in
Vanity Fair, 1885 William Henry Houldsworth was born on 20 August 1834, the fourth and youngest son of Henry Houldworth (1797–1868) and Helen Hamilton. His mother died while he was very young; although her exact date of death is unknown, his father remarried in 1838. In the 1860s, Houldsworth purchased farmland by the
Stockport Branch Canal in Reddish and built
Reddish Mill, then the largest cotton-spinning mill in the world (construction began in 1863 and was completed in 1865). Four members of the Houldsworth family held a 60% share in the Reddish Spinning Company Limited, which built the North Mill (started in 1870) and the Middle Mill (started in 1874). An institute—now
Houldsworth Working Men's Club—was completed in 1874. All of these buildings were designed by architect
Abraham Stott. Houldsworth later commissioned
Alfred Waterhouse to design
St Elisabeth's Church, its
rectory, and
Houldsworth School. All of these buildings remain standing today. The beginnings of a
model village, known as
Houldsworth Model Village, were also laid out, with a variety of houses constructed in front of the mill. Some of these houses have since been demolished, but those on Houldsworth Street and Liverpool Street remain. He was created a
baronet in 1887 as
Sir William Henry Houldsworth, of
Reddish, in the Parish of
Manchester, in the
County Palatine of Lancaster, and of
Coodham in the Parish of
Symington in the
County of Ayr. The City of Manchester made him a freeman in 1905, and the
Victoria University of Manchester awarded him an honorary
LLD. In later life, Houldsworth moved away from Reddish and Manchester and focused on his estate at Coodham, Ayrshire, in Scotland, where he built a domestic chapel designed by Waterhouse. ==Legacy==