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davidkidd@spiritone.com |
Exley Head, The Shape of an Ancient Yorkshire Village |
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An 1822 description: "Exley Head, 3 or 4 farm-houses in the township and parish of Keighley, liberty of Staincliffe; 1 mile S. of Keighley." The three Farms are named Hole Fold, High Fold, and Low Fold. |
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Ancient Exley Head was technically a hamlet not a village for it didn't have a church. In 1560 English ‘Wich’ meant "nearness in place"And the meaning "surrounding district" is first attested 1796. Vicinity (e.g. Greenwich). c.f. Du. wijk "quarter, district." fr L. vicinitas fr vicinus "neighbor, neighboring." Neighbors But I am glad to find Wikipedia today defines village as “a clustered human settlement or community in a rural area” and doesn’t mention buildings at all. To me, each village was originally the settlement of a family, and the territory and the clan were synonymous. In old Scotland a visitor couldn’t settle anywhere in clan-areas without being adopted by the local clan and changing your name |
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Oxaléah Héafod = The top end of the ox field Ox Old English oxa, cf G ochse, Skr ukshán pl. = any bovine cloven-footed ruminant domesticated for draught, or supplying milk or meat. Ley or Lea Old English léah = tract of open gound esp. grass land. Head Old English héafod cf G haupt = upper end. |
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The earliest farming settlement in the Dales avoided the valley bottoms, which were damp, shady frost-hollows with soils of boulder clay, left by glaciation, heavy to cultivate. Early farmers sited their farms well up the slopes, especially on the better drained 'shoulders' which the horizontally bedded Millstone Grit geology provides. Starting up the hill, coming running diagonally down the hillside is a watercourse of sparkling new spring water. Exley Beck springs at 220m and "enters" and "issues" repeatedly on its way down 120m to Ingrow. |
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1852-53 Ordnance Survey Map http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk from http://www.old-maps.co.uk with permission of http://www.landmark-information.co.uk |
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Altitude 221m. Lat Long +53° 51' 29.52", -1° 56' 7.80" |
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Exley Head's sparkling head spring, at 221 meters, is now sadly paved over. Its location is near the bus stop on Wheat Head Lane near Wheat Head Crescent. Perhaps it's under this manhole cover? Before humans made Wethead Lane into a proper road it seems likely this beck went straight downhill towards North Beck below Fell Lane, but the road makers dug a ditch on the hill side to stop the road being washed away in the wet season. |
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Going down the hill towards the village the mapmaker of 1852 called the outflow at 200m an "Issue" but the next cartographer named it "Spring". Whatever you call it, it is just below Springwell Cottages, 140 Wheathead Lane. Older maps also mark a well just up the hill from the cottage but that may be from a lower stratum.
Detail of a 1930 postcard by A Dewhirst & Sons. |
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The author with his big brother in the back garden of 130 Wheathead Lane. Apart from Springwell Cottages our neighbours on three sides were cows.
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Wethead Lane was originally the name of the track from Hole Fold to Wethead Farm. Apart from Springwell Cottages the lane viewed only fields until they built numbers to 110 to 130 Wheathead Lane about 1913.
Below Hole Fold it was not called Wethead Lane, just Exley Head.
