rowleyregislosthamlets

Pubs in the Lost Hamlets 1 – The Bull’s Head

There was no shortage of places for folk to have a drink in days gone by, in Rowley and around. Hitchmough’s work on Black Country pubs is an amazing and most interesting read, packed with information and stories. (Hitchmough’s Guide to Black Country pubs – an invaluable source for local historians is at longpull.co.uk ) He lists 29 pubs in and around Rowley, 7 with a Whiteheath address in addition to the ones in the Lost Hamlets. Not all of them will have been operating at the same time and most of them have long since disappeared but in their time, there were a lot of them!

For the purposes of this study, I shall look at the main pubs in the Lost Hamlets in separate posts, as there is too much information for each of them to fit them into one piece

I am starting with the BULLS HEAD which was at 1, Dudley Road, Springfield, (Tippity Green), Rowley Regis. This is the view that most people now would recognise, from Anthony Page’s Second book of Rowley Regis images.

According to Hitchmough, who is the fount of all knowledge on such issues, the owners of the Bull’s Head were Ferdinando Dudley Lea-Smith, Thomas Benjamin Williams and Lizzie Bate of Rowley Regis, Ansells Ltd. (acquired in 1946) and later Sue Whittall and Mark Franks [1997].

It is entirely probable that there was a public house or hostelry of some sort on the site before formal licensing was introduced but the LICENSEES were as follows:

Joseph Bowater [1834] – [1854]

Mrs. Eliza Bowater [1860]

Elizabeth Bowater [1861] – [1865]

William Henry Hingley [1868] – [1870]

William James Hingley [1867] – [1874]

William Williams [1875]

Thomas Benjamin Williams [1875] – [1891]

Thomas William Williams [1892] – [1900]

Howard Woodhouse [ ] – 1909);

Simeon Dunn (1909 – [1912]

Thomas Benjamin Williams [1911]

Gertrude Fletcher (1913 – [ ]

John Hughes [1916] – 1932

Hitchmough has later licensees listed but I have stopped at about 1920 as my study is really looking at this earlier period.

This map is dated about 1803, copyright Bob Adams. It shows a substantial building on the site of the Bull’s Head which was probably a hostelry even then. There is not much other development, the buildings above it are marked Poor and are presumably the Poorhouse which fits with later census routes. The windmill is just visible in the middle at the bottom, the tiny building with sails, in the ownership of J Alsop, according to this map. There is no development to the North side of Tippety Green but the building opposite the Bull’s Head may be the Mill Farm. I suspect that the tiny square there is the Tippity Green Toll House but that is just a guess! Perrys Lake is already quite a substantial area with several buildings shown.

This hand-drawn map looks to date to about the same period and was shown on Facebook by Roger Slater. It too shows the same buildings but possibly also shows the ‘green’ area. Presumably the bar shown across the road to Perry’s Lake is the Toll Gate.

Joseph Bowater, the first licensee listed by Hitchmough, was also a butcher and it was quite common in those days for licensees to have other full time occupations in addition to the pub, including butchers, farmers and boilermakers in this area. In the 1841 Census, Joseph Bowater was listed as living in Tippity Green and his occupation was shown as a butcher. His age was shown as 50 and with him was Elizabeth Bowater, also 50 with no occupation shown, and also William Cooper, a Male Servant, aged 20, and Catherine Hargrove a female servant aged 25. The two men were both born in Staffordshire, the two women were not.

Also living there were three other men, all labourers. Since Joseph had already been the licensee for several years, it appears that he was combining his butchery business with the pub which was probably why the pub was called the Bull’s Head. (In similar vein, the Levett family apparently sold or let land near their butchery business in Birmingham Road, Blackheath for the erection of a pub (first licenced in 1857) and specified that the pub should be called the Shoulder of Mutton which is, as far as I know, still there and still a pub.)

So it appears that as early as 1841 Joseph Bowater was operating also as a lodging house keeper at the pub. A Joseph Johnson Bowater was baptised at St Giles on 13 Jul 1788, the illegitimate son of Ann Bowater, one wonders, as ever whether his middle name is a clue to his father’s identity. And I was very interested to note from the parish register that sixteen years later in 1804, a child Elenor was baptised, the ‘base-born’ daughter of Daniel Johnson and Elizabeth Bowater , unusual in this register for the father of an illegitimate child to be named – perhaps the Bowaters and the Johnsons were near neighbours!

There were other Bowater families in the area at the time, the first Bowater mentioned in the Parish Registers of St Giles is in 1740.

In 1851 the census gives clearer picture – Joseph Bowater, 64 still showing as living in the first entry in Tippity Green, is a Vittler (a corruption of Victualler – someone who supplies Victuals – food and drink) and Butcher who was born in Rowley and his wife Elizabeth, 66 who was born in Birmingham. Joseph is also employing a butcher Luke Lashford aged 21 who was also born in Birmingham (also referred to in my post about the Redfern family), two female general servants, born in Halesowen and Tipton respectively , a fourteen year old lad from Dudley described as an Inn Servant and a visitor William Bowater 40, born in Rowley.

Whereas Tippity Green came in time to be used as the name of the street running from Dudley Road to Perrys Lake, it seems that at this time the names of various small hamlets referred to a group of dwellings and small businesses grouped together, often round an open space or Green rather than a linear row of houses, as shown on the early maps above, hence Tippity Green, Cock Green, Brickhouse Green although quite where one stopped and the next started is not so easy to work out. One thing I have learned is not to get too hung up on precise addresses at this time.

Bowater was clearly keeping the Bulls Head Inn , licensed premises even though the Census does not mention it by name and this is borne out by that little word in the description of one of his employees – Inn servant! And when I looked at the Enumerator’s Route which Ancestry provides at the beginning of each census piece, the enumerator actually mentions the Bulls Head Inn although he doesn’t identify it on the Census sheet itself, how contrary and unhelpful for us later local historians centuries later!

Incidentally, the next entry in the census is for two people described as Almspeople so that gives us a clue that the almshouse was somewhere very close to the Bulls Head. One of those was Thomas Beet, my 4xg-grandfather, then aged 88 and blind.

There is remarkably little information about Joseph Bowater that I can find. There is one baptism in St Giles in 1829 for James, son of Joseph and Mary Bowater of Cock Green, a labourer which is roughly in the same area as the Bull but there were a lot of Bowaters around and there is no real evidence that this is the same Joseph. By 1841 our Joseph was married to an Elizabeth but no children of that marriage are listed anywhere that I can find. Joseph appears to have died in 1857 and was buried on 23 Jan 1857 at St Giles, aged 70, his abode given as Tippity Green and his cause of death shown in the Burial Register as old age.

Elizabeth or Eliza Bowater then appears to have taken over the licence as she is shown by Hitchmough as the licensee until at least 1865. In the 1861 Census, she is still in Tippity Green, aged 71 and a publican, living with one Elizabeth Bowater, 71, publican and one house servant and one boarder, a stone dresser so the butchery business appears to have ceased or at least not to have a butcher there. There was a grocery shop listed next door in that census, occupied by Benjamin Rock so perhaps he was using part of the premises which had previously been used by the butcher.

Inquests were often held in local pubs and the Bull’s Head was no exception. A report in the Stourbridge Observer on January 1 1865 told of

“An adjourned inquest was held at the BULLS HEAD, Perry’s Lake, on Wednesday last, before E. Hooper, Esq, Coroner, touching the death of Henry Parkes, a collier, 44 years of age, who met with his death through falling down a coal pit on the 21st ultimo. On that day, the deceased and several others who all worked for Mr. Mills of Gornal went to the office to receive their wages. Deceased left the office first, and walked towards the pit to pay his club money. One of the men heard a sound, and immediately missing deceased, some tackle was procured, and a miner named Edwards and another man descended and brought deceased from the bottom of the shaft. He was quite dead. The pit according to witness’s statement, was fenced all round, and was not at work. A man and a boy have both lost their lives previously, by falling down the same pit. After the first inquest, the Coroner and Jury went to view the pit.

At the adjourned inquest, on Wednesday, Mr. Baker, Government Inspector of Mines, was present, and also Mr. Homfray, solicitor, with Mr. Mills, on behalf of the proprietors of the colliery.

Some further evidence was taken of the state of the fencing round the pit, and William Morgan, the banksman of the pit, was called by Mr. Homfray. He stated that the pit was in the same state when the Jury saw it as at the time of the accident.

Mr. Mills was also sworn, and deposed to the same circumstances, and promised that new iron railing should be placed round it.

The Coroner summed up, impressing upon the Jury the fact that there was no evidence as to how the deceased got into the pit. If they were of opinion that the pit was properly fenced of course, would be accidental; but if they thought that the pit was not properly fenced, they would leave the matter in the hands of the Government Inspector.

The Jury retired for ten minutes, and then returned a verdict of Accidental Death, accompanied with the opinion that the pit was not properly fenced at the time.”

Poor Henry Parkes and his family and just before Christmas, too. After publishing this piece I was contacted via Facebook by Luke Adams who was able to give me more information. His wife was related to the Mr Mills referred to above and Luke thinks that the reporter misheard the name of the place, which he gave as Gornal but which Luke thinks was probably Gawne Hill which was the site of a mine and very close to the Bull’s Head. This makes a lot of sense to me, as I had found the Gornal reference odd. Thanks, Luke!

The Bull’s Head also acted as a community venue and several meetings of striking miners and pottery workers were held there at various times, as reported in the local press.

William Hingley took over the licence from at least 1868 so I looked for a death or burial for Elizabeth Bowater at or around that date. But there was no such burial at St Giles anywhere near that date. However, there was a death registered in the Dudley Registration District in the September qtr of 1866 for an Elizabeth Bywater of about the right age. And FreeREG shows that an Elizabeth Bywater was buried in Upper Gornal on August 1866, aged 70 which is exactly the right age for Elizabeth Bowater. Upper Gornal? The abode recorded in the Burial Register is the clue here, she had been in the Union Workhouse there, just along the road from Upper Gornal and if, as I surmise, she had had no children to look to her welfare, this might well be where she ended up if she became infirm.

I had noticed when looking at the Bowaters in censuses that they rarely employed anyone from the village, always from the surrounding area, perhaps they did not endear themselves to local people.

There is an article on the workhouses.org.uk site from the Dudley Guardian here on the Dudley Workhouse, including an article dated April 1866 so particularly timely for this Elizabeth which gives a ‘pen and ink sketch’ of the new workhouse, well worth reading and fairly positive, considering the general reputation of workhouses at that time.

https://workhouses.org.uk/Dudley/#Post-1834

The Licence for the Bull’s Head was now taken over by William Henry Hingley [1868] – [1870] and then William James Hingley [1867] – [1874]. I do wonder whether these two were actually the same man. Certainly a newspaper report in the Stourbridge Observer on 28 September 1867 has William James.

In the 1871 Census William J Hingley is recorded as being 32 and a licensed victualler, born Rowley Regis. He had married Ann Maria Barnsley in 1862 at Netherton and children Caroline M, born 1864, William H, born 1867 and Mary born 1869 were listed in the census, all born in Rowley Regis. His father Titus Hingley was also a publican, running the Heath Tavern in Cradley Heath – the licensed trade is another that often ran in families.

Did he keep a good house? I suspect it depended who you asked…

A report in the Stourbridge Observer on 28 September 1867 says:

“At the Petty Sessions, on Wednesday last, before H. G. Firmstone, E. Moore, and F. W. G. Barrs, Esqrs, William James Hingley, landlord of the BULLS HEAD, Tippitty Green, was charged by Superintendent Mills with unlawfully and knowingly permitting drunkenness in his house on the 9th instant.

Police-sergeant Powner said that he visited the defendant’s house after eleven o’clock. He found about forty men in the house, several of whom were quite drunk. Two of the men were playing at dominoes, and four others at cards. About one o’clock in the morning he heard great screaming at the defendant’s house, and some person shouting ‘Murder’. He visited the house again just before two o’clock, and there was fighting going on, the defendant taking no notice.

Defendant admitted that there were a number of persons ‘fresh’, but he did what he could to get them out. Fined 5s and costs.”

So it sounds as though he was popular with some people!

The Police were obviously keeping an eye on the Bull’s Head. A report in the Stourbridge Observer on 21 February 1874 relates:

“William James Hingley, landlord of the BULLS HEAD INN, Rowley, was charged with a similar offence [being open during prohibited hours] on the 8th inst.

Police-constable Cooper said he visited defendant’s house on the above date at 5.40pm and found a man and a woman there. The landlady was warming some ale. The man gave the name of Joseph Whitehouse of Dudley. Defendant’s wife said the two people said they were travellers, and she was getting them something to eat and drink, when the officer came in. Joseph Whitehouse also gave evidence. The case was dismissed.”

So he was let off here. Certainly convictions on licensing matters for a licensee were not a trivial matter. At the Annual Licensing Meeting of the Rowley Regis Petty Sessional division, held at Cooksey’s Hotel, Old Hill on 27 August 1870, the County Express reported that the landlord of the Boat Inn, Tividale who had two convictions recorded in the previous year, had his licence taken away altogether, two more had their licenses suspended, and five landlords, including William’s father Tobias in Cradley Heath were ‘cautioned in reference to the future conduct of their houses’. Numerous beer house keepers around the area applied for wine and spirit licences which were all refused except one. Nine men applied for a licence to keep a beerhouse and all but one of these were refused, too. So frequent offences might well lead directly to a loss of livelihood.

But an advertisement in the Dudley Herald on the 7 March 1874 seems to show the whole brewing apparatus being sold off.

“Unreserved sale ….. at the BULLS HEAD, Tippetty Green near Rowley Regis ….. the whole of the

excellent brewing plant, well seasoned hogshead and half hogshead ale casks, 350 gallon store cask,

2 and a half pockets fine Farnham and Worcester hops, malt, whiskey, stock of old and fresh ale,

crossleg and oblong tables, rail back benches and forms, quantity of chairs, 4-pull beer machine, tap

tables, malt crusher, iron boilers, vats, coolers, fowls, stock of hay etc. together with the neat and

clean household furniture…..”

Whether this sale went ahead we do not know because certainly William James Hingley was still landlord of the Bull’s Head in June of that year when the following report appeared in the Stourbridge Observer

“William James Hingley, landlord of the BULLS HEAD, Tippetty Green, Rowley, was charged by Police-sergeant Walters with selling ale during prohibited hours on the night of the 13th inst, to wit, at 20 minutes to twelve.

Defendant’s wife pleaded not guilty.

Police-constable Jackson said that he visited the defendant’s house at twenty minutes to twelve o’clock. When he heard some persons laughing and talking. Witness pushed the door, but it was fastened. He got over the wall and found several men sitting in the bar, and some women. Cole had a glass of liquors, as also had a man named Joseph Baker. A woman named Priest had a stone bottle full of ale. He went to the front door, and met the woman coming out. Witness told Mrs. Hingley of it. She said the ale was filled before eleven o’clock. Witness saw the bottle filled.

Defendant said it was club night, and there was a dispute over a bondsman, and could not help it.

Sergeant Mills said defendant had been previously convicted; although it had been some time since.

The Bench considered it a bad case, and fined defendant 20s and costs.”

Whether or not these issues led to the Hingleys giving up is not known but Thomas Benjamin Williams took over the licence at latest in 1875 which is very close to that date and the sale.

Thomas Benjamin Williams was born on 6th August 1844, at Glasbury on Wye, Radnorshire. He married Alice Susannah Darby on 8th September 1874 at Rowley Church. He died in 1908.

The Baptisms Register at St. Giles’, Rowley records the baptism on 15th August 1875 of Ella Mary, daughter of Thomas Benjamin, publican of Tippetty (sic) Green and Alice Susannah Williams,

(Thirty-five years later on 29th July 1911 Thomas Raymond (b. 9/7/1911), son of Thomas Benjamin and Jessie Williams, brewer, The Croft, Rowley Regis was also recorded, the next generation!)

So the 1881 Census for the Bull’s Head has Thomas Benjamin Williams (36), licenced victualler, born Glasbury; Alice S. Williams (39), wife, their children Ella M. Williams (5), Florence Williams (2), daughter and Lizzie Williams (7 months), daughter, all born in Rowley Regis plus Louisa Plant (14) and Hannah Horton (14), both general servants and born Rowley Regis. The Williams family employed people from the village in contrast with the Bowaters.

Sadly Florence died in December 1883 and was buried at St Giles on 10 December, aged 5 and Ella Mary Williams died in December 1888, aged 13 and was buried at St Giles on the 20^th December. So in the 1891 Census there were Thomas Williams (46), licensed victualler, born Glasbury, Radnorshire, Alice S. Williams (39), wife, Lizzie Williams (10), daughter, scholar, Thomas B. Williams (8), son, scholar, all born Rowley Regis and Ellen Hill (22), a general servant, born Rowley Regis.

Anthony Page had this photograph in his Second Book of Rowley Regis photographs and he dated this to the late 19th Century. The buildings to the right of the house are the brewery. Perhaps the people standing outside are the Williams family.

An article in the Black Country Bugle in January 2003 had the following tale to tell:

‘Tippetty Green – The Tromans Family – And The Rowley Quarries’ by Peter Goddard

“The BULLS HEAD was a little more upmarket thanks largely to the efforts of Thomas Benjamin Williams and his wife ….. Thomas had left the quarries to take the tenancy of the BULLS HEAD and it was here that their children were born – Lizzie and Thomas Benjamin Jnr. The pub prospered much to the reported displeasure of the Levett family who were running the PORTWAY TAVERN …… One night the windows of the BULLS HEAD were mysteriously smashed. The following night, Thomas, always called Master by his wife, was seen leaving his pub with a poker up his sleeve, and setting out over Allsops Hill. The following day it was reported that the windows of the PORTWAY TAVERN had been broken during the hours of darkness! The BULLS HEAD suffered no further damage.

Having worked in the quarries Thomas knew the hardships the local families suffered and during very severe periods he would send a cart to Old Hill Bakery for a load of bread which he distributed free of charge to his customers.

…..The pub continued to improve its trade and Thomas eventually purchased the freehold and began to brew his own beer. The business made rapid progress and Thomas purchased other pubs in the area, including the WHEATSHEAF at Turners Hill and the GRANGE in Rowley Village. They had 14 pubs in all and to meet the demand they built a bigger brewery on land to the rear of “The Turnpike” immediately opposite the BULLS HEAD. Williams’ [This is a useful clue to the whereabouts of the Turnlike!] Fine Rowley Ales continued at the Rowley Brewery until 1st November 1927 when they began to purchase beers from the Holt Brewery of Birmingham. Thomas (Jnr) had taken over the business when his father died in 1908. Ansells Brewery bought out the Holt Brewery and being keen to expand further, made a bid for young Thomas’ business. After protracted negotiations an ‘attractive’ offer was finally made and accepted and the enterprising business of T. W. Williams and their Fine Rowley Ales finally came to an end…..”

https://maps.nls.uk/index.html

This map, the OS 25” to the mile, was surveyed in 1881 and revised in 1914 and it shows the site of the brewery in Tippity Green. It ceased brewing on 1st November 1927.

