Henry Brown, Son and Pickles. Engineers - Part 4

I think we should draw the story together so far.  William Bracewell, son of Christopher Bracewell of Green End, Earby comes to Barlick in 1835 at the age of 23 and sets up at 24 Church Street putting yarn out to local weavers.  By 1885 when he dies he has built Butts and Wellhouse Mills, formed the railway company, built up his engineering works in Burnley, bought coal mines at Ingleton, owns the Corn mill and is building a gas works for the town.  He also owned land and farms and Ouzledale Mill.  The bank takes over when he dies and in 1887 there is a sale of most of his assets, the bank keeps some, amongst which is Butts and Wellhouse Mills.

Barlick is thrown into decline and local men get together to found two shed companies to supply space for weaving on the Room and Power system.  These are the Long Ing Shed Company in 1888 and the Calf Hall Shed Company in 1889.  They build Long Ing and Calf Hall Sheds.  The Calf Hall company buys Butts and Wellhouse mills.  Included in Wellhouse Mill is Bracewell's old engineering shop.  Bracewell's main engineer, Pete Bilborough, leaves the trade and goes into business as a coal merchant in the town supplying domestic and mill coal.  A man called Sutcliffe takes over the Wellhouse machine shop.

In 1900, Henry Brown at Earby is tipped off by his uncle, John Duxbury of Crook Carr, who is a shareholder in the Calf Hall Co, that Sutcliffe has given notice to vacate the machine shop. Henry Brown takes it over at £25 per annum and starts a light engineering service keeping the Earby shop going.  He goes into partnership as an iron founder with a man called Henry Watts who is running Ouzledale Mill as a foundry, renting it from the Calf Hall Company.  Henry Brown's trade expands as the mills are built and in 1908 he sets John Albert Pickles on as foreman.

Barlick was booming at this time.  The quarries on Tubber Hill were cutting stone as fast as they could to supply the demand caused by mill and house building.  There were so many houses built in Barlick at this time that, apart from the odd infill, no more new houses were needed until after WW2.  Henry Brown's business was growing as well and this was why he needed a good foreman.

Until Johnny joined Browns they had never tried to break into the heavy engineering side of the trade.  If engine repairs were needed the mill owners got the manufacturers in.  This was anathema to Johnny who had worked in the heavy end at Burnley Ironworks, he had bigger ideas but had to get established first.  Henry Brown was content to do small maintenance jobs and blacksmithing.  

Johnny had met a young woman working in the mill in Earby, she was called Sarah Elizabeth Kirby.  Born in Carleton in 1885 she had moved to Earby to find work and lived near Green End in Earby.  On St Valentine's day in 1913 she married John Albert and for a while they lived at her parents.  In 1913 Johnny bought a new house, 35 Federation Street in Barlick and they moved in there just before the war started.  Sarah carried on working in the mill weaving at Windle's at Wellhouse.  On the 10th of March 1916 she bore a son, William Newton and stopped weaving, she never went back to the mill.

Just as WW1 started there was a lot of sub-contracting work to be had for the outside firms who were installing engines and lineshafting in the new mills.  Henry Brown and Sons soon built up a connection making the lighter shafting for preparation and taping rooms.  This gave Johnny an idea and he sat down at night at home and designed a small steam engine, the 'donkey engine' which was used to power the tapes when the main engine was stopped.  He made the patterns for the castings and persuaded Henry Brown to start making them.  They made 48 engines in the next 15 years.  Johnny was an engine builder at last!

Sometime round about WW1, Henry Watts up at Ouzledale either died or retired and Browns took over the foundry.  Harold Duxbury told me that it was then that Henry Brown brought in James Cecil Ashby, a young ironfounder who had been working in Leeds and set him on as foreman at Ouzledale.  This foundry did all the castings for Browns including the donkey engines which were fairly big lumps.  If you look carefully at the road down to Ouzledale you can still find pieces of slag, the waste from the cupola furnace, which was used for road-making.

Sometime shortly after the end of the war, Ouzledale couldn't cope with the amount of work that Browns were doing.  They were getting a lot of castings made by other foundries and Henry Brown and Johnny decided that there was scope for expansion, trade was booming so they decided to build a new foundry which Johnny would design.  The site chosen was Havre Park, in fact you can see the original foundry now, it's the middle building of what is now Gissing and Lonsdale's.  There is a problem with this land in Eastwood Bottoms, it's all soft silt and very bad bearing ground.  Newton told me that Johnny bought hundreds of tons of old wrought iron loom cranks and used them to consolidate the foundations.  Newton said that his mother took him down there one night to see the first pour of metal and he'd be about eight years old at the time so this would make it about 1921 or 1922.

We're going to have to stop here for this week.  Johnny is established and doing the things he enjoys most.  Newton is growing up steeped in cutting oil and Browns are roaring ahead taking on bigger and bigger jobs.  It looked as though it could go on forever.  As Rabbie Burns said, 'The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley … '

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© Stanley Challenger Graham 2003

Page updated: 13 OCT 2003