A Brewer's Auction Mart Challenge

In January 1903 Lancaster brewer William Mitchell issued a challenge to his friend Richard Turner, a Bentham auctioneer. Mitchell was the owner of the Royal Oak Hotel (now the office and saleroom premises of Richard Turner and Son) in Bentham, and he offered to build an auction mart in a field at the rear of his hotel if Bentham farmers, via Turner, could form a Company that would run it. Whether this “challenge” resulted from something said over a friendly glass of ale, or was the outcome of a carefully planned joint business venture, is now lost in time, but the events that happened in consequence are well-documented and offer a fascinating insight into how a part of Bentham’s commercial history was made.

Turner and Mitchell would both have an informed overview of the buying and selling needs of the local farming community. For Turner, the marketing of livestock was at the heart of a family business that had already been in existence for a hundred years. It is probable therefore that Mitchell’s challenge was anything but an impromptu or informal suggestion. For Mitchell the proposal represented a fairly straightforward investment opportunity, albeit one that would appear to have been quite generous in its terms. In return for building the Auction Mart on his own land and then turning it over to a new Company he asked only for a financial return of 3% p.a. (around £20 per year) on his original investment. There was a condition that the new Company guarantee to operate the Auction Mart for at least ten years, but at face value his offer was indeed an extremely generous one. It was not entirely without reward however, because with the new Auction Mart being located virtually on the doorstep of the Royal Oak, the potential for a massive increase in his hotel trade made it a rather shrewd investment proposition for Mitchell. Ironically though, many of the local farmers were staunch Methodists who would have no interest in visiting the hotel premises.

Although containing some prospect of financial reward, Richard Turner’s vision of the new venture was possibly quite different. Primarily he would have seen the commercial need to prevent livestock trade being taken away from Bentham to other Auction Marts already operating in the area. Also, his knowledge of the trade and his daily contact with dealers and farmers would have made him familiar with some of the less honest practices being carried out in the area. There was therefore a degree of altruism in his desire to centralise trade and create a more open and transparent way of conducting farm business in Bentham. Turner would have known that the proposition was likely to meet with a positive response from many of the local farmers, so it would be with some confidence that he arranged for a public meeting to take place.

Handbills were printed and distributed throughout the town inviting “Farmers, Cattle Dealers, and all interested” to the assembly rooms at the Royal Oak on Wednesday 18 February 1903. A local magistrate and prominent Bentham farmer, Richard G. Wilcock of Mewith House, was invited to take part and agreed to chair the proceedings.Whatever the expectations of Turner and Mitchell on the day of the meeting, they can only have been pleased when 165 people arrived to hear more about the proposal. The meeting started at 1-30pm and for some of those present it evolved into something of a marathon session, as before finally making their way home they would in fact have attended three meetings!

At the meeting Richard Turner was asked to outline the case for forming an Auction Mart Company. In an address reported in detail by the Craven Herald and Lancaster Guardian, he said that as auction marts were becoming so common and so popular in the region he did not think it necessary to give a lengthy explanation of the proposal. He told the assembly that he believed there was no place in the North of England better suited for an auction mart, nor one better served by the railway. He said that auction marts had shown themselves to be the way most farm business would be conducted in the future, and that Bentham was as convenient as anywhere he could think of for the large markets. He believed, he said, that if they all worked together and did their best, he could guarantee there would soon be buyers coming in because it was very well known that there was “no better neighbourhood anywhere for a sounder or healthier class of stock than at Bentham.” He suggested that if the meeting voted in favour of the proposal, then a working committee could be formed to get in touch with buyers from the large markets, and also to petition the railway company for cheap fares.

Overall, the Mitchell/Turner presentation to the meeting must have been an extremely successful one because the minutes record that “A show of hands was taken, after some discussion, and an overwhelming majority decided to form a Company.” Not all were initially agreeable to the proposal, saying they felt safer with the more familiar and traditional methods of buying and selling stock. Many of these were won over, however, when they realised that for the payment of a small fee to the Auction Mart they would have their sales concluded instantly and be paid on the spot. In fact before the meeting was finished a total of 77 people would have made a commitment to become Shareholders of the new Bentham and District Farmers’ Auction Mart Company Limited. Many others who felt unable to make an immediate commitment to the new Company would do so in the weeks that followed.

