People in the Lost Hamlets both arrived and left, this is looking at why and where they came from or went to, and especially how this was affected by their work and skills.
Faithful readers who ploughed through my piece about Hall Houses last week may recall that I had quite a lot to say about timber framed houses and the skills and production methods used in their construction.
The fire at the Cathedral, in April 2019, caused extensive damage to some parts of the cathedral but the windows and bell towers, relics and art survived the fire. But the spire fell, through the roof. The things which were extensively damaged were parts of the structure, some many centuries old, that most people probably didn’t notice when they visited. But, as the Telegraph noted, “as la forêt – the latticework of timber over the nave that had supported the roof for eight centuries – had been engulfed in flames and would need rebuilding.”
In the immediate aftermath, work began on finding craftsmen with the necessary skills to re-create the timbering exactly as it was and using the same techniques as 800 years ago, and also to find the timber required. That was the task of the French equivalent of the Forestry Commission who worked with the carpenters to identify the trees required for the work. Eleven principal trusses were needed and forty five secondary trusses, each 1.4m wide and 10m high. The task of carrying out the work was given to a group specialising in heritage projects – Charpentiers sans Frontières (Carpenters without Borders) – which brings together experts to work on historical construction sites.
English carpenter Mike Dennis is one of the small number of carpenters in the world with the skill and knowledge to undertake such work. And he was already living in France. Much of the work, according to him, had to develop from such plans and dimensions as they had available to them. The architect Remi Fromont had done a study of the roof in 2014 and his knowledge was vital. But to recreate the roof in every detail, as they were determined to do, meant drawing on many other resources, including trawling the internet for photographs visitors had taken, which might enable the carpenters to see details and angles of the trusses and tie-beams, including the carpenters’ assembly marks, to which I referred in my previous article.
Tree felling began in December of 2022 and the carpenters would go into the forests with a team from the commission to identify suitable trees for their purposes. They also had a team of blacksmiths who made tools, 13th century style axes, and gouges for them to recreate the marks on the timbers. The work was organised in much the same way as in a medieval workshop, Dennis says, the timber would arrive at the workshop, the carpenters would work on the trusses which would then be piled up ready to be sent to Paris as soon as the masons had prepared the walls. He describes the structure as “a flat pack on a massive scale”. All of the hewing and carpentry work was done by hand, with the carpenters working out the best and quickest ways to create what was needed with hand tools, just as the carpenters would have done originally. The only modern tool used was a circular saw to cut the joints.
The pictures from the restored cathedral look absolutely wonderful but you will not see la forêt – that is hidden above the ceiling but it is there, doing the job of holding up the roof, thanks to the wonderful skills of carpenters like Mike.
Mike Dennis is on Instagram and this is his page there – there are some amazing images of cruck timbers in various old buildings as well as his own work. https://www.instagram.com/mike_dennis_craft/?hl=en
Since completing this work, Mike has apparently been involved in a project to recreate the ship on which William the Conqueror sailed to England.
It was lovely to read about this work on Notre Dame and to realise that it was the same skills, on a smaller level which created timber framed houses in our past and in our neighbourhoods, and especially good to know, as the daughter of a traditionally apprenticed and trained carpenter, that there are still dedicated craftsmen keeping these skills alive today.
Recently, on the ‘I remember Blackheath and Rowley Regis’ Facebook page Ronald Terence Woodhouse drew my attention to a serious fire in a mine at Lye Cross, just over the hill from the Lost Hamlets and probably where some of the miners who lived in the Lost Hamlets worked. I found some basic details fairly quickly for Ronald who had remembered being told about the fire when he was a child but I have since done more research.
The pit concerned was a coal mine at Lye Cross, notLye near Cradley Heath, it was just below Oakham off Portway Hill and was owned by the Earl of Dudley. The colliery became renowned as a ‘state of the art’ pit.
There were many local pits scattered around the area, and their activities later led to many problems with subsidence for houses and buildings built above them, including amongst many other buildings the second Rowley Church, Portway Hall and – a bit out of our district – the now famous and demolished Crooked House pub.
This map, which I found online shows the local pits.
Copyright: mindat.org.
It was surprising to me to realise quite how many pits there were. You can look at this map here https://www.mindat.org/loc-302392.html and if you zoom in, more detail is shown. A green dot with a figure on it shows the number of separate mines or shafts there were on the site or in the immediate area.
An old press article about the History of Mining in the Dudley Herald dated 18 May 1898 gave a lot of information about coal mining in the area. This claimed that originally, it had been thought by local engineers that there was a layer of coal below the basalt which is Rowley Rag but ‘expert geologists who had investigated the subject’ had a contrary theory , due to the geology of the Rowley Hills, that there was no coal underneath the basalt rock. So, according to this expert,
“for many years it was usually believed that either no coal existed beneath the basalt or that whatever coal might have existed had been burnt or otherwise rendered useless by the great heat of the basalt when it flowed from the earth’s interior.”
This, despite the known belief of the colliers of the district that workable coal lay beneath the basalt. Experts, it appears, do not always get things right! The article goes on:
“This important question was not, however, easily disposed of and mining men awaited further developments. One of the most suggestive of these followed the cutting of the Birmingham Canal in 1856: this tunnel passes through the base of the Rowley Hills and no basalt was met with during its construction.”
Trade was said to be in a depressed state at the beginning of 1865,
“though the coal trade improved through the year. There was a colliers’ strike and a lockout of the ironworkers that year. “The lockout took effect in the early part of the year and was indirectly due to a strike of ironworkers in North Staffordshire; in consequence of this strike the ironmasters of South Staffordshire decided to lock their men out as a measure of defence, and to support the masters of North Staffordshire. Towards the end of the year there were about 115 blast furnaces at work in the District.”
In the years 1867-68, the No.25 Tividale Pits were sunk through the hills without passing into any basalt in position. The thick coal was pierced at a depth of about 230 yards and at some distance from the shafts was found to be thrown down for about 100 yards by a great fault. More new shafts were later successfully sunk at Grace Mary and the presence of coal was now confirmed. In the year 1874, the article confirms, the Earl of Dudley’s pits at Lye Cross were completed but unlike those before described, these passed through about 65 yards of basalt which was met at a depth of about 11 yards from the surface. When the lower part of the basalt was reached a large quantity of water poured into the shafts, and this gave considerable trouble. Later parts of the article describe drainage problems in the various mines and the equipment required to try to extract water, mainly rainwater filtering through the rock into the mines. Much is said also about fluctuations in trade in both coal and in the iron industry which was such a big customer for coal for the many furnaces and how these affected the mines. In 1873, apparently, the iron trade began to fall off and later on the coal trade was seriously affected. In March 1874 it was decided to ask the thick coal miners to accept a reduction of 1 shilling and the thin coal miners a reduction of 9pence, owing to trade depression. The men refused to give way, and a strike of about 13,000 colliers was begun and continued for four months. After the strike ended, trade was only moderately good, there being only 80 furnaces in blast in December 1874, whilst 34 were idle.
