THE RICKARDS FAMILY ..... another story from Tony Goulding

 I have been curious for some time about this family, given that the head of the family, William Henry Rickards, his first wife, Ellen (née Royle) and five of his children were interred in St. Clement’s old churchyard. 

They occupied the grave which is marked by the most substantial and well-preserved memorial in the churchyard. 

William Henry Rickards was born on the 16th October, 1815 and baptised on the 14th July the following year in St. John’s Church, Manchester. His parents were Charles Rickards and his wife Frances (née Broome). His father, described as “a gentleman” on his marriage record was in business as a cotton spinner but his health began to fail and he had to wind up his business. The family’s wealth came courtesy of land holdings near Sandbach, Cheshire where the Broome family had farmed land on Brereton Road since the 16th century. 

William Henry’s older brother Charles Hilditch Rickards inherited the land. He was a successful paper manufacturer and a prominent public figure in Victorian Manchester. A magistrate on Manchester’s bench for two decades and on the county bench for over ten years, he combined these duties with serving as a Trustee for Henshaw’s Society for the Blind in both Manchester and Oldham, and serving as a member then chairman of the “Manchester Board of Guardians of the Poor” for 27 years. He endowed a scholarship at Manchester Grammar School of which he was a former pupil and was a major patron of art, especially the works of George Frederic Watts who he commissioned to paint this portrait.

He died, on the 8th July, 1886, at his home, The Beeches, Seymour Grove, Old Trafford, Stretford, Lancashire. He left in his will a personal estate of over £48, 000 of which £13, 300 consisted of the artworks of G. F. Watts.

William Henry Rickards began his business career as a partner in a firm of calico printers which traded as, Barratt and Rickards. After dissolving this partnership, he entered into another with William, John, and Benjamin Carver; shipping merchants. In his youth William Henry shared in his elder brother’s public-spiritedness donating to a subscription list for the Manchester School for the Deaf and Dumb, serving on the committee of the “Manchester Homœopathic Hospital and Dispensary”, Bloom Street and contributing, in February, 1852, to a body formed by the citizens of Manchester for the relief of the widespread distress caused by the catastrophic bursting of a large reservoir (1) in the neighbourhood of Holmfirth, Yorkshire. Although he remained a J.P. following his move to the shipping industry, he concentrated on his business affairs and domestic life with his 9 surviving children from two wives. Ellen (2)(Royle) who he married at the parish church of St. Mary the Virgin, Eccles, Lancashire on the 3rd August, 1843. Sophia (Munton) (3)  who he married in Manchester Cathedral on the 26th February, 1862. 

He lived for close on 20 years in Carlton Lodge, a 14-roomed mansion on Dudley Road, Whalley Range, where he passed away on the 24th May, 1891. He left a personal estate £131,451- 1s–4d, a huge sum, valued today (according to the Bank of England Inflation Index) at £16,827,204-10p.

In part this amount comprised of the inheritance of one third of his brother’s Personal Estate. He was, also, left the use of the land in Sandbach which on his death, by the terms of Charles Hilditch’s will, passed to his eldest surviving son, Harry.

Pictures; family tomb from the collection of Tony Goulding, painting by G.F. Watts, Manchester Art Gallery, Licensed under Creative Commons  Attribution Non-commercial Non-derivatives license (CC By-NC-ND), Holmfirth courtesy of Linda Rigby's sister-in-law Diane Booth.

Notes: -

1) On the 5th February, 1852, following an exceptionally wet January and days of heavy rainfall the Bilberry reservoir “burst its banks” resulting in the tragic loss of 80 or so lives, many of them children. A national relief fund was launched to alleviate the distress.

A pre-existing tower with an additional plaque marking the height of the flood water and recording the names of 81 lives lost.

2) Ellen was born in 1812 the daughter of Jeremiah Royle, a “twist dealer” and commission agent, of Pendleton, Salford, Lancashire where he also served for 11 years as the church warden of St. Thomas’s Church. Her mother, Ann, was possibly the daughter of George Jackson of Hulme.

She died on the 19th September, 1860 and was buried in St. Clement's churchyard in Chorlton-cum-Hardy on the 24th September, 1860.

Opposite; Alms Houses built with the £700 surplus from the national relief fund.

3) Sophia Munton was born in Bourne, Lincolnshire and was baptised there on the 21st February, 1830 in Saints Peter and Paul’s Church. Her parents were William, a merchant and his wife Mary. The 1851 census shows Sophia working as a governess of the 7 children of Rev. William and Anne Thorpe of Bawtry. Nr. Doncaster, Yorkshire. (Interestingly, Rev. Thorpe was actually the vicar of Misson, which is in the far north of neighbouring Nottinghamshire). Ten years later Sophia had moved to Manchester and was residing at 23, Cecil Street, Chorlton-on-Medlock with her older siblings, brother Frederick, a corn miller, and sister, Mary Bowes.  Sophia moved in her widowhood to “Woodlea” Burnham, Eton, Buckinghamshire where she died in the March quarter of 1911.