Gayle Mill: The Yorkshire Dales mill run by volunteers that attracted national fame when it was featured on BBC Two's Restoration series 20 years ago

The Gayle Mill dates back to 1784 and was built as a water-powered cotton mill by two local Quaker brothers Thomas and Oswald Routh who had joined the trade by accident.

They had invested in the London banks who had lent it to land investors in the US, just after the end of the American War of Independence.

When the people who borrowed money from the banks defaulted on their loans, the two brothers were paid back in land and began producing cotton.

They chose to build the mill in the Yorkshire Dales village of Gayle as it had free source of power, access to water, and was suitable for cheap labour with women and children living in lead miners’ homes and farmhouses.

A volunteer at the mill, Sarah Dashwood, told The Yorkshire Post it was one of the first factories in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

She explained: “It was actually the first stage of bringing people out of their houses where they were working individually and into a group setting where one woman could do 10 women’s work on a machinery that was available.

“Things like this were built on 10 times the scale and it helped people realise that mass manufacturing was far cheaper and far more economically productive than people working on an individual basis.

“It evolved, the factories took off and the people who owned it decided they needed to diversify and eventually the diversification came to an end when manufacturing took over all the things it could do and that’s when it was turned into a sawmill.”

The mill has gone through a variety of changes but it was forced to close down in 1988 as what they were making at the time was not needed.

At the time it was owned by Brian Aldersen, who decided to sell it and turn it into a scheduled monument to preserve its history.

It was part of a project to bring it back to life in 2004 which was featured in the BBC Two series Restoration and garnered national attention.

“[Brian] was offered money to convert it into flats but he said it’s been in his family since 1865 and it’s part of North Yorkshire’s history,” Ms Dashwood said.

“So [he decided to] make it into a scheduled monument and try and encourage someone to buy it who will make it into a museum and preserve its history.

“It was bought in 2003 by what is now called Cultura Trust and that’s when the renovation started. With the previous owner’s help, a whole programme of works was designed to bring it back into functionality to make it into a community benefit and self-sustaining.

“It was opened to the community for them to do all sorts of things like crafts, create a warm space for the community to meet, to get woodworking courses going and they actually achieved that with a £1.2 million lottery grant and it ran for around 10 years still making gates, fences, doors for farms.”

The mill was powered by a 22 ft overshot waterwheel and was turned into a flax and wool spinning mill by 1813 for the local knitting industry and for a period in the 19th century, it was used for domestic accommodation.

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Seven years later it developed into a woollen mill where wool was spun and knitted in the homes by everyone in the family including the men.

William Aldersen and his partner Thomas Lambert took over the mill in the 1860s and turned it into a sawmill to produce wooden equipment and vehicles that would be used on a farm. They invested in Victorian machinery brought in between 1865 and 1880 that you can still see at the mill today.

In 1879, the waterwheel was replaced with a Thomson double-vortex turbine. It is thought to be the only remaining working variety of its type.

“It was the first provider of electricity to the village of Gayle and Hawes,” Ms Dashwood said.

“They replaced the water-wheel in 1879 with the turbine which is like a big water-driven fan.

“By the 1900s they realised that if you connect that to a generator, it can start generating very clean electricity, so by 1910 they began doing that.

“In 1943 there was a regiment of border guards that lived in the loft who were tasked with testing the amphibious tanks for the D-Day landings by driving them out of the mill pond. You wouldn’t imagine that because we’re in the middle of nowhere.

“They were able to supply electricity for all the lights in the mill, all the street lights in Gayle, and they carried on doing that, they were the only source of electricity right the way through until the National Grid got to Gayle which wasn’t until at least 1948.”

It fell into disrepair again in 2018 and had to close down until a group of nine dedicated local volunteers took over the mill in 2021.

“With the money from visitors, we’ve actually managed to do a temporary repair that has allowed water to run again,” Ms Dashwood said.

“It can also set an example to young people about how things can be sustainable; if you make tools in the right way, mass manufacture, make tools that can be reused, make tools that will last a lifetime, you can save on materials.

“When we are open during the holiday season, from spring until autumn, we are usually getting between 20 and 25 visitors a day.

“We get quite a mix as well; we get people who come here just because it’s raining and they’re interested, we get people who come here who have worked as apprentices in the 1950s in woodworking mills.

“We also have people who are into engineering, visitors who are interested in Quaker history, cotton spinning industry, and you learn from the people who [visit].”