6 Inch Ordnance survey map OS CCXLV1 SE 1908 -see additional notes at the end of this article

Albany House

Albany House is a handsome Victorian building which stands close to the junction of Albany Road and Waterloo Road, on the boundary with Dalton. There is little now to tell us what an important site this once was, but a significant clue is the long ‘stream’ which runs between the rear of the house and Fenay Beck near to Woodfield, roughly parallel to Waterloo Road. This is all that remains of a goit which formerly served the important corn mill known at different times in the past as Lepton Mill or Heaton Mill. Albany House was probably the miller’s home and it owes its present name to Albany Road which commemorates a visit by the Duke of Albany to Whitley Hall in October 1883. Although its earliest history is not known the mill was part of the Lascelles Hall Estate and it is mentioned frequently in documents from the sixteenth-century. A typical lease of 1579, from William Beaumont to William Lylye of Kirkheaton, carried with it the proviso that the tenant should ‘lead seven wain loads of wood from Heaton hall to the said Beaumont his milne’ – a considerable distance but evidently part of a policy by the Beaumonts to make use of their own manorial resources. It was sometimes called Lascelles Hall Mill at that time. The history of the mill in the 1600s is complicated, partly because Lascelles Hall was for a time in the hands of a branch of the Ramsden family whose main residence was at Longley in Almondbury. A deed of partition from c.l619? shows that Mary Ramsden, who was one of five sisters, acquired the mill or the profits from it as part of her dowry when she married Henry Grice of Sandal. However, it was later re-purchased from Grice by Thomas Beaumont who made his will in 1668 and bequeathed to his wife ‘the sum of £500 of Lawfull money, to be had and taken forth of the rents, issues and profits of all the watercornemilne called Lassil Hall Milne in Lepton’.

The names of the mill’s occupiers, as opposed to its owners, are known to us from this period. An entry in the hearth tax for Lepton lists ‘John Crowther and Milne’, taxing him on two hearths, and the same man is referred to as the former occupant when Joshua Jackson held the lease in 1699. An endorsement on the deed refers to Jackson’s right ‘to cut … wood necessary to repaire the millne … within the premises or in Batley heighferme’. This was the old name for Round Wood in Dalton, also held by the Beaumonts. Other families associated with the mill in the eighteenth century were the Dransfield’s and Home’s, and the Estate rentals show that Thomas Horne was the miller there for more than thirty years. His annual rent was roughly £25 but he was consistently in arrears and seems never to have been able to find the extra £10 he needed to clear his debt. During his tenure he was advanced money by the Beaumont’s towards ‘a pair of blue stones’ for the mill, which cost 14 guineas and increased the rent. Aquilla Rishworth who was a well-known local millwright supervised the installation of the stones but the workmen’s wages were paid by Thomas Home himself. In 1766 his name in the rent book was replaced by that of Joseph Horn.

The first information that we have about the mill buildings is from a manorial survey of 1813 when William Horn was the miller. The house was described as an old building with a barn, mistal and stable adjoining, whereas the two-storey mill was made of stone and slate and was in good order. It contained three pairs of stones, called blue, grey and ‘shilling” stones and over the beck in Dalton there was a drying kiln and waggon shed. The ‘dressing machine’ . which is mentioned was probably for ensuring that the com was free of chaff. In 1841 the tenancy was briefly taken over by Thomas Wood and a new water wheel was installed. The vocabulary relating to that is of real interest, and the list includes a fly wheel, main shafting, the ‘Bye Wash, Forebay and Pen-trough’. Sadly Wood died almost immediately and his executors were made an allowance for all the work he had carried out. He was followed by Michael Sheard and in 1850-2 the old house was replaced with a fine new one, probably the building which still stands on the site today.

The Estate accounts suggest that an attempt was first made to renovate the old property for there are several references to ‘Repairs of house’. However, the decision to rebuild cannot have been long delayed and in 1851 a long list of local craftsmen submitted bills which are worth looking at in more detail. The raw materials used were traditional and simple: stones and roof slates from James Clayton, timber from Richard Armitage and lime from Richard Gill. ‘Bricks for setting fixtures’, that is encasing stoves or boilers, were supplied by William Hanson. The actual building was done by John Lee, with Schofield and Hallas responsible for the joinery and carpentry: George Fleetwood did the blacksmith work; Joseph Hall the plumbing and glazing and Abraham Clayton was the painter. He worked both inside and outside and painted the fashionable sash frames. Several items relate to the mill and not the house, including ‘two stone posts … two Cast Iron pillars for sheds … and an arch over the water course’.

The final and possibly the most fascinating group of references relates to the internal fittings. The house clearly had some heating: John Brook and Sons, ironmongers, supplied stoves for the parlour and two bedrooms and L. Fisher supplied a prestigious marble chimney piece. When the house was finished, freshly-painted inside and out, and all the fittings installed, Holmes Brothers supplied the locks. The total bill was in the region of £345. See Holmes advert p. 125 (1853).

George Redmonds                            Courtesy Anne Marie Redmonds

Additional notes

A. School lane, Kirkheaton was originally named Mill lane Dalton.

B. Balk lane or Stead Lane.

C. Former site of Kirkheaton and Dalton gasworks.

Lanes are denoted by brown hashed lines. Of particular interest is the lane between the mill and Kirkvale which gave direct access to Lascelles hall and Lepton. This was severed when the railway line to Kirkburton was built circa 1867. A small viaduct was built to allow continued access, however this was later bricked up. The lane on the Kirkvale side is still evident but on the mill side is largely lost due to deterioration and the flood alleviation scheme of 1990. This scheme  was mainly a new additional channel for Fenay beck with a bridge near Albany house underneath Albany road . The two sections of Fenay beck rejoin downstream.

Fenay beck is also known as Roundwood beck in Dalton or Lees head beck in the confines of Syngenta where it joins the river Colne.

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