Horace Mayhew

For the 19th-century journalist, see Horace Mayhew (journalist).

Horace Mayhew (20 June 1845 – 15 August 1926[1]) of Broughton Hall, Flintshire,[2] was a British mining engineer and colliery owner who founded the town of Broughton, Nova Scotia, now one of Canada's most famous ghost towns.[3] He was the son of John Mayhew Esq of Platt Bridge House, Co. Lancaster, and Elizabeth Mayhew (née Rapley),[4] JP Lancashire (1876), JP Flintshire (1888), Deputy Lieutenant (1900),[5] and High Sheriff of Flintshire (1904).[6][7]

Educated at King William’s College, Isle of Man, Mayhew began his career as an apprentice with the Wigan, Coal and Iron Company Ltd. Mayhew soon established himself as a preeminent mining engineer managing and part-owning collieries throughout the Wigan district. He became Managing Director of the Brinsop Hall Colliery Company working in partnership with A. H. Leech.

Wigan experienced dramatic economic growth and the population grew rapidly as the coal and textile industry expanded in the 1870s and 1880s. Mayhew was well connected. His brother Walter was Mayor of Wigan between 1876 and 1878 and in 1883 Mayhew formed a partnership with W. E. Gladstone, then Prime Minister. He started managing Gladstone’s extensive collieries and brickworks in Hawarden and in 1888 took over Halls Collieries at Swadlincote, Burton-on-Trent employing close to 2,000 mineworkers.[8]

  1. ^ Burke's Landed Gentry, 1965, 18th Edn pp 495
  2. ^ Page 76, A History of the Old Parish of Hawarden. T.W. Pritchard. 2002. Bridge Books. Wrexham
  3. ^ Source: 1923 Colliery Year Book and Coal Trades Directory. Published by The Louis Cassier Co. Ltd., from a copy held in the Scottish Mining Museum, Newtongrange, Midlothian
  4. ^ Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland Vol 1 [1894] pp1368
  5. ^ "No. 27301". The London Gazette. 2 April 1901. p. 2300.
  6. ^ "No. 27655". The London Gazette. 8 March 1904. p. 1538.
  7. ^ "No. 27377". The London Gazette. 15 November 1901. p. 7367.
  8. ^ http://www.wigantoday.net Wigan Observer, Obit. 17 August 1926