So although the list of licensees shows other people at different periods between 1900 and 1911, the pub was still in the ownership of the Williams family.

So in the 1901 Census, Thomas and Alice Williams were still at The Bulls Head, Thomas now listed as a brewer rather than just a publican with their children Lizzie, now 20 and Thomas Junior, 18 and one general domestic servant Maria Parsons, aged 19. Next door on Dudley Road was still a grocer’s shop where Hannah Povey (or possibly Dovey) was noted as the shopkeeper. Living with her and her husband Charles Povey (or Dovey), who was a self-employed haulier, were her daughter Isabella, Isabella’s husband Simeon Dunn who was also listed as a brewer and their five children. Simeon Dunn was listed as the licensee from 1909, the year after Thomas Williams’s death, until 1912 when the licence went back to Thomas Junior for a couple of years. So these were obviously closely connected with the family and reinforces my feeling that the grocery shop was part of or intrinsically connected with the Bull’s Head.

The Parish Register notes on 15th September 1909 the baptism of Wilfred, son of Simeon and Isabella Dunn, brewer, of 1, Dudley Road, the usual address of the Bull’s Head and the 1911 Census has Simeon Dunn (45), brewer, Isabella Dunn (43), wife, married 23 years, James Dunn (22), son, coal haulier, (perhaps with his grandfather/step-grandfather Charles Povey/Dovey?), William Dunn (19), son, a bricklayer’s apprentice, Amy Dunn (18), daughter, Arthur Dunn (15), son, blacksmith’s striker, Lily Dunn (12), daughter, Florence Dunn (9), daughter, Hilda Dunn (6), daughter, Wilfred Dunn (1), son, all born Rowley Regis. Simeon and Isabella’s descendents are still very much around today.

Norma Postin also confirmed in a comment on this piece about the descendents of Simeon and Isabella Dunn – “I am one of them as they were my gt grandparents . My grandfather was James Dunn. Isabella was the daughter of Hannah and her first husband Samuel Wittall. Isabella later married Charles Dovey. Simeon and Isabella’s daughter Florence married John Noott in 1927 , and lived at Rowley Hall .” Thanks, Norma, the web of connections around the Hamlets is always interesting!

Luke Adams also added some more information on Facebook about Gertrude Fletcher, the landlady in 1913 and who was Luke’s wife’s great-grandmother. She was apparently pretty formidable and well known as the sole proprietor of a series of pubs and cider houses such as The Plough in Halesowen, which was quite unusual for a woman in that time. Coincidentally, she was also the granddaughter of Mr Mills, mentioned in connection with the death of Henry Parkes. And he even supplied a picture of her!

Gertrude Fletcher, Copyright Luke Adams.

The invaluable ‘I remember Blackheath and Rowley Regis’ Facebook page and community can add some interest to the picture, too. In 2021 Simon Hancox showed a picture of a Williams Fine Rowley Ales blue and white Pint tot, owned by his mother and which was thought to come from the Bull’s Head. Simon’s mother lived at Rowley Hall which he says was owned by the William’s family so their property holdings in Rowley were obviously substantial. A rare and possibly now unique piece of Rowley history, I show it here, if Simon has any objection to this, I will of course remove it.

As I said in the original piece, I had no doubt that there are many local residents who have memories of this pub, so much a part of the lcoal community over such a long period which has been confirmed on the Facebook page ‘I remember Blackheath and Rowley Regis! Many people had lived there or had friends who lived there or had held family celebrations of various sorts there, many happy memories.

I had asked whether the pub is still open or whether it has suffered the fate of so many pubs now and had closed down. Immediately this piece was published, several people reported on the Facebook page that the Bull’s Head is currently closed and looking sad and run down, there seem to be various rumours about potential future uses though no mention of it reopening as a pub to the regret of many people. Another community asset lost and the long usage of the site as a pub apparently at an end. Many thanks to everyone who added information and answered my question.

The family of Joseph and Ann Maria Redfern, Part 2

Later Redferns after 1851

Following on from my last piece about the older children of this couple, this piece looks at the children born after the 1941 Census.

By 1851, the family was still on Turner’s Hill, Joseph still a labourer but now with his age given as 48 and his place of birth as Rowley Regis as were the whole family. Maria was now 50, Eliza 20, Joseph 18, William 16 both boys working as labourers; Ann at 13 was still a scholar. In the interim between the censuses, Solomon, aged 9, John aged 7 and Samuel aged 5 had all been born. All were described as scholars.

Incidentally, when I looked at later Censuses, I noticed that Joseph’s widow Maria, later described herself as the widow of a Highways Labourer and in 1871, he described himself as a Furnace Labourer, although he and Maria had a boarder who was a Highways Labourer so perhaps he moved from one job to the other. Certainly other Redferns were Furnace Labourers, gruelling hot work for much of the year, I suspect. Their family has grown in ten years.

In 1851 Eliza is still living at home, now aged 20, Joseph aged 18, William, aged 16 and Ann, aged 13, the two boys were working as labourers and Ann and the younger children were Scholars. But Elizabeth, like her mother, had no occupation shown. Also Solomon, aged 9, John, aged 7 and Samuel aged 5 had come along. The household is almost next to Turner’s Hill Farm so they were pretty high up on the hill.

Henry Redfern

I also noted that there was another Redfern in the later censuses, living with Joseph and Ann Maria and later with his own wife and family. This was Henry Redfern who was born in 1854, the illegitimate son of Eliza Redfern. Henry was baptised at St Giles on 22 Mar 1854 as the son of Eliza Redfern of Turners Hill with no father named and appears to have been raised by his Redfern grandparents as he was with them in the 1861 and 1871 censuses, and after his mother had married Daniel Hughes in 1859 and moved to Dudley.

Family trees on Ancestry state that on his marriage certificate in 1875 (when Henry married his cousin Elizabeth Redfern), his father’s name was given as Luke Lashford. I can find only one reference to this name in the locality and this was in 1851 when a Luke Lashford, born in Birmingham, was living and working as a butcher for Joseph Bowater at the Bulls Head in Tippity Green – the dates fit, so presumably this is Henry’s father. After this census Luke Lashford disappears without trace. I cannot find a death for him, nor any other record of him later, it does look as though he may have ‘done a runner’! Fortunately, the Redferns were obviously a very supportive family for Eliza.

Henry worked for most of his life in the stone quarries and he and Elizabeth lived on Turners Hill all their lives, it appears from censuses, and had nine children. Their children were Mary A (1874), Henry (1875), Eliza (1878-1878), Joseph (1879), Martha (1882), Louisa (1885), Walter (1889), Sarah Jane (1891) and Ernest (1895) – another nine great-grandchildren for Joseph and Ann Maria.

It seems likely to me that, since Henry worked in the quarry for at least forty years, he may appear on some of the numerous photographs of quarry workers which are in various books and online. Alas, I have no way of identifying him if so but perhaps some members of the Redfern family might recognise a family likeness. Do tell if you can!

Younger children of Joseph and Ann Maria Redfern

Solomon Redfern 1841-1928

Solomon stayed in the hamlets all of his life, working in the quarry. He married Mary Ann Mole of the Club Buildings, Hawes Lane, on 8 Feb 1863 at St Giles when he was 21 and she was 22. They initially lived in Hawes Lane, possibly at the Club Buildings but by 1881 they were back in Perrys Lake where they stayed for the rest of their lives. In the 1901 Census, the address is given as Hailstone Quarry, following on from Perrys Lake in the list so perhaps they were further up the hill, actually within the quarry. Family members may be able to tell me this.

Solomon’s children:

Solomon and Mary Ann had six children that I know of. These were William (1863-1863), Ann (1864-1948), Alfred (1866-1940), Edward (1868-1871), William (1872-1956) and Samuel (1876-?).

Of those children, the first William died aged 15 weeks, sadly not unusual in those days.

Ann (1864-1948) married Eli Eades at Reddal Hill church on 19 Dec 1891. They had three children, Annie in 1893, William G in 1895 and Jesse in 1901. Eli Eades was a draper and died in 1023. William appears to have followed him into this trade and they may have had a shop in Long Lane, somewhere in the area of Shell Corner. Ann lived on until 1948.

Alfred (1886-1940) stayed in Perrys Lake in Rowley, marrying Kate or Catherine Whithall, also of Perrys Lake on 25 Dec 1887 at St Lukes, Cradley Heath. He appears to have worked at the quarry for his whole life and they lived at 12 Perrys Lake but had no children. He died in 1940 and Catherine died in 1954.

Edward (1868-1871) had died at the age of three and was buried on 12 Nov 1871 at St Giles, Rowley Regis.

William moved to Threlkeld in Cumberland to work in the quarry there, at some point between 1891 when the census shows that he was still in Perry’s Lake and 1900 when he married Sarah Ann Airey in Threlkeld. They had five children – Ernest in 1901, Edith in 1902, Alfred in 1903, Mildred in 1907 and Annie in 1909. By 1939, William and Sarah had moved to Langcliffe, Craven where William still gave his occupation as a Limestone quarryman. Their son Alfred lived next door but one with his family, he was also a quarryman. William died in 1956 and Sarah in 1957, they are buried together in Langcliffe, Craven District, North Yorkshire, England.

I could at first find no trace of Solomon’s youngest child Samuel after 1901 when he was still living at home. None of the online family trees had any further information on him either. He did not appear to have died between 1901 and 1939 in the UK, he did not die in the First World War, I could not find him in the 1911 or 1921 Censuses . Did he start using another name? Did he emigrate?

But I think I have now found him. The 1939 Register, (which was not a census but a listing of the whole population taken by the Government just before the Second World War and which was to be the basis of rationing and later used by the NHS, ) is a useful source as it shows dates of birth, addresses, implied family groups, occupations but not places of birth. Many newer entries are redacted, blacked out for 100 years from their date of birth because those people are or are assumed to be still alive, although people who have died can be opened up. But I could search the Register for the whole country for a Samuel Redfern born in 1876. There were six Samuel Redferns in the whole of England and Wales in 1939 who had been born between 1875 and 1877. Of these most were in Derbyshire or Cumberland. But one was in the Cockermouth area, where, as I showed in a previous post, quite a number of Rowley quarry workers had settled, recruited by the quarries there for their sett making skills. Those had included William Redfern, Samuel’s brother who had settled in the Threlkeld area.

It appears that Samuel had followed his older brother up to Cumberland, he had married in the Cockermouth area in 1908 to Mary Elizabeth Charters and they had two children William Lawrence in 1909 and Mary Frances in 1911. In 1939 Samuel was living in Rakefoot, Embleton, Northumbria with his wife and daughter, his occupation was given as a Roadstone Quarry Worker – the granite connection again! Using this information I was then able to find the family in the 1911 Census in Wythop Mill Nr Cockermouth and in Tile Kiln Cottage, Arlecdon, Cumberland in the 1921 Census, Samuel always working in quarries.

John Redfern 1844-1929

John was living at 26 Rowley Village in 1911, with his two daughters Ann Maria 1871- and Phoebe 1880. He had married Leah Tromans on 24 December 1865 at Dudley St Thomas and states in the 1911 Census that they had had 8 children of whom only four were still alive in 1911. I can only find the birth registrations for six children between their marriage in 1865 and 1890, the last child I can find was John, born in 1883. The first two children Martha (1866-1866) and Sarah Ann (1868-1868) had both died in their first months and were buried in St Giles. It is possible that there were another two stillbirths which would not be registered but which would still be counted by the family as their children.

Some of the trees on Ancestry have a photograph of a farm called Upper House Farm, Wolferlow in Herefordshire, attached to the information about this John, stating that John farmed there with his son John before returning to Ockbrook, Derby and Stanley, Derbyshire where the family had originated from, a Moravian settlement , where John’s grandfather German Redfern had lived.

This may be possible and may come from family information, since the trees are those of Redferns. However, this may not have been over a prolonged time period as both John and his son John are in the Rowley and Blackheath area for all of the censuses that I have been able to find and all of their children were born in the area. John the older died in Rowley Regis in 1948. Neither of them appears to have any farming experience from their listed occupations which does not necessarily preclude a period of farming, family members may be able to explain how this came about. There were certainly Redferns farming in Wimborne, Dorset but I have not looked at the Derby Redferns in any detail. His father was given as John Redfern, a labourer and hers as Joseph Stokes, deceased, also a labourer. The witnesses were Joseph Stokes and Jane Hadley.

Leah Redfern died in 1905 and was buried on 17 Aug 1905 at St Giles, aged 58. John Redfern , of 26 Rowley Village, where he had lived with his family for many years, died in 1929, aged 85 and was buried at St Giles on 4 Mar 1929.

John’s children

John and Leah’s known surviving children were Ann Maria born 1871, Joseph born 1875, Phoebe born 1880 and John born 1882.

Ann Maria 1871-1955, Phoebe 1880-1955

Neither Ann Maria or Phoebe married and they lived in Rowley Village with their father until his death in 1929, after which they appear to have continued to live together in the same house. Online family trees record that Phoebe died on 9 February 1955 aged 75 and Ann Maria died only a few days later on the 17^th, aged 84. Whereas Ann Maria seems to have taken care of domestic life for the family, Phoebe worked, in 1901 as a Nail Bag Maker, in 1911 as a ‘counter of nuts and bolts’ in Rowley, in 1921 as a ‘weigher of nuts and bolts’ at T W Lenches in Ross, and in 1939 as a ‘checker of nuts and bolts’ so it appears likely that she worked at Lenches all her life.

Joseph Redfern 1875-1943

Joseph married Eliza Stokes at St Paul’s Church, Blackheath on 22 Apr 1895. He was 21, a labourer and gave his abode as 74 Halesowen Street while Eliza was also 21 and gave hers as 97 Halesowen Street. They had at least seven children and in 1911 were living at 91 Rowley Village. He was then working as a Brick Kiln Labourer. Their children were Joseph (1896), Ethel (1899), Doris (1902), May (1905), Leonard (1908) and Lily (1910) and Annie (1912). In 1901, the family were living in Rowley Village and Joseph was working as a labourer at the Cement Works; in 1911 they were at 91 Rowley Village, and Joseph was working as a Brick Kiln Burner; in 1921, still living at 91, Rowley Village, Joseph was working as a Yard Labourer at T W Lenches. The 1939 Register shows Joseph living at 6 Limes Avenue, Blackheath and working as a Works Watchman. With him is his daughter Ethel with her husband Thomas Astley, and Joseph’s youngest daughter Annie.

Although Joseph is noted as a Widower in the 1939 Register, Eliza appears still to be alive and she is listed in the 1939 Register in the Staffordshire Mental Hospital near Stafford, she lived until 1957 by which time she was back in Rowley Regis. There may have been an assumption that Joseph was a widower on the part of the person completing the 1939 Register as Joseph was living alone in Limes Avenue. Joseph died in December 1943 and was buried on 18 Dec 1943 at St Giles, Eliza in 1957.

John Redfern 1882-1948

John married Annie Crumpton in about 1906, in the Stourbridge Registration District. They went on to have at least nine children – Leah – 1906-1906, Percy in 1907, Lily in 1910, Phoebe in 1913, John in 1915, Arthur James in 1919, Harry in 1922, Hilda in 1924 and Stanley in 1928. The family lived in various roads in Blackheath and John was at times a labourer but in 1921, a storekeeper at British Thompson Houston. In 1939, the family were living in Grange Road and John was listed as a general labourer and also as an Air Raid Warden. Annie died in 1947 and John died in 1948.

So all of John and Annie’s children stayed in the Rowley and Blackheath area for the rest of their lives.

Samuel Redfern

Samuel Redfern 1845-1911

Samuel was the youngest child of Joseph and Ann Maria and by 1861, at 15 years of age he was already a labourer, still living at home with his parents on Turners Hill. In 1871 he was again still living at home and both Samuel and his father were described as Furnace Labourers. In 1891, Samuel appears to have been a patient in the North Lonsdale Hospital, Barrow in Furness where he was described as a ‘Stoker at the Steelworks’. Yet another instance of Rowley men moving up to the North for work, in this case in the steel industry, rather than quarries. But he did, after all, come from a family where many of the men were furnace workers.

After that, records become sparse for Samuel. In 1901 he is still in Barrow in Furness living with his wife Sarah, formerly Hartley and a son named in the census as Henry H Redfern, Samuel’s occupation given as a Steelworks labourer. Samuel and Sarah had been married in Barrow in Furness in 1896. But there is no birth registration for a Henry Redfern in this area in 1882, I suspect that Henry was actually, as so often in those days, put down as Redfern because that was the name of the head of the household and he was actually Henry Hartley, that Sarah was a widow at the time of her marriage to Samuel and Henry was one of three sons of that previous marriage. And there is a Birth Registration for a Henry Hartley in Barrow in Furness in 1882 and a Henry Hartley appears in the 1911 Census in Barrow in Furness, too. So I do not think Henry was Samuel’s son.

Samuel appears to have died in Barrow in Furness in the early months of 1911. His widow Sarah remarried in 1912.

Redfern Overview

Any errors in this research are all my own, corrections welcome. I have looked at Redfern Trees online and sometimes used those to guide me to additional information (I have said so where I have done this) but generally I have only included information where I can confirm information and sources.

So although I have not gone any further back from Joseph and Ann Maria in that first 1841 census, in two generations they had between them 11 children and at least 54 grandchildren in the Rowley area or within a few miles, shown on this screenshot here (of the Redfern part of my own family tree – Joseph is the paternal grandfather of the husband of my 1st cousin 3x removed, so not exactly closely related!).

The screenshot is, I’m afraid, much too small for you to read the details but Joseph and Ann maria are at the top just under those little green symbols. And I couldn’t even get all of the grandchildren on the screen, too many of them, the tree is too wide but it gives an idea of how big their family was! And the majority of them stayed in the Rowley and Blackheath area, although a few went North, no wonder there are still many Redferns in the area today.

There are several Redfern family trees on Ancestry and the Redfern Family website https://redfernsworldwide.com/ and One Name Study which I mentioned in my last article so plenty of opportunities for co-operative researching!

More family studies from the Lost Hamlets coming in due course!

The Redfern Family in the Lost Hamlets 1

The 1841 Census for the Lost Hamlets has one family of Redferns – Joseph Redfern was living on Turners Hill, a labourer, with his age given as 35. His wife Maria (sometimes Ann Maria), nee Priest, has her age as 40. Joseph and Maria appear to have been married at Tipton on 16 Jul 1827. Maria sometimes used Ann Maria and sometimes Maria, in records throughout her life. Their children Sarah aged 12, Eliza aged 10, Joseph aged 8, William, aged 6 and Ann, aged 4 completed the family, all of the children were born in Rowley Regis.

