Denby Dale Village History
Before the Industrial Revolution, Denby Dale, or Denby Dike as it was then known, was a very sparsely populated village, with a textile cottage industry. Relics of this hand-weaving industry still survive in several buildings which retain their typical weaving-chamber windows. The roads were mere dirt trackways, often impassable during the winter months and wheeled transport was brought to a standstill.
In 1825, the quiet location became a main crossroads of two turnpike roads - the Barnsley to Shepley Lane Head and the Wakefield to Denby Dale…25 years later and the railway had been built with surrounding factories and mills. And the village prospered – well placed to supply the textile industry with raw materials, coal for power, a water supply and transport to move the products to and from markets. Added to this were the inherent skills set within the local workforce of the textile industry, supplemented by external resource, keen for the new work in the mills.
And so the population of the village greatly increased and it became necessary to build terraces of houses to accommodate the people who began to arrive to fill the demand for factory workers. For many years into the nineteenth century children provided cheap labour in the mills, often working for up to twelve hours or more a day.