James Sidebottom was born into humble stock around 1805 in Manchester. He was an example of the Victorian self made man. His first job was as an errand boy in the Kershaw Leese and Callender warehouse at India Mills on Heaton Lane in Heaton Norris.
He was a hard worker and worked long hours rapidly climbing up the corporate ladder, by his own admission his working day was from 6am until 8pm. His ambition coupled with his autodidacticism gave him the skills to become an office clerk then a sales representative and he rose to become the best cotton buyer at the Manchester Exchange. On 21 December 1842, on the retirement of Nathaniel Barr (the father of James Roby Barr – see below), he entered into the partnership of Leese, Kershaw and Sidebottom and in 1852 they were able to commission new premises on Portland Street in Manchester.
At the same time, in keeping with his status he moved into Mersey Bank after Sir Ralph Pendlebury with his wife Mary Ann. She may have been one of James Kershaw’s sisters¹, however sources are confused on this, and her name may have been Slater or Bennett, alternatively she may have been widowed.
James Kershaw (1796-1864) was certainly a good business partner and contact. A Saddleworth man and being the principal in the cotton firm, he became Mayor of Manchester in 1842, and was sat as the liberal MP for Stockport between 1847 and 1864. He died in the Manor House, Streatham, Surrey and is buried at West Norwood Cemetery in Lambeth, in a tomb designed by Alfred Waterhouse.
After James Kershaw’s death James Sidebottom was seriously considered as his replacement at Westminster. However, this did not come to pass.
James Sidebottam was an enthusiastic Congregationalist, and close friends with the Watts family in Heaton Mersey, he opened many such churches across the country, including on 28 October 1869, laying the foundation stone for St Peter’s Hill Congregational Church in Grantham, where later a young Margaret Roberts was to worshop, before she married Denis Thatcher. He was so prolific at laying such stones that he kept an unrivalled collection of presentation trowels on display in his house which he enjoyed showing to visitors.
By 1861 he was firmly established at Mersey Bank along with his wife and children and he lived there until his death on 17 November 1873, he was buried at Harpurhey Cemetery in Manchester. He left £12,000 in his will (£1.4m in 2020).
James and Mary Ann had seven children, the eldest, Mary Ann Sidebottom (1832-1878) married John Job Howell, a Liverpool cotton broker, and they lived on Lance Lane in Wavertree.
James Sidebottom Jr (1840 -c 1870) married Samuel Watts’ daughter Elizabeth (1836-1873) and he ran Spring Bank Mill in Stockport. Elizabeth and James lived at Southcliffe in Reddish , Stockport (which is now the home of Reddish Vale Golf Club). They had two children, Eliza Watts Sidebottom and James Alfred Watts Sidebottom. Of this family, all but Eliza Watts Sidebottom were dead by 1873. Eliza Watts Sidebottom lived to a ripe old age, dying on 12 November 1955 at Oakleigh in Burnage. Because of her family connections she became something of an authority on the history of Burnage and delivered lectures on the subject.
Southcliffe, Reddish
Miss Eliza Watts Sidebottom and her relative and companion Miss Jane Watts
Their third child, William Roby Sidebottom (1842-1908) married Jane Buckley, another Saddleworth girl, and the daughter of John Smith Buckley of West Bank, and he was clearly named for William Roby Barr, of Heaton Lodge. William was also a cotton spinner and they lived on Wilmslow Park in Cheshire.
George Isaac Sidebottom was born in 1844 and further cemented the ties with the Buckley family by marrying Eliza Ann Buckley (1840-1915). He continued in the family firm of Kershaw Leese and Company, they initially went to live at 67 Albert Road in Meols, but in the mid 1880s his mental health appears to have declined and he is found on the 1891 census at Bilton Garth in Knaresborough under the care of a doctor, and in 1901 at the Retreat in York, which specialised in the treatment of mental health patients. He died there in 1912.
Bilton Hall
The Retreat
In 1920 the case of Sidebottom V Kershaw Leese and Co was heard. Obstensibly this was to remove the threat of competition from GI Sidebottom & Co which had broken ties to it in 1900 but still held a minority shareholding interest. The case is an important precedent that a company may change its articles of association in order to defend itself against competition, but given the health of George, I wonder if there were more to it.
Elizabeth died in 1915 at the Willows, Poulton Le Fylde, she left £6,955, three years after George’s death an inheritance of £16,347 had been severely depleted.
Robert Sidebottom, born 1847 appears to have died around 1878 and Alfred Sidebottom only lived between 1850 and 1862.
Henry Sidebottom (1851-1932) was the only family member to have a long and healthy life. He apprenticed with his father and in 1876 married Fanny Elizabeth Booth (1853-1943) the daughter of a Rochdale cotton spinner. The couple moved to Davenport and then Syddal Park in Bramhall, Stockport. He initially enjoyed the fruits of his father’s labour and in 1881 was describing himself as retired, he was still indolent in 1911 and living on his own means in Southport.
However, by 1911, he appears to have taken up the reins again, after the death and incapacity of his brothers he is described as the chairman of a cotton spinning company. Both Henry and Fanny died at Sherwood, Sydall Park, in Bramhall.
You would think with Pendlebury Hall standing proud on Lancashire Hill, that Sir Ralph would be widely documented, and that Pendelbury Hall on Lancashire Hill is a fitting monument to his legacy as a Victorian Philanthropist.
The story is not quite like that. Ralph Pendelbury was born on 14 February 1790 in Bolton Le Moors, Lancashire to Thomas Pendlebury (1757-1840) and Ann Lord (died 1801), he was the second son, but the first to survive, his brother Gerrard having died aged six months in December 1788.
Thomas, his father was a bleacher who moved to Heaton Mersey around 1800 to work as manager of the Heaton Mersey Bleachworks for Robert Parker. The young Ralph was nearly killed at the same works, he was arguing with a friend about the number of wheels on one of the works machines, and resolved to count them whilst in motion, his clothes were caught in the machinery and he was so severely injured and he narrowly avoided his shoulder being amputated.
At 15 years old he was apprenticed to a hand loom weaver in Bolton where he stayed a few years without making any mark on the business, after which he moved to Mr Jones’ warehouse at Acres Field where he learned the cotton trade. Thomas meanwhile had transferred to Peter Marsland’s (of Woodbank Hall) bleachworks in Stockport, and Ralph joined him there.
Ralph was now starting to rise in his profession and became partner in a threadmakers, and in January 1818 married Susan Wynne¹ of Stafford, whose father owned a shoe factory. Ralph and Susan set up a shoe shop for the sale of Stafford boots on Meal House Brow in Stockport, but sadly in 1825 she died in childbirth, along with their infant.
Ralph transferred the business of the shop to one of his wife’s relatives, whence it traded for the next half century.
Meanwhile in 1824 Ralph had entered a partnership with James Wilkinson as a cotton spinner at Palmer Mill in Portwood, Stockport, this was extremely lucrative for both parties, and they amicably dissolved their partnership in 1833, Ralph continuing his business at Wharf Street Mill in Heaton Norris (at the terminus of the Stockport Canal), and building Kingston Mill on Chestergate in Stockport.
Kingston Mill, Chestergate
The following year he married Ellen Brownhill (nee Stringer) who was the widow of Henry Brownhill, a corn merchant on the market place. Ellen and Henry had at least two children, one of whom Ann Ellen Brownhill married John Eskirgge, the brother of Thomas, and brother in law of William Roby Barr.
In 1838 Ralph became mayor of Stockport, and was living with Ellen on Dillow Grove in Heaton Norris. By this time he was a man of means, because he could afford to lend the council £6,000 (2020 £670,000) so they could purchase land to establish the new Gas works. He also advanced Lancashire Council £25,000 (£3m in 2020) in 1848 at 5% in order that they could build a lunatic asylum.
His tenure as mayor coincided with the height of Chartist riots and for his role in quelling them he was knighted on July 1st 1840.
In 1844 after John Hall’s death Ralph and Ellen were residing at Mersey Bank and they lived there for most of the rest of their lives.
Ellen died on March 20 1858, and Ralph moved then to Hope Bank in Heaton Norris, the Manchester Courier of 2 November 1861 reported that he had been confined to his bed and he died on 9 November at Hope Bank.
Sir Ralph Pendlebury had no immediate issue, both his marriages had failed to produce living heirs, therefore in his will he made small legacies to surviving relations and left the balance of his fortune – £100,000 (£12m in 2020) for the support of a charitable institution, but I am prevented by a legal difficulty from doing so.
