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AOSA CENTENARY HISTORY 1841 - 1941 |
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Contents
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The time favoured new ideas and processes, new men and methods. Tremendous and unsuspected forces were being harnessed to industry; steam was to be the prime mover of machines; coal supplied fresh energy; a great increase of population, crowded into the manufacturing towns, consumed machine-made products as quickly as machinery could produce them; an increased output of iron, coal, munitions of war, cotton goods, woollen goods, food, bricks, all the necessaries and luxuries of life, made more wealth; new roads, canals, the locomotive and the railway demanded increasing capital; industrial England was taking shape. During these changing times the three Quaker partners worked hard and earned prosperity; Overend’s connection in Yorkshire and the North, the Gurney influence in Norwich and the East, Richardson’s London experience, spread their clients and their business. Even when he was established as a wealthy man, the head of a renowned firm, and after he had moved from the City to the house he had built on Stamford Hill, Thomas Richardson’s carriage drew up every day in Lombard Street, at ten in the morning, and every day he remained at business until four or five in the afternoon. In a few years the partners were rich men and in 1830 Thomas Richardson retired from the firm, the more closely to look after his other interests in the North. The portrait-caricature ‘A Friend in Lombard Street’ shows Thomas Richardson - for he is the Friend-in the prime of his London career. From the square-toed shoes to the low, broad-brimmed, Quaker hat a solidity marks it. Here walks a man of substance, warm and comfortable, without pride but with a due regard for himself. The buttoned gaiters and knee breeches, the long, collarless coat of broadcloth in Quaker plainness, the hat of best fur, show a simplicity, dignity and sureness towards himself and a meek disregard of other opinion by one who could afford to disregard it. He fronts his fellow men without ornament and without disguise, confident that they will take him for what he is. In spite of the firm chin and prominent nose, a humorous kindness marks his face; the eyes alert and friendly belong to the man who later knew all the Ayton children, who liked to ask them to tea at Cleveland Lodge when the strawberries were ripe, and who could see and supply the school needs of ‘4 tin pie dishes’ or ‘2 milking frocks.’ Thomas Richardson was always human; business never overwhelmed him; as his life went on his shrewdness remained, and his kindness of heart mellowed. The poor health of his wife Martha turned his thoughts to Great Ayton. He had told her much of the country and she imagined its keen, sweet air would invigorate her. Accordingly when he retired from the London business he and his wife came to live at Great Ayton. They leased Ayton House where they lived until Martha Richardson died in October 1841. A dispute with his landlord and his wife’s death there precluded his renewal of the lease. He decided to build, and found a suitable site on land belonging to the school. A minute of the committee dated the 28th of 11th mo. 1843 stated that Edward Pease and John Richardson were ‘requested to act as a sub-committee to confer with our friend Thomas Richardson relative to a Building Scite etc. in the Sand Hill field, a part of the property of this institution, and report.’ Next month they reported that they had ‘inspected the Sand Hill and two fields adjoining’, and the committee authorised ‘our friend Thomas Richardson to take immediate possession of such part thereof as he may require, the rent to commence 4th mo. 6th 1844 at £2 10s 0d per acre per annum.’ Preparations proceeded rapidly. Workmen excavated the foundations. Deep in them they dug a hole wherein were placed various documents, a newspaper, coins. A large stone closed the hole. George Dixon’s daughter Alice, tapped the stone with the mallet provided. Each of the other scholars supplemented Alice Dixon’s gentle blow and thus well and truly laid the foundation stone of Cleveland Lodge. Here in Cleveland Lodge Thomas Richardson lived the rest of his busy life. His business interests now lay mainly in the North. He partnered Edward Pease and George Stephenson in the latter’s locomotive works at Newcastle, he held a large number of shares in, and was an original director of, the Darlington and Stockton railway. He was, too, one of the six original ‘Middlesbro Owners’ who had the acumen to see and the faith to believe in the future commercial value of the chapelry of Middlesbrough. This lay in the northern extremity of the parish of Acklam. In 1801 it consisted of four farm houses and twenty-five inhabitants. The ‘Middlesbro Owners’ bought a riparian farm of 500 acres. They glimpsed some part of the reality-the glare of blast furnaces strung down the river, the departure to the ports of the world of great ships from deep water docks where then grew marsh grass and harsh rushes and where sea birds pecked their food in the tidal mud. This Middlesbrough of theirs had 154 inhabitants in 1831. Ten years later at the time of the start of the school the population numbered nearly 6,000. Now when the Ayton school-boy stands on the top of Roseberry he sees the pall of industrial smoke that covers nearly 140,000 people, and he might reflect that the man chiefly responsible for his presence there was also largely responsible for the great town beneath his gaze. |
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