Robin Longbottom on the stories behind landmark towers and pinnacles in the Aire Valley

IN the mid 1960s – as the Keighley bus from Skipton made its way down the Aire Valley – a couple sitting at the front of the top deck were overheard discussing the towers and pinnacles above Cononley, Farnhill, Sutton and Steeton.

As each came into view – five in all, including the more distant Cowling Pinnacle – they speculated that they may have been lookouts for Scottish raiders, Napoleonic signal towers or Second World War observation posts.

However, none of them have anything to do with defence, or invasion.

The tower on top of the hill known as the Gib at Cononley is an industrial chimney. It was built in the 1830s to disperse the noxious fumes and gases emitted from a lead smelting mill in Nethergill, the clough that runs west out of the village. Lead ore was brought down from the mine on the Gib and processed at the smelt house from which the fumes travelled up the hill along a covered flue before being finally dispersed into the atmosphere. Today the chimney survives as a monument to a now forgotten industry.

The pinnacle above Farnhill and the towers above Sutton and Steeton were all built in 1887, the year of the jubilee marking the 50th year since Queen Victoria ascended to the throne.

The monument at Farnhill was built by volunteers and replaced an earlier cairn. It is a circular structure with a domed top, rendered with mortar, lime washed and surmounted with a large cross. The cross is decorated with roses, thistles and shamrock to represent England, Scotland and Ireland. A large bonfire was lit at the side of it on June 21, 1887, to celebrate the jubilee. The villagers of Kildwick and Farnhill have continued to maintain the structure since it was built.

Sutton Pinnacle, known as Lund’s Tower, was also built in 1887 to commemorate the jubilee. Jonas Bradley – the Stanbury schoolmaster, naturalist and antiquarian – recalled in 1934 that the builders were his brother, William Bradley, of Higher Buckstone Farm, Sutton, and Edward Smith, a stonemason living at Fairplace Farm, Cowling. The pinnacle can be ascended by a spiral staircase of about 40 steps to a castellated viewing platform and was built at the request of James Lund of Malsis Hall, Sutton.

The grandest of all the local jubilee towers is the one at the top of Steeton Brow. It was built by Henry Isaac Butterfield of Cliffe Castle, Keighley, on land he had inherited from his late sister. It has commanding views up the Aire Valley and is a tower house. It stands 70 feet high and has four storeys and a viewing platform. The tower was sold by the Butterfield estate after the death of Sir Frederick Butterfield in 1943 and bought by an eccentric Austrian professor called Hans Beren. It has remained a private house since.

The present pinnacle above Cowling was built in 1900 by Messrs Gott and Riddiough, of Cowling, in the form of an obelisk. It replaced an earlier structure that was said to have looked like a factory chimney. By the 1890s it had been struck by lightning several times, dislodging stones at the top. The original reason for its construction has been the subject of much conjecture. However, a report in the Craven Herald in 1876 states that it was built at the request of the late Mrs Wainman of Carr Head about 60 or 70 years ago. In April, 1830, her son Richard Bradley Wainman wrote to Robert Townley Parker, who owned the land, and in the letter merely referred to it as an ‘object’ to be viewed from the house. The pinnacle appears to have been no more than a folly, perhaps to satisfy the whim of a grieving wife after the death of her husband, William Wainman, in 1818.