Also coming into operation about this time was the appointment of a Royal Commission. The article states
“In accordance with the common practice of the Government, when about to take effective steps for remedying evils generally felt by the community, a Royal Commission to inquire into the occurrence of accidents in mines was appointed on February 12th 1879.”
If in doubt, appoint a Royal Commission – some government practices have not changed in f150 years, it seems! This Royal Commission was in response to a series of disastrous colliery explosions in numerous places. As a result of the reports produced by the Commission the operation of the previous Coal Mines Regulation Act 1872 ceased on 31 December 1887 after a period of 15 years, during which time, it had been, directly or indirectly, a great cause of improvement in mining operations, and a new Coal Mines Regulation Act 1887 came into effect on 1st January 1888.
What other records suggestabout early coal mining in Rowley
Despite the impression given in this article that there was little or no coalmining until the late 1800s, this is not really borne out by other local records.
In his Will proved in 1844 John Beet, the Squire of Rowley Hall, made numerous references to his coal copyholds and his coal mining interests and how they should be managed for the benefit of his legatees. Later the Rowley Hall mine became a large and active mine for many years, the Bell End pits may also have been his but I have no definite information on this. But clearly local business men were well aware of the potential profits of coal mining in Rowley and did not see this as impossible.
The Burial Registers at St Giles
In the parish registers for Rowley, there is an entry in July 1695 that “Hen. Sheldon of Tivydale, Kill’d in a Coal Pit in Tippon (sic. Presumably Tipton)” had been buried so certainly some form of coal mining was going on in the area at that early date, although there was not then the demand from the ironmasters which would help to drive demand for coal for their blast furnaces.
In November of the same year, William, son of Tho. Willets was also listed as having been killed in a coalpit so it appears that boys as well as men were working in the pits, as the name of the father is not usually given unless the burial is for a child.
In October 1803, the St Giles Burial Register has a description of the death of another child killed in a pit.
“Henry, son of John and Mary Edmands. He was killed in a coal pit near Brierley Hill. His cloathes were caught by a hook, or something of the kind, of the skep, which took him up a considerable way: at length his clothes tore and he held by his hands till being unable to hang any longer, he fell and spoke no more.”
Poor lad, how terrified he must have been.
Another boy, James, son of Joseph and Sarah Darby of Dudley, was killed by a fall of coals in a pit in 1806, a man John Lenton, killed in a coal pit in 1808 and William Thomas was ‘burnt in a coal pit, also in 1808.
Pits were hazardous places above and below ground – Thomas Williams, who was 35 was buried on 29 November 1810 after
“He fell into a coal pit in the dark about 8’o’clock on Saturday evening at Windmill End, It had lain uncovered and unguarded nearly twelve months & was about twenty yards deep in water!!!”
In 1811, William, son of Thomas and Ann Davies, aged 16 was also buried after being killed in a coal pit. Throughout the following years in the early 1800s there are frequent burials of mostly young men and boys killed in coal pits, with 92, for example, between 1813 and 1849.
In the 1841 Census 13 men living in the Lost Hamlets were listed as miners, in 1851 this had increased to 36. So there were certainly men and boys mining coal in the parish well before the period discussed in the article above.
The Lye Cross Colliery
In the Birmingham Gazette on 8th March 1841 an advertisement appeared, addressed to ‘Iron-masters, coal-masters and others’. This gave notice that a One-third share of the Lye Cross Colliery was to be sold by auction in West Bromwich on the 18th March, and stated “ the ‘above-named valuable colliery, together with the Plant in and thereon’ was offered for sale. The advertisement went on
“This property consists of seventy two Acres of Thick Coal in the fast, of undoubted good quality, and of unusual thickness. The sinking of the Shafts and the driving of a Gait Road about 100 yards into the Thick Coal has just been completed, and the latter operation has proved the excellence and superiority of the quality and substance of this important measure.
The Engine is complete and powerful, the shafts within 525 yards of the upper level of the Birmingham Canal and the whole Machinery and Mines (the latter entirely free from water) ready for immediate draught.
The Quarterly Payments, which are light, commenced on the 25th March last, under a lease granted by J E Piercy, Esq., of Worley Hall, from which date thirty nine years have to run.
The present affords an opportunity rarely to be met with for the prosperous investment of a moderate capital, and is therefore especially worthy of attention.”
Further particulars could be obtained from a Solicitor Mr G H Townsend, or Mr B R Smith, Surveyor and Viewer) both of West Bromwich.
Only a few weeks later a further advertisement, couched in identical terms with regard to the mine itself appeared in the same newspaper on 21 June 1841. However, this time, it was not a one-third share being offered but the whole enterprise, to be disposed of by private contract, rather than auction. Again the same Solicitor was listed as able to give further information, along with Mr B R Smith,( in this advertisement described as a Surveyor and Brewer, rather than Viewer!) plus another surveyor, Mr Joseph Cooksey, all of West Bromwich.
Why one third should be offered for sale by auction in March and the whole by private contract is June, I am not clear, it seems rather strange.
Whatever the individual circumstances, however, this makes it clear that there was a full, well equipped and potentially very profitable mine in operation at Lye Cross by mid-1841.
New Colliery Opening
An article in the County Advertiser and Herald dated 20 February 1875 reported
“Coal under Rowley Hills
The new Colliery which has just been opened by the Earl of Dudley, at Lye Cross, furnishes additional testimony of much value as to the coal deposits underlying the basaltic rock which overspreads the Rowley Hills, a section of the Dudley District which, until the last few years, was believed to be wanting in mineral treasure other than that of the famous stone known as the ‘Rowley Rag’. To the enterprise of Mess’rs W North, D North. E T Wright and others in this until recently untested portion of the coalfield the discovery of its great and rich stores of fuel is mostly due, and the success of these pioneers has stimulated enterprise on the part of others. The newly opened Lye Cross pit adds to the previously ascertained mineral wealth of the Earl of Dudley’s estate some 500 acres of best thick coal. The depth of the coal is only 280 yards from the surface but the diameter of the shaft is much above the average, and the plant and machinery, designed and erected under the superintendence of Mr Latham, are among the finest in the District. The time of ascending or descending the shaft is only fifteen seconds. The colliery is now in full operation.”
