Description: A view of an attractive stone built house in Cressbrook Village ('Rock House'), with two men and a woman standing on the roadside below. The Photographer, Mr J L Sykes was a Manchester based painter. 'Rock House' was the first of many mill workers houses built by Henry McConnel in the mid-19th century when the mill and the estate of Cressbrook was owned and operated by McConnel & Co of Manchester.
Thomas Farrington Downes lived in Rock House as recorded in the 1881 census and probably started at the mill in the 1850s. Before he retired he was cashier clerk at Litton Mill. His second wife Ann Downes was postmistress at Cressbrooke in the 1860/70s (information supplied by Thomas Downes' great-great-grandson, Geoffrey Mather).