A mill at Fleet was in existence by the end of the 13th century (1201 – 1300), according to the Wakefield historian John Goodchild in his analysis of old manuscripts. As well as crushing cereal grains (corn) to make flour, by 1341 it was also used for fulling, whereby the water operated heavy wooden hammers to beat woven woollen cloth in large vats or tanks.
Under the medieval, or feudal, legal system tenants of land had obligations to their superiors including their local lord of the manor and up the chain to the king. Instead of taxes paid in cash they were required to carry out certain duties and one document shows that in 1425 it was the custom that tenants in Oulton had the burden “to carry stone to repair the dam of the mill of Flete.”
From the Norman invasion in 1066 the Rothwell area became part of the Honour of Pontefract, a vast estate of 162 manors and 60 parishes stretching from Yorkshire into Lancashire. It was granted by William the Conqueror to one of his lieutentants, Ilbert de Lacy, based at Pontefract Castle. It was in his and his descendants gift to sublet the land to loyal tenants and they in their turn made further subdivisions.
It was under the de Lacys that the mill at Fleet was built and operated. It was probably in the hands of whoever was the lord of the manor in any one period although their names are unknown. He would have employed a miller and other workers to carry out the day to day operations.
Goodchild states that the Fleet and Rothwell mills came under the same lord. Under a feudal law called “soke” it was compulsory for farmers in the manor to have their corn and malt ground at one of the mills and pay a milling toll known as multure, or mulcture. It was taken as a fixed share of the grain or flour. The farmers couldn’t own mills of their own, even hand operated ones, and in return for a monoploy the lord had to maintain the mill. The miller was usually a tenant who leased the mill from the lord for a fixed annual rent. He made his living entirely off the grain he confiscated from the farmers via the multure.
Very few other records of the local mills during the de Lacy period have come to light. Eventually, at the end of the 14th century, after a long, complicated and sometimes brutal history, Rothwell as part of the Honour of Pontefract came under the control of the Duchy of Lancaster. This is covered in detail in Batty’s History of Rothwell and in the more recent History of Rothwell Castle. Both books record visits by kings, queens and men like John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. It’s entirely possible they ate bread made from flour ground at the Rothwell and Fleet mills.
In 1399 Henry IV decreed that the Duchy of Lancaster be held separately and distinctively from the general Crown Estate and its yearly income became the private property of the reigning monarch. Even now King Charles III continues to hold the title of Duke of Lancaster and receives the net income generated by the estate.
That’s not to say the land on which the mills at Rothwell and Fleet stood have anything to do with today’s monarch. That’s because it was sold off as will become clear.
Goodchild, in his book News from Newland, states that during the reign of Henry VIII (1509 – 1547), and afterwards throughout the 16th century, Duchy papers record the leasing out of the Rothwell manorial mills and the powers to get stone for their repair. One document refers to: ”All the soake & multure of all the corne and graine used or expended within the Mannor or Loppe of Rothwell.” No other mills, powered by water, wind, horse or hand were to be erected.
As can be expected the imposition of the soke rules wasn’t appreciated by ordinary farmers and many tried to avoid the designated mills. In 1573-74, during the reign of Elizabeth I, a case was taken to the Duchy court by its Attorney General on behalf of the lessees of the Fleet, Rothwell and Castleford mills to uphold their rights. Perhaps predictably the court backed the lessees.
Events in 1603 had a significant effect on Fleet Mills. When Elizabeth I died in March that year with no direct heirs the Tudor dynasty came to end. Under the law it meant that the English crown passed to her closest Protestant relative, James Charles Stuart. He had already been James VI of Scotland since 1567 so under what was known as the Union of the Crowns he also became James I of England.
Despite England being much richer than Scotland James had a problem. When he got to London he found the government had very little money coming in because its traditonal revenues hadn’t kept pace with inflation. Huge debts had built up following wars with Spain. That didn’t stop James spending lavishly on himself and his favourites though. Part of the solution was to raise money by selling off Duchy of Lancaster properties and Fleet Mills was one of them.
After first being sold to middlemen, London based textile merchant Edward Ferrers and his partner Francis Philips, the mills’ first Yorkshire owner, in 1609, was William Cartwright, originally of New Hall in Middleton which was then in Rothwell parish. He was an official of the Honour of Pontefract responsible for its daily administration, collecting rents and law enforcement. As such he had risen to be a clerk of the peace and under sheriff for the West Riding running the courts and managing county administration.
As the new owner of what was described as two mills under one roof he had to pay a small annual fee to the Crown. The sale stipulated that if the mills “shall grow ruinous” he could be taken to court and ordered to make repairs within a year. If they weren’t carried out the king then had a right to repossess the mills. This may explain a record from the Duchy of Lancaster held at the National Archives. It dates from 1615-16 and is an account for the sale of 100 trees for the repair of Rothwell and Fleet mills.
The mills changed ownership several times during the rest of the 17th century as chronicled by Goodchild in News from Newland. Nothing is known in this period about the day to day activities and who worked there. By 1649 there were three water driven corn mills and two fulling mills demonstrating that a good deal of cloth weaving was carried out in the Rothwell area. Most of the owners appear to have a connection to Wakefield or the countryside north of there including East and West Ardsley and all appear to be linked by marriage.
