Frederick Bishop
BISHOP, Frederick (c. 1815-91), solicitor, Stoke upon Trent.
Frederick Bishop was born on 15 December 1815 at Shelton, the son of William Bishop, an attorney, of Shelton Hall and Mary Ann nee Chatterley. Frederick Bishop was articled to his father, and in 1841 was appointed clerk to Shelton Gas Co. Ltd. By 1851 he was in practice as a solicitor and partner in the firm of Bishop and Blakistone.
He acted as solicitor for the Staffordshire Potteries Building Society in1854 and was a director of the Potteries Street railway in1862 and also of the Chatterley Iron Company. His father retired from practice about 1866.
Frederick Bishop served as chief bailiff of Hanley in 1847.
Bishop was an astute property dealer:-
He bought the Mount estate, Penkhull, from the Spode family in 1856, and laid out Prince's Road with good-class terraced housing. He sold land to Hanley council for use as a cemetery about 1860, and also sold ten acres of the Mount estate as a site for the new North Staffordshire Infirmary, to which he gave £1,000.
Stoke Corporation agreed to purchase 21 acres of land for Hartshill cemetery from Frederick Bishop at a cost of £3,450. The agreement included the proviso that the corporation was to pay half of the cost of a new road - Queens Road to run from the cemetery to Princes Road at Hartshill. Frederick Bishop then tried to persuade the North Staffordshire Infirmary to pay the other half of the cost of Queens Road. They refused and he then got the corporation to agree to pay two thirds of the cost of the new road and the hospital the remaining third. He also altered the line of the new road which was originally to have skirted the western boundary of the North Staffordshire Infirmary so that it joined Princes Road further to the west. This allowed him to sell building plots on both sides of the new road. In fact only one site was sold fronting Princes Road where a row of six houses was built next to the Infirmary Lodge.
Queens Road, Penkhull - Hartshill
In 1888 the committee of the North Staffordshire Infirmary alarmed at the prospect of being entirely surrounded by houses bought the triangular site on the corner of Queens Road and Princes Road containing 3 acres for the premium price of £1,200. Frederick Bishop extended Queens Road to Penkhull at his own expense in the mid 1880s and began to sell sites for new houses.
He was patron of the church of St Thomas the Apostle, Penkhull, about 1883.
St Thomas Church, Penkhull - where Bishop was patron
In August1842 he married Eliza Agnes Watson at St. Pancras church, London, the ceremony being conducted by his brother, the Revd. William Chatterley Bishop, of Northampton. There were at least eight children by the marriage.
From about 1855 to 1875 the family lived at the Mount, Penkhull. Two of Frederick Bishop's children who died in infancy were buried in Penkhull churchyard.
The Mount, Penkhull - former home of Josiah Spode II
Frederick Bishop died at Portman Square, London, on 25 August 1891.
SOURCES: Census 1861; Dir. 1851; A. Dob, The Mount Estate; R Talbot, Penkhull Remembered Again; VCH VIII. A. Dobraszczyc notes.
