Arthur Ratcliffe (17 February 1882 – 3 May 1963) was a British

Conservative Party The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right. Political parties called The Conservative P ...

politician who served as the

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

(MP) for the Leek division of

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...

from 1931 to 1935. Ratcliffe stood for

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

only once, at the 1931 general election, when he overturned the comfortable majority of

Leek The leek is a vegetable, a cultivar of ''Allium ampeloprasum'', the broadleaf wild leek ( syn. ''Allium porrum''). The edible part of the plant is a bundle of leaf sheaths that is sometimes erroneously called a stem or stalk. The genus ''Alli ...

's sitting Labour Party,

William Bromfield William Bromfield (24 January 1868 – 3 June 1950) was an English trade unionist and Labour Party politician from Leek in Staffordshire. He was the town's Member of Parliament (MP) for all but four of the years between 1918 and 1945. Bromfi ...

, winning the seat with a majority of 2.8%. Ratcliffe did not defend the seat at the next election, in 1935, when Bromfield was returned in a two-person contest with a National Labour Party candidate. It was suggested that he should stand in the 1939 General Election, but that did not happen. He owned a building firm and built a house for himself on a hill at Ecton in

, about 12 miles from the town of

. It became known as "Ratcliffe's Folly", or "The Castle" because of its copper spire and battlements. Construction started in 1922 and continued until 1939 with various alterations and additions. The spire was constructed in 1937 and completed with an 8-inch golden ball on the top.

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* 1882 births 1963 deaths Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies UK MPs 1931–1935 {{England-Conservative-UK-MP-1880s-stub