At the end of the century, after many years of trying, the woollen merchants of Leeds and Wakefield obtained an act of parliament in 1699 enabling the construction of the Aire and Calder Navigation. By building weirs, locks, and short lengths, or cuts, of canal it made it easier for heavily laden boats to carry cloth to the ports on the east coast. From then on the fate of Fleet Mills became closely linked to that of the Navigation.
At first the relationship was uneasy as the Robinson family of West Ardsley, who by then were the owners, demanded compensation after the Navigation had made a cut to avoid the Fleet Mills’ weir. A new road bridge was built over the cut to reach the mills but the Robinsons had lost a large fishing pond, the herbage for cattle had been destroyed and the animals had been prevented from drinking from the river. More importantly damage had been done to the mill race which drove the water wheels. One account in the archives shows that in December 1702 the Navigation’s shareholders, known as undertakers, agreed to pay two guineas for the herbage.
On the positive side the fact that the mills could now send their product cheaply by water, either upstream to the growing town of Leeds or downstream to Castleford and beyond, meant that output could increase and bigger profits could be made. In 1701 it was claimed that Fleet Mills could be kept going during any summer, however low the water. One reference states: ”The Fleet Mills are good mills and if well managed none can beat them.”
The law regarding soke contined to exist and a 1742 document refers to the legal status of the mills by calling them “the King’s mills,” a practice common throughout the country. There, and at Rothwell, the soke or customary legally exactable payment was taken in kind rather than cash. It was one sixteenth or “A certain Dishfull for every Stroake of Come Grayne or malt there Ground.” It applied to all wheat, maslin (wheat and rye sown together), barley, peas, beans and oats. For malt one thirty second part was paid. Presumably this was then sold to pay the miller and his men and out of which profits were made. This was the usual practice until well into the nineteenth century when soke became too difficult and costly to enforce.
In 1742 the mills were sold to John Smith of Newland Hall near Normanton. He had been an undertaker on the Wakefield committee of the Navigation during the 1730s. He also bought back the mill at Rothwell which had been with different owners since 1704. Both mills were then let to Joseph Birkes (or Birks) of Rothwell for a rent of £100 a year. A windmill was also part of the deal.
Smith had inherited the Newland estate from John Silvester, a rich uncle, a blacksmith from near Barnsley who had made a fortune as an anchorsmith in Portsmouth for the Royal Navy and at the Tower of London. One of his achievements is believed to have been an enormous chain to be drawn across the River Thames in the event of a Dutch naval invasion.
A year after he bought Fleet Mills the Newland manuscripts suggest John Smith started major repairs and a long term project to rebuild them completely leading to the layout shown in 20th century photographs. Negotiations began with the Aire and Calder Navigation and they spent £300 on works to improve the locks and cut running next to the mills.
John Smith died in 1746 and the mills then passed to his eldest son John Silvester Smith. Along with others in the early 1770s he opposed improvements planned by the Navigation stating they would injure his “very valuable Corn Mills” at Fleet. A little later, in 1775-76, he made the last of a number of payments relating to the repair and rebuilding of the mills including to Salt & Gothard, a firm of ironfounders based in Hunslet.
From their creation until midway through the 18th century nothing is known of the millers, their workers and families at Fleet Mills. Later photographs and plans show a rectangle of houses next to the mills but it’s not known when they were built.
The registers of Rothwell church started in 1538 but Fleet isn’t mentioned until April 1736 when Martha, a daughter of John Holmes, a miller from Fleet was baptised. The following December there was another baptism for Ann, a daughter of Thomas Earnshaw, a yeoman from Fleet mill. In the 1740s there were other baptisms for the children of Toby Birks, no doubt a relative of Joseph Birkes who held the lease. Other names with a link to Fleet include Bywater, Wrigglesworth, Gibson, Hanson, Spurr and Storey. In 1752 Stephen Dixon,”a stranger” who drowned at Fleet Mills was buried.
New tenants took over in the latter part of the 1770s. They were Richard Hutchinson of Astley and William Evers who had run a successful metal working business at Swillington Bridge. A lease seen by Goodchild was to run for eleven years at £300 a year. The lease provisions included “all the Suit Soak Toll and Mulcture” of Fleet and the “Benefits and Privileges of the Water of the Boats and other Vessels passing and reprising.”
The use of a room in the mill house was reserved for Smith and his friends and he was to approve tenants in the house. The lease listed moveable items in the mills. There was an iron “mulcture” dish, measures, picks, hammers chisels, and a mill chisel for dressing millstones. Every third salmon caught at the mills was to be sent to Newland.
A windmill on the Orgreave Field in Rothwell, “lately fallen down,” was also let to Hutchinson and Evers. When restored it would have come into its own when low water levels prevented the operation of the water mills. It’s not known if this refers to the windmill on one of the highest points in the district just off the road between Rothwell and Woodlesford.
In 1777 shareholders in the Navigation had shown an interest in buying Fleet Mills, a deal that eventually came about in 1786 when they were acquired from Smith for £10,250. Hutchinson and Evers continued as tenants under Navigation management. Their involvement is detailed on a separate page.
News from Newland by John Goodchild was published privately in 1999. It chronicles the history of the estate at Normanton established in the 12th and 13th centuries as a base for knights who went off to fight in the Crusades in the Holy Land. The book is best obtained from a library as copies are now rare and expensive.