Milner Field Revisited

The South Lodge

The later managing directors of Salts Mill, Saltaire, married ladies whose families were more minor members of the peerage.

Eva Siggs had many siblings and she was one of the youngest members of her family, living at 98 Acre Lane, Lambeth, Greater London.  She was born in 1874.  In 1900, she married Ernest Henry Gates.  Their son, Ernest Everard Gates was born in 1903. 

In later life, Eva Gates suffered ill health; her sister, Laura, also mentioned in the peerage along with her father George, died somewhat prematurely in 1921.  Eva died around October 1923, presumably at the Milner Field home in Bingley.  

Ernest Gates met with an accident, injuring his foot and after going in to a private nursing home in Eldon Place, Bradford, he died on April 1, 1925.  His Will was proved later that year, when his son and successor, Ernest Everard Gates had moved back to Norfolk.

Ernest Gates’ family had an ancestral coat of arms and his family home was Old Buckenham Hall, Attleborough, Norfolk.  The residence later became a school which was destroyed by fire in 1952.

There is a rather crude ‘spoof’ Facebook page in existence suggesting that Eva Gates haunts Milner Field as she used to sit in the conservatory and would often request the gardeners to place bets on horse races for her, or so some say.

A book written some time ago about Hollins and Viyella, the latter a mixed fabric and later a brand-name also associated with a company called Courtaulds, mentions the family bearing the name formerly referred to.

Why would Eva Gates or indeed Annie Hollins haunt the ruins of Milner Field?  Well, it is difficult to say.  Perhaps they hoped for more from their physical life than it would ultimately offer either, or perhaps their illnesses made more of a dent in the ether.

The most obvious culprit for the destruction of anyone who later lived at Milner Field would be Titus Salt Junior.  He overspent and ruined himself, entertained royalty and funding his mining activities in America with the Dayton Coal and Iron Company.  

Yet he put on a splendid Jubilee Exhibition which lost him a lot of money and it is very sad because you can see the human side of him and his efforts in this marvellous attempt to create an amazing exhibition.  The problem was that, perhaps from a marketing perspective, Saltaire was too small, the exhibition should have been held in Shipley or Bradford.  Shortly after the exhibition closed, in November 1887, Titus Junior was found dead in the billiard room at Milner Field aged only 44.  

James Roberts is the dark horse; later Sir James Roberts, he was created a baronet by the same person who had been entertained by Titus Junior, the former Prince of Wales, King Edward VII.  Mr Roberts was a man from supposedly humble beginnings in Haworth, working his way up and looking for opportunities to take over both Salts Mill and as many of the directors’ residences as he could.  After wrestling The Knoll, in Baildon, from fallen Salts director Charles Stead, he then set his sights on Milner Field.

Sir James did suffer family tragedies whilst living at Milner Field, but he and his wife came through personally unscathed, owning both Strathallan Castle in Scotland and Fairlight Hall.  Both lived to reach a decent age.  He also bought the Bronte parsonage in Haworth and presented it to the local council, to be used as a museum. 

James Roberts was the man that the Salt brothers, Titus and Edward, should have kept the closest eye on.  Anyone who looks in to the situation closely can see that James Roberts waited on the misfortune of others, namely Titus and Edward Salt and even Charles Stead, in order to take what they had and keep it for himself.  Like Julius Caesar or Octavian, the Roman Emperors of classical times, he humiliated the Salts and Stead, building his own empire at Salts Mill. Some would call him the perfect businessman. 

As far as hauntings go, we have a lot of disgruntled persons both incarnate and discarnate, roaming around.  Then perhaps we forget to mention that Catherine Salt as a member of the Halifax-based Crossley carpet family, even in late Victorian and Edwardian times, would have expected a be shown a good deal of respect.  As a woman and lone parent, upon the death of her husband, she apparently had to mortgage Milner Field to her brother.  Upon vacating the property, James Roberts assumed residence.

Mrs Catherine Salt would have experienced an acute loss of status following the death of her husband and she would still have been young enough to marry again, but would not have been seen as a wealthy enough prospect by suitors within her social circle.  She may therefore have become both justifiably bitter and disillusioned to see others in her husband’s place at Salts Mill. It must have hurt her.

Who goes (there), you decide!

