Deciding there was a need for a ‘concise, strictly chronological history of Leek’, PHILIP BROUGH began the huge task of putting together his ‘Barebones’ narrative of the Queen of the Moorlands. Here, abridged, is part eight...
1826
A group is constituted as the Leek Gas Light Co. They buy land on the west side of Newcastle road, and JA West of Durham, engineer and chief shareholder, builds the gasworks there. The dyeworks of the Badnall family is run by a partnership consisting of Richard’s son, also Richard, F. G. Spilsbury, and Henry Cruso.
Cornelius Brumby, who has been an usher at the Grammar school, opens his own school.
1827
An Act of Parliament obliges Lord Macclesfield and his heirs to supply the town with water from the reservoirs. It allows him to charge up to £5 year for each house supplied, according to its rented or rateable value.
The gas works opens on Newcastle road by Leek Gas Light Co. The coach between Manchester and Nottingham runs daily in each direction from the Swan.
A second printer in town, George Nall, sets up a press in Spout Street.
1828
Father James Jeffries begins to build a Roman Catholic chapel on the corner of Fountain Street and Portland Street. It is built by a Cheadle builder named Higgs, at a cost of £700. The Albion
Mill is completed. A chapel is built at the corner of Ball Haye Street and Regent
Street. The building was originally intended for use as a Wesleyan Sunday school only, but it is fitted with a gallery and an organ at the expense of James Wardle and also used for services.
The annual procession of Sunday school children is first recorded. It takes place on the last Sunday in August. About 1,000 children from Wesleyan Methodist Sunday school walk that day, and hymns are sung in the Market Place.
The subscription library is refounded as the Leek Book Society.
1829
All 42 houses planned to have been built in Haregate Road by the Leek Building Society have been completed and the Society is disbanded.
Father James Jeffries opens the Roman Catholic Chapel at the corner of Fountain Street and Portland Street.
Dedicated to St. Mary, it includes an altarpiece depicting Virgin and Child by Joseph Barney and four paintings of saints brought from Lisbon by nuns.
1830
Another dye-works is established by Joshua Wardle on Leek brook near its confluence with the River Churnet. Joshua Wardle’s son, Thomas, claims that the water of the River Churnet is among the best dyeing water in Europe. In particular it produces a unique ravenblack dye for which Leek is to become celebrated.
Cliffe Park Hall is built at the northern end of Rudyard Lake. It later becomes the Club House for the Golf Club and later still, a youth hostel.
1831
Population of Leek and Lowe is 6,374. A combined bailiff of court and scavenger is appointed and two overseers of highways for the town of Leek reappointed.
Friendly societies parade on the last Thursday in July. The town’s factories close for day.
1832
At the Workhouse, the number of inmates averages 54, maintained and clothed for 3s. 6d. each per week.
A dispensary is established to provide medical and surgical help for the industrious working classes in their homes and attendance on poor married women during their confinements.
An amateur performance takes place at what is called The Theatre Royal, which occupied premises at the Red Lion.methodist services at Ball Haye Green have ceased.
1833
The Congregationalists divide. One group moves to a stable behind the Black’s Head, and later move to their own buildings in Union Street (later the site of the Majestic Cinema). Racing takes place on a course at Birchall Dale on the west side of Cheddleton Road.
The Old Methodist chapel on Mount Pleasant starts to be used by the circuit’s preachers.
1834
Jeremiah Barnes, the assistant curate at St. Edward’s and master of the grammar school, starts a monthly lecture at the school. It so well attended that he begins to give a lecture and a service in church every Sunday evening.
Hobson’s school on
Clerk Bank is closed. The Manchester and Liverpool District Bank opens daily.
The ceded Congregationalists open their chapel in Union Street.
There is unrest in the town
– attempts by handloom weavers to defend and improve their rates of pay for piecework led to strike.
A short-lived silk operatives’ union has been formed by May when over 400 men and women marched through the town with considerable ceremony at the funeral of a fellow member.
The workhouse has been enlarged to four storeys and measures 75 ft. in length and 21 ft. in depth.
1835
A new Sunday school is opened on the site of the Grammar school, with a salaried master and mistress, 34 monitors, 265 children (141 girls, 124 boys). The unusual predominance of girls over boys may have arisen because the mistress as well as the master is allowed to teach.
There are, in the town, seven mills (one unoccupied), with 119 power looms, employing 744 people.
A subscription is started to meet the cost of Jeremiah Barnes’ weekly lecture, including a stipend of £30 year for the lecturer.
A Charity Ball is held at the Swan.
1836
Leek Total Abstinence Society is formed by Charles Carus Wilson.
A lending library for teachers, pupils and parents is set up at the Sunday school on the site of the Grammar school.
The Primitive Methodist chapel is built at west end of Fountain Street and a Sunday school is begun.
1837
The Leek Poor-law
Union is formed and a new Union Workhouse is built on Ashbourne road (now the Moorlands Hospital) designed in the classical style by Bateman and Drury of Birmingham.
