Columns at front of Liverpool Road entrance, Joseph Crossfield & Sons, Warrington, Cheshire, England, UK, WA5 1AB


Joseph Crosfield (5 October 1792 – 16 February 1844) was a businessman who established a soap and chemical manufacturing business in Warrington, which was in the historic county of Lancashire and is now in the ceremonial county of Cheshire. This business was to become the firm of Joseph Crosfield and Sons. Early life Joseph Crosfield was born in Warrington, the fourth son of George Crosfield and his wife Ann née Key. The Crosfield family had been Quakers since the time of George Fox and this tradition was maintained by George and subsequently by Joseph. George Crosfield was a wholesale grocer in Warrington who also had interests in a sugar-refining business in Liverpool. The family moved to Lancaster in 1799 for George to develop a sugar-refining business there, while still keeping an interest in his grocery business in Warrington under the care of his assistant, Joseph Fell. Nothing is known of Joseph's early life in Lancaster. From September 1807, a time close to his 15th birthday, he was apprenticed for 6 years to Anthony Clapham, a druggist and chemist in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. By 1811 Anthony Clapham was also a soap manufacturer. In 1814, Joseph's apprenticeship having finished, at the age of 21 he decided to establish his own soap making business in Warrington. At this time soap manufacturing was growing rapidly in the Mersey bad recently developed canals and river navigations in the area which allowed for easier transport of the raw materials into the factories and for the distribution of the finished products. A number of new large soaperies had recently been established in the nearby towns of St Helens, Runcorn and Liverpool. Joseph Crosfield's soapery was established on the north bank of a loop of the river Mersey in an area known as Bank Quay, near to urban Warrington but at that time separated from it by a stretch of fields. Other industrial premises were nearby. The premises occupied that of a failed wire mill were sourced


Size: 5112px × 3420px
Location: Bank Quay, 4 Liverpool Road, Warrington, Cheshire, England, UK, WA5 1AB
Photo credit: © Tony Smith / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

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