Booklet 3: Holgate Windmill History Pack
Introduction
This pack gives you information about some of the people connected with Holgate Mill
throughout its history. There is also an overview of the milling industry in York which
may be of interest.
Contents
George Waud snr
George Waud jnr
George Waud grandson
John Thackwray
Joseph Peart
William Bean Horseman
Joseph Chapman
Charles Chapman
Herbert Warters
Thomas Mollett
The Gutch Family
The Milling Industry in York
Page no.
(Miller 1770 – 1792) ................................. p2
(Miller 1792 – 1811) ................................. p3
(Miller 1811 – 1851) ................................. p3
(Miller 1851 – 1855) ................................. p4
(Mill Owner 1855 – c1864) ....................... p4
(Miller 1860 – 1866) ................................. p4
(Miller 1858 – 60 and 1866 – 1896) ......... p5
(Miller 1896 – 1902) ................................. p6
(Miller 1902 – 1922) ................................. p6
(Miller 1922 – 1933) ................................. p6
(Mill Owners c1902 – 1939) ..................... p7
..................................................................
p8
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THE MILLERS AND MILL OWNERS
George Waud snr (Miller 1770 – 1792)
George Waud was born around 1717 in Barlow near Selby. Little is known of his early
life but his father was also a miller and George owned Camblesforth Windmill from
1749.
In December 1768 he bought an acre of land in the Howefield at Holgate. A windmill
would have cost around £1000 to build then and George raised the money to build
Holgate Mill by mortgaging the Mill at Camblesforth at least twice. In May 1770 there
was no entry for him in the Acomb Manor tenants list but building work on the Mill
must have been well underway as in October 1770 he was recorded as paying rent for
the Mill. (Technically the Lord of the Manor owned all of the land and George would
have paid rent for it whilst still being able to build and own the Mill himself.)
Holgate Mill was in a prime position as York was a growing city and needed more mills
to supply the increasing population with flour and its situation at the junction of two
main roads enabled easy access to the markets in town and to the farmland growing the
wheat. Also there were no other mills in the vicinity. There had been a mill at Acomb in
the area now called Millfield but it had disappeared around the time of the Civil War as
had the Mill in the Bishopsfields (the area now around Wilton Rise). Further afield there
were mills at Rufforth and Poppleton but with the growth of the City building a mill
closer to town was an astute move.
George had three sons Robert, John and George. By the time the Mill was built they
were all in their twenties and were all millers and or flour dealers in their own right.
John ran Camblesforth Mill for a time after his father came to York but eventually all of
the brothers lived and worked in the York area. Sadly Robert died in a fall from a mill in
York in 1785. Keeping the whole business in the family helped to increase the profits.
Traditionally millers took a proportion of the flour as payment for milling which was
called the multure. But milling and then dealing in the flour or selling it on to other
family members cut out the middlemen and would have given George much better
profits than just milling for other people would have done.
In January 1774 George’s wife Margaret died. She was buried in St. Stephens Church,
Acomb. He continued to mill at Holgate until he retired to Tollerton in 1792 when a
tenant miller took over for a short time before his son George moved in as the miller.
George died on the 26th October 1799 aged eighty two years old of ‘decline’ and he was
buried two days later in St. Stephens Church in Acomb. There is no trace of the grave
now due to the remodelling of the churchyard when the church was rebuilt after 1830.
George left a will signed with an ‘x’ leaving the White Mill in Fulford, his furniture and
his silver cup to his grandchildren.
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George Waud jnr (Miller 1792 – 1811)
George Waud jnr had been born in September 1751 in Camblesforth. He became a
freeman of the City of York in 1781 and assisted his father at Holgate. Milling here
would have been a two man job when the Mill was fully operational. Most of the millers
throughout the Mill’s working life had an assistant or employed other family members.
George married Elizabeth Simpson in 1781 and they had three children
The family milled here from 1793 and were here in 1796 when legislation for the
regulation of mills came into force. This Act stated that every miller must have a “true
and equal balance with proper weights” for weighing the corn before and after it was
ground and that a board should be displayed outside the Mill showing the miller’s prices
for grinding the corn. It wasn’t unknown for millers to maybe take a little more in
multure than was strictly due to them hence the necessity of introducing the Act. There
was a saying that honest millers had hairy palms on their hands which suggested how
few honest millers there were.
