Joseph Whitworth - Awards and Memorials

Awards and Memorials

Whitworth received many awards for the excellence of his designs and was financially very successful. In 1850, then a Fellow of the Royal Society and President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, he built a house called The Firs in Fallowfield, south Manchester. In 1854 he bought Stancliffe Hall in Darley Dale, Derbyshire and moved there with his second wife Louisa in 1872. He supplied four six-ton blocks of stone from Darley Dale quarry, for the lions of St. George's Hall in Liverpool. He was conferred with Honorary Membership of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland in 1859.

A strong believer in the value of technical education, Whitworth backed the new Mechanics' Institute in Manchester (later UMIST) and helped found the Manchester School of Design. In 1868, he founded the Whitworth Scholarship for the advancement of mechanical engineering. He donated a sum of £128,000 to the government in 1868 (approximately £6.5 million in 2010) to bring "science and industry" closer together and to fund scholarships.

Richard Copley Christie was a friend of Whitworth's. By Whitworth's will, Christie was appointed one of three legatees, each of whom was left more than half a million pounds for their own use, ‘they being each of them aware of the objects’ to which these funds would have been put by Whitworth. They chose to spend more than a fifth of the money on support for Owens College, together with the purchase of land now occupied by the Manchester Royal Infirmary. In 1897, Christie personally assigned more than £50,000 for the erection of the Whitworth Hall, to complete the front quadrangle of Owens College. He was president of the Whitworth Institute from 1890 to 1895 and was much interested in the medical and other charities of Manchester, especially the Cancer Pavilion and Home, of whose committee he was chairman from 1890 to 1893, and which later became the Christie Hospital.

The University's Whitworth Art Gallery (formerly the Whitworth Institute) and adjacent Whitworth Park were established as part of his bequest to Manchester after his death. Nearby Whitworth Park Halls of Residence also bears his name, as does Whitworth Street, one of the main streets in Manchester city centre, running from London Road to the south end of Deansgate. Near The Firs a cycleway behind Owens Park is called Whitworth Lane. In Darley Dale is another Whitworth Park. In recognition of his achievements and contributions to education in Manchester, the Whitworth Building on the University of Manchester's Main Campus is named in his honour.