The Family Firm with the personal touch

The Burton Family has been associated with Electricity since the early part of the 20th Century the Great-Grandfather of Mr William Burton (Present day owner of Maxwell's) brought Hydro-Electricity to the Yorkshire Dales villages of Askrigg (Wensleydale) and Reeth (Swaledale).

Below is the copy of an article written by Mr Robert B. Matkin and published by The Dalesman in November 1978 (Vol.40 No.8).

The Day they Saw the Light

In 1911, when nearly every home and street on industrial Teeside was lit by flickering gas jets, Reeth, a small village some 10 miles from Richmond in Swaledale, was lit by electricity. Reeth was not the first village in the Dales to be so lit, for W. H. Burton and Sons, pioneers in rural electrification. had already installed a supply at Askrigg, in adjacent Wensleydale. Many other places in this Dale were also being "wired up" to small generating plants.

At the beginning of the century, William Handley Burton, an Askrigg millwright, joiner, general builder and maker of hand hay-rakes, had a casual conversation with some Lancashire electrical engineers who told him how, in Italy, the mountain torrents were being used to drive electric generators.

On his return to Askrigg, Burton took a long look at Mill Gill Force a mile west of the village, where a tributary of the river Ure plunges over a 70 feet limestone cliff; he realised that he had a "mountain torrent" on his own doorstep and he could harness it to supply electricity. So it was that the turbines, and hence the generators, received their motive power from the fast-flowing rivers of the Dales. An article in the Illustrated Chronicle for 1911 reported " .. the manner of lighting proves how easily and cheaply electric light can be obtained".

In 1910, on a day nobody thought fit to record, William Burton, accompanied by his son Ernest, pulled a switch in their home Mill Gill House, for it to become the first in Wensleydale to be lit by electric light.

It was the River Arkle which pours down Arkengarthdale to join the Swale just below Reeth, that provided the water to the turbines for this village supply. The power of the Arkle had been harnessed some 100 or more years earlier by the building of a large slanting stone weir to provide, via a long leat (mill-run), the water to drive the wheel of a corn mill. This mill, its leat and weir, having fallen into disuse, was renovated. An account in the Darlington and Stockton Times of October 15, 1910, reads:

'Mr. Burton of Askrigg has purchased a portion of the old Arkle Mill and has repaired the mill-dam. Soon the old building will be demolished preparatory to the building of an electric power station so, in the future, Reeth will be illuminated by electric light'.

In fact, the old building was not demolished, but the inside was gutted. and used to house the turbine, generating plant and distribution board. The leat was strengthened by forming the sides and base in concrete to provide a deep channel. A sluice gate was erected where the leat joined the weir, to control the water supply when the river was in flood.

The Leat at Reeth

The original turbine, manufactured by Gilbert Gilkes of Kendal, was a 12 h.p., 16 in, Trent type with a horizontal shaft, single discharge and a globe case. The water was fed to it from the settling tank via a 36 in. diameter cast iron pipe. It worked on a 19 feet head of water, consuming 530 cu. ft./minute to run the turbine at a speed of 306 r.p.m. The turbine drove an electric generator manufactured by Cromptons' of Chelmsford.

To adjust the incoming water. and thereby control the electricity supply, an automatic fine speed control governor had to be fitted. With very little information to help him - not much was known about using water for electricity at this time - Burton had to get permission to manufacture, under licence, an Italian model of a governor.

The supply to the village was originally 110 volts de carried by separate overhead cables of O.1 in. diameter. After 1930, when the supply changed to 230 volts ac, the cable became a 3-phase and neutral supply.

Although there was a limitation on the erection of poles for any purposes at this period, the overhead supply method was found to be the most practicable; only in very special circumstances were the cables run underground. By 1912 there were 25 street lamps, each of 50 candle power, used only during the winter time.

Private houses being wired to the supply were permitted to use the electricity only at night. During the day the supply was necessary to charge up batteries or accumulators.