The meeting closed and those who had not committed themselves left the room. There then followed the first Shareholders’ meeting, and Richard Wilcock, who was among those who had guaranteed to buy shares, was again invited to chair the proceedings. He would later be formally appointed as the first Chairman of the Auction Mart Board of Directors. (Richard Green Wilcock gave his name to Green Smithy which he founded and which stands at the corner of Mewith Lane and Slaidburn Road).

The main purpose of the meeting was to elect a Board of Directors, but firstly it was recognised that the new Company would need a Secretary, and Richard Turner Jr., son of the founder and grandfather of the present Richard Turner, was elected to this post pro tem. The appointment would be subject to ratification by the first Annual General Meeting of the Company Shareholders. A good deal of discussion would probably then follow before election of the first Board of Directors, comprising the following twelve men: Richard TurnerRichard G WilcockEdward J ClaphamChristopher JacksonWilliam BlacowJohn MorphetJohn ProctorThomas MarshallWilliam WilcockSam Bargh William HutchinsonEdward Ayrton

	Belle Bank Bentham
	Mewith House Bentham
	Moulterbeck Bentham
	Fourlands House Bentham
	Lowfields Burton in Lonsdale
	Nether Lodge Horton in Ribblesdale
	Mill Dam Bentham
	Bentham Hall Bentham
	The Cravens Wennington
	Clifford Hall Burton in Lonsdale
	Batty Farm Bentham
	Masongill Hall Bentham

For those men a long business day was to become even longer as the Shareholders’ meeting was immediately followed by the first Directors’ Board meeting. The minutes of that first Board meeting give only the briefest outline of the proceedings and do not immediately convey the intensity of the discussion that probably took place before the first decisions were made. These decisions and those of forthcoming meetings were to be the foundation stones on which the Auction Mart was built, so they would not be made lightly. In summary, the “stones” laid at that first Board meeting were as follows:

• That the share capital in the new Company was to be £1000, in one pound shares at ten shillings per share paid up.
• That Messrs H. J. J. Thompson & Co., of Bentham and Lancaster, be instructed to act as Company Solicitors (”their charges to be as reasonable as possible”!)
• That the Lancaster Banking Company be appointed as Bankers to the new Company (”on condition that to the Company no commission is charged and no interest given to their account”!)
• That the Company’s financial year was to begin on 1st June and end on 30th June annually.

• That Christopher Wilcock of Springfield, Bentham, and Thomas Marshall of Bentham Hall, Bentham, be appointed Auditors to the Company.

Christopher Wilcock was at that time a cashier at the Bentham (Station Road) branch of the Lancaster Banking Company, which later became the District Bank and more recently the National Westminster Bank. He was to remain an Auditor for the Mart until his death 47 years later in 1950. Thomas Marshall was the grandfather of Bateman Marshall and great grandfather of Thomas Marshall who are present-day owners of the Riverside Caravan Park in Bentham. He was a cabinet maker whose workshop was in the premises now trading as Hash Browns in Main Street. Shortly after the opening of the Auction Mart he left the furniture trade to move into farming, turning the business over to his two apprentices, one of whom was called Brown and one Whittaker. Their names still remain synonymous with joinery and building in the Bentham area.

• That the new Auction Mart was to have provision to accommodate two hundred sheep and thirty head of cattle.

For his part, William Mitchell took the first steps towards building the Auction Mart. Working to plans and specification drawn up by Roper, Procter and Harris, Architects, of Lancaster, and presumably in consultation with the new Directors, he put the building work out to tender. The contract was won by Bentham building contractor Henry Slinger, whose family business had been established some eighty years previously and also remains today an important part of the local building trade. Whilst having built a great deal of the 19th century property in and around Bentham, one of the more notable contracts undertaken by C M Slinger & Son was the removal in 1934, stone by stone, of Claughton Hall. The building was demolished, transported from its site adjacent to the church in Claughton, and re-erected on its present site on the slopes of Claughton Moor.

