Skipton-in-Craven: Building the Modern Town, 1865–1914

Abstract

In Skipton, the provision of new and replacement housing within the modern town was the outcome of a complex interaction between primary and secondary developers. The former included established landowners, notably the Skipton Castle estate, who laid out streets and designated building plots, acting on expectations of population increase and with regard to the alternative returns from agriculture. The latter were dominated by speculative builders who bought or leased building plots, raised working capital, and constructed houses in accordance with plans approved by the local authority. Although the priorities of landowners and builders did not necessarily converge, in the long run the bipartite system successfully met the needs of a rapidly growing population, while significantly improving the housing stock. However, by 1914 it was evident that it was incapable of addressing the challenge presented by the worst kinds of substandard housing occupied by people who could not afford to pay a commercial rent elsewhere. The system lasted longer in Skipton than in many other towns because of the continuing influence of the Castle estate, but its characteristics were generally in accordance with those identified in previous studies of the building trade.

Keywords:

• primary developer
• secondary developer
• landowner
• speculative builder
• building contractor
• new and replacement demand

Acknowledgements

I am most grateful to Dr George Sheeran of Bradford University, and to the staff of North Yorkshire County Record Office in Northallerton; North Yorkshire County Library in Skipton; the West Yorkshire Archive Service in Wakefield; and the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society which at the time was still based at Claremont in Leeds.

Notes

1. Jackson, K. C. ‘Skipton-in-Craven: The Genesis of the Modern Town, 1865–1914’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 87 (2015), 145–69.

2. Chapin, F. S. Jr., Urban Land Use Planning, (Urbana, 1965), pp. 90–7. These complementary perspectives were applied to good effect in H. Carter, ‘A Decision-making Approach to Town Plan Analysis: a Case Study of Llandudno’, in Urban Essays: Studies in the Geography of Wales, eds Carter, H. and Davies, W. K. D. (London, 1970), pp. 66–78.

3. Jackson K. C. ‘The Architectural Provenance of Speculative Housing: Some Further Evidence’, Local Historian, 44, 1, (2014), 2–17.

4. ‘Skipton Castle estate’ is shorthand for the trustees under the Will of Henry Tufton, eleventh Earl of Thanet, who died in 1849. Note that a successor, Sir Henry Tufton, became first Baron Hothfield in 1881.

5. The use of rate books, deposited building plans, and deeds in the study of housing development has been explained in several publications of which the following are indicative: I. Darlington, ‘Short Guides to Records: Rate Books’, History, 47, (1962), 42–5; Rodger, R. G. ‘Sources and Methods of Urban Studies: the Contribution of Building Records’, Area, 13, (1981), 315–21; Archer, C. A. and Wilkinson, R. K. ‘The Yorkshire Registries of Deeds as Sources of Historical Data on Housing Markets’, in Urban History Yearbook, (Leicester, 1977), pp. 40–7.

6. Jackson, ‘Genesis of the Modern Town’, 149–53.

7. See, for example, Craven Pioneer, 20 January 1866 and 3 October 1874; Ranger,W. Report to the General Board of Health of a Preliminary Inquiry into the Sewerage, Drainage, Supply of Water, and the Sanitary Conditions of the Inhabitants of the Township of Skipton in the West Riding of the County of York, (London, 1857).

8. See also North Yorkshire County Library, Skipton: Skipton Tithe Apportionment Schedule, 1843, (incomplete transcript).

9. Craven Pioneer, 24 February 1877 reports the discovery of military relics on the summit of Cock Hill during building operations. They were thought to date from the siege of Skipton castle during the Civil War.

10. See his obituary, Craven Herald, 5 June 1896.

11. Craven Pioneer, 17 November 1866.

12. The increase in the proportion of uncollected rates during the Cotton Famine, in respect of empty properties, from 1.5 per cent in 1861 to 5.0 per cent in 1865, combined with the high level of turnover of occupants in 1864 and 1865, gives some support for Nicolson’s concerns. See North Yorkshire County Record Office (NYCRO): DC/SKU/2/5/1, Skipton Local Board General District Rate Books, 1861–1865.

13. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, (Cambridge, 1988), Agriculture 15, p. 220. For example, see Craven Pioneer, 20 September 1879, and thereafter.

14. Craven Pioneer, 18 October 1879.

15. WRRD, Book 728, Page 634, No. 756, 17 April 1875, registered 20 July 1875. (Abbreviated, 738/634/756, 17/4/75 and 20/7/75).