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Below Hoyle Fold the hill levels out onto the hillside shoulder. All the spring water from the hillside conspires to make a stream running ESE leaving an attractive dry ridge for travel and housing. Exley Beck is most unusual in that it runs diagonally across a hilside. It runs on the uphill side of Wethead Lane, between the road and the hill. However it is now mostly in pipes and paved over. |
A South-North cross-section shows that this stream is in a micro-valley separating the shoulder from its hill. This is because the beck follows a geological fault line. This fault line runs WNW to ESE between Sutton and Harden. |
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The rock geology is not apparent because the shape of the hillside was later heavily rounded-off by grinding glaciers and also plastered by their Till, a stiff blue-grey boulder clay. This map is British Geological Society 1:50000 England and Wales Sheet 69, Bradford, solid and drift edition © NERC 2000 |
BEDROCK: In the late Carboniferous, Silesian, Namurian period this was a tropical beach. It later became Millstone Grit, a fine to granular feldspathic sandstone with rippled laminations and occasional lines of mudstones showing marine life. |
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A geological fault is formed by brittle earth’s crust yielding under unequal stress, slipping generating earthquakes. In West Yorkshire a parallel series of such faults results in the Pennine Chain stepping down from the moors to the plains of York. In Exley Head area each steps down on average 15 meters. The older houses of Exley Head are built on this horst; Wethead Lane runs up it as far as Hole Fold. Fault planes are zones of pulverized rock that allow springs of rising ground water. Here these springs result in Exley Beck. In addition some streams from the higher-up springs at faults 1 and 2, heading for the North Beck valley, are captured by the Exley graben and diverted to the Worth Valley instead. |
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Hoyle Fold Farm: Altitude 193m. The pastures north of the lane would have been too dry for the oxen had there not been another water supply. And I propose the name of the farm "Hole" refers to this vital Watering Hole. Isn't it odd that a spring is there out of line with the other springs? Could there be an underground waterway from Exley Beck under the lane emerging back of the farm at 193m. One might call such a natural passage a Hole. The 1853 cartographer distinguished between "Spring" and "Issue" but perhaps should have called that at Hoyle Fold an "issue". |
On Coronation day 1953 the farmer let the village party on this green road: three-legged races; sack races; all the mums running with an egg on a spoon. Joseph Tulley of Exley Head earned 18 shillings a week weaving worsted so supplemented his wage by raising pigs. At the 1847 York show won first prize of £6 for best large sow. In 1851 his cross-bred "Matchless" was recognized as a new breed: the Middle White. He became famous thereby and moved down Oakworth Road to "Matchless House", a gothic cottage west end of Damside that the Duke of Devonshire had a hand in, and farmed 25 acres. Then beside pigs he also won prizes for poultry: Bolton Grey and Chittaprat. By 1858 he had moved to a big farm: Truewell Hall up Holme House Lane. His daughter Mary Ann always proudly declared that she was born in Exley Head. In the 1930s Exley Head was still best known for pig farming, but by the 1950s it was all cattle. I remember Hoyle Fold had a bull kept in the barn. The farm-hand use to scare us kids with stories about what it could do if it got out. Wasn't it called Tom? Please Email your answers to David Kidd |
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Textiles as an industry in West Yorkshire was founded in cotton in the early 18th century. The cotton was imported initially from India via Lancashire. The weavers wove linens. A loom took up a whole room and the family was expected to live in the other single room. These would be tied cottages: built and owned by a businessman and let-out only to those he employed. Should the worker die or become incapable the family would be evicted. Therefore the whole family was always a team, the eldest being apprentices and the younger kids assistants to ensure security of housing. The early census underlines this family-profession system.
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Spinning being a light-weight product was the first industry to employ a lot of children. In the spinning mills children started as doffers: removing the full bobbins from the frames and replacing with empty ones for 1s 6d (7.5p) a week. Children started work in the mills half-time at 12 years old. Then school and mill alternated morning and afternoon until they were 13 years of age and could leave school. Mill holidays were one week at Keighley Feast, and two days each at Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide - all unpaid. |
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Weaving as a cottage industry came to an end when power looms were perfected about 1800 and the mills sprang up. By the 1840s India was no longer capable of supplying the vast quantities of cotton fibers needed by British power looms so traders turned to purchasing cotton from plantations in the United States and the Caribbean. But the American Civil War of 1861 the Union blockade caused the Cotton Drought. The lack of cotton forced West Yorkshire mills to turn to the local product of wool. And worsted brought a boom in the cottage industry of woolcombing for wool-combing machines proved most the difficult to invent and perfect. Robert Smith of Hoyle Fold controlled Exley Head's production and warehoused his goods at Hoyle Fold. He employed woolcombers and traded their product with the new spinning mills for spun yarn that he then distributed to his weaver's cottages. |
Woolcombing by hand demanded strength and skill and necessitated keeping the room stove burning day and night. It all smelled of putrid hot oils for they worked "in the grease": with the lanolin still in the wool. The smell of lanolin clung to your clothing and made the floors slippery, though they did joke it gives you lovely soft hands! Combing's purpose is to force the fibre staples parallel to each other, butt-end to tip. The product is called a wool top, ropelike in apearance. With further combing it is called a sliver (rhymes with diver) and is ready for spinning. In 1823 the Townend Brothers of Cullingworth invented a machine to spin worsted heald but it did not take-on. Hand woolcombing was peaking in 1851 when the first succesful machine was developed by Heilmann and Holden of Oakworth. Even so the 1861 census lists hand-combers in Exley Head. |
In 1823 the Keighley region had 4 cotton mills and 44 worsted. By 1828 that had risen to 60 worsted mills. All the cottage industries petered out in the 1860s but the census shows that most young workers continued their family speciality but in the mills instead. In 1841 there were 73 handloom weavers in Exley Head. In 1851 only 10 were left but there were 69 powerloom weavers. The mills preferred mostly women for powerloom weaving and becoming the wage-earners had a dramatic affect on women's rights hereabouts. |
The Census occupations show that the flourish of house-building in the 19th century was to accomodate workers at the expanding spinning and weaving mills in Ingrow and Keighley. Many of the new workers were from Craven wheer refugees from the Dales had fled due to eviction in favor of sheep, followed by the economic collapse of lead mining. For example in 1851 the population of Swaledale was 6,820 but in 1891 only 3,464.* In 1851 the population of Grassington was 1,138 but in 1891 was only 480.
