New Lanark and Haverbreaks

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NEW LANARK AND HAVERBREAKS

Colin Stansfield

Abstract

This paper traces the links in the nineteenth century between New Lanark, the well-known cotton mill and village in Scotland, and Haverbreaks estate in Lancaster.

The origins

New Lanark originated with David Dale who was born in 1739 (Figure 1). He rose from a weaver’s apprentice in Paisley to become a clerk to a silk merchant and then a wealthy textile merchant in Glasgow. He married (at the age of 38) 24-year-old Anne Carolina Campbell, the daughter of the Edinburgh Director of the Royal Bank. They lived in Charlotte Street, Glasgow, in a house designed by Robert Adam. He became the Glasgow Agent for the Royal Bank. David Dale, now a banker, had already established a dyeworks and other mills before he joined with Richard Arkwright (Figure 2) to found New Lanark cotton mills in 1786 (Figure 3) (McLaren 1990; Donnachie & Hewitt c1983). Arkwright was already an experienced mill-owner, running Cromford Mill in Derbyshire. The site that became New Lanark provided extensive water power from the fast- flowing River Clyde for the spinning machines. But with little existing housing locally, the mill- owners had to create their own community, building houses and other facilities for the workforce of around 2500.

Figure 1 David Dale Figure 2 Richard Arkwright

Figure 3 New Lanark Figure 4 Robert Owen

Dale was a deeply religious man. He broke from the Church of Scotland, disagreeing with it on ecclesiastical patronage. His faith guided the philanthropic principles that underlay how he ran New

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Lanark as a factory and a community: fair discipline, a school and health care. This ‘model village’ element did not sit well with Arkwright, who left the partnership after only a year.

One of Dale’s six children, Anne Caroline Dale, married Robert Owen (Figure 4). Robert Owen joined his father-in-law in the business and bought Dale’s share in New Lanark in 1799. Dale was then selling off his assets for retirement to Rosebank house near Cambuslang where he died in 1806. Owen became the mill manager in 1800 and was thereafter the driving force in carrying on the ideals of utopian socialism (Donnachie 2000; Donnachie and Hewitt c1983). He had to pay David Dale £60,000 over 20 years. However, other directors of the Lanark Twist Company were unhappy at the cost of his welfare ideas and forced an auction in 1813. Owen needed new investors and partners.

Owen travelled to the London Meeting House where he made the acquaintance of investors with Quaker, socialist and humanitarian principles, including Jeremy Bentham and John Walker, a wealthy Quaker. New Lanark then had a Board of Directors sympathetic to Owen’s principles. Owen left Britain in 1824 for the United States where he founded the short-lived community of New Harmony in 1825. Control of New Lanark passed to John Walker’s sons (also Quakers) who occupied Braxfield house in Lanark from 1832. In 1851 the Walkers tried to dispose of New Lanark without success and so they continued to manage it until 1881, when it was sold to local industrialists, Henry Birkmyre and Robert Somerville and their newly established Lanark Spinning Company (New Lanark Trust 2017). New Lanark continued as a factory, changing products and technologies, until 1968 when it closed (Figure 5). It is now a World Heritage Site and a major tourist attraction (UNESCO 2001; 2017)

Figure 5 New Lanark today

It is the Ford and Walker families who provide the connection between New Lanark and Lancaster. The Ford family had owned the Ellel Hall estate since the 1740s (British History Online 2017) and as Quakers met the Walkers socially at the Friends Meeting House in London. John Ford had three children, a son, William, and two daughters, Sarah and Mary. John Walker’s son, Charles, married Sarah Ford and his other son, Henry, married Mary Ford. The two families purchased the estate

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Contrebis 2018 v36 called Haverbreaks Farm, Lancaster, from the trustees of the Royal Albert Asylum on Ashton Road, which was built between 1868 and 1873 and designed by E.G. Paley (Brandwood 2012, 222–3). It was renamed the Royal Albert Institution in 1909 and then the Royal Albert Hospital and is now Jamea al Kauthar, an Islamic girls boarding school. What is now Haverbreaks estate was deemed surplus to the requirements of the Royal Albert and its sale in 1875 helped defray the cost of building the Asylum.

In 1875 Charles and Sarah Walker along with William Ford created “The Albert Park Estate” on the sloping ground between Ashton Road and the Lancaster Canal. William Ford employed the local architectural firm of Harrison and Hall to produce the master-plan of the estate, laid out with building plots and illustrated with designs for suggested villas. The first residences were erected in 1881, the same year as when the Walkers sold their interest in New Lanark to Birkmyre and Somerville. Richard Inglis Hall, one of the partners in the architectural practice responsible for laying out the estate, married the daughter of William Storey, a Lancaster mill owner, and Richard was commissioned to build the first three villas, Thornbreaks, Haverbreaks and Elmsfield. Further details about the early development of Haverbreaks estate (and maps of its growth) including the houses, architects, builders and owners can be found in Stansfield (2016).

After Charles Walker sold New Lanark in 1881, the family purchased a country estate near Levens, Cumbria, called Brettargh Holt – today an up-market hotel called The Villa. Charles and Sarah renamed the main road on Haverbreaks (The Avenue) Brettargh Drive. When William Ford died in 1898, Lord Ashton bought his Ellel Hall house and the Walkers sold Haverbreaks to a syndicate of local builders (Stansfield 2016). The direct link between New Lanark and Haverbreaks Estate had lapsed after 85 years.

Acknowledgement All the Figures are taken from the New Lanark Trust’s website (see below).

Author profile Born in Manchester and resident in Lancaster Colin Stansfield (BA Hons) is a retired civil servant. His interest is mainly in the architects working in North-West England between 1751 and 1951. He is a life member (and one of the founders) of the 20th Century Society. Email: [email protected]

References Brandwood, G 2012 The Architecture of Sharpe, Paley and Austin. Swindon: English Heritage British History Online 2017 – www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol8/pp96–101 Donnachie I 2000 Robert Owen: Owen of New Lanark and New Harmony. East Linton: Tuckwell Press. Donnachie I & Hewitt G c1983 Historic New Lanark: the Dale and Owen Industrial Community since 1785. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press McLaren DJ 1990 David Dale of New Lanark: a Bright Luminary to Scotland. Milngavie: Heartherbank Press New Lanark Trust website 2017 – www.newlanark.org Accessed 30/09/17 Stansfield C 2016 The development of Haverbreaks in Lancaster, 1875–1913. Contrebis 34, 13–23 UNESCO 2001 World Heritage Committee Nomination Documentation. http://whc.unesco.org/uploads/nominations/429rev.pdf UNESCO website 2017 – whc.unesco.org/en/list/429 Accessed 30/09/17

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