The annual Venison Feast is held early in October with venison supplied by the Duke of Sutherland, the owner of Wall Grange Farm, in Longsdon.
Joshua Brough, of the silkmanufacturing firm of Joshua and James Brough and Co. builds Buxton Villa on Buxton Road at the junction with Abbotts Road at time of his marriage to the daughter of William Spooner Littlehales of Erdington.
The Manor Court appoints a crier. The Leek Literary and Mechanics Institute formed.
There is also a circulating library.
1838
A ropewalk is situated on the north side of Buxton
Road near its junction with Ball Haye Street. What is now Ashbourne Road is known as London Road.
The mill hands go on strike against a pay cut and the Government Commissioner comes to Leek later in the year. The Mechanics’ Institute has, in October,
145 members. They have a reading room which is open three evenings week; a library of almost 500 books, plus pamphlets and periodicals.
The road from the Canal basin into town, known as Spooner’s Lane, is renamed Canal Street.
The stretch of road between Green Man inn on Compton and Birchall is realigned.
1839
Only half of the 150 broad looms and third of 180 engine looms are working full time. The domestic ribbon industry is mainly in the hands of female members of undertakers’ families.
Journeymen have moved into mills, and apprentices are no longer being taken.
The Leek Poor-law Guardians begin a school at the Union Workhouse for the children there and employ a master and mistress.
On a visit to Leek, Wombwell’s Menagerie engages a local man, James Bostock of Horton, aged
24. He later marries George Wombwell’s niece and take over the business.
The Leek Philharmonic Society is established by Benjamin Barlow, the organist at St Edward Church.
The Leek Total Abstinence Society is established.
The Leek Wesleyan Sunday School Society is founded.
Glendinning and Gaunt have 10 steam-powered looms in the Horton Street Mill, having earlier used Ball Haye brook to provide power.
St Edward’s church alterations started. They last two years.
1840
The Leek Benevolent Burial Society is founded. At the meetings of the Mechanics’ Institute, outside speakers include John Murray, a lecturer on popular science, who gives at least four series of talks at Leek during the decade.
Wesleyans set up a day school in Ball Haye Street and employ a master plus a mistress.
The Leek branch of The Anti-corn Law League is formed (the Corn Laws are a series of import duties placed upon corn The effect is to protect the British producers but to deprive the poor of cheap corn that is available from the corn-belt of America.
1841
The Pacific Court of Foresters is founded.
The Derby Street Academy has closed.
The Government Commissioner again remark on the cleanliness of the town and the workers’ dwellings but also record a prevalence of fever, which he attributed to ‘the neglected state of privies, ditches, boglands, and lanes.’
Leek’s six Sunday schools have 1,607 pupils on their books and an attendance of 80 per cent. There are 168 teachers.
1842
A friendly society for Anglican men is founded.
Chartist disturbances take place (the Chartists were members of a political movement calling for an extension of the franchise to the working-classes.
1844
Day schools are united with the National Society and are established in the town to supplement or replace the system of secular instruction offered at the Sunday schools.
The Cricket Club is reorganised as Leek and Moorlands Cricket Club at Barnfields.
1845
The district of St. Luke is formed out of St. Edward’s parish. The patronage of a perpetual curacy is vested in the Crown and the Bishop alternately, with the Crown making first presentation.
Benjamin Pidcock is the first minister (1845/82). At first, he holds services in a room in the yard of Black’s Head inn in Derby Street.
1846
The Pride of the Moorlands Lodge of the Order of
Sisters is formed. It is a friendly society for Anglican women. The Leek and North Staffordshire Benefit Building and Investment Society formed, but the venture is unsuccessful.
The land bounded by
Queen Street and Fountain Street is bought as a site for a church and school.
1847
A County Court district established. Day and Sunday schools for St. Luke’s district are built in Fountain Street.
The Mechanics’ Institute join the Midlands Union of Literary and Mechanics’ Institutions.
A plan to replace the Town Hall in the Market Place with a grander building on another site in the Market Place comes to nothing.
1848
On July 27, round arm bowling is introduced in a cricket match against Cheadle.
A County Police Station is built at the junction of
Mill Street and West Street, including a dwelling for inspector and three cells in place of the two in the Town Hall. The police station includes a court room where the Petty Sessions are held.
1849
A Friendly Society for members of the Congregational church founded.
A meeting is held at the George and a Committee of five is formed to organise horse racing in Leek.
William Sugden comes to Leek as the architect and surveyor of Churnet Valley railway line. He is to supervise the stations being built on the railway. The Churnet Valley railway opens with a station on Newcastle Road.
Because the railway has arrived, omnibuses are introduced from the Red Lion and the Roebuck to the station on Newcastle road.
1850
There is a commercial newsroom in Stockwell
Street.
The old Black’s Head is demolished and a new Blacks Head is built and designed.
The Railway Company takes over a house near the station and opens it as the Churnet Valley Hotel.
The Nab Hill tunnel through the high ground to north is built to resemble a natural cavern in rock.