LANCASTER CLICK the for sugar houses in that street. (For local directory of sugar houses, click here.) (For national directory of sugar houses, click here.)         The width of this map represents 1ml / 1.6km.
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Lancaster - Refineries in St Leonard's Gate. John Hodgson sold the first sugarhouse on St Leonardgate, with its brewhouse and warehouse, to John Lawson, a local merchant and Quaker, probably some time before 1680. Lawson built a bridge over the mill stream, and in 1680 a wharf, Lawson's Quay, on the Green Ayre, both we can assume to allow the speedier movement of raw sugar to his sugarhouse from his ships returning from the West Indies. The 1684 map of Lancaster shows this sugarhouse midway along St Leonardgate, and downstream from Lawson's Wharf, and I think where the present Council Offices and "Sugar House" are situated.

 

c1684 - the early sugarhouse.

 

c1778 - the later sugarhouse.

 

In February 1766, Robert Foxcroft of Lancaster leased his sugarhouse further along St Leonard Gate to five Lancaster gentlemen namely Robert Lawson, Abraham Rawlinson, Henry Hargreaves, Miles Birkett, and George Foxcroft, and Luke Astley a grocer of Preston. The whole, possibly known as the Sugarhouse Company, being divided equally into six shares. In 1769, Lawson, Rawlinson and Hargreaves bought out Birkett and Foxcroft, and in 1772 Rawlinson and Hargreaves bought the Astley share. A directory entry of 1793-8 shows the refinery belonging to James Hargreaves, Henry's son (see will). George Crosfield & Co are known to have been running the sugarhouse from 1827-1834. The Lancaster maps of 1778, 1807, & 1824 show only this one sugarhouse towards the northern end of St Leonard Gate, and slightly upstream from Lawson's Quay. The sugarhouse complex appears to have stood midway between the present Phoenix St & Germany St, and stretched from St Leonard Gate back to Cable St (now Parliament St). The various deeds (1766-9) give no details of the sugar house itself, just the "Sugar House Land" from St Leonard Gate back 117ft to the "Green Area", though they do describe the adjacent dwelling house and brewhouse fronting St Leonard Gate and the land behind. Both Heartwick Grippenhearl who was made a Freeman of Lancaster in 1748-9, and Johann Hinrich Holthusen who is listed in directories 1829-34, are known German sugar refiners in Lancaster. A photograph of the gravestone of Holthusen's wife Ann (1824) is shown in 'White2' (see sources below). There is a suggestion that in 1834 Holthusen was running a second refinery in Cable St, however this may simply have been the other end of Crosfield's ... more research needed.

Sources : Manchester Archives & Local Studies - Refs : L245, L246, L247. 'White1' ... "Lancaster - A History" by Andrew White, Phillimore, 2003. ISBN 1-86077-244-7. 'White2' ... "Life in Georgian Lancaster" by Andrew White, Carnegie Publishing, 2004. ISBN 1-85936-102-1. 'White3' ... "Lancaster - A Pictorial History", by Andrew White, Phillimore, 1990. ISBN 0-85037-744-5. Lancaster Historic Maps

 

Early Lancaster - from the north-east. The mill stream, which the sugarhouse land backed on to, is shown far left.

 

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