(c.1707 - 1767)
Lawrence Earnshaw, born into a weaving family at Mottram Moor some time around 1707, is perhaps, undeservedly, one of the least remembered of local celebrities. He spent much of his adult life inventing ingenious machines, yet died in relative obscurity.
Despite having no formal education, from a young age he was showing a curiosity and interest in clock mechanisms and other machines. He began his working life as an apprentice to a local tailor - a position he maintained for eleven years, while developing an impressively wide range of other skills, including engraving, painting, making optical instruments and sundials, tuning violins and harpsichords, gun making, bell founding and coffin-making. But of all these, it was clock-making that held his interest most, and he specialised in creating many long case clocks, culminating in his greatest achievement, an astronomical clock. For this he made all the calculations, and spent over seven years in its creation, despite continuing money problems. Finally, the finished timepiece was sold to the Earl of Bute for the sum of £150. One of Earnshaw's clocks still survives in Mottram Court.
Around 1753 he invented a machine to spin and weave cotton, but, more of an inventor than businessman, and awe-struck by the speed and efficiency of his invention, he soon after destroyed it, believing that it would cause widespread unemployment and hardship among local spinners and weavers. Thus his machine disappeared into obscurity and Earnshaw failed to achieve either the fame or wealth which he undoubtedly would have earned from the invention.
Lawrence Earnshaw died on the 12th May 1767 and is buried in St Michael's churchyard in Mottram in an unmarked grave. The local parish record shows an entry for his death, describing him as an "...ingenious man of Mottram".A Blue Plaque erected on the Court House in Mottram marks his achievements