ROCK MILLS, BROCKHOLES

Joseph Sykes and Co Ltd - Huddersfield Fine Worsteds

Chance decreed that I started my working life ‘in the mill’.  It wasn’t my ambition, but one has to go where fate leads.

I started as an Apprentice Designer at Rock Mills in 1955. Unlike my brother with brains and application at school, there was no university for me, just a steady but enjoyable slog through years of part-time study on day release, nights and even some Saturday mornings at college with a lot of work at home.  I would recommend it to anyone.

Rock Mills was part of Huddersfield Fine Worsteds and in those days this seemed to be just a vague association with Learoyd Brothers on Leeds Road, Huddersfield and we had an annual cricket match against them at Farnley Tyas - well I can remember one of them, my only contact with Learoyds.   

Joseph Sykes and Co Ltd manufactured superb quality fabrics from raw material to finished product on both the woollen and worsted systems and so it was an ideal place for me to ‘go through the mill’.

A woven label as supplied with fabric 

It was a bit disconcerting that on my first day a blond haired Norwegian Assistant Designer called Eivin Emil Torp, fixed me with his pale blue eyes and said, ‘I don’t know why you have come here.  Textiles in this country is finished.’   Well he was dead right!   He left shortly afterwards and I was really sorry to see him go, but it took a little longer than maybe he thought it would.  It certainly made pursuing a career in textiles an exercise in survival. 

At that time many mill owners seemed to have become Colonels in the army during the war.  What exploits of derring-do they performed I never heard although I know of one who had been on searchlights somewhere fairly safe.  At Rock Mills one of the two principle family directors and to whom I never had reason to speak as he only passed in and out of the upstairs the directors only enclave, was Colonel Keith Sykes, MC OBE TD JP,.  A small man but one of obvious distinction.  But the salesman had only been a major, which put him at a severe disadvantage against resident colonels.  He was Rex, the brother of James Mason, a film star of that era and a really lovely man with a very attractive daughter.  While thinking of the military, I soon discovered that the Head Designer there before the war, Charles Bentley, had been in the same POW camp of Chieti, in Italy, where my Uncle found himself for a while, but he didn’t take the opportunity to escape and so spent the rest of the war as a POW in Germany.  I don’t know if he ever came back to Rock Mills after the war but I did come across him some years later as some sort of textile Consultant..  (LINK)

While I was there, a Polish weaver and very decent chap taught me to weave.   I forget his name but not his scorching garlic laden breath.  A keen photographer, he spoke at close quarters above the noise of the looms; no one wore ear protection then; and advised me of the first good camera I should buy.  It was a Voigtlander Vito B that took all my savings and which was subsequently stolen from my car along with other bits and pieces while taking my dog for a walk around Yateholme many years later.

So with my Voigtlander I took some photographs inside Rock Mills, regrettably not showing many of the people there and now I wish I had taken more.  Sadly, I also went to the viewing day for the Mill Sale when Rock Mills eventually closed down in 1969 and was consumed by nostalgia with the well known sounds of the various doors sliding or banging shut, the smells and the depressing sight of so much standing machinery in that beautifully built big stone mill.

My desk was at the 'far end' of the room where the lower orders of the design department lived, two or three of us.  The Head Designer and another had an adjacent office.  I am not sure why I am staring into space.  Probably in love at the time.  The large bound books behind me are pattern books and making instructions for the fabrics.  I wonder what happened to them?  In front of me are yarn shade cards.  I used to weave the yarn shades on a handloom with a satin weave and a fine black warp to make fabric that could be cut up and distributed to be used for shade cards.  Individual threads could then be pulled out from the squares of solid colour pasted in the shade card to lie on a black cloth covered board when constructing colour combinations. 

At the other side of the pale green tongue and groove partition wall behind the shelving with the books was the finished goods warehouse.  The chap in there would whistle the same tune endlessly which got pretty wearing.  So to combat the stress I would quietly whistle a few bars of a different one and that was sufficient to change the record for a while.

