This lonely Victorian industrial site in Upper Teesdale is found not too far from the Teesdale Way, on the opposite (south) bank of the Tees in the shadow of Cronkley Scar. Over the brief years in which it operated it was known variously as Cronkley or Widdybank Mill, thus the soft, shale ‘pencils’ it produced — used for writing on slate tablets — were known locally as ‘Widdies’.
The mill had been built to exploit an ‘inlier’ of pre-Devonian rocks — much older than those in the otherwise Carboniferous landscape — which had been thrust upwards as a result of geological faulting. Quarried by hand from amongst the hard rock, the shale was transported a short distance to the workshop for water-powered grinding. It was then “mixed with some binding agent and pressed into moulds to harden”.
One of the earliest references to there being a working mill at the site was in the autumn of 1847, by the rambler Francis P Cockshott in his journal Journey through Teesdale. It’s thought that the mill wasn’t a commercial success and had no more than a handful of employees over the entire time it operated. It appears to have been out of use by 1878 and abandoned completely by the 1890s.
All that remains today is a single-storey building with low walls that once held up a stone-slabbed roof. It sits within a small quarry on the south bank of the Tees downstream from Widdybank Pasture. The building is approximately 15 m (50 ft) long, divided into 3 sections thought to have been (from west to east): a wheel enclosure; a workshop; a store.
The mill race was tapped off the river, before the bend on the upstream side (NY 841297), then routed to the site through a constructed channel known as a ‘leat’. This fed a wooden ‘launder’ directing the water to what is thought to have been an overshot water-wheel with a diameter of around 12 feet. The tail race, linking the wheel site to the river, can also be identified.
A survey, conducted in 1969, reported the original pair of millstones (the lower ‘bedstone’ and the upper ‘runner’) as still being on the site. The survey describes them as made from a “dark, vesicular lava… quarried in the Mayen district of Germany”. The mill site is accessible via a trail on the south side of the River Tees from Cronkley Bridge, past High House, over Cronkley Pasture, on the riverbank under Cronkley Scar.
Location NY 848295 (Mill Building)
References
Atkinson, Frank. “A Pencil Mill at Cronkley Scar.” The Industrial Archaeology Group for the North East, no. 5, 1968, p. 17. Cleveland Mining Heritage Society, http://cmhs.org.uk/information-and-resources-2/bulletins-of-industrial-archaeology-society-for-the-north-east/. Accessed 14 October 2020.
Stoyel, Alan. “Pencil Mill.” The Industrial Archaeology Group for the North East, no. 7, 1968, pp. 2-4. Cleveland Mining Heritage Society, http://cmhs.org.uk/information-and-resources-2/bulletins-of-industrial-archaeology-society-for-the-north-east/. Accessed 14 10 2020.
Chapman, Vera. “Slate Pencil Mills.” The Industrial Archaeology Group for the North East, no. 8, 1969, pp. 3-15. Cleveland Mining Heritage Society, http://cmhs.org.uk/information-and-resources-2/bulletins-of-industrial-archaeology-society-for-the-north-east/. Accessed 14 October 2020.
Beadle, H. L. “Cronkley and Newbiggin Pencil Mills.” The Industrial Archaeology Group for the North East, no. 9, 1969, pp. 21-25. Cleveland Mining Heritage Society, http://cmhs.org.uk/information-and-resources-2/bulletins-of-industrial-archaeology-society-for-the-north-east/. Accessed 14 October 2020.
Keys to the Past. “Cronkley Slate Pencil Mill (Forest-in-Teesdale).” Keys to the Past, 2020, http://www.keystothepast.info/article/10339/Site-Details?PRN=D980. Accessed 14 October 2020.