Frederick Whittaker Dixon

• Born                      16 April 1854 at Oldham
• Christening         22 June 1854 at St. Peters, Oldham
• Died                       16 November 1935 at Southport

Frederick Whittaker Dixon was born at Oldham on 16 April 1854, the son of Benjamin Dixon or Dickson, a staunch Methodist and his wife, Sarah, and was educated at Dronsfield’s Academy in that town. He entered the employ of Messrs Woodhouse & Potts as a youth and in 1880 became the partner of his fellow Methodists, Edward Potts and George Pickup at 18 Clegg Street Oldham. He established his own practice in 1889, first in the same building as Potts at 18 Clegg Street, and later at 52 Union Street Oldham, with another office in Manchester. He designed twelve mills in Oldham between 1891 and 1906. About that time, he took his son Ernest into partnership, the firm being known as F. W Dixon and Son and they were responsible for building another eleven mills as well as many extensions to existing factories.  By the start of the First World War, Dixon was again practising on his own, although around 1920 he was joined by Thomas Jackson Hill with the firm being re‑styled as Dixon, Hill & Company.

In 1896, owing to the state of his wife's health, Frederick Dixon moved to Southport, travelling each day to his Oldham office. For a time, he took a prominent part in the public affairs of his adopted town serving on Southport Council, becoming the mayor of that borough, (where he was also a Justice of the Peace), in 1906-1907. A native of Oldham, Dixon attended King Street Methodist Church, joining the choir at the age of seven, becoming organist and choirmaster when only 23 years of age and a teacher in the Sunday school. He was always proud of the fact that his father had been the first scholar on the formation of the Bank Street Methodist Sunday School on the 18th August 1835. In Southport he attended Duke Street Methodist Church and was co‑superintendent of the school for more than thirty years. He was also President at some time of the Free Church Council, the local Temperance Society and the Sunday School Union.

In his earlier mills, yellow brick was used to relieve the plainness of the outside walls, but a later technique involved pronounced brick piers between each window extending to the top of the parapet. The design of his towers was highly individual drawing on a wide variety of architectural styles. The firm also designed the Didsbury Institute of the British Cotton Industry Research Association and several churches and schools in Manchester, Oldham, Southport and London, but Dixon's most notable designs were for the Swedenborgians in Failsworth (1889) and the Primitive Methodists at Washbrook in Chadderton in 1892. Obtained a large number of commissions in Chadderton.

In 1877 Fred Dixon married Annie Noble of Oldham. They had two children, Edith and Ernest. He died on 16 November 1935 at Hotel Windsor, Lord Street Southport and was buried in Southport Cemetery

Reference    Oldham Chronicle 16 Nov 1935 Obit
Reference    Jones: Industrial Architecture
Reference    Gurr & Hunt: The Cotton Mills of Oldham. Third Edition Oldham 1998
Reference    Pevsner: South Lancashire
Reference    The Methodist Who’s Who 1912 Page 73

Address
1889-        18 Clegg Street Oldham
18 – 1935    52 Union Street, Oldham and Manchester

Residence
1881        49 St Thomas Street South, Oldham
1896        Southport
1912        “Redlands,” Southport
1935        Hotel Windsor, Lord Street, Southport