Copyright John Firth  and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

On February 23^rd an informal talk was given by Barbara McLoughlin, a group member, on the industrial hamlet of Bell Busk and the associated remains of the old cotton spinning mill.

The mill was built in 1794, and although there are farms in the surrounding area, the hamlet appears to be different from many Dale’s villages as it seems to have developed solely because of the mill. Taking water from the River Aire, the mill pond was north on the railway line near Bell Busk bridge, and east on the river, and the mill building to the south of that. The mill race can be traced in a fairly straight line going north to the Aire, on the other side of Mark House Lane, now a bridle path to Gargrave.

Various owners occupied and ran the mill, which spun first cotton and then silk. In the late 19^th C, numerous local mill owners in the area joined together to form the English Sewing Cotton Company Limited, with the intention of preserving their trademarks, products and mills, and avoiding competition, but it did not work for Bell Busk and the mill closed in 1901.

A number of cottages were built to house workers at the mill, originally back-to-back, most were subsequently altered to provide more space by knocking through the adjoining wall, making both a front and a back entrance. The cottages were initially supplied with cold running water, outside privies and communal wash-houses. This was quite good compared with other areas at the time, but still often meant that all family members were squashed into very limited space.

Copyright Kate Jewell / Bell Busk Viaduct

James Braithwaite Garforth of Coniston Hall, whose family also owned Bell Busk cotton mill at the time, built St Peter’s church in 1848, and it was dedicated a year later. The church now houses a clock made by James Harrison in 1845.

Along the road towards Otterburn is a house once known as the reading room. It was built in the early 19^th C as a Wesleyan Sunday school, but it appears that it ceased to have been used as such before the end of the century.

Between 1847 and 1959 people from Leeds and Bradford could use trains of the Little Western Railway for days out in the Dales, alighting at the small station at Bell Busk.

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