Twentieth Century In 1905 Station Mills was bought by Peter Green & Co. Part of the mill building was to be used for the production of cotton textiles. After 1910 a substantial part of the building, known as Station Works, housed the pioneering dynamo and electric motor factory of Horace Green & Co. After the First World War Horace Green's factory was considerably extended. By then the Aireside Mill was occupied by the worsted spinning business of Thomas Stell & Co. In the early 20th century Cononley was a self-sufficient community. It was well served with churches and chapels: a Wesleyan Methodist chapel (built 1808), St. John's Anglican church (built 1864), Mount Zion Methodist chapel (built 1869) and a Baptist Church (built 1877). Each was a centre of social life and many children attended their Sunday schools. A new County Primary School replaced the Anglican Church's 'National School' in 1910. There were more than ten shops including the Cononley Co-operative Society and a post office. The village had had four inns but two of these were closed in 1907. The Village Institute opened in 1909, partly to provide a non-denominational but, more especially, alcohol free place for people to use their leisure time productively. The village and its people in the early 20th century were recorded in a perceptive memoir by Catherine Moscrop, a village girl who would go on to attend Leeds University and become a missionary. The search for a satisfactory site for village playing fields lasted 40 years, probably because land owners hoped to sell their land for housing or industry, but Cononley Playing Field was eventually opened in 1937. Housing development in the first half of the 20th century was very limited due, in part, to the lack of further economic growth. A public housing development at Crag View commenced in 1925, using locally quarried stone. The notable public housing project after the Second World War was the estate at Meadow Croft. An emphasis on industry should not detract from the continued importance of farming in Cononley during this period. However, the number of people engaged in work on the land steadily declined. The number of farms reduced from 47 in 1840, to 31 in 1953, and finally to only six in 1996. The second half of the 20th century also saw the end of Cononley as a major manufacturing centre: Peter Green & Co. closed