archive, providing further details from the mill’s early years through to recent times.

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