Hey Green Mill

Hey¹ Green Mill was the first mill in Marsden. During its history it was a fulling² mill, a mill for the manufacture of cloth, a corn mill and also a brewery.

The first mill on the site was a fulling mill, and it was built at Hey Green in 1710 following a proposal by Robert France of Edgend (Holmfirth) in April 1709.³ A copy of the petition in support of the proposal is held in the West Yorkshire Archives⁴, and it bears the signatures of 42 local weavers.

Read a transciption of the petition

The precise dates of the fulling mill are hard to find, but its existence is confirmed by a Land Tax document³ dated 1717. The mill was sited a few yards north of the River Colne at Hey Green. This would have been a good position for a mill due to the availability of a reliable source of clean water for power and for washing the cloth, and its proximity to the local trackways and the main pennine route.

It is not clear how long the fulling mill was in existence, but the site is reported to have been used later for a larger mill for the manufacture of cloth, and later still for a mill for grinding corn³ and for brewing beer. For many years the corn mill was run by the Dowse family as 'The Hay Green Corn Mill Company Limited', which prospered until the early 1870s. The company was based at Marsden and Dewsbury, and is reported in the local newspapers to have been a very prosperous enterprise. In January 1835 Joseph Dowse opened a warehouse at Tunnel End, with an internal loading dock connected to the Huddersfield Narrow Canal. The warehouse was later extended and a set of railway sidings was added which connected to the London and North Western Railway. A newspaper report states that in 1855 J. E. Dowse treated his workforce to dinner, with tea for their wives: 'afterwards they assembled about 70 in number in a large room adorned in first-rate style with festoons and designs of evergreens'.⁶

Reference to the 1854 6” to 1 mile Ordnance Survey map shows that the corn mill was a substantial building, and the letterheading on the company's paperwork shows a four storey mill and a terrace of buildings on the opposite side of the road beside the river Colne. This terrace included a cottage for the blacksmith/farrier, four cart sheds and a gas works at the eastern end.

On the north side of the road, opposite these buildings, was a gasometer, with the gas providing lighting to the mill buildings and to nearby Hey Green House. To drive the mill wheel, water from the River Colne was drawn off at a weir (just above Hey Green Bridge) into two mill ponds inside the grounds of Hey Green House. By 1851 the mill was powered by a steam engine.

From sometime in the 1860s the corn mill also included a brewery, owned by John France and named 'The Hay Green cum Dean Brewery'. John France started his brewery about one mile away at Higher Green Owlers, The Dean, in 1858. He owned several public houses in the area including the Swan and the Old Ram in Marsden.

In 1870 J. E. Dowse, the owner of the corn mill died, and in December 1871 the property of the corn mill company was put up for sale in 16 lots⁷, but there were no buyers except for one small lot.

Read the announcement of the sale from the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 2 Dec., 1871

The corn mill business closed down a few years later having been put up for sale on several occasions. In 1887 the mill was bought by John France, but he died in 1893 and Hey Green House, the corn mill, brewery and reservoirs were sold to Joseph Crowther. In 1905 photographs show the mill buildings in ruins.

Today there is nothing to be seen of the mill buildings, but the former blacksmith's cottage, cart sheds and gas works were converted into houses in the 1880s, and remain as Lower Hey Green cottages, and Hey Green House and the corn warehouse at Tunnel End are also still in existence.

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Notes

1. Hey Green is a modern spelling. Previously it was spelt Hay Green.
2. Fulling is the process of cleaning and beating woollen cloth using fulling stocks (large, heavy wooden hammers which were water-powered). It removed oils, dirt and other impurities and resulted in a smooth tightly finished fabric.
3. Whitehead, Lewis Buckley, Bygone Marsden, (Manchester, 1942) p.25, 26
4. Copy of petition, courtesy of WYAS (KC615)
5. Photo of Hey Green Corn Mill, courtesy of WYAS (1214/6)
6. Huddersfield Chronicle, 15 January 1855
7. Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 2 Dec., 1871