So, had the previous mine been closed for a time or was this ‘new’ pit a revival of the previous one? Or were there two pits with the same name but in slightly different places?
Experiments with dynamite
Developments in mining and quarrying technology continued during this time. This article in the Worcester Journal dated 2 October 1875 describes experiments in both the stone quarries at Turner’s Hill and in the Lye Cross mine with the use of dynamite to dislodge stone and coal for extraction. Dynamite, as a blasting explosive, had been patented in 1867 by the Swedish physicist Alfred Nobel and it rapidly gained wide-scale use as a more robust alternative to the traditional black powder explosives. The experiments described here were apparently very successful and, what is more, the dynamite reduced loss of coal to slack, made less smoke and was substantially cheaper than earlier methods.
Note that this article described the Lye Cross pit as having “without exception, the finest plant and opening out at the bottom in the whole of the South Staffordshire district”.
In another newspaper article, an obituary for a well known mining engineer a Mr Edward Fisher Smith in 1892, there is also a reference to the special geology of the Rowley Hills. This notes that the area was of special interest to scientific men because the leading geologists of the last generation were emphatic in their declarations that no coal would ever be found beneath the basaltic rocks of which the Rowley Hills were composed. Mr Fisher Smith had experiments made which convinced him that good coal and ironstone would be won under the basalt. He caused the ‘well-known Lye Cross Pits’ to be opened and these were often visited by the late Earl of Dudley and his friends and were regarded as among the best pits in the District, ranking with the Sandwell Park and Hamstead collieries, as well for their scientific mode of working. The present Earl, with distinguished visitors, also apparently often visited this pit at that time.
I also found references to a banquet being held inside the pit by the Earl of Dudley on one occasion in 1875. The most detailed account I have been able to find appeared in the Dudley Chronicle on 3 September 1925, fifty years later and this reads:
“The Lye Cross Banquet
A Worcester contemporary draws attention to the famous banquet which was served in the workings of the Lye Cross pit just 50 years ago. This unique event has been referred to many times in these columns. The pit was visited by a numerous party. Under the courteous guidance of Mr Thomas Latham (a well -known and highly respected Dudley mining engineer) they traversed the extraordinary workings but the novel and interesting feature of this additional celebration of the opening of the colliery was the banquet given in a spacious and commodious dining room which the plodding labour of the miner had hewn out of the solid coal. The repast was on the scale of unusual liberality, wines, viands and fruit, of rare quality being provided. Upon the table there was a profuse display of flowers and ornaments, and the really fine banqueting hall was brilliantly illuminated, the occasional lighting of various coloured fires contributing to form a scene never contemplated by the visitors. The late Earl of Dudley (father of the present Earl) was the host. His lordship was the owner of the colliery which was subsequently visited by distinguished geologists. The pit, in fact, was perhaps the best known of all in the South Staffordshire coalfield. It is not in operation now.”
What an extraordinary occasion that must have been!
Another visit to the Pit was made by members of the Midland Union of Natural History Societies in 1878 to Lye Cross Colliery, and gives some idea of the scale of the pit:
‘Members of the Union and their friends, to the number of nearly 400, made an excursion to Dudley and the neighbourhood, under the auspices of the Dudley and Midland Geological and Scientific Society and Field Club, representatives of which received the party at the Tipton Station of the Great Western Railway, and conducted them in the first instance to the Open Coal Work at Foxyards, where the Ten-yard Coal Seam exposes its point of outcrop on the east side of the obstruding ridges of the Dudley Castle Hill and the Wren’s Nest. Mr, Thomas Latham, the Earl of Dudley’s Mine Agent, gave interesting information as to the mode of getting the coal, and under his direction a fall of coal was displayed.’
‘After Luncheon came the crowning event of the day – the descent by more than 400 persons, including many ladies, of the famous Lye Cross Coal Pit at Rowley, which was superintended by Mr. Latham. This pit is remarkable as the first sunk through the Basalt, or Rowley Rag. Where the pit was commenced the thickness of the basalt was unknown; it proved to be no more than 68 yards, when the rock binds of the coal measures were reached. At 168 yards the Two-foot and Brooch coals were met with, and at 228 yards the Thick coal was cut into. The pit is 258½ yards deep.’ (Anon.,1878).
Since this is in a commercial photo library I cannot reproduce it here but it is worth you having a look as it gives an idea of the scale of the workings and of the hazards of the working conditions.
The Science Museum also has a Collection of black and white glass negatives of mine workings, chiefly underground, at pits in Staffordshire and Worcestershire taken by H.W. Hughes. ca.1900-1910. This collection totals over 360 negatives. Boxes V and VI (totalling 100 negatives) primarily concern Ramrod Hall Pit and Lye Cross Pit showing a wide range of human and horse activity, machinery and tools. What an interesting collection these would make if they were ever printed.
A few of these images do appear to have been printed and can be seen at the bottom of this page, including photographs from both Lye Cross and Ramrod Hall pits. They give a bleak impression of the working conditions in the mines which were both owned by the Earl of Dudley. https://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?txtkeys1=Mine%20Shafts
Herbert William Hughes, the author, was the colliery manager at the Conygre Pit at Dudley and wrote a book entitled ‘A text-book of coal-mining : for the use of colliery managers and others’ which is extensively illustrated with drawings of all sorts and I note from the index pages that there are seven references to Lye Cross mine in the book. It can be seen and/or downloaded free of charge from the Internet Archive if anyone would like to learn more about mining practices at that time. https://archive.org/details/textbookofcoalmi00hughrich
Mining and other accidents
The Lye Cross pit was not completely trouble free, of course. A report I found in several newspapers, dated August 1900, tells of a collier named David Robinson, aged 60 so presumably an experienced collier, who was crushed when part of the roof where he was working fell on him, even though it was described as ‘well timbered’ and after he had inspected it and considered it safe. By the time he was extracted from under the roof fall, he was dead.
Not all the hazards were inside the pit. In March 1902there are reports of an inquest into the dreadful death of Samuel Hinton, of Oldbury, aged 15 who was buried under a pile of burning ash at the colliery which he was trying to dig out to load onto a cart. (People were apparently allowed to take the ashes produced by the mine gratuitously). His employer was Enoch Richards of Portway Farm. Samuel had already visited the ash tip about fifteen times that week with Joseph Brooks who was also employed at the farm, to collect ash to repair a road. Samuel went on his own this time and his employer stated that he had gone without his knowledge and contrary to his wishes. As Samuel was digging ashes from the bottom of the pile it collapsed onto him, partially burying him. A witness Harriet Green gave evidence that she saw the lad loading ashes at the mound and subsequently saw a cloud of dust and she had shouted that the deceased and horse were buried, although it appears that the horse was not injured but panicked and plunging. Thomas Bishton heard shouts and found the horse plunging and he then saw that the wheel of the cart was on the boy’s leg. The body of the boy was covered in red-hot ashes and terribly burnt, it was very difficult to recover it.