Rock Mills, Brockholes,  Huddersfield

Regrettably no longer there.  Now demolished and covered over by commercial units and housing.

Pattern weaving

These two narrow Hatterersly pattern looms with Jacquards were located just outside the design office door and woven by Henry Tyas and Harold Wimpenny.  

The mill machinery was driven by leather belting running off line shafting turned by the huge double beam engine with a battery of coal fired Lancashire boilers.  The pattern looms mentioned before are on the right with some standard width pattern looms across the alley and the sliding door to the passage by the design office between just out of sight.  I can still hear its sliding sound and thonk as it closed, pulled shut by a weight on a rope.  Another pattern and length weaver, John Platts who wove the full width looms on the left, was probably in his twenties.   I can remember him going off to have all his teeth out which he said would prevent him having problems in the future.  I suppose people did that sort of thing a lot and so got a smart set of even teeth..

Belts would come off, break, or had to be knocked off the line shaft pulleys from time to time.  To put them back on you had a long wooden pole with bit of a triangular wooden bracket at the end that you hooked under the belting and lifted it over the rotating line shaft pulley.  Then you got hold of the slack belt and slipped it on the edge of the loose pulley of the loom, or other machine, and spun it on making sure to keep you hand from getting in between the belt and the pulley.  Just about the only machine guards then were some square sections of wire mesh on the ends of looms to try to deflect a loose shuttle flying across the weaving shed.

Part of the weaving shed

That looks like a tuner walking down the isle.  I read that in the U.S. they called them Loom Fixing Technicians.  Here they were controlled by the Tuner's Union and you had to consult the Union to get permission to employ one.  It was still mired in the closed shop Craft Union mentality.  (In later life I was to struggle with this concept and a big chap called Clifford who ran the Tuner's Union locally).  On the other hand it could have been a Chainmaker walking down the shed.  They converted the design requirements to a chain like an endless flexible ladder with small pulley wheels on, like an abacus, that lifted levers in a specified order as the 'ladder' progressed through the 'dobby' controlling the shafts, the healds and therefore individual threads.  Chains of this sort also controlled the colour selection of the weft telling the loom which shuttle to send across and one of these chains can be seen dangling over a rail on the picture below.  I did most jobs in the mill at one time or another but never Tuning or Chainmaking where the latter in particular were always covered up to the elbows in back oil.  The Mill supplied some peach coloured stuff called Rozalex as a barrier cream but nothing else that I recall.

The pieces lying on the cart are ready to go for burling and mending, a necessary evil with fabric, as yarns have ends and so have knots as well as other imperfections, something a wallpaper firm from Hemel Hempstead who took over a textile company struggled to understand along with much else.  The top piece there looks like a check back overcoating.  No one makes them now I suspect, but they were a relatively heavy fabric with a herringbone or twill outer or similar and a check design (in place of a coat lining) on the back making them a double cloth.

The weaving shed looms were all Dobcross with four boxes each side and as can be seen not all had shuttle guards to stop flying shuttles. I can't imagine how old they were.  There wasn't much that was new in that mill as was often the case in many others.  Everything was mechanical and even at the college they taught that mechanical was better than electrical systems as it was more reliable and easier for Tuners to understand.  Tuning, generally speaking was just that.  A loom depended to a large extend on buffalo hide, chrome leather, assorted items of wood and bits of band of various sorts in order to function efficiently, so a change in the weather could see it go out of tune.

Parallel to the long weaving shed was another shed with a couple of looms I never saw run and it was largly full of bales of merino wool as long as I was there.  This was some sort of Government reserve.

Split drum winding showing with three warping mills beyond

The wife of the head designer Keith Fox ran the first warping mill, May Fox she was called, and her niece Jean Sykes ran another.  Only the other day I came across Jean in a supermarket, the first time I had seen her since about 1960 and was instantly recognisable.  I used to chat to a winder on the split drums called Claire from time to time.  One day I was walking out down the mill yard at home time and we spoke outside for the first time.  I was amazed as I had only heard her voice over the sound of the machinery and it sounded nothing like her outside.

