Ramsbottom Grant Arms Hotel in Market Place was the home of William and Daniel Grant, 19th century industrialists closely associated with the rise of the town and reputed to be the inspiration for the Cheeryble brothers in "Nicholas Nickleby" by Charles Dickens. The Grants' employees were paid in tokens that had to be redeemed at a public house owned by the company. The landlord converted the tokens into cash, but only after deducting threepence per person, which had to be spent on beer, a variation on the truck system. A network of roads and railways routed through Ramsbottom allowed for a
Frank Dickens (biochemist) Frank Dickens (biochemist) Frank Dickens FRS (15 December 1899 – 15 June 1986) was a biochemist, best known for his work at the Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry with Edward Charles Dodds on the pentose phosphate pathway which generates NADPH. He was born in Northampton, England, and educated at Northampton Grammar School. He father was the owner of a leather factory in Kettering Road, Northampton, which his four brothers joined and turned into Dickens Brothers Ltd. However, Frank developed an interest in science and won a scholarship to Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1918. He did not take this up till 1919