Marshall Stevens, Vanity Fair, 1910-09-14

Marshall Stevens (18 April 1852 – 12 August 1936) was an English

property developer Real estate development, or property development, is a business process, encompassing activities that range from the renovation and re-lease of existing buildings to the purchase of raw land and the sale of developed land or parcels to others. R ...

. His work with

Daniel Adamson Daniel Adamson (30 April 1820 – 13 January 1890) was an English engineer who became a successful manufacturer of boilers and was the driving force behind the inception of the Manchester Ship Canal project during the 1880s. Early life Adamson ...

and others led to the construction of the

Manchester Ship Canal The Manchester Ship Canal is a inland waterway in the North West of England linking Manchester to the Irish Sea. Starting at the Mersey Estuary at Eastham, near Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, it generally follows the original routes of the river ...

, completed in 1894.

Biography

Stevens was born on 18 April 1852 in Plymouth, England, the eldest child of four sons and two daughters of shipowner and coal merchant Sanders Stevens (1826 – 1910) and Emma Ruth (1832 – 1899; née Marshall). He was appointed general manager of the Ship Canal Company in 1891. On 1 January 1897, Stevens resigned from the canal company to become general manager of Trafford Park Estates, a company set up by

Ernest Terah Hooley Ernest Terah Hooley (5 February 1859 – 11 February 1947) was an English financial fraudster. He achieved wealth and fame by buying promising companies and reselling them to the public at inflated prices, but a prosecution exposed his deceitful ...

to develop

Trafford Park Trafford Park is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, opposite Salford Quays on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, southwest of Manchester city centre and north of Stretford. Until the la ...

, the ancestral home of the de Trafford family, into what became the first and largest planned industrial estate in the world. He also served as

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...

Member of Parliament for Eccles from 1918 to 1922. Stevens died on 12 August 1936 in

Devonport, Devon Devonport ( ), formerly named Plymouth Dock or just Dock, is a district of Plymouth in the English county of Devon, although it was, at one time, the more important settlement. It became a county borough in 1889. Devonport was originally one o ...

and was buried in St Catherine Church,

Barton-upon-Irwell Barton upon Irwell (also known as Barton-on-Irwell or Barton) is a suburb of the City of Salford, Greater Manchester, England, with a population of 12,462 in 2014. History Barton Old Hall, a brick-built house degraded to a farmhouse, was the se ...

. Shareholders in Trafford Park Estates subscribed to pay for a memorial.

Legacy

A 22-ton block of Welsh granite with a bronze portrait medallion and inscription was designed and made by

Ashton upon Mersey Ashton upon Mersey is an area of the Trafford, Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, with a population of 9,693 at the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 census. It lies on the south bank of the River Mersey, south of Manc ...

sculptor, Arthur Sherwood Edwards. It was unveiled at the junction of Trafford Park Road and Ashburton Road in October 1937. In 1993, the memorial was relocated to Wharfside Promenade with the introduction of a new road layout. As the site became part of

Imperial War Museum North Imperial War Museum North (sometimes referred to as IWM North) is a museum in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford in Greater Manchester, England. One of five branches of the Imperial War Museum, it explores the impact of modern conflicts on pe ...

, the memorial was put into temporary storage when construction work began on the museum. It is now in Trafford Park Village at the junction of Third Avenue and Eleventh Street. The memorial is inscribed:

References

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Stevens, Marshall 1852 births 1936 deaths Businesspeople from Plymouth, Devon British real estate businesspeople Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies UK MPs 1918–1922