As he may have suspected, his troubles started here. Sir Ralph’s reputation can not have been good, the Liverpool Mail reported on 22 February 1862:
The late Sir Ralph Pendlebury…(who) rather resembled old Ralph Nickleby, and had the character in life of being a hardflated money grubbing mean stingy old bachelor….. reversed the natural order of things and left by will only one third , or some £50,000 to his next of kin ….. and he ostensibly left all the rest, about £100,000 to nine public spirited or philanthropic gentlemen².. we believe the next of kin will contest it to the uttermost, and thus the £100,000 instead of even tardily going to any Charitable or Benevolent Institution , bids fair…. to be long squandered amongst lawyers.
Not content with one battering, they followed this report up on the 1st March with
…what a satire on human inconsitency that the parsimonious ex cobbler and thrifty millocrat, the late Sir Ralph Pendlebury, of Stockport, who, we are reliably informed would almost as soon as parted with his heart’s blood as with a ten pound note for any charitable purpose whilst living, should have bequeathed really for some so called charity £100,000, of which at one fell swoop a round ten thousand pounds must go for the Ten Percent Legacy Duty, whilst most of the remaining ninety thousand may go in endless Chancery litigation!
The newspaper was not off the mark and the lawsuits contesting the will continued for twenty years. In 1873 the courts awarded a further £28,000 to the next of kin, but now the problem was that in order to avoid the will falling foul of mortmain, Sir Ralph had given verbal instructions to each of the worthies of how he wanted the legacy to be distributed, and unsurprisingly they could not agree on our thrifty millocrat’s instructions. They therefore had to spend a further £11,000 in seeking advice from the Court of Chancery on how to proceed.
It was not until 1880 agreement was reached and a competition to design an orphanage on Lancashire Hill was announced in which JW Beaumont, of Manchester was the winning architect. The building cost was estimated at £6,000 and the building was to comprise a hall to accommodate about 400 people, day rooms for the children, apartments for the master and matrons. It was to be built in Tudor style with deep red bricks and an 80 foot tower over the main entrance giving (on a clear day) capitalviews over the surrounding neighbourhood.
Pendlebury Hall
By the time of its opening, the cost of build had almost doubled to £10,000, and a footnote in the Manchester Courier of 17 April 1882 states, after a long and detailed description of the fine and expensive architecture, The orphanage provides accommodation for only a few resident children…...
The hall was opened officially by Lord Vernon on 20 April 1882, and this was celebrated with a sumptuous banquet attended by Lord Vernon, the Governors, Frederick Pennington and Charles Henry Hopwood, MPs for Stockport, town councillors and the local gentry.
Whilst the charity did manage to pay out bequests to orphans (nearly 1500 orphans received a total of £18,000 in the first 8 years of its existence) there remains confusion and mystery what happened to the original legacy. The Stockport Express reported that the £76,641 6s 2d balance after the cost of building has never seen the light of day. It is doubtful whether an orphan has ever slept under its roof.
In the first world war it served as a military hospital, becoming Stockport Junior Technical School in the 1950s, becoming part of youth services for Stockport council in the 1970s and since has become a care home for the elderly.
The author (centre) attending a lecture on map reading inside Pendlebury Hall, 1975.
The charity suffered further misfortunes in 2010 when the Manchester Evening News reported that a rogue accountant had embezzled £180,000 from it. It continues today, but in a much reduced state.
They are even trying to change the name, however, I do not see that succeeding, Pendlebury Hall is too strong a landmark for Stockport to allow that, and Hilltop Hall, I ask you…
Sir Ralph’s legacy has been sadly misused by generations of his successors. Remember that next time you pass the Grade II listed building on Lancashire Hill.
¹ Susan’s nephew, William Palmer Wynne (1861-1950) went on to become Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the University of Sheffield and was a pioneer in the study of napthalene. His goal was separating sulphonic acid isomers. This would lead to the determination of the orientation of napthalene derivatives. With hindsight, this is actually a form of determination of aromaticity and the activation and de-activation of rings. Someone will tell me what that means.
² Our nine public spirited gentlemen were:
James Kershaw Esq (MP for Stockport 1847-1864 and the father in law and business partner of our next Mersey Bank resident, James Sidebottom) William Rayner Esq JP MD (Surgeon and Mayor of Stockport 1883-1884) John Stock Esq William Williamson Esq (Councillor 1843-1877, Mayor of Stockport) Sir Thomas Bazeley Bart, MP (MP for Manchester, Cotton Manufacturer, recipient of the Legion D’Honneur) Ernest Reuss Esq (Merchant and Trustee of the Manchester Deaf and Dumb Institute) Edward Carrington Howard Esq ( Cotton Merchant, and inhabitant of Brinnington Hall) Edward Walmsley Esq JP (Mayor of Stockport and Chairman of the River Committee for the Manchester Ship Canal) Christopher Travis Esq JP (Councillor, Trustee of Stockport Grammar School)
Moving from Parr’s House we wander back up the hill to what was quite a posh cluster of houses. Let’s have a look at the 1848 tithe map of Heaton Mersey.
Mersey Bank 1848
Mersey Bank House can be seen off Didsbury Road next to West Bank and Heaton Lodge, and thanks to the rather unfortunate quick deaths of the first two inhabitants we have an early description of the building and a date of build – 1840.
The house was offered for auction at the Clarence Inn in Rusholme (our next inhabitants the Halls had roots there). The Clarence has followed the fate of many pubs and Little Chefs and now serves curries but it was an Inn into the last century. Here’s a postcard from 1905:
The Clarence, Rusholme 1905
In the Manchester Courier of 11 April 1843, Mersey Bank is described as a mansion with pleasure grounds, lying 5 miles from Manchester (I suspect the auctioneers were being a little liberal with the definition of Manchester centre) and 1½ miles from Stockport centre and Heaton Norris¹ station – which had trains departing every hour.
On the ground floor there was an entrance hall with a stone starircase and dome light dining room, a drawing room, breakfast room and study, as well as kitchens and a butler’s pantry. The principal kitchen was 19 feet square (that does seem a little cramped at 1.76m² ) We will return to the kitchen next time and find out some of the dishes that were cooked there. From the kitchen there was a back staircase for servants’ access.
Upstairs there were five bedrooms, three of which had attached dressing rooms, the two largest bedrooms each a comfortable 23 feet by 18 feet (38m²). The house was well equipped as there was not only a store room and water closet but also a bath with hot and cold running water, quite well provided for 1840.
There were also cellars and wash houses but also a large conservatory heated by hot water, this was truly cutting edge as this technology had only begun in the 1830s, and radiators did not reach mass market (that is a comfortably off mass market) until Franz San Galli invented his radiator in St Petersburg around 1855. The heating was probably fired by a wood or coal boiler, although the Stockport Gas works was around the Heaton Norris gasworks on Heaton Lane was not yet operational.
Outside there was a coach house, with stabling for five horses, and the gardens were southern facing, with good soil, choice fruit trees and the house itself was situated in one of the most salubrious neighbourhoods in Manchester with views over the Mersey and Alderley Edge. The grounds covered 15,198 square yards (12700m² or 3.1 acres) and was surrounded by a ring fence, the whole property being offered freehold without chief rent.
Having seen a description of the house, let us meet the first inhabitants. George Bowring and his wife, Sarah Milnes. George was born on 22 November 1777 in Edensor, and baptised in the Parish Church there six days later.
The Bowrings were a Derbyshire family who can be traced back to the 1600s . In the 1700s they were living in Edensor (pr Ensor) near Chatsworth in Derbyshire. George was the son of William Bowring and Ann Marple. WIlliam and Anne had nine children and he was one of perhaps two children from the family who left the area. In 1810 we find him in Stockport where he married Sarah Milnes (1781-1849) and became an Innkeeper at the Robin Hood Tavern on Higher Hillgate. His brother, William (b 1775) , followed him to Stockport and in late 1813 William fell foul of John Lloyd, the Stockport Solicitor when he was heard to utter Damnation to the House of Brunswick and a speedy downfall to it whilst making a toast in a local public house.
Charles Prescott, the magistrate committed him to Chester Castle to stand trial, as his brother refused to bail him. The matter was reported by the snickety Mr Lloyd to the Home Office in a letter to the Home Office highlighting the seditious language. New Mills is obviously not one of Mr Lloyd’s chosen destinations.
