Place Name
Takes its name from the house, Wildcroft Manor, built by David Hartley following the death of local landowner Percival Lewis. His inheritors sold off the land in parcels allowing for a substantial building work to be carried out in the 1770s. Hartley was the son of the philosopher, also called David. He became a Whig MP in 1774 and from Parliament opposed the slave trade and the American War. Wildcroft Manor, which stood on the site now occupied by blocks of flats, was originally called Fireproof House. It was knocked down in the 1930s and all that remains are a pair of wrought-iron gates, which were the main entrance to the grounds, and the Hartley Memorial Obelisk which was erected in 1776 there . Among other things they record how Hartley junior received £2,500 as a reward from the government for his invention. Among those who saw first-hand the house was Sir Richard Phillips who wrote: “When I saw it, [it] was filled with workmen who were converting it into a tasteful mansion, adding wings to it, throwing out verandas, and destroying every vestige of its original purpose. One of the workmen shewed me the chamber in which in 1774, the King and Queen took their breakfast, while, in the room beneath, fires were lighted on the floor, and various inflammable materials were ignited, to prove that the rooms above were fireproof. The alterations making at the moment enabled me to comprehend the whole of Mr Hartley’s system. Parts of the floors having been taken up, it appeared that they were double, and that this contrivance consisted in interposing between the two boards, sheets of laminated iron or copper.” In the 19thCentury Wildcroft House became the home of Sir George Newness, a self-mad man who began his career as a clerk but who set up a vegetarian restaurant in Manchester, which was so successful he was able to launch a magazine Tit-Bits, which made his fortune.