In later censuses, Joseph gave his age as 48 in 1851, giving a birth year of about 1803. I can find no baptism for a Joseph Redfern in the area in that year, so it is possible that he was born elsewhere, though he consistently says in censuses that he was born in Rowley Regis. Another possibility is that he was baptised in a non-conformist chapel. Certainly, the Priest family into which he married had very strong connections with the Presbyterian Chapel in Cradley Heath which was also in the parish of Rowley Regis.

Maria or Ann Maria gives her age in 1851 as 50 which gives her birth year of 1801. The only baptism I can find for this period of a likely Ann Maria is Maria, the daughter of Cornelius and Mary Priest of Bournbrook , Cradley Heath who was baptised at St Giles, Rowley Regis on 4 Oct 1801. But this is by no means certain, there may be another baptism somewhere that I have simply not been able to find.

The fact that Joseph and Maria were married in Tipton perhaps argues that she was not connected to the Cradley Heath Priests but I cannot find another Maria or Ann Maria baptised in the Tipton area either. And since Maria had had a baby out of wedlock, it seems possible that her family sent her to stay with relatives in Rowley to hide the shame for the family (possibly their view, not mine!). And it seems that David Priest , living with his family in Gadds Green in 1841 was born in Cradley Heath and directly related to the Priest families there so they would have been known to each other and were probably related.

At various points Joseph gives his occupation as a labourer or a furnace man or a furnace labourer. This seems to have been a common occupation for the Redferns as at least two of his sons were also furnace labourers. In 1856, at his son Joseph’s marriage his occupation was given as a Blast Furnace man. One census entry notes that he is a furnace labourer in a coal mine (fires were kept burning at the bottom of shafts to pull air through the mines and reduce the build-up of explosive gases) but others were noted as Blast Furnace labourers, a very different job. I am unsure where the nearest blast furnaces were to Turner’s Hill, possibly at Tividale/Tipton where there were extensive iron works and at least three furnaces shown on the 1^st Edition OS Map though there were almost certainly others in the area including Brades where a furnace is also shown. If Joseph was working at the iron works in the Tividale/Tipton area, this may account for the marriage at Tipton church.

Ist Edition OS Map, copyright David & Charles, surveyed about 1830. Several furnaces and iron works are shown on this map including ones at Tipton and Dudley Port, also at Brades.

Ann Maria

The name Ann Maria is used frequently in the family from this point on, often, it appears, with the name Maria being used day to day. Almost all Joseph and Ann Maria’s children and many of their grandchildren named one of their daughters Ann Maria so they are liberally scattered around the family tree!

Are they on my family tree?

Yet again, having thought when I started this study that I had no connections with the Redferns, I now find that I have two, so far, as Cornelius Priest was already in my family tree! I suspect that the more I look in detail at the families in the Lost Hamlets, the more I shall find that my lines are married into them at some point, sometimes several points, perhaps a natural result of them living in such small communities with limited contact with other communities. So yes, they are on my tree!

Who was Thomas Priest?

Thomas Priest, aged 15 was also living with the Redfern family on Turners Hill. The 1841 Census does not show relationships within households. Thomas was baptised at Dudley St Thomas on 26 Mar 1826, the son of Ann Maria Priest and there is no name shown in the Register for the father so he was probably illegitimate. Joseph and Ann Maria were married in July 1827, fifteen months later so this was certainly not a hasty marriage shortly before or after Thomas’s birth. There are several family trees on Ancestry which suggest that this Thomas was the illegitimate son of Ann Maria and Joseph, born before they were married.

My expert consultant on such issues agreed with me however that, at this time, when parents of an illegitimate child subsequently married, that child usually then became known by the father’s name and is shown in sequence in censuses as the oldest child whereas step children tend to be listed after full children. Since Thomas is shown at the end of the household in 1841, and with the name Priest, not Redfern, and after Joseph and Ann Maria’s other younger children, I suspect that he was not Joseph Redfern’s child but a stepson. It was very common at that time for stepchildren to use their stepfather’s surname or to swap between the two names so the later use of the Redfern name is not conclusive. The only document I can find which lists Thomas as Priest is the 1861 Census when Thomas was living in between his stepfather and stepbrother. I suspect that the enumerator knew that Thomas had grown up in the Redfern household and perhaps thought of him as a Redfern so that the use here is an enumerator error. Certainly all of Thomas’s children were registered as Priest, not Redfern.

At his own marriage to Emma Moreton in 1850, at Dudley St Thomas, Thomas gave the name of his father as Joseph Priest, a Furnaceman, not Joseph Redfern – although he was also a Furnaceman!

There was at least one Joseph Priest in the area who is of about the right age and could have been this man but although there was one family of Priests at Finger i’ the hole in 1841 there is no Joseph listed there and other Priest families appeared to have been in Blackheath and especially in Cradley Heath (which is also where I theorise that Maria’s family were living). It is also possible that the priest asked ‘What is your father’s name and Thomas replied ‘Joseph’ and this was attached to Thomas’s surname of Priest so that gave Joseph Priest. Or Thomas may simply have invented a father’s name, rather than have that space empty, thus showing that he was illegitimate, something that genealogists find is not uncommon with illegitimate children.

A DNA test might prove the final answer to this, perhaps the current members of the Redfern family have done this and established the answer to their satisfaction!

Certainly in later years, Thomas remained in the hamlets, at one stage he and his family were living next door to other members of the Redfern family for several decades.

I shall do a separate post about the Priest family.

Where had the Redferns come from?

One of the crests associated with the Redfern family, courtesy of Andrew Redfern.

Wikipedia suggests that Redfern is an English surname of French Norman origin. It originally appeared as De Redeven.

The first Redfern mentioned in the St Giles’s Parish Registers is the baptism of Ann, the daughter of William and Sarah Redfern on 9^th December 1792, followed by John, their son on 20 May 1798. This John must have died, (although I cannot find a burial for him), as another John was baptised to William and Sarah on 11 Jul 1802.

In 1813,Elizabeth, daughter of William (a farmer) and Sarah Redfern of Piddocks Green, Rowley Regis was baptised on 5^th August, in June 1815 Edward, son of William and Sarah of Plants Green, farmer, was baptised . Plants Green was certainly in the Old Hill/Cradley Heath area but I do not know where Piddocks Green was, it may well have been the same place, place names were sometimes quite flexible.

On 19^th January 1817 Henry Smith Redfern, base born son of Mary Redfern of Turner’s Hill was baptised (there may just be a clue as to the identity of his father there, although I haven’t looked any further into that!).

On 15^th July 1821, William, son of John and Mary Redfern of Turners Hill, a nailer, was baptised, followed by sister Rebekah on 7 September 1823. On 25 September 1825 Joseph, son of John and Mary, now described as a labourer and of Lye Cross was baptised. On 9 Mar 1828 Mary Ann Redfern of Lye Cross, died, aged 28 of Fever.

On 4 December 1832 Esther Redfern of Mincing Lane, aged 30, died of diabetes.

On 7 Jul 1833 Elizabeth Redfern of Dudley Wood was buried, aged 27, having died of decline.

On 16 Oct 1839, John Redfern of Turners Hill, aged 9 months died of measles.

On 13 February 1848, Harriet, daughter of William (a miner) and Ann Redfern of Portway was baptised.

On 2 December 1849, William Redfern of Turners Hill was buried, aged 81, the cause of death being given as Old age.

So clearly there were Redferns in the area, including Turner’s Hill and Lye Cross as early as 1821.

Both Joseph and Ann Redfern give their place of birth consistently in all censuses as Rowley Regis. And yet, I cannot find baptism for a Joseph Redfern in Rowley or in the surrounding area.

At least some of Joseph and Ann Maria’s children were baptised at Dudley St Thomas, Joseph and Eliza both on 12 Aug 1832, with Joseph’s occupation given as a Furnaceman and their abode as Rowley Regis. William was baptised there on 2 Jul 1837 and Ann Maria was baptised the same day.

Also at St Thomas, John, son of John (another Furnaceman) and Mary Redfern of Portway, was baptised there on 18 Oct 1835.

So it appears that these Redferns moved between St Thomas at Dudley and St Giles at Rowley, which seems to be quite common for families living in this area. And there were Redferns scattered around both Rowley and the wider neighbourhood after about 1790.

To muddy the waters, Solomon (one of Joseph and Ann Maria’s later children, to be covered in a later post) appears to be a Redfern family name. There are Solomon Redferns in Stockport in Cheshire in 1866 and in Meltham near Huddersfield in 1852, though that name is spelled Redfearn. And in Denton, Lancashire in 1866. Although all of these Solomons were married to a Mary so it is possible that they are all the same person, moving around!

Online trees trace Joseph’s birth to Stanley in Derbyshire, but I have not investigated this possibility any further, since Joseph himself believed that he had been born in Rowley Regis and there were certainly Redferns in the area at that time.

So this is the Redferns in the Lost Hamlets in the 1841 Census. Since this is such a short piece, I will add some details about:

Joseph and Maria’s older children (those listed in the 1841 Census)

Sarah Redfern 1829-1885

The oldest daughter Sarah, who was aged 12 in 1841 was no longer in the household by 1851. In fact she was living at 84 Snow Hill, Birmingham where she was a servant in the household of Josiah Blackwell, who was a grocer. She was described as a House Servant but there were also three other Assistant Grocers living in so there would have been plenty to keep her busy. Snow Hill Station was, of course, the Birmingham Station familiar to those of us who used the train into Birmingham, that trains from Rowley and Blackheath later ran in to on the Great Western line but the station was not built until 1852 so it was not open when Sarah was working there. But a long row of shops remained long afterwards, running down the hill. Rowley Regis and Blackheath Station did not open until 1867! But even without the busy station that Snow Hill became later, there must have been quite a contrast between the rural outlook of Turners Hill and the increasingly busy city of Birmingham.

On 25 Dec 1854 Sarah Redfern was to marry William Damby or Danby, a miner, at Dudley St. Thomas.

Her father Joseph’s occupation then was given as a Furnace labourer and a Joseph Redfern was one of the witnesses, possibly her brother Joseph who would have been 21 by this time but more likely to have been her father. Sarah and William had ten children, born in Cradley Heath and then The Knowle before William died at The Knowle in January 1873, aged only 41. He was buried in St Giles. By 1881 Sarah had moved to Dudley with the younger four of her children. Among the children of the couple were several with the recurring Redfern names, including Ann Maria (known as Maria) and a Solomon. Sarah died in December 1885, aged 58 and was buried on 20 Dec 1885 at St Giles, with her abode shown as 26 Cinder Bank, Netherton.

So Sarah does not appear in the hamlets after the 1841 Census, although at one later stage she was living at The Knowle, just around the corner from Lost hamlets.

Eliza Redfern – 1831-1909

The next daughter was Eliza, born in about 1831/2, and baptised on 12 August 1831 at Dudley St Thomas was still at home in 1851. On 15 Jun 1859 Eliza married Daniel Hughes at St. James Church Parish, Dudley, and the couple made their home in Dudley, where they had 5 children. Eliza died in September 1909. So Eliza only appears in the hamlets in one more Census, the 1851, before moving to Dudley.

Joseph Redfern 1833-1912

Joseph stayed firmly on Turners Hill, all his life, and married Ann Maria Taylor in 1856, another Ann Maria! Was she related? There were certainly Taylors living on Turners Hill so I shall check this out. Emma Redfern was born in the June qtr of 1854, but Joseph and Ann Maria did not marry until June 1856 so it is not known whether or not Emma was Joseph’s child. However, she was always described as his daughter on census returns and used the name Redfern until her marriage so she may have been. Joseph and Ann Maria went on to have Thomas in 1856, William in 1858, Sarah in 1860, Ann Maria in 1864, Samuel in 1866, Joseph in 1869, John in 1870 and James in 1873.

In 1861 there were three Redfern families living in a row on Turners Hill, this Joseph, his brother (or half-brother) Thomas Priest/Redfern and his father. By 1871, Joseph was working as a labourer in a ‘potyard’, presumably Doulton’s factory. In his census entry in 1901, Joseph was, at 69, still working as a labourer in the stone quarry. In 1911, still at Turners Hill, he was noted as a pottery labourer but also Old Age Pensioner, a whole lifetime of hard physical labouring of one sort or another.

He states in 1911 that his marriage had resulted in 9 children of whom only four were still alive. Ann Maria died in 1903, buried on 14 Jul 1903 and Joseph died in 1912. He was buried on 07 May 1912 at St Giles, his abode given as 3, Turners Hill.

William Redfern 1835-1917

William also stayed in the hamlets, living on Turners Hill until his marriage to Elizabeth While in Halesowen in 1871, when he moved to 6 Perry’s Lake where he stayed until his death in January 1917. William and Elizabeth had no children. William was a general labourer all his life, sometimes working at the pottery and his last census entry in 1911 he stated that he was an “Old Age Pensioner, Retired Labourer Moving Pipes”. William was buried at St Giles on 17 Feb 1917. Elizabeth died in 1926 and the entry in the Burial Register at St Giles says that she was ‘late of Perrys Lake’.

Ann Redfern 1838-1919

Ann Maria married Frederick Hadley in the Dudley Registration District in the last quarter of 1857, (although I only know this from GRO Index and have not yet found the marriage). They lived in Lye Cross for a while before moving to Turners Hill and they had at least eight children: Joseph in 1859, William in 1861, Mary in 1863, Ann Maria in 1865, Thomas in 1868, Sarah in 1871, Eliza in 1877 and Ellen in 1881. They stayed living on Turners Hill, next door to Ann’s older brother Joseph until their last census entry in 1901. Frederick died in 1909 and was buried at St Giles on 31 Jul 1909. Ann died in 1919 and was buried at St Giles on 13 Mar 1919.

Thomas Priest or Redfern 1823-

Thomas was the illegitimate son of Ann Maria or Maria Priest, probably not the son of Joseph Redfern. He married Emma Morton on 10 June 1850 at Dudley St Thomas. Emma had two children before this marriage, John in 1847 and Sarah in the March quarter of 1850. It is not clear whether these were Thomas’s children although they both subsequently used the Priest surname. Thomas and Emma had at least a further eight children: Joseph in 1854, Thomas in 1857, Ann Maria in 1858 (who died the same year), Ann Maria and Elizabeth (twins) in 1859, Mary in 1862, Eliza in 1865 and Emma in 1867. Emma, wife of Thomas died in 1895 and was buried on 04 Aug 1895 at St Giles.

Thomas Priest died in January 1905 and was buried on 19 Jan 1905 at St Giles, with his abode still given as 2 Turners Hill so he had lived there for nearly 50 years.

So this is all relating to the Redfern family as they were shown in the 1841 Census. There were more children born to Joseph and Ann Maria later but I will cover them in another post.

The Redfern Family One Name Study

There is a website about the Redfern family which is linked to a Redfern One Name Study and this may be of interest and allow Redfern family members to join forces to compare their information. Andrew Redfern who runs the website and study would welcome contacts with members of the Redfern family wherever they are. Here is the link:

https://redfernsworldwide.com/

The Twelve Hills of Rowley

A little fun puzzle for my readers today.

In the course of researching my post on the Hailstone in April, I came across and mentioned this quote:-

Stone Pillar Worship (Vol. vii., p. 383.) [Date not known but certainly prior to 1879 and probably much earlier.]

“—The Rowley Hills-near Dudley, twelve in number, and each bearing a distinctive name”

This quote has kept coming back to me since writing the post and I wondered whether it was possible still to name the twelve hills today.

Ist Edition OS Map, surveyed between 1814 and 1827. Copywright David & Charles. The hatching of the area of the hills may be a useful clue!

Some are easy. Turners Hill, Darbys Hill, Hailstone Hill and Hyams or Highams Hill spring immediately to mind and are clearly marked on OS and earlier maps.

Was The Knowle one of the hills? The original spelling seems to have been The Knoll which is another term for a Hill so perhaps this was one of the old names.

There was a Rock Hill quarry marked on the 1902 OS Map, near to Darbys Hill, along with Rough Hill shown on the map above Springfield. Hawes Hill, also on the OS maps, lay just below the village.

Surely the hill on which the main street of the village was built, on which the church stands to this day, was Rowley Hill? When I walked to school in Hawes Lane, I certainly knew I was walking up Rowley Hill and if a stranger asked where Rowley church was, you would say that it was at the top of Rowley Hill but that name doesnot appear on any maps. And what happened to Dobbs Bank, shown on the First Edition OS Map? Is a Bank a Hill?

The OS map also shows a Bare Hill Farm, near Oakham and Bare Hill is shown on a map of 1820. The names Rough Hill, Bare Hill and Rock Hill quarry do tell us something of what the terrain looked like.

Was there a Portway Hill – it is still referred to as such today but the road was always just called Portway, rather than Portway Hill and the OS Map labels the hill there Turners Hill, rather than Portway Hill.

Allsop’s Hill is mentioned in documents occasionally but that may have been a later name associated with the owner of the quarry.

Are Haden Hill and Old Hill just too far away? Is Gorsty Hill counted as part of the range of hills? Moving over the county boundary, are Kates Hill or Cawney Hill part of the range, too or Tansley Hill which is just below Oakham and appears to be part of the same range of hills? I did not know that there was a Warrens Hill until I looked at this map. (I wonder whether there were rabbits there?)

Does Bury Hill fall within the group? Was Waterfall Lane ever known by name as a hill? There is plenty to consider.

Goodness, the whole area is hilly!

On a recent trip back to the area, I was struck by how hilly the whole area is, every road seemed to go up or down hills, right over to Merry Hill and Brierley Hill and to Furnace Hill in Halesowen.

So this is my list of the possible candidates. The first twelve appear on OS maps and I personally would regard as part of the range of Rowley Hills. The others are listed in my order of probability and proximity.

Turners Hill
Darby’s Hill
Hailstone Hill
Highams Hill
Hawes Hill
Rough Hill
Bare Hill
Rock Hill
The Knowle/Knoll
Timmins Hill
Warrens Hill
Dobbs Bank
Rowley Hill
Portway Hill
Allsop’s Hill
Tansley Hill
Cawney Hill
Kates Hill
Gorsty Hill
Haden Hill
Old Hill
Bury Hill

So I would be very interested to know what others think, and would welcome some group participation! Especially, I would welcome thoughts from local people who may know of names I have not found on maps. Answers on a postcard please or better still, please comment if you have views on which were the twelve hills of Rowley or if you know of more possibilities, either here on the blog or on the ‘I remember Blackheath and Rowley Regis’ Facebook page where I will put a link to this article.

The Farms in the Lost Hamlets

As I have mentioned before, although the landscape around Rowley became industrialised and scarred by mining, clay extraction and quarrying, much of Turners Hill remained open countryside and in use for farming, supplying the local population with milk and eggs until well into the 20^th century and much of the area on the hill is now being returned to a green condition as quarries are filled in.

