ON Saturday, April 5, 1856 Robert Heaton, a worsted spinner and manufacturer, of Becks Mill in Silsden, treated his employees to a tea and supper to celebrate the end of the Crimean War.
Becks Mill stood in Keighley Road, Silsden, until about 2010 when it was demolished to make way for housing.
It had been built in the late 1830s and was a steam powered worsted spinning mill with the later addition of a weaving shed.
In the 1840s the mill was occupied by William Wright and Robert Heaton. Wright was the senior partner and a landowner in Silsden and Brunthwaite. Robert Heaton was twenty years his junior.
His father, Joseph Heaton of Sutton House in Sutton, was a friend of Wrights and had probably apprenticed his son to him to learn the trade of manufacturing.
Although Wright was married, he had no children and it would have been natural for him to take a friend’s son under his wing.
In 1851 the partnership employed 258 people, both working at the mill and from home. Those employed at the mill were spinners and power loom weavers whilst the outworkers were hand woolcombers.
The back of Becks Mill with weaving sheds on the right
William Wright left the partnership in 1853 and retired to his farm in Low Fold, Silsden.
Here he lived in the style of a gentleman employing two men to farm his land and a man servant to cater for his needs at home.
After Robert Heaton’s father died in 1854, he continued to live at Sutton House where he employed, a cook, a housemaid and a groom to care for his horses. He now ran the mill as a sole proprietor and would have travelled to it daily on horseback.
When the celebration took place in 1856 the number of hands at the mill had reduced to 178, probably because of the introduction of wool combing machines, which replaced the hand combers.
To cater for the large number of guests the meal was divided into two sittings. The first, at teatime, was for the female hands and the second, at supper time, was for the male employees and including several veterans from the Peninsula and the Crimean campaigns.
The food was prepared by the landlord and landlady of the King’s Arms Inn at New Road Side, now Bolton Road.
It was a cold collation (a buffet) and would have consisted of boiled ham and ox tongue, roast beef and poultry, pies, brawn and pressed jellied beef.
As it was too early in the year for salad instead there would have been an array of pickles and chutneys. It would have concluded with cheesecakes (for which Silsden was famous), flummeries, custards and fruit tarts.
The meal took place in the Wesleyan School House and after the usual loyal toasts and speeches “the cloth was removed” revealing the spread.
Entertainment was provided by Messrs Holloway, Sugden and Moseley who sang a selection of “social songs and glees”.
The ballad of the Battle of Alma, Let Me Fall Like a Soldier, and dialect songs such as Awve Hard Wark to Howd Up Mi Hed and Aw Cannut Dry My Een (eyes) were popular social songs.
These were accompanied by Silsden Brass Band whilst glee songs, such as Sigh No More Ladies and See the Conquering Hero Comes, were sung unaccompanied.
After the meal the guests adjourned to the King’s Arm where a room was cleared of furniture for dancing, which went on until midnight.
Such celebrations were not uncommon and designed to increase the popularity of mill owners at a time when civil unrest was never far away. Heaton’s own weavers been on strike over pay in 1854.
Robert Heaton died suddenly in 1863. However, the business appears to have continued until 1866 when the mill was advertised to let.