Hazlehurst family, of Runcorn

Thomas Hazlehurst (1779-1842) was born at Winwick on 27 February 1779 and spent his early years at Frodsham, in Cheshire. In 1816 he began making soap at his Camden Works in Runcorn, building a very successful business as Runcorn grew to be one of Britain's most significant centres of soap manufacture. Raised in the Church of England, the death of his infant daughter Eliza in 1806 prompted a religious conversion and a turn to Methodism, so that the one-time churchwarden became a Class leader and Wesleyan trustee.

After the death of the elder Thomas on 18 February 1842 the business passed to his four sons, but by 1857 the active partners were Thomas (1816-76) and Charles (1819-78). Charles took a greater part in the firm and was responsible for the introduction of soap in tablet form in 1870. The younger Thomas was a dedicated philanthropist, especially to Methodist and other religious causes. He supported the building of twelve chapels and three schools in and around Runcorn, including the Italianate St Paul's (1864-66) in the town centre, designed to seat a congregation of 1400, and Trinity, Frodsham (1871-73), a Gothic chapel with tower and spire, designed by C.O. Ellison, of Liverpool. Thomas's generosity extended well beyond Runcorn: he donated some £70,000 to religious causes and amassed a collection of 100 presentation trowels from the invitations to lay foundation stones for chapels and schools across the country. Thomas was also a local preacher and up to a million copies of his sermons were printed and distributed as tracts.

After the death of Charles Hazlehurst in 1878 family involvement in the business reduced and the company was sold to Lever Brothers in 1911.

Thomas junior lost three sons in infancy. His elder surviving son, Thomas Arthur, was killed in a railway accident in 1869, just after his twenty-first birthday. A younger brother, George Steward (1850-1918), continued the commitment to Methodism and to civic and industrial life: he was one of the first lay representatives to the Wesleyan Conference in 1878, was Mayor of Birkenhead in 1901-02, and invented the Hazlehurst acid pump. He married Ada Mary Edmunds, daughter of a Banbury Wesleyan family; their eldest son, George Arthur (1873-1940) took Anglican orders and became a Canon of Derby Cathedral.

Sources
  • Peter I. Vardy, ‘Thomas Hazlehurst and his Family: Methodism and the Early Chemical Industry in Runcorn in the Nineteenth Century’, Cheshire History, vol 45 (2005), pp 67-82.
  • Additional material by Peter Vardy on the Runcorn History Society website

https://www.runcornhistsoc.org.uk/hazlehurst/hazlehurst_index.html.

  • Richard Rymer, ‘Memoir of Thomas Hazlehurst, Esq., of Camden-house, Runcorn’, Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, September 1844, pages 710-17.

Entry written by: DCD
Category: Person
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