The Dayton Coal and Iron Company - More Supernatural Happenings

I only buy a local paper very occasionally. I'll be honest, I usually read something in it that winds me up, so I leave it alone much of the time these days. I actually once worked for our local paper and also for the Yorkshire Post, but there you go

Anyway, for some reason I did buy a copy of the local paper yesterday and in it I read about historian Dave Shaw and associate Dave King going to Tennessee to view the mines and land formally owned by Titus Salt Junior and his company , The Dayton Coal and Iron Company.& This kind of set me off doing my own research as Saltaire, these days is a bit of a quango. Certain persons seem to be of the opinion that they 'own' Saltaire and its knowledge and are charged with protecting a heritage that has only come into the spotlight as a result of Jonathan Silver restoring the Mill and filling it with Hockney's work. Nothing to do with Salt.

The truth is that Denys Salt, grandson of Titus Salt Junior, chose to make his home in Austria where he co- authored a book called 'Austria - A Bibliography' part of a series aimed at scholars and he actually has very little to do with Saltiare other than by association with his forebears; he does not even live in the area.

With no disrespect to Saltaire or the Salts, they had actually completely lost control of the mill and their American mines, iron and coke works by the early 1890's and other than in name, their actual attachment ends there. Or does it? Because that is the angle I am looking in to.

Yes, some may scoff at the supernatural and that is just fine (for them!), but for those who believe or are of the spiritual persuasion we have the same rights as the atheists and scoffers. So for those who want to bask in the reflected glory of the Salt family up to the 1880s in the 21st Century, today, that is up to them. I am sure it brings in a lot of funding. And of course plenty of work for the photographers.

My concern is that there is usually something funny going on closely connected to Titus Junior. No one could live in his house, Milner Field. A different approach to investigating this is covered in our ebook, Milner Field: The Magickal Corridor, available on Amazon.

When we started studying Titus Junior we didn't intend to like him, but we did end up liking him, almost championing him, however not as fans or worshippers of Saltaire or the Salt history, which is just that - history.

The thing about Titus Salt Junior was that he so wanted to be one of the members of the top echelons of society, putting himself out for princes and princesses, to the cost of his health and his finances, but the Salts didn't perhaps have the business acumen of their father and they let others steal from them what their family had built up. James Roberts must have really been laughing up his sleeve, not that it did anyone any good who did take the Salts property.

Anyway, I read with interest the article in the Telegraph and Argus about the Richland Mine owned by Titus Junior and also backed by Mr Stead another Salts Director who eventually lost his home, The Knoll - James Roberts got this too. After several long hours of research and reading a lot of websites and articles that told a lot of different accounts, this is what I pieced together. Titus Junior was found dead in the billiard room of Milner Field in November 1887 by the way.

Titus Junior was, in my opinion, up to his usual tricks again! This time with the mines. He started buying up land in Dayton, near Chattanooga in Tennessee in 1879 and set up the Dayton Coal and Iron Company. Over 200 mine workers houses were built and an impressive house was built for his manager a Mr Ferguson with 10 bedrooms.There Coke ovens were hastily built and pig iron manufactured.

In 1884, despite the boom and employment of hundreds of people, Titus Junior got financing back up from James Watson Iron Merchants of Glasgow. When the Americans put tariffs and embargoes on foreign textile trade to protect its own textile industry in 1892, the mill began to suffer, Titus Junior was by that time some years departed and the whole concern of Dayton Coal and Iron Company was sold to James Watson Iron Merchants of Glasgow. Then it all goes wrong.

There were three main mines - the Richland mine, the Nelson mine and the Dixon-Slope mine.  According to one account, when digging in the Dixon-Slope mine, the miners were only 20 feet from a lucrative coal seam which they missed!

There was a disaster at the Nelson mine on December 20, 1895 killing many miners, accounts of exactly how many vary. Then there was an explosion at the Richmond mine in May 1901 which killed more miners, some of whom were entombed forever in the mine and others burned to death. Apparently some of the miners bodies were buried near the Richmond mine. After this on March 31, 1902 there was another disaster in the Nelson mine.

In between this miners set fire to some of the outbuildings and were forever striking.  Many lawsuits were brought against the Dayton Coal and Iron Company, owned by James Watson, Iron Merchants of Glasgow, for smoke pollution.

On June 24, 1913 Peter Donaldson, the well respected Managing Director of James Watson Iron Merchants who had offices in Glasgow at 7 Royal Bank Place, and also had offices in Middlesbrough, Liverpool, Swansea and Grangemouth, committed suicide. He chained himself into his car and drove it into the River Thames as himself and his companies faced ruin.

Peter Donaldson lived at 5 Prince's Terrace in Glasgow from 1905-1913 and had a summer house, Woodbine, which is now the Kilgreggan Hotel and he was instrumental in building Cove Burgh Hall as well as this he enjoyed yachting on the River Clyde.

