Lupton family
Described in the city's archives as "landed gentry, a political and business dynasty",[2] they had become successful woollen cloth merchants and manufacturers who flourished during the Industrial Revolution and traded throughout northern Europe, the Americas and Australia.
William took "Town End" which included his father's dressing mill built in 1788, warehouses, the tenter garth stretching to Wade Lane and a substantial house.
[31][32] William, who married Ann, the daughter of tobacconist John Darnton,[33] shared responsibility for the business with his brother, Arthur II (1782–1824).
[37] The Lupton widows maintained their social status and living standards with their own personal estates and by developing their inherited urban landholdings.
[36] William's widow Ann, a woman of "considerable initiative and skill",[29] maintained the family business with her sons Darnton, Francis and Arthur.
[21] Originally Anglicans, by the early 19th century the Luptons were Dissenters, part of a close group of established merchant families who belonged to the Unitarian congregation of Mill Hill Chapel which included the Luptons, Oates, Bischoff and Stansfield families who were subsequently joined by new money, the Marshalls, the Kitsons and radicals such as Samuel Smiles.
[42][43] Arnold Lupton's wife, Jessie (1859–1938) was involved in political life and active in the Leeds branch of the National Anti-Vivisection Society.
He joined the board of the Bank of Leeds, became a magistrate of the West Riding of Yorkshire and overseer of the poor in the parish of Roundhay.
He attended Leeds Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge where he read history before entering the family business.
Led by Lupton, the committee cleared the York Street and Quarry Hill areas of almost 4,000 buildings and organised new housing.
Major Francis Ashford Lupton[104] was reported missing at Miraumont on the night of 19 February 1917 when he went out with one man on reconnaissance and was later found dead.
After their deaths, Lupton turned his family home, Rockland,[95] into an institution for the children of sailors and soldiers, and moved with his daughters to Roundhay.
Leeds University received its royal charter in 1904, naming "Our trusty and well-beloved Arthur Greenhow Lupton, chairperson of the Council of the Yorkshire College" as its first Pro Chancellor.
With friends, he started the Wetherby Water Works, was concerned with the Yorkshire Waste Heat Company, was a director of the North Eastern Railway and a West Riding magistrate.
[67] Elinor Lupton was awarded an honorary LLD for services to Leeds University in 1945[112] after chairing the Women's Halls Committee for 23 years.
[116] The women hosted visits from royalty, including the Princess Royal, her husband Lord Harewood, the Duchess of Kent and Lady Mountbatten.
[120][121] In the 1970s, the sisters placed a non-build covenant in the ownership deeds to preserve open grassland on Asket Hill, part of the family's Beechwood estate.
[132] He was the city council's Chairman of the Improvements Committee and promoted the construction of Leeds Outer Ring Road in the post-war years and the widening of the Upper and Lower Headrows.
[133][134] Hugh Lupton (1861–1947), Francis III's fifth son attended Rugby School before University College, Oxford, reading modern history.
He was apprenticed to Hathorn Davey, makers of heavy pumping machinery, in 1881 and rose to be managing director only to see the company taken over by Sulzer in the Great Depression.
nurse at Gledhow Hall, the home of her second cousin, Lady Airedale whose daughter the Hon Doris Kitson and her sister-in-law, Gertrude Middleton also volunteered.
[157] In February 1935, Mrs Noel Middleton was elected as a governor of Leeds YWCA at the annual meeting at which Dame Louise McIlroy led discussions about young women's access to university and potential careers in medicine and dentistry.
[161] Their youngest son, Oxford-educated pilot, Peter (1920–2010), is the grandfather of Catherine, Princess of Wales, Philippa Charlotte Matthews, and James William Middleton.
Moberly Bell was vice-chair of the Lyceum Club for female artists and writers[164] and the first headmistress of Lady Margaret School in Parsons Green.
Anne and her uncle Charles Lupton were guests when King George V visited the Beckett's Park Military Hospital on 27 September 1915.
[167][176] In 1938, she organised an exhibition at the London Housing Centre for the centenary of Octavia Hill's birth which was visited at her request by Queen Mary.
[189] Norman and Agnes's donation to the Leeds Art Gallery included works by John Sell Cotman, Thomas Girtin and J. M. W.
[21] More recent memorials are found in St John's Church in Roundhay,[199][200] and Mill Hill Chapel, where a stained glass window commemorates the family.
[204] During the late 1970s and 1980s, Beechwood College was a base for co-operative education and for a time housed the office of the Industrial Common Ownership Movement (ICOM).
They were keen to ensure that, despite housing developments on Asket Hill, as wildlife lovers, they would protect their family's land, "just as their great aunts had done years ago".