The Auction Mart building contract called for the work to be completed to a schedule that would cause many modern day builders to have nightmares:

“The works to be commenced seven days after the signing of the Contracts and carried forward regularly and expeditiously without stoppage whenever the weather will permit, and the Contractor must have the walls up ready to receive the roof by the first day of June next, the works covered in by the first day of July next, and the whole of the works to be completed by the first day of August next under a penalty of ten pounds per week for each week the same shall be delayed beyond such period, which penalty will be rigorously enforced from such of the Contractors as may cause delay”.

At today’s prices, and based on the original cost of the building, the penalty clause would probably equate to between £750 and £800 per week. Whilst the actual completion and handover dates were not recorded there is evidence to suggest that the various stages of the work were completed to schedule and all the target dates met. Meanwhile, the various formal and administrative tasks involved in preparing the new Company for operation as a working business were completed. On 20th March 1903, under the Companies Act (1900) a Company Certificate was issued by the government Registrar, and on 28th March the Company published its Articles of Association, which in effect announced its birth as a Limited Company. Richard Turner Jr. was formally appointed Secretary of the new Company and it was agreed at a Board meeting on 6th June 1903 that “he be paid the sum of £2/-/- per day for his services.”

Board and Shareholders’ meeting minutes and other available documents from 1903 are remarkably brief and seem to cover only the formal business elements of the Company’s birth. They do not, for example, record the actual opening of the Auction Mart on August 26th. It is difficult to believe that there was no formal opening ceremony or celebration, particularly with a brewer and publican as the project’s mentor, but if there was, then it seems not to have been worthy of press coverage. The only surviving references to the opening day are an advertisement from the Lancaster Guardian (also carried in the Preston Guardian) and a brief market report from the Preston Guardian..

But whilst there is some scarcity of surviving records, there is nevertheless a good deal of evidence to suggest that the launch of the new business was very successful. Trading figures for the first financial year to June 1904 show a turnover of over £29,000, which suggests a tremendous amount of business at 1903/4 prices. In fact it would be 1916 before that turnover figure was again achieved. On a recommendation from a meeting of Shareholders on September 30th 1903, the Directors agreed that “in the future not more than five shares will be allotted to any one person, that person to be either a farmer or one who is directly interested in farming.” At the same meeting it was also agreed that “the Lancaster Bank be asked to extend their opening by one hour on Wednesdays, for convenience.”

Discounting the Secretary, the Company’s first named employee was John Hutchinson, who was paid five shillings per day to clean out the Mart. The sum of four shillings per day was also paid to Richard Turner and Son for “two men to assist and come when required.”

The dates for the first Christmas Show were fixed for 2nd December (dairy cattle) and 9th December (fat cattle and sheep). It was agreed that a ring entrance fee of 2s/6d be charged, which would be refundable to purchasers, and a fee of one shilling for each show entry. A scale of prizes was agreed, but this was later amended as sponsors came forward for the various classes. The final list was as follows:

• Lancaster Bank Prize £3/3/- to be for dairy cow, heavy weight, to have had a calf or to have a calf within 28 days. Second £1/1/-, third 10/-.
• Thomas Mashiter £1/1/- and Mart £1/1/- for light weight (under 11cwt) dairy cow. Second £1/-/-, third 10/-.
• Richard Turner & Son £2/2/- for pair of dairy cows. Second £1/-/-, third 10/-.
• Wm Mitchell £2/2/- for fat heifer or bullock. Second £1/-/- and third 10/-.
• The Mart to give:

  	£1/-/- for fat cow.	Second 10/-.
  	15/- for fat calf.	Second 7/6.
  	10/- for 6 fat shearlings.	Second 5/-.
  	10/- for 6 fat lambs.	Second 5/-.
  	10/- for 6 horned ewes.	Second 5/-

The Christmas Show came at the close of a calendar year that must be seen as a very important milestone in the development of farming trade in the Bentham area, with the “challenge” of William Mitchell having been met with incredible success. Today, the Bentham Farmers’ Auction Mart has survived war, depression, Foot and Mouth and Blue Tongue and has become one of the largest auctions in the North of England.

But despite the early success of the business and the prospect of a sound future, 1903 did not end happily, for on 12th December the Auction Mart lost one of its founders when Richard Turner Snr. died suddenly at home.

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