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The fictional Robert Moore (Shirley) succinctly sums up the attitude of many actual mill owners: ‘my mill is my castle,’ (Chp II, p 17). Indeed one of the ironies attending the confrontation of Luddites and owners was that the attack and defence of the mills resembled the sieges of medieval castles more than contemporary siege warfare in Spain during the Peninsular campaign. John Hirst’s Wood Bottom Mill just outside Marsden on the Slaithwaite road, was fortified with barricaded windows, a sealed off ground floor and a trap door over the water wheel. (Kipling/ Hall, p 18)
Wood Bottom Mill. The chimney shows it was later converted from water to steam power.
On the left of the building, behind the rubble heap, is an arch dating from when the mill was water powered.
The water wheel would have been at this end of the building.
William Cartwright’s Rawfolds Mill had flagstone on the upper story that could be raised as shields for the defenders, spiked rollers on the stairs and tubs of sulphuric acid (Vitriol) mounted nearby (Reid, p 106). The defences of William Horsfall’s Ottiwells Mill sound more up to date; it was supplied with what Lesley and Kipling call a ‘redoubt to protect one side’ with ‘cannon mounted at it’ (p 18). According to an engraving published later in the century this was not a redoubt following the pattern of Napoleonic military engineering, a low earthwork like the Dungeness redoubt http://theromneymarsh.net/dungenessbatteries but a hastily constructed high wall, looking like an enlarged version of the local dry-stone field walls: https://www.hpacde.org.uk/kirklees/jpgh_kirklees/k008381.jpg. It was this fortification that inspired Horsfall’s dangerous boast that he would ‘ride up to his saddle girths in Luddite blood’ (Reid, p 105). After Horsfall was killed, the family sold the mill but the defences were still intact in the 1880s.
Ottiwell' Mill: The Redoubt, drawing after:
https://www.hpacde.org.uk/kirklees/jpgh_kirklees/k008381.jpg
The Luddites opposing the manufacturers conducted military drilling sessions on the moors above the valleys. Captain Francis Raynes observed Luddite drill taking place on the moors at night and, in one instance, marching past a Lancashire church on Sunday. At these drills men were given numbers not names, so all could be accounted for in the event of an attack, (Reid, p 92). Despite resembling a modern army, the Luddites had little access to firearms. Many of the raids they undertook were in quest of guns (Reid, p 176, Brook/ Kipling, p 34) but, despite their best efforts most of their forces were armed with home-made pikes. Reid mentions a report to Lord Fitzwilliam, Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire, of pikes made in three parts that were easily hidden and assembled for use with a ‘through-pin and nut screw’ (Reid, 73). Similar weapons were manufactured for the Huddersfield Uprising of 1820 (Brook/Kipling , p100).
The site of Ottiwells Mill. In the background is Bank's Mill, The mill name is embedded in Ottiwells Terrace
one of the mills that replaced Horsfall's enterprise.
After Cartwright’s first defence of RawfoldsMill , he moved the conflict onto a new technological level by installing a gun capable of firing 60 musket balls on a carriage that could be moved swiftly from window to window (Reid, p2 07). It was never used but if Guy Richie ever makes a film about the Luddites expect it to be prominent…
This copy of a 19th century engraving of Rawfolds Mill shows a later incarnation of the mill.
In Cartwright's day it was water not steam powered and had two, not four stories according to this site.
http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~calderdalecompanion/dw118.jpg
Reid mentions three stories. As Cartwright estimated only 9 of 300
windows were left unbroken after the fight, a building larger than two stories seems likely.
(Reid, p 117)
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