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The
English inventor and manufacturer, Sir Isaac Holden was the son of Isaac Holden,
who hailed from Cumberland, and was born at Hurlet, a village between Paisley and Glasgow, on the 7th of May 1807.
His father ensured that he had as much elementary education as was possible. At the age of ten he began
work as a weavers draw boy, and he was later employed in a cotton mill.
During this time his education was continued at night school, and
occasionally as funds allowed, he went to the grammar school, he later went regularly
to this school for a year or two until he was fifteen, when he was
apprenticed to an Uncle who was a shawl weaver but he was not suited to
this kind of work.
In 1823 he became a teacher in Paisley, and in 1828 he became a
mathematics teacher at the Queens Square Academy in Leeds. After six months he was transferred to
a grammar school near Huddersfield, and shortly afterwards became classical master at Castle Street Academy, Reading. It was here that in 1829 he invented a
'Lucifer' match by using sulphur as a medium between the explosive material and the wood, but he
did not patent his invention.
His health failed again in
1830 so he returned to Scotland and a school set up for him by a friend.
Later he was recommended for a bookkeeping post at Messrs. Townend
Brothers of Cullingworth, where his interest in machinery drew him from
the counting house to the mill, where his experiments led to the invention
of a square motion wool comber and along with S. C. Lister (Later to
become Lord Masham), a process for making 'Genappe' yarns for which a
patent was taken out in 1847.
They
set up a firm together in 1848 called 'Lister and Holden' which
established a successful business near Paris.
Lister retired in 1850 and the company was succeeded by Isaac Holden and
Sons which at the time was the largest wool combing business in the world,
They employed up to 4000 people in Yorkshire.
Due to his health problems he was advised to undergo a change of
occupation and in 1865 he entered politics as the Liberal MP for
Knaresborough.
He served as an MP until 1868, and did not get elected again until 1882
when he was elected for the Northern division of the West Riding, and then
for Keighley in 1885 until 1895.
In
1893 he was knighted and became a Baronet.
He died four years later at Oakworth House on 13th August 1897.
The
house was left empty, then became derelict and was destroyed by fire in
1909.
Isaac's son, Angus Holden was created a peer in 1908, and held the title of
Baron Holden of Aston.
The park was presented to Oakworth Urban District council on 23rd May 1925
by Francis H. Illingworth, Sir Isaac's Grandson.
There are two plaques mounted on the park gate posts. they describe the
presentation of the park and the names of the people present at the
ceremony:
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Holden Park
This park site of the residence of the late
Sir Isaac Holden, Bart, M.P.
1807 - 1897
Was presented in his memory
by his
Grandson
Francis H. Illingworth Esq. J.P.
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Opened May 23rd 1925
Oakworth UDC
Members
Robert Heaton Esq. J.P. Chairman
Hartley Waterhouse Esq. Chairman Parks Committee
Edgar Middleton Esq.
Edmund Harrison Esq.
Joseph Hill Esq.
Jonas Sugden Esq. Cllr.
James Henry Heaton Esq.
Henry Anderson Esq.
Dick Akeroyd Esq.
William Greenwood Esq.
Samuel Dixon Wood Esq.
Robert Hutchinson Esq.
Jas. A. Sharp Clerk to Council
Geo. Blackbrough Engineer & Surveyor
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The
following text is reproduced here with the kind permission of Malcolm
Shifrin, he's the author of a website about
Victorian
Turkish Baths, it gives details of Isaac Holden's private turkish bath
at Oakworth house. It includes plans of the bathrooms in Oakworth house.
Oakworth House was built in 1875 by Isaac Holden on the site of an earlier
house. Holden, was responsible for the invention of advanced woolcombing machinery at his works at Alston, near Bradford. He was a Liberal MP for thirty years from 1865, was made a baronet in 1893, and died in 1897.
In July 1877, Holden wrote to Joseph Constantine asking him to call in order to advise on how to improve the heating of the house, and about the possible installation of a Turkish
bath.
Holden was unaware, when writing the letter, that as a young lad Constantine had been a hand comber at Holden's mill and had lost his job there after the invention of the new
machinery.
But, as he later told Mrs Holden, it was the best thing that could have happened to
him.
Constantine became a bathman in Keighley and in 1850 opened his own establishment in Manchester, adding a Turkish bath there in
1857. In 1886, in conjunction with Thomas Whitaker, he took out a patent on the Convoluted Stove which he later used to heat Holden's Turkish bath and
which in the intervening period, had become the most popular furnace for heating such baths.
The house had its own winter garden, adjoining which was a billiard room. Unusually, the Turkish bath opened directly out of this room. It comprised a hot room, 11x13 ft; a shampooing room, 11x12ft, with shower, spray and douche, and a cooling room, 10x11ft.5 The whole layout and style of this Turkish bath seems to be rather similar to that which Constantine designed and fitted out ten years later for Theodore
Mander. But while Holden's bath led directly off the billiard room, Mander's was only adjacent to it. It could be that in both cases, the Convoluted Stove additionally kept the billiard room warm.
Holden was an extremely health conscious person and a great believer in exercise. According to Constantine, even at the age of 83 he walked regularly for one-and-a-half hours daily and on his
return he went into his private Turkish bath, which is always kept warm, took a warm and cold shower and changed his underclothing...He takes one Turkish bath a week, and if the least out of sorts two or
three.
(Thanks to Steve Sharp, whose family have been builders in the area for over 150 years, and who 'contributed to the building of Oakworth House, the neighbouring chapel, and the Sunday
School').
This page is currently being revised in the light of new information found in the Holden Papers housed in the J B Priestley Library at the University of Bradford. In particular, further plans have now come to light which suggest that the plan and description below may only have been a proposal rather than the actual Turkish bath which was eventually built. Watch this space!
Our thanks go to Malcolm Shifrin.
Visit his 'Victorian Turkish Baths' website at http://www.victorianturkishbath.org
A not-for-profit educational project in the UK
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