[19298] St Thomas, Huddersfield : Starkey

St Thomas, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, 1858-59.

By Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878).

Funded by the Starkey family who owned Springdale Mill, now demolished, across the road.

Grade ll* listed.

 

Starkey Memorial -

John Starkey - d1856.

Thomas Starkey - d1847.

Joseph Starkey - d1857.

 

The mill was the property of the brothers John, Thomas and Joseph Starkey, shrewd businessmen all, who, quick to recognise the potential profitability of new inventions in the textile industry, had, as early as 1835, installed seventy power looms in their mills. As with all innovations at that time, the looms were regarded with suspicion and some resentment by the workforce and soon after they were introduced fifty women and girls went on strike because their wages were reduced. There was more trouble at the mill in August 1842 when the plug rioters succeeded in drawing the plug from the mill boiler despite the stalwart defence put up by Joseph Starkey and his workmen.

 

Thomas Starkey died at the age of fifty three in 1847. Ten years later, his widow and his two brothers commissioned Sir George Gilbert Scott to design the church they intended to build in his memory. By the time the church was completed in 1859 John and Joseph Starkey had also died and a stained glass window was erected in memory of all three brothers. St Thomas' was the first 'high' church to be built in Huddersfield.

 

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