I have the honor to transmit to you copies of Informations taken against a man of the name of .. Bowring some little time ago respecting some seditious Expressions uttered by him at a public house in this Town, and which, owing to the presence of military characters, it cou’d not and ought not to be overlooked. He was consequently taken up under a Warrant obtained from the revd. C. Prescot, our resident magistrate, who directed him to find Bail – and not being able to do so, he was committed to Chester Castle where he now remains; and, if you direct it, may be indicted at the next Assizes, or required by the may consent in court to enter into Recognizance for his future good behaviour, but certainly some notice must be taken and the reasons I have stated. I was aware it wou’d be required of me to state further circumstances for you to form your Judgement upon, and I have therefore made such enquiries, as struck me to be necessary. Bowring followed the Trade of a master Butcher in a small way, at a populous village in Derbyshire called New Mills 8 miles from this Town — a place notorious for profligacy of manners and formerly for disaffection to the Government. (but which latter I shod hope cannot generally now prevail even there.)—I have been informed he has been in the habit of drinking the Toast charged agt him altho’ he has been cautioned & warned of the impropriety & the consequences—It seems he had hitherto been encouraged by the impunity—He has a Brother, keeping a public house here who refused to bail him He (the Prisr) is not a very drunken man—but was somewhat in liquor at the time he uttered the words—however he was at that time cautioned by those present that anticipated the words of the intended Toast to be seditious; and upon the whole I have found that he is an object for chastisement — and shod the great Government Law Officers not recommend the prosecution at the public expence I will take some steps to keep him under alarm, till with a view to his being placed under a Recognizance at least. I have the honor²
Apart from this setback George appears to have done well from his trade as a landlord and in 1841 he is to be found retired, living at the newly built Mersey Bank House, on Independent means. Sarah died on 16 November 1849, and in 1851 George was living on Chestergate. He died on 2 January 1858 and was buried at St Peter, along with Sarah and their children.
The Bowring family tomb at St Peter, Stockport
His brother William possibly moved to Pendleton after this, although the details are hazy.
George and Sarah had four boys, William (1813-1839), Robert (1814-1815), John (1810-1816) and George (1818-1902).
William seemed destined for high things, obtaining an MA at Queen’s College, Oxford in 1831 then in 1835 he was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn. However he died in 1839 and is buried along with his parents.
George is the one who made his mark on history. He was born on 17 February 1818 in Stockport, and attended grammar school in Bradford. He studied medicine and became around 1842 the surgeon at the Salford and Pendleton Royal Hospital, followed by some time at King’s College Hospital in London. He moved back to Manchester where he was the Dispensary Surgeon at the Royal Infirmary in Piccadilly (MRI) , and around 1850 he is said to have been the first surgeon to adminster chloroform as an anaesthetic during an operation in the North West.
He lived first at 7 Clifford Street off Oxford Road in Manchester, and on 30 July 1864 he married Frances Walmsley (1836-1864) – the daughter of a Stockport Corn dealer, William Walmsley, at St Mary in Stockport and they moved to 324 Oxford Road where they spent the next years. During this time he became an FCRS, and consulting surgeon to the MRI.
George Bowring MCRS FCRS LSA 1818-1902
In 1871 he visited his roots in Edensor and took Frances to stay at the Peacock Hotel, Baslow along with Frances’ sister, Emma Walmsley. The hotel still stands and even in those days it was a prestigious place to stay. Their five children remained at the family house on 324 Oxford Street looked after by the family nanny.
George also served as a churchwarden for Manchester Cathedral, and in 1870 in recognisance of his service his head was carved at the base of one of the arches of the east nave.
George Bowring Manchester Cathedral
By his death he was the medical officer to the Workhouse, and also the Surgeon to the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. He passed away in Manchester on 3 March 1902 and was buried at St Peter in Stockport with his wife in the family tomb.
Next time we shall meet another family of Iron merchants, the Halls, who have connections with other local Wesleyan families we have met on our travels.
¹ Newly renamed from Stockport Station, on account of Stockport New Station on the other side of the viaduct, and starting its long decline as express through trains were no longer to stop there. It became a suburban stop served only by a Manchester service. The fare at the time to Manchester was 1s 3d first class, 1s second class, and 8d third. (approx 6p,5p and 4p) – Manchester Courier, 8 April 1843. The Manchester Times reported on 27 May that year that the turntable at Heaton Norris was being removed (being redundant as it was no longer a terminus) , and first class carriages would no longer serve the station.
I did know that there was a Victorian watercolour of Heaton Lodge, drawn by William Alexander Ansted, I even put a track on it at auction houses, so I could at least see it before it flew to a high bidder. I did not expect to see the painting pop up on Ebay whilst I was idly perusing it in February. It did though, and on a reasonably priced Buy It Now auction.
Well what could I do?
Heaton Lodge William Alexander Ansted
There’s not a lot about Ansted to be found. He was born in Guernsey on 1 March 1859, he trained as a draughtsman for an engineering company, and in 1882 exhibited two paintings at the Ipswich Fine Art Club, moving to St John’s Wood¹ London the following year when he exhibited five oils at the same club.
In 1887 he married Constance Greville Walsh (1856-1937) with whom he had two children (Constance 1888-1971) and David Alexander (1890-1945).
He exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1888 and 1893 moving to Dover by 1911, where he worked as an artist, instructor and poster writer. He died at 291 Folkestone Road in Dover on 26 April 1948 at the age of 88.
Durham Cathedral, The Dart Near Buckfastleigh and Dartmouth all by William Alexander Ansted
However, what about the provenance of the painting?
Firstly on the back it confirms it is a painting of Heaton Lodge in Heaton Norris, the home of Roger Rowson Lingard in the 18th and 19th centuries, the note goes on to say that the picture depicts the house in which my grandfather lived.
Who that was will remain a mystery for now, Ansted also published series of ecclesiastical engravings, so he may have been commissioned by the Reverend Roger Rowson Lingard (1825-1908) Roger’s son, who was chaplain to the Bishop of Brechin, alternatively it may have been his son Randle Lingard (1827-1904) who became an accountant in Liverpool, but returned to Heaton Norris to die, or possible Richard Boughey Monk Lingard (1824-1907), who is mentioned in Debrett’s, became a Solicitor, and took on the arms of Monk-Lingard. He may have wished to create a backstory about his past.
It is all conjecture. Whilst Ansted may have seen the house, and sketched it in the late 19th / early 20th century, he has depicted it in Regency times (incorrectly as the house was at best late Regency built around 1830.) Roger Rowson Lingard only lived there 14 years, first being seen in the house in 1831 and dying in 1844, his widow Mary moved out soon after his death, surviving until 1875.
I was doubtful at first about the pond, but reflecting on the two pictures side by side the watercolour is drawn from the West Bank side, whilst in the photograph we are looking at the house from the Highfield side, and there was a pond at that side (which survived until the mid 1970s). Albeit drained, and a mudpool. We called it the swamp, and regularly sunk in 6 inches of mud, sometimes luckily avoiding sharp objects at the bottom.
Whatever the history, it is a nice touch that Roger was remembered enough at the beginning of the 20th century for an ancestral home story to be created. I did try and contact Kevin Rowson Lingard, an ex senator in Australia who I believe is a living descendant, but as is so often the case, I received no reply.
For the next piece I have Tony Marsh of Stockport Heritage to thank. He wrote a piece about Juan Illingworth in Stockport Heritage Magazine in the early noughties.
I learned some new facts about the family, his brother Abraham Roger Illingworth (1785-1868) was a Ship’s Surgeon and Medical who followed Juan to Ecuador, and settled in Guayquil.
His descendants have made a pilgrimage in recent times to Stockport to visit his birth town, now that we have identified his birthplace as Parr’s House, it would be nice if they had known that, and the visits have been reciprocated, in 1989 Princess Anne, the Princess Royal toured South America to pay homage to Admiral Illingworth and other mercenaries from England who fought in the battle for independence. Tony says Juan Illingworth is as famous in South America as Admiral Lord Nelson is in England.
In 1986, Ecuador celebrated the bicentenary of his birth by striking some commemorative medals, which I saw at the Heritage Centre. Tony was kind enough to give me one of the medals from his collection, and I thank him for his kind gesture.
The coins read, Admiral Juan Illingworth, Hero of Ecuadorian Independence, on the Bicentenary of his birth, born in Stockport in the county of Chester England on 10 March 1785.
I really do think we need a blue plaque to Mr Illingworth.