George jnr died in 1811 and was buried at St. Crux Church in York City centre. He died
without leaving a will but the Acomb Manor Court verified in 1812 that his only son,
another George, should inherit the mill.
George Waud grandson (Miller 1811 – 1851)
The third George in the line had been born in York in 1785. He became a freeman of the
City in 1807 and lived in Fossgate. He married Ann Hill in 1808 and they had at least ten
children.
George Waud grnson was a miller and a flour dealer. He kept the business in the family
as his grandfather George had done. His wife ran a baker’s shop in Church Street while
his cousin Robert was the miller at Holgate. Ann was recorded in the local newspaper
for apprehending two men who had taken bread out of the shop window and tried to
leave without paying for it. They were both sentenced to fourteen days hard labour.
George’s time at Holgate was marked by countrywide economic problems resulting
from the Napoleonic Wars and frequent poor harvests. These lead to wildly fluctuating
grain prices and food riots. George raised some money to support his business by
mortgaging the Mill in 1836 for £400 but when another trade depression occurred in
1841 George became bankrupt. He subsequently put the Mill and some other property
up for sale. He was rescued by John Musham a wealthy gentleman from York who acted
as his mortgagee for £400 and George was able to buy the Mill outright and carry on as
a miller.
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In May 1851 George put the Mill up for sale due to his declining health. In fact he lived
for another six and a half years before dying of ‘natural decay’ at the age of 72 years old.
He was buried in York Cemetery.
John Thackwray (Miller 1851 – 1855)
The Mill was taken over by John Thackwray, a miller from Boston Spa near Wetherby.
He had been born in February 1822 the son of William and Mary Thackwray, farmers.
He had served his milling apprenticeship in Leeds where he had married Hannah
Rhodes. They had no children and Hannah died shortly afterwards. John came to
Holgate around 1851 but was only here for a short time until 1855 when he went to
Heworth Windmill. He was recorded there on his marriage to his second wife Charlotte
Potter in 1857.They did not have any children. John eventually died from bronchitis in
Scarborough in 1880.
Joseph Peart (Mill Owner 1855 – c1864)
Joseph Peart wasn’t a single handed miller but the head of an empire employing millers
at several mills around the city. He had been born in February 1806 in York. His father
James was a miller and a corn merchant in Pocklington and York.
He had a very profitable business and could afford to live at Mount Terrace House (at
the corner of Dalton Terrace and Holgate Road). Joseph bought Holgate Mill in 1855. He
enfranchised the Mill; paying a fee to remove it from the control of Acomb Manor so
that it became a freehold property. Joseph put the Mill up for sale in August 1858 after
he had added another pair of millstones, to bring it up to four pairs, and he also had it
substantially rebuilt around that date. The dust floor was added effectively raising the
height of the Mill. The Mill was first recorded as using steam power while Joseph owned
it but whether Peart installed it or whether previous millers had used steam is unclear.
Joseph also put Mount Terrace House up for sale at the same time but neither sold.
They were both re-advertised in February 1859 and the Mill was again advertised in
1863 and 1864. Joseph Peart retired to Fulford to farm with his second wife Ann.
William Bean Horseman (Miller 1860 – 1866)
The miller in residence for most of the time while Joseph Peart owned the Mill was
William Bean Horseman. (The brothers George and Joseph Chapman milled here for a
couple of years from 1857/8 until 1860. They will be mentioned later).
William was born in Harswell near Market Weighton in 1826. There was no record of his
baptism probably because he was illegitimate. His mother Grace Bean married George
Horsemen very soon after William’s birth and William used both surnames at various
times so it is probable that George was his father.
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The family lived in Naburn where William learned to mill at Naburn watermill. He
married Esther Bland and they had two children there before coming to Holgate around
1860 after the Chapman brothers had left. In the 1861 census he was listed as the miller
at Holgate with an assistant Joseph Dent. William didn’t stay here for long and had left
by 1866. In 1871 he was working at the White Mills in Pocklington, another mill owned
by Joseph Peart.
