Brinnington being on the Tame was once an upmarket home for many of Stockport’s Cotton Barons., giving them easy access to their mills, and a pleasant riverside residence.
One such family was the Marshalls who ran Palmer Mills. We will meet other members of the family at a later date.
James Marshall Junior, the son of James Marshall and Nanny Fielding was born around 1804 and baptised at St Mary in Stockport. He is living at Brinnington Mount in 1837 with his wife Elizabeth Leech. Some time after that her father, James comes to live with them, presumably after the death of his wife, Sarah. He is mentioned living there in Samuel Bagshaw’s Directory of 1850. James had been a draper, but had retired by then, and was living as a Gentleman.
The house stood on a hill overlooking both the Tame and the Goyt, a comfortable distance from Palmer Mills. Not only a successful businessman, like many of his like, he served as Mayor of Stockport in 1848. The family concern thrived, and the business extended to Park Bridge Mill, and further mills in Heaton Norris, Waterside in Disley and an office on Cannon Street in Manchester.
James and Elizabeth had three girls. Sarah Ann, Mary Elizabeth and Charlotte. The latter two girls remained spinsters and Sarah married a Cheshire farmer. James had three brothers, John, Thomas Steers and George. Thomas and George predeceased him, and John although married, had no issue. After James died in 1873 the business was managed for a few years by his widow, but finally auctioned off in February 1884 for lack of a suitable heir.
After James inherited his father’s house at White Bank, the house was occupied by Abraham Alcock. Abraham had married Elizabeth Marshall (1815-1865), the only daughter of James Marshall Senior in 1836. Abraham owned a great deal of property around Daw Bank and Portwood, and was living from the rents and sale of houses. He had practised as a Draper, and was drawing a pension from his investments.
The Alcock family live at the Mount from the mid 1850s until after Elizabeth’s death in 1865, after which we meet Peter Marsland‘s grandson, Herbert living at the house. Herbert was born at Woodbank Hall in 1831 and first took up the family business of cotton manufacture, but invested in railway stocks, and in 1881 at the age of 50 was living there on the proceeds of his investment. Although he does appear to have been rather indolent, he was still living at Woodbank in 1871, aged 32, with his wife, Emily, mother and elder brother Henry. His time in Brinnington Mount was but a temporary exile as he returned in 1890 to Woodbank to live his life of luxury after the death of his brother where he lived out his days until his death in 1907.
After Herbert, James Hamilton Leigh moved into the Mount. James, a cotton spinner, was the nephew of Sir Joseph Leigh of Brinnington Hall. His wife, Mabel Constance Jennings was the daughter of Louis Jennings, the MP for Stockport between 1885 and 1893, and erstwhile editor of both the Times of India and the New York Times.
They did not stay long, for our next resident was Frank Stafford Johnson (1873-1950), and his wife, Sarah Alice Pickford. The Johnson family originated from Nottinghamshire, and the father, John Goode Johnson, was a Calico Bleacher who earned his fortune by managing Henry Marsland’s bleachworks and lived out his life at Brinnington House nearby with a large family.
Frank, followed in his father’s footsteps in the cotton trade and managed a textile mill. He also has the distinction of being an early Olympic Silver Medalist in Lacrosse at the 1908 Games in London. Not to pour cold water on his achievement, there was only a Canadian and British team competing, so our man was certain to win, and came second in a field of two. He also played cricket and golf at club level in Stockport.
By 1921 the couple moved to The Alders on Davenport Crescent, in Stockport.
In 1939 Arthur Whalley, a wholesale grocer, and chair of the North of England Wholesale Grocers’ Association is living at the Mount. The house is still standing in 1949, as it appears in an article in the Manchester Evening News describing a local ramble in Reddish Vale. It is just around the B of Brinnington in the map below.
The Mount was demolished sometime before 1959, to allow the construction of St Bernadette’s RC Church, which was needed to serve the growing community of post war housing in Brinnington. I have not been able to source a picture of it, and can find no descriptions of it for sale, so it must for now be pictured in our imagination.
Sources
The Stanford Companion To Victorian Fiction , John Sutherland, Stanford University Press 1989
© Allan Russell 2020
The History of Stockport in 100 Halls 