Wet Finishing - the triangular thing allows pieces (the name for a full length of cloth say 60 yards) to be folded along its length and sewn up the lists, called bagging.  This prevents running marks in wet processing as some fabrics tend to run in a crease on the machines which marks them.  The liquor getting in the tube formed prevents this.
 

Below are cuttled pieces on carts by the tenter.  The tenter is a large chamber heated by layers of steam pipes.  The hydro extracted but still wet fabric passes through the tenter between the layers of pipes in a zigzag fashion suspended on sharp pins mounted on an endless chain each side.  The saying - 'Being on pins' meaning 'on edge' is, as far as I know, where the saying originates, and of course the more obvious one of 'Being on tenterhooks'.  The width between the chains governs the natural finished width of the fabric.

Tenter man Freddie Knapton, left, ran the tenter.  A common trick for new apprentices and the like was to leave a long metal skewer or something metal protruding from the cuttle of warm fabric after it emerged from the tenter and ask the unwary to go and pull it out.  You could get a fine static shock that way.

Looking back from the dry finishing end towards the back of the tenter and scouring beyond

Raising machines etc - on the right somewhere is a Teazle Gig which was extensively used to raise the surface of the fabric when appropriate.  Teazles, from Spain, mounted in frames around a drum that rotated against the fabric gave a more gentle raising effect than raising machines using 'wire'.
  .

Cropping machines - to give a clean or even finish. 
 

Back in the Design Office below, Norris Donkersley who lived in Berry Brow,  had the separate office with the Head Designer, Keith Fox, next door to the three or four Apprentices.  I never quite knew what Norris's title was as he missed the War and kept the design office going while everyone else was away.  He never designed anything while I was there but kept a huge book, the contents of which remain a mystery to me, but I guess it must have charted the details and progress of designs and pattern lengths etc..  I wonder if Norris was 14746 Corporal Norris Donkersley AMC who enlisted on the 23rd July 1917 and was discharged due to sickness on the 11th July 1919 and was granted the Silver War Badge.  There can't have been many Norris Donkersleys about.  

Norris Donkersley 

Another Apprentice, Granville Binns,  who came a couple of years after me is obviously getting some insight into the paperwork on this photo.  He was a good table tennis player and represented someone, maybe Huddersfield.  We had a table tennis table tucked away in a building, which saw some needle matches at lunchtimes.

Granville Binns with Norris's book.

I think Norris must have had to be away and needed someone of Granville's administrative abilities to run the show while he was off.  I recently learnt that Granville ended up as the Designer for Butterworth and Roberts in Hombridge, Holmfirth, but I never saw him after moving on to get my first proper job as an Assistant Designer at Black Rock Mills, Linthwaite, designing ladies fancy Colne Valley Tweeds.  Granville worked in a betting shop in his spare time and was very numerate.

Joseph Sykes & Co Ltd employed a constant stream of apprentices.  There were two before me, Derek Braithwaite and Brian Longbottom with another two while I was still there, Granville and the last one 'William' ( I think) Boyd.  Becoming 21, one could consider one's apprenticeship finished and get the statutory textile rate for men as agreed for the industry, which amounted to something like £7 a week then.  Before that it was on a 'wage for age' scale and that was then discounted by some percentage for being an apprentice.  My weekly wage was something like £2-16-9 when I first started in 1955.  You can do your own conversion to metric!  

Me posing with Norris's book

Looking from the top floor of the spinning mill.