Louisa Hickman of Portway told the inquest that she went to the mound (which was about sixty feet high and sloped to an angle of 45 degrees. However, some of the ashes were still burning and these were about ten feet high) she saw that the boy was partially buried in the ashes but when she attempted to rescue him a second fall occurred which completely buried him. When he was dug out his body was very badly burned.
The Government Inspector of Mines also attended the Inquest and he noted that the burning slope did not look safe, it was dangerous for anyone to get onto it, it was not a safe place to send a youth to.
A verdict of Accidental Death was returned.
Pit ponies
Horses or ponies were commonly used in mines for hauling coal from the coal face to the shafts and the ponies often lived underground for their whole working lives. This description of the underground stables at Lye Cross is taken from Hughes’s book, mentioned above.
Arrangement of Stables.—Pure water and plenty of ventilation are essential. The stables at Lye Cross Pit are shown in Figs. 214 and 215. Each horse has a stall 7ft long by 6ft wide, and a corn manger made with specially shaped bricks, 4ft wide. A water bosh is placed between each two stalls, and a 2in main pipe with down branch pipes that delivers water to each bosh, which has a hole and plug in the bottom to allow of easy emptying.
Photograph copyright: Glenys Sykes.
The 1902 Fire
The disasters were not over for 1902. In the early hours of Christmas Day 1902, a great fire broke out at the Lye Cross pit. The miners reported that all had been quiet and secure when they left the mine at 4pm on Christmas Eve but shortly after 9pm that night a watchman who was on duty at the colliery saw smoke coming from what was known as the spare shaft. He and several miners descended one of the other shafts and found that a ‘great fire’ had broken out in the principal roads and was spreading rapidly. These men tried to rescue eleven horses which were in the underground stable there but the flames almost overtook them and they were forced to abandon this work and give the signal to ascend the shaft.
The report notes that they were fortunate to reach the pit bank speedily for immediately afterwards the flames from the fire ascended the spare shaft to a height of at least 20 feet above the pit mouth and began to spread towards the engine house and it was feared that the valuable machinery would be destroyed. The Dudley Fire Brigade was called out but the manual pump was inadequate to cope with such a big fire and a steam fire engine was sent for. In the meantime a gang of men were employed in damming up the air roads leading to the shaft with tons of black sand. When the steamer arrived a large quantity of water from a local pool was pumped into the shaft . One newspaper report describes this, saying that when the water was pumped in to the shaft ‘steam and ashes were shot up as though from a volcano’. But it was not until five o’clock that the flames were extinguished. Fortunately the expensively equipped engine houses were not affected but the horses were lost, poor beasts. Ronald had remembered being told of this event as a child, and had remembered that the ponies had not been rescued. Obviously this aspect had stuck in the folk memory of this event for many years afterwards.
A slightly later report in the Tamworth Herald noted that throughout the whole of Christmas Day and the following day, the workmen were engaged in damming up the mouth of the shaft and the workings were expected to be closed for at least seven or eight weeks. It was fortunate that this occurred at holiday time so that no men were in the workings. About 130 men were thrown out of employment.
A report in the County Advertiser & Herald in August 1904, however, stated that
“there is little probability that the Lye Cross Colliery being re-opened for some months yet, due to the fact that there is a less demand for coal at the present time. About 100 miners who were thrown out of employment at the time of the fire are still out of work.”
This was twenty months after the fire so the mine had been closed for a long time. I suspect that in practice most of the miners would have sought work in other pits, few men would have been able to survive out of work for that length of time before the welfare state existed.
The 1911 Fire
Alas, this was not the last fire at the Lye Cross colliery. A further report in November 1911 described another serious outbreak of fire in the ‘Staffordshire Show Pit’ at Lye Cross which this time led to the closure of the pit and the loss of their jobs for 300 miners. I have not been able to find any trace of the pit re-opening after this.
So that is the story of the Lye Cross Pit, somewhere most of us probably did not even know existed but which almost certainly employed many men from the Lost Hamlets area. Mining has always been a dirty and dangerous business, but it was an important part of the success of the Black Country and must have contributed to the substantially both to the local economy and to the wealth of the mine owners.
This is the title of a book by the renowned historian David Hey, which is subtitled “Local Societies in England before the Industrial Revolution” and I recently noted it from an online comment as recommended reading for those of us with an interest in particular localities, whether in the form of a One Place Study or what I have heard called ‘micro-history’ or more general interest. So I acquired a copy and it has sat on my study table in a pile of other interesting books for a couple of weeks. Until a few days ago when I wanted something to read, out in the garden, sitting in the September sunshine.
Regular readers may remember that recently I commented that in the course of my research for my One Place Study, I had come to the conclusion that many of what I had called the ‘core families’ of the Lost Hamlets in particular but also Rowley village, had been there since time immemorial .
That felt rather a brave thing for me to proclaim, since I am neither academic nor a scholar, but I have come to believe this and certainly the idea seemed to strike a chord with many local people who commented on the ‘I remember Blackheath and Rowley Regis’ Facebook Page who appeared pleased to think that they were so deeply rooted or grounded as one person put it, in this small village.
I had started to observe this pattern when I first started transcribing parish registers for Rowley for FreeREG and realised that many of the names in the 19th century Registers which I was transcribing were names that had also been in the Attendance Registers of my classes at school, both at Rowley Regis Grammar School but especially at Rowley Hall Primary School. I had not seen many of those names, I realised, in the forty years since I had moved away from Rowley so perhaps they were local to the area. This observation was confirmed and reinforced by every subsequent record source I looked at.
I noticed what I came to think of as ‘local faces’ in old group photographs but which I also recognised from school. And I knew from my own family history research that physical likenesses had passed virtually unchanged over – in my instance – a period of seventy years and at least five generations, from my great-uncle who died without issue at Passchendaele in 1917 to an uncanny likeness to him which popped up in my son, born seventy years later, five generations apart. The likenesses were there in the men of the intervening generations when I looked properly at their photographs, too but my son not only had the same face but the same stance, the way he held his shoulders and, it appears from other records, similar aptitudes and skills. Other observations, over time, brought the realisation that gaits, stances, voices, aptitudes, skills, and mannerisms also passed unchanged through generations.
