Edward Godward 1841-1908
Edward Godward was one of the most remarkable men in the history of New Mills. A Quaker mill owner, his interests included politics, local government, education, the co-operative movement and architecture. He was perhaps the archetypal Victorian benevolent autocrat, yet he spent much of his life laying the foundations of the local democratic and educational institutions.

Born at Low Leighton, after four years of elementary schooling in Barnsley he joined his fathers twine spinning business in New Mills at the age of nine. He continued his education in the evenings at the Wesleyan school. At the age of twenty two he took over from his father. And by the age of twenty seven he had bought Brunswick Mill (now Swizzles Matlow), floating it as a public company seven years later. He also practised as an architect and surveyor, designing many buildings in the district, notably the board schools at New Mills, Hague Bar and Thornsett, and later in 1882 his own residence Cliff House on Albion Road.

 His dedication to education, started with his appointment in 1852 as assistant librarian at the People's Institute. He was one of the secretaries of the Mechanics Institute. In 1875 he was elected clerk to the new school board and remained so for twenty years, until responsibility for education was transferred to Derbyshire County Council by the 1902 education Act. Despite opposition to the religious provisions of the Act and several consequent brushes with magistrates, he stood for election to that authority, becoming one of its first aldermen and sat on their education committee until his death in 1908. One of his last actions was the donation of a thousand pounds to provide a Trust for scholarships to attend the secondary school.

 He was a man of strong convictions and always ready to express them. He participated to the full in local political life, helping in the formation of the first local board in 1876 and became the first chairman of the new urban district council in 1894. He presided over many stormy meetings, including one at which a brick was thrown at him through a window.

He was an active member of the Liberal Party, a pillar of the temperance movement and one of the founders of the local co-operative society. A man of many talents and wide-ranging interests, his contribution to local society was reflected by the numbers attending his three-quarter mile long funeral procession in 1908. He was laid to rest at the Friends Meeting House in Low Leighton.

 

 

 

This site is listed in the British Towns and Villages Encyclopaedia of Great Britain and we can be found in the entry for New Mills