What is the full name of the person whose leasehold interest were taken over by others?
The first attempt at reclaiming Chat Moss took place at the start of the 19th century. In 1793 William Roscoe began work on reclaiming the smaller Trafford Moss, now part of Trafford Park. By 1798 that work was sufficiently advanced for Roscoe to enter into a lease of part of Chat Moss from the de Trafford family, but no reclamation work was carried out until 1805.Reclamation methods varied somewhat during the 19th century, but three basic operations featured; constructing drains at appropriate intervals; building a system of roads to allow access to the land so that materials such as clay, lime or marl could be dumped on it, to give it body; and fertilising the land by adding manure, often in the form of the euphemistically named night soil, collected from neighbouring towns.
The reclamation of Chat Moss and Trafford Moss was innovative in that instead of constructing roads to give access for the material to be dumped onto the bog, a movable light railway was developed. Narrow gauge track – which allowed the weight of the wagons to be spread evenly across an area of the bog – was temporarily laid down and then picked up and relaid elsewhere as needed. Roscoe was declared bankrupt in 1821, but the reclamation work continued under the stewardship of others who took over his leasehold interest, amongst them William Baines, the anti-Corn Law MP and owner of the Leeds Mercury newspaper.Between 1831 and 1851, the population of nearby Manchester increased by more than 150 per cent, putting considerable pressure on refuse disposal. The problem was exacerbated by a gradual switch from the 1870s onwards from the older cesspit methods of sewage disposal to pail closets, which required regular emptying. By the 1880s, Manchester was producing more than 200,000 tons (203,209 t) of refuse annually, about 75 per cent of that being night soil. In 1895, Manchester Corporation purchased 2,502 acres (1,013 ha) of Chat Moss known as Chat Moss Estate from Sir Humphrey de Trafford, with a view to using the moss as a refuse disposal site. The final price paid by the corporation was £137,531 7s 1d (equivalent to £14.4 million in 2016)
William Roscoe