All of these elements also indicated to me that many families stayed close to their home ground over centuries. Some, of course, moved elsewhere for work or opportunity (and transmigration patterns between Mountsorrel in Leicestershire, Rowley Regis and the Clee Hills in Shropshire, due to particular granite working skills, have emerged clearly during this study) but most families stayed put, even if individual members moved away, often only for a time. I identified the ‘core families’ who lived in the hamlets over hundreds of years, intermarrying and mostly staying very close to home.
At the Black Country History Conference which I attended at the Black Country Living Museum last year, Simon Briercliffe gave a talk on Irish immigrants in the Black Country. He showed a chart (seen in this photograph, I can obtain the fullchart if anyone would be interested to see it) with the proportions of the population in various local towns and villages who had been born there or elsewhere, based on the places of birth shown in the 1851 census, the first census to show this specific information.
Copyright: Chart – Simon Briercliffe, photograph Glenys Sykes.
Of all the villages Simon had looked at, Rowley Regis had the largest proportion of people who had been born less than ten km away from the village, the smallest number of people born between 10 and 49 km away , even less who had been born more than 50km at all and none from Ireland. As I recall, this raised a little chuckle in the audience as he reviewed the various results with a comment to the effect that Rowley Regis was well known for the people there not moving far!
And when I began to read David Hey’s book, I found myself nodding happily at just about every sentence in the introduction. David Hey, who died, sadly, as the book was in production, I think in about 2016, noted in his introduction that he had been ‘much involved’ in the study of English local and family history at both the professional and amateur level over 50 years and had noted that the local approach, also sometimes called ‘micro-history’, to give it, he says, academic respectability, had helped to transform the understanding of the history of the nation at large.
There are chapters in the book on The people of England, England’s historic towns and cities, Organizing the countryside: Villages, hamlets and farmsteads, Earning a living in the countryside, The greatest buildings in the land, Parish churches and chapels, Timber framed houses, and Population, family life and society.
He notes the importance of considering the administrative framework of a place, and a familiarity with the natural surroundings, the study of farms and field systems, the pattern of highways and lanes, the buildings, the interpretation of place names. But all the while, he says, “we must have at the forefront of our minds the people who inhabited these landscapes, the ordinary English families as well as the high and the mighty.” He welcomed the interest in family history that reinforces the value of the local approach.
This was only the first page of the introduction and yet I was feeling as though he was directly addressing me and my work on the One Place Study!
He goes on to talk about the differing nature of the various local societies throughout England and notes that people used to speak of the neighbourhood with which they were familiar as their ‘country’ , (just as, of course, we refer to our neighbourhood as the Black Country), by which they meant not the whole of England but the local district that stretched as far as the nearest market towns. He says “The core groups of families that remained rooted in these neighbourhoods were the ones that shaped local culture and passed on their traditions.” He notes that they often bore distinctive surnames which were unique to their area, still evident today.
He notes a tenet of social history that most people in the Stewart and Tudor periods moved from their place of birth at some stage in their lives. Some will have moved but many will have left members of their families behind. He argues that the character of a local community was determined not so much by such comings and goings but by the families that stayed put, even though in time they may be outnumbered by incomers. These formed the core of the community and provided it with a sense of continuity. Networks of families were formed and repeatedly strengthened by intermarriage. He calls these ‘urban dynasties’ and quotes Arnold Bennett, writing in 1902 about families in the Potteries (also in Staffordshire, of course) who said “those families which, by virtue of numbers, variety and personal force seem to permeate a whole district, to be a calculable item of it, an essential part of its identity”. Hey notes that many of these old urban dynasties continued to run matters in their locality over several generations. I have also noted in the course of my research familiar names cropping up in reports of parish offices, of local councils, of those involved in the administration of local affairs, centuries after those names were recorded in the Court Rolls and the Parish Registers for Rowley, so this applied in the Rowley area, too.
Hey also discusses how the study of surnames has altered in recent years and his belief that each area or ‘country’ had its distinctive collection of surnames which had been formed locally in the Middle Ages. There is also now a school of thought, he says, that very many English family names, including the common ones as well as the rare, should be treated as having a unique history that must be traced back in time and that many would prove to have a single family origin. So each time I have looked at the first entry in the Rowley Registers for a name in my family tree, and wondered whether I could actually trace my line to that person, it seems that yes, I might well be able to and that this would not be too unusual.
In particular Hey notes that where surnames have been mapped from the 1881 census, the great majority of those distinctive surnames – those that appear to have had a single family origin – were still decidedly local in character. He notes that Staffordshire provides many examples of surnames which have remained concentrated in their county of origin. Examples relating to the area of the Potteries are described in the book, and he also discusses those which appear to have derived from small places, and discusses the use of detailed maps in this respect to identify the origins of some names, which may have been as small a place as one farmstead.
Of particular interest to Rowley folk, perhaps, is a paragraph in the introduction about Rayboulds. This name, he says, derived from an old personal name and appears to have had a single family origin in the Black Country. The 903 Rayboulds in the 1881 Census, he notes, included 306 in Dudley and 259 in Stourbridge. I could tell him somewhere else to look too! And that Francis Raball who appears in the Rowley Marriage Register in 1614 is surely one of those very early ones of that name.
And so for all the Darbys, Groves, Wards, Bridgwaters, Hipkisses, Willetts, Whites, Rustons, Whiles, Jeavons, Dankses, Lowes. Hadens, Detheridges, Mucklows, Parsonses, Cartwrights, numerous others – any of those family names still in the Rowley area and appearing in the mid-1500s in the first few pages of the Rowley Registers, it seems that it is not actually fanciful, to think that you are, very probably, a direct descendant from those original families in Rowley then.
Later in the book, talking about the structure of settlements, Hey says that “Hamlets are found in every English region, even in the heartlands of the Midland open-field villages. Far from being a somehow inferior type of settlement, as was once assumed, they were often more suited to communal farming than were large villages. Their versatility, adaptability, resilience and tenacity enabled most of them to survive the late medieval economic and demographic depressions, though many suffered and a proportion succumbed. They ensured that England was a country with complex and different rural economies.”
There is a fascinating breadth of knowledge in this book, distilled from a lifetime of study of local and family history by David Hey, about all sorts of details of living in earlier times. Thinking of my piece recently on the Inventory of Ambrose Crowley 1, I was interested to read in this book that livestock were far smaller than now and they produced less milk and meat, while disease was a constant threat. A cow gave 120-150 gallons of milk a year, about one sixth of present day yields. In Yorkshire the average dairy cow produced just 72 pounds of butter and cheese annually. Medieval hay meadows were valued at three or four times the level of surrounding arable lands because they provided the essential winter fodder to keep breeding stock alive over the winter, confirming the reason for the relatively high valuation given in the Inventory for the hay in the barn.