¹ Random fact about St John’s Wood, it is the only station on the London Underground that does not contain one of the letters in the word mackerel.
Parr’s House is shrouded in mystery, few photographs exist, and those that do, do not show the whole house. We have a glimpse of it taken at the Mafeking celebrations around 1900. I took the washing down for you to afford a better view.
We also have one taken just before demolition, looking from the terrace towards the Crown Inn.
And that’s it, just a few glimpses of a house that had so many influential people pass through its doors.
After Henry Pearson’s death, the house was put up for sale for one more time, and our next resident was Robert Matthews.
Robert was born on 23 December 1854 in Wigton, Cumberland to Humphrey Matthews and Ann Grey. Humphrey was was an engineer who built agricultural implements. Robert followed in his footsteps and in the 1870s he moved to work R&W Hawthorne in Newcastle Upon Tyne and then worked at J Wigham Richardson and Company in the same city. By 1878 he was chief draughtsman at Bell, Lightfoot & Company.
The Engineer February 1876 Hull Waterworks Pumping Engine.
Around this time Bell Lightfoot & Co built a large beam pumping engine for the Hull Waterworks, the engine was in operation between 1876 and 1952 and is preserved at the site. On the dissolution of the Bell’s partnership (administered by William Barclay Peat ¹) Robert went to Dartford as managing draughtsman in J & E Hall whose chief product was refrigeration machinery for shipping meat from Australia.
In 1880 Robert moved to Manchester where he joined Goodfellow’s of Hyde, eventually becoming a partner, the firm working under the style of Goodfellow & Matthews, who manufactured rope gearing and refrigeration machinery
Finally in 1891 he became a director of Sir Joseph Whitworth & Company and remained in that position until the company amalgamated with Messrs Armstrong Mitchell and Company into Armstrong Whitworth, at which point he was appointed head of the engineering branch in Manchester.
We have briefly met Sir Joseph before, as he married Mary Orrell.
During his time at Armstrong Whitworth, Robert was President of the Engineering Employers federation, and a Council member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers for ten years, as well as being a member of the Institution of Civil and Electrical Engineers, and of the Naval Architects.
In September 1877 he married Jane Corbett in Newcastle, and on moving to Manchester they lived at Parr’s House until his death on 13 June 1923. Jane’s father and mother Thomas Corbett and Ann Taylor came to live with them at Parr’s House in the 1890s. Thomas was also an Engineer from Newcastle and the relationship presumably derived from his time there.
Robert and Jane had five children, Thomas (1879-1880) , Robert (b 1884), Arthur (b 1886) Lillie (b 1890) and Jennie (b 1895)
After Robert’s death Parr’s House had no further inhabitants, and it was demolished for housing, leaving no evidence of the grand house that once stood there. Parr’s House has disappeared from history. We do not have any pictures showing it clearly, nor do we have pictures of any of its inhabitants since John Illingworth, whose fame still resonates in Central America.
Houses where Parr’s House stood on Didsbury Road
Except, perhaps… does this gatepost in the Crown Inn Beer Garden originate in Parr’s?
¹ In our continuing spotlight on famous accountants, William Peat, is the “P” in KPMG
After Henry Kirk’s death both Parr’s House and Parr’s Mount were put up for sale.
Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 5 August 1843
The house was certainly big, with six bedrooms, and considered convenient for Heaton Norris station – with the viaduct newly built journeys to Birmingham and beyond were now viable, and as we learnt last time, Henry Kirk’s ex coachman had set up a carriage service from the station. We can also see that Heaton Mersey was becoming a desirable place to live, and the seller had no compunction in selling the land for housebuilding.
The 1854 electoral register shows Henry Pearson living in Heaton Mersey and in his obituary in 1887 the Manchester Evening News says he lived for there 40 years, in 1865 another auction notice posted by John Thorniley has Parr’s House once more up for sale, this time mentioning it is in the occupancy of Henry Pearson. Henry probably lived there from the late 1840s until his death in 1887. He most likely bought the property in 1865 as he is the owner at his death.
Henry Pearson was born in January 1817 in Stockport to John Pearson and Sarah. By 1838 he was working in partnership with his brother James and Thomas Rhodes running a cotton mill, the brothers continued on their own account from 1838, and in 1840 they are in charge of the Heaton Mersey Cotton works. This went bankrupt in 1840, paying a dividend of 8s (40p) in the pound to creditors. Henry was however an honourable man. In 1852, he summoned all the original creditors to his offices at 45 Brown Street in Manchester and voluntarily paid out the remaining debt, making a full dividend of 20s in the pound. His creditors were so pleased with him that the presented him with a silver tea service, worth £80 (£11,000 in 2020).
Around the mid 1830s he married Elizabeth Winterbottom the daughter of , John Winterbottom a cotton spinner from Hayfield in Derbyshire. The couple lived on Brinksway and had three children. Sarah Elizabeth married Frederick Simpson, the son of John Atkinson Simpson, a Manchester cotton merchant and the couple lived at Avenham Tower in Preston. (which subsequently became the residence of Edwin Booth of Booth’s Grocers).
Avenham Tower, Preston
George Edward Pearson (b 1839) married Sarah Jane Bennett and was a cotton spinner as his father. They lived at the Manor House on Torkington Road in Stockport and finally James Marriott Pearson (b 1842) appears to have died in infancy.
In 1843 Henry bought the old Stockport Grammar premises on Adlington Square in Stockport and built Square Mills in its place. Some would say the demise of the centre of Stockport dates from this, as a leafy pleasant Georgian square was transformed an industrial landscape which was run down by the mid 20th century.
The mill was a medium sized mill for Stockport, and had 21,000 spindles. Henry had his warehouse on Portland Street in Manchester, by 1871 he was employing 400 people.
At the same time Henry busied himself in the Heaton Mersey community. In 1857 he headed the project to build the Day and Sunday school at St John’s church there.
Elizabeth Pearson passed away some time around then, and in 1867 Henry married Mary Ellen Duckett, the daughter of Richard Duckett a partner in Duckett and Stead, Railway Contractors, who had made his fortune building the Great India Peninsular Railway.
Henry kept involved in local life, being elected as councillor for Middle Ward in Stockport in 1868, and becoming a patron of St John’s school in 1869 and a JP for Lancashire in 1869. He also owned a not insubstantial property in Didsbury, the Limes which he sold in 1885. Subsequent residents in The Limes include Rik Mayall and Ade Edmundson as students inspiring The Young Ones, fittingly I’m told it’s now an anarchist squat.
At around 9 o’clock on Friday 21 July 1887, Henry went to take a bath, after which he had an attack of paralysis after which he sadly died at the age of 71. The house and contents were sold after his death, and he left a fortune of £18,276 9s, approximately £2.1m in 2020. Mary had died the previous August, and was buried in Heaton Mersey.
Henry and Mary had three children between them. Ellen Duckett Pearson (born 1869) moved to live with her half sister, Sarah in Bispham after her parent’s death. Henry Duckett Pearson (b 1870) went to live with George at the Manor House on Torkington Road, as did Sarah Simpson after her husband Frederic died in 1878. Finally, Ethel Mary Pearson (born 1873) married Cyril Rayner Luzmore of Hayfield.
The Reddish family hailed from Mottram In Longendale. Edward Reddish, the father was a corn dealer¹.
Mottram 1795, James Aiken, Thirty Miles Around Manchester
Edward was born in 1755 in Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire, and by 1782 he had moved to Mottram where he took up as a baker. That year he married Esther Chadwick, a Mottram girl. He was successful in his trade and moved to Stockport to become a corn dealer at number 40, The Market Place. He died on 3 December 1823, at his home there, and was buried 3 days later at St Mary, Stockport. Esther moved to Heaton Norris where she died on 15 August 1828.
Edward and Esther’s first four children only survived until the age of 2 years. Joseph Reddish (1793-1835) took over his father’s business on the Market Place. He had a child, Elizabeth Davies, to whom he left all his possessions (£1500 in 1835 – a substantial amount – over £190,000 in 2020), as his natural daughter, which suggests she was born out of wedlock, or via a clandestine relationship.
There was an Frances (Fanny) Hargreaves who married Linch Davies, a millwright in 1824. They subsequently moved to Newbridge Lane in Stockport, and baptised a daughter, Elizabeth in 1826. Whether these are the same people is lost in history, but the closeness of the professions may be an indicator.