If you look at the picture of the mill taken from the main road you will see this wheel on the side of the spinning mill.  The tall building housed both woollen spinning with mules, woollen carding and worsted spinning.  Other buildings housed preparatory processes and dying but I regret that I never thought to document the rest at the time.  Almost all the machinery ran from the most glorious large double beam engine with a 20 foot diameter flywheel

Like many mills the spinning had a large number of 'mill girls' from Barnsley and Rotherham coal mining areas who tended to be thought of as a bit wild but actually they were a fine, good hearted, hard working lot.  Castles from Holmfirth  and Baddley Bros each used to run a coach taking them to the mill.  One passed my house so I was picked up early in the morning and lived in fear and trepidation on every journey, though really had no need to.  It was very embarrassing on the very odd occasion when my alarm failed and I overslept, having to wave them on from the bedroom window while still in my pyjamas, while the coach hooted outside as they could not wait.  One of the local ladies (Edith comes to mind) who worked in the spinning mill was only about four and bit feet tall.  The machines are quite high and for some operations need a good reach.  She used to flit about using a big wooden roving bobbin to stand on and was as fast an operative as anyone.  Not only that she was a bit handicapped to some extent with stiff bow legs.  They said the piece rates were based on her performance.  Today Health and Safety would have prevented her from doing that job she loved in the way she did it all her life, and would closed the mill down anyway.  It was in the days before carding engines had guards and you walked about in a narrow gap down the length of the machines between an array of fast moving flat belt drives.

Some of those I knew etc  - The text in this link is fine but the picture referred to seems to be non existent now, more's the pity.  The story here is one of the dedication of local people to the 'Mill' and the fact that generations spent their whole working lives there.  It was an era of a type of employment which may have had low industry fixed wages and long hours, but which had a social conscience and a somewhat benevolent understanding and trust that would soon vanish.  

However, the Sykes family directors were totally remote and never seen in the mill.  The Directors had their own dining room.  I don't recall one of them ever speaking to me and certainly the other never said anything of a personal nature.  They tended to turn up sometime in the morning and I never knew what they did as they were upstairs out of the way, but then I was at the bottom of the pile and simply getting a good technical education so in no position to know or understand.  A cousin of theirs, Leonard Sykes, was the colour matcher and he was a nice gentlemanly sort of chap.  I worked as his assistant for some time and I think he was a director without any real authority.  John Sugden who ran the mill as a non-family director had a military bearing with a steel tipped positive fast stride.  I don't remember if he was titled as Managing Director or not now but think he was.  He had been a colonel in WW2 and served in Burma for three years without leave.  He was a very decent chap with a very difficult task in a family business.  He worked at the mill for 42 years with the exception of war service.  When the mill closed his main concern was to make sure all the loyal staff got jobs, which they did with his help.  There were some very genuine people there who had virtually given all their working lives to the mill, one or two disabled in some way. One with the effects of trench feet from WW1, another badly crippled with arthritis, but everyone doing long hours and working hard for the low textile wages of the time, for it was their life there. 

I am not sure how the mill was actually managed from on high.  I think family textile businesses then were fated by their approach as well as the fact that we helped the world to make our type of cloth and do it cheaper.  Eivin Torp was most prescient as Huddersfield and district was full of apparently thriving mills in those days, but most were very family oriented.  They used to say there were more Rolls Royce cars per square mile in Huddersfield than anywhere else.  But then of course there is the aphorism, 'Clogs to clogs in three generations.'  

Not all the textile companies in the area have gone though.  There have been some entrepreneurial survivors, and even new starters, who have maintained the tradition of Huddersfield for unbeatable quality yarns and fabric.  The name of 'Huddersfield Fine Worsteds' lives on too although now American owned. Huddersfield Fine Worsteds 

For interest - Some survivors

I enjoyed my time at Rock Mills and it provided a good foundation for the future.

About the engine

Pictures of the engine

Another picture of the engine  - I had my own pictures of the engine once but can no longer find them.  It was very difficult to photograph as it was built into a small space.  Just across the yard was a narrowish tall room with a thick line shaft running across it quite high up as it was a tall room.  The Gent's toilets were in there and primitive is not the word.  In those days little consideration was given to such conveniences for workers and they could be dire holes to visit.  Along the left hand wall as you went in was some basic urinal facility, then a short row of wooden partitions for toilets but with no doors.  When you went in you could see the trousers around the ankles, and more, as the incumbents sat reading the daily paper.  On the whitewashed ceiling above the line shaft there was a rough repair in the plaster.  I was told at the time that the place had once been used as a store for wool bales and some chap had been on top and become caught on the shaft and flung up against the ceiling and killed. 

