With the increase of the population came the necessity for a new church, and on the 28th April, 1768, Edward Byrom laid the foundation stone of St. John’s—so named in compliment to his father—which was consecrated on the 7th June in the following year. Little more than two years later he joined Messrs. Sedgwick, Allen, and Place, in establishing the first bank in Manchester, the doors of which were opened on the 2nd December, 1771, under the style of Byrom, Sedgwick, Allen, and Place. It occupied the site of Messrs. Hunt and Roskell’s shop in St. Ann’s Square, and the name is perpetuated in Bank Street, leading from it. Less than seventeen months after, Edward Byrom was laid to rest, his death occurring on the 24th April, 1773, at the early age of forty-nine. Under his will the Quay Street property passed to his daughter Ann, who became the wife of Henry Atherton, of the Middle Temple, the issue of the marriage being an only daughter, the estimable and much-honoured Miss Eleanor Atherton, the foundress of Holy Trinity Church, in Hulme, and the last representative in a direct line of the Byrom family, who died at the old home in Quay Street, on the 12th September, 1870, at the age of eighty-eight. In accordance with the provisions of her will, the greater portion of her property, including the Kersall estates, passed to her godson, Mr. Edward Fox, who, in accordance with her expressed desire, assumed the name and arms of Byrom—the arms John Byrom was so proud of, and of which he made such frequent mention in his Journal:—
Some sire of ours, beloved kinsfolk, chose,
The hedge-hog for his arms; I would suppose
With aim to hint instruction wise, and good,
To us descendants of his Byrom blood.
I would infer, if you be of this mind,
The very lesson that our sire design’d.
At last the hedge-hog came into his thought,
And gave the perfect emblem that he sought.