Yet Hey suggests that the inhabitants of England’s medieval towns formed only about 10% of the national population. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most English towns remained small, they were not yet divorced from the surrounding countryside and their fields and meadows could usually be seen from the market place. This rings true to me because in the small Gloucestershire town where I now live, where expansion and development were crippled for a long period by the collapse of the wool trade, one feature of the landscape is that the surrounding countryside is clearly visible from many of the town streets, including especially long views from the Chipping, originally the Cheaping, the market place.
Hey also considers the position of London, then, as now, not typical of other English towns and with a higher proportion of non-native residents, but he notes also that, at least since the early 1600s and probably well before, London had been connected to smaller cities and market towns in every part of the kingdom by weekly carrying services. A document of 1637 lists the London inns where provincial carriers arrived and departed and their regular schedules. A study he refers to has calculated that about 205 waggons and 165 gangs of packhorses entered and left London every week, carrying a total of about 460 tons of goods each way. By 1715, regular carrying services by road in and out of London had more than doubled since 1637 and coach services to the most provincial centres numbered nearly 1000 a week.
Amongst the goods carried, I reflect, would have been nails from Rowley Regis. Small wonder then that the more ambitious of the families in Rowley, perhaps the young men wanting to expand their horizons, opted to move, at first to larger towns such as Stourbridge where there was a thriving market for nails, possibly transported from there on the river. Nails were heavy, and dense, they could be transported by pack horse or cart but roads were generally poor and travelling slow. Water transport allowed large quantities to be moved more easily, hence the development of canals to places which did not have access to rivers. But I now know of at least three Rowley families whose descendants moved to London to trade as ‘nail ironmongers’ in the city where their wares could be sold on the London markets and also shipped across the world from the London docks where they set up their businesses. They would doubtless have arranged their own transport, from the Midlands, cutting out the middleman, the carrier and probably improving their security en route. It seems that at least some of our ancestors may have been a lot more mobile than I had always thought.
Also, some young men (not many women), from all parts of the country, came to London to be apprenticed to various trades, as can be identified from Apprenticeship Registers in the archives of the various Livery Companies, as was Ambrose Crowley 3. Hey gives very interesting descriptions about how these apprenticeships were arranged and also how many families in the provinces had one or more members who were in London. Again, this brings my mind back to my ancestor Edward Cole who was married in a Fleet Marriage in London in 1730, then returning to live in Rowley Regis for the rest of his long life. I had already, as a result of earlier research, been wondering whether he and his father had been involved in transporting nails to London, now I am wondering whether there had been an apprenticeship somewhere along the line, too. So now I am going to have to learn more about Apprenticeship Records.
Thoughts
This man is speaking my language.
By learning about this early period I am seeing not only how our ancestors lived then but how this earlier period shaped the times and society that followed.
Most dry days now, I take the book and a large mug of tea out to a sunny spot in the garden and read a few more pages, not rushing, because almost everything he writes is worth understanding and thinking about. If you have found this interesting and fancy a longer read, look out for copies on Amazon or Abebooks or try ordering it through interlibrary loans. For myself, I am enjoying every page and feeling a new confidence that my researches have been leading me in the right direction and that further research is worthwhile.
David Hey was Emeritus Professor of Local and Family History at the University of Sheffield, his roots were in the Hallamshire area of Yorkshire, on which he has published numerous books, he was a hands on family historian, as well as a renowned academic. A review on the book describes it as “a magnificent overview of England’s past, which serves to unite the worlds of landscape history, family history and local history”. Another review notes that it is “highly readable, an excellent interpretative work, up to date, wide-ranging in themes, regions and chronology.”
It is also meticulously referenced and provides details of a range of other books which could tempt me, not to mention Hey’s other publications, some of which I already had. His books ‘Family names and family history’ and ‘Journeys in Family History’ have already found their way onto my TBR pile this week! I am now valiantly resisting the temptation to acquire his book “Packmen, Carriers and Packhorse Roads : Trade and Communications in North Derbyshire and South Yorkshire”, as I suspect that many of the trading conditions in metal working in that area may have been similar to those in the Black Country. And ‘Surnames, DNA, and Family History’ by George Redmonds, Turi King, and David Hey – also sings seductively to me – at this rate I am going to need another bookcase…
I have always been an avid reader and had considered myself reasonably well informed about English history, since it has always interested me. What a joy it is, in my mid-seventies, to have my knowledge and understanding of English history, of ordinary English people, (not just the powerful and wealthy who have always been well documented), and how common folk lived, my perceptions so greatly enhanced and expanded as they are being, in the course of this One Place Study and by such gifted writers as David Hey and Gillian Tindall. My only problem is that there are just not enough reading hours in the day!
Over the last few weeks, I have done quite a lot of work on the Levett family in Rowley Regis. After the terrible year for that family of 1902 I suspected that most of the remaining Levetts had moved away from the village. Having a quick look at the 1911 Census for Rowley to confirm my theory, I was surprised to see a John Levett aged 67 living in Springfield because he did not appear to be part of the other Levett family in any of the earlier work I had done. On searching further, I found him in Rowley and Blackheath right back to 1871, originally working as a butcher and later at the quarry. I knew that there were later generations of Levetts who were butchers in Rowley and Blackheath who did not appear to come from the branch of the family which I had been working on – was this where they came from?
This John Levett appears in his first census under this name in Rowley in 1871 and he was consistent in records thereafter over a 50 year period about his age and place of birth which showed that he was born in Rowley Regis in 1847. So who were his parents? Where was he in 1851 and 1861? He did not appear under this name in the censuses for those years.
I looked in various records for a birth or baptism of a John Levett in Rowley Regis in 1847, + or -1 year. No birth registration or baptism. Odd. Checked surrounding parishes – still no John Levett. Odder. After mulling this over for a while, it occurred to me that perhaps his birth and baptism had not appeared because he was illegitimate and his birth might have been registered in his mother’s name?
The illegitimate Johns baptised in Rowley Regis in 1847
So I checked the Baptismal Register for St Giles for 1847, looking for a child named John, illegitimate, and baptised in that year. There were only two.