UPDATE/ADDENDUM 16.03.2020

Having posted the above in 2014 I was contacted by the late James Sugden.  James Sugden - A champion for British Textiles   James is one of three sons of the late Managing Director of Rock Mills, John Sugden,   In 2014 he kindly updated me on some of the discrepancies in my account of Rock Mills which I then corrected.  So having just come across some of this correspondence while having a bit of a clear-out I decided to add edited extracts that may be worth adding, as below -

To James from me -

Your father was a very decent chap and I know he put his heart and soul into the place.  I remember him coming to work in a horrible bright blue colour Morris Oxford or failing that an Austin Seven.  He set me on as an apprentice and I was probably a pain in the backside to him as I was not the most subservient of apprentices.  But unlike the other design apprentices, while I was there I did manage to get to work all over the mill.  From time to time I invaded his office trying to get a rise, but they were rigid about following the Federation or whatever list of agreed wage tables were applicable.  I think your father would have preferred it had I gone and done my National Service since he suggested it to me but I got deferred until I had qualified.  In fact he more or less tried to persuade me to go as I think he thought it would get me out of the way.  In the event, this deferral took me past the point where National Service was discontinued, so I never had to do it.  Clearly there was no future when one finished one's apprenticeship.  Actually I was only allowed to do two designs toward the end of my time there - a couple of subtle checks on a fresco, (3/22s Wstd as I remember), so on plain weave it was hardly designing.   My 'talents' were never going to be recognised there and so I went to Black Rock Mills, Charles Lockwood's, and designed ladies Colne Valley Tweed fabrics until I decided I needed to know about knitting, which was suddenly in vogue.  My career path has changed direction, mostly strategically, on every move since, so it has been really very interesting.

The comment about Colonels was also related to the ones I kept coming across at Lockwood's and elsewhere as well.  (I had made an droll observation in the original Post about the fact that at that time all millowners/directors I came across seemed to have been colonels). Sorry if I stressed this but it wasn't intended to include your father.  If your father was in Burma he has my deepest respect and admiration.  There must be a good story there!  I never knew what Neil (Sykes) was or if I did I have forgotten but I laboured under the delusion that he had been one too.   He ignored me apart from occasional very cutting sarcasm.  I acquired two hamsters from his daughters.  The mother was a tall fiery woman from memory and active in Almondbury.  Unfortunately I was brought up to call senior men 'Sir' and could never get out of the habit at Rockmills and so maybe those in authority thought I was either being deferential or taking the mickey.  

I liked Charlie Hoyle (He was the Weaving Manager) and one son taught at the local school here.  I got on OK with Leonard Sykes in his trilby and had to sit across the desk from him.   He was very precise, quiet and reserved.  There was a chap called Derek Settle who worked in there before me that I was friendly with and I went in there after he left to do his job.  He lived just across from the main gate in the terraced houses.  I seem to remember the powers that be hoped I would stop on to be a colour matcher, (there was no future in the design office),  but then when I worked in my holidays at Z Hinchliffe's before I went to Rock Mills that was offered there too.  Actually being in that office I had other duties as the medical stuff was there and I had treat cuts and other little injuries (no training) and to sell tampons for threepence to the mill girls in need.  I was also responsible for minor surgical procedures like removing splinters and spent some time poking about in people's fingers and hands with a tweezers and a needle, probably the same needle each time especially reserved for the job!.    I had a malicious delight in applying iodine so that probably killed anything in those days.

