A Man Called Potto

In the village of Houghton, which we passed through in the last post, stands a bust to the memory of Potto Brown.

Potto Brown 1797-1871

With his upright posture, severe countenance and facial whiskers he looks like the head of a powerful Victorian family, which in the context of a small village he was. 

We'll get on to who he was and what he did in a moment, but first....the statue.

When it was decided on his death that the community wished to preserve his memory in bronze it faced a problem. You see, in his long life he was far too busy to ever sit for a portrait and no photographs were thought to exist either. All they had was a quick pencil sketch. At this point a farmer called Albert Goodman, a man with no artistic pretensions, took a lump of clay and made the model on which the statue was based.

Cottage in Houghton with a step made from an old millstone

Potto Brown was the son of the miller who ran the mill at Earith and who later moved to Houghton to run the mill there. His odd name came from the maiden name of his paternal grandmother, Sarah Potto. He was educated at good schools but "That which is conventionally called education left strangely few traces upon him" as his biographer put it.

Houghton Mill today, covered in scaffolding!

So on leaving school Potto went to work for his father in the mill. When his father retired, having taken it into his head (rather late in life) to study medicine, Potto took over the running of the mill. He was a strongly religious man and a non-conformist. He was a lay preacher and is said to have prayed that God should make him rich and successful in his business ventures. And to help matters along the way he took along his business ledgers and prayed that his debtors should be able to pay him. This form of shaming meant that most people learned to pay him before the service commenced!

Houghton village.

He expanded his milling operations by building state-of-the-art steam-powered mills in St Ives and Godmanchester. Once the business was established and he'd become a wealthy man he set about spending the money on good causes. He was tireless in his philanthropy - "I don’t want to have a poking hut in heaven. I mean to have a large mansion and a park", he is supposed to have said. He'd been born into a Quaker family but after an argument became a Congregationalist. One of his first projects was to build a chapel in his home village so that non-conformists would have a place to worship.

The Chapel

He also founded two schools where the children of non-conformists could be educated, founded the St Ives Friendly Society and bought land for allotment gardens for the poor. He gave money for lifeboats, contributed to the building of a Free Church in Huntingdon and served as a magistrate too.

When the Free Church was being built in St Ives he gave £3,000 to the project, though he refused to contribute to the building of the steeple which he considered an unnecessary embellishment. As you can see in the photograph below, the townspeople managed to raise the extra £2,000 required for the steeple. You can also see that it's another building which is giving employment to scaffolding contractors at the moment.

St Ives Free Church on the Market Square

Potto entertained all kinds of guests at his house, from American anti-slavery campaigners to French Catholics. One imagines there must have been some lively conversations around the dinner table. Although he was a strict tee-totaler he would serve beer and wine to his guests - but only if they were over sixty!

His grave is in the yard of the little chapel which he built in Houghton, alongside other members of his family.

Take care.