John Hobbiss
One was born to Rosannah Hobbiss at Slack Hillock on 28th February 1847 and was baptised at St Giles on 9 May 1847, according to his Birth Certificate. Although the mother’s name is given in the Baptismal Register as Louisa, I cannot find any trace of a Louisa Hobbis before or after this date and I suspect that either this is a clerical error or she lied about her name! But a John Hobbis of the right age appears in the 1851 and the 1861 Censuses, apparently the son of Rosannah Smitten, nee Hobbis, in both censuses living in Old Hill. But after that John Hobbiss is nowhere to be found. Rosannah Hobbis married Thomas Smitten at Dudley St Edmund on 25 Oct 1847 and in 1851, when they were living in Old Hill, John is described as Rosannah’s son so it appears that he was not Thomas’s as their other child Emily is specifically noted as his child. Rosannah was born in Bromsgrove so was not a Rowley or Old Hill girl. In 1861, the family were living in Cherry Orchard, Old Hill and John is again shown under the name of John Hobis, by then 14 and a coal miner. In 1871 Rosannah, by now widowed, was living in Elbow Street, Old Hill with her children by Thomas Smitten but John is no longer living with her. I have not been able to find any trace of him under that name after that date.
So this boy had associations with Slack Hillock and Halesowen Street, where the mystery John Levett was later living in 1871 and where his bride Ellen Smith lived, was only a few hundred yards away. However it is more difficult to see whether John Levett of Rowley, the farmer, had any direct connections with this area that would bring him into contact with Rosannah Hobbiss but that cannot be ruled out either.
John Moreton
The second illegitimate John was born to Emma Moreton, (who just happens to be my 2xgreat-aunt) on 16th March 1847 at Finger-i-the-Hole and was baptised at St Giles a few weeks later on 13th June 1847. Emma, who grew up in Perry’s Lake, married Thomas Priest (or Redfern) a couple of years later in 1850 and they had ten children together. But in the 1851 Census her four year old son John is living with them in Gadds Green under the name Priest and also in 1861, by then aged 14 and listed by the name Redfern – but that was because his stepfather Thomas Priest also used both names in different censuses, either that or it was an enumerator error, as the family was living literally between two households of Redferns – see my article on the Redferns for more on that! At that time John was a furnace labourer, a common occupation for the Redfern men. But after that John Moreton – or Priest or Redfern – depending on which name he was using at the time – is nowhere to be found on the area.
So both of these illegitimate Johns seem to disappear after the 1861 Census when they would have been 14 and going out to work – no help there, then!
However, a John Moreton, aged 22, was married at St Giles on 21 Aug 1870 to Eliza Caddick. He gave his abode as Turner’s Hill, (where the Priests/Redferns lived), and did not enter any name for his father. And the witnesses to this marriage were Solomon and Mary Ann Redfern, Solomon was only a few years older than John and was a half-brother to Thomas Priest or Redfern. He actually lived for some years next door to John so would certainly have been known to and associated with this John.
Had this John reverted to his original name for his marriage? I think he had.
John and his wife were living in Church Row, Rowley in 1871 with their 10 month old son Samuel and this John gives his place of birth as Rowley Regis. There was only one John Moreton born in Rowley in that period, so it seems likely that this is the same John Moreton who was baptised in 1847. By 1881 the family had moved to Barrow-in-Furness in Lancashire and John was working in the iron works there. Again, this fits with his previous occupation as a furnace labourer when he was in Rowley.
Barrow-in-Furness Migration from Rowley
Incidentally, on this page of twenty six people in Parker Street, Barrow-in-Furness, there are no less than twenty two people who give their place of birth in the Black Country – Rowley Regis, Cradley, Brierley Hill, Tipton – on this page and those around it there are Mortons, Whitehouses, Gaunts, Willetts,Siveters, Priests, Ingrams, Westwoods, Billinghams, and Taylors, all familiar local Rowley names. It looks as though there was a considerable migration amongst the iron workers from the Black Country iron works to the Barrow area.
This Moreton/Morton family (The spelling changes at this time) remained there afterwards and it appears that John Moreton died there some time between the 1901 and 1911 censuses when Eliza Morton is shown as a widow in the latter. If this is the John Moreton who was baptised in 1847, he is not our man.
Back to the mystery man –John Levett the Butcher
At this new John Levett’s marriage in St Giles in 1867, aged 21 and a butcher, of Blackheath, he gave his father’s name as John Levett, farmer. The information given in such records is only as accurate as the priest or Clerk is told so the use of this name is not necessarily true. But his use thereafter of the Levett surname does seem to indicate that he believed that he was a Levett. Perhaps he knew who his father was and decided to name his father and use his surname when he got married and thereafter.
As to the identity of this John’s father, there is only one John Levett in Rowley Regis in the 1841 and 1851Censuses, and that was John Levett of Brickhouse Farm, father of James Adshead Levett. Did the recently widowed John Levett find solace with a local girl in 1846? Perhaps he did. Was he the father of this John Levett? He would have been nearly seventy by 1847 so not impossible but perhaps unusual.
Or might James Adshead Levett, living in Perry’s Lake, and aged 42, and previously described in records as a farmer, be responsible? It appears from the variations in the descriptions of James’s occupations that the pub-keeping was only one of various occupations and as late as 1851 he was described as a colliery clerk. It may well have been that he also assisted his father with running the Brickhouse Farm.
Of the two possible illegitimate Johns baptised in Rowley, I tend towards thinking that the John Levett in Rowley is more likely to be the son of Rosannah Hobbiss. He was later living in Halesowen Street, Blackheath at the time of his marriage, just up the hill from Slack Hillock and it does seem likely that the other John reverted to his original name of Moreton and moved away from the area.
I can find no Bastardy Orders to help. Perhaps a DNA test would throw up some links or perhaps descendants of this couple actually know the story but otherwise this has to remain pure speculation.
John and Ellen Levett
This John Levett married Ellen Smith on 14 Oct 1868 at St Giles, Rowley Regis. He was 21 and a butcher of Blackheath. She was 19 and also of Blackheath, so presumably her father had given his consent to the marriage. The groom gave his father’s name and occupation as John Levett, farmer. Her father was Sydney Smith, a Manufacturer. The witnesses were Job and Sarah Siviter but these people were the Grave Digger and Church Cleaner for St Giles so this may have been the only connection, they may have acted as witnesses on a regular basis.
John was marrying into a respectable family, perhaps he felt under pressure to be able to name his father in the marriage record. Later in life their sons and daughters went into service with wealthy families and ran businesses so they must all have been presentable and capable.
Ellen Smith was the eldest daughter of Sydney Smith of Halesowen Street , Blackheath who was a Rivet Manufacturer, employing five men in 1871. From the description in the census then it appears that they were living towards the Gorsty Hill end of Halesowen Street, perhaps somewhere near the junction with New John Street.
