Linthwaite, West Yorkshire: The village rich in industrial heritage
The industrialisation of the Colne Valley in the 19th century saw the fusion of several hillside hamlets about four miles west of Huddersfield, today recognised as Linthwaite.
Developed over about 1.5 miles of the A62 Manchester Road, the replacement 200-odd years ago to the treacherous turnpike to Saddleworth, the busy route gives Linthwaite a distinctly urban feel, despite its rural location.
Surrounded by the rural Colne Valley, there’s relatively little green space in the village aside from Causeway Crescent Park and church cemetery. Its small, but perfectly formed green on Royd House Lane, is however, well used and last month hosted the Linthwaite Leadboilers Festival.
The event, named after the name given to locals who collected lead shot from the surrounding hillsides where the Cavaliers and Roundheads were doing target practice during the Civil War and in a bid to disguise where the metal had come from tried to melt it in boiling water.
The village’s character remains defined by its large integrated mills built for woollen cloth production in Victorian times. These include the three-storey Westwood Mills on Low Westwood Lane, built above a mill race and parallel to the towpath of the Huddersfield Narrow Canal.
The west block, a fulling and scribbling mill, was built by John Shaw a decade before the 42-lock canal opened in 1811, running from Sir John Ramsden Canal in Huddersfield to the Standedge Tunnel and beyond. It is striking how the building’s windows are mainly on its south aspect, to provide light for wool packing and repairing woven pieces. The mill’s chimney was felled almost 20 years before the mill finally shut in 1981.
Recent years have seen the sprawling complex given five separate entries on the Heritage At Risk register, including its mill dam, powerhouse, water tower, engine house, workshops and various blocks. However, in 2020 Kirklees Council approved plans for 64 houses and 63 flats.
On the same lane, but the opposite side of the River Colne, stands the village’s principal landmark, Lowestwood Mill, better known as Titanic as due to its huge scale. Built to house thirty-six carding sets and at its peak employing hundreds of villagers, the mighty mill spanning 26 bays and six storeys has been repurposed as 130 flats alongside leisure enterprises, such as a spa.
Not all of Linthwaite’s 50-plus designated heritage assets have survived without such large-scale investment. A number of the industrial buildings have been demolished. On the opposite side of the A62 to the Titanic, recent years saw the huge James Dyson Dyeworks at Hoyle Ing become a destination for urban explorers. To the south, 225 homes have been built on the site of Black Rock Mills, off Waingate.
The latter mill was built beside Black Rock House, which survives as a listed building and can be seen through the trees lining Black Rock Drive. The Lockwood family of Black Rock House had sent out material for spinning before the emergence of mechanical power. Built in the mid-19th century Black Rock House saw the manufacture of warps, the vertical or lengthwise threads that are held tightly in tension on a loom, whilst the weaving was out-sourced to local houses.
Ahead of the Victorian advances, Linthwaite had mainly been composed of weavers’ cottages and numerous buildings that survive are now listed. As some mill owners looked to employ workers in their own homes, hundreds of terraced and three-storey properties sprung up along near the dyeworks and mills along the Manchester Road.
As good light was vital, the properties’ workrooms were often shared, on the top floor, with an exterior door to separate the building’s domestic purpose from its industrial one. Typical of these are the terraces of hammer dressed stone properties with light stone mullioned windows at the A62 junction with Hoyle Ing and opposite Ramsden Mill Lane and Barber Row, six terraced cottages just off the main route near the Premier convenience store.
While the wool industry was in terminal decline in the village by the 1980s manufacturing businesses continue to dominate the local economy. Hundreds of local residents are employed at the Thornton and Ross plant, producing over-the-counter consumer healthcare products, household disinfectants, and prescription pharmaceuticals and on the other side of Linthwaite Cricket and Bowling Club, there’s the JT Grosvenor agrochemicals plant.
Earlier this year, the family firm announced a £200,000 capital investment to expand production capacity and support future growth at the site to meet growing demand from specialty chemical markets while reinforcing the company’s long-term commitment to manufacturing in the North.
At the beginning of this century more than half of the area’s residents remain employed in manufacturing, compared to 15 per cent nationally. The commercial core of Linthwaite is busy at most times, as it also provides for surrouding settlements with fewer facilities.
The area also features numerous shops and public buildings, including Christ Church, one of six built in the Huddersfield area with a fraction a £1m Parliamentary grant to commemorate the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. However, in terms of its usual position in village landmarks, the impressive 1828 Anglican place of worship on the tree-lined Church Lane, boasting a square west tower with broach spire and six-bay buttressed nave, is overshadowed by large industrial buildings.
It was a £3,000 donation from mill owner George Mallinson that led to the building of the Methodist Chapel on Low Clough in 1867 alongside an assembly hall which served as a Sunday School from the 1880s. The village has two primary schools, Linthwaite Clough and Linthwaite Ardron, as well as Colne Valley High School, which Ofsted last year concluded remains ‘good’.