A COUPLE of weeks ago you published an old photograph from the Rowley Collection of the bungalow in Water Street, which is now a restaurant, and wondered who the lady in the picture was.

It is most probable that she was Margaret Cooper, widow of Reverend Henry Cooper of Embsay. Margaret was the niece of Christopher Sidgwick, the mill owner who originally constructed the building as a school for his "half-timers" (children who spent half their time in school and half at the factory).

Sidgwick also founded Christ Church in Skipton, and the school in Water Street which is still there today. Sidgwick converted the half-timers' school into a house for himself, but after he died in 1877 Margaret certainly lived there, with just one servant for company. In 1865 she had been widowed at the age of 37, after just six years of marriage, and died at the bungalow in Water Street in July 1918.

Her father was John Benson Sidgwick, of Stone Gappe Hall, Lothersdale (where novelist Charlotte Bronte was briefly a governess for the Sidgwick children), but the family had in 1847 moved to Embsay Kirk when Margaret was in her early teens. They later lived at West Riddlesden Hall, before Margaret returned to Embsay as the vicar's wife. John is said to have been the model for Mr Rochester in Charlotte Bronte's novel, "Jane Eyre".

His brother (Margaret's uncle) was William Sidgwick, headmaster of Ermysted's School. Margaret Cooper’s obituaries (which even appeared in the Times newspaper) made much of her social connections (her cousin was married to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and another cousin was married to the sister of the prime minister, Arthur Balfour), as well as her being a “supporter of benevolent movements in the district”. The Craven Herald noted she was a “devoted worker in connection with Skipton Parish Church.” She was also for many years one of the earliest female Poor Law Guardians for the Skipton Union.

Jane Lunnon

Skipton