A revolutionary cash flow scheme (From Lancashire Telegraph)

A revolutionary cash flow scheme

2:02pm Thursday 11th June 2009

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HISTORIAN Jack Nadin looks back at the 100 plus years of Padiham Building Society.

Building societies arose during the Industrial Revolution, to raise money by subscriptions for building or purchasing houses for its members.

In this respect, the predecessors of both the Burnley and the Padiham building societies were among the forerunners of the movements.

The formation of a Padiham Union Society was instigated at a meeting held at the Starkie Arms in 1823 and the original trustees were all businessmen or members of the ‘upper classes’.

These included Paul Tickle, a land agent, who was also a partner in the consortium that built Smithygate Mill on Mill Street in 1834.

Others were Elijah Helm, a cotton manufacturer, James Bertwistle, a joiner whose business still survives, manufacturer James Hoyle and Thomas Riding, a cordwainer.

This society was a ‘terminating’ society, that is, that once the objectives of the society had been achieved, the society was then terminated.

But then, in 1877, the Padiham Permanent Benefit Building Society was registered, after a series of meetings by interested businessmen and well-to-do trading families.

Richard Crawshaw was elected to the chair, other members included James Moorhouse, Peter Laycock, a clogger and shoemaker, Richard Bertwistle, Josiah Monk, farmer of Brookfoot Farm, and later the first chairman of Padiham Urban District Council, Henry Bridge, George Green and Eli Whitehead, a joiner and builder along with others.

The first recorded meeting was held at the Commercial Room of the Padiham Coffee Rooms and Commercial House Company in Burnley Road.

Their bankers were the Craven Banking Company and the first offices of the new building society were at the Local Board Office in Burnley Road, almost exactly on the site of the later, new headquarters.

Over the years it operated from rooms in the old Liberal Club, in a cottage and then a brand new office in Sowerby Street.

The name of the society was also changed and shortened to the Padiham Building Society in 1924 On May 31,1958, the official opening of the new headquarters was performed by Sir Harold Parkinson, of Hornby Castle, who had been associated with the National Saving Movement for many years.

There have been many people connected with the society, including Henry Coupland Jackson, his son Henry D Jackson and Tom Gill.

Tom lost a leg serving as a private in the First World War – he rose to captain, but devoted his life to education and taught at St John’s RC School Padiham.

Padiham lost its own permanent society when it was merged with Bradford and Bingley after 105 years.

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