The company eventually changed its name to the Cumberland Iron and Coal Co which is probably where the name Cumberland Way comes from.

I am of the opinion that, as with Milner Field, there were supernatural agencies at work, causing the trouble with these mines and also causing trouble with the Dayton Coal and Iron Company and those associated with it. It is exactly the same as what happened to Milner Field, reduced to rubble and who is the common denominator of all this? Well, whether the purists of Saltaire or the modern day Saltaire quango like it or not the catalyst is always Titus Salt Junior.

As a footnote and just to show how 'tuned in' I am, Harlington Craven, (our pen name for our ebook, Milner Field: The Magickal Corridor) is actually an ancestor of ours.  His father, from Baildon, Shipley, West Yorkshire, was an iron foundary foreman and Harlington went to America in the early 20th Century and along with another relative, he owned and ran an ironworks company, though luckily not on the scale of the Dayton enterprise. More eerily still, Harlington eventually returned from America and went to work in Glasgow, before returning to Bradford, where he died in his early 40's.

We used Harlington's name on the ebook about Milner Field because he was a free spirit, a person who's roots were from near Milner Field, but who got away and did his own thing.  We knew nothing of Titus Salt Junior's American Dayton Coal and Iron Company at that time and learned this only from the publicity given to Dave Shaw in the Telegraph and Argus of May 15, 2012 and from Dave Shaw's Saltaire Forum blog.

Mine Fired by Incendiaries as reported by the New York Times

Tennessee Mine Disaster as reported by the New York Times

Milner Field House Wants Your Attention!

For the full history of the Milner Field House, there are plenty of explanations on the internet. We would never dream of insulting this Goetia/retro Gothic, Steam Punk house by attempting to put the ruins in the Triangle of Art. Let it run, there are plenty of beings who want their voices to be heard, so let them speak and listen to their exasperated whisperings. Demons or Angels, it is not for us to criticise where these energies arise from. We have to go with the flow and accept that life is always about being a healthy shade of grey or gray because who is to say which is the correct spelling? The right actions connect with the right diagnostic feelings/ isotonics and The House wishes to speak.

Ghosts and the Slow Shutter

Does the slow shutter of a camera capture a person's essence suspended in time for real? Yes we know its all about light capture but even so, I'm sure there is a bit more to this question.

Its like the famous parapsychologist visionaries of old. Many of them went off and wrote one book, or two books, three books four books etc. and these books were acclaimed as brilliant at the time of writing as many of them still are today.

On closer inspection however, these famous persons often used someone else's ideas and put these ideas in to a format which was up to date in their lifetime and so on and so forth.

If you study this subject carefully you will see that the same ideas have been re-packaged and trotted out for hundreds of years and several 'great men or women' have taken credit in modern history for a foundation of ideas and systems that was not in fact originally developed by them, but was actually developed hundreds of years previously.

Every so often someone has come along, read some old books and re-packaged the concept as their own work. I have recently found that many of the works attributed to a 'golden handful' of very famous 19th and 20th century parapsychologists are merely re-packaged copies of very much older material and it is not the work or even the idea of the 'golden handful' at all yet even today, they take all the credit for apparently mainly working out these systems themselves.

Another thing that may make people in awe is that these scholars of old have a fondness for latin language. Now there is nothing particularly clever about using latin. In the UK today you can read a bit of latin on the back of your shampoo bottle.

Learning latin was part of the national curriculum in the UK right up to the end of the 1960's and many private schools continue to teach latin today. The Catholic church used latin in it's mass. It was reasonably normal to use latin back in those days, it didn't mean anyone was exceptionally bright or clever just because they used a bit of latin. Latin sounds more pompous than using English, that's all, but its not really, but people think it makes them sound posh.

My late brother could read both latin and ancient Greek fluently, but that's because he learned it at school. He had books like Virgil's Aenid in latin and one day my hamster found a piece of chocolate on top of this book, ate it and dribbled all over the book's cover and that about sums up my view of stuff written in latin!

All Along The Watchtower

It would seem that every good occultist has had some sort of manic 'Carrie' style religious upbringing that has turned them in to some sort of 'nut' at least where the general public are concerned.  Even Joseph Stalin of Russia was the son of a priest. You could say that the 'mania' develops from being brought up in a religious household and goes on from there.

As far as the Golden Dawn is concerned, too many people think they 'own' It, own Its Rights, Its essence, itself. There are a good number of 'High Fallutin', 'factual' missives on the internet, including stuff about The Society of Dew and Light, like oh they actually KNEW David Lund personally.

