John Rylands Library named after mill owner from St Helens

Born in 1801, John Rylands was the third son of Joseph Rylands, who was a manufacturer of cotton goods in St Helens.

After learning the hang of the cotton trade from a young age, John entered into a partnership with his father and two elder brothers, Joseph and Richard, to establish the family firm, Rylands & Sons.

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The old St Helens Coat of Arms above the library doors (Image: St Helens Star)

Establishing the firm in Wigan in 1819, the family business manufacturered and distributed linen, and opened its first warehouse in Manchester in 1822.

With business expanding rapidly, Rylands & Sons branched further out into the manufacturing world and became merchants, as well as manufacturers, following the erection and acquistion of more mills in Wigan and Bolton.

After his elder brothers retired from the business, and a few years before his father's death, John became sole proprietor of Rylands & Sons and he went on to take business further afield and opened warehouses in London.

Eventually, the business expanded to become the largest textile manufactuer in the UK and employed 12,000 people across 17 mills at its peak. This resulted in John becoming the first millionaire in Manchester and presumably from St Helens.

The neo-gothic library was modelled like a church and opened in 1900 (Image: St Helens Star)
Incorporating Rylands & Sons into a limited company in 1873, with a capital of £2 million, this enabled the business to expand into the manufacture of ready-made clothing and move into corners across the world.

Highlighting its global reputation, the business won prizes for the quality of its work in exhibitions in Cape Town in 1877 and Paris in 1878.

While Rylands & Sons rapidly increased under the Parr-born owner, John retained sole management of the business for most of his life and was known for working 12-19 hour days over the course of his career.

Because of the way that John Rylands had structured his company, it meant that the business long survived him and continued operations until 1989, an existence of 170 years.

The library has more than a million works in the building (Image: St Helens Star)
After two failed marriages and six children that did not survive him, Rylands moved to Stretford in 1857 and wed Enriqueta Tennant.

Acquiring John's fortune following his death in 1888, aged 87, Enriqueta commissioned an architect to design a library in her late husband's honour, with the John Rylands library opening on Deansgate in Manchester in 1900.

The historic reading room, with a statute of John Rylands (Image: St Helens Star)
Becoming the first building in Manchester to be lit entirely by electricity, the church-modelled library contains the old crest of St Helens on its doors, and has attracted national and international recognition for its neo-Gothic Edwardian structure.

Merging with the University of Manchester in 1972, the Grade I listed building now contains more than 250,000 printed volumes and more than one million manuscripts and archive material.

With a statue of John Rylands inside the reading room, the library has become a historic part of Manchester that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.

The library has the St Helens Borough crest above its main door (top right) (Image: St Helens Star)