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Not so run of the mill
It shouldn't happen to a lad, although Tony Routh – now 63 – smiles at the memory.
He had been the final apprentice joiner to be taken on at the 200-year-old Gayle Mill in one of Wensleydale's prettier villages. But he soon found out there'd be a lot more to the work than being taught how to operate a wood lathe or cut window panes.
The castration of cock chickens was his first surprise. In the early 1960s every part of the mill had to bring in money, and excess space on the top floor was used for rearing capons. Each one sold for about 25 shillings (1.25), which was then half of Tony's weekly wage, and although the timber mill had no competition for its services in that part of the Dales, those were still austere times and money was short. The mill boss, Tommy Alderson, was a Methodist lay preacher with a dry sense of humour, and one day he thought he'd baptise his fresh-faced young apprentice in the harsh realities of life. "Come with me, lad," he said, leading the way out into Gayle.
Tony walked with him to a house in the village, where they were shown upstairs to a bedroom in which a newly deceased man with bare feet was lying on a bed.
Alderson pulled out a tape measure from his pocket. "Here," he said, giving one end to Tony. "Hold that on the chap's big toe."
Tony says now: "I really think he wanted me to be horrified by measuring a corpse for a coffin, but even then not much came as a shock to me."
However, that attitude didn't last long. A few months later, Alderson took Tony aside and told him the mill could no longer afford an apprentice. Even with the income from capons, he was too much of a drain on finances. The mill struggled on for another 25 years until it closed in the 1980s, while Tony eventually set up in business as a joiner and carpenter and became one of the best-known
restorers of dilapidated field barns in the Yorkshire Dales.
These days Tony is back at Gayle Mill, this time as a director of the trust which has given the building a new lease of life. It has restored the original suite of Victorian machines, powered with electricity generated by the fast-flowing water in Gayle Beck.
In 2004, Tony was chosen as spokesman for the mill when it was featured on the BBC programme, Restoration, a national competition to win funds and goodwill to kick-start the revival of British architectural treasures.
After the show's presenter, Griff Rhys Jones, had rhapsodised about the derelict building's potential, Gayle Mill was voted into third place and won the sort of financial and volunteer support it may otherwise have struggled to find. Earlier this year, Rhys Jones returned to see how the building had been saved.
Gone was the cage of scaffolding that was virtually stopping it from falling down, and he found people from a wide area had come together to form the Friends of Gayle Mill and devote much of their free time to raising money.
It's easy to see why it generates such passion. The mill is one of the largest buildings in Wensleydale, and one of the few completely water-powered mills left in Yorkshire.
First built in 1784, it was a place for spinning cotton yarn, using Richard Arkwright's new water-driven technology that would go on to industrialise many Pennine towns and villages. Within a few years it moved on to flax for sail cloth, and spun wool for the hosiery trade.
In the 1850s, it fell into disrepair, just as it was to do a century or so later. With no TV programme riding to its rescue, the building was hardly used again until its conversion to a sawmill in 1878.
Its original 22ft high waterwheel had rotted away, and new state-of-the-art power generation came from a Williamsons of Kendal 11.2 kilowatt electric turbine that was driven – like the waterwheel – by the pure Wensleydale water of Gayle Beck. It drove the earliest models of electric planer, lathes, circular saw, bandsaw and morticer by a series of belts and pulleys off a central line shaft in the basement. Today most of the original machines are working again at Gayle Mill.
Cut to a bright autumn afternoon in 2009 and the mill hums to the noise of its machinery, just like the old days. This time they are operated by volunteers taking part in a DIY Victorian woodworking machinery weekend. People have signed up to learn how to make milking stools or boot jacks – a nifty wooden device for taking off Wellingtons.
The Gayle Mill Trust's chairman, William Lambert, is there in between milkings of his British Friesians and Ayrshires for the Wensleydale Creamery. Like many others, the mill features in some of his earliest childhood memories.
"I used to come down here with my father to get timber fencing posts and rails," he says. "I remember looking up at the sawblade that was higher than I was. I was in total awe of it.
"Well, that's one of things we haven't got working yet, but we've got some funding towards its restoration this winter."
Another member of the trust, Mike Thompson, takes time off from his management and recruitment consultancy to demonstrate how the mill is powered by Gayle Beck, the water running the same turbine that was installed in 1878. In the late 19th century, it was sending out surplus electricity to light street lamps in the village, and then the owners set up something called the Hawes Electric Lighting Co to sell power to the nearby town.
Today, the mill is back supplying power to the National Grid, this time through a computerised system, and earning some useful income for the restoration programme.
But as Lambert says, there's no point restoring the mill if nobody gets to see or use it, and so there are regular demonstration days and these occasional hands-on weekends.
Working on a milking stool is Maureen Prince. "I'm a volunteer helper with the mill, but this is the first time I've used the machines," she says. "You can't get more traditional in Wensleydale than a milking stool, can you? I sat on plenty of these when I was a girl." Nearby, Angela Leathley is making a boot jack.
"I'm of the generation where girls did domestic science and only boys got to do woodwork," she says. "It's something I always wanted to have a go at, and now I've got the chance."
At the next table the story of the mill's recent history has come full circle. Tony Routh, the last apprentice, is showing 15-year-old James Middleton how to use hand tools. "Lads like James are the mill's future," Tony says. "I like to think this place will always be here. We've got such a fantastic team of volunteers all willing to stick in and work hard."
The entrance to Gayle Mill is next to the bridge in the village of Gayle, near Hawes, Wensleydale.
The next DIY Victorian Woodworking Machinery Weekend is the weekend of January 23 and 24, 2010. Booking on 01969 667320.
Demonstration days are held at Gayle Mill on the first Sunday of every month, starting at 11am and 2.30pm. More information at www.gaylemill.org.uk.
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Friday 10 February 2012
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