Initially Linch and Frances stayed in Stockport, living on Reddish Lane in 1841, with Elizabeth, but then after a spell as millwright and iron founder in Heaton Norris moved to Liverpool around 1844, and in 1851 he was a millwright manager, having fathered at least eleven other children, which appear to be his. Elizabeth is nowhere to be seen. He moved back to Stockport, living in Coronation Street, Reddish, where he died on 24 August 1874 at the age of 85, and was buried at Tiviot Dale Methodist Church.
During the mill strikes of 1829 Joseph Reddish signed a public declaration to support the striking workers, asking the shopkeepers of Liverpool to help fund them in their time of need, a wise move, as those same shopkeepers’ income was under threat if nobody could afford to buy their wares. Joseph moved to Sale Moor where he died in 1835.
James Reddish was born on 17 December 1796 and also took up his father’s trade in the Marketplace. In April 1829 he married Jane Heaword at St Mary in Stockport. Jane’s father was a cotton manufacturer and this marriage raised his status, as by 1830 he is describing himself as a Gentleman, although still resident on the marketplace. In 1830 he became mayor of Stockport and a couple of years later he is living at Parr’s House, where he died on 25 October 1832.
James and Jane had one son, Edward, who was born on 10 April 1830. We shall meet Edward and Jane again in our next story, so leave them for now.
Edward and Esther’s last child was a daughter, Ann, born on 7 October 1799 on the marketplace. She married Thomas Cooper, a grocer, and they lived at Mile End Cottage near Mile End Hall in Bramhall, as it was then. She died in January 1879, at the advanced age of 79.
¹ Interestingly there is another family of Reddishes in Mottram at the same time, some in the corn trade. John Reddish married Arminal Middleton, and they were depicted in a stained glass window in St Michael & All Angels gifted by one of their sons, Joshua.
I can’t find a direct connection between the families, except for name, location and trade, and also a migration to Stockport. But I do like the story below, it is Heatons related, and it bears repeating.
A son of this other Reddish clan son, Edward (1784-1850) became a leading attorney at law, practising from chambers on Lower Hillgate and Little Underbank in Stockport. In 1844 he along with William Vaughan of Lingard and Vaughan defended John Kenyon Winterbottom a solicitor and town clerk who in 1839 cashed a fraudulent bill of exchange via John Stanway Jackson to the value of £5,000 and absconded, after which other “acts of plunder” were discovered. It transpires he had been using client monies to fund his failed investment schemes.
He was eventually found destitute in September 1844 in Liverpool and was transported to Tasmania via Millbank prison in Woolwich, where reasonably good behaviour obtained him a ticket to leave (he once got drunk and stole a hat, but only received a minor punishment).
Now a free man once more, he worked for the nascent Hobart town council and promptly defrauded them in 1867 by amongst other crimes, pocketing the proceeds of the sale of council debentures. Two years further imprisonment followed. Being released once more, he spent his last days a free man, dying in Hobart in 1872
And you don’t trust solicitors or council officials these days?
John Kenyon Winterbottom
This Edward Reddish ( c 1784 – 1850) lived on Heaton Lane. He trained in London, and in 1818 practised from Hare Court in Temple Bar. He married Elizabeth La Coste, the daughter of Thomas Barrett La Coste, a Banker living in Chertsey in 1824 before moving back up to Stockport and setting up his practice there. Elizabeth moved then to Birch House on Sandy Lane, before dying aged 50 in 1853.
If we don’t what caused the son of a metal merchant, Thomas Gore to move to Parr’s House in Heaton Norris, our next inhabitant, it must be said was the son of a metal merchant, and he moved to Heaton Norris to take up a totally different profession from his father.
In Henry Kirk’s case it is a little clearer, his second wife was born in Stockport, and he took up the trade of a Wine Merchant, wishing to live the life of a town gentleman, rather than solely reside at his Country Estate of Eaves in Chapel En Le Frith in the family business.
That said he did maintain his residence in Chapel, he just alternated between the two locations.
Henry Kirk of Parr’s House was born on 9 October 1797 to Mary Vernon and Captain Henry Kirk (of the North High Peak Corps of the Derbyshire Volunteers¹)
Captain Kirk was born circa 1752 in Derbyshire, and around 1770 he and his brother founded Henry and Thomas Kirk, Iron Founders, at Town End in Chapel En Le Frith.
The iron works were in a strategic place, being a coaching stop on the turnpike to London, and therefore an ideal place for the production of horseshoes. The Kirk family’s involvement in iron goes back as early as 1650, when Thomas Kirk is recorded as repairing the clapper to the bell on the parish church. With the advent of the railways the Kirks the horse trade declined, but was replaced by the far more lucrative trade in iron for the railways the other needs of the industrial revolution. Nasmyth’s first steam hammer was made at Town End around 1844.
Captain Henry married Edward Vernon’s daughter Mary, giving him an inheritance of more land. Henry and Mary lived at the Eaves near Chapel En Le Frith.
The 1898 Ordnance Survey Map showing the location of the Eaves, near Chapel En Le Frith, the family home of Henry Kirk
Henry and Mary had around six children, Maria, Sarah (1786-1844), Hannah (1791-1848), Henry, and Elizabeth both of whom we will meet later, and Ann (1816-1837)
Elizabeth Kirk was born in 1803 at the Eaves, and on 19 September 1838 she married Elkanah Armitage.
Higher and Lower Eaves, Chapel En Le Frith
Elkanah Armitage was born in 1794 in Failsworth, Lancashire, and at the age of eight joined George Nadin and Nephews, cotton spinners. Because of his diligence and intelligence he quickly rose through the ranks to manager.
In 1816 he married Mary Louisa Bowers , with whom he had eight children, then after her death he married Elizabeth in 1838, and they had one further child, Vernon. Elizabeth and he first lived at Gore Hill, then in 1853 they bought Hope Hall in Pendleton. He employed Sir Alfred Waterhouse to design an extension²
18th Century View of Hope Hall, British School
Elkanah and his first wife had set up a drapery business at 18 Chapel Street in Salford in the early 1810s and by 1829 he had 29 workers, eventually expanding to build a factory in Pendleton, Salford, employing 200, manufacturing sackcloth and ginghams. By 1848 he had over 600 workers and and in 1867 they took control of the Nassau Mills in Eccles.
Sir Elkanah Armitage
Politically, Elkanah was liberal, and in 1806 he petitioned for the abolition of the slave trade. He entered local politics and rose to become Mayor of Manchester between 1846-1848, and in 1849 was knighted by Queen Victoria for services during the chartist unrest of 1848.
Elizabeth died on 27 July 1868 at Hope Hall, and Sir Elkanah on 26 November 1876.
Captain Henry Kirk died on 18 February 1834, leaving his only son Henry to inherit the Eaves estate.
Henry Junior married first to Jane, and had at least three children, Jane, Ann and Henry, only one of whom, Jane (1832-1909) appears to have survived past adolescence.
After his first wife’s death Henry appears to have taken stock of his life. The 1829 Pigot’s guide shows him living with his first wife in Chapel, but in 1830 we can see he has taken up residence in Stockport as the Chester Chronicle announces he has been appointed a constable of Stockport. His first wife died soon after this and on 9 October 1833 he married Jane Reddish, nee Heaword (1809-1867), the widow of James Reddish, the previous occupant of Parr’s House and moved in with her.
Between 1834 and 1839 he operated alongside Charles Higginbotham as a Wine and Spirit Merchant on Lower Hillgate in Stockport, dissolving that partnership in 1839, but carrying on in his own account after that, as the 1841 places him at Parr’s House, still describing himself as a Wine Merchant.
However, he still maintained his links to Chapel, and around the same time is listed as an Iron Merchant in the town. He used both his houses as bases for his professional career.
He was a man to take an interest in current events, and in 1835 he subscribed to Braithwaites Supplement to Sir J Ross’ Narrative of a second voyage in the Victory. and was a shareholder in the Manchester and Liverpool Railway, as well as a director of the Bank Of Stockport, although given that John Stanway Jackson was in charge around that time, he may have thought twice about the appointment.
His attention to civic duty was not as diligent, in May 1837 the Manchester Courier reported that he was fined £5 (£560 in 2020) for non attendance for jury duty, however he did sit on a committee that same year to raise funds for St Thomas’ School in Stockport, and politically he was a supporter of Major Marsland.
Infact in 1841 Henry Kirk had everything going for him, a new young wife, several children by his new marriage, a successful business in Stockport, as well as in Chapel En Le Frith, two substantial houses between which he shared his time.