William had turned his hand to shop keeping in Redcar by 1891. He died in November
1893 in Redcar. He died of fibroid phthisis and the accompanying anaemia unfortunately
a common cause of death in millers. Fibroid Phthisis was a lung disease similar to
tuberculosis. It was caused by particles of flour dust getting into the lungs and causing
severe irritation. There were no effective treatments and sufferers invariably died. The
disease was so well known that it was called miller’s lung. Baker’s also suffered a similar
fate from handling flour continually. Even today exposure to flour dust is the second
biggest cause of occupational asthma. There was also a comparable disease associated
with mill-stone makers. Breathing in the fine dust caused by manufacturing mill-stones
could also cause phthisis and as the stones had to be redressed every few months to
keep the grinding surface effective the stone dust must have been a hazard in the Mill
as well as the flour dust.
If that wasn’t enough milling was hard physical work moving about fifteen to twenty
tons of corn in, and out as flour each week and there could be terrible injuries resulting
from getting caught in the machinery.
Joseph Chapman (Miller 1866 – 1896)
After William Bean Horseman left Joseph Chapman became the miller. He was the
younger of the Chapman brothers who had been here briefly around 1857/8 to 1860.
Their father Major Chapman had been a miller too (Major was an unusual forename).
George the eldest brother had been born in Stillingfleet in 1812. He was a joiner handy
for all the woodwork in a mill. Joseph was born in York in 1829 seventeen years later
than George with at least five siblings in between them.
Joseph had started his career as a baker but by 1857 had become a miller. As previously
mentioned the brothers were here for a short time around 1857/8 until 1860 when their
partnership was dissolved and they went their separate ways. George became a
surveyor and a property landlord until his death in 1880. Joseph continued to mill going
to Askham Richard Mill before returning to Holgate in 1866.
Joseph married three times, his first two wives died young, Jane at 43 years old and
Louisa at 31 years old, both at the house next to Holgate Mill. The Chapman children
were the first and only children to be born at the Mill in its entire history. Unfortunately
the children seemed particularly susceptible to Phthisis perhaps as a result of a genetic
trait or perhaps because they were exposed to flour dust from birth during Joseph’s
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careers as a baker and then a miller. James the first child to be born at Holgate Mill
arrived in March 1859. He died of bronchitis at only three weeks old.
Joseph was listed on the electoral roll at “The Mill, Holgate” until 1896. He then retired
to Scarborough and married his housekeeper Rosabel. Joseph died in February 1898 in
Scarborough of Bright’s disease.
Charles Chapman (Miller 1896 – 1902)
Joseph’s son Charles took over when Joseph left for Scarborough. He had been born in
May 1860 and was the first child born here, in whole history of the Mill, to survive past
infancy. Charles had assisted his father and must have learned the art of milling before
becoming a locomotive engine fitter, probably at the local Railway carriage works. He
lived in Oak Street but by the 1901 census he was back as a miller with his wife Elizabeth
and their only child John.
Charles was yet another miller to succumb to Phthisis though. He died on the 7th of
April 1902 aged just 41 years.
Herbert Warters (Miller 1902 – 1922)
Herbert Warters took over as miller after Charles Chapman. He had been born in 1853 in
Wold Newton in the East Riding the son of Richard and Mary Warters farmers. He had
been a miller in the nearby towns of Malton and Norton before he came here. Herbert
had married Rebecca Shelbourne in 1885 but they had no children. He was 49 years old
when he took over after Charles Chapman’s death in 1902.
It was probably during his time at the Mill that the Gutch family bought it. Herbert and
his wife Rebecca ran the mill as tenants until 1922 when he retired aged 69 years.
Holgate Mill was then using wind power and recently installed electricity which
according to legend was plugged straight into the City mains. He was remembered as a
wiry man but must have been immensely strong to be still carrying around bags of
wheat and flour at the age of 69 years old. Herbert died in 1927 in Heworth.
Thomas Mollett (Miller 1922 – 1933)
The last miller was Thomas Mollett. Like Herbert Warters he was a tenant of the Gutch
family. He was born in April 1894 in Birkin. His parents James and Emily Mollett ran a
farm there. He married Rosa Booth on 4th December 1923. On their marriage certificate
his residence was given as Holgate Mill. They had no children.
