The Edmondsons and Dent Marble
Dentdale is a secluded, and beautiful valley in the Yorkshire Dales. It is underlain by the Carboniferous Limestone series and is drained, west to the River Lune, by the River Dee.
Soon after the invention, by James Hargreaves, of the Spinning Jenny in about 1765, Richard Alderson, a Quaker, built a water-powered mill in Artengill Beck, a north-bank tributary of the Dee at a place now called Stonehouse. The original purpose of the mill, built around 1780 (or possibly earlier) was for cotton-carding and spinning, a surprising activity in this area as the nearest substantial centre of cotton working was at Preston, about fifty miles to the south.
This function did not last long, however, and between 1800 and 1810 the mill was converted to cut a local decorative limestone that became known as ‘Dent Marble’. In fact, a group of several buildings served the Dent Marble business. There was a manager’s house, which probably gave the locality its name ‘Stonehouse’, ‘High Mill’, the original cotton-spinning facility, and ‘Low Mill’, built to polish the limestone. Power was supplied by a water wheel said to have been 60 feet in diameter. In Artengill Beck remnants of a small dam can still be seen and it is said that remains of the Low Mill wheel pit can be seen from the roadside at Stonehouse. At the south end of the wheel pit stand two large blocks of carved stone, one each side, one with a semi-circular recess.
These may have supported part of the gear train for the wheel or possibly part of the marble polishing machinery. The water wheel survived until about 1920.
Low Mill may have been converted from an older mill or built specifically to polish the limestone but in any case it was extended to house sawing machinery in about 1815. It survived as a stone polishing mill, equipped with large polishing wheels, until 1907 but has since been demolished. A 
notice in the Heritage Centre at Dent village says that
George Armstrong studied the science of water power at Artengill Beck before establishing his highly successful armaments business in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Marble is a limestone that has re-crystallized under the influence of heat and pressure and is thus a metamorphic rock. The limestone that forms ‘Dent Marble’ has not been subjected to the degree of heat and pressure needed to produce re-crystallization and is not, therefore a true marble; it is, in fact, simply an ornamental limestone. Three varieties of the limestone seem to have been worked. The most attractive has a black matrix against which large amounts of white fossil debris stand out. The commonest source of the debris is the remains of the stems and fronds of crinoids, an extinct group of plant-like animals related to star-fish and sea urchins and reminiscent of some frond-like corals. Another variety of Dent Marble is a brownish, somewhat amorphous limestone. I do not know the nature of the third type, but all three types are said to be visible in the floor of St. Andrew’s church in Dent village.
Dent Marble takes a good polish and for a time during the nineteenth century it became very fashionable. Many early Victorian homes throughout the country were furnished with Dent marble fire surrounds and some was exported to prestigious projects abroad. There is a Dent Marble fireplace at the Heritage Centre in Dent, and another that can be examined over a pint or a cup of coffee at the Sportsman’s Inn at Cowgill. The most famous example, however, was commissioned by the Tsar of Russia in 1843, for the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. The Dent Marble industry began to decline from the early 1890s onward
s partly due to the importation of true marbles from Italy but also because of changes in late Victorian fashion and taste.
The Stonehouse stone-cutting and polishing facilities gave rise to the development of a group of skilled stone-working families, one of which was the Edmondson family. My interest in them comes from the fact that an Annie Edmondson married William Tuson and became one of my great Grandmothers.
Data from the 1881 census shows that the Edmondson family was strongly centred near Lancaster, and the surrounding areas, including Dentdale. A visit to the churchyards of St. John’s at Cowgill and St. Andrews and the Methodist churches in Dent village found six Edmondson memorials; two of those at St. John’s, specifically mention ‘Stonehouse’ as the abode. Cowgill is about two miles downstream from Stonehouse.
Annie Edmondson was the daughter of Anthony Edmondson and Elizabeth whose maiden name was also Edmondson. Anthony was born about 1840, the son of George Edmondson, a ‘marbel polisher’ who was living at ‘Stone House’ in Dent at the time of the 1841 census, together with his wife Ann and five children. The sheet of the 1841 census that lists George also shows two Marble Masons and one Marble Sawyer.
The 1861 census shows that Anthony Edmondson was born at Dent and he was then a Marble Polisher. He was then living at Toxteth in Liverpool, lodging in the house of a 
George Bank (or Banks?). George Bank’s wife was called Margaret and she too was born at Dent;
there is a possible marriage of a George Banks and a Margaret Edmondson listed on the Civil Registration Index in June 1848 at Lancaster, District 21 Page 331, so Margaret could well have been a close relative of Anthony.
Anthony’s wife, Elizabeth Edmondson, was born at Asby, Westmorland in about 1843. Her father was William Edmondson, described on Annie’s marriage certificate as a ‘Marble Polisher’ and he too was born at Dent. At the time of the 1861 census William and his family were living at number 21, Woburn Place at Chorlton-upon-Medlock in Manchester.
Anthony too must have moved to Manchester for both he and Elizabeth were living there in 1865 when they married, and when Annie was born in 1866 they were at number 20, Mansell Street in Chorlton upon Medlock. At some time their daughter Annie moved to Whittle-le-Woods and she was working there as a Domestic Servant when she married William Tuson in 1887.
It appears that Anthony died some time after 1875 and, sadly, the 1881 census shows Elizabeth living with three of her children in the Chorlton Union Workhouse at Withington in Manchester; she was then described as a ‘Charwoman’.
This then is the story that I can currently tell of the Edmondson family of Dentdale in Yorkshire and their close relationship with ‘Dentdale Marble’. There is clearly scope for further research and I hope, therefore, to be able to add more information in due course.
Sources consulted
1. http://www.dentdale.com/history.htm
2. http://www.outofoblivion.org.uk/record.asp?id=340
3. http://www.outofoblivion.org.uk/stone.asp
4. http://www.dentvillageheritagecentre.co.uk/
5.http://www.yorkshiredales.org.uk/index/learning_about/landscape_character/dales_character_areas/cumbrian_dales_character_areas.htm
6. http://www.countrylovers.co.uk/places/thedales.htm
7. Tourist leaflet ‘Dent Village Heritage Centre’.
8. Tourist leaflet ‘Discover Dentdale’.
9. Information displayed in Dent Heritage Centre.