Summary
An L-shaped, two-storey mill house with associated buildings and features including a coppice barn, a drying kiln, a privy, offices/stable, retaining walls, tracks and part of the water management system. The remains survive as a roofed and unroofed buildings, stone foundations, earthworks and buried deposits.
Reasons for Designation
The Howk Bobbin Mill of mid-C19 date with later additions, is scheduled for the following principal reasons:
* Survival: a large and well-preserved bobbin mill that illustrates the full range of buildings and processes including water management, manufacture, storage and transport;
* Potential: the upstanding structures together with earthwork and buried archaeological remains will contribute to our knowledge and understanding of the operation and evolution of this purpose-built mid-C19 bobbin mill;
* Documentation: understanding of the mill's layout, history and functioning is enhanced by the survival of contemporary records and a full archaeological survey;
* Group value: taken together with other bobbin mills in the region, it will provide insight into the C19 bobbin mill industry and the north-west textile industry which it supported.
History
Bobbin mills were constructed during the C19 originally in response to the demand for wooden bobbins and reels for the growing cotton trade predominantly based in Lancashire. Many of these mills were founded in the valleys of south Lakeland where raw materials for the production of bobbins - water to power the machinery and wood for coppicing - were available in profusion. Such was the demand that corn mills and even iron furnaces were converted to bobbin manufacture and at the height of production in the late C19 there were over 60 mills in operation in Cumberland, Westmorland and north Lancashire. The mills were originally water powered but steam engines, turbines, and latterly electric motors became the chief sources of power to drive the machines which sawed, bored, dried, sculptured and polished the bobbins and the variety of other wooden objects such as handles, shafts, rollers, pulleys, poles and dowels which were also manufactured. The main components of a bobbin mill comprised: at least one or more mill ponds from which water was channelled to power the waterwheel; a wheelpit; coppice barns where the wood was stored and dried prior to use; sawing sheds where cutting the wood into manageable lengths was undertaken; drying rooms and sheds; lathe sheds where the wood was turned; engine rooms; a blacksmith's room where tools and machinery could be manufactured and repaired, and storage sheds where the finished product would be kept until transportation. Since the mid-C20 the virtual disappearance of the Lancashire textile industry and the use of cheaper plastic in place of wood has reduced the demand to the extent that virtually all the bobbin mills have now closed.
The Howk Bobbin mill lies at the north end of the main concentration of Lakeland bobbin mills, and is situated within a natural limestone gorge with waterfalls, that had acquired Romantic links by the visits of Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1800 and William and Dorothy Wordsworth in 1803 who described its picturesque qualities. The mill was purpose-built by John Jennings a local entrepreneur, and started production in 1857 indicated by a date stone on the main elevation of the mill house. This original phase included the mill house with water wheel pit, drying shed, coppice shed, privy and various retaining walls. The mill was driven by water taken from the Cald Beck at a weir upstream and carried to the site in a buried leat, and transferred to the wheel via a timber launder carried on a ledge within the crag. After a fire in 1859 the mill underwent repairs including the replacement of the water wheel. This wheel was one of the largest waterwheels in England at 42ft in diameter by 3ft wide; it is reported that visitors in the Victorian period would come to the Howk for a picnic to see the waterwheel, which was nicknamed the ‘Auld Red Rover’ due to its red haematite paint. Between 1863 and the OS 2,500 map of 1899 further buildings were added including timber coppice barns, workshop offices, the drying kiln was probably extended, and a saw bench lean-to added against the north side of the mill. The mill operated for 67 years and eventually closed in 1924, after which the machinery was removed including the water wheel in 1940.
The mill was one of the largest in the Lake District, and at the height of its operation it employed 60 men and some boys, and as well as sewing cotton reels and spinning and threading bobbins, its products included butter moulds, helves for picks and hammers and washing dollies. Goods were transported along a track by horse and cart to Wigton railway station, and as far afield as Ireland and India.
The mill was fully recorded by the then Lancaster University Archaeological Unit, now (2022) Oxford Archaeology North, in 1994. The site also benefited from a programme of consolidation between 1995 and 1997, funded by Historic England (then English Heritage) and the Lake District National Park Authority.
Details
PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS: an L-shaped, two-storey mill house with associated buildings and features including a coppice barn, a drying kiln, a privy, offices/stable, retaining walls, tracks and part of the water management system. The remains survive as a roofed and unroofed buildings, stone foundations, earthworks and buried deposits.
