Percy Rickard - Totley Tunnel Engineer
Percy Rickard's talent for engineering showed itself early in his life. Born in Derby in 1859, the third child of six to William, a silk manufacturer and Marianne, Percy attended the local grammar school.
William Rickard's silk mill built in the 1860s, Bridge Street, Derby
At 14 his engineering career started with an apprenticeship at the Derby Locomotive Works of the Midland Railway. He worked his way through the workshops and drawing office and in his spare time attended classes in science and art. At 18, he went to work in Nottingham on the construction of the Nottingham and Melton branch of the Midland Railway. A couple of years later he moved to the Manchester drawing office of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company where he was entrusted with making surveys and contract drawings for major engineer projects. The most important of those being for an iron bridge carrying one of the main roads over the Victoria Station and for plotting the depth and direction of the currents in the Fleetwood Channel as part of its developed as a major port.
On the 13th September 1887 Percy Rickard and Elizabeth Teresa Jones were married in Islington. Elizabeth was born in the Mill End Road in 1866. She was the eldest of the nine children of Fredrick and Sarah Jones. Her father was a stonemason who was born, worked and died in the St. Pancras area of London.
In 1888 Percy was again working for Midland Railways this time as Resident Engineer of the Dore and Chinley line. He and his wife and young son, George lived in Totley Grove. They had two servants living in the house with them, Emma Wilson, cook and Emma Cooper, nursemaid. In Gardener's Cottage (now called Juniper Cottage), their gardener, Thomas Bowley lived with his wife, Kate and their young son, Robert.
Totley Tunnel, Padley portal
During the construction of the tunnel, the area around Totley Grove was very different from the semi rural retreat it is today. The house is just north of the entrance to Totley Tunnel and the spoil heap from the tunnel covers the field at the junction of Penny Lane and Hillfoot Road, putting Totley Grove at the centre of a major construction project. In fact the proximity of the house to the workings of the tunnel was a contributing factor in Percy Rickard's death.
The summer of 1893 was very hot and the living conditions for the navvy workforce and their families were primitive. There was no water supply or sewage system to the navvies' huts which drained into Needham's Dyke; described in Percy Rickard's obituary as a running sewer. Typhoid swept through the workforce. Percy Rickard was one of the victims. He died of typhoid in Totley Grove on 31st October 1893 aged 34 years and was buried in his home city of Derby. It was thought at the time that as Needham's Dyke ran through the grounds of his house, Percy had contracted the disease from its foul water.
At the time of his death, Percy and Elizabeth had three children. George was 4 years old; his sister, Elizabeth 2 years and their baby brother, Hugh, 11 months. In the census of 1901, eight years after Percy’s death, Elizabeth was living in Bakewell with her three children and a general servant. She described herself as a widow living on her own means. After the First War, she appears on a passenger list for Canada. She died in Ontario in 1951 aged 85, leaving her entire estate of £445 to her daughter. Apart from this mention in her mother's will, no other information about Elizabeth Teresa M Rickard has come to light.
George Rickard married and was living in New Jersey in 1930. He died at Niagara Falls, New York State in 1937, aged 48.
His brother, Hugh Percy fought in both World Wars. In the First War as a private in France with the 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade; and in the Second War as a General in the Royal Artillery. He was a prisoner of war in Stalag 344 at Lamsdorf, Poland in 1942.
In January 1894, The Institute of Civil Engineers demonstrated its regard for Percy Rickard's engineering talent by organising a reading and discussion of his paper, The Tunnels of the Dore and Chinley Railway. You can see a copy of this paper in the Sheffield Local Studies Library.