The Mellor Family of Crosland Hill

Our forefathers were talked of mainly as Quarrymen and Farmers living (at least since the 1840’s) in and around the small village of Crosland Hill a parochial district of Lockwood and Almondbury in the township of Huddersfield. Lying to the West side of the town on the hillside edge of Crosland Heath between the valleys of Colne and Holme, Crosland Hill was nationally known as a quarrying district, extracting good quality ashlar and ancilliaries from the Gritstone/Sandstone beds. It was a one street village, Crosland Hill Road, surrounded by stone workings and backfill areas on all sides, with some of the adjoining roads left on cliff edges where a good seam had been delved to within 3 foot of its borderline. ( The owners would have tunnelled under the roads too if the Local Authority had allowed it, such was the demand for stone in those days). I remember it as a child being a busy main thoroughfare but find it now to be a narrow lane.

My Grandfather Fred married in c.1895 Ada Whiteley, a weaver from Linthwaite and later acquired land and a farmstead, Felks Stile Farm. The homestead of mainly a large barn and a smaller house was located at the top of Quarry Road where it joined (with a farm gate and a lovely stone stileway) Felks Stile Road, the link between Blackmoorfoot Road and Church Lane, Linthwaite. It has mostly gone now. The farm in ruins, the land we farmed and quarried taken over by the spewer factory (Standard Fireworks Ltd) who have steadily expanded their holdings between the village and Crosland Heath Golf Course since the Great War. The village has changed too except for the principal dwellings on the main street, the Manor House and the Chapel, most of the quarries filled in and a large caravan sales area dominates. Samuel Johnstones Quarries were still active and expanding south along Thewlis Lane when I last visited, but the old sites of J. Wimpenny &Co., Mallinsons, Boothroyds, Hirst & Mellors, and Bates’s Quarries , have all suffered the straits of progress, buried under recreation and housing.

About 1873 William built a block of 4 houses midway along Crosland Hill Road, 2 semi’s back to back. He and his wife occupied the right-hand one, looking from the street and rented out the other 3. As his 3 sons grew up, Squire married Ellen and inherited the family house, Fred married Ada and inherited the house next door. William emigrated to Australia, and I suppose Squire and Fred would share the rents from the 2 houses round the back. Squire and Ellen had only one son, Brook, who when he married Nellie Earnshaw, a girl from Meltham, lived in the family house until about 1955 when Brook retired from his partnership in Hirst and Mellor Quarries to move into a bungalow at the top of Tom Lane (next to another quarry). Their daughters, Amy and Mabel were born from the Crosland Hill family house.

Next door to Squires, Fred and Ada reared 4 sons and a daughter, before moving during WW1 to Felks Stile Farm, Crosland Heath. Fred had left school at the age of 12, but the boys were made to continue to 13. The new Education Act in December 1918 made 14 the compulsory leaving age, which meant that Harriet couldn't start work until 1922. Fred had two attempts at opening up small quarries but a spoilt partnership with one left him without capital and they struggled along with the small one-horse farm and a milker, renting out fields to other farmers, and small pieces of land to the expanding Spewer Factory. The boys were working in the quarries from the Crosland Hill house but after moving to the farm they helped out whenever they could.

The photo shows John Mellor with a Woodbine cigarette in his hand. He always rose at 6.00am and would cough for half an hour before going to work.