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The House on Richmond Hill	Barbara Riding
Last June Christine Moore led a party of half a dozen local historians on an expedition to discover what remains of Richmond Hill. 200 years ago it was a slight incline up to a double-fronted Georgian House with gardens to the side and behind. Gradually more houses were built including a warehouse which became Richmond Hill Paper Company. Now, due to demolition and Barbara Castle Way, they are all gone, except for the original double-fronted house and a few buildings attached to it. The object of the expedition was to discover the history of the house and the family who lived there. Christine gave us three clues, the rainwater head, the oldest mill in Blackburn and a brewery. The house, which became 7 Richmond Hill has a distinctive rainwater head with the initials and the date BT 1791. After going through all the names in the available directories and referring to the works of all the local historians I have come to the conclusion that the initials belong to a man called Benjamin Tattersall. He appears to be the only person who might be considered important enough to have a house built with those initials on the rainwater head. In a newspaper article, Benjamin’s son William is described as "a member of an old Blackburn family, the son of Benjamin Tattersall, who was well known". I realise that this argument is tenuous, but I am still working on it, and the rest of my research is based on it. Benjamin Tattersall was a miller. He is listed in Baines Directory as one of the three millers in the town. By 1818 he appears to have moved to Millgate which was a continuation of Mill Lane. He worked at the old corn mill on the Blakewater which in 1835 was converted to be worked partly by steam. Before Benjamin the mill was rented by Samuel Derbyshire of Audley Hall who built the windmill on the canal at Eanam. The shell of the old corn mill is still there at the end of Weir Street, but nowadays it is a vehicle service and repair centre, G.A. Autocare. Across the road Tattersall Street links Weir Street to Mill Lane. Benjamin Tattersall had several sons, but John, his second son, born about 1816, appears to be the only one to join him at the corn mill. By 1842 Benjamin must have retired to Milnthorpe in Westmorland because an announcement in the Blackburn Standard in October 1842 states : " On Thursday last at our Parish Church by the Revd. Dr. Whittaker, vicar, Mr. John Tattersall, second son of Mr. Benjamin Tattersall of Milnthorpe, to Esther, second daughter of the late William Dutton esq. of this town ". What a sad life was to follow for John Tattersall. A baby daughter was born the following July but his wife died in August 1843. The baby Esther Alice died the following March aged 8 months. John remained a widower until his own death thirty four years later. However, his marriage to a Dutton was to have a major influence on his life. In 1799 Thomas Dutton and his son William founded a brewery on Bow Street which became known as Salford Brewery. Both Thomas and William died and the Brewery passed on to the grandson Thomas. John Tattersall married Thomas’s sister Esther, and ten years later was taken into partnership with his brother-in-law. When Thomas died in 1871 John subsequently became sole owner of Thomas Dutton and Son. The following tear he took his younger brother William Tattersall into partnership and the brewery became Dutton & Co. John Tattersall died at his residence Quarry Bank on Billinge End Road in 1878 and is burried in St. Peter’s churchyard. Having no heir the residue of his estate and the brewery passed to William. William appears to have divided his time between the brewery in Blackburn and his country home in Milnthorpe. There he is remembered for the founding of the Tattersall Almshouses in 1884. In 1894 a building committee was set up for the building of a new church on Preston New Road. William Tattersall became one of the trustees and headed the subscription list witha donation of £1000. His wife had the honour of laying the foundation stone of the new St. Silas’s Church in December 1894. William did not live to see the opening of the Church as he died in 1896. (St. Silas’s celebrated its centenary in May 1998). Christine Moore supplied me with the following information. William’s only daughter Alice married George Whitely of Albion Cotton Works, who was eventually created Lord Marchamley. William had already handed over the management of the Brewery to George in 1889 which his wife inherited on William’s death. They had a house built on Livesey Branch Road, called Beechwood. In the 1960’s Duttons demolished it and built a public house in its place. The remains of the old house lie beneath the present pub car park, but they’ve changed the name to the Oak Tree !!!! While the Tattersalls were moving up in the world, from Mill Gate to Milnthorpe, from Mill Lane to Billinge End Road, what was happening to 7 Richmond Hill. I can find no mention of it until 1847. From that date James Kanyon qualified as a voter because he lived in a public house on Richmond Hill. In Barrett’s Directory 1854 Jane Byrne is living at the Hindle’s Arms Inn, 7 Richmond Hill. There was a bad report following the official inspection of Public Houses in 1893. "It is a very old house in want of repair.The old buildings in the yard should be pulled down or repaired". In 1925 Thomas Hart was landlord of the Hindle Arms Inn but by 1928 the building had been taken over and converted into a warehouse by J. Stott and Sons, a firm of wholesale stationers and clothing manufacturers. They eventually acquired nos. 9 to 13 and another building bringing the warehouse up to Tontine Street. Kathleen Barnes (née Stott) who runs the business learned from her father that it had been a public house. It had been a stopping place for carriages bringing prisoners from Preston. There had been stables at the back and stone troughs for horses. And so the research has come full circle - from a date on a rainwater head, through millers, brewers, a lord, a Church and a couple of public houses to Stott’s Cash and Carry 1791 - 1998. Acknowledgments Christine Moore  Mike Rothwell - "Industrial Heritage" Mary Whalley - "The parish Church of St.Silas" J.G.Shaw - "Bits of Old Blackburn" George Miller - "Blackburn Worthies" George Miller- "Bygone Blackburn" George Miller-"Blackburn’s old Inns" Kathleen Barnes  Blackburn Reference Library
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