There were several farms on the Rowley side of Turners Hill itself, and this post is principally about Freebodies Farm, Hailstone Farm and Turners Hill Farm with a mention of Lamb Farm, nearer to Portway Hall. To local people these farms were often known by the names of the farmers living there at the time but on maps their traditional name are usually shown. Of the local farms, there were apparently at least four dairy farms in the area in the 1920s and 30s, run by the Monk, Richards, Merris and Skidmore families.

At an early stage there was a Mill or Windmill Farm at Tippity Green although this was not identified in the later censuses, it appears to have been on the site of the former parish windmill and this area was subsequently quarried away.

This photograph of the Ibberty (later Tippity) Manorial Mill appears in J Wilson Jone’s book, The History of the Black Country which was published in about 1950 although the date of the photograph is not known.

In 1841 Edward Alsop aged 60 was listed as a farmer at the Wind Mill Farm in Tippity Green, with his presumed wife and four children, plus a male servant. Next listed on the Census was Elizabeth Lewis, aged 40, an ironmonger, with her family and then Joseph Bowater who was a butcher and subsequent licensee of the Bulls Head so that is the correct area in Tippity Green. Neither the Alsop nor Lewis families are listed in the area by the time of the next census.

There was also a Knowle Farm but this is not quite within the area of the Lost Hamlets and I have not indexed the Census for this area.

Also, the late Anthony Page has a picture in his first book on Rowley of Warren’s Hall Farm which was over the top of the hill on the Oakham Road, a large white house. It later also had riding stables and later still became a residential Nursing Home before being demolished and replaced by housing. Again, it is not quite within my study area and I have not indexed the census for this area.

Portway Farm, also slightly outside my study area, still exists though no longer in farming use, perhaps the only one of all these farms to have survived as a building to the present day.

The Censuses

The Censuses are not consistent about how the farms were recorded. Sometimes they were not listed by name. Where I have been able to identify the farms I have shown the results under details about each farm. To date I have only transcribed censuses for the Study area up to 1881. Later ones will follow in due course and I hope to upload the transcripts to a website for the Study at some point.

Not all the censuses include the acreage farmed by each farm but where they do, they vary considerably from one census to the next which does not help with the identification process.

Where on Turners Hill were the farms?

I was very unclear until recently exactly where each of these farms was although I think I have them identified now. No doubt someone will help me out if I have this wrong!

Freebodies Farm and Hailstone Farm were next to each other down a lane on the left off the Turners Hill Road, above the Hailstone quarry with the Hailstone Farmyard being at the end of the track in the area shown on OS maps as Gadds Green. Hailstone Farm occupied the two buildings shown on the left on this photograph and Freebodies the three buildings on the right.

The date of this photograph is not known (copyright also unknown but will be gladly acknowledged if informed) but the two farms are very much on the brink of the quarries so probably 1960s.

Turners Hill Farm was further up the hill, on the right.

Turners Hill Farm, 1969. Copyright: Mike Fenton

Many of the fields were divided not by hedges but by stone walls which is a very common practice in areas where there is a ready supply of stone for use, as in the Cotswolds and in the Yorkshire Dales. There were some hedges, though, because Reg Parsons who grew up at 2 Turners Hill in the late 1930s told me that his mother loved the wild sweet peas which grew in the hedges near there. He remembered Vera Cartwright with the milk cart which delivered daily to Blackheath, Whiteheath, Langley and Rowley Regis, seven days a week. Before the advent of milk bottles, milk in most parts of the country was taken round in churns and cans and the cans were taken into the customer’s house to be dispensed into their own jugs. This was not just in Rowley, my husband can remember, as a boy, helping his uncle with his milk round in Gloucester where the same system was used. He also said that the horse or pony would know the route and stopping places where they would wait patiently for the milk to be dispensed before moving on to the next stop.

Reg Parsons also remembered that there was a field below his home on Turners Hill which was used as an fuel dump in the Second World War, he remembers piles of Jerry Cans on concrete bases and also an anti-aircraft gun (known apparently as Big Bertha) near the Wheatsheaf pub. My mother used to be on fire watch sometimes during the war, with the St John’s Ambulance brigade and she also remembered the gun there. Sarah notes that one of her grandfather’s fields was requisitioned by the army so this would have been for the fuel storage that Reg remembers and she also tells of family memories that during the war a German bomb landed on one of the fields killing a cow. And during air raids, the ponies pulling the milk carts had to be unharnessed in case they bolted, with all the potential loss of milk and vehicles. Later, in the 1950s, six caravans were put on the site which were lived in by local people.

Many people have mentioned their memories of the Cartwright family who farmed at Hailstone Farm on Turner’s Hill for many decades and who had a riding school, as well as the milk round. Sarah Thomas has written a fascinating book called Hailstone Farm about life on the farms there which she has published privately and, having come across my study online, she has very kindly sent me a copy but with the stipulation that she does not wish to have any of the contents to be put on social media. However, she tells me that she has deposited copies of the book in national and local archives so it would be well worth enquiring, if you are visiting local archives or perhaps Blackheath library, whether they hold a copy. Certainly Dudley Archives lists a copy and Sandwell Archives appear to but do not specify where it is held and it is not reservable through the library system. The book is full of photographs and pictures of documents and family memories and history. I will not be reproducing anything from it but it will inform me about the farms and where they were so that this study has a more accurate record of the farms and their ownership over recent years.

Freebodies Farm, Turner’s Hill

There has been, if not specifically a farm, then an area known as Freebodies on Turners Hill for centuries.

A Survey of English Place Names refers to it as an ‘early-attested site in the Parish of Dudley , a name of the manorial type, deriving from the family of Frebodi found in Dudley in 1275 and 1327’. Bear in mind that for centuries the main route from Rowley to Dudley ran over Turners Hill so directly through the site where Freebodies Farm later was. There was, may still be, an area of Dudley called Freebodies in the Kates Hill area of Dudley and the Freebodies Tavern was there until very recently.

The Morgan website has a large amount of well documented and referenced information on local families and the area and notes that a document in the Dudley Archives shows that there was a Deed Poll in about 1550 by a William Chambers Alias Ireland assigning ancient ecclesiastical land of the Priory of St John’s at Halesowen. A number of his descendants for the next 150 years appear in the local records of Rowley Regis and Dudley, using the names ‘Chambers alias Ireland’ These include intermarriages with the Darby family. The name Ireland is sometimes spelled ‘Ierland’ or ‘Yearland’. The same document demonstrates that they owned ex-monastic lands at Rowley called Freebodies, and this reference recurs in a number of later Darby wills. If you have Chambers/Irelands/Darbys or Cartwrights on your family tree it is well worth looking at this site https://www.morganfourman.com/ Sadly I have none of these names in my tree!

A survey by Lord Dudley’s Stewards in 1556 produced a rent roll in which William Ireland’s Freebodys, later called Freebury Farm is recorded, suggesting that it was established before the neighbouring Hailstone Farm.

A Will of John Chambers in 1870, implies that the farm on Turners Hill was originally part of the Freebodies estate. Certainly, John Chamber’s brother William was an executor of his will and was described as a farmer of Rowley Regis.

At other times it was known as Freebury Farm. Spelling was very variable in those days!

Censuses for Freebodies: At Freebodies Farm in 1841 were Josiah Parkes and his family (including Sophia Cole who was mentioned in my earlier article about the Cole families around Turners Hill, and one male and one female servant.

However, there is no mention of Freebodies in the 1861 Census nor any farmer listed in Gadds Green. However, listed as Farmhouse, Turners Hill and as a farmer of 30 acres is William Smith, aged 54 with his wife Sarah and his Levett granddaughter, plus two servants. Was this Freebodies?

In 1871 there is no mention of Freebodies Farm but two households are listed as ‘adjoining Hailstone Farm’ – John Bradshaw, an agricultural labourer aged 26 with his wife and his 11 month old son plus his brother aged 21 and also an ag lab. The brothers had both been born in Haselor, Warwickshire and his wife in Solihull. Also described as living ‘adjoining Hailstone Farm’ was a blacksmith Henry Russell aged 33 with his wife and daughter. So both of these households were from outside the area. It is possible that the land of the two farms was being worked together and the farmhouse used to house either farm workers or tenants.

The next building listed is Brickhouse Farm which was some distance away in Cock Green on the Dudley Road and which was being farmed by the Levett family with one ag lab and one female servant. There is sometimes no accounting for the routes taken by census enumerators!

Or was there a well established path across the fields between Hailstone and the Dudley Road at Springfield which everyone used? This seems likely as Reg Parsons mentioned to me that his father, on his way home from work, would sometimes get off the bus at Springfield to buy something from the shop there and would then cut up over the fields to home. This does seem more practical than the residents up on the hill always having to walk down to Perrys Lake, along Tippetty Green and to the Knowle that way. There is certainly a Footpath marked on the 1904 OS Map, here, running from Knowle Farm to Hailstone Farm and also further on up Turners Hill. .

Hailstone Farm

A lease in Dudley Archives dated 1796 is for a lease of 21 years to Samuel Round, farmer, of Hailstone Farm (a messuage called Freeberrys alias Fingerhold – that Finger ‘I the Hole popping up again!) so it seems likely that the farm was established by the late 1700s.

Sarah’s Cartwright grandfather had been born on Hailstone Farm but the family then moved elsewhere, again this makes me think of the information on the Morganfourman site that the Cartwrights were closely linked to this area as far back as the 1500s. He took over first Lamb Farm in 1912 and then Hailstone Farm in 1924 and ran their businesses from there, including the riding school established by Sarah’s mother and the milk round (which had originally been started in the early 1900s when the family were living at Lamb Farm), later taking on the tenancy of Freebodies in addition in 1932, subletting the house to tenants. In addition to the Riding School, there were some Gymkhanas there – much more detail about this and photographs in this article in the Black Country Bugle in 2019. https://www.pressreader.com/uk/black-country-bugle/20191106/281505048027440

Later part of the family moved to another farm at Bewdley and Sarah’s mother and father continued to live at Hailstone until the 1960s when the lease was terminated and the land taken back for quarrying.

There is much more detail in the book about the farms, their construction, plans, photographs, invoices etc from the business in the book, a real very personal record of a Rowley Farm in the 20^th century.

Censuses for Hailstone Farm

In 1841, the farmer at Hailstone Farm was Samuel Round who was sixty, with three servants, possibly the Samuel Round mentioned above who was granted a lease in 1796 or possibly his son . I can find no trace of Hailstone Farm or the Round family in 1851.

In 1861, Keturah Round, a married lady of 54 was at Hailstone Farm with several children though no spouse and she is described as the Head of the household though not a widow. She had married Edwin Round in Dudley in the Sep qtr if 1854 and was previously Wheale.

In 1871 Hailstone Farm was occupied by Elizabeth Stickley, a widow with her occupation given as Farmer with her two sons John aged 37 and Thomas aged 27, both described as Farmer’s son, along with Ruth Lees, a servant but possibly also related to Elizabeth Stickley as her maiden name was Lees. In the previous census this family had farmed at Oatmeal Row, Cakemore, next door to some ancestors of mine!

In 1881, there is no mention of Hailstone Farm, and no farmer listed but there are three households listed as Hailstone Hill. Susan Jones, who was 50 and a widow was listed as an annuitant aged 33, born in Middlesex, as were the two young nieces living with her who were scholars. Her femail servant was born in Kingswinford. It is tempting to think that this was Hailstone Farm. One of the other houses was occupied by Joseph Hooper, a Farm labourer, aged 48 and born in Cleverley, Shropshire and his wife Ann aged 54, born Thame, Oxfordshire. The tenants in this area certainly almost all came from outside the area, it seems.

Turners Hill Farm

Maps show Turners Hill Farm higher up Turners Hill from the other two farms and there is also a reference on some maps to Cloudland though not on recent maps. There appears to be a large House there, too, Turners Hill House and sometimes the owners of this house were also described as farmers. It is possible, since there is evidence that the Downing family had other land in the area which they let out, that farming was not their principal occupation and that most of the land was farmed from Turners Hill Farm, rather than house.

Censuses for Turners Hill Farm/House

At Turners Hill in 1841 was Joseph Downing with his wife Nancy, son Isaac and two female servants.

By 1851 still on Turners Hill but with no name given for their residence was his widow Nancy Downing with their son Isaac, aged 35 who was a ‘proprietor of lands’ and three unmarried daughters, all described as annuitants, plus a Thomas Whitehouse who was probably Nancy Downing’s brother as her maiden name was Whitehouse. Thomas Whitehouse was a widower, and also a ‘proprietor of lands’ like his nephew.

By 1861 Isaac Downing was still living on Turners Hill, with his three sisters. This time he has given his occupation as “Principal occupation: general superintendence of the cultivation of land. “The Enumerator has added Farmer. But Stephen Parsons on Facebook commented that he remembers that in his time there was a large house on the right of Turners Hill Road which was Turners Hill House, and that Monks Lane ran below it which led to Monks Farm and the quarry. There was also an area in this location called Cloudland on some maps. So were the Downings perhaps living at Turners Hill House but contracting out the farming? It seems likely. I was interested to see on the Facebook page that Linda George has receipts signed by Isaac Downing in 1855 and 1856 for the letting of a farm at Darby’s Hill to Samuel Cook so the Downing family may have had substantial land holdings around the area.

The Downing siblings, still all unmarried, were still on Turners Hill, in 1871, Isaac, now 55, described as Landowner and Farmer and also on Turners Hill and described as a farmer of 88 acres in 1871 is William Whitehouse, a widower, with his two teenage sons a female servant and a farm labourer. I note that a William Whitehouse had been one of the witnesses of Joseph Downing and Nancy Whitehouse in 1810 so may well have been an uncle or cousin to the Downings. This census is the last one showing this Isaac Downing, as he died in November 1874 and was buried in St Giles.

There was also listed in 1871, however, a farmer of 60 acres on Turners Hill, James Bridge aged 28 with his wife Anne, one female servant and one agricultural labourer so this may have been Turners Hill Farm. By 1861 Ann Bridge, now a widow aged 39 was the farmer at Turners Hill Farm, by now farming 40 acres and employing 2 labourers, a cowman and a waggoner.

By 1881, there is the family of Samuel Woodall, an Engineer and Iron Founder listed first under Turners HIll, probably at Turners Hill House. He was 35 and born in Dudley. His wife Mary was born in Birmingham. In addition his two brothers and a sister were also living with them, with three female domestic servants, again all born outside Rowley. I presume this was the house previously occupied by the Downings.

Listed at 5 Turners Hill was William Giles, aged 30 – a farmer of 70 acres employing one additional man. This presumably was Turners Hill Farm. He and his wife were born outside Rowley, though not a great distance, being from Kingswinford and Cakemore respectively. Their elder two children aged 8 and 6 had been born in Enville, Staffordshire, the two younger aged 4 and 2 in Rowley Regis.

The Parish Registers

The Chambers family

On 31 October 1544, Margrett, wife of William Chambers was buried, so there were already Chambers in Rowley at this date. In 1558 William Chambers was buried. Between the two dates three Chambers girls – Mary, Margaret and Agnes were all married at St Giles. The records from 1558 to 1566 are noted by the Vicar, Adam Jevenn, as being missing. (I wonder whether he was an early ancestor of the Jeavons families in Rowley and Blackheath?)

In 1575, Jone, as daughter of John Chambers was baptised and in 1602, John, son of Thomas.

On 12 Feb 1603, a child William was baptised, described as the son of Edward Shakespurre and Joane, d. of Christopher Chambers. Freebodies is not mentioned but certainly Christopher Chambers was associated with Freebodies then . In January 1641, Edward, son of William Chambers of Freebodies was baptised at St Giles, in 1744 another William Chambers of Freebodies was buried . Christopher Chambers was one of two people appointed in 1650, along with three others to be ‘Collectors for the poore’ which implies a certain social standing in the parish. At times, the Chambers used the name Irelands, too. Sometimes their abode is given as Churchend though it is not clear where this was. Certainly there were 152 Chambers entries in the Parish Register between 1539 and 1684 for baptisms and burials, 1539-1754 for marriages. On occasions Chambers were also churchwardens.

By 1723, with the burial of Elinor Chambers, widow, her abode was shown as Ffreebodies. Another branch of the Chamber, however was at Brickhouse in 1724. In 1727, Christopher Chambers of ‘ye ffinger i’ the hole’ was buried. Another branch of the Chambers was described in a marriage in 1732 as ‘of Tividale’. So the Chambers seemed to be scattered right around Turners Hill over several centuries.

The Downing family also had a long term presence on Turners Hill. The first Downing entry in the Registers is in 1644 when Robert, son of John Downing of Warrley was baptised, with numerous entries after that, the first Isaac Downing (that we know of) being baptised at St Giles in 1672. In 1814 Isaac Downing, of Turners Hill was buried aged 75, having died of Asthma.

Back in 1722, Mary, wife of Isaac Downing ‘de ffox oak’ was buried but he appears to have remarried the following year and had a child Samuell baptised at St Giles, with an Isaac Downing of Foxoak being buried in 1727, probably not the same man but possibly related.

On 23^rd July 1815, Isaac , son of Joseph and Nancy Downing, was baptised and Joseph’s occupation was given as a ‘Beast Leech’ – someone who treated sick animals. Joseph and Nancy were still on Turners Hill in the 1841 Census. A daughter Mary Ann was baptised to them in 1818, followed by Lavinia in 1821 and Amelia in 1823. Another Isaac Downing was married to Elizabeth Nutt in 1815 so there were several Isaacs around then. Joseph Downing, originally a ‘beast leech’ and later a farmer died and was buried in St Giles on 2 Jan 1849.

Not all the Downings in the area were so well-to do – Mary Downing, aged 69 of Perry’s Lake was buried in April 1821, having died of cold. In 1823 William Downing, son of Joseph Downing a miner, died in the Poorhouse. In 1828 an Isaac Downing of Perrys Lake died aged 88 of natural decay so presumably there was some connection shown by the use of the name Isaac. There were also Downings in Mincing Lane, in Windmill End and in Portway, all apparently in labouring jobs of various sorts. By the 1840s another branch of Downings were living in Gorsty Hill and another in Waterfall Lane.

Only the Downings on Turners Hill appear to have been wealthy and one wonders whether perhaps one child might have benefitted from a scholarship to the Old Swinford Hospital and been able subsequently to have gone into a profession which improved his circumstances. I would dearly love to find out a list of Rowley boys who attended that school!

Lamb Farm

Lamb Farm was, according to Roy Slim, in an article in the Black Country Bugle in 2021, a small farm adjacent to the Lion Farm which later gave its name to the Lion Farm Estate, near Whiteheath so slightly out of my main study area but included here as there were connections to Freebodies and Hailstone Farm . Roy says that the Throne Farm, farmed by the Skidmores, was much larger than either of them and I presume that the local roads with royal names were so named because they were on land formerly part of this farm. Throne Road, Throne Crescent, Queens Drive, Hanover Road, Tudor Road, Windsor Road, Stuart Road. And I am interested to see that some of the modern roads there, built where the quack was, also have names with Royal connections, Sandringham Drive, Palace Close, Majestic Way, with the Vikings, Celts, Druids, Goths, Romans and Saxons getting a mention, too!