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At the East end of the village, the valley under Oakworth Road is deeper than one little spring could make. That's because the whole of the the uphill side of the Village is riddled with seasonal springs that add their contributions. It was known as Spring Bank, and is at altitude of 205m, the same stratum as Springwell Cottages. |
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At High Fold was butcher Pickard's slaughterhouse. When the lads had nothing to do of a week-end they'd go up there and beg a pig's bladder. This, tied off and blown up, made a right good soccer ball. |
Although modern vehicles make Exley Head seem to be part Keighley it is really part of Ingrow: the beck links them and Exley Head is in the parish of Ingrow St John's. It seems most millworkers from Exley Head worked in Ingrow, walking down the unmade Exley Road to get to work. | ||||||||||
In the 1740s many villagers adopted the method of the Anglian John Wesley and met society at one of the cottages in Hole Fold. Initially Wesley insisted they regularly attend their local parish church as well for he did not want Methodism to become a 'break away' movement. All baptisms, marriages and funerals would have been held down town. However Wesley moved away from the Anglicans and started Methodist baptisms about 1816 and marriages 1845 - which is when this Wesleyan Methodist chapel was built. It is probable they were Primitive Methodists for such concentrated their mission on the rural poor and promoted equal rights of women and education. The sunday school there really was a school that taught how to read and write. In the twenties my father hand-pumped the organ there. And in the forties I made my stage debut there as one of the dwarves in Snow White! |
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The Exley Head roll of honour of the forty-four men who served in WWI is now kept at Cliffe Castle museum. And outside the Methodist Chapel the polished granite cross memorialises our lads killed in the wars WWI |
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| WWII: • Pte. J. Fairfax Dean, Y & L Reg, drowned off Tobruk, 1941, age 26. • Cpl. Pearson Crossley, R.A.S.C. died in Japan 1943, age 26. • P.O. Douglas D. Smith, F.A.A. killed, Northern Ireland, 1945, age 21. |
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The only postbox was here, a hub of the village, (altitude 187m). The VR pillar box was replaced with a GR flat box set-in to the stub wall of number 32 just to its left, see photo below. |
The street betwen Hoyle Fold and Wethead farm has always been called Wethead or Weathead Lane. But from Hoyle Fold down to Oakworth Road it used to be called Exley Head as, in effect, the village bent around the corner. But between 1881 and 1891 the Post Office changed the house numbering system and extended the name Wheathead Lane right down to Oakworth Road so that Exley Head became only that on Oakworth Road. My research shows that up the lane they just subtracted 20 from the even numbers, e.g
Did they have to go all the way down to Fell Lane to buy postage stamps and get their 'Lloyd George' pension? Well they'd have to go down that far to get a pint o' beer any road for there was no pub in Exleyhead either. |
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About 1852 at the meeting of Wheathead Lane and Oakworth Road were built these houses by James Atkinson Jowett. The taller building was in fact two houses back-to-back: 32 Exley Head and 1 Wheathead Lane. In 1859 Jowett sold to James Lund who in 1888 sold the farm, three fields and the four cottages to the mill-owner Haggas for £5,600. In 1925 the Haggas Estates sold the two taller building to the tenants for £250 job lot. At one time ten people lived in 1 Wheathead Lane, where the attic bedroom went over top of 32 Oakworth Road. All the young men slept in that attic so when they got up and put their work-boots on the noise was right over the heads of those sleeping next door. They needed no alarm clock.