16. See, for instance, Thompson, F. M. L. English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century, (London, 1963), pp. 292–396.

17. WRRD, 1895, 9/84/170ff, 1/2/95 and 14/3/95.

18. WRRD, 720/3/5, 15/10/73 and 23/7/74 refers to the lease of the plots.

19. University of Leeds, Brotherton Library, Special Collections, Yorkshire Archaeological & Historical Society Collection [hereafter YAS], YAS/DD214/3, Draft agreement for a building lease of land at Skipton, 1870.

20. Offer, A. Property and Politics 1870–1914: Landownership, Law, Ideology, and Urban Development in England, (Cambridge, 1981), pp.115, 118.

21. This role is defined in more detail below.

22. NYCRO: DC/SKU/1/1/2, Minutes of Skipton Local Board of Health, 1871 to 1877.

23. Craven Pioneer, 4 September 1875.

24. Craven Pioneer, 11 March 1876.

25. WRRD, 800/675/720, 12/5/77 and 31/7/78; 810/731/817, 12/5/77 and 24/12/78; 824/621/692, 7/11/77 and 2/8/79.

26. WRRD, 824/623/694, 2/2/78 and 2/8/79; 824/624/695, 7/8/78 and 2/8/79; 824/626/696, 7/8/78 and 2/8/79; 824/635/707, 26/3/79 and 2/8/79.

27. See WRRD, 824/638/710 continuously to 824/650/729, various dates, registered 2/8/79, for a selection of mortgage details by place and occupation. Full title Skipton & District Permanent Benefit Building Society.

28. WRRD, 772/344/389, 20/4/76 and 16/2/77; 822/551/641, 7/11/77 and 30/5/79.

29. For example, in Middletown: Byron Street (south side), WRRD, 7/382/189, 8/2/97 and 16/2/97; Building Plan 780, 20 February 1896. Cowper Street (south side), WRRD, 9/615/322, 8/2/97 and 4/3/97; Building Plan 774, 16 January 1896. Fairfax Street (west side), WRRD, 9/618/323, 8/2/97 and 4/3/97; Building Plan 783, 19 March 1896. Dorset Street, WRRD, 23/944/458, 7/5/99 and 7/6/99, Building Plan 876, 6 October 1898. Neville Street (north side), WRRD, 7/187/94, 4/8/03 and 20/8/03; Building Plans 1034 and 1054, 4 September 1902 and 2 July 1903. Building plans are from NYCRO: DC/SKU/4/2 Building plans submitted for approval by Skipton Local Board of Health/Skipton Urban District Council (SLB/SUDC).

30. YAS/DD214/2, Plan of building plots off New Market Street to be offered for sale. Includes technical plans and cross-sections of streets and sewers, the cost of which was to be met by purchasers.

31. Craven Herald, 28 March 1903.

32. For example, the worsted manufacturer, George Walton, built Towerville subject to a covenant requiring an expenditure of at least £2,000. See the late Derek Walton’s family papers. See also Building Plan 98.

33. Building Plans 521, 533, 583, 689, 697, 742. See also the 1901 Census enumerators’ books.

34. Plan of sites to be disposed of for the erection of semi-detached villas in Aireville Gardens, Gargrave Road, Skipton, the property of Sir Henry Tufton Bart (January 1872). I am grateful to the late Arthur Norton (via Douglas Grant) for supplying a copy of the plan.

35. Building Plans 499, 602, 705, 852, 947, 1038, 1053, 1101, 1104, 1118.

36. The evidence is summarised in Jackson, K. C. ‘Skipton-in-Craven, 1865 to 1914: A Study of Urban Growth in a Small Textile Town’, (unpublished PhD thesis, Bradford University, 2011), Vol. 1, p. 98 and Vol. 2, p. 35 (Table 4.1).

37. Standards were enforced by a covenant imposing a cost of at least £500 per house including site (1906). See, for example, Land Registry title No. NYK 201507, also Building Plans 1136, 1163, 1268, 1272, 1283, 1315.

38. Grant, D. C. ‘The External Relations of Skipton Grammar School, ca. 1860 to 1914’, (unpublished MA thesis, Leeds University, 2013), pp. 42–4.