After the Cartwrights moved to Hailstone Farm in 1924, Lamb Farm was let to various tenants, including Hawleys, Hewitts, Slims, Matthews and Skidmores. Roy Slim has also written about his family’s time there.

Lamb Farm was sold for development in 1945.

Local memories of the farms

On the ‘I remember Blackheath and Rowley Regis’ Facebook page, Raymond Kirkham remembered that he had known the farm halfway up Turners Hill as Cartwright Farm. This would have been Hailstone Farm, as at the time Raymond was growing up, the Cartwrights were working the area of both farms from Hailstone Farm and, although they leased Freebodies too and farmed the land, the house was let to tenants. He noted that the farm further up at the top of the hill was Monk Farm and this must have been Turners Hill Farm. He said that this whole area was his playground when he was growing up and his family got their eggs from the farm.

Ian Davies remembered Hailstone farm well, as he was related to the Cartwright family. Ian’s Geordie grandfather lived with the Cartwrights at Lamb farm, near Portway Hall, when he first moved south in the early 1900s. He remembers that by the 1950s George Cartwright had moved away to a farm near Bewdley and Hailstone Farm had been taken over by their daughter Vera and her husband George Thomas. George taught Ian to ride. The quarries were already threatening to swallow the farm back then. The narrow track from Turners Hill had quarries close on both sides. The farmhouse and top of the land were swallowed up by the Tarmac mega-quarry, The lower area stretching down to Springfield was used for housing.

Ian also remembered Lamb Farm which was on the left going down Throne Road, immediately after Portway Hall. He used to walk past the drive on the way to his grandparents’ house in Newbury Lane. He thinks that St Michael’s School was built on the land and that in the 1800s Portway Hall colliery was on the farm’s land and he thinks this was responsible for the subsidence that ultimately forced Portway Hall to be demolished.

Ian also kindly added a link on the Facebook page about memories of Blackheath and Rowley Regis to an article written by Sarah Thomas in the Black Country Bugle which appeared in Nov 2019, including various photographs.

https://www.pressreader.com/uk/black-country-bugle/20191106/281505048027440

There are obviously several family connections to the Cartwrights still in the area as Margaret Higgs said that George Cartwright was her father’s uncle, her grandmother was George Cartwright’s sister.

Mark Northall said that his father Frank Northall had worked at Cartwright’s farm as a lad.

Jill Watkins-Beavon had lived in Gadds Green which was the land opposite Hailstone farm, later her fmily lived in one of the four houses in the quarry.

William Perry remembered in 2018 that his father had told him that when he was young he would walk up Turners Hill to Cartwright’s (Hailstone) farm where they had a lovely horse that he used to stroke.

So this is all the information that I have found to date about the farms in the Lost Hamlets, all disappeared now into the quarry but helping to sustain the local populace in their time, and about the families who farmed them over the centuries. More information would be very welcome and this can be added, corrected or a further post done if sufficient additional information is found.

The distracting delights of background reading

One of the things I have learned as I have been working on this One Place Study, but which I was already somewhat conscious of from my family history researches, is how difficult it is for us, in our relatively pampered modern lives, to really understand what our ancestor’s lives were like. How they coped with the sheer hard toil of their work, whether in mine, quarry or workshop, how they coped with the loss of so many of their wives dying in childbirth, husbands dying in industrial accidents, the high numbers of early deaths from diseases now rare or curable, their children dying young from diseases and conditions which have been overcome by modern medicine. Were they were worried by the changes in their surroundings as industry despoiled what had once been fields and pastures or did they consider the jobs that this brought were a benefit which outweighed this?

Some of this we may never know. We can only wonder.

So in recent times, I have widened my reading to address my lack of knowledge about those times.

A really good blog for Family Historians

I follow an interesting blog on WordPress which I highly recommend, called English Ancestors by Janice Heppingstall. Janice writes excellent and thoughtful (and very informative) pieces on family history and sometimes recommends books which she has found interesting. A few weeks ago she recommended ‘The Butcher, the Baker and the Candlestick Maker’ by Roger Hutchinson which is about how the censuses came to be taken, including a lot of fascinating information, well worth reading. She and I seem to share certain interests, such as what she calls ‘homing in on the little people’ and, like me, some of her ancestors moved from rural areas to industrial ones, including Mill towns, in her case in the North West. Similarly, a book entitled The real Oliver Twist by John Waller and about Robert Blincoe, who was thought to have inspired the character of Oliver Twist. That has also now been added to my pile of books to be read.

Contemporary Fiction as a source of information

At a conference on West Midlands history which I attended a few weeks ago, there was an interesting note from one speaker that we can sometimes learn from the fiction writing of contemporary authors. Francis Brett Young is the obvious writer for the Black Country ( though I confess to not enjoying his writing m7ch) but the other name which was mentioned as giving detailed descriptions of the hardships of many who worked in industry was Charles Dickens.

I have been an avid reader since I was a child but must confess that Dickens has never been top of my list of favourite authors. In fact, when I thought about it, I couldn’t remember reading any of his books apart, perhaps, from Oliver Twist when I was a child. I have seen the many adaptations of his works on television, of course, but again, not for many years so that I could not remember the details of the plots of even Great Expectations. The story of A Christmas Carol is more familiar – dare I admit that that is mainly because it is so deeply imbedded into our culture around Christmas, particularly from the Muppets Christmas Carol which was a family favourite for many years.

But the speaker at the history conference commented that Dickens had used his books to bring attention to the dreadful working conditions of ordinary working people, with some success and had helped to expose the poverty and living conditions of the poor as a result of the Industrial Revolution. He particularly mentioned ‘The Olde Curiosity Shop’ which is next on my reading list.

Different ways to read books!

Now I have a fondness for computer puzzle games. Not the sort of modern flash bang video racing explosive hidden object or match three stuff but actual puzzles, jigsaws, etc. I play a couple of games most days and like to think it helps to keep my brain active. One I have played for many years is called Sherlock and was invented by an American called Everett Kaser, he has many absorbing puzzle games. Recently I noticed that he had a new game called Beckett’s Books. This game takes books which he has transcribed and divides each page into squares (you can vary the numbers of squares) and jumbles them. Your task is then to put the squares back into the right order to give you a readable page before you can move onto the next page. This is done by matching the beginnings and ends of words and phrases – it is quite challenging at times. Kaser has a list of some fifty or so books available including many classics, such as The Secret Garden, the Father Brown Mysteries, several Sherlock Holmes novels, a number of Dickens classics, some of the PGWodehouse books, plus some which clearly reflect his particular interests and some American authors I am not familiar with. As you do the puzzles, of course, you read the book. Really properly slowly read the book – and it’s really enjoyable. The first Dickens book, I tried was Great Expectations. This brought home to me that Dickens really was a cracking writer and that he was very skilled at leaving his readers with a cliff hanger. He originally wrote many of his books for serialisation through daily or weekly publications and I can now fully understand how eagerly his readers would have been waiting for the next instalment. I could hardly wait to start the next page when I finished each one! This threatened to be so time consuming that I had to resort to buying copies of the novels to finish reading.

The Olde Curiosity Shop is, sadly (or perhaps fortunately) not among the books listed at the moment (so I have a pre-loved paperback copy on the way) but another novel called ‘Hard Times’ is among those Everett Kaser has listed and online reviews said that this was a diatribe about the evils of industrialisation, the effects on the air around and the suffering of the poor workers. So I have read (yes, and puzzled) that one. It’s a clever story and has many characters, sympathetic and not, many threads, some amusing and some incredibly sad at times. It is an interesting insight into the politics and prejudices of the time. I was actually moved to tears at one point which is not something that often happens to me. The other thing that is engaging is that it is written entirely without the benefit of hindsight. It reflects in detail how people really lived, worked, travelled, amused themselves at the time without anything but fairly primitive means of communication.

One chapter details an operation to rescue a man who has fallen into a disused mine shaft on the moors above the town – it is no less than riveting, giving so many details about the rescue that I had to wonder whether Dickens had actually watched such an operation.

The Whiteheath Mine Disaster

In December 2022, I posted the piece below on Facebook about a mine disaster at Whiteheath which had resulted in the death of eleven men. Although Whiteheath is slightly outside the Lost Hamlets area, I include the piece below, people living in the hamlets would certainly have known of it at the time and some men from there may well have worked in the mine.

‘The Ramrod Hall Colliery explosion 1856 – some local history which I had never heard of before.

Transcribing burial records last week for St Giles in 1856, I was curious to notice five consecutive entries for burials of young men all on the 15 August 1856, the abode for all given as Whiteheath Gate. The following day another young man from Portway was buried, none of these had any cause of death shown which was unusual for this register.

The loss of five young men would have been a grievous loss for such a small community so I did a little research. I wondered whether they had all died in some sort of accident together.

Knowing that the Ramrod Hall Pit was at Whiteheath, I searched the website of the Northern Mine Research Society and found the following information about an explosion there:

RAMROD HALL. Oldbury, Staffordshire. 13th August, 1856.

The colliery was owned by Lord Ward and was at White Heath Gate. The explosion occurred because of bad ventilation. This was partly due to the neglect of the ‘butty’, Thomas Barker who did not discharge the 17th Rule and did not inspect the mine before the men descended. Of the sixteen men and boys who were in the mine at the time of the explosion, eleven were killed.

Those who died were:

Thomas Barker aged 23 years,

R. Cartwright aged 43 years,

John Sheldon aged 36 years,

Thomas Shaw aged 35 years,

Thomas Round aged 34 years,

John Walletts aged 28 years,

William Simpson aged 33 years,

Samuel Willetts aged 26 years,

J. Fulford aged 16 years,

John Bryan aged 13 years,

T. Hampton aged 18 years.

At the inquest it emerged that on the morning of the disaster one group of men descended one of the two shafts. (The mine was quite new and had been closed for a few days because the men were working on the approach roads on the surface.) When the mine reopened, and the first party went down, one of them had a lighted candle which was seen to burn blue, indicating the presence of gas. The candle was sensibly blown out and the miners called up to the banksman that gas was present and to bring down a lantern. By the regulations, a lamp should have been used to test for gas before the men went down. This rule was neglected.

Another skip containing seventeen or eighteen men was lowered and a man named Barker, the butty, ordered some live coals to be placed in it, saying that there was no sulphur for the lantern. The explosion took place as they were being lowered, blowing the basket and men out of the top of the shaft and causing terrible injuries to them. The accident was put down to the fact that there were two shafts at the mine and water was being drawn off one which forced the foul air up the other shaft.

Newspaper reports tell of hundreds of people rushing to the pithead after the explosion and miners from a neighbouring pit volunteering to go down to rescue injured men still trapped below ground.

Such a sad tale, such a hazardous industry and what a terrible event for the community of Whiteheath, so many widows and children left behind, without any means of support. There are frequent entries in the Burial Registers for men (and boys as young as ten) ‘killed in a pit’, even though in 1835 a mining investigative committee had been set up to figure out how to cut down on the number of accidents. Whatever they did was not enough to prevent the deaths of at least 610 miners in the Black Country between 1837 and 1842 and many more in later years.

A press report on this explosion states that the inquests were attended by two Inspectors of Mines and a solicitor (representing Lord Ward who was out of the country) to observe. The Coroner reported that he had gone down the mine the day after the explosion and again a few days later so he was obviously very thorough and such accidents were being properly examined.

Although the reports refer to Thomas Barker (who was buried the day after the other five) the Burial register and his Death Registration give his name as Baker. Thomas Barker/Baker was the ‘butty’ who gave the instruction to carry burning coals into the mine, even though he had been warned that gas was present. Presumably he was buried the following day as local feeling did not want him buried with the other men who died because of his actions. The Mines Inspectors though were clear at the inquests (there were five separate inquests because the men killed lived in different places) that the failure of the mine managers to keep a fire or furnace burning at the foot of one of the shafts to force air circulation through the mine was the reason that gas accumulated while the mine was closed for a few days. A horse kept underground apparently survived the explosion unhurt and for five days afterwards without any attention, food or water, poor animal!

Within weeks of the inquests, Mine Agents for the area met and agreed tougher new rules on ventilation in mines so perhaps this tragedy helped to prevent others.

The J Fulford listed amongst those who died was listed in the Burial Register as Joseph Fullwood, although his Death Registration gives his name as Fulford. So if you have a young man who disappears from your family tree in 1866 in this area, this may be what happened to them.

These days we sometimes tend to think H&S is too rigorous but those men could have done with rather more of it.’

That post generated some interesting comments, including some from a former HM Inspector of Factories who noted that “Nowadays, I think the verdict would not be directed at the fault of one person, ‘the butty’, rather the controlling organisation would be blamed (the employer/directors/management), ie it was a systemic failure. And I’m pretty sure the charge would be ‘corporate manslaughter by gross negligence.’ The dangers were well known, the precautions should have been in place, but weren’t.”

Hard times in Whiteheath?

The connection here is that the rescue described by Dickens in Hard Times must have been very similar and vividly relates the incident almost minute by minute.

In the story, the two women who realised that a missing man had fallen down the shaft of a disused mine which had not been fenced off adequately (his hat had fallen off and was lying by the shaft) had to run long distances across the moor in opposite directions to seek help – no mobile phones, no phone boxes. It was a Sunday so people were not at work. Of the men the first woman found, one was lying in a drunken sleep – he was woken and hearing “that a man had fallen into the ‘Old Hell shaft’ he started out to a pool of dirty water, put his head in it and came back sober” – and Dickens recounts that he turned out to be the most useful of the men at the rescue operation. The other men ran off to nearby villages and others from those in turn ran on to other places to spread the word to get more help and equipment, before all heading back to the ‘Old Hell shaft’ where, again, they had to wait for more implements and help to arrive. No cars or lorries or helicopters, no mountain rescue, no first aid kits or painkillers or stretchers, no radios, no roads, the equipment needed had to be assembled and carried manually up to the shaft. Dickens notes that it was more than four hours before enough equipment arrived to start the rescue attempt. Difficulties had arisen in the construction of a means of enabling two men to descend securely before this was rigged with poles and ropes, requisites had been found wanting and messages had to go and return. Some of this would not have applied at Whiteheath, as it was close to other mines and it was a working day but some of the difficulties of the rescue must have been the same.

Eventually, in the story, a surgeon also arrived after messages were sent to the nearest town. By the time the rescue could be attempted, Dickens says perhaps two hundred people had assembled. “There now being enough people present to impede the work” the original rescuers, led by the man who had been drunk, “made a large ring around the Old Hell shaft and appointed men to keep it”. Again, one can well imagine this happening at Whiteheath where a large and anxious crowd had assembled.

When enough equipment had arrived a windlass was set up and a candle was sent down into the shaft to “try the air while three or four rough faces stood crowded close together, attentively watching it: the candle was brought up again, feebly burning “, – such a vivid picture this conjures – then a bucket was hooked on and two volunteers with lights were lowered into the pit where they found the desperately injured man.

“As the rope went out, tight and strained, and the windlass creaked, there was not a breath among the one or two hundred men and women looking on. The signal was given and the windlass stopped, with abundant rope to spare.”

Again, Dickens has some striking detail – he mentions that when the two rescuers had first been below for some time with no communication, some in the crowd began to panic that they too had suffered some accident but that

“the surgeon who held the watch declared that not yet five minutes had elapsed and sternly admonished them to keep silence’. Just then the windlass reversed and “practised eyes knew that it did not go as heavily as it would if both workmen had been coming up and that only one was returning.” Yes, those miners would have known that.

“The rope came in tight and strained; and ring after ring was coiled upon the barrel of the windlass, and all eyes were fastened on the pit. The sobered man was brought up and leaped out briskly on the grass. There was a universal cry of “Alive or dead?” and then a deep profound hush.

When he said ‘Alive’ a great shout arose and many eyes had tears in them.”

‘The surgeon who held the watch’ – the watch – presumably not many of the onlookers would have had such a thing and presumably, too in such an operation, one watch has to be used as the timekeeper for that operation.

The story goes on that the fallen man was very badly injured and a hurdle was brought, on which a thick bed of spare clothes was made by the crowd while the surgeon contrived some bandages and slings from shawls and handkerchiefs.

“As these were made they were hung upon an arm of the pitman who had last come up, with instructions how to use them: and as he stood, shown by the light he carried, leaning his powerful loose hand upon one of the poles and sometimes glancing down into the pit and sometimes glancing round upon the people, he was not the least conspicuous figure on the scene. It was dark now and torches were kindled. “

Again, such a clear picture is in my mind of this man. Eventually, he was lowered again into the pit and again, the windlass stopped.

“No man removed his hand from it now. Everyone waited with his grasp set, and his body bent down to the work, ready to reverse and wind in. At length the signal was given, and all the ring leaned forward.

For, now the rope came in, tightened and strained to its utmost as it appeared and the men turned heavily, and the windlass complained. It was scarcely endurable to look at the rope and think of its giving way. But, ring after ring was coiled upon the barrel of the windlass safely, and the connecting chains appeared, and finally the bucket appeared with the two men holding on at the sides – a sight to make the head swim- and tenderly supported between them, slung and tied within, the figure of a poor, crushed, human figure.

A low murmur of pity went round the throng and the women wept aloud, as this form, almost without form, was moved very slowly from its iron deliverance, and laid upon a bed of straw.”

Now, to me, that was the most vivid report I have ever read of such an operation, encompassing not only the details of the mechanics required but the expertise and skills of the rescuers, the feelings of those involved and those watching. I could not help imagining just those responses in the crowd which gathered after the explosion at Whiteheath.

Dickens does not allow the opportunity to pass of making mention of the huge numbers of pit casualties in those times. The victim here says (in a broad accent that I will not attempt to reproduce) that the pit into which he had fallen had cost, in the knowledge of old people still living, hundreds and hundreds of men’s lives, fathers, sons, brothers, dear ones to thousands and thousands and keeping them from want and hunger. The pit he had fallen into had had methane gases which he described as ‘crueller than battle’ which he had read about in public petitions from the men who worked in the pits, in which they prayed and prayed to the lawmakers not to let their work be murder to them but to spare them for the wives and children that they loved as much as gentlefolk loved theirs. When the pit had been in use, it had killed needlessly and even now it killed needlessly.

Powerful stuff!

Hard times was published in 1854, just two years before the Whiteheath Mine disaster, these scenes must surely have been very similar. The book was not necessarily well thought of at the time. Macaulay attacked Hard Times for its ‘sullen socialism’, but 20th-century critics such as George Bernard Shaw and F.R. Leavis praised this book in the highest terms, for what is both Dickens’ shortest completed novel and also one of his important statements on Victorian society. George Orwell later praised the novel (and Dickens himself) for “generous anger”. The works of Dickens are apparently regarded as having brought about or at least advanced many improvements to working and living conditions of the poor and voiceless which he laid before the mass of his readers.

