Description and History of Site:-
The earliest water powered textile mill in Sutton-in-Craven stood on the banks of Lumb Clough Beck within Sutton Clough Wood. The three storey mill, 16.5 yards (15m) long by 9 yards (8.2m) wide, started as a cotton spinning mill but later successfully changed over to worsted spinning. The mill was powered by a waterwheel supplied by its two dams taking water from the beck upstream, the goit on the beck side is still discernible along with the weir and sluice gate stonework. The Lower Dam's earth bank runs faintly alongside the public footpath with a large earth bank to the left hand side of the location which is believed to be made up of rubble from the demolished mill, the foundations exposed when a pipeline was laid in 1972. Upstream from the Lower Dam stands the remains of the Upper Dam, the public footpath now passing through a breach in the dam wall.
The mills sizing house when cotton spinning took place, was further downstream in the village and run by the Berry family, now a row of four cottages called 'Woodville'.
John Driver Heaton born in 1765, the son of John Heaton of Sutton, inherited land from his uncle in 1785 which included Brow Bottom Farm, extending down into the lower reaches of Sutton Clough at the side of a fast flowing beck.
With Richard Arkwright's unsuccessful defence of his Water Frame cotton spinning patent, and with the patent's lapse in 1785 the race to build water powered cotton mills in the Pennines was on. John Driver Heaton wasted no time in erecting a small three storey cotton mill in 1789. On completion of the mill it's likely that he operated the mill until a permanent tenant could be found at a later date.
John Driver Heaton fell ill and died in 1793 at the age of 28 with the mill passing to his young son Thomas Driver Heaton. The mill was managed by executors until Thomas came of age in 1808 when a permanent tenant was sought to take over the running of the mill. Peter Hartley (1768-1831), originally a Haworth man, took the lease and moved his family to Sutton around 1810, living in Brow Bottom Farm and commenced spinning cotton at the new mill.
An indenture of 1815 describes the mill as a cotton mill and occupied by Peter Hartley. In 1817 Hartley was paying an annual rent of £68-10-00 for the mill.
Hartley had successfully changed production to spinning worsted yarn, the mill being described as worsted in 1817 when it was put up for sale, advertised as ''three storeys, 16.5 yards by 9 yards complete with dams, goits, reservoir, water wheel, tumbling shaft, landlords machinery and fixtures'', but the land on which the mill stood offered very limited room for expansion and had poor access down a steep hill across fields so when the lease at Low Mill (Greenroyd Mill in later years) just down stream in Sutton became available around 1824, Hartley moved his business there (with the Hartley family buying that mill in 1861 after Peter's death in 1831).
After the departure of Hartley, High Mill was leased to Joshua Clough who was raised at Bent Farm, Sutton, his father and brothers Robert and John were involved in the worsted trade owning mills in Keighley. In 1845 the Heaton family offered the mill for sale and it was purchased by Joshua's elder brother John with Joshua continuing to manage it. In 1853 the Ordnance Survey map still marks High Mill as a worsted mill but was unoccupied by 1860.
High Mill was eventually demolished by the new land owner John Willie Hartley, Peter Hartley's grandson, before 1894 when he built nearby Sutton Hall, the mill by now in a state of dereliction and the mill being within sight of the carriageway leading to the hall.

Further Reading and References:-
Owd Settings, Doris Riley pp 6-7
Sutton-in-Craven - The Old Community, Alec Wood, Ridings Publishing, pp 34-35
A Home Spun Yarn, Doris Riley, p7,p11
https://www.suttonincraven.org.uk/pdf/TheLifeAndTimesOfStubbingHill.pdf Robin Longbottom
Keighley News 6th August 2020 Robin Longbottom.

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Key Words :- cotton spinning worsted spinning waterwheel

Viewing the Site :- Public footpath runs alongside.

Address :- Sutton-in-Craven, Keighley, North Yorkshire
Grid Ref :- SE 00681 43458
Co-ordinates :- Lat 53.887307 , Long -1.991124
Local Authority :- Craven District Council
Pre 1974 County :- Yorkshire - West Riding
Site Status :- Site demolished or no longer extant
Site Condition :- Earthworks only
Site Dates :- 1789 - c1894
Record Date :- 11 June 2020

Copyright :- cc-by-nc-sa 4.0 © Andrew Garford