The Birley Family at Ford Bank, c. 1824-58

Joseph Birley

In the early years of the 19th century, three brothers, Joseph Birley, Hugh Hornby Birley and John Birley, all successful cotton manufacturers, moved from Burnley to Manchester. One reason suggested for the move is that they were meeting with opposition from the Burnley handloom weavers in their attempts to introduce new machinery into their factories. Possibly, too, they realised the advantages of manufacturing in a town that was now the centre of the cotton trade. The original firm was Birley and Hornby with a factory in Oxford Street. W.A. Shaw in his Manchester Old and New says of the Birleys: “The various business ramifications of this family would of themselves fill a chapter of local history.”

Joseph Birley (1782-1847) bought Broome House (on Wilmslow Road) in Didsbury and then, when in 1823 the Ford bank estate came up for sale, bought it and built the large mansion house that was subsequently known as Ford Bank. He acted as his own architect and clerk of works, buying the materials and hiring the labour.  Fletcher Moss writes that: “Mr Joseph Birley had built Ford Bank House on some land down an old cowlane, called the ‘Sands Lands’, which he had bought from Lawrence Walker, a ‘torney; he [Mr Birley] was his own architect.”

The building of the house was completed sometime after 1823. It was built on a high bank above the flood plain of the River Mersey, near the Northenden ford, which would later be replaced with a footbridge. The local topography, therefore, provided the reasoning behind the name of the house. 

Joseph Birley married Jane Hornby (1788-1858) in August 1809. The Birley family, who originated from Blackburn, and the Hornbys from Kirkham in Lancashire, were famous cotton manufacturers in Cambridge Street, Hulme. In 1828, working with Charles Macintosh, a Glasgow chemist, the Birleys developed a process for the manufacture of waterproof and airproof cloth using india-rubber dissolved in naphtha, giving us the famous raincoat – the Macintosh. Dunlop took over the factory in 1925. 

Joseph’s older brother, Hugh Hornby Birley (1778-1845), was an officer in the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry Cavalry and was reputed to have played an important part in the fatal charge at the Massacre of Peterloo in 1819. He was in fact charged at Lancaster with responsibility but was found not guilty. He was a man of wide interests. He was a leading Manchester Tory and the first President of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. He was a moving force in the establishment of Owens College. He was a director of the Manchester Gas Works and became a business associate of Charles Macintosh with the intention of putting the works’ waste products to profitable use in the manufacture of waterproof fabrics. He eventually went to live in Pendleton.

Hugh and Joseph Birley were two brothers who married two sisters. 

Joseph and Jane had seventeen children – eleven sons and six daughters.

Some details of their children are included below:

Note:

1. Four of the children – Thomas, Hugh, Louisa and Alfred – died in their first year of life.

2. After the death of a child, the next born of that sex was christened with the same name, as shown in the following examples:

• Thomas Hornby died in November 1814.

• Thomas Hornby was born in May 1815.

• Hugh died in November 1816.

• Hugh Hornby was born in October 1817.

• Louisa died in August 1824.

• Louisa Margaret was born in October 1828.

• Alfred died in November 1827.

• Alfred was born in May 1832

3. Two of the children – Henry and Herbert – were twins.

4. Two of the children – Robert and Alfred – became church ministers.

5. The thirteen children who survived their first year went on to enjoy relatively long lives, with several living well into their seventies and one, Adelaide, surviving to 84. Their average age was approximately 73.2 years.

6. Assuming that Ford Bank was not built until about 1824-25, the first eleven children were born elsewhere.

7. As was the custom and practice at that time, some of the children were given their mother’s maiden name (Hornby) as a second forename.

8. Several of the children were born at Ford Bank and all of them would have lived there at one time or another.

Factory evidence

“There are isolated cases of children being treated badly in factories. Some are true, some exaggerated, some entirely false.

It is not in the interest of the owners of factories to injure the persons they employ.”

(Joseph Birley, Manchester factory owner, interviewed in 1832.)

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