If I remember rightly Harold Wright ran the spinning.  He had his son there as an apprentice.  One day I was in there and the son got his fingers through a gill box and when I came across him has was standing holding his hand with rows of faller pins sticking right through his fingers.  Probably an intersecting gill box.  It nearly happened to me a Hinchliffs. (Denby Dale).  I was oiling round with a cleaning rag in my hand and the drip oilcan handle was over the end of it.  The tail end of the cleaning rag got in the feed rollers and my hand was being drawn in as I could not get the cloth off as the oilcan handle was trapping it.   Fortunately the mill girl from Barnsley or Rotherham or somewhere at the front of the machine noticed and knocked the machine off in time. 

Your father wore steel tipped shoes and used to march smartly down the resonating hard floor of the corridor to Norris's office from time to time, with the self closing iron fire door making its bang in the middle of the corridor shortly after he passed through.  I adopted the steel tips too (I had to make my shoes last somehow on what I was paid) and used to copy his march down the corridor and into Norris's office, flinging the door open.  It disturbed Norris no end as suddenly he and Keith Fox (Head Designer) had to go into panic mode to create the impression of industry.  Norris gave me some pain too.  He used to come in to where I was and whine at me, 'Hey lad.  What are you doing?'  I have to say that whilst I learnt a lot I had a lot of fun there too 

On the viewing day (Rockmills contents sale) I came across your father in the mill yard.  The last time I saw him.  I was manager of a mill in Moldgreen at the time making pile fabrics.  I felt very uncomfortable and sad for him.  I didn't go to the sale itself.  In any event there was nothing he could have done to prevent the inevitable.  I was fated to work elsewhere that had the same type of pre-war old family business carry on.   It gave me an easy life I suppose because there were no real demands on anyone, but making significant changes was near impossible and heads were well and truly in the sand.  It was not until the early 1980s that I was fortunate enough to get into a really progressive successful and rewarding environment.

I remember two of them in the Time Office.  One was nice quiet lame chap, maybe his name was Bob.  And then there was a smallish sharpish sort of chap in a blue suit - Arthur Nicholson if I remember right.  He had a daughter Barbara, a lovely girl who went into the Colour Office while I was in there and they lived in a bungalow in Brockholes just down on the other side of the road. 

I remember Margaret, and Luther Armitage, who I was once told had been a Huntsman for the HVB.  They and Brian Longbottom and Rex Mason were dead keen on beagling.  At that time I hunted mounted with the Rockwood and took a rather youthful and ignorant dim view of beagling.  There was lad called Terry Calligan in the top pattern room place who was a mate of Longbottom at work and who had been in the Pay Corps in Hong Kong for his National Service.  He used to sit glued to his high stool by the long bench that ran the length of the front windows and when he did move it was with studied slowness and method.   Derek Braithwaite was an apprentice who came back from National Service who was in front of Longbottom in the pecking order and who ended up teaching at the Tech, but like Keith Fox who also went to lecture at the Tech, has I think passed away.  After me came Granville Binns also now deceased and then other called Boyd.  Boyd challenged me to a fight one lunchtime in Norris's office when no one was around.  At the time I had been doing a bit of boxing in the Tech gym and had some gloves so we set-to with Binns as ref..  The outcome was fairly quick and conclusive and I regret that I was not as gracious a winner as I should have been as Boyd used to get on my nerves for some reason.

A bit from James -

The gatehouse was occupied/manned by Bob Hicks (lame) who also had the post office I think. The other person watching over the clocking in was Arthur Mitchell, big friend of Freddie Knapton , the tenter operator from Honley, a wonderful man.  Arthur and Fredde used to go for their annual holidays together, usually to lake Garda in Italy. Terry Calligan was in the pattern room , and indeed I was always struck by the careful timing of all his jobs and he came by train to Brockholes.  After the closure he went to Learoyds. Do you remember Mr Crosland the accountant? His office was on the ground floor, not too far away from your den of iniquity the design office.  Both the two Sykes boys are no longer with us, David whose initial marriage to the daughter of the owner of the Farnley Cock ended in divorce ended up running a post office near York.

David Sykes's Aston Martin can be seen on a previous post - A Classic Aston Martin

Photos copyright of David Swanbury