Robert Scott (businessman, born 1822)

[3] Born the son of a farmer at Abbey Holm in Cumbria, he was a salesman by the time of his 1845 marriage to Maria in Cheetham Hill, north Manchester.

Scott became 'cashier', or finance director, of Tootal Broadhurst Lee in 1854 [3] and was deputy chairman of the Equitable Fire and Accident Office insurance company;[6] by the 1881 census he was described a spinning manufacturer.

[3] In 1874 Scott bought ten acres of land in Bowdon, south Manchester, from the Earl of Stamford at a cost of £7075[3] and built a large villa, Denzell,[7] to the designs of the architects Clegg and Knowles.

[2] The building is now known as Denzell Hall and is Grade II* listed as a notable example of a specifically commissioned late nineteenth century house for a wealthy patron with a high degree of craftsmanship and quality of materials.

[8] The listing cites the design as inventive and eclectic and by a noted Manchester architects' practice; [8] the architectural critic Pevsner described it as a luscious but 'very bad' mixture of debased Jacobean, Gothic and Italianate.