#11022, Edward CROSSLEY

Edward Crossley was educated at Totteridge House and Owen's College, Manchester

On completion of his education, Edward entered the family business; 1861, accompanied his brother Walter to Australia and was there when Walter died in 1862; a Director of John Crossley and Sons Ltd on its formation, 1864. On his father's death in 1868, he found himself chiefly responsible for the management of the firm, with his cousin Louis John; Chairman 1891-1905; on Halifax Town Council, 1871-76 and 1881-86; Mayor, November 1874 to November 1876, 1884; Chairman Halifax Liberal Association, 1882-85; MP (Liberal) for Sowerby, 1885-92; completed his father's almshouses in Arden Road, Halifax at his own expense (said to be £16,000), 1870, and endowed them with £16,800 Indian Railway Stock, in 1872; President Halifax Literary and Philosophical Society, 1871; 1865-72, of 3 Park Road, Halifax (all the houses in Park Road having been built by the Crossleys between 1858 and 1865); 1872 bought Ravenscliffe, Skircoat Green, which he pulled down and built Bemerside on the site in the Elizabethan style; by 1881, owned Southfield, Ryde, Isle of Wight; a keen astronomer began his astronomical studies while living in Park Road and had a small telescope there; at Bemerside he established a well-equipped observatory in a circular building - still standing in 1953 - with what was at that time the second largest telescope in existence; (in 1895, because the Halifax climate did not allow this gigantic telescope to be used to full advantage, he presented it with all its accessories to the Lick Observatory in California. At Southfield, Ryde, where the air was cleaner, Edward Crossley also built a circular observatory, now an inhabited house. He left his house and contents at Southfields, Ryde and 2/9s of his estate to Arthur Andrewes (later Alderman and JP, of Ryde), who was to continue the Evangelical Protestant Chapel which Edward Crossley had estalished in 1893 in Newport Street, Ryde.

Edward Crossley was buried at Lister Lane Cemetery, Halifax, Yorkshire

Taken from the notes of Robert (Robin) Morley Fletcher (1935 - 2015)

Vanessa Griffith - June 2016