42.56 – Ellena, Margaret, William Albert and Christiana Sutcliffe

They could have had a hefty monument, but children of three of the town’s wealthiest non-Fielden manufacturers and managers are buried here – you wouldn’t suspect would you? Of course one did have a Fielden connection, but it was purely business. Read on to find out more.

Ellena Pilling, the uniquely-spelled first person buried here, isn’t the oldest person here – that honour goes to her husband, William Albert Sutcliffe. He’s an easy man to write about because he was rich, and that always means more newspaper copy. He was born in 1849 to William and Elizabeth (Eastwood) Sutcliffe. Elizabeth was a daughter of John Eastwood, as in the Eastwoods of Eastwood, a landowning family whose roots in the area predate the Normans. Elizabeth received a fine education and William Sutcliffe would have been an obvious match. Her father and one brother were running Eastwood Dyeworks and William, his brother John and father John were running Harley House Mill on Blind Lane. They, of course, lived at Harley House.

In 1857 his first wife, Ellena Pilling, was born in Walsden. Ellena’s childhood wasn’t much different since she, too, was the child of a cotton manufacturer. In her case this was James Knowles Pilling who owned Dancroft Mill and had formerly been running Deanroyd Mill along with his father Andrew and some of his brothers. Unfortunately after setting out on his own he struggled to make a go of things, and in 1879 was made bankrupt, with his liabilities over twice as much as his assets. He recovered (probably in no small part because of his family) and in 1881 was employing “57 men, 38 females and 4 boys” at Dancroft Mill according to the census. But in January 1882 he died and his family had to figure out a way forward. The Pillings and Sutcliffes almost certainly were moving in the same circles and if Ellena and William weren’t already a couple by then we’d be surprised. They were married in April that year and William Sr. sent all the mill’s employees to Hollingworth Lake for a “knife and fork tea” in honour of the wedding.

The following March William and Ellena welcomed their first and only child, Margaret. Ellena was unfortunately not well – already dying, in fact, from phthsis – and by June she WAS dead. Poor Margaret didn’t fare well after Ellena’s death and in December she also died, in her case from convulsions from an unspecified cause. Both were buried here and William grieved…grieved so much that, unlike many widowed men here, he didn’t remarry for nearly seven years.

Meanwhile, Christiana Susan Wrigley was living her own life at Robinwood House in Lydgate. She had been born in 1859 to Thomas and Mary (Fielden) Wrigley of Lydgate, and Thomas was, you’ll be unsurprised to know, a cotton man. His father Edmund ran Waterstalls Mill and Thomas was the manager at Robinwood Mill for many years. He was very popular in fact with Fielden Bros. even though the Fielden he married wasn’t one of their Fieldens. By the time 1890 rolled round Thomas was the manager of all Fielden Bros.’s mills, and the Wrigleys had moved to Waterside House. Christiana became involved at Christ Church with the Sunday School.

Christiana was unmarried and well off, and in a cotton family, and so she and William’s paths will have crossed the same way his and Ellena’s would have crossed. They were married in August 1890 and their wedding made the newspapers as is no surprise. For William it was a second chance at happiness, and for Christiana it was a leap in the dark, as all marriages in those days were for women. Would you get a prince or would you get a frog? Christiana seems to have gotten a prince, or at least, not a frog.

The couple had six children together, all of whom made it to adulthood. You might say of course they did, they were rich! But remember Ellena and Margaret. Money couldn’t pay for a cure for everything. They were still lucky in many ways. At first they stayed at Harley House but Christiana clearly remembered her childhood days in Lydgate fondly because later she and William took up residence at East View. It sits on the opposite hillside to Robinwood House, just past where Mount Olivet Baptist used to stand on Jumps Road. Despite their close proximity to Harley Wood the couple remained old faithfuls at Christ Church where William took on a second career as the Vicar’s Warden, holding that post for 36 years until his death. Now that’s commitment.

William died in 1919 and was much lamented, as they say around here (in the graveyard) and spoken of highly in the newspapers. He had gone to work in his office at Harley Mill and not returned home for his lunch, and when son Thomas went to go see what where he was found him dead in his chair from a suspected heart attack. Christiana was left a well-off widow. How well off? Well, his estate was valued at £67,462, which is a cool £2.9m in today’s money. While Christiana would “only” receive an annuity of £200 a year for the rest of her life, it was still a decent amount. The rest was shared amongst the children as they all hit the age of 21. Only the youngest, Sarah, was under 21 in 1919, so the children – who all still lived at home – were quids in, so to speak, and were able to help their mother easily.

Christiana stayed at East View for a few more years but eventually moved down the hillside to Thornhill. Her health suffered over the years and by 1939 was marked as “incapacitated” on the Register, and a live-in nurse was in the household along with now three of her daughters. All were described as living on private means, which isn’t a surprise. You would too if you inherited that sort of money! And Christiana had money from her own family too. All in all the Sutcliffe women had a lucky break in many ways.

Christiana died in 1942 and joined her beloved husband here, along with his first wife and first child. Think of the wealth these people had and scroll back up and look again at the gravestone – without knowing them, it’s easy to think that these were people who at least in death knew that humility was important. There are bigger, fancier, more expensive monuments here that tell the world how much money the dead beneath them had at one point…but the Sutcliffes knew you can’t take it with you, and it’s better spent in life, on life.