|
In 1833 the firm of Thomas Whitehead and Brothers bought land at Rawtenstall and built Lower Mill, Holly Mount House and Holly Mount School.
The house, divided into three for the brothers, was ready first, in 1835.
David Whitehead describes the building of "Holly Mount" in his diaries (1) |
|
1851 Census showing the Whitehead Brothers living at Holly Mount
(Click the image to enlarge)
|
|
"Brother Peter and I set our head and hands to work in planning the grounds and the buildings of Holly Mount, which we built upon the estate of land bought from Mr. Law.
Brother Peter and I fixed upon this spot, just before the south door of Holly Mount Observatory, the highest part of the ground, and drove a pile of wood down into the ground, from which we took all our levels for excavations, removing part of the hill, and forming the grounds and buildings of Holly Mount…Part of the houses and all the outbuildings were built from stone out of our own quarry on the same estate. The stones of the front and each end of the three houses came from Dean Clough, near Padiham". The first stone was laid on the 3rd April 1834.
|
Holly Mount from the air
|
|
When the three houses were built, the three brothers cast lots for which house each should have.
According to his diary "…and each took the house which fell to him by lot, and we were all well satisfied each with his own lot. |
I removed my family from Hall Hill to Holly Mount in the month of October 1835"
In 1842 W. Cooke Taylor wrote of his visit to Holly Mount:
|
"The residences of the Messrs Whitehead are built in a row on the top of a little eminence just above the factory. The three houses are, so to speak, echoes of each other; they have precisely the same aspect in front, the same set of conveniences in the rear, gardens of exactly the same size, and for aught I know, families of precisely the same amount, for in reckoning the children I soon lost count" (2) |
|
Holly Mount
|
|
Holly Mount contained a Chapel so that the Whiteheads could worship in their own home
In 1855, when the partnership of Thomas Whitehead and Brothers was dissolved, David Whitehead took over the Holly Mount Estate. Today Holly Mount, the former home of the Whitehead Brothers, the Valley's cotton kings, stands empty.
(1) "The autobiography of David Whitehead of Rawtenstall", published by the Helmshore Local History Society"
(2) W. Cooke Taylor "Notes of a tour in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire" Letter IV Rossendale forest, 1842 |
