The site of the building belonged to the Manor of Leeds and was held by copyholder until 1837 when the copyhold was transferred by Rachel Milnes to Maclea & March; in 1826 it had been converted to be a freehold.
In 1825 Charles Gascoigne Maclea and Joseph Ogden March were both ex-Matthew Murray apprentices commenced in business as iron and brass founders as well as flax and tow machine makers and the manufacturers of hydraulic presses based at No 4 Union Foundry, Dewsbury Road, and their first business was when they ordered a Cupola from Longden, Newton & Company of Sheffield.
At his point we will give brief outlines of the partners. Charles Gascoigne Maclea (1793-1864) seems to have been the driving force and was listed as a mechanic and local politician and a self-made man. The firm became highly successful and due to Maclea’s engineering experience and when the Great Exhibition was held in 1851 he was chosen to be one of the Judges for manufacturing machines and tools.
Time passed and Maclea left most of the business deals and day-to-day running to his partner while he concentrated on other things such as various commercial interests and in 1847 he was appointed a Director of the Leeds & Yorkshire Insurance Company and almost immediately became its Chairman.
Local politics was to take up much of his time. He was a member of the Whig/Liberal Party and an Alderman from 1842 -1862 and in November 1846 he was elected Mayor of Leeds but ill health forced him to resign in January 1847.
He was present at the laying of the foundation stone of the new Borough Goal at Armley and the foundation stone for the New Town Hall on 17 August 1853. Maclea was a Trustee of the Advowson of St Marks Church and a JP, he was also a member of the Leeds Philosophical & Literary Society. He was married to one of Matthew Murray’s daughters. He died at his home in Blenheim Terrace on 24 May 1864.
Joseph Ogden March (1799-1888) was born in Holbeck on 17 February 1799, his father being George Wood, who was engaged in the woollen trade and like Maclea he too served his apprenticeship with Matthew Murray at Murray, Fenton & Wood after which he joined Maclea in partnership.
He too married one of Murray’s daughters, Mary, but they seemed to have no luck with their children. In 1830 Joseph Ogden March Junior died 11 months and 20 days old, 1834 saw the death of Ann Maclea March at 8 years and 3 months, 1839 saw the birth of daughter Ann Maclea March who survived until 1847 but his wife Mary died aged 66 at their home, Beech Grove House, Leeds, on 18 January 1864.
March took his son George into partnership in the business because March senior was subject to ill health and for the last 8 years before his death he was an invalid.
Like Maclea, March took an active interest in public affairs. They were both members of the Town Council, both were elected Aldermen and both filled the office of Mayor, March in 1862-1863. As a friend of Education he was appointed a member of the first Board of Directors of the Mechanics’ Institute & Literary Society in December 1824 while in politics he was a Liberal and in Religion he was a Congregationalist, attending Queen Street Chapel of which he was one of the Trustees. Joseph died on 27 February 1888 at his home Beech Grove House leaving two sons and three daughters.
Now back to the Foundry. Maclea told the Factory Inquiry that the Foundry had a 6-hp Murray steam engine for power and that it employed 82 of whom 63 were men. The fitting shop was enlarged in 1831 and that by 1847 the works were laid out in the form of a courtyard surrounded by two-storey workshops with a reservoir some distance behind. In 1887 half the reservoir was sold to allow for the extension of the Leeds Corporation Gasworks at the time of a depression in the tool trade, and the business was wound up in 1889 due to the deaths of the partners. It was probably at its peak between 1850 and 1870 when it employed 310 workmen with a 30-hp engine. In 1851 they employed 211 men and by 1861 this had risen to 244.
In 1889 Messrs. Oliver & Appleton were employed to sell by auction the Foundry gear which was listed as follows, in the Foundry were two engines and boilers and three strong oak cranes, in the loam foundry and box yard was an iron crane and a Goliath, then addition there was a ‘drop’ for breaking metal and a blowing fan.
The premises were bought by a man called Rawson for £23,535 from the executors and he also owned a shoddy mill higher up Dewsbury Road. Rawson was possibly responsible for some rebuilding on the south side of the yard where there is a break in the building line by the entrance arch and a fine octagonal stair block in the yard while the chimneys indicated the former smiths shop in the foundry.
The building was renamed Union Mills and let to several tenants. Rawson mortgaged the property in 1903 and the tenants included G Glover, Gas Meter Manufacturer; Banks & Moores, printers; B Eastwood, wholesale clothiers; Chas Russell, printers; JM Siddell, roller blind makers. Soon these were joined by others like Kirk Preston & Company, drysalters and Carvers, furniture movers who used part of the foundry as a repository. Simpson & Sands, nail makers occupied most of the north block from 1910 onwards.
Today the building is very much in use and seems well maintained by the tenants who are there and anyone with a passing interest can still see how big the original premises had been and how far towards the Crown Point shopping mall it was. May this and other similar buildings long continue to survive.
Photo: Jeremy Morton
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Ken, so good to read this fascinating history, and the research you’ve done about the Union Foundry at the very start of Dewsbury Road. I’ve been researching the life and history of Joseph Ogdin March and his family and work for the last two years, because I work inside Beech Grove House these days, where he and his family lived! Beech Grove House is smack bang in the middle of University of Leeds campus and it’s the oldest building there. It was there long before the university started to appear around it. It’s not far from Blenheim Terrace where Maclea lived then. By the way his name was spelt ‘Joseph Odgin March’.
He did have four surviving children, and two of them continued to live in Beech Grove House, unmarried, after Joseph (and Mary previously) had died. The two sisters who lived there did a lot of charity work and supported a local church and built a working man’s institute in Woodhouse.
Joseph Ogdin March and his family are buried together in St. Matthew’s churchyard in Holbeck, and apparently there’s some stone memorial plaques inside St. Matthew’s that commemorate him and his family too. They were all buried in Holbeck, where he’d started out.
It’s interesting to read a lot more about their Union Foundry and ‘Maclea and March’ as a business, tied up with Matthew Murray and family. Thanks! I’ve developed in interest in the family since I started working their old home.