On 23 November 1841 he was at the Eaves, hunting for game, when he passed through a hedge, whilst his servants and footmen were beating the ground in front of him, a shot was heard, and one of his servants , John Dain, heard him give out two heavy sighs, and fall to the ground. They ran to him, but he was bleeding profusely, and died on the spot.
Whilst that is unfortunate, at the inquest it was discovered that the same gun had exploded in his face whilst he was out grouse shooting on the 12 August the same year, fortunately it missed him, but the explosion destroyed the hat he was wearing. He clearly did not learn from that narrow escape. The inquest returned a verdict of accidental death.
We are fortunate enough to have a description of him from the contemporary press, he was a fine looking man, in the bloom of life, standing more than six feet high, and proportionally stout, the Sheffield Independent reported.
His widow, Jane endowed a white marble tablet to be placed in the church at Chapel, recording, Belloc like, the cautionary tale of his lamentable demise, decorated with the family arms the following year*.
The tablet reads:
This monument is erected by his bereaved and affectionate widow to the memory of HENRY KIRK late of EAVES within this parish, gentleman whose premature death in the vigour of manhood by the accidental discharge of his fowling piece cast an unprecedented gloom over the whole of the locality and called forth the sincere lamentation & regret of all who knew him.
Henry Kirk’s Memorial and Grave in the Church of Thomas A Beckett, Chapel En Le Frith
Jane first moved to Everton, where she appears on the 1851 census living with Mary Elizabeth (b 1835) and later moved moved to the Eaves with her two surviving children by William, Mary Elizabeth and Henry. Five of her children had died in infancy, their last child, Henry, was born in June 1842, seven months after his father’s untimely, if avoidable, death.
In 1841, Edward, Jane’s son by James Reddish, was staying at King Street in Prestbury, with Samuel Higginbotham, a solicitor.
Edward sailed on 14 November 1847 to Calcutta on the Flora MacDonald, in order to gain a knowledge of mercantile transactions. After a calm journey of 126 days, the ship moored at Garden Reach, seven miles from Calcutta, a few days later, he accompanied Captain Sutherland to Calcutta, but on returning to the main ship his dinghy was overturned and he drowned on 1 April 1848.
Jane stayed at the Eaves until the 1860s when the family moved to London, Jane and her daughter lived in Thornton Heath, Croydon, and Henry on Inverness Road in Hyde Park. Jane died on 29 March 1867 and was buried in Chapel a week later.
Jane Kirk’s grave, and the Church of Thomas A Beckett, 1225, Chapel En Le Frith.
His erstwhile coachman Joseph Brown, put to good use the experience he had in ferrying his master between Parr’s House and Eaves, and saw the commercial opportunities offered by the new station at Stockport, the viaduct having been opened the previous year, and set up a coaching firm to convey travellers from the train to their final destination.
Before we leave the Kirk family, we will have a look at what happened to Captain Henry Kirk’s brother, Thomas with whom you will remember he started the Iron Foundry. His grandson Peter Kirk carried on in the iron trade, working first at Chapel, then setting up at the Star Ironworks on New Bridge Lane in Brinnington, Stockport and subsequently moved to Workington where they set up in the New Yard Works as well as acquiring the Ellen Rolling Mills in Maryport, and the Marsh Side Mills in Workington. His son Peter (1840-1916) followed his father and then emigrated from Workington to Washington State in the USA, where he founded the city of Kirkland in King County Washington.
Peter Kirk (1840-1916)Henry Kirk 1830-1914
Kirkland was a steelworkers town, and Peter wanted it to become the Pittsburgh of the West, with his Great Western Iron & Steel Company. Perhaps not as famous as Juan Illingworth, he is remembered in many buildings in the town, including the imaginatively named Peter Kirk Building and Peter Kirk School. Nowadays Kirkland is a suburb of Seattle with a population of around 90,000.
Peter’s brother Henry also served his time at the Town End Ironworks, before moving with his father to Stockport and on to Workington. He was regarded as an expert in the production of puddling iron, which allowed the production of large quantities of high grade iron to feed the needs of industrial England. He died on Petteril Street in Carlisle on 8 July 1914.
*Returning to Henry and his memorial at Chapel en le Frith. Being a fan of Hillaire Belloc please indulge me on my take on how he would have composed Henry’s tablet.
The Cautionary Tale of Henry Kirk, of Parr’s House, who having narrowly escaped death with a faulty rifle was fool enough once more to venture out onto the moors with a defective firearm leaving his wife twice widowed and unborn heir orphaned.
Henry Kirk, of high renown Lived in Chapel and Stockport Town A home at Eaves for smelting iron And one at Parrs for selling wine. One glorious 12th he left his house Determined for to bag some grouse His gun recoiled, a grave mishap Yet fortune struck, it was his cap That was destroyed. He lived to sire A son and heir, but alas, this squire Would never see his fine young son For one more time he took his gun
Off to the hills some game to hunt Yet, Henry’s mind was clearly blunt And did not replace nor try repair The gun. For safety first he did not care. He tripped, a bang and great distress He fell, he died. I must impress To you, should you perchance To hunt, of proper maintenance. And do not be like Henry Kirk And corners cut nor mending shirk. Dear reader please I hope you care To keep your gun in good repair
¹ The Derbyshire Volunteers were formed in 1803 as a Home Guard to counter the threat from France. The North High Peak Corps were based in Chapel En Le Frith and numbered 120 men. The great and the good formed the usual suspects of the officer class, and they wore a uniform of scarlet coats with blue collars and cuffs. They weren’t a particularly significant force, in 1827 they received government funding of £81 out of a total of £145,006 1s 3d paid to Yeomanry Cavalry in the UK. The North Derbyshire force received £1,045 16s 10d by comparison (Parliamentary Papers: 1780-1849, Volume 17).
² Accountancy fans amongst you will be thrilled to know that Alfred Waterhouse’s younger brother was Edwin Waterhouse, the founder of Accounting firm Price Waterhouse. (Now Price Waterhouse Cooper).
Many thanks to Tom Parker at St Thomas A Beckett in Chapel En Le Frith who helped me locate the graves and was very welcoming at the historic church. It is well worth a visit and tour of the graveyard, and other Heatonians are remembered there, plaques to the Healds of Parrs Wood Hall, Brinnington and Chapel can be seen on the walls.
I doubt if few people in Heaton Mersey know that there was a Parr’s House, we lost it almost a century ago.
As a child, growing up in Ladybarn in Manchester, I knew of Parr’s Wood, because we lived near Parr’s Wood Road, Miss Jackson at Ladybarn Primary school taught us that Kingsway was named for King George V and Parr’s Wood was so named because Mr Parr once owned a wood there. Moving to Heaton Mersey in 1968 I was surprised to see that not only was there a Parrs Wood, but there was also Parr’s Mount Mews. This Parr chap was certainly once famous.
When we have a look at the 1848 tithe map, we see that not only did he have a Mount and a Wood, he had a House (infact we will soon learn he had a Fold).
Parrs Mount 1848 Tithe Map
The house stood on the turnpike between Didsbury and Stockport (now Didsbury Road) opposite the Crown Inn.
Parrs Mount still stands today next to Didsbury Road primary school. A Georgian house, connected by an arched passage to an annexe which allowed servants to cross into the main house from their quarters. Behind it was a yard and what may have been a workshop, now transformed into Mews cottages. The Yard was known in 1851 as Williamson’s Yard, named it seems after its occupier, James Williamson, a Gentleman. The houses at the back were inhabited by this time.
The land next to Parrs House was owned in 1848 by John Thorniley.
John Thorniley was a descendant of Isaac Thorniley of Grundy Hill in Heaton Mersey. The Thornileys owned the brickworks on Harwood Road there, and in 1831 they built the Griffin Hotel on Didsbury Road, in the 1700s they were a wealthy yeoman family living in Heaton Mersey. We will come back to the Thornileys, the brickworks and the Griffin another time.
Isaac Thorniley (c 1690-1722) married Martha Chorlton in 1712. The children we know about were Isaac (c 1718-1804) who married Hannah Torkinton, Martha (c 1715-1790) who wed Jonathan Higginbotham and Sarah (c 1725-1787), who became the wife of Isaac Cheetham. Martha was the daughter of George Chorlton, and her brother Thomas presumably died without issue, as his will of 1728 bequeaths all his land at Grundy Hill (one of the Hamlets that grew into Heaton Mersey) Martha Thorniley (nee Chorlton)’s son Isaac.