DESCRIPTION: the remains of the mid-C19 bobbin mill are situated in a deep limestone gorge on the western side of Caldbeck Village, and occupy relatively level ground between the Cald Beck and the foot of the crag to the north. Part of the water management system that powered the mill is included in the north-west part of the site. It includes a short section of the buried leat, a narrow stone wall with a length of 15 inch diameter pipe projecting at the base, and a rock-cut ledge on the north side of the ravine that formerly carried a timber launder fed by the pipe, that carried water to the tower situated at the north-west corner of the mill house.
MILL HOUSE AND ASSOCIATED FEATURES: the mill house is situated on the east side of the site, parallel to the beck. It is visible as a large, L-shaped, unroofed two-storey building, orientated east to west, and measuring 17.5m by 13m, with walls and gables standing to roof height. Access to the first floor is via a small external staircase located in the east wall. The main entrance is via two arched doors within the centre of the east gable that are made of neatly faced red sandstone quoins and key stones. A date stone above the entrance records the date of construction in 1857. The south wall is more substantial than the others, and contains five identical window openings on each floor. The northern block of the mill has a first-floor entrance accessed via stone steps, and it retains part of a wooden door. The interior of this block retains part of a machine base and five substantial stone piers; the machine base would have been used to anchor machinery driving the lathes that produced the bobbins and other goods. Within the south-west corner of the mill house there is a rectangular pit about 4m by 1.2m, and at least 0.8m deep. Its function is unclear, but it is thought it might have housed a turbine fed by a pipe running diagonally from a water tank on the north corner of the mill. Attached to the west end of the mill there is a large stone-built rectangular wheel pit (open to the south) measuring about 13.5m long by 1.3m wide. The top of the west wall is capped with flagstones and is level with a large central opening in the mill wall, and there is a large built-in buttress, and two narrower buttresses flank the central area. At the north end of the pit, there is a three-sided stone 'tower' of rock-cut stone laid in courses, topped by four pillars of similar construction, which carry a pair of decayed wooden beams. This tower is interpreted as a launder support, of several different phases, from which water was fed onto the water wheel. A sunken area on the north side of the mill house is the remains of a stone-pillared lean-to interpreted as a saw bench
COPPICE BARN: this is situated immediately to the east of the mill house, and is a large 13m x 6m, roofed, rectangular building of open construction. Its roof structure with slate covering is supported by ten substantial dressed stone pillars (buttressed internally) rising from two separate foundation walls. The pillars are bonded into the retaining walls and are of fine dressed stonework. Their internal sides are stepped near ground level and contain slots above and below.
DRYING KILN: a small rectangular structure to the north-east of the coppice barn, and built into the side of the gorge measures 6m by 5m with walls standing to a maximum height of 2m; its location, and the fact it formerly had an iron roof, suggest this is a kiln used to dry wood prior to being stored in the coppice barn. There is an entrance in the centre of the south wall, and a set of stone steps lead down from an upper entrance in the north-east comer. Within the rear wall is a rectangular flue opening. To the north-east of the drying kiln, there is a smaller sunken area, partially filled with stone rubble, and considered to be an extension to the kiln.
ANCILLARY BUILDINGS AND FEATURES: east of the kiln there are the remains of a rectangular stone privy measuring 3m by 3m with walls standing about 1m high; a large stone trough is visible on its eastern side, together with two low openings. To its north is a curvilinear bank constructed around an area of flat ground, about 1.5m wide and 0.3m high; this is thought to be the remains of a small pond to supply water to the privy and/or to a boiler for the drying kiln. North of the mill house and butted against the crag face there are the stone foundations of an L-shaped building standing to about 0.4m high and identified as a stable/office/store. A stone retaining wall 3.5m high, effectively channelling the beck around the south side of the site, extends from the south-east corner of the mill house along the stream edge for about 42m. A second stone wall running roughly east to west and about 25m long and a maximum of 1m high is situated west of the mill house, where it channelled the beck away from the path. The remains of a third stone wall aligned roughly east to west serves to separate the flat valley floor from the steep slopes to the north. The earthwork remains of part of the original track that provided access between the mill and Caldbeck village is also visible, and was used to import raw materials to the site and export manufactured bobbins and goods. The buried remains of several ancillary buildings depicted on late-C19 maps, including timber coppice barns, are thought to survive beneath ground level as buried features.
AREA OF PROTECTION: this includes the core of the mill site as surveyed in 1994, and part of the associated water management system including a section of the leat where it enters the site at the north-west corner. The display board, and timber seat and fences are excluded from the monument, although the ground beneath it is included.
