Scan and page transcript from:
Historical Sketches of Oldham by Edwin Butterworth
Pub. 1856
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Clegg, who has on all occasions shown a warm interest in every thing calculated to advance the progress or promote the prosperity of his native town. Immediately after the introduction of thc new law, a Board of Guardians was elected, and the office of law clerk was appropriately conferred upon Mr. Clegg. Ground was purchased on Royton road, and plans for the erection of a new workhouse having been accepted from Messrs. Travis and Mangnall, architects, Manchester, the present workhouse was completed in 1851, at a cost of £13,305 2s. 21/4d. Since that time numerous improvements have been effected in the arrangements of the house, and the affairs of the union have been conducted in such a manner as to call forth the encomiums of the authorities at Whitehall, and the workhouse has been held up to other unions as a model for imitation. A new Lunatic Asylum, adjoining the workhouse, has been completed in the present year, at an expense of about £2000.
The noblest public institution in the town, however, is the offspring of private benevolence - the donation of one great-hearted man to posterity - the Blue Coat School on Oldham edge, which, from some unaccountable reason, Mr. Butterworth passes over with merely a casual notice, in his account of the hat manufactory of the Messrs. Henshaw. As there mentioned, the Oldham Blue Coat School was founded by Mr. Thomas Henshaw, who, by a will dated November, 1807, made a bequest of £20,000 to endow such an institution in Oldham, and by a codicil, dated January 9, 1808, he made a further bequest of £20,000 more for the same object, these sums being vested in trustees, who were authorised to establish a school at Oldham, on condition that the inhabitants would provide a site and suitable buildings; and a second eodicil directed that the money should continue in the firm as long as the executors determined. On the death, or rather suicide of Mr. Henshaw, in 1810, a bill was filed in the Court of 236 |
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