In the cellar after doing the laundry she simply tipped the dolly tub out onto the stone floor where she mopped it around as it gurgled down a hole, thereby washing the floor with the same water. |
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In 1858 William Keighley and Robert Holmes wrote of Exley Head's "little bridge". The oldest map shows an area like a pond under Oakworth Road. I have highlighted it in pale blue. But "The Toller and Haworth and Blue Bell Trust" turnpike decided that our little bridge hindered traffic and dumped a huge dyke over it to level it as an arterial road. The embankment looks about 6 metres tall. |
They must have put in a drain pipe for our beck. Lets hope they didn't make it too small for we do get floods in excessively wet weather. |
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There is a tradition that during the plague of 1645 a market was held here when Keighley was infected, and that buyers were told to leave their coins in the hole in the top which had been filled with vinegar as a disinfectant. |
Village crosses were erected since the 8th century, usually paid for by the Lord of the Manor, as a civic centre for trading, the reading of proclamations and banns, for preaching and public punishments. Sadly most crosses were destroyed in the civil war of the 1600s by Puritan iconoclasts who, following Calvin, believed no created thing could considered holy. In toppling crosses they liked to enact the Biblical verses from 1 Samuel 5 "early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of the Lord ... only the stump of Dagon was left." In 1858 Keighley and Holmes wrote: "At the end of the little bridge is a large block of stone like the frustum of an octagonal pyramid with a hole in the middle, which was formerly the crown of a series of sloping steps, designated the Cross. It was the pedestal of a stone pillar or cross." However in the19th century the constructors of the turnpike embankment set it up top opposite Wheathead Lane. But recently years the council moved it a few yards South. There was complaint it should have been left in its proper place but perhaps it is now nearer its historic location. |
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When the pond was buried under the embankment it's as if it felt unwanted, and became the rubbish tip for everything unwanted.
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In 1716 Mr. Jonas Tonson a " fanatical Presbyterian" who lived in Exleyhead left £100 "to be settled on a good and sure Freehold Estate of inheritance, for and towards" a free grammar school . He also endowed the rents from lands and a house at Exley Head to funds "an usher to teach and instruct such children as he can to learn ... in the English and Latin tongues". The Free School, or as it is sometimes called the Usher School, was built at Exleyhead in 1716 at Oak Square. Sometime later Tonson's free school combined itself with Drake and Green's Free School, down in Keighley on Cooke Lane, and Jonas Tonson's endowment was tranferred to it. Exley Head was at that time in the Parish of Keighley, and on 30th June 1739 at a vestry meeting it was agreed to take the old school-house at Exleyhead for the use of the poor, at the yearly rent of forty shillings, which resolution was sanctioned by the parishioners.