Truth is my family really did know the Lunds, back in the 19th Century and yes some of the family were freemasons and members of other brotherhoods groups and sects back in good old Bradford as well as a number of other places.

Fact- the Stella Matutina was not the Golden Dawn but an offshoot of it. Dion Fortune belonged to the Stella Matutina not the Golden Dawn. Israel Regardie had a lot of manuscripts from the original Golden Dawn workings but he was NEVER a member of the ORIGINAL Golden Dawn, but another offshoot. So much of the stuff on the internet is factually incorrect, yet people brag and brag about their ownership of the Golden Dawn. Well good luck to them if that is their trip, but it is not the God's honest truth whatever they say.

Going on to The Watchtower this is another belief system, with Jehovah (God) as the great lord. it is still very interesting if somewhat bigoted. But then all religions are totally bigoted. It the 'my way or no way' syndrome.

Jehovah's Witnesses on Wikipedia

Occultism in a Creepy Old Building

The occult is a science, which follows a particular order. It's not about who knows the most, about what, or where, or how or any form of 'show off' knowledge. True followers of any occult path are in it for the religion, not to show off, thats why many occultists in history were poor, including Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. Occultism is not a substitute for modern medicine, nor is it a placebo or blind faith, it is something more, a third element creeping in, or indeed being drawn in by a person or persons with enough knowledge of occult science in everyday life to make this happen.

The occult is not about a lot of male chauvinists in a rock band giving themselves or their band an occult based name to be 'really clever', its not about emo's or goths or anyone playing at being a pretend vampire and its not just for young people who dye their hair black, or old hippies from times past. The occult is really serious. It's one of the most serious things there is in life and it is there for anyone who has a genuine interest.

For those who are religiously minded, the occult doesn't actually go against anyone's God either, because it is not saying it is bigger than the Creator, just a part of creation and that could mean that your particular God created the occult too, so its not acutally about idolatry because all these created elements, perceived by some as idols could be seen as belonging to the Creator and being part of the Creator and therefore not idols at all, but part of the same picture.

The occult is not about arrogantly knowing the most about past occult 'heroes' or what happened to 'such and such' or where certain events happened. It's not about saying God is good or Satan is bad either. Anyone is bad who hurts other people with vindictive knowing. Anyone intent on harm is evil, whether they label themselves a follwer of God or Satan. Similarly anyone who helps others or does a nice thing for someone else is good whether they are a Satanist, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or other.

I have spent the last few days reading, exclusively, The Holy Qur'an translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali. Before this I was reading all about Buddha and how to become a Buddha.

A lot of religious problems seem to be cultural rather than genuinely religious. To say a Satan is evil, end of, is not ackowledging the problems created by over zealous religous belief in GOOD which becomes evil because of the over zealousness applied.

I was suprised at how similar the Qur'an is to The Bible. A lot of it is so the same, why is everyone falling out? I have also read The Satanic Bible, by Anton La Vey and that man wrote in the main, some very helpful and sensible straightforward advice about looking after yourself.

Anyway, the upshot of it all is that we all repeated the Shahada quite seriously out loud which is what you have to do to become a Muslim so I suppose we have all become Muslims now too.

I think if someone tries to infiltrate your beliefs with 'false prophets' or the 'prophets of false' or false mockery, (whatever false means to you) or just plain nastiness, your only option is to infiltrate theirs as they tried to infiltrate yours. Hopefully it will all come out in the wash and everything will be OK in the end.

Meanwhile here is a creepy picture of the wreck of the conditioning house in Bradford, West Yorkshire, a truelly hideous, dangerous derelict building. Shalom.

Polyfaith Exploits of The New Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn With Dew and Light

Cernunnos

Ibo-Ibolo

Horus

We know that 'Degree' ceremonies are meant to teach followers of certain concepts in small manageable steps. For instance, you could learn about the elements of Earth, Air, Water and Fire (in Feng Shui, the five elements used are earth, fire, wood, metal and water.

But in the same way you could attend Cambridge University, or you could equally attend the University of Life and eventually at some point your paths would cross.

It's the same with esoteric systems, there is more than one way to learn them and arrive at the same conclusion or destination as your counterpart. 'It's not what you do, it's the way that you do it' as the song goes.

If you are Polyfaith, then you can believe in everything at once if you feel like it, or be selective. We have a shrine to the Lady Epona, a Shrine to Lord Ganesha, paintings of the African warrior Ibo-Ibolo, the Lord Horus and also a painting of one of the oldest Gods of all time, dating originally from the stone age, Cernunnos, who is also known by various other names.