100 Halls Around Manchester Part 97: Dr Mainwarings House, King Street

This time we will leave Casson and Berry’s map, an look at a house that they overlooked. Whilst all the central Manchester homes they displayed have long since disappeared, this one has survived, this despite it being described as unpretentious in Cornish’s Guide of 1857. Manchester is a Victorian City, this is the only surviving Georgian House in Manchester with a central block and wings. However the wing facades have been removed for those glass frontages you can see below….. It is listed as well.

King Street, Top Left Laurent, 1793

In the late 17th/ early 18th century there was a move towards the King Street area. The first substantial building was the Cross Street Chapel. The Jacobite citizens of town constructed James’ Square and a prestigious street leading from it. James Square disappeared after the rebellion of 1745.

At number 12 (now 35) Dr Peter Mainwaring (c 1694-1785) built a fine house. Peter was the son of Peter Mainwaring of Wynbunbury and a member of a relatively well to do family, the Mainwarings of Kermincham in Cheshire. He was at one point heir in remainder to the estate. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, gaining his BA in 1716 and MA in 1720 and by 1725 he was practising medicine in Manchester. He married Ann Malyn on 28 April 1731 in Ashton Upon Mersey. There was no evidence of him actually receiving a medical qualification at Trinity.

Ann was the daughter of Dr Robert Malyn (b c 1660), and his wife Katherine Massey. Robert had inherited the Manor of Sale through marriage to Katherine and on the death of their sons Robert in 1727 and the Reverend Massey Malyn (1688-1729) the estate descended to Ann and her sister Katherine (b 1689). Katherine married Walter Noble and moved to Lichfield.

Ann and Peter settled in King Street and when Manchester Infirmary was founded he was one of the original physicians appointed. In 1782 he presented his collection of books to the hospital, effectively establishing the library and was made Physician Extraordinary. He also played a great role in the cultural life of Manchester, being the founding President of the Literary and Philosophical Society in 1785.

Socially he was a good friend of the poet, John Byrom, although when it came to the Brexit issue of the day, the men differed, Byrom was a Jacobite and Peter firmly on the side of the Loyalist cause. For this Elizabeth Byrom, his daughter mocked him endlessly for his views, saying that he went around endlessly:

frightening folks— namely, my Uncle and Aunt Ann, and that he says that the rebels have done nothing but what a rabble without a head might have done.

He played his part in the rebellion, as Elizabeth wrote:

Dr. Mainwaring ordered the bellman to go round and give notice to all the inhabitants of the town that they are desired to rise and arm themselves with guns, swords, shovels, or any other
weapons, and go stop all the ends of the town to prevent the rebels from coming for two hours, and the King’s forces will be up with them ….. I saw the doctor on horseback in the midst of the mob encouraging them much and promising them to send all the country in as he went (for he ran his way as soon as he had done), and accordingly he did, for all the country folk came in with scythes, sickles, etc. He also sent a party of townspeople to Cheadle on a fruitless errand to destroy the ford over the Mersey there.

Had he succeeded in blocking the ford the Jacobites would have had their northern retreat cut off, and the Duke of Cumberland could have caught them. However, it didn’t happen and Elizabeth noted that the troops crossed the ford, came back to Manchester and visited Dr Mainwaring, where they were in Elizabeth’s words a little rough.

He also served as a justice of the peace and as such he had issues with one of the employees of the infirmary, one Ann Lee (1736-1784) also known as the Mother of the Shakers. She appeared before him in 1772 on an assault charge, and given her past conduct and record, he asked her to give a guarantee of good behaviour. This she refused, and was fined 6d (2½p) and sentenced to a month’s imprisonment.

However, the following year she was arrested again for wilfully and contemptously disturbing divine service and received a £20 fine. Soon after this she departed for America.

Peter Mainwaring died on 30 December 1785 and his obituary was at least a little kinder to him, the Manchester Mercury wrote that he was:

A gentleman highly respected for his integrity and public services in the line of his profession, and as a magistrate and greatly beloved by all who had the happiness of his acquaintance.

Next to move into the house was a tea dealer from Market Sted Lane, John Jones (d 1775)who had diversified into banking. This is not as unusual an occurence as you would think. Twinings had a banking operation before being taken over by Lloyds. Tea dealers had high turnover, and plenty of loose change. John Jones himself was often seen in his shop straightening bent tea chest nails with a hammer.