After 1858 the buildings at Exleyhead were just called Oak Square. Though the Haggases bought that land in 1872 or 1888 the buildings were still there in 1909 however demolished by 1919. In 1911 Keighley Union still had Wet Head farm for the inmates to work. |
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The older maps shows a road straight down to the Tanyards as if Wheathead Lane carried straight over making a crossroads, but about 1895 a new road was made down from Low Fold Farm. From the top of the old track they made the little level area near the village cross. Could the sloping field below the Tanyard point at the origin of the village name? For the village clearly lies at its head: Oxaléah Héafod |
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Our community gathered together without exception, especially at harvest festival. And we partied together -- you should have seen us on Coronation Day! I am sure in small communities extended family can be literal. I recall the old ladies of Exley Head were especially adept at recognizing father’s “looks” in babies. And they also knew exactly who'd been where and when. In villages there aren’t any secrets. It’s not so much that a village is like a big family, it is a big family, a clan. A friend visted her great-uncle, a pioneer geneaologist, and asked “Who are we related to around there?” He leant close and replied in a confidential manner, “We’re related to everybody around here!" |
The only shop I knew was on the right here on Oakworth Road at number 20 Exley Head. The 1911 census lists the occupents as the Shuttleworths, 3 males and 1 female. However there used to be also a grocery shop run by the Pickards up at 10 Exley Head. |
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The first houses in Exley Head stands on a prominent rocky ridge, altitude 185m. It is the northern edge of the shelf on which sits our village. It has such a fine view over both the Aire and Worth valleys that in ancient times it would have been an outstanding tactical and defensive position. Before 1930 no houses stood beyond it, only steeply-sloping fields. Keighley town center lies 72 meters below us, about 1.5 km down that steep hill. |
 The first terrace is on a ridge at the edge of the old village. Did the turnpike to Keighley blast through our ridge? |
Oakworth Road didn't used to be called that. In 1852 as far as Exley Head it was called "Exley Head Lane"; and carrying on up to Haworth was called "The Two Laws and Keighley Branch of the Toller and Haworth and Blue Bell Trust". The nation's turnpikes closed during 1870s and were handed over to county councils created about 1888. |
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The ridge, at an angle to Oakworth Road, is numbered 2 4 6 8 but the houses on the road starts with 16. Have numbers 10, 12 and 14 disappeared under "Ridgeway"? No, maps from 1852 to 1919 do not show three ancient houses there. I propose the three cottages are those near High Fold. "Ridgeway" has covered up the old track from 8 to 10. Though maps show clearly only a field there in 1894 it must have had a foot path. |
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Censuses of 1881-1911list Pickards, of the High Fold family, as running a butchers then a grocers shop annexed to number 10. This supports the theory that 10-14 were open to High Fold Farm. < NOTE: The map here is not real but an illustration of my proposal that the cottages by High fold were called 10 12 14 Exley head. And that those house numbers suggest the original village layout was a track from Low Fold straight up to High Fold |
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The area of the northeast corner of the village is Low Fold farm, its altitude only 180m. In 1572 the manor was sold for £240. However 'manor' means a feudal territory so the £240 was for the whole estate, of which the hall was a tiny part. |
 Exley Hall's inglenook |
'Heckleslay' was not lised in the Domesday book. But in 1292 a Henry de Ekkeslay is recorded as inheriting this feudal territory. By 1546 it was owned by the Paslews of Riddlesden but in 1572 Frances fell on hard times - maybe sent to the Tower of London - and sold the estate to Hugh Laycock. The Laycocks sold it in 1809 to George Griffin. |
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MORE OLD LOCAL PHOTOS yourlocalweb.co.uk historical nostaligic pictures simplesite.com/Keighleyhistory MODERN PHOTOS geograph.org.uk (enter SE 046402) LOCAL HISTORY thetelegraphandargus.co.uk : Hall has the Exley factor. 25 March 2009 workhouses.org.uk/Keighley : All about the workhouse at Exley Head menofworth.wikispaces.com/Exley+Head+WW2 : The War Memorial Keighley & District Local History Society Journal Feb 2010 p26 Haworth Woolcombers by Rev Lewis Burton Keighley And District Local History Society Forum Down Memory Lane by Ian Dewhirst. 1983, Keighley News thesunflowertrust.org.uk : Oxenhope History The Oakbank History Trail by M. G. Smith. 1982, Countryside Publications Ltd. ISBN 861570480 and 0 861570537 Keighley Past and Present by Holmes 1858 http://www.yorkgen.com GENERAL HISTORY oldandinteresting.com laundry tub and posser yorkshire-dales.com/walls drystone walls |
MAPS old-maps.co.uk Enter coordinates 404500, 440500. Landmark Info Grp http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk Ordnance Survey http://ooc.openstreetmap.org/?zoom=15&lat=53.860703&lon=-1.933064&layers=000B0 OpenStreetMap (OSM) http://www.bgs.ac.uk/GeoIndex/products.htm#50kgeol British Geological Society 1:50000 british-history.ac.uk/map.aspx British History toolserver.org GeoHack: links all mapping systems and satellite images GENEOLOGY wharfegen.org.uk All ancestors in Craven Hearthtax.org.uk: West Riding Yorkshire.pdf The King's list of households in the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1672. USEFUL MODERN LINK |
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