Dickens was born in Portsmouth and left school to work in a boot-blacking factory when he was twelve because his father was in Debtor’s Prison. After three years he was able to return to school and later became a journalist, editing a weekly journal for twenty years as well as writing 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles. But it meant that he had first hand experience of working conditions and the lives of poor people. He was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children’s rights, for education, and for other social reforms.

Am I leaving you on tenterhooks with Hard Times? What happened next? One more short quote, then:

“They carried him very gently along the fields, and down the lanes and over the wide landscape; Rachael, [his beloved friend] always holding his hand in hers. Very few whispers broke the mournful silence. It was soon a funeral procession. The star had shown him where to find the God of the poor and through humility and sorrow, and forgiveness, he had gone to his Redeemer’s rest.”

Yes, I had tears in my eyes by this time, too.

As a new convert to the works of Dickens, I do recommend you to seek out the book Hard Times and read the whole thing – it is such a good read, such a reminder of how people behave to one another and the living conditions in which many ordinary people lived then. I shall be interested to see what Dickens has to say in the Old Curiosity Shop and what I can learn from that about the society in which Dickens lived and observed.

So I hope my readers will forgive this little diversion from the detailed posts about the Lost Hamlets and the people who lived in them – more posts on that in progress and to follow very soon.

A special education

In my last post to this blog, I mentioned in passing that a William Cole (my 2xg-great-uncle) had been a witness at the marriage of Edward/Edwin Hopkins and Elizabeth Cole and that it appeared that this William Cole was the older brother of Elizabeth.

I knew from my previous researches for my family tree that William was born presumably in 1837 or at least baptised at St Giles, on 17^th September 1837, the eldest son of Edward and Frances Cole of Perry’s Lake and that he became a hairdresser which was a somewhat unusual occupation in the area at that time. He was with his parents in Perry’s Lake in 1841 but not in 1851 when he would have been 13 or 14. I searched for him, wondering whether he had died in the interim between the two censuses or whether he was staying with grandparents or other relatives. But he was not in Perrys Lake or Rowley and I could not find a death registration or a burial for him.

Searching the 1851 Census for a slightly wider area, I found him listed as a Scholar at an institution named in the Census as ‘The Old Swinford Hospital’ which was on the Hagley Road, near Stourbridge, along with 80+ other boys. How on earth did he come to be there, apparently living there?

So I googled ‘The Old Swinford Hospital’ and found that this had been – and still is – a boarding school! That was a surprise to me, as I hadn’t thought the Coles were of a class who could afford to send their son to a boarding school. And, of course, they weren’t. They were ‘poor but honest’.

Founded by Thomas Foley, an ironmaster, MP and landowner from the Great Witley Estate in Worcestershire and with close links to Old Swinford and the surrounding area, Old Swinford Hospital first opened its doors to pupils in the late summer of 1670, just four years after the Great Fire of London which had probably considerably affected the Foley’s trading empire in London and may have resulted in them retiring to their country estates for a time. Local tradition has it that Foley, son of the famous Ironmaster Richard Foley, was originally inspired to start the school after hearing a sermon by Richard Baxter, the ‘Kidderminster divine’, on the proper use of riches. In particular, it appears, the school prepared the boys for useful lives where they could ‘make a difference’ to society and to provide them with a trade or craft, a means of earning a living.

Originally known as Stourbridge Hospital (charity), and occasionally referred to as Foley’s Blue Coat School, Thomas Foley’s vision was for the education of 60 boys from ‘poor but honest’ families nominated by specific local parishes. Families who had received poor relief at any time were excluded from this. The boys were not to come from the families of ‘the undeserving poor’. From those nominated by the eligible parishes, the Feoffees would choose boys to make up the required number.

Rowley Regis was one of those parishes and William Cole must have been nominated for a scholarship by the Vicar/Curate of Rowley Regis, at that time, the Rev’d George Barrs and perhaps the Church Wardens. The boys boarded for two half year terms each year at the school in what were fairly Spartan conditions and were provided with a uniform. The diet was apparently fairly basic but this was regularly inspected by the Feoffees.

The eligible parishes and the numbers of boys to be nominated from each were set out in Foley’s Will, dated 1667, in places where the Foleys had a major interest, usually a landed or industrial link. These were:

Three from Old Swinford, four from Stourbridge Town, six from Kidderminster with three from the town and three from the foreign, four from Dudley and from Bewdley, two from each of Great Witley, Kingswinford, Kinver, Harborne, Halesowen, West Bromwich, Bromsgrove, Rowley Regis, Wednesbury, and Sedgley and one from Hagley, Little Witley, Alvechurch, Pedmore and Wombourne. In these cases the parish officers were to choose several names from which the feoffees made the final decision. The original school was for 60 boys and the remaining fourteen boys were chosen by the feoffees, though the numbers were later increased.

The 1851 census for the Hospital shows that home parish of each boy, all of them between 8 and 13 (with the exception of one 7year old!) These included Clent, West Bromwich, Harborne, , Stourbridge, Great Witley, Halesowen, Dudley, Bewdley, Kinver, Ledbury, Birmingham, Martley, Bromsgrove, Kidderminster, Wednesbury, Old Swinford, Kingswinford, Cradley, Pedmore, Wombourne, Worcester, Prestwood in Staffordshire, Hagley, Amblecote, Hallow, Holt and Banbury – so the admissions were still mainly being made in accordance with the original scheme nearly two hundred years later.

This Foundation was a huge undertaking, when you consider that Eton College had been founded in 1446 for seventy scholars and Winchester School, also for seventy in 1382, both with the huge resources of their royal and ecclesiastical founders behind them. Their intake of boys from the poorer classes was based on similar philanthropic motives, as well as on the need for choirs. In a much more local instance for me, the secondary school my children attended was founded in 1384 when Katharine, Lady Berkeley set up a school in Wotton-under-Edge, (one of the Manors owned by the Berkeley families of Berkeley Castle and treated by them as the Dowager’s residence) with one master and two students. This grew and later became a Grammar school and again, Katharine Lady Berkeley’s School still exists and is now a highly successful 11-18 mixed comprehensive school with over 1500 students.) So these educational foundations can continue to serve their local communities indefinitely, it seems.

Thomas Foley’s Will gave the Feoffees he had carefully selected and appointed the responsibility for the ‘maintenance and education and placing forth of Sixty Poore boys’ which was a considerable responsibility. In 1689 the total expenditure was £592.16.11 (That is £592 pounds, 16 shillings and 11 pence for those unfamiliar with pre-decimal currency. There were twelve pennies to the shilling and twenty shillings to the pound!). This was funded mainly from the income from the Pedmore Estate, including rectorial tithes and rents, which had been purchased by Thomas Foley for this purpose, though he also purchased other lands in various places including 15 acres in Rowley Regis.

The Dyett (food!) cost £173.16.07, much of the corn was home grown and the diet included a variety of meats. Apparel, including linen cloth for shirts and blue cloth for the traditional ‘Blue Coat’ coats and suits cost £124.7.6, plus salaries, husbandry, building and other minor expenses.

Later Foleys also funded an extension to provide a new aisle to Old Swinford Church, as all the boys would attend on Sundays which would have made it rather crowded.

How many local families must have benefitted over the centuries from this school and the opportunities offered to poor children? This requirement that the families of the boys had to be ‘poor but honest’ bears out my long held view that my Cole family were not rich but were respectable and industrious. I had wondered though how it was that the children of John Cole (1768-1843), unlike many of their cousins, appeared to be literate – perhaps John Cole or one of his sons was an earlier scholar at the school and passed on his learning to his siblings and children?

Imagine the shock these grand buildings would have been to the poor boys of Rowley, leaving home for the first time – even Rowley church, until it was rebuilt, did not appear to be as grand as this. These buildings also remain in use at the school today, it appears as the school is still there, now a State Boarding School of high repute and they have an interesting website which says that descendants of Thomas Foley are still among the Trustees or Feoffees to this day.

Day to day running of the school

In 1851, the school did not have a big establishment – the Census shows that the Head of the Household was a Scottish lady of 51 who was described as the Matron, although the Head Master (also a Scot)lived nearby on Hagley Road. She was assisted by one Under-Master, a Porter, a Nurse, a Cook and a Housemaid. Not many people to look after and educate more than 70 boys. The aim was that boys entered the school at about the age of seven or eight and received a grounding in many subjects although many would have been illiterate or very nearly so on entry.

Older boys were appointed as ‘hearers’, each of whom had two or three younger boys under his care for half a year and had to hear the boys of the 1^st and 2^nd classes reciting thirty verses of scripture and thirty of hymns, some new and some old, per week plus rules of grammar and arithmetical tables. The ‘hearers’ apparently took pride in their pupils doing well. Lessons, in 1838, for the 3^rd and 4^th classes included Writing, Reading, Spelling, Arithmetic, Reading and Tables, Catechism and Bible reading. By 1876 the 3^rd classes were studying Writing and Dictation, Reading, Arithmetic, Arithmetic and grammar or geography, reading and sums, Grammar, Geography , Catechism and geography and scripture, a total of 30 hours teaching a week. The 4^th classes studied Writing on slates and paper; Reading and dictation; Sums; Reading, spelling and scripture; Arithmetic and geography or scripture; Catechism and geography and Scripture. In 1848, boys began to attend a drawing and modelling class at the Art School in Stourbridge and were later entered for public examinations in design. This all prepared the boys for industrial or commercial apprenticeships. Nothing if not ambitious and clearly well thought out.

Not all boys went in so early. The Headmaster’s report for 1865 mentions that some boys were already ten or more when admitted and only two were below nine. Two of those aged above ten did not know the alphabet and could not count to twenty.

All cannot have been sweetness and light at times, as in September 1854, 43 boys, nearly half the school, ran away, claiming that they were badly treated by the Master, that they were sometimes struck by the Porter with a cane and that they were not given sufficient food for breakfast and supper – perpetually hungry bolshy teenagers, it seems, perhaps not so different from boys today though I suspect most boys of that age now would be utterly astonished at the prospect of learning and reciting thirty verses of scripture and of hymns each week, in addition to the rest of the curriculum The absconding boys were mostly brought back the following day by their parents and the Feoffees looked into this and dismissed the first claim, reprimanded the Porter and increased the ration of bread with meals, at least until the following year when more boys ran away so the Feoffees decided that the amount of food did not appear to have made any difference and reduced the portions to the previous amount!

At the age of 14 the boys were apprenticed or indentured in various crafts and trades, on terms specified by the Feoffees of the school and which applied until the apprenticeship was completed. Placements were carefully selected and the Founder had set out in detail the form of indenture to be used. A Master requiring a boy had to provide a certificate signed by his local church authorities to show that he was a member of the Church of England, was a good and substantial householder, of sober life and conversation, and had sufficient employment to require and properly maintain an apprentice. He would then appear in person before the feoffees, sign the indentures, and receive a premium which was formerly of £4, afterwards raised to £10. No assignment of the indenture was allowed without the feoffees’ consent.

This was taken very seriously and the Admissions Book apparently shows the destination of every boy and the annual printed reports listed all appprenticeships agreed on. The Feoffees’ report of 1859 refers to the fact that the character of the boys stood high in the neighbourhood, and this is quite understandable. They were placed carefully, commonly within easy reach of the parent’s homes but sometimes they went further afield. For example, a boy was apprenticed to a confectioner in Aberystwyth in 1826, another to a London architect in 1848, and a third to a saddler in Manchester in I874. The kind of trades and crafts they went to varied considerably; some went into manual trades-rollers, blacksmiths, file cutters, fitters, carpenters, wheelwrights, coachbuilders; some into retail trades-grocers, drapers, bakers, confectioners; and a few were sent to professional men such as solicitors or architects, or even to surgeons, though in this last respect it was usually ‘to learn the art of a dispensing chemist’. There was a need in the area, particularly as industry and the industrial revolution expanded rapidly for literate boys with good education and Foley’s school was aimed precisely at meeting this need.

Much of this information is taken from a fascinating study entitled ‘Old Swinford Hospital School’ by Eric Hopkins who was a Principal Lecturer in History at Shenstone College, Bromsgrove. Appearing in the British Journal of Educational Studies in 1969, it can be accessed through educational links or a library interlibrary loan. It is online and worth reading. It is full of interesting detail and I have barely skimmed the surface! Other information comes from ‘The Seventeenth Century Foleys’ by Roy Peacock, published by the Black Country Society.

The opportunities this school presented to the boys of poor families in the area must have been life changing for them, by contrast with the schools available in the village. Other wealthy individuals at various times also gave or left money to improve education in Rowley, including Lady Monins who set up a group of Trustees to remedy the lack of a school but died before her scheme could be implemented. She left a sum of money in her will in 1705 to found a school but it seems likely that it was not enough to do so and her relatives lived in London and Kent so probably were not really interested in Rowley matters. In 1774 it was found that income from the moneys left by Lady Monins were being used by the Gaunt family, Richard Gaunt was the Parish Clerk and also sexton at St Giles – the Gaunts were Parish Clerks for several generations – perhaps some of them too had been scholars at the Hospital. His school was the only one in the village at that time and Richard Gaunt, according to Edward Chitham in his book on Rowley Regis, was found to be receiving £10 per annum from the Monin moneys and he educated 24 children for free, in addition to his paying pupils, his daughter Hannah also later running the school. But it seems unlikely that his teaching could have covered the curriculum and breadth of teaching at the hospital and opportunities for a real education in the village were severely limited.

The Old Swinford Hospital School continued to operate under Foley’s specifications for more than 300 years before becoming, in the last forty years, a top class residential comprehensive school.

Swinford Old Hospital Boys

At some point I hope to be able to see the original records and registers for the school and find out more detail but at present I do not know where these records are held or what access is permitted to them. But I have been able to trace quite a lot of information about the three boys there in 1851 and their stories follow.

William Cole

William Cole appears to have been trained as a barber or hairdresser and he continued this trade until the end of his working life, at least from 1861 to 1891. By 1861 William Cole was living in Corngreaves Road, Reddal Hill, lodging with a widowed plumber and glazier and with his occupation given as Barber. In November of 1861 he married Elizabeth Davies at Dudley St Thomas. Although Elizabeth’s name was spelled Davies in the Marriage Register, the children seem, in the GRO Birth Registrations, mostly to have mother’s maiden name as Davis. What is interesting about this is that the plumber and glazier that William, now 23, was lodging with in 1861 was a Richard Davis. And another lodger was a Joseph Davis who was 24 and a ‘grainer and Decorator’. I cannot help wondering whether Joseph, with that distinctive trade, had also been a scholar at the Old Swinford Hospital, there were several Davises in the school in 1851 so it is possible that he and William had become friends there. Elizabeth’s father was shown in the marriage register as Isaac Davi(e)s, so perhaps Elizabeth was related to one or other or both of the Davises in that household.

In 1871, still in Corngreaves Road, and now listed as a hairdresser, he and Elizabeth had four children – Emma Jane, born 1865, Annie Rebecca born 1867, William Edward born 1869 and Amelia born 1870. By the time of the 1881 Census three more children had arrived, Edward born 1873, Nelley born 1876 and John born 1879. It is possible that other children may have been born and died between censuses. By 1891, William was still at 4 Corngreaves Road, still a hairdresser, and with a grandson Norman Cole aged 3 living with them, in addition to his own children, possibly the illegitimate child of Amelia.

William appears to have died in the September quarter of 1900 without ever living in Rowley or Perry’s Lake again. The trade he presumably learned at the Old Swinford Hospital gave him employment for his whole life and at least one of his sons followed him into the profession.

And William was not the only Rowley child at the Old Swinford Hospital in 1851.

Uriah Gadd

Also from Perry’s Lake was Uriah Gadd, aged 12, the son of James and Phoebe Gadd. At the time of Uriah’s baptism in 1838 the family were living in Ross, (that Gadd stronghold), but in 1841 they were in Perry’s Lake. Uriah was the 5^th child of the couple and the 3^rd son.

By 1861 Uriah was back in Blackheath, aged 22 and a carpenter, living with his parents. He remained in Blackheath living in High Street and later Mott Street, and working as a carpenter for the rest of his life. Uriah was married in 1864 at St Andrew’s, Netherton to Honor Hickman of Netherton.

By 1871, Uriah and Honor were living in High Street, Blackheath with three children, Mary (5). Charles (3) and Edward (1). In 1881, Uriah, now giving his occupation as a Carpenter and Joiner and Honor were living at 108 High Street , Blackheath with Charles (13), Edward (11), Ann (9), all scholars and George (3) and Ellen (1). Plus Honor’s mother Mary Hickman and nephew Walter Hickman (6).

By 1901 the family had moved to 25 Mott Street and Edward, now 21 was working as a bricklayer’s labourer and Uriah had given his occupation as a Carpenter Journeyman. I was slightly surprised that Edward was not also working as a carpenter but because Uriah was a Journeyman and not a Master Carpenter, he would not have been able to take apprentices. George, Ann and a last child Rachel (7) were all scholars. By 1911 Uriah was living alone, a widower, in Mott Street, now 72 and still giving his occupation as a Carpenter & Joiner, working on his own account in the House Building Trade. Honor had died in 1907, aged 62 and Uriah died in 1921, aged 82.

William Jenks Milner

Also in the school in 1851 was William Jenks Milner , whose parish was given as Rowley Regis and who had been baptised there on 11 September 1842, the son of Richard Milner, a wheelwright and his wife Phoebe, nee Jenks (who had grown up in Clent). In 1851 Phoebe was living with her parents William and Harriet Jenks in Clatterbatch, Clent on their farm and was a widow with two other children. I was interested to see from the Census that even in leafy and green Clent, most of the inhabitants were nailmakers and a neighbour of the family was a Scythe grinder, quite a specialised trade and one for which a particular type of iron was required. Perhaps it was supplied by the Foleys.

Richard Milner had died in Wolverhampton in June 1849 so the opportunity for William to receive this education must have been a great boon for his mother. The census entry for Phoebe and her other children notes under occupation that his brother Thomas aged 5 was a ‘scholar’ and Mary at 11 ‘attended Sunday School’, which may show the level of education William would have received, had he not been awarded his scholarship. Had his father lived, it seems possible that William would have followed him into the Wheelwright’s business but in those days when a craftsman father died prematurely it also made it much more difficult for any children to learn their craft.

I have been unable to find William Jenks Milner in the 1861 Census but on Christmas day 1862 William married Louisa Perks at St Barnabas church, Birmingham, both of them aged 21 so it seems likely that he was still in the Midlands. Her father Henry Perks was a Grocer in Great Hampton Row in Birmingham. It seems likely that William had been apprenticed to a saddler in Birmingham.

