Finger i’ the Hole

Another place name in Rowley Regis which has had the same question asked about where it was is ‘Finger-i-the-hole’. Where was it? Why was it called that?

The name first appears in the Parish Registers in December 1727 when ‘Christopher Chambers of ye ffinger-i’-the hole’ was buried and the name crops up in later years with different spellings in various records, including the 1841 Census, when twelve families were living there. Later references to it seem to have reduced it to Fingeryhole.  The local consensus in discussions on the Facebook page was that it was somewhere on Turner’s Hill.

J Wilson-Jones, in his book, The History of the Black Country recounts this story:

“Upon the Rowley Hills stands an old Cottage known as Finger o’t’Hole. It was so named because old Black Country cottages had a drop latch fixed upon their doors, it could be opened from the outside by putting the finger through a round hole. At this cottage there lived an old lady and one night a robber thought to take advantage of her loneliness. The cottage being in darkness, he placed his finger through the hole but the old lady had been disturbed and was waiting with a poised hatchet. The robber lost his finger and the cottage was named Finger o’t’Hole.”

So that legend obviously goes back a long way.

This appears to be the sort of latch referred to in the story, with a finger hole! (Photograph courtesy of Creative Commons).

When I came to transcribe the 1841 Census, I was not able to find any mention of Gadd’s Green, although Turner’s Hill and Perry’s Lake were easily found. By following the census enumerator’s route, which appears on the first page of each set, I found that Finger-i-the-hole appeared to be in the same geographical position as Gadds Green was in the 1851 and later censuses, after Perry’s Lake and before Turner’s Hill.

Transcribing the 1841 Census showed that the families living in Finger-i-the-hole in 1841 were :

William Priest  (+2)                          45           Nailmaker

Joseph Taylor    (+5)                        40           Nailmaker

Thomas Hill (+8)                                45           Nailmaker

John Hipkiss (+14)                            70           Nailmaker

Joseph Whitehall (+6)                    59           Nailmaker

Philip Taylor (+4)                              35           No occupation shown

William Woodall (+2)                      45           Nailmaker

Pheby Whitehall (+2)                     30           Nailmaker

David Priest (+5)                               35           Labourer

Jos’h Hill (+3)                                     20           Coal miner

Elizabeth Morton (+6)                    35           Nailmaker

John Simpson                                    20           No occupation shown

And every single one of these families appeared in the 1851 Census with the name of their abode given as Gadd’s Green! So – even if the origin of the story of Finger-i-the-hole related to one cottage – from references in the Parish Registers and from the 1841 Census, by the early 1800s the name referred to a whole group of dwellings.

I hope to add the whole of the 1841 and later Censuses for these hamlets in due course so that family members can be seen. The 1841 Census is the least detailed and informative of the censuses, often difficult to read as it was completed in pencil. Also, the ages of adults were supposed to be rounded down to the nearest five years and no relationships were shown. Later censuses were much more informative.

So at last there is an answer to the question, where was Finger-i-the-hole? It became known between 1843 – the last reference to Finger-i-the-hole in the Parish Registers – and 1851 when it appears in the 1851 census – as Gadd’s Green. 

It is probably not a coincidence that the Rev’d George Barrs died in 1840. He had been a vigorous and campaigning Curate in charge of the Rowley Regis Parish  from 1800 until his death and in those forty years must have built up extensive knowledge of local people and places and would have known local names. Perhaps succeeding newcomer curates to the parish found the name Fingeryhole (and the story behind it) fanciful or unacceptable in those very proper Victorian times.

There were certainly Gadds in Perry’s Lake in 1841 and 1851 so it’s possible they were connected and the name came from land they owned there, some further research into deeds may one day give more information.  Interestingly, there were also Gadds, rivet makers, living in Ross, an old street on the other side of the village, in 1841 where later Thomas Gadd founded his rivet making factory. The factory was still there in the 1950s and 60s, and including the original cottages, as I passed this factory on my way to and from the library. I now know that my great-grandfather Absalom Rose worked there.

As I keep saying, folk tended not to move around much!