39. Building Plan 234.

40. NYCRO: DC/SKU/1/1/2, 24 September 1875. See also Craven Pioneer, 9 October 1875.

41. Whitehand, J. W. R. The Making of the Urban Landscape, (Oxford, 1992), pp. 128–9.

42. The sale took place in 1956, see Particulars, Plan and Conditions of Sale of the Skipton Castle Estate in the Craven District of the West Riding at North Yorkshire County Library, Skipton.

43. Aspinall, P. J. ‘The Internal Structure of the House Building Industry in Nineteenth Century Cities’ in The Structure of Nineteenth Century Cities, eds. J. H. Johnson and C. G. Pooley, (London & Canberra, 1982), p. 85.

44. Definition based on Dyos, H. J. ‘The Speculative Builders and Developers of Victorian London’, Victorian Studies, 11, (1968), 663.

45. NYCRO: DC/SKU/4/2. Plans for about 2000 houses were approved but this was reduced to 1829 for present purposes because of uncertainty in identifying the status of certain applicants. Plans were generally submitted by the architect or by whoever else had produced the drawings on behalf of the applicant. All plans were for houses actually built.

46. Aspinall, ‘Internal Structure of the House Building Industry’, pp. 91, 94; Rodger, R. G. ‘Speculative Builders and the Structure of the Scottish Building Industry’, Business History, 21, 2, (1979), 226–46.

47. The house building cycle for Skipton was delineated and discussed in Jackson, K. C. ‘The House Building Cycle: A Neglected Aspect of Local History’, The Local Historian, 43, 3 (2013), 193–209.

48. Failure of small house builders at this time was a widespread phenomenon. See Rodger, ‘Speculative Builders’, 235.

49. Aspinall, ‘The Internal Structure of the House Building Industry’, p. 97.

50. Jackson, ‘Skipton-in-Craven, 1865 to 1914’, II, pp. 39–42.

51. An exception arises where separate plans were submitted by a speculative builder and by a non-builder for the various houses in a terrace built uniformly with no break in continuity. In such cases, it can be safely assumed that the speculative builder and the contractor were the same firm. See, for example, Park Avenue (Gargrave Road): Building Plans 1163, 1268, 1272, 1315, (1906 to 1911). Occasionally, the network of relationships is explained in the local newspapers, as in the case of the initial phase of New Town for which a detailed account is given in Craven Pioneer, 14 May 1870.

52. Jackson, ‘Skipton-in-Craven, 1865 to 1914’, I, pp. 107–8, 111–2.

53. See SLB, Minutes, 6 December 1871 and Building Plan 91, November 1870 also Craven Pioneer, 14 May 1870.

54. Building Plan 606A (Joseph Platt).

55. Craven Pioneer, 23 September 1876, Craven Herald, 11 August 1877 and 27 October 1877. The 1860 building bye-laws prohibited new construction of back-to-backs except as blocks of three or four houses such that the houses were open on at least two sides (NYCRO: DC/SKU/1/6/7, SLB, bye-laws with respect to new streets and buildings, 1860, clause 12, ‘Space about buildings’).

56. Building Plans 1026 and 1090.

57. Building Plans 286, 556, 589.

58. Baer, W. C. ‘Is Speculative Building Underappreciated in Urban History?’ Urban History, 34, 2, (2007), 296–316.

59. Jackson, ‘Skipton-in-Craven, 1865 to 1914’, I, pp. 109–10.

60. For example, Thomas Duckett was responsible for the construction of Ings School (1911) and the restoration and extension of Holy Trinity Parish Church (1910). See his obituary in Craven Herald, 8 February 1929.

61. There are many advertisements in the Craven Household Almanack including the following: James Horner, (1883, p. 102); Christopher Edmondson (1890, p. 12); Benjamin Kirk (1897, p. 18); George Bradley (1897, p. 36); Thomas Duckett (1897, p. 182). An unusual diversification by W Morgan & Son involved the running of an eating house and bakery in Castle Street. This seems to have arisen from a client defaulting on payment for the property. See Craven Pioneer, 6 April 1878.

62. WRRD, 1916, 16/1152/460, 6 June 1916 and 21 June 1916 (Colin Street, Barnoldswick).

63. For example, while in the 1881 Census, Henry Hinings was described as a master stonemason, in 1891 he was simply a stonemason. Similarly, after a short period as a speculative builder in 1896 and 1898, Jonathan Lowe was an employee stonemason in 1901.

