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The exterior of Stockport Central Library, located near to the railway station, which is sadly going to be closed soon.

The first library was opened in 1875, a rather unassuming little collection in a room on the upper floor of the produce market.

The great Andrew Carnegie, from a time when wealthy tycoons did good things for the community, put £15,000 towards the construction of the new library building which opened in 1913. The design for the building was put out to competition, with the firm of Bradshaw, Gass & Hope winning with their Edwardian Baroque style.

The building is beautiful, although the local heritage collection has already been entirely stripped out in preparation for a move to a new location. The book selection isn’t huge, but it felt well curated and I got the impression that a trained librarian had actually had something to do with the whole arrangement.

I can already see the tragedy that the Stockroom, that is planned to replace this beautiful Carnegie building, is going to be. There’s a level of arrogance to some of the documentation that has been released already, which I suspect has not actually been run past a librarian, as it talks about the exciting coffee options with no mention of the local history section. It’s hard not to laugh at the “stunning” (their word) images they’re using to show off their new building, it looks like Stockport will be a laughing stock. These two are the only ones of the adult library and local history sections. The council want this to be a performance venue to up access numbers entering the building, a desire to have an on-trend coffee shop.

What do they need with all that shrubbery?

Well that looks peaceful and calm. They haven’t burdened themselves with images of where people will actually sit and haven’t bothered at all with images of the local history section. Even hotel chains make a vague stab at having spaces for people to work in their imagery.

The council has also decided it won’t linger on the results of their consultation which showed that 55% of people didn’t want the library to move. They claimed that the problem with these results was that they were skewed to people who used the library. Well, who knew…..  Incidentally, the council have just announced more cuts to their library service, but who needs books when you can have a lovely new coffee shop and performance venue?

Located at St. Mary’s Church in Stockport, this is the grave of William Davenport, who died on 15 July 1799 at the age of 61.

William had been born in 1738 in Northenden, with his father also being William Davenport and his mother Mary, being baptised on 31 August 1738.

He married Hannah Hardey, who was around five years younger, in Stockport on 19 January 1776. More on her in a later post. At least I think this is the correct marriage, it’s the only one of a William Davenport in Stockport and the name of his wife matches, so that’s a decent start. The gravestone also notes that he lost his daughters Molly and Ann, both at a young age.

I can’t find out anything else, but that’s not entirely surprising as the archives aren’t packed with on-line records from this period. I can’t find any evidence of him having children who survived him, but I suspect that his wife died as a result of child birth, as she was just 38 years old. He had married aged nearly 40, later than usual for the time. I like that his marriage record survives though, to be able to see his signature on the document.

This is a good example of my limited knowledge as there are a couple of elements that I don’t understand here. I don’t understand the reference to the junior sadler on the grave and I don’t understand who Esther Nixon is. Maybe one day I’ll come back to this and try again to work it out….

I don’t much like when churches use gravestones as paving for outside their buildings as it feels disrespectful to me, and also causes damage to the stones. However, St. Mary’s Church in Stockport seems odd as they have some old stones, with many from the late eighteenth century, and their entire paving is done like this.

I’m not entirely sure I have the answer to why they’re like this, but there was a new burying ground established in 1810 by Lady Warren-Bulkeley to give the church more space for burials. At the same time, the church authorities decided to take down the church’s historic nave and tower to build a new one, but they decided to use dynamite to do this. The result was somewhat sub-optimal, with numerous stones damaged by the explosion. I bet that Fred Dibnah would have done a better job.

I’m rather impressed at how tough some of these stones are as they were a few that are around 250 years old and they’re still undamaged despite their treatment over the years.

There’s no shortage of stones to look at. Which I did, so expect a heap of gravestone related posts now….

This image, from Stockport Heritage Services, is even more intriguing to me. It’s of the old medieval church just before it was demolished in 1810, which I think is a rather grand and beautiful affair. However, in the graveyard there are numerous stones and they’re all lying flat. So, it seems that what likely happened is that during the reconstruction of the church, including its rather explosive demolition, they’ve collected the damaged and undamaged gravestones up and just relaid them around the outside of the building. There are numerous stories which say that the gravestones were used as part of the demolition rubble to build the nearby Waterloo Road, although I imagine this was mostly stone from the tower and nave, as many of the gravestones do seem to have survived. The new church opened in 1813 to much excitement, but there was much controversy in 1810 and a local meeting roundly condemned the church (twas ever thus) for their poor engagement with parishioners about the rebuilding.

Last week was the first time that I’ve visited Stockport and I was rather impressed with this viaduct which carries the West Coast mainline. The Stockport Viaduct stands as something of a testament to the ambition and ingenuity of the early railway age as this was a massive project to have undertaken and to have secured financing for. Constructed between 1839 and 1840, it was at the time of its completion the largest viaduct in the world. Designed by George Watson Buck in consultation with architect John Lowe, the viaduct was built for the rather entreprenuial Manchester and Birmingham Railway. The construction contract was awarded to John Tomkinson and Samuel & John Holme, with W. Adams & W.H. Perkins serving as resident engineers. The construction process was a significant undertaking, employing roughly 600 workers in shifts, day and night. Despite facing challenges such as flooding from the River Mersey, which washed away the supporting structures on several occasions (rather sub-optimal), the viaduct was completed in December 1840.

Built primarily of brick, the viaduct is an impressive example of brickwork construction. Approximately 11 million bricks were used in its construction, along with 11,300 cubic meters of stone. The viaduct’s design features 22 semi-circular arches, each with a span of 19.2 meters, flanked by two smaller abutment arches. In the late 1880s, the viaduct underwent a significant expansion to accommodate the growing volume of railway traffic. A second viaduct was constructed alongside the original, effectively doubling the width of the structure and allowing for four railway tracks instead of the initial two. This expansion involved the use of an estimated 10 to 12 million additional bricks, further solidifying the viaduct’s status as one of the world’s largest brick structures.

The original tender document, which must have been something of an intimidating challenge for any company interested in bidding. By March 1839, the newspapers were reporting that the first stones had been placed and work was well underway. In June 1839, the debate started about the plan to save money by reducing the Congleton viaduct by 20 feet and raising the Stockport viaduct by 13 feet at one end, which was opposed by some but ultimately permitted. By November 1839, eight of the twenty-two arches had been completed and the ninth, crossing Heaton Lane, was about to be finished. Just a few weeks later, the flood mentioned earlier caused massive damage to some of the works, but they soon replaced all the damaged wooden support scaffolding. The local media were proud of the project and reported frequently on how works was progressing. By September 1840, the Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser, reported that:

“This gigantic and most wonderful piece of workmanship is steadily approaching to completion, and assumes now an appearance of the most interesting kind. Already are the coping and ornamental top stones laid along about one-half of its length, with work completed by the latter end of October.”

It cost over £100,000 to complete, something around £7 million in today’s money. I’m fairly confident in saying that the project today would be considerably more than that in cost. The final stone was put in its place on 21 December 1840 by Thomas Ashton, the chairman of the company directors. If only there was the same excitement and pride in modern-day rail projects….