These three Thorniley children each married into a prominent Stockport or Manchester family, the Higginbothams, Cheethams and Torkintons were all wealthy.
The terms of the will were to pass the property at Grundy Hill to Isaac on condition that he pay a yearly sum of £5 to Thomas Chorlton’s charity of which £4 was to go to the chapelwardens of Didsbury to be laid out in the purchase of bread for the most poor and indigent people belonging to the townships of Heaton Norris, Didsbury and Burnage such as should come frequently to hear divine service. The remaining £1 was to be paid to the schoolmaster of the school at Barlow Moor.
In 1844 John Thorniley owned a substantial share of the land in Heaton Norris, measured here in acres, rods and perches.
From A History of The Ancient Chapels of Didsbury and Chorlton in Manchester, Reverend John Booker 1857
The Chorltons owned Grundy Hill before the Thornileys, Thomas Chorlton who lived there between 1678 and 1728 had a son Thomas, himself at the time a widower married the widow Elizabeth Parr.
There are other Parrs in the area. George Parr, born 1792 in Burnage, the son of James Parr and Mary Thorniley, and founder of Parr, Curtis and Madeley, manufacturers of looms and other machine equipment at Phoenix works in Manchester. Their main product was a self acting loom.
Lathe Parr Curtis & Madeley
Phoenix Works Manchester, Grace’s Guide
Loom Parr Curtis & Madeley, Norsk Tekniskmuseum
Incidentally, Matthew Curtis, was the father of Richard Curtis who married Margaret Nelson, the daughter of William Nelson.
George Parr lived on Burnage Lane near to Burnage Hall, and had five children, his daughter Ada Georgina Parr married Samuel Watts of Cringle Villa and Burnage Hall, the nephew of Sir James Watts.
These Parrs may have been descendants of Hugh Parr of Kearsley and his son John. Hugh settled lands in Kearsley and a house in Manchester in 1654 ¹. Joe Eaton in his history of Heaton Mersey suggests that some of the land was in Heaton Norris.
Then we have Parrs Fold.
An article in the Stockport Advertiser from 13 December 1935 tells us that the executor of Samuel Goolden’s will was a Parr of Salford. The Gooldens were extensive local landowners and had bought land from the Moseleys in the 17th century.
Samuel Goolden (or Goulden, the spellings vary) occupied the white house at the top of the road, it is still here today, and Samuel Oldknow of the Heaton Mersey Bleachworks took a house (possibly Parr’s House or Parr’s Fold) here in 1792 – James Goolden being the landlord and charging £40 for 6 months rent on a house, stables, gardens and field (around £6,000 in 2019). By 1841 John Goolden was the third largest landowner in Heaton Norris – as you can see in the table above.
Parr’s House itself was built around the end of the eighteenth century, in the only images we have of it it appears to have Georgian features. By 1804 it is owned by Samuel and James Goolden, but let to Robert Parker, a Calico Printer.
Parrs House to let – to a respectable, genteel family – Manchester Mercury 24 July 1804
Of the Goolden family, we know even less. John Goolden gave the land for a church, graveyard and the surrounding roads to build St John in Heaton Mersey. John Marsland laid the foundation stone. Samuel Goolden, was in 1747 overseer of the poor in Heaton Norris.
Finally we come to Parr’s Wood.
The Reverend John Booker, in his History of the Ancient Chapels of Didsbury and Chorlton (1857) says that the name of Parr’s Wood dates back to 1587 (although he does not explain how he knows this). Parr’s Wood was at the southern end of Heaton Wood. I have already covered some of the history of Heaton Wood. A survey of 1320 (reported in Remains Historical and Literary Connected with the Palatine Counties Lancaster and Chester – The Cheetham Society 1861) of Heaton Norris found that the wood, of oak, was fast diminishing and would soon be gone. The few trees are left today at Heaton Mersey Common.
Pevsner is a mite scathing about Parrs Wood House, he calls it a poorer mans Heaton Hall². It was possibly built by somebody connected to the Georgian architect, James Wyatt (1746-1813), famous amongst other works for The Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford, Liverpool Town Hall, the Royal Military Academy and Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, and of course Heaton Hall in Heaton Park, Manchester, which he built in 1772 so may date the building.
Parrs Wood Hall, Johnson 1819
The tithe maps of 1848 give no clues as to ownership, Samuel Cheetham owns a few fields in the area, and the park at Parrs Wood is owned by James Knott, interestingly just to the north of Parrs Wood there is another wood, Bolton Wood, which stood next to where the Metrolink station now stands. Perhaps an echo of Bolton where the Parrs came from?
Miss Jackson was right, a man called Parr had a wood. After that it is unclear. There is some connection with Hugh Parr of Kearsley, and his relatives do own or give land to people in Heaton Norris. I will leave it to someone else to find connections, Hugh may have been a descendant of the Parrs of Kendal who begat Henry VIIIs wife Katherine Parr, or a relative of the Parrs of Warrington, Sugar Merchants who founded Parrs Bank (which is now subsumed into the Royal Bank of Scotland Group via NatWest). Whatever the case the fact that houses were built in the mid 18th century bearing the Parr name suggests they were still local.
The houses are a little intermingled. In the late 18th century it is not possible to distinguish who is living in which house. However, there are some interesting people to meet. Over the next few weeks I will concentrate on Parrs House and Parrs Mount, but sometimes all we know is that the person lived in a Parrs house.
Parrs Wood Hall, I will leave for another time, and I will gloss over the Cossack invasion.
William Le Queux The Great War In England In 1897.
I promise you it is a lot less vague, and next time leads us to some very surprising places, including an exhumation after over 150 years and a burial with full military honours.
And the first man to fly……
1 A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 5, ed. William Farrer and J Brownbill (London, 1911), pp. 39-41.
² The Buildings of Lancashire, Manchester and the South East, Clare Hartwell, Matthew Hyde and Niklaus Pevsner Yale University Press 2004 P446.
Sad footnote:
In my edition of Pevsner (1969), of the five buildings he lists of interest in Heaton Mersey, three are now demolished.
I think its about time we saw Mile End Hall. As the first pictures we have date from the period of the Clifton family, here is the hall around 1920, in the days it was still a private residence.
Mile End Hall, Mile End, Stockport
By 1885 the owners of Mile End Hall were getting a little desperate to dispose of the property they had obtained on the purchase of the Bramhall estate. The house was offered at a greatly reduced rent in the Manchester Courier that year, possibly attracting our next resident, Daniel Clifton.
The description of ten acres of land suggests that the present footprint of the school occupies the grounds of the hall. However, it is certainly a des res, being situated near Davenport Station, and certainly adequate for a family, with seven bedrooms and four entertaining rooms. The water supply was indeed the town’s, it came from Henry Marsland’s Stockport Waterworks Company who pumped water from a 45 metre deep artesian well in the centre of town (where Sainsbury’s now stands) to a reservoir in Woodbank Park for onward supply. It was a few years before Stockport Corporation was to take over, and water supplies were taken from the purpose built reservoirs at Goyt and Kinder.
Daniel’s father, Ralph Clifton was born around 1806 in Stockport. He married Rachael and they became owners of the Pack Horse Inn on the Market Place. In 1841 they were running the Royal Oak on Higher Hillgate in Stockport. Ralph died on March 23 1851, and Rachael on 7 January the following year.
Ralph and Rachael had around six children, Daniel, Edward, George Frederick, Ralph, John Henry and Frances. Of these it was Daniel who took over the pub after his father died.
Daniel was born in 1835 and in 1855 he married Sarah Hannah Hamer, the daughter of John Hamer a fellow publican from Shaw Heath in Stockport. Sarah and Daniel had two children, Florence (b 1856) and Ralph (b 1857), however Sarah died young at the age of 31 in 1864.
Daniel then married Clara Louisa Saunby the following July. Clara was the daughter of Henry Saunby (1820-1890) a Lincolnshire tailor who had a business on Little Underbank in Stockport.
Daniel’s trade expanded and in 1870 he built the Royal Oak Brewery between his pub and Wellington Road South. At the time, brewing was still very local. Innkeeping was starting to be dominated by local brewery chains. There were a number of breweries in Stockport, Robinson’s (who still survive), Bell & Company (owned by Henry Bell, the father of Alfred who lived at Bramhall Lodge, which is now part of the grounds of Stockport Grammar school) Showell’s Brewery, Richard Clarke & Co of Reddish, and the Windsor Castle Brewery.
