Richard Roberts

Roberts was born at Llanymynech, Powys, on the border between England and Wales. He was the son of William Roberts, a shoemaker who also kept the New Bridge tollgate. Roberts was educated by the parish priest and early found employment with a boatman on the Ellesmere Canal and later at the local limestone quarries. He received some instruction in drawing from Robert Baugh, a road surveyor, who was working under Thomas Telford.

Roberts then found employment as a patternmaker at Bradley Iron works, Staffordshire and, probably in 1813, moved to a supervisory position in the pattern shop of the Horseley Ironworks, Tipton. He had gained skills in turning, wheel-wrighting and the repair of millwork. He was drawn for the militia and to avoid this made for Liverpool, but finding no work there he shifted to Manchester, where he found work as a turner for a cabinet-maker. He then moved to Salford working at lathe- and tool-making.

Because the militia was still seeking him, he walked to London where he found employment with Henry Maudslay as a fitter and turner. At Maudslay's he absorbed his master's philosophy of "the importance of accurate machine tools where hand-work was replaced by mechanisms".

By 1816, when defeat of Napoleon had removed the threat of the militia, it was safe for him to return north, he had set up at Manchester as a "turner of plain and eccentric work at No 15 Deans Gate". The lathe was upstairs in a bedroom, driven by a big wheel in the basement turned by his wife. Roberts soon moved into New Market Buildings at Pool Fold, and was described as a "Lathe and Tool Maker".

Roberts was elected to membership of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society on 18 January 1823. He was, with other members of the Society, a founder of The Mechanics' Institute in Manchester.