Charles Roe

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This page is about Charles Roe the Cheshire industrialist. For the coachbuilding company see Charles H. Roe

Charles Roe (1715 - 1781) was an industrialist from Macclesfield in Cheshire. He was born in Castleton, Derbyshire in 1715 and later moved to Macclesfield. His excursions into the silk trade made him one of the founding fathers of the Macclesfield silk industry. He established a mill to manufacture silk which ran successfully until 1758 when Roe ventured out into new areas.

In 1758, Roe took an interest in the copper mines at nearby Alderley Edge. In the same year he built a works on Macclesfield Common to smelt the copper and also copper ore from another of his ventures, the copper mines at Coniston in the Lake District. Coal was obtained from the nearby hills where shallow deposits of coal were mined. The success of the smelting works, lead him to build two other smelting works at Congleton and Bosley.

In 1764 Roe was granted a 21-year lease by the Bayly family to work for copper at the Parys Mountain in Wales and to mine at a lead mine in Caernarvonshire. The subsequent discovery of the “Great Lode” made Roe a rich man and turned the mountain into what was then the largest copper mine in Europe.

In 1767, Roe moved operations to Toxteth on the outskirts of Liverpool and opened two smelters on the banks of the River Mersey. The ore and coal from a mine in Wrexham now owned by Roe were offloaded at a small dock made for the purpose on Wellington Road.

Roe ceased mining at Alderley Edge in 1768, and concentrated on the Parys Mountain site. Mining at Coniston continued until 1770 when Roe turned to smelting copper from mines in Ecton, Staffordshire owned by the Duke of Devonshire. with calamine (zinc ore) from North Wales to make brass and founding the Macclesfield Brass Works.

At various time, Roe also had connections with mines and metal from Ireland having obtained a lease for the copper mines at Avoca in Ireland

Roe is remembered in Macclesfield by a memorial Tablet in Christ Church which lists his achievements in the silk and copper industries. Two streets are also named after him and his efforts, Roe Street and Calamine Street.

[edit] References

Bentley Smith, Dorothy (2005). A Georgian Gent & Co: The life & times of Charles Roe. Landmark Publishing Ltd., Ashbourne, Derbyshire.

Chalonor, W. H. (1953). Charles Roe of Macclesfield (1715-81). Trans. Lancs. and Ches. Antqn. Soc. vols. 62 & 63.

Herman, Arthur (2001). How the Scots invented the Modern World. Random House, 132-160. ISBN 978 0 609 60635 3.

Stanley, Louisa D. (1969). Alderley Edge and it’s Neighbourhood. E J Morten, Didsbury, Manchester, 33 - 37. copy of 1843 edition by Swinnerton, Macclesfield.