This is the Hyde Road Hotel which in August, 1887 witnessed the meeting where Ardwick F.C. was established.
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| The Hyde Road Hotel |
Two stalwarts of Gorton (Association) Football Club, Walter Chew, the secretary, and Lawrence Furniss, a former club captain, had ambitions to develop the club into a more professional concern. They wanted to be able to compete against the top teams of the day, twelve of which were to form the professional Football League on the 17th April, 1888 in the Royal Hotel on Market Street, Manchester. In part 1, I told the story of Walter Chew now I move on to that other prime mover at this meeting, Lawrence Furniss.
While Walter Chew helped establish Ardwick as a force in local football and was responsible for a permanent ground for the club to play their matches at, it was his successor, Lawrence Wain Furniss, who oversaw Ardwick’s entry into the Football League.
Unlike his predecessor, Lawrence was not a native of Manchester being born on the 18th January, 1858 (1) in Cromford, Nr. Matlock, Derbyshire. His father, Edwin Furniss, was the long-serving stationmaster of the village railway station.
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| Cromford Station |
Cromford railway station – the ornate building on the left is thought to be the original stationmaster’s house
His mother was Sarah (née Wain) which gave Lawrence his unusual middle name. Lawrence began his working life working as a railway clerk and was working in that capacity at the time of the 1881 census which shows him as still residing with his parents in Cromford. However, at some stage during the early to mid 1880s decade he moved to Manchester. In 1891, the census recorded him as living, as a lodger, at 128, Kirkmanshulme Lane, Longsight, Manchester. His landlady Mrs. Sarah Bowker was a widow (of William a builder) who had two grown-up children also in her household. These were her son William Henry (26), a buyer for a machine maker, and her 23-year-old daughter, Ellen, an assistant schoolmistress. On the 1st June, 1895 Lawrence married Ellen Bowker at St. Mark’s West Gorton. Rather fittingly the minister conducting the service was Arthur Connell who was also to christen the couple’s first child, Elsie Kathleen, on 26th October, 1896 (born 29th September at 4, Tank Grove, Longsight) in one of his last acts before his retirement. Lawrence and Ellen had two more children, twin daughters, Marjorie and Winifred born on the 1st September, 1901 at 4, Peel Grove also in Longsight.
As stated above during his tenure as secretary, Ardwick were able to progress to play a higher standard of football culminating in being admitted first to the Football Alliance (2) in the 1891-2 season and then to the the newly-formed Football League Division 2 the following season. In order to achieve this Lawrence and to confront a perennial dilemma faced by sports teams over the years –to represent an institution, club or area or to try to become more successful by importing better quality players from outside (known in footballing circles as “ringers”). In 1890, Lawrence and a fellow Ardwick official, John Allison, travelled to Scotland to engage some top players of the clubs there. This was a common practice by English clubs at the time as Scottish football was until 1893 a strictly amateur game (ostensibly). The Ardwick “raiding party” were able to sign five leading players. Lawrence has also been credited with “discovering”, while he was refereeing a game of Northwich Victoria his former club, the Welsh Wizzard, Billy Meredith, and bringing him to Manchester City.
Billy Meredith during his "City" playing days
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| Billy Meredith during his "City" playing days |
Billy Meredith, born in 1874 in Chirk, Nr. Wrexham, North Wales, was possibly English Football’s first superstar playing for both Manchester Clubs over a period of 30 years.
Sometime during the first decade of the 20th century Lawrence and his family moved out of Manchester to Marple in Cheshire. He is on the Electoral Roll of 1908 for the Parish of Marple which shows him living at the quaintly named Bottoms Hall, Bottoms, Roman Bridge Lakes. Living close by at “Strawberry Hill” were his older brother, Edwin, variously a land agent / farmer and the manager of a cotton mill, and his nephew Evelyn Oswald who was to die on The Western Front on the 22nd April, 1917. He was 34 years old and serving as a private, with the Durham Light Infantry, when he was killed in action in a battle for the Lens coalfield in Northern France. He has no known grave and is one of the 20,639 names commemorated on the Loos Memorial.
Lawrence Furniss continued his involvement with Ardwick / Manchester City fulfilling various administrative functions he was a board member from 1903 but the following year fell foul of the Football Association over irregularities in the transfer of two players, J. Thornley and F. Norgrove, to the club from Glossop F.C. As a consequence, he was suspended from taking part in any football related activity from the 4th November, 1904 until the 7th May, 1907. Thus, he avoided involvement in the much more serious charges involving allegations of bribery and illegal payments to players which resulted in dramatic penalties being imposed on the club in 1906. After a spell out of football Lawrence returned to briefly take up the position as the club’s Chairman during the first World War and later held that office from 1923 until 1928. In this latter period, he oversaw the move to the club’s new ground the ambitious purpose-built Maine Road, christened by some as “The Wembley of the North” Three years after his resignation he was appointed Manchester City’s first president. It was in this rôle that he was injured in a road traffic accident while travelling home from a reserve team match at Maine Road. He was a passenger with a club director, William Menzies Shaw, in a motor car hired from Finglands Hire Car Ltd. when it was in collision with a Manchester Corporation bus in Moss Side, Manchester. At the Manchester Assizes Civil Court on the 7th July 1938, he received £600 compensation for personal injury. (Mr. Shaw was awarded £150)
Lawrence Wain Furness passed away at 303, Wilmslow Road, Fallowfield, Manchester on the 31st July, 1941. His home at the time was still The Old Mellor Hall, Mellor, Nr Marple, Cheshire. Two years earlier, the 1939 Register recorded him as a widowed (3) Land Agent living there with his unmarried daughter, Marjorie.
Pictures Hyde Road Hotel m 27241 Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Archives and Information Manchester City Council. http://manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
Cromford Station by Geof Sheppard - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83013768
Billy Meredith - by Stevo1000 - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11452244
Notes: -
1) Lawrence was born in 1858, although in his later years he appears to have “shaved” 4 years off his age. In 1939 he gave his date of birth as 18th January, 1862.
2) Formed in 1889 as an alternative to the football league after 3 seasons the two bodies merged with the formation of the League’s Second Division.
3) His wife had died in the September quarter of 1926 in Didsbury, Manchester.
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