Alfred Hewlett

(1831–1918)

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Alfred Hewlett was a grand-nephew of the Rev. James Philip Hewlett I and became one of the foremost figures in British mining during the late nineteenth century.

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He married Elizabeth Darlington in 1857 at Chorley, Lancashire. They had three daughters: Amy (1858–1905), Ada (1863–1940), and May (1875–1883). At his death in 1918, his estate was valued at £286,510 — equivalent to more than £8 million in modern terms.

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In 1860, Hewlett was appointed Chief Mining Agent to the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres of Haigh Hall, Wigan. That same yea,r John Lancaster operated the nearby Kirkless Coal and Iron Company. In 1865, the two concerns merged to form one of the largest mining enterprises in the country: the Wigan Coal and Iron Company Ltd. Alfred Hewlett became its first Managing Director. Hewlett Pit at Hart Common, Westhoughton — sunk in 1865 and named in his honour — operated until 1931. Under his leadership, the company became a dominant industrial force in Lancashire.

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Beyond industry, Hewlett was deeply committed to education. He served as chairman of the governors of the Wigan Mining and Mechanical School (founded 1858). In 1879, to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, he proposed transforming the school into a college — the Wigan Mining and Technical College. He was made a Freeman of Wigan in 1901.

His philanthropic work was closely linked with James Darlington. In 1874, they jointly funded a new school at Coppull Moor. Later, when Darlington — then aged eighty-four — began the project of building the Church of St John the Divine, Coppull, Alfred Hewlett again acted as co-donor. Together, they provided not only the building but also its fittings: bells, organ, and communion plate. Coppull St John’s, built in the Edwardian period in the Victorian neo-Gothic tradition, stands as one of the last of the great churches of that style. The surrounding streets, Hewlett Street and Darlington Street, commemorate their benefactors.

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Hewlett has been described as an industrial titan and a significant local benefactor. Yet the mining world in which he prospered was marked by harsh conditions for workers and their families. In nineteenth-century Wigan, children as young as four were employed in coal and iron mines. Some worked long hours in darkness opening and closing ventilation doors; others laboured hauling heavy tubs of coal through narrow, waterlogged passages, often on hands and knees. Working days are commonly extended to eleven or twelve hours, sometimes longer.

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Such conditions formed the stark social background to the industrial wealth of the period — a world in which figures like Alfred Hewlett stood at the intersection of enterprise, philanthropy, and Victorian social reality.

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Sources and Further Reading

• Local histories of the Wigan Coal and Iron Company.

• Records of Wigan Mining and Technical College.

• Lancashire mining history archives and industrial records.

• Parish history of St John the Divine, Coppull.