John married Sarah Mottershead, the daughter of the Reverend Joseph Mottershead (1668-1771) and Elizabeth Bennett. The Reverend was born in Stockport on 17 August 1688 and trained as a methodist minister. From 1708 to 1717 he was Minister at Nantwich and Kingsely then Minister at the Cross Street Chapel from 1718-1771. He narrowly avoided danger in 1745, having discovered that the Jacobites planned to kidnap him and demand £2,500 from his congregation (£600,000 in 2022). Tipped off by a lady who knew him, instead James Bayley was ransomed. The Reverend married three times in all, including the widow Rebecca Gaskell who was the mother of Clive Of India.

After John Jones’ death, the bank was run by his sons, Samuel (1746-1819), Joseph Daniel and William (d 1821) His daughter Sarah (1796-1883) married Lewis Loyd (1768-1858) a preacher at Dob Lane Chapel in Failsworth.

The bank moved into King Street around 1788. Soon after they had to react nimbly following the collapse of Byrom, Allen, Sedgwick & Place. To avoid a rush of depositors wanting to withdraw their funds, they quickly applied new paint to all the woodwork in the premises. Fear of damaging clothes with wet paint overcame fear of loss of funds, and the bank survived

The Loyd family the took the bank forwards into the 19th century. William Loyd (1729-1800) their father was a farmer from Cwm Y To near Llandovery in Camarthenshire. He married Ann William in 1765 and they had seven children.

Lewis was the first of these children to come to Manchester. He rode there in 1789 and became a supply preacher at Dob Lane in 1790 but after his marriage to Sarah Jones was persuaded to join the Bank. His brother, Edward (1780-1863) came to Manchester around 1797 and was employed as a teller at Jones & Co on King Street. By 1805 he was a partner in the bank and married Sarah Taylor in Blackley in 1809.

By 1821 Edward had risen to become head of the bank, now known as Loyd, Entwistle and Company of King Street. Edward and his family were the last people to have King Street as a family home. After them it was solely used as bank premises.

Lewis went to London to set up the London branch and after Sarah’s death married Catherine Lloyd (1772-1798). In 1835 he obtained a grant of Arms from the Herald’s College in London for his father and his father’s descendants.

When Lewis died he left a fortune of £2m (over £¼ billion in 2022) which he left to his only son, Samuel Jones Loyd (1796-1883) who became MP for Hythe from 1819-1826. He became Lord Overstone having increased his father’s fortune to £5m (£0.65bn in 2022)

Another brother, William Loyd (b1770) went to London where he became a merchant and warehouseman. Thomas Loyd (1775-1853) became a Calico Printer with Loyd and Price in Manchester on Cross Street and lived on Ardwick Terrace. The only daughter to survive Jane married Lewis Davies and the couple stayed in Wales looking after their parents.

Loyd Entwistle bank was eventually taken over by the District Bank and ended up as a National Westminster Bank until 1993. It was a forward looking bank, as early as 1855 it put forward ideas for decimal coinage, we could be using the Royal penny, there were to be 100 to 10s (50p).

Since then the King Street House has been many things, including a Clothes Shop, a Virgin Weddings Shop and was listed in 1952.

Let’s see some pictures:

Sources:

Central Manchester A History Tour, Jean & John Bradbury: Amberley Publishing, 2018

Cornish’s Strangers Guide To Manchester & Salford: J&T Cornish, 1857

NOT HAVING THE FEAR OF GOD BEFORE HER EYES’ The Scandals and Quarrels of the Masseys of Sale,and Their Descendants, Jill Groves : Ashton & Sale Historical Society, 2018.

Ann the Word The Story of Ann Lee, Female Messiah, Mother of the Shakers, the Woman Clothed with the Sun, Richard Francis: Arcade, 2013

Sketches of the Lives and work of the Honorary Medical Staff of the Manchester Infirmary, Edward Mansfield Brockbank : Manchester University Press, 1904

Mercantile Manchester, Past & Present, John Mortimer: Lulu 2016

Loyd & Loyd 1690-1990 Alwyne E Loyd, 1990

© Allan Russell 2022.

Advertisement

One thought on “100 Halls Around Manchester Part 97: Dr Mainwarings House, King Street

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s