Charles Wicksteed (engineer)

His parents met when Charles senior arrived in Leeds in 1835 to lead Mill Hill Chapel, at the heart of that industrial city, and two years later they married.

Brothers included Philip (Henry), the economist and Unitarian theologian, and (Joseph) Hartley, president of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers,[1] whose daughter Mary Cicely married the Australian surgeon Sir Alan Newton.

In the early twentieth century, he a wrote several pamphlets on topics including agricultural labour, capital, and what he called 'the farce of nationalisation' of the coal board.

Architects Gotch & Saunders worked with Wicksteed to develop plans, including a large park at the centre of the estate.

However, Wicksteed's attention soon focused on making the park a better place for children to play and in time he developed robust swings, slides and other playground equipment.

[11] As Wicksteed set about improving the play equipment in his park, he also turned his playground inventions into commercial products that would soon be sold across the country and the world.

[12] By the 1950s, his products had been sold in Canada, New Zealand, India, Hong Kong, Malta, the West Indies, North Borneo, Southern Rhodesia and St Helena, as well as the Belgian Congo, Venezuela and the USA.