64. James Pye, one of the earliest estate agents in the town, was previously a rent collector and it is not difficult to see the connection between these roles. See his obituary in Craven Herald, 24 September 1926.

65. Offer, Property and Politics, pp. 143–4.

66. WRRD, 1903, 40/78/39, 2/9/03 and 9/9/03; 1904, 39/302/130, 7/9/04 and 17/9/04; 1904, 39/306/132, 8/9/04 and 17/9/04 (Neville Street).

67. WRRD, 1903, 18/80/38, 3/4/03 and 24/4/03 (Clitheroe Street); 1907, 52/68/28, 20/12/07 and 28/12/07 (Neville Street).

68. Rodger, ‘Speculative Builders’, 235; Chalklin, C. W. The Provincial Towns of Georgian England: A Study of the Building Process, 1740–1820, (London, 1974), p. 239.

69. Caffyn, L. Workers’ Housing in West Yorkshire, (London, 1986), p. 78.

70. See half-yearly statements in Craven Herald, 5 August 1898 and 24 February 1899. Note that some years previously the society had provided mortgages (as distinct from short term loans) to builders erecting houses for their own use as landlords and owner-occupiers. See WRRD, 810/742/834, 4/11/1878 and 24/12/1878 (Henry Ridley and SBS, 9 houses in George Street) and 824/644/720, 15/7/1879 and 2/8/1879 (James Horner and SBS, 4 houses in Union Street).

71. Saul, S. B. ‘House Building in England, 1890–1914’, Economic History Review, 15, 1, (1962), 119–37.

72. Jackson, ‘Skipton-in-Craven, 1865 to 1914’, I, p. 157.

73. Ibid, pp. 157–9; NYCRO: DC/SKU/2/5/1.

74. Jackson, ‘Skipton-in-Craven, 1865 to 1914’, II, pp. 66–9.

75. Yeadell, M. H. ‘Building Societies in the West Riding of Yorkshire and their Contribution to Housing Provision in the Nineteenth Century’, in Building the Industrial City, ed. M. Doughty, (Leicester, 1986), p. 71 and Offer, Property and politics pp. 142–4.

76. For example, WRRD, 800/670/712, 16/2/1878 and 31/7/1878, relates to the building of Firth Mill. However, by 1899, in the interests of improving the quality of the assets used to secure its loans, the society explicitly rejected industrial premises. Only houses and shops were accepted. See report of Skipton Building Society half-yearly meeting, Craven Herald, 24 February 1899.

77. Jackson, ‘Genesis of the Modern Town’, 163–5.

78. Report of Skipton Building Society half-yearly meeting, Craven Herald, 5 August 1898.

79. Weber’s data were published in J. Parry Lewis, Building Cycles and Britain’s Growth, (London, 1965), pp. 149–54. Yeadell made a similar observation, see Yeadell, ‘Building Societies in the West Riding’, pp. 86–91.

80. Derived from annual advertisements in the Craven Household Almanack. See Jackson, ‘Skipton-in-Craven, 1865 to 1914’, II, pp. 83. Note that the rates quoted are as at November of each preceding year.

81. Yeadell ‘Building Societies in the West Riding’, p. 87.

82. Ibid, p. 86.

83. Report of Skipton Building Society half-yearly meeting, Craven Herald, 5 August 1898 and17 August 1900.

84. Blackman J., and Sigsworth, E. M. ‘The Home Boom of the 1890’s’, Yorkshire Bulletin of Economic & Social Research, 17, 1, (1965), 75–97.

85. Ibid, p. 96; Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, p. 681.

86. The Land: The Report of the Land Enquiry Committee, Vol 2 Urban, (London, 1914), pp. 89–90.

87. Jackson, K. C. ‘The Room-and-Power System in the Cotton Weaving Industry of North-east Lancashire and West Craven’, Textile History, 35, 1, (2004), pp. 68–9.

88. Jackson, ‘The House Building Cycle’, 206–7.

89. Jackson, ‘Genesis of the Modern Town’, 163.

90. The report by Thomas Carnworth was dated 27 January 1914 and a summary was published in the Craven Herald, 25 May 1922.

91. Official guidance was 12 houses per acre, which compares with 50 per acre in New Town (1870–86) and 40 per acre in the final phase of Middletown (1898–1913). In 1951, 63 per cent of households in Skipton did not have a fixed bath, which was slightly below the average for the West Riding (Printed Census, 1951).