Robin Longbottom on how large swathes of farmland in the town were given over to arable to sustain the population

BETWEEN Oakworth Road and Bridge Street in Keighley is a short stretch of road called Damside.

It takes its name from a small mill pond that existed until the early 20th century. The pond was a reservoir for the manorial corn mill that had stood, in various reincarnations, for centuries at the bottom of Damside at the point where it now meets Bridge Street and the road to Halifax.

The manorial corn mill had originally been held by the Keighley family but when the last male heir died in about 1560 it passed by marriage into the hands of William Cavendish, whose family was later to become the Dukes of Devonshire.

It is difficult to imagine today that large areas of farmland in Keighley were given over to arable and that cereal crops and pulses were grown to sustain the local population. The principal crop was oats, together with small amounts of wheat, rye and barley. Pulses, peas and beans were also a major crop. The manorial mill had the monopoly on processing these crops into flour and meal, a right known as the soke, until manorial rights were abolished in the early 19th century.

In the 17th century a second mill was built, adjoining the old one. This enabled the miller to use the stones in one mill to grind oatmeal and pulses and a pair of more superior stones to grind wheat in the other. Each mill was powered by its own waterwheel, and it is most probable that they ran in tandem, with the spent water from one wheel powering the other.

The mill pond on Damside was fed by a long goit that brought water from a weir on the North Beck, about a quarter of a mile upstream, and later from a large mill pond on Becks Road. Early weirs were constructed using piles and cribs – wooden posts driven into the bed of the watercourse supporting a wooden framework filled with stone, like a modern-day gabion. It may well have been this type of structure that was swept away in the great flood of 1768. Replacing the weir was a huge undertaking; it needed to raise the height of the watercourse by over ten feet. A new stone weir was built at a cost of £43 – 8 shillings, a huge amount considering that a labourer was paid 1 shilling and 2 pence a day. However, the new weir did not last a generation and had to be rebuilt again in 1792.

The corn mill was also rebuilt many times – a major rebuild took place in 1771-72, with timbers, stone and slates provided from within the manor. A deeper wheel pit was created by blasting out the bedrock with gunpowder. This allowed for a bigger and more efficient waterwheel to be installed. The new wheel probably replaced the two earlier ones, and together with other mill work was completed a cost of £79. The millstones were also replaced with more superior ‘blue and French’ stones for grinding wheat and ‘grey stones’ for oats and pulses.

After a fire the corn mill was rebuilt again in 1791 by John Iveson, a local stone mason, whilst John Wass, a millwright from Leeds, built a new waterwheel. Ten years later the mill had to be rebuilt once again.

The final phase in the history of the mill took place when the Rushworth Brothers took control in the mid 19th century. They introduced a beam engine and turned the mill over to steam power, building an engine house on part of the mill pond and a boiler house with a tall mill chimney.

The mill continued trading into the 1920s and was finally demolished in 1934.