Thomas produced wholemeal flour at Holgate Mill and was remembered delivering it in
a pony dray cart. He charged a penny a stone for milling or a penny halfpenny to include
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delivery. Some of the flour from the Mill was sold in white linen bags at the Post Office
and General stores on the corner of Falconer Street (now a fast food outlet).
Holgate Mill’s sails were removed around 1930 as they had been battered by high winds
and were no longer considered safe but milling continued powered by electricity. In
1933 Thomas left and the last mill in York was closed. He died in 1974.
The Gutch Family (Mill Owners c1901 – 1939)
The Gutch family lived in Holgate Lodge a substantial house roughly in the area of
Holgate Lodge Drive today. John Gutch was a wealthy solicitor who acted for the York
and North Midland Railway. He married Eliza Hutchinson from Manthorpe near
Grantham in Lincolnshire. She was twenty five years younger than John; in fact he was
her godfather. John died suddenly in 1881 leaving an estate valued at around three and
a half million pounds and Eliza continued to live here alone. She was a founder member
of the Folklore society and wrote for various journals including “Notes and Queries”
under the pen name of St. Swithin, her birthday being the 15th of July, St Swithin’s day.
Perhaps her interest in preserving the old ways led her to buying the windmill in the
early 1900s. No trace of the actual purchase date has yet come to light.
Eliza’s granddaughter Mary remembers that a lot of money was spent by the family in
maintaining the sails and keeping them working. The Mill then produced barley meal for
pigs and a wholemeal flour for making bread. She also remembers Eliza being horrified
when she told her that as a child she had climbed out of the Mill and sat next to the fan
tail at the top.
After Eliza died in 1931 her sons Wilfred, a London barrister and John, a doctor in
Ipswich designed the housing estate to replace Holgate Lodge and its grounds; the
street names being named after the family.
Numerous letters went back and forth between Wilfrid Gutch and the City Council
concerning the Mill. It was the Gutchs’ idea that the Council should preserve the Mill in
working order and should open it to the public. The council weren’t quite so keen.
Eventually in 1936 after the intervention of the Lord Mayor the Council agreed to buy
the Mill but apparently it took at least three conveyance documents before all sides
were happy. The paperwork was finally signed on the 2nd of January 1939.
The Mill was sold to the Council for £100 which the family then donated back for
repairs. The conveyance document states that it was to be preserved, from time to time,
as a building of local historic and artistic interest. Not quite the full working order and
public opening that the family had wanted. Since then it became quite neglected.
Various attempts to restore it came to nothing and an idea that it should become a
home for two artists from Chelsea also fell through but it did remain standing at least
when many other mills across the country were demolished altogether.
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The Holgate Windmill Preservation Society was formed in 2001 to restore the Mill to
working order.
THE MILLING HISTORY IN YORK
York in around 1770 when Holgate Mill was built was a wealthy country city. It was a
social centre for the rich and was the centre of agriculture in the area. There were
regular large cereal markets held there. There was a sizeable number of mills in and
around the City to provide the population with bread flour. Bread then was a major
constituent of the diet and the poorer folk often had little else to eat.
The Baines trade directory of 1823 listed at least twenty four mills in the City and there
must have been many more in the surrounding countryside; within six miles of Holgate
there were at least fourteen country mills. The mills around the City ranged from large
quay side concerns on the River Ouse such as Peart’s and L. and J. Simpson’s to single
owner/occupier run windmills such as Bootham Stray, Nun Mill and Holgate.
The Slater’s Directory of York of 1855 listed just seventeen millers a decline of at least
eight since 1823 although the City and its population had expanded considerably. In the
main the larger mills had survived as they could often absorb the losses due to
fluctuating grain prices more effectively than the smaller mills. Leetham’s built a vast
new factory mill in Hungate in 1861 which undercut the prices even further and led to
the closure of several mills. When Holgate Mill was advertised for sale in 1864 it was
suggested that the site would be ideal for a villa within handy reach of the City rather
than as a working mill.
