The Blackburn Times obituary to George Holden carries the headline “Attended the Opening of Panama Canal”. This would have been in 1916 because although the canal opened in 1914 the official opening ceremony was delayed because of the war. He was on the Executive of the Blackburn and District Cotton Manufacturers and attended in this capacity. A remarkable story but perhaps not that surprising given that in the space of only a handful of years in the late 1800s he rose from a clerk in a gas office to a cotton manufacturer owning and running a substantial number of weaving looms.

 

George started a weaving business in Chorley in 1886 deploying the ‘room and power’ system which enabled aspirant manufacturers, who lacked substantial financial capital, to lease space, power and machinery in an existing premise and then hiring operative to run the looms. Growth was rapid, riding the wave of the expansion of cotton manufacturing in Blackburn and Lancashire more widely. In 1887 he expanded the business, moving back into Blackburn and leasing looms firstly at Rockcliffe Mill (Paterson Street) and then in Commercial Mill (Bolton Road). Trading as Geo Holden & Co Ltd he acquired Rockcliffe Mill outright in 1896. The mill cost £16000 (approximately £2m in today’s money), a sum that that would have required substantial loans alongside George’s accrued savings from the business since 1886. In 1906 further expansion saw the purchase of Havelock Mill on Stancliffe Street. Subsequently this traded as T&A Holden Ltd as George’s sons move into the business – see also below. At the height of the boom in cotton manufacturing the family were running over 1500 looms, well above the average for firms in Blackburn.

 

As the business prospered George and his wife Ellen bought a house on Preston New Road. Four of their five children were born and brought up here. George was a champion of the New Jerusalem Church on Anvil Street, Blackburn; Chairman and Vice Chairman in the 1890s and 1900s and then in 1910 elected organist. A period as choirmaster followed. He died at home in 1922; Ellen having died seven years earlier. They are buried in the non-conformist section of Blackburn Old Cemetery. Tom Holden (grandson) recalls this about his grandfather: “He must have been a most remarkable man starting with nothing but probably worth 2 ½ million pounds in today’s money when he died.  He was typical of the textile entrepreneurs, a man dedicated to his family, a strict church-goer, a man of discipline and a man of great determination”.