Walshaw Drake became part of the Bulmer & Lumb Group in the mid to late 1950’s when the owner, Lloyd Walshaw was nearing retirement and sold out to company that had previously been a customer. Bulmer & Lumb later became part of the Allied Textile Company and most of the group business was transferred to the Bulmer & Lumb site at Buttershaw, Bradford. This signalled the death knell for the Rosemary Works and they were subsequently demolished after just over seventy years of use. The demolition was captured in the below photographs donated by Geoff English and houses were built on the site in 1997. Thus ended almost two hundred years of textile manufacturing on the site of the former Rosemary Park, Rastrick, a name that is almost lost in the mists of time.

At the bottom of Rosemary Lane, the road name changes to Brook Grain Hill. This ancient name comes from grein, an old Norse word meaning a junction or a place where two watercourses meet. There are two streams that meet near here, the first being the one we have just mentioned that helped to power the original water mill whilst a second stream rises from the ground in the fields at Moor Hey between Pinfold Lane and Ainley Top. This stream filled the dam at John Smith’s Mill near to the Sun Inn and then travelled under Badger Hill cricket field where it then filled the dam at Spout Mills. It continued its journey on the land between Tofts Grove and Crowtrees Lane, filling a third mill dam at Crowtrees Mill before going back underground beneath The Orchards, Castlefields Drive and Thornhill Road, where it joins the other stream near Brook Grain Hill. The two streams then flow under Bramston Street recreation ground to Bridge End where they empty into the Calder behind the railway arches at Rastrick bridge.