The Slater’s 1865 Directory of Yorkshire listed only thirteen mills in York a steady decline
from 1855. Most of the mills that were left were the large factory type mills run by
steam. There were only five owner/occupier mills left in the vicinity of the City which
like Holgate were mainly windmills.
Roller milling arrived in York in 1882 at Leetham’s and Thomas Mill’s mills. This new
system used cylindrical rollers to crush the grain and was faster and more efficient than
stone grinding. It was powered by steam rather than wind or water and could produce
finer whiter flour although many argued that the process also removed much of the
taste. The increased competition from the English roller mills did cause the quantity of
flour imported from the United States of America to decrease but with the advent of the
railways and steam powered ships the importation of cheap grain from the American
Mid-West increased dramatically. A general decline in agriculture occurred across
England as the country was bombarded by foreign imports.
The Steven’s Directory from 1885 listed just five mills in York in addition to Holgate Mill
and they were all far larger concerns; Fairweather’s on Skeldergate, Hurtley’s on
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Goodramgate, Thomas Mills on Skeldergate, Randerson’s on Haxby Road and Leetham’s
‘Anglo-Hungarian Roller Flour Mill’ on Hungate. By this time many of the village mills
around York had already closed although they seemed to have declined at a slower rate
than the City centre mills. There were only nine village mills left within a six mile radius
of Holgate in 1885 and by 1895 the White’s Trade Directory listed only six. The relatively
slower decline of the village mills may have been due to them being more directly linked
to a particular farming area and its population. The supply of English wheat was
decreasing though due to farmers putting their land to other more profitable uses and
this had a great effect on the few small mills that were left.
The City mills tended to be far larger companies which relied upon imported wheat but
in turn they were more susceptible to takeovers, mergers and to global changes in trade
especially when the profit margins were small. York was only forty miles from the port
of Hull by road but the route the grain ships would have taken via the Rivers Humber
and Ouse was a distance of around sixty miles. This meant that York millers were paying
considerable extra costs to transport the imported grain from Hull to their mills and
they were becoming unable to compete with millers based on the coast.
By 1902 there were only four mills listed in the York Trade Directory: Holgate Mill itself,
Leethams on Hungate, C. D. Mills on Skeldergate and Lyons on Goodramgate. Leethams
was to become the City’s third largest employer (after the Railways and Confectionery
companies) but milling using wind power was becoming outdated. The number of
traditional millers with experience was dwindling.
The face of milling had changed. It has been estimated that there were ten thousand
mills in 1876 using millstones but a total of only eight and a half thousand by 1892.
During that time seven hundred and eighty five roller mills had been built and they
alone could meet the country’s flour needs. The windmills that had managed to survive
the increased competition were now surplus to requirements. It has been suggested
that thirty years after the introduction of the roller mills three quarters of the country’s
wind and water mills had gone. In that sort of climate it’s amazing that Holgate Mill kept
going at all.
Unfortunately the actual demand for bread and flour had also started to decrease.
Sweets and chocolates had become big business in the preceding decade. Rowntrees, of
York, manufactured fruit pastilles and gums and in the next few years were to launch
Aero, Kit Kat, Dairy Box, Rolos and Smarties. Likewise Cadbury’s first produced the Dairy
Milk bar in 1905. In addition to this Quaker Oats, Shredded Wheat and Kellogg’s
cornflakes were available and the fast increasing ranges from these companies would
completely change how the country breakfasted.
By 1925 the York trade directory listed only C. D. Mills, Leethams (which were both
owned by the Leetham family) and Holgate mills in the City. At a meeting held on the
12th December 1928 at the Royal Station Hotel it was decided to wind up Leethams
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voluntarily and the company was bought out by Spillers Ltd. Spillers were reluctant to
support the trade in York which involved transporting imported grain from the port at
Hull up the Rivers Humber, Ouse and Foss to get to the Hungate factory. Instead they
invested in their own mills situated at deep water ports such as Newcastle and Cardiff to
minimise transport costs. As a result of this both the Leetham’s and C.D. Mill’s sites
were closed.
The last representative of milling in York thus became Holgate Mill. It had outlived all of
the large steam mills and the roller mills and still used mill stones up to its closure in
1933.
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