In 1871 William and Louisa were living in High Street, (the Ecclesiastical District is given on the Census return as Reddal Hill so I suspect this was High Street, Old Hill but possibly Cradley Heath as he was certainly based in High Street, Cradley Heath later. Their children were Ada L, aged 7 born on 14 December 1863 in Birmingham, and baptised at St George’s, Birmingham on 25 September 1865 with their abode given as Lozells and William’s occupation as a Saddler and Harness Maker. Harriet, aged 4 was born in Aston and William J aged 1 born in Rowley Regis (Cradley was in the Rowley Parish so this new William Jenks Milner was probably born in Cradley.) which suggests that their move was fairly recent.

An advertisement in the County Express on the 31 August 1878 by William Jenks Milner, states that the Saddlery, Oil Sheeting and Tenting business ‘carried on so successfully for nearly ten years and , by the wish of my grandfather William Jenks, carried on in his name’ would, from that date, be carried on as usual in his own name, William Jenks Milner. Perhaps grandfather William had helped his grandson set up business in Cradley Heath, and had wanted the business to be in his name. I have not found anything to indicate that William Jenks the elder was ever a saddler as he appears to have been a farmer.

By 1881 William was living at 61 High Street, Cradley Heath and gave his occupation as a ‘Sadler & Oil Sheet Manufacturer, employing 1 man and 1 boy. Along with Louisa, their children Ada Louisa, aged 17, a pawnbroker’s assistant, Harriet, aged 14, William Jenks, aged 11, Anne aged 9, Mary Jane, aged 4, all of whom were scholars , Thirza aged 1 and William Jenks aged 92, his grandfather.

William Jenks, the grandfather, must have died soon after the Census which was taken on 3^rd April 1881 as his death was registered in the April-June quarter of that year. And, despite the optimistic tone of William Jenks Milner’s advertisement in 1878, everything changed for the Milner family in 1883 when the family emigrated to Queensland, Australia.

Since the business in Cradley Heath appeared to be sound, a move to the other side of the world was a big step and I wondered what had prompted this. I had noticed that, immediately below William’s advertisement in the County Express in 1878, there was an advertisement for sailings from Great Britain (Scotland) to Brisbane, seeking migrants for Queensland, especially female domestic servants and farm labourers who were offered free passage. The Local Agent was in Brierley Hill. Who knows whether, in checking his own advertisement, William had seen this, considered all those farmers and settlers who would need saddles and harnesses and probably oil sheeting and tenting, all William’s business goods, and it had sowed a seed about new opportunities in his mind which could, perhaps, only be realised after the death of his grandfather. Certainly the Milners sailed on the 31 Aug 1883 from Dundee in Scotland, within months or even weeks of his death, arriving on 28^th December, a four month voyage.

Louisa Milner died in 1919 and is buried in Toowong Cemetery, Brisbane. William Jenks Milner died on 30 Jul 1932, aged 89, at Leichhart, Sydney, New South Wales and is buried in the Rookwood Cemetery there, described by his children as their ‘dearly beloved father’ on his death notice in the Sydney Morning Herald. It appears that some if not all of the Milner children remained in Australia.

To sum up…

So, three boys from Rowley Regis, two of them from Perry’s Lake, were scholars at the ‘The Old Swinford Hospital’ in 1851 who all went on in good trades and crafts in the area or further afield. There were boys from Rowley there in 1861, too – James Fletcher, aged 13, Meshach S Palmer aged 11 and James Wharton aged 11 of Coombs Wood though I have not researched these boys.

Who knew? I had never heard of ‘The Old Swinford Hospital’ until now and yet hundreds of boys selected over those centuries and the community of Rowley Regis and the surrounding area must have benefitted from the generosity and care of Thomas Foley in 1670. I agree with Thomas Foley that his school was indeed the best thing he did with his wealth and which benefitted so many ‘poor but honest’ boys in the area, fitting them for new trades, crafts, skills, professions and, it appears, usually successfully assuring them of skilled work for the remainder of their lives.

An accidental shooting in the Hamlets

Life was not always without incident in the normally quiet hamlets. A brief report in the Wolverhampton Express and Star on 22 September 1876 tells of a “Fatal Gun Accident near Dudley” and goes on

“A most painful case of accidental shooting occurred at Oakham on Tuesday night. Three young men, named Samuel Russon, William Redfern and Thomas Wellings, were in a house belonging to Redfern [or more accurately, it transpires, a house on Turner’s Hill and belonging to his father] when the young man Redfern reached down a gun which had lain on a shelf for a long time, and said he would try if it was loaded. Upon examination he said he would see of a cap was on it, and finding none proceeded to snap the trigger. As he did so, the gun went off and the contents lodged in the face of Russon, who died in great agony an hour afterwards. The affair has created a profound sensation.”

Samuel Russon, aged 16, was buried on 24 Sep 1876 at St John (Kates Hill), his abode given as Oakham. Samuel was born on 20 Feb 1861, and baptised at Dudley St Thomas on 4 Aug 1861, the son of Joseph Russon and Elizabeth nee Poulton, of Cawney Hill. Joseph’s occupation then was given as a glass blower, possibly at Chance’s.

In the 1861 Census, Samuel was with his parents and his older brother William in Cawney Hill, living next to his maternal grandparents Benjamin and Rhoda Poulton. But Samuel’s father Joseph Russon died and was buried on 20 Dec 1868 at St John, Kates Hill, aged only 31. In 1871 Samuel was living with his mother and brothers, William, and two younger brothers Joseph and Benjamin, still in Cawney Hill and still next door to his Poulton grandparents and his four uncles.

Copyright: Alan Godfrey Maps. Cawney Hill can be seen just under the printed heading St John’s Ward, top left, the map also shows the proximity to Oakham and, just to the right of the map, Turner’s Hill.

William Redfern had been baptised on 27 May 1860 at St Giles, the son of Joseph Redfern and Ann Maria nee Morris of Turner’s Hill. William was one of at least seven children.

Thomas Wellings was the son of Joseph and Harriet Wellings, born in Rowley Regis according to the 1871 Census at which time his family was living in Brades Road, Oldbury. Although he was named in the newspaper report, he does not appear to have played any part in the incident, except that he was in the house at the time and he does not seem to have been called to give evidence at the inquest.

A longer account of the tragedy is given in the Dudley Herald on the 23rd September 1876 which reported on the Inquest which was held at The Wheatsheaf Inn, Oakham. Emmanuel Whitehall, a miner, gave evidence of identity as Samuel’s stepfather and he confirmed that Samuel was 16 and worked in a mine. He had seen Samuel at about half past five that evening. At about quarter past seven, he had gone to his mother’s house at Gadds Green, and, hearing an outcry he had gone to Joseph Redfern’s house on Turner’s Hill and found his stepson sitting on a chair bleeding heavily from his jaw and face. He was told that Samuel had been shot by William Redfern.

Afterwards he asked what had happened and heard that Samuel had asked William to reach the gun down and he did, upon which he said he would see if there was anything in it, and through lifting up the hammer the accident was caused. He believed that it was entirely an accident and that William was not aware the gun was loaded. The gun used to hang over the screen and he had seen it there several times.

Samuel had not spoken after the accident. Mr Houghton, a surgeon of Dudley, had been sent for and his assistant was quickly in attendance but by that time, Samuel was dead.

Samuel’s mother Elizabeth gave evidence that Samuel had left home about seven o’clock on Tuesday evening and shortly afterwards she was told that he was dead. She had gone to the house but, although he was alive and knew her, he could not speak. She was also sure that it was an accident as the two boys had been such ‘excellent friends‘.

William Redfern also gave evidence, saying that he lived at No.3 Turner’s Hill. Samuel had come for him to go out. Both of his parents were out but Thomas Wellings was in the house. As William was going out of the room to wash, Samuel had asked him to reach down the gun which was hanging up. The gun had hung there for a long time, as it was simply for protection of the house against robbers. At first he had told Samuel not to meddle with it but Samuel had said he would get it down himself. Upon that, William had got it down and pulled the hammer up to see if there was a cap on but as he could not see a cap, he let it down with its own force and it went off. At the time he was holding the gun with the muzzle towards Samuel who was sitting down only four or five feet away and the charge entered his right cheek. Neighbours had come to look after Samuel and William had run to Dudley for the doctor but by the time he got back, Samuel was dead.

William said that his father had not known that the gun was loaded but had cautioned his son against taking down the gun, and he said that he would not have taken it down if he had known it was loaded.

William’s father Joseph Redfern, a boat unloader, told the inquest that the gun produced was his and that as a rule it was not loaded. He did not know how it came to be loaded but the previous 5^th November he had lent it to his eldest son to fire off [perhaps for Bonfire night] but his son did not remember leaving it loaded. His son also said that he had not used any shot when he fired it in November.

The Coroner summed up the evidence and the jury returned a verdict of “Accidental death”.

What a terrible accident this was and how deeply affected all concerned must have been. Poor Elizabeth had lost her husband and now one of her sons. Imagine how William must have felt as he ran up and over the hill to Dudley to fetch medical help, though he must already have been in terror for his friend’s life. William, who was only sixteen himself, had accidentally caused the death of a close friend, and one would think that he may have carried a burden of guilt for this for the rest of his life, living as he did, close to Samuel’s family although it was clear from the Inquest that they knew this had been a terrible accident and did not appear to blame him.

William Redfern appears on my family tree in a very remote connection (he was the uncle of the wife of the stepson of my 2nd great-great-aunt Sophia Cole if you are really interested!) and he married Emma Morris (who has the same surname as William’s mother so may well have been a cousin of some sort) three years later in 1879 and they had ten children. Living in Springfield Road, William was working at the stone quarry. Alas, William did not make old bones either and died of pneumonia in September 1901, aged only 43. He was buried at St Giles on 26 Sep 1901.

There are three family trees on Ancestry which include William, including one by a Redfern so it appears that some of William’s family have researched their family tree. I hope that, if they read this, they do not find it disrespectful as it is not intended to be but to recount the facts of an incident which must have very much affected these close knit local communities at the time.

The fascination of guns, particularly for boys and young men, seems a common theme in accidents of this sort, and such accidents seem to be going on even in the present day. But this was a very local tragedy involving the families of the Lost Hamlets and happening on Turners Hill. It must have remained in local memories for many years.

The Waterways Connection: The Hopkins family

My maiden name was Hopkins and I was very fortunate to have a head start when I started our family tree, as my father’s only sibling, my aunt Alice, gave me several family documents of great interest, including some original, battered and creased original birth and marriage certificates for my Hopkins family, as well as a little oral history. At that time, I had no idea that my Hopkins line originated outside the area. One of those documents, my paternal great-grandfather Arthur Hopkins’s birth certificate, showed that he was born in Perry’s Lake in 1867, the eldest child of Edward and Elizabeth Cole. This enabled me to look for the family in the 1871 census, thus starting considerable progress on building my family tree.

I have to confess that, despite being born in Springfield and going to school for several years only a few hundred yards away, I had never heard of Perry’s Lake until I started doing my family history!

Edward Hopkins – or was he Edwin?

My g-g-grandfather Hopkins, Arthur’s father, I saw from that 1871 Census, was not a Rowley man. Although he was living in Perry’s Lake in 1871 he gave his place of birth as Gloucestershire and his first name was shown as Edward. That was a surprise to me, there had never been any hint in the family that there were any links to Gloucestershire. That was, I later realised, partly because there were no living close family there by then, or perhaps no family he wanted to stay in touch with. He stayed in the Rowley/Oldbury area for the rest of his life and many of his children did, too.

So next I looked for the marriage, shortly before Arthur’s birth, of Edward Hopkins and his wife Elizabeth, (whose name I knew from both the 1871 Census and from Arthur’s baptism) because he was their eldest child and in those days babies tended to come along quite quickly after marriage. Sure enough, I found a marriage for Edward Hopkins and Elizabeth Cole at Dudley St Thomas on 25 December 1866. I’m not sure why they were married at Dudley, rather than Rowley unless it was something to do with the fact that their first son Arthur , my great-grandfather, was born on 17 March 1867, so Elizabeth was six months pregnant at the time of the marriage. So Arthur came along very quickly! The marriage was witnessed by William and Elizabeth Cole, presumably the William who was Elizabeth’s eldest brother and his wife Elizabeth nee Davies. The other interesting thing for me about the marriage entry was that Edward was a widower.

So I next went back to the 1861 Census to see whether Edward had been in Perry’s Lake then.

And there he was, aged 21, already in Perry’s Lake and living with Benjamin Cole as his son-in-law with Edward’s wife Ann. Yes, Ann, not Elizabeth. Further investigation showed that Edward Hopkins and Ann Cole had been married on 1 April 1861 at St Giles, Rowley Regis. (you begin to see why there are quite so many Coles in my family tree, don’t you?) They had married at St Giles just one week before the Census was taken on 7 April, how lucky for me was that! Edward gave the name of his father as James Hopkins and his occupation as a cabinet maker. I was absolutely thrilled to see this, my father John Hopkins was also very proud of being a cabinet maker and I was delighted to discover that this was an inherited skill. I have subsequently discovered that there is a long line of carpenters in the Hopkins family, going back to at least 1800, although sadly my own father had died some years before so never knew this. I was very surprised to be told only a couple of years ago by someone who knew him that my grandad Hopkins was also a ‘chippy’, a carpenter although he worked at various jobs and as an ‘odd job man’, I had never realised he was also a carpenter. When I told my brother about this, he told me that, although generally he hated school, the woodwork teacher at Britannia Road School had said that he was the best woodworker he had ever taught. My brother went into the motor industry as so many local people did but the carpentry gene was obviously still going strong in the 1960s.

Edward and Ann had a son James in the June quarter of that year, presumably named after his paternal grandfather, another prompt arrival of that first baby! Alas Ann Hopkins died in March 1864 and little James in September 1864. Both were buried at St Giles.

And in 1866 Edward Hopkins married Ann’s first cousin Elizabeth Cole, daughter of Edward and Frances (or Fanny) Cole. Edward and Elizabeth Hopkins had ten children, nine of whom survived into adulthood – Arthur in 1867, John in 1869 (also died in 1869), Harriet in 1870, Fanny in 1872, William Benjamin in 1874, Edward , sometimes known as Edwin in 1876, Joseph in 1877, Samuel in 1879, James in 1882 and Lucy in 1884. The family later moved from Perry’s Lake to Portway and later to Taylors Lane and by 1911 Edward, (by now a widower after Elizabeth died in 1907) was living in Canal Street Oldbury, with his daughter and son-in-law Enoch and Fanny Pooler. In 1921 he had moved to live with his son Samuel in Albert Street, Oldbury. Dying in 1922, Edward was buried in the Rood End Cemetery on 8 Mar 1922.

Sometimes, in the Census Edward/Edwin just gave his name as Ed. I think that is significant, because if that is what he called himself, it seems likely that various officials assumed that he was the more popular Edward, rather than Edwin.

Father deceased – or not? A trap for the unwary!

One of the advantages of seeing images of full marriage registers or full transcriptions is that, after 1837, when the Civil Registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths began, there was usually some chance of finding the names and occupations of the fathers of both bride and groom. This did not always happen, as if one of them was illegitimate, this was left blank. Similarly, it was usually indicated if the father was dead. But this was not infallible.

In my case, Edward had given his father’s name as James Hopkins and that he was, in the first entry, a cabinet maker and, in the second marriage, only five years later, he was marked as a carpenter and deceased. This led to a brick wall of many years standing as I assumed from this that James Hopkins had died in the intervening period between the marriages. I searched for a long time for James Hopkins, thinking that he was alive in 1861 but could find no definite trace of him after 1841. More on this shortly.

Where did Edward come from?

Edward gave his place of birth in subsequent censuses more specifically as Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. He was consistent about his age, indicating that he was born in about 1839. So I looked for an Edward Hopkins born about then in Tewkesbury, in both the 1841 Census and in the Tewkesbury Parish Registers. I couldn’t find him. Nor could I find him anywhere in Staffordshire or Gloucestershire in the 1851 Census. But in the 1841 Census I did find an Edwin Hopkins, born in Tewkesbury in 1839, born to parents James Hopkins, a carpenter of Barton Street, Tewkesbury and his wife Harriett(nee Evans). James and Harriett had been married in Tewkesbury in 1827.

By the time of the 1841 Census, James Hopkins was a widower (Harriet had died in May 1841 of Tuberculosis, just a couple of weeks before the 1841 Census) living in Potters Alley, off Barton Street, Tewkesbury with his children William, aged 10, Harriet, aged 8, James aged 6 (James’s twin John had died in infancy) and Edwin aged 1. If you compare that list of names with the names of Edwin/Edward’s children in Rowley, there is a striking overlap. Edwin’s birth Certificate describes his place of birth as ‘Corner of Potter’s Alley, Tewkesbury’ so I have been able to stand in front of the house and see exactly where they lived, it is still there.

Copyright: Glenys Sykes. You can see the entrance to Potter’s Alley at the left hand side of the house, still with very ancient paving which James and Harriett had probably walked on which gave me a thrill as I walked down the alley. Walking in my ancestor’s footsteps! The house on the left of that is an altogether grander place and I think it is unlikely that it would have been occupied by a carpenter, even if he was a cabinet maker! So I think this is where Edwin/Edward was born.

By the time of the 1851 Census, the only one of the family left in Tewkesbury was Harriet , by then 18 years old who was in service and living in Church Street, which is a continuation of Barton Street. Harriet was to remain in service in Tewkesbury until her death in 1912, having married the coachman of the household Joseph Wakefield, and they had two daughters Alice and Lucy (yes, those names also recur in the Rowley Hopkinses!).

So where were her brothers in 1851?

I could not find William, the eldest in the local area in the 1851 Census but he was twenty by this time and could be (and was) somewhere miles away.

William’s story (or a small part of it!)

Just to add to my fun, I later made contact with one of his descendants and discovered that he had changed his name to William Daniels and joined the merchant navy in Gloucester in 1843, later moving to Scholing in Hampshire – it’s a long story…. He also had numerous children, including a James and an Edwin, a Harriett and an Alice, all Hopkins family names. But although I discovered that many years later he made contact again with his sister Harriet in Tewkesbury, he was said by my contact never to have found his brothers James and Edwin, both by then in the Black Country, they were the lost brothers he named his sons for.

The same contact told me family lore that William, the oldest brother, had told his family – that he had changed his name and left Gloucester because of some undesirable issue with the Hopkins family that he was ashamed of, and my research has since provided clues about what that might have been. He had also said that his mother Harriet had been genteel, educated and a teacher, that her family had been related to William Shakespeare and that the family names Lucy and Alice came from that connection.

This sounded far fetched to me when I first heard it in about 1990 but I have to say that several of the elements of that story have since proved to be correct and certainly, those names continued to be used in the Black Country Hopkinses, both brothers.