It was not a smooth path to riches, in 1874 he purchased a horse from the local fair for £30, the horse was immediately set on by a number of people, and beaten, by the time it had reached the brewery, it could not move, and Daniel was forced to sell it back for £17. The Horse Trick was a common ruse, and this time the miscreants were apprehended at Bury Horse fair.
In October 1885 a fire raged through the brewery, causing extensive damage. The newspapers are also replete with reports on tenant landlords embezzling funds.
In 1895 he took advantage of Companies’ legislation and incorporated Daniel Clifton & Company as a limited liability company, to take over the business of Daniel Clifton, common brewer, wine and spirit merchant and manufacturer of mineral and aerated waters.
Daniel had seven management shares, his wife and sons had one each (giving him 70% control as permanent governing director). His daughters had one ordinary share each. The total capital was £125,000, but the power rested in the management shares. The object of this was to move behind the corporate veil and avoid the unlimited liability which a partnership had (a principle that was confirmed in law in 1897 by the case of Salomon and Salomon).
By 1900 he owned 76 inns, many of which were designed to the same style, and some of which thrive to this day, and some not. The Ash in Heaton Norris was a pleasure gardens in Victorian times, and even appears on Johnson’s 1819 map in an earlier incarnation, it was converted to tea rooms in recent years, but now stands forlorn in the estate agent’s window earmarked for housing. The Jolly Sailor in Davenport on the other hand survived the danger of closure and has arisen from the threatened ashes to become a respected gastropub. Charlie Hulme has a detailed coverage of the history of this hostelry.
Daniel bought land to build the Hollywood Hotel in Stockport to cater to the newly developed Hollywood Park in 1894 for £1,250. His problem here was that whilst the new park was going to benefit all of the town’s residents (the council had spent £10,000 (£1.2m in 2020) developing it the previous year) the proposed site for the area was populated by a significant proportion of teetotallers.
Eventually in August 1893 an open air meeting settled the debate in favour of an inn, not without both sides claiming that rival supporters had been brought in to sway the vote. At the end of the evening the Manchester Evening News remarked somewhat cynically that the leading orators eventually recruited their exhausted energies in the public houses which are to be found within five minute’s walk of the proposed hotel.
The licensing hearing was heard the following August, and it was eventually granted on the condition that he abandon the license on the New Bridge Inn in Portwood, and transfer the license of the nearby Millstone to the Hollywood Hotel.
Apart from Disley, Macclesfield and Hayfield, Daniel was a local brewer as can be seen with the list of his pubs in the attachment below (Wikipedia). The Macclesfield pubs were only bought in December 1898.
In 1881 he had moved with his family from The Royal Oak to a home in newly fashionable Davenport and in 1890 he took up residence in Mile End Hall, where he lived with Clara until he died on 31 October 1900, leaving £23,382 in his will (£2.8m in 2020). Clara lived a further ten years, dying in June 1911 at Mile End Hall.
Clara and Daniel had three children, Clifford Daniel Clifton (1866-1932), Jessie Clifton (b 1868) and Frank Clifton (1870-1928).
Clifford and Frank followed their father in the brewing business. Clifford was born in 1866 at the Royal Oak, and by 1891 he is styling himself as a brewer and living at Mile End Hall. Like all the good burghers of Stockport, he volunteered in the 4th Batallion of the Cheshire Regiment.
In 1896 he married Georgina Maud Kay, a Bradford girl, and they went to live on the newly built and exclusive Davenport Park Estate opposite Mile End Hall in a house they called Broomfield on the 1901 census (although Stockport Image archive claims it was Bramhall Grange). He now styles himself as a Brewer and Mineral Water Manufacturer, no doubt wishing to appease the temperance movement who had tried to block the erection of the Hollywood Hotel.
Clifton Mineral Water Bottle
After his father’s death he moved into Mile End Hall and in 1911 he is no longer a simple brewer, but a Company Director. The following year the owner of Manchester United John Henry Davies (who we met last time purchasing Bramall Hall) took over the Clifton Brewing Company. This gave Daniel the freedom to pursue other interests, and in 1913 he succeeded Charles Henry Scott as Chairman of the Prince Shipping Line.
He is certainly a wealthy man by this time, an advertisement in the Manchester Evening News in June 1915 asks for a chauffeur, preferably one who is accustomed to a Rolls Royce, and in 1929 his yacht, Gracie III is reported moored at Dartmouth.
Clifford and Georgina lived at Mile End Hall until around 1926, however they had started downsizing in 1924, and an advertisement in the Yorkshire Post in April that year will ring a bitter note with generations of Stockport School pupils who were regularly mugged to pay for the Organ in the Assembly Hall.
Capes Dunn will sell by Auction… A complete 2 manual and pedal pipe organ, by Richardson Manchester. Swell organ oboe 8 foot, gemshorn 4 foot, ……Great organ Cremona 8 foot ….approximate size 13 feet high , 8 feet 6 inches by 4 feet. Hand and hydraulic blowing, the whole occupying a space of 8 feet by 4 feet.
That is one large organ, there was also a pianoforte and Steinway grand up for sale. He was also disposing of his billiard table. Twenty lines of the announcement are devoted to a detailed description of the organ whilst a brief aside at the end indicates the sale of the household furniture and general effects.
They left Mile End Hall to go to the newly built Abbey Lodge, Regent’s Park, London and took flat number 35.
Abbey Lodge was constructed in 1927 in neo Georgian style and has views over Regent’s Park. Neighbours today include the Sultan of Brunei and the current asking price is around £3-4m for an appartment.
Clifford died there in early 1932, he left £118,547 (£8.2m). Georgina moved to Harrogate, and died on 4 May 1946 at the rather sweetly named Mile End House there. They do not appear to have had any children.
Jessie Clifton married Frederick Seymour Rogers, a Norfolk gentleman residing at Coltishall Hall, a grade II country house built around 1700. They lived comfortably together at Ingham New Hall in Suffolk until Frederick’s death in 1940. He left £46,586 in his will (£2.6m) and again there appears to have been no issue.
Coltishall Hall, Norfolk
Frank Clifton enjoyed even more leisure. In 1893 he travelled with his father on a cruise aboard the SS Garonne leaving London on 22 December sailing to Madeira with the intention to sail on to Tenerife, but an outbreak of cholera put paid to that. Instead Captain Livett decided to cross the Atlantic to Barbados and Jamaica, stopping for a few hours in Montego Bay. They then proceeded to Grenada, St Lucia, Martinique, Dominica, St Kitts , Santa Cruz, Kingston Jamaica, Havana, Nassau and returned via Lisbon to London.
Perhaps not being as environmentally conscious as today, the ship’s party revelled in the capture and dissection of a whale en route in the hope that they may find swallowed treasure inside. In this endeavour they were unsuccesful, as was one passenger’s attempt to photograph the hapless creature, which was eventually cut up for its blubber the asssembled spectators having lost interest at the lack of spoils.
Frank was also a keen breeder of Irish Terriers, winning prizes at dog shows all over the country during the turn of the twentieth century, however his visit to Crufts in 1902 does not appear to bring home any awards.
Unlike his sister he did not name any of his future houses after his beloved Mile End Hall, and sadly apart from Clifford Clifton, the only other pictures I can find of any of the Clifton brood, canine or human are of his terriers, this one named of course Mile End Muddler
In 1899 Frank married Sarah Elizabeth Nicholas, in London. Sarah was born in Montgomeryshire.
He is also that year the proud owner, like his brother of the Yacht Io, awarding prizes at Yarmouth Regatta in July.
Sarah and Frank moved to Oakfield, on Station Road in Cheadle Hulme after their marriage and subsequently to Boyne House on West Cliff Road in Bournemouth where Frank died in 1928, leaving a fortune of £32,821. They had twin children, Frank and Doris Jo, born in 1902. He kept his yacht ownership up to the end of his life, buying a steam yacht, Sea Fay in March 1928.
As we saw earlier, John Henry Davies took over Cliftons Brewery, in 1928 he was Chairman of the Manchester Brewery Company, a subsidiary of Walker Homfrays took over the operations of Cliftons brewery. We met James Ogg, the company secretary of Walker Homfray when we were looking at the last days of Highfield in Heaton Mersey.
Walker Homfrays became Wilsons, which ceased brewing in 1987.
Next time we will look at the last days of Mile End Hall.
allanprussell 