Hollingrakes

The Hollingrake name is significant in our family because is it one of the names in the company that brought some wealth in the late 19th and early 20th century - Hollingrake and Clegg Limited.

It was Abraham Hollingrake that established the firm together with George Clegg, J. P.. Abraham was one of, probably, five children of John Hollingrake and Salley Barnes. Sally was from Withens, an area of moorland between Stoodley Pike and Crag Vale - quite a remote part of countryside. I'm not sure as yet, where John's family lived. There were a number of Hollingrake families in that part of the Calder Valley at the time, some were non-conformists and some established church. John and Sally were married at the Parish Church in Halifax because, although they were non-conformists, marriages weren't allowed to be performed outside the established church until 1836. On the same day, 5 September 1802, a Mary Hollingrake married Gibson Sutcliffe. Gibson was a witness to John and Sally's marriage so my guess is that Mary was John's sister. It's quite a way from Todmorden to Halifax; perhaps they shared a taxi!

John and Sally lived at Carr Green on the outskirts of Lumbutts. This is a normal looking West Riding farmhouse but during the time they lived there, the building next door, Croft Carr, was the workhouse for the Langfield Township. I haven't drawn any inferences from this because, despite what I'm about to tell you, I think John and Sally Hollingrake were solvent and successful. Certainly, in their marriage records John is a weaver and his (presumed) brother-in-law, Gibson Sutcliffe, is a manufacturer. This seems to suggest a thriving family with good connections. Both men could write quite competently.

It's quite sad then that Sally died in 1818 shortly after they had Abraham's younger brother, Samuel. John was left with five children aged between one and twelve and no way of caring for them. It probably sounds harsher than it actually was, but the eldest two, William and John, were farmed out as apprentices in December 1818 after their mother had died in the October. Betty was apprenticed in August 1820, aged 9. Abraham, our direct ancestor, also aged 9, was apprenticed in 1824. Samuel, I'm not sure about as yet. My fear is that he died in infancy, maybe due to complications related to his birth and his mother's death, I don't know.

The mitigation we offer on John Hollingrake's behalf, is that his children were probably apprenticed to family and friends who cared for them in a way better than the Dickensian Oliver Twist fashion you could imagine. Sally had a younger brother, James Barnes, who had moved down the valley from Withens Clough to the lower part of Crag Vale close to Mytholmroyd. He was a weaver, and a weaver in a time that this industry was changing quickly. The Luddite rebellion had been over for less than a decade and production was changing from piece workers and small water powered mills in the high valleys to larger mills in the valley bottoms close to the canals and turnpike roads. James (shall we call him Uncle Jim) lived at New House in Mytholmroyd and took Abraham on as an apprentice weaver. New House was within a few hundred metres of Mytholmroyd centre and, although Uncle Jim is reputed to be a handloom weaver, there were modern mills here in the valley bottom.

Whether or not Abraham served his apprenticeship on hand looms or power looms, by 1838 he was living and working just over the valley in Luddenden, probably for John Murgatroyd, as an overlooker (manager) in a worsted mill. In 1851 he was manager of John Murgatroyd's newly built, steam powered, Oats Royd Mill. Then, sometime before 1861, he formed a partnership with his son-in-law George Clegg who was the bookkeeper for Oats Royd, and started manufacturing worsted yarns themselves as Hollingrake and Clegg.

Abraham and his wife, Grace Spencer, had just two daughters: Sarah, who married George Clegg, and Ellen, who married a prominent Methodist minister, William Henry Greenwood.