However I thought that the Shakespeare connection sounded just too unlikely. After all, my Hopkins family had lived in Tewkesbury, not Stratford-on-Avon. Until one day, I casually googled ‘Shakespeare and Tewkesbury’ and discovered that there were indeed Shakespeares in Tewkesbury (buried in the very early Baptist chapel off Church Street) and they were indeed connected to William Shakespeare’s family, though obviously not of direct descent. One day, I shall do some more research on that! For the moment, Harriet and her family are another brick wall of long standing.

The younger Hopkins brothers

Of James and Harriet’s other sons in 1851, I found a possible James Hopkins, now aged 16, born in Tewkesbury and living in Northgate Street, Gloucester as a ‘visitor’ with a confectioner named Richard Davis. Although I am pretty sure this is my man, I have never been able to find out why he was there or any connection between James and his host.

And I found a possible Edwin Hopkins, aged 11, apparently born in Gloucester and a scholar, in the Gloucester Union Workhouse. This was a real puzzle. If this was my Edwin why was he in the Workhouse? And why was his place of birth given as Gloucester because if it was my Edwin he should have been in the Tewkesbury Workhouse, that was how the Poor Law worked, each area responsible for their own poor. In fact, that would have been why his place of birth was given incorrectly, if the truth had been known he would have been shipped off to Tewkesbury. So presumably, someone lied because they didn’t want that to happen. I discovered later that James’s mother Catherine had lived in Gloucester, dying in 1850 so I believe that Edward and possibly James had been raised by her, or perhaps by her oldest daughter for some years before Edwin went into the Workhouse, possibly when Catherine died. Some of James’s family in Gloucester were – to say the least – less than honest so a lie about where a child was born, would probably not have been a problem for them, especially if they were trying to get rid of an unwelcome child.

So that was two boys from the Hopkins family in Gloucester in 1851 and the eldest had joined the navy in Gloucester. They had obviously moved to Gloucester from Tewkesbury at some point and this suggested family links with Gloucester city.

The missing James Hopkins Senior

Despite diligent research, over some years, I could not find any trace of their father James anywhere in 1851, nor in any subsequent census. Eventually, I abandoned the idea that James was still alive when Edward married in 1861 because it was possible that the Vicar had simply not asked the questionwhether he was stil alive. I began to look carefully at all the GRO Death Registrations I could find for a James Hopkins, born in 1805, dying after the 1841 Census and before the 1851 Census, concentrating specifically on the Gloucestershire deaths simply because it seemed most likely that he had stayed close to home. There were nine in that period, ranging from Chepstow to Bristol, to Monmouth and Evesham. There were none in Tewkesbury and just one in Gloucester (or Gloster as it was called then,) in December 1842. Just one! It called to me….

By this time in my research, I was living and working in Gloucester (sometimes the genealogical gods smile on us!) so I decided to pay a visit to the Register Office in Spa Road, explain my quest and ask them to check the details in the Register to see whether there were any matching details. This meant I did not have to pay for the certificate upfront. The Registrar could not have been more helpful. He went and looked at the Register and came back to tell me that this James Hopkins had died in the Gloucester Infirmary, in Lower Southgate Street, overlooking the Docks, barely a quarter of a mile from the Register Office, in October 1842, aged 38, of dropsy – perhaps heart failure. Though the Registrar warned me that several deaths at the hospital had been registered on the same day by the same person, possibly a reasonably capable and mobile orderly, perhaps with what we would now recognise as learning difficulties, and the same cause of death had been given for all the deaths – dropsy. He thought it unlikely in his professional opinion that they had all died of the same thing so I should treat this with caution. And it does seem possible to me that James had also died of Tuberculosis, like his wife only a year or so earlier.

And this James Hopkins had been a carpenter– Bingo! I was convinced this was my man. This was why I could not find him later, this was probably why his children were in Gloucester. Edwin was still only three years old then, I reasoned that James must have come back to Gloucester, perhaps to family there, with his younger children, after his wife’s death or perhaps when he became too ill to work or look after them. He was buried at the church of St Mary de Crypt, a few hundred yards further along the road from the hospital. I later discovered that James’s family were living at Littleworth, Gloucester just round the corner from the Register Office and on the Bristol Road, not far from the Hospital. They were all in the area around the docks.

By now I had realised that Edwin/Edward must have had some substantial contact while he was growing up with someone else in his family. How else would he have known the correct names of his parents and the detailed occupation of his father – a cabinet maker, no less? Someone was proud of that and must have told him, it is unlikely that the Workhouse would have had such detailed information on his background, or passed it on to him. He had been orphaned by the time he was three, he could not have remembered this by himself.

It was to be several more years before I was able to find the evidence that confirmed my theories – but it was very satisfying when I did! But that’s another story… Do you want to know? It’s (to me anyway) a very interesting and complex story but it doesn’t really relate directly to Rowley Regis so I won’t go into more detail here but I will happily do another post on that jigsaw if anyone would find it interesting.

The Waterways connection

So up until he left Gloucestershire between sometime 1851 and 1861 my g-g-grandfather was Edwin and after that he was (mostly) Edward. He named one of his sons Edwin though I have found that this son also seemed to use Edwin sometimes and Edward at others, perhaps a practice he got from his father.

The Great Mystery

But how did Edwin/Edward get from the Workhouse in Gloucester to the tiny rural and surely not widely known hamlet of Perry’s Lake and be married to a local girl in the ten years between censuses? He wasn’t a skilled granite worker so it wasn’t that. He worked most of his life, after settling in Rowley, as a miner then in 1901 as a labourer in the brickyard, in 1911 as a stoker at a laundry and only in 1921, at the age of 83 was he shown as having no occupation.

It took me a long time to arrive at a possible explanation and even now I cannot prove it but it seems very likely that he came up on the River Severn from Gloucester Docks, not far from the Workhouse, and the canals up to the Midlands.

What made me think that?

I am always interested in (some might say nosy about) other people’s family trees and, having got my husband hooked on his own family history, I knew that several generations of his ancestors in Gloucester had been boatmen on the canals and the River Severn. He is indeed a proud ‘Gloster boy’ himself, born and bred in the West End of Gloucester, adjacent to the busy docks. So when I saw a book in our local library entitled ‘Working Life on the Severn and Canal, Reminiscenses of Working Boatmen’ compiled from interviews with former boatmen by that meticulous Gloucester historian Hugh Conway Jones, I knew the book would be of interest to my husband.

Photograph copyright: Glenys Sykes – we rapidly acquired our own copy!

As I stood in the library that day, leafing casually through it to see whether any of my husband’s ‘family names’ were mentioned, another name leapt off a page at me – a mention of ‘a quarry on Rowley Beacon’! The section was relating the memories of boatmen on what goods were transported back down to Gloucester once their inbound loads had been unloaded.

The paragraph reads :-

“During the summer months, instead of bringing coal [back to Gloucester and the West Country] some of the boats brought stone for the County Council to put on the roads. We fetched it from a quarry on Rowley Beacon – you went through the Bar Lock, out to Smethwick and then took a branch to the left, Titford Canal. The stone came down on a railway operated by a cable so that the loaded trucks took the empty ones back up. As each truck came alongside, they dropped the side down and let the stone fall into the boat. When you had twelve tons in the aft-end, you shifted the boat to load 8 tons into the middle, and then you shifted her again to load 7 tons into the fore-end. The stone was discharged on the river bank just above the Haw bridge [between Tewkesbury and Gloucester]. It was put into wheel-barrows and taken ashore across planks, although if the water level was high, the boat could sometimes get in close enough for the stone to be just thrown out on to the bank. From the Haw Bridge it was taken by horse and cart to various road-side sites to be broken up by gangs of men with hammers.”

This photograph, from Anthony Page’s book on Rowley is captioned that the boats were loading coal. But might they have been loading stone? It seems possible.

Another photograph, also from Anthony Page’s book on Rowley, shows the trucks used to move coal, and, it appears, stone down to the canal at Titford.

First of all, this book and this account fascinated me – it tied together so many things I already knew about the quarry in Rowley and the stone that was produced, and the truck systems. And it made me better understand the multiple handling and the sheer physical hard work required to shift the stone out of the boat and then to reduce the stone to the right size. Imagine pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with stone over a gang plank?! I’m sure they were skilled at it but it must have bounced and been exhausting and quite perilous.

Secondly, the whole book is really interesting and worth reading. The recounting of the personal memories reveals the formidable skills and hard working lives of these men who had to find their way up and down the river and through the canal network, summer and winter, in flood conditions and dry, so much knowledge and experience generally unrecognised and now lost, but for the memories recounted in this book.

And thirdly – another ‘Bingo’ moment. Had Edward been working on the canals, was that how he had arrived at Rowley? I stood in that library exultant, suddenly a beam of light shone onto the great mystery which had been in my mind all those years – I think that the waterways were the connection that brought Edwin to Rowley Regis. But I doubt I will ever prove it…

To bolster my theory, the book also has this quotation from one of the boatmen about Gloucester Docks and the people who lived on the boats.

“You normally only lived on board when you were away on a trip as most crews had their own homes in Gloucester. [This was certainly true of my husband’s ancestors]

In the early days, there were sometimes young boys without homes hanging around who went with any skipper who needed a crew. They had to learn to do what they were told and keep the boat clean, and then they were never long without a trip. If a boatman’s wife had to stay at home for a bit, one of the boys would go in her place. Also there were some unmarried skippers who didn’t have a regular crew. A few were a bit barbaric and knocked the boys about or half-starved them but others were more considerate. One boy managed to work with two skippers for quite a long time – when he came back with one, if he was lucky, the other would be loaded and tied up by the lock ready to set off the next morning. Now and again, the one at Gloucester found his turn came up before the boy was back. So then he sent a postcard to the Worcester Office, saying he was coming up on the tug and the boy stayed with the lock keeper at Worcester until he arrived.”

What sad lives these young boys had, with no settled home and whatever work and food they could find.

But you can just imagine on those summer evenings, when they were tied up at Rowley, ready for the journey back the next day, the local girls might venture out for a stroll along the ‘cut’ and might just happen to get chatting with the boys who worked on the boats, so much more interesting than the Rowley lads they had known all their lives!

If this was how Edward/Edwin found his way to Rowley, and he thought there was regular work to be found there as a miner, no wonder he settled in this simple village.

And, we realised, my husband and I, it is conceivably just possible – though again I will never know – that my husband’s boatmen ancestors might have brought my g-g-grandfather on one of their boats up the River Severn and the canals to Titford. Wouldn’t that be neat?

I later discovered that Edward’s older brother James had also come from Gloucester up to Birmingham, perhaps by the same route and had married in Birmingham (also describing his father James as a cabinet maker!) and had later settled in West Bromwich. There is a suggestion that he too joined the navy as his older brother William did, though that is still uncertain. And the two brothers were definitely in touch with each other, in a later Census I found Edward/Edwin’s daughter Harriet staying with her uncle James in Oldbury as a visitor. Perhaps Edward/Edwin had managed to stay in touch, perhaps he had even come to the Midlands to be near his brother. So he was not completely alone in the world.

But imagine, for this long orphaned boy, no doubt ejected from the Gloucester Workhouse at about fourteen, if not earlier, and apparently with no other family around able or willing to take him in, what a relief it must have been to marry into and settle in the close knit community of Perry’s Lake and the large Cole clan, a real home at last, founding the dynasty of the Hopkinses in Perry’s Lake and Rowley!

The Cole families in the Lost Hamlets

Sorting out the early Coles in the Rowley area is a bit like trying to knit with overcooked spaghetti. I think I have them sorted out and suddenly a strand slips and it all unravels. Repeatedly. It isn’t helped at all that different branches use the same Christian names – Edward, John, Benjamin, William, Sarah, Fanny, ten a penny, they are!

In the 1841 Census, there are seven Cole households in the hamlets or immediately adjacent. (Bear in mind when looking at these that in the 1841 Census adult ages were rounded down to the nearest five, though children were recorded with their actual ages. Supposedly, because occasionally adult’s actual ages are recorded).

Perry’s Lake

In the 1841 Census, there were a total of fourteen households in Perry’s Lake, of which three were Coles and one a married female Cole sister. It appears from the order in which they were listed that they did not live in a row but were within a very close distance of each other. This is borne out by maps which show clusters of houses, sometimes appearing to be around a yard or close.

The sons of Edward Cole and his wife Phebe

Edward Cole Jnr, aged 30, was baptised at St Giles on 4 June 1811 so he actually was 30, the figure wasn’t rounded down. He was living with his wife Fanny/Frances (nee Smith),who had been baptised 13 Sep 1819 at St Giles, a daughter of William and Elizabeth Smith. Her age in the Census is shown as 20 but she was about 22) they are living in Perry’s Lake, with their two children William, aged 4 (baptised 17 Sep 1837 at St Giles) and Benjamin aged 1 (baptised 8 June 1840).

A few doors away, John Cole, is shown as aged 35. He was baptised on 20 Mar 1803 at St Giles so he was actually 38. He was living with his wife Sarah (nee Willetts), possibly the Sarah Willetts baptised at Dudley St Thomas in 1808 living with their six children. The children are Anne aged 12, baptised 19 Oct 1928 St Giles, Edward aged 10, John aged 8, Hannah aged 5 and Eliza aged 3. None of the children after Anne were baptised at St Giles or any other Anglican church that I can find. It seems very possible that they were Methodists as we know that there was a Methodist Chapel in Perry’s Lake from before 1840, so very possibly there at the time of their births. Although no records have been found for this chapel from this early date, The National Archives have a Non-Parochial Register dating from 1814-1824 showing baptisms for families from Rowley Regis which may have been performed by a visiting Methodist Minister or at Dudley which appears to have been his base.

Again, a few doors away, Benjamin Cole is shown as aged 30. He was baptised on 27 Jul 1806 at St Giles so was almost 35. , with his wife Phebe (nee Smith) and their three children Eliza aged 8, Joseph aged 4 and Ann, aged 1. (Although Benjamin and Edward both married Smith girls they were not sisters, but may well have been cousins. I still have work to do on that line.)

These three are all nailers and are brothers, the sons of Edward Cole and his wife Phebe, nee Perry. Edward had died in 1821, so there is no entry in this census for him. Phebe, his widow, remarried in 1839 to Thomas Lane and was living with him in Dudley in 1841, along with her youngest daughter Ann Cole.

Edward Snr and Phebe had had seven children in all, four boys and three girls, two of whom had died as children. In addition to the three sons listed above their daughter Mary, married to Henry Taylor, was also living in Perry’s Lake with their six children.

The family of John and Elenor/Nelly Cole

The Knowle

John (70) and Elenor/Nelly (70) Cole were at the Knowle in the 1841 Census, just round the corner from Tippity Green so not strictly within the Lost Hamlets but included here for completeness and to illustrate how close to one another they all lived.

John and Elenor had had five daughters and five sons, of whom at least three died in infancy, possibly more as I can find no trace of other children at present.

Their son David was the farmer at Slack Hillock, of whom I have written previously on this blog. It was said at his inquest that David could not read the label on the bottle of mixture which poisoned him because it was the middle of the night and he had not lit a candle. But the important implication of that is that he could read.

Their daughter Maria married George Taylor and lived in Rowley Village. There is a substantial memorial still in the St Giles churchyard to George and Maria and their children. George was variously described as a nail manufacturer (rather than nailer) and later he became the Relieving Officer for the village, later succeeded by his second son John. Of their seven children, only one William married and had children – although he did have eleven! The other children stayed living together in Rowley Village until the ends of their lives. More prosperous family members.

Their youngest daughter Nanny married Joseph Walters of Oldswinford and they lived in Lye, then Slack Hillock where Joseph farmed and kept the Sportsman and Railway pub, (according to Hitchmough) and finally Rowley village again where they both died. Was this the same farm that Nanny’s older brother David had farmed? I do not know but will try to find out. This is another prosperous couple and their sons kept pubs in Rowley Village later.

At their marriage in Harborne, both Nanny and Joseph signed the register and theirs are assured signatures, well practised curves and not awkwardly scribed as is often the case with people who do not write much. Notice also that the witnesses are Nanny’s sister and brother-in-law George and Maria Taylor, showing that they too had practised signatures.

I wonder how they met? Did Joseph visit Rowley to buy nails through Nanny’s father? There have been previous indications with the Cole family that they may have been involved in shipping nails elsewhere and I think it is possible that they were more than simple nailmakers. Or did Nanny meet him when he rented a farm to her older brother? David died four years after the marriage so he was farming at Sleck Hillock at the time they would have met.

All three of these marriages were apparently to successful people who had known skills and their children often went into business locally. These Cole children were literate.

Freebodies Farm

There is also a single Cole at Freebodies Farm on Turner’s Hill, Sophia Cole, born in 1819. She was the daughter of Joseph Cole who had died of a fever, aged only 24, in Sep 1919 – only three weeks before his daughter’s baptism. Sophia was part of this branch as her father Joseph was another son of John and Elenor/Nelly Cole. Joseph’s widow Ann (nee Smart) had later married Josiah Parkes in 1825 and Sophia, Joseph’s only child, was living with them at Freebodies Farm in 1841. Although she is marked as a servant, that was not uncommon in such a situation. Sophia went on to marry a John Cole (oh joy!) who was a butcher and they moved to Darby End where they had one son Joseph Thomas in 1851. This branch of the Coles did appear to be mainly on the Lye Cross side of Turner’s Hill.

The Previous Generation:

John Senior and Edward Cole Senior , the fathers of these families were also brothers, the sons of William Cole (1734-1784) and Mary Price ((B.1731), it is possible that some of the other Coles may yet link back to them or to William’s parents Edward and Dianah Cole, the ones who married in a Fleet marriage and then returned to Rowley to raise a large family.

The Lye Cross Coles

Up on Turner’s Hill is another Edward Cole, aged 40, also a nailer, son of Edward Cole(70) and Sarah of Lye Cross. He was married to Leah Clift, at Sedgley and it was their daughter Sarah who I wrote about in my blog last week, ‘A wandering Cole’.

At Lye Cross in 1841 are Edward (aged 70) and Sarah Cole, nee Johnson, parents of the Edward above, with their son Henry and two other children. I have not yet identified Edward Senior’s parents.

At Cock Green , just around the corner from Tippity Green, is another Benjamin Cole, aged 44, a jobbing smith, with his wife Elizabeth (nee Hadley) and their seven children. I have not yet worked out where this Benjamin fits into the Cole jigsaw!

Summary

The purpose of this article is to give a glimpse of the way that these families tended to remain close to each other and where they were living in relation to each other and to the Lost Hamlets in 1841. Note, too that almost every name of a spouse listed here is also a well known Rowley family name, naturally enough they married the people around them, adding to the complications of researching our Rowley Roots!

I will update it in future as I show how their families expanded and moved around the area. Because of the constant use of certain common Christian names, it can be difficult to be certain that these relationships are correct but I shall continue to work on this. Still knitting with cold spaghetti here!