A sign “Town Ales” on the side of a house on Huddersfield Road near the garden centre marks it out as a former tavern. This was once "The Gardener's Arms".
“Town Ales” was the trading title of the fine beers brewed at Bentley and Shaw’s Lockwood Brewery, Huddersfield. In 1795 Timothy Bentley began brewing beer at Warley near Halifax. From there the business moved to Meltham Mills, Huddersfield, and thence to Lockwood. The Horseback Spring nearby supplied plenty of fresh spring water and the resultant beers soon gained a good reputation. As the business succeeded, the brewery bought up licensed houses to further sales of these beers. Two of Timothy Bentley’s sons ran breweries he had set up in Woodlesford and Rotherham. One of his daughters, Emma, married William Shaw, who was interested in the business, and soon afterwards the company became known as Bentley and Shaw. Both the company’s draught and bottled beers won acclaim. Their bottled Town Bitter was particularly successful. When it won a competition for bottled beer, the ornate trophy it was awarded became the trademark of the company from then on, and featured on their labels and their advertising. Sadly, the last brew at the Lockwood Brewery was on 21st November 1962, when production moved to Tadcaster.
"The Gardener's Arms" was the place where William Leather was drinking from 6pm until after midnight on Monday 15th January 1866. After leaving the pub he returned to his aunt, Lucy Thornton's cottage in Shelley. An old lady, she had taken Leather in when he left the workhouse and had nowhere else to go. She did not like him staying out late drinking, however, and apparently struck him with a poker when he returned that night, but unfortunately for her, Leather was much stronger and wrested the poker from her, beating her almost to death with it. Her unconscious body was not discovered until the following day. Leather was arrested at a house just behind "The Gardener's Arms" and taken back to the cottage, where Lucy was able to identify him as her attacker. Leather was taken to the lock-up at Kirkburton and later to the one in Huddersfield.
Meanwhile Lucy appeared to be recovering, but suddenly deteriorated and died on 25th January. An inquest was held at "The Star Inn", Shelley, presided over by deputy coroner Thomas Taylor. Lucy's injuries were described and a verdict of "manslaughter" returned, with Leather being sent for trial at Leeds Assizes. There the jury agreed he was guilty of manslaughter and the judge sentenced him to 6 years in jail.
Corset Making
This was one of the more unusual occupations, in fact the products were unique to Shelley and Albert Fitton, the most famous Shelley corset maker, claimed in 1907 and 1913 to be "the only maker in the British Empire" and Shelley to be the only corset making village in the country. The production of corsets in the village seems to have been partly a cottage industry and partly a factory one. Weavers, working on their looms in the upper rooms of their cottages, where there was more light from the upper windows, wove the corsets in one piece to a complicated pattern. It involved the weaver operating about 10 treadles with his feet and 4 or 5 shuttles which he threw by hand across the width of the fabric on the loom at intervals. The corset had to go out for the hip and bust sections and in for the waist. The method used was quite different from the normal method of corset production at the time which involved stitching a dozen or so pieces of fabric together, boning and trimming them. Instead the Shelley garments were produced in one piece then cut down the back, hemmed, backbones fitted when used, eyeleted and trimmed with lace. They could be made to measure and even adapted to fit deformed and misshapen bodies. The corset was nicknamed "The Shelley Dreadnought". Albert suggested it be worn for only about 3 years, but he knew one women who had worn hers for 12 years and others who had worn them for 7 or 8. After a hard week's work each weaver would carry his bundle of corsets to the factory and exchange it for cash and a parcel of weft and warp threads. The rest of Saturday was his rest day, apart from maybe tidying up his loom.
In 1856, the same year he married Amelia Mosley at the Independent Chapel at Kirkburton, Henry Fitton opened a new "shop" at Red Hill employing about 80 weavers with 20 to 30 women ironing the stays in their own homes. In 1881 he was employing 41 men and 14 females according to the census. 10 years later his son Albert, aged 28, was also a corset manufacturer, albeit he still lived with his parents at Hill Top, Shelley. Soon afterwards though, on 21st April 1892, Albert married Ellen Ann Mitchell at Shelley New Connexion Methodist Chapel and established his own home and family at Far Bank and his corset factory at Bank Bottom. His parents appear to have emigrated to Queensland, Australia, and "The Leeds Mercury" published a photo of them there in May 1906. Henry had been chairman of Shelley School Board and the District Council and had some influence in the village.
Albert was to face hard times ahead. "The Huddersfield Examiner" of 17th May 1916 reported that a receiving order had been made for the estate of Albert Fitton, corset manufacturer of Far Bank, Shelley, who was adjudged bankrupt on his own application. A personal disaster followed. His son, Frank, an art student at Goldsmiths College, London, drowned whilst on holiday in Mablethorpe. He had gone for a swim in the sea with a female companion, Frances Wright, in August 1921. Both got into difficulties, she managed to save herself but Frank did not.
Albert died in January 1934 and is buried in the graveyard of Shelley Methodist Church. His son, Frank, is mentioned on his gravestone.
The Millennium Memorial Stone
Shelley residents, looking for a way to commemorate the passing of the 20th Century and beginning of the 21st, came up with an idea after 23 tonnes of stone accidentally fell from a Marshall's truck onto Penistone Road opposite the village green. These particular stones were not appropriate for what they had in mind, but one of the village councillors was prompted to phone Marshall's stone quarry to ask if they would be willing to supply a more appropriately sized one. Marshall's agreed and a suitably engraved stone was unveiled at the village green in millennium year, June 2000. On unveiling day a procession, headed by Scissett Youth Band, paraded through the village stopping at seven sites for songs to be sung. The parade began at Shelley parish church, stopping near the stone en route to the Methodist Hall for refreshments.