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Samson Fox

Samson Fox, inventor, industrialist and three-times Mayor of Harrogate, was born in Bowling, then near Bradford, in 1838, the son of James, an overlooker, and Sarah. Having been apprenticed as a mechanic he set up his own business as a tool manufacturer. He founded the Leeds Forge Company in 1874 at Armley and went on to make his fortune with two developments. The first in 1877 was the Fox corrugated boiler furnace, applicable to marine boilers. The second, equally crucial in an age of rapid developments in transportation, was a pressed steel underframe for railway waggons, which greatly improved rolling stock. He had factories in the USA at Joliet and Pittsburgh. He also pioneered the acetylene industry in Europe

Chris Dicken.jpg
Chris Dicken.jpg
Chris Dicken.jpg
Chris Dicken.jpg

Grove House, South Front

Another development was of so-called water gas, obtained by passing steam through coke, and used for lighting. With this, however, he ran into difficulties. It proved to be too powerful for ordinary domestic use and he naturally encountered hostility from coal-gas producers. The syndicate set up to develop it collapsed and Fox had bought back the shares when it began to fail. The writer Jerome K. Jerome, better-known as the author of Three Men in a Boat, in an 1897 article in ToDay then accused Fox of swindling the public. Fox sued. He was exonerated and Jerome had to pay the costs, but the damages awarded of just one farthing, as it was stated he had failed to take sufficient safeguards, damaged his reputation and probably cost him a knighthood.

For he had also been a great benefactor and active in public life. He had served as a councillor in Leeds and was for three years Mayor of the Borough of Harrogate from 1889 to 1892 and also a member of the West Riding County Council. All as a Conservative. He was a Justice of the Peace for both Leeds and Harrogate. His major philanthropic endeavour was the £46,000 he gave for new buildings for the Royal College of Music in London, which opened in 1894. Locally in Harrogate, he was remembered for the ox-roastings on the Stray on the occasions of Queen Victoria’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees in 1887 and 1897.

Chris Dicken.jpg
Chris Dicken.jpg
Chris Dicken.jpg
Chris Dicken.jpg

Grove House from the vestibule in Fox's day
Grove House, South Front

He had first come to Harrogate following a breakdown in his health in 1878 and was to make his home here at Grove House in 1882, which he went on to purchase three years later. The house, located off Skipton Road and close to the railway line by the time of his purchase, dated back to the early eighteenth century and had been an inn called the World’s End. It was rebuilt in the late 1740s and this structure was retained as a central core when later additions were made. By the close of the eighteenth century, for some reason, it had ceased to be an inn, been renamed Grove House and converted for use as a school. Over the succeeding years it was a private house, then a lodging house and again a school before being acquired by Fox. His architect, T. Butler-Wilson, added flanking wings to the original building, a stone porte cochère and heavy crenellation. The Royal Stables were erected with an ornate clock. By purchasing further portions of land in the immediate locality, the estate eventually was increased to some 40 acres. For example, the land that accommodated the gatehouse at the entrance to the estate, where a bungalow was built. The grounds housed a science laboratory and observatory.

Most of the stained glass and oak panelling came from the old Dragon Hotel on the opposite side of Skipton Road, just over the bridge. The clock tower for the stables, together with most of the stone used in building the east wing, tower and stables also came from that Hotel. The glass screen by the dining room had dragons encompassed in the design of the glasswork. The house was equipped with gas lighting and central heating, generated from a water gas plant within the grounds. The west wing was originally built to provide a suite of rooms for the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and his entourage when visiting Yorkshire, and included a library, billiard room and small gallery. The east wing, on the site of the former Grove House Winter Gardens was built to provide a music and ballroom, together with an art gallery on the first floor. A surviving album of photographs shows the house in Fox’s time.

Chris Dicken.jpg
Chris Dicken.jpg
Chris Dicken.jpg
Chris Dicken.jpg

Grove House, Trade entrance
Grove House, stables, the horses' Turkish bath

Fox married twice. First in 1861 to Mary Slinger of Knaresborough. She died in 1895, aged fifty-four, at Grove House. The year before, their twenty-year-old son Harry had died at the Leeds Forge following an epileptic fit. Fox remarried in 1899, Annie Louisa Baxter. Back in 1891 she had been a nineteen-year-old second housemaid at Grove House, but by the census of 1901 she was mistress there. But she did not enjoy it for long. Fox died in 1903 of blood poisoning. He was buried at Woodhouse Cemetery, Leeds, along with his first wife. Anne remained in Harrogate for a time but in 1912 married a German ship broker and coal exporter, thereby becoming a German citizen. It was not until after World War Two that she resumed her British citizenship on his death, later living on Harlow Oval.
As to Grove House, it was used as a hospital during the First World War. The Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes then purchased the premises in 1926 for £10,000 for use as an orphanage. It opened at Easter 1927 and the parade of members took three hours to march from Harrogate Railway Station with four brass bands. Grove House Orphanage operated from 1926 until Christmas 1947, even though some army units were stationed here during World War II. It was later converted to become a Convalescent Home for the Order. The R.A.O.B. eventually sold the premises which were acquired by Springfield Healthcare.

Fox has an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography but see in particular Malcolm Neesam, Wells & Swells: The Golden Age of Harrogate Spa, 1842-1923 for his life and work.

Grove House photographs courtesy Graeme Lee, Springfield Care Homes

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