Mr Handley Burton, a grandson. recalls how as a small boy he had to take leaflets around the Dales asking people if they wanted electric light. Perhaps they were sceptical of this new 'power', for there are no records of any lighting beyond Reeth until the advent of the national grid. Until 1936, the local postman was responsible for maintaining the turbines - when, ofcourse, he was not delivering the mail.

There was no restriction on the wattage available to houses for lighting purposes, and each was allowed to have one electric iron. Only hotels in the village - at one time there were 17 - were allowed electric fires. By 1935, electric cookers were permitted. It was recorded that someone at this time had an Acme electric washing machine.

Until 1930, the charge for electricity was 1s. (5p) per unit but then, due to an increase in the number of customers (160 in 1936), the price was reduced to 8d. (3.5p) per unit. Radio batteries cost 6d. (2.5p) to be charged.

Sometime before 1933, the undertaking changed its name from W. H. Burton and Sons to the Askrigg and Reeth Electric Supply Company, Limited. In 1936, the electric supply was extended to the adjacent village of Grinton, about a mile away.

ASKRIGG
Unlike Reeth the water supply to the turbines at Askrigg came from a reservoir lake constructed some half a mile above Mill Gill Force. From here, it descended some 129 feet through a cast iron pipe to the power house. The reservoir was supplied with water from Mill Gill, itself a tributary of the river Ure.

Completed in 1910, Askrigg was a more sophisticated supply undertaking than Reeth. The power house was specially constructed in the gorge below the Force, and the water supply pipe was laid in a trench cut in the side of the gorge.

Power house and water supply pipe at Askrigg

At the start of the undertaking the turbine was a 16 hp Vortex Special with 8¾ in. wheel, consuming 90 cu. ft. of water per minute with a speed of 1600 r.p.m. The generator was a direct-drive 12 kW dc 110 volt Westinghouse,employing a Gilbert Gilkes 4½ in, self-contained hydraulic speed-governor. From a record sheet of the consumption trials taken on June 2nd, 1910, it can be seen that the efficiency of both the generator and the turbine under full load was around 80 per cent, In later years the turbines were duplicated, and although no records exist of numbers in use, the concrete plinths are still in existence in the old power house.

According to a receipt of 1933, the cost of electricity was the same as at Reeth, 8d. per unit. It appears, however, that this was reduced to 7d. per unit after the first 27 units. The meter rent was 1s. 4d. (6.7p).In 1948 there were approximately 100 customers.

THE TAKEOVER
The North Eastern Electric Supply Company, in 1928. tried to obtain a Bill authorising them to provide an electric supply to the then North Riding of Yorkshire. Mr. Ernest Burton, without success, made representations to them to leave Wensleydale and Swaledale alone. In the end he decided to brief Counsel and oppose the Bill, and in this he was successful.

The result was the Askrigg and Reeth Electricity Special Order of 1929. which empowered the Burton's to continue the supply of electricity at Askrigg, Low Abbotside, Bainbridge, Reeth and Grinton. It did mean making a change to the voltages of the supplies, at Reeth from 230V dc to 230V ac, at Askrigg from 110V dc to 230V ac.

Thus the local suppliers were safeguarded. It was not until 20 years later that the final threat to their existence came when electricity was nationalised. Being a statutory undertaking they were taken over at once, and Bainbridge was the first of the villages to be connected to the national grid; the others soon followed.

Electricity is taken for granted these days. Our main concern now is whether we will have an adequate energy-source to produce it, whether it be coal, oil or some other alternative.

Nearly 70 years ago, when Askrigg with its new electric lighting was, according to a newspaper report, "a sparkling jewel set against the backcloth of the dark hills", the energy source was no problem.

Perhaps the time will come again when the Dales will still be the only ones to 'see the light', using their own local resources while the rest of us try to get the "telly" to work by candles.

Robert B. Matkin

The writer gratefully acknowledges all the help he has received, especially from the relatives of the pioneer W. H. Burton. Mr. J. J. Elam, of Gilbert Gilkes and Gordon Ltd., kindly assisted him with information end drawings concerning the early turbines supplied by his Company from 1910 onwards to the Dales undertakings.

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