Sir William Henry Houldsworth, 1st Baronet (born Ardwick

Ardwick

Ardwick is a district of the City of Manchester, in North West England, about one mile east of Manchester City Centre.By the mid-19th century Ardwick had grown from being a village into a pleasant and wealthy suburb of Manchester, but by the end of that century it had become heavily industrialised...

, Manchester 20 August 1834, died Kilmarnock

Kilmarnock

Kilmarnock is a large burgh in East Ayrshire, Scotland, with a population of 44,734. It is the second largest town in Ayrshire. The River Irvine runs through its eastern section, and the Kilmarnock Water passes through it, giving rise to the name 'Bank Street'...

 18 April 1917) was a mill-owner in Reddish

Reddish

Reddish is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, in Greater Manchester, England. It is north of Stockport and southeast of Manchester...

, Stockport

Stockport

Stockport is a town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on elevated ground southeast of Manchester city centre, at the point where the rivers Goyt and Tame join and create the River Mersey. Stockport is the largest settlement in the metropolitan borough of the same name...

. He was Conservative

Conservative Party (UK)

The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...

 MP

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 for Manchester North West

Manchester North West (UK Parliament constituency)

Manchester North West was one of six single-member Parliamentary constituencies created in 1885 by the division of the three-member Parliamentary Borough of Manchester under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885. Its first MP, William Houldsworth, had previously sat for Manchester...

 from 1883 to 1906, and sometime chairman of the Fine Cotton Spinners' Association. He was made a baronet

Baronet

A baronet or the rare female equivalent, a baronetess , is the holder of a hereditary baronetcy awarded by the British Crown...

 in 1887.

Houldsworth bought farmland by the Stockport Branch Canal

Stockport Branch Canal

The Stockport Branch Canal was a 5 mile branch of the Ashton Canal from Clayton to Stockport-Route:The canal left the main line of the Ashton Canal at Stockport Junction , between locks 10 and 11 at Clayton, and it terminated at Stockport Basin just beyond the top of Lancashire Hill...

 in Reddish in the 1860’s and built Reddish Mill

Houldsworth Mill, Reddish

Houldsworth Mill, also known as Reddish Mill, is a former mill in built in 1865 in Reddish, Stockport, Greater Manchester, England . Designed by Abraham Stott, it was constructed for Henry Houldsworth, a prominent mill owner at the time...

, then the largest cotton-spinning mill in the world (started 1863, completed 1865). Four members of the Houldsworth family were 60% shareholders in the Reddish Spinning Company Limited which built the North Mill (started 1870) and the Middle Mill (started 1874). An Institute (now Houldsworth working men’s club) was completed in 1874. All the above were designed by the architect Abraham Stott. Houldsworth commissioned the architect Alfred Waterhouse

Alfred Waterhouse

Alfred Waterhouse was a British architect, particularly associated with the Victorian Gothic Revival architecture. He is perhaps best known for his design for the Natural History Museum in London, and Manchester Town Hall, although he also built a wide variety of other buildings throughout the...

 to design St. Elisabeth's church, rectory and school. All the above buildings are still standing.

The start of a model village

Model village

A model village is a type of mostly self-contained community, in most cases built from the late eighteenth century onwards by industrialists to house their workers...

 was also laid out, with a variety of houses built in front of the mill. Some of the houses have been demolished, but those in Houldsworth Street and Liverpool Street remain.

The City of Manchester made him a freeman in 1905, and the Victoria University of Manchester

Victoria University of Manchester

The Victoria University of Manchester was a university in Manchester, England. On 1 October 2004 it merged with the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology to form a new entity, "The University of Manchester".-1851 - 1951:The University was founded in 1851 as Owens College,...

 awarded him an honorary LLD. In later life, Houldsworth moved away from Reddish and Manchester, and concentrated on his estate at Kilmarnock, Scotland.

Several features in Reddish are named after Houldsworth. A drinking fountain and four-faced clock, paid for by public subscription, was unveiled in Houldsworth Square on 11 September 1920.

External links

The aerial view at spinningtheweb shows Houldsworth's mill (to the left of the road running vertically), the canal (running horizontally) and the housing (in front of the mill). St Elisabeth's church with its tower is at the top of the picture (above the mill). The school is to the left of the church and the WMC is the large building to the right of the church. One of Reddish Spinning Co Ltd's mills is at the top-left of the picture. The mill to the right is Broadstone mill; the right-hand half of the structure, both chimneys and the engine house (at the centre) have been demolished.

External links