After their marriage, the couple were living in Halesowen Street in 1871, in Garratts Lane, Old Hill in 1881 and by 1891 had moved to 2 Dudley Road, Springfield where he was described as a Labourer, (also in 1901 when he and his two remaining sons at home were stone breakers) whereas previously he had always been shown as a butcher. 2 Dudley Road was next to the Bull Inn and there is some evidence that this had been a shop, possibly a butcher’s shop previously. By this time John and Ellen Levett had had five sons and three daughters. They remained in Springfield until their deaths, both attaining grand old ages for that period. John Levett died in 1926 aged 81 and Ellen in 1929 aged 80, both are buried in St Giles Churchyard.
Their children were:
Harry (1870-1886), who died aged 15 and was buried at St Giles on 9 May 1886, his address was shown in the Burial Register as Tippity Green so their Dudley Road home appears to have been very close to the Bull Inn.
Their eldest daughter Alice (1872-1915) had in 1891 been living in as a servant in the household of Mr T Danks, Boiler manufacturer, at 77 Dudley Road, along with her sister Amy. In 1895 Alice married Samuel Dowell at Reddal Hill and they moved to St Johns-in-the-Vale, in Cumbria, where they were living in 1901, where Samuel was working in the stone quarry. (Regular readers may remember that many Rowley sett workers moved to St John’s-in-the-Vale in this period, this has been referred to in other pieces on this blog.) Alice’s brother Frank was also living with them, also working at the quarry. However, their stay in Cumbria does not appear to have lasted long as both of Alice and Samuel’s children were born in Rowley, Winifred in 1903 and Donald in 1907. In 1911 they were living in New Buildings, Tippity Green. Alice died in 1915, aged 42 and was buried at St Giles.
Frederick (1873-1932) This little Levett stayed at home! Frederick became a butcher, in 1901 and 1911 he was listed as a butcher in Rowley Village. In 1894 Fred, then a quarryman, married Elizabeth Payne at Holy Trinity, Old Hill, and they had six children, two daughters and four sons, one of the latter died in infancy. By 1921 Fred had a butcher’s shop at 35 Penncricket Lane and his son Harry (by then 24) had his own butcher’s shop at 48 Birmingham Road, Blackheath. It was this shop that I remember although by then it must have been run by Fred’s grandson or great-grandson.
Frederick and Elizabeth had four sons and two daughters, Harry (1896-1958),John (1899), Ellen (1902), George Frederick (1903-04), Alfred(1908) and Amy (1909). Harry continued to run the butcher’s shop in Birmingham Road and it was still run by Levetts up to the 1960s.
Copyright – Steve Pearce
This photograph, posted on Facebook by Steve Pearce in 2014, shows Levett’s butcher’s shop in Birmingham Road, alongside the never to be completed car park construction. The abattoir was originally behind the shop, I understand and the family sold the land on which the Shoulder of Mutton was built, the name of the pub specified as a nod to the butchery business! There are many comments on Facebook from people who remember David Levett and his son still running the business and how well respected, obliging and friendly they were, as I remember myself.
Amy (1875-1952) also went into service and after leaving Mr Dank’s household, she moved to Stoke Prior where in the 1901 Census she was a nurse to the children of Mr Victor Drury, a boot manufacturer. Her sister Lizzy was Cook in the same household. However, soon after the Census Amy married William Henry Edwards (a Rowley boy) on 27 Jun 1901. And they married in St Johns-in-the-Vale, in Cumbria (popping up again!). This family stayed in Cumbria, however, their children Frederick and Ellen were born there and they later moved to Cockermouth where they died, William in 1940 and Amy in 1952.
Frank, (1877-1938) who had been living with his sister Alice in the 1901 Census, also stayed in Cumbria. On 8 Apr 1901 he married Annie Adelaide Hindmoor Benbow at St Johns-in-the-Vale, Cumbria and they had three sons Sydney (1903), James (1904) and John (1908) He and his family moved to the USA in 1913, probably to join Annie’s brother JamesBenbow, and Frank is still listed as a sett cutter at this time. However, Annie died in Massachusetts in 1917 and Frank returned to Cumbria with his two younger sons James (1904) and John (1908) (their eldest son Sydney (1902) staying in the USA for the remainder of his life) in 1919. They were living with his sister Amy and brother-in-law William Edwards in Threlkeld in the 1921 Census. Frank died in 1938, his death registered in the Carlisle area so it is possible that he continued to live in Threlkeld or perhaps died in the Infirmary in Carlisle which is the main hospital for the area.
Lizzie (1880-1956) or Lizzy (the spelling varies throughout her life!) also remained in Springfield, Rowley for many years, listed as late as 1940 in trade directories as a shop keeper at 7, Dudley Road, where she lived with her parents until their deaths. Whether she kept the shop open is unknown but she died at 7 Dudley Road in 1956, the last of her generation, and it appears likely that she is the Elizabeth Levett who was buried at St Giles then. She had been Lizzie all her life and her birth was registered as Lizzie but formality overtook her at the end! Records show that Probate was issued to her nephews Harry and John Levett, both butchers!
Peter (1883-1944)
Peter’s is a sad story. He was unmarried and shown as a stone quarry worker in 1911, living in Dudley Road with his parents. He served in WW1 with the Worcestershire Regiment but was discharged ‘insane’ in 1919 and in the 1921 Census was shown as a patient at Barnsley Hall Mental Hospital. He was still there in the 1939 Register, shown as an ex- soldier, which probably implies that he had been there ever since. He died at Barnsley Hall in 1944.
Ernest Levett (1877-1919)
Ernest, the youngest of the children of John and Ellen Levett, was born in 1877. In 1911 he was working as a labourer at the stone quarry. He married Beatrice Taylor at St Giles on 25 Oct 1908 and they had five daughters and one son, including twin daughters Nellie and Amy born on 28 Oct 1919. He died and was buried at St Giles on 6 Dec 1919, when they were barely a month old. No mention is made of his cause of death and he may have died of Spanish flu which killed many people then. Beatrice, at the age of only 26,was left with six children aged twelve down to a few weeks old. Ernest having returned from the war, unlike many men, this must have seemed very hard to Beatrice. In the 1921 Census, Beatrice was still at 2 Tippity Green, the address given on Ernest’s enlistment papers but by 1939 she had moved with all her children except Elsie to Queens Drive, Whiteheath. It appears that Elsie died in 1927, aged 11. The other children – Lizzie (1909), Herbert (1911), Annie (1913), Elsie (1916), Nellie and Amy (twins – 1919) mostly appear to have married fairly locally, although this is entering the period when tracking people becomes more difficult because of data protection.
Summary – the other Levett family!
This John Levett was not mentioned in any of the Levett Wills I have looked at and it is not known whether the other branch of Levetts in Rowley acknowledged them. The names John and his wife used for their children are not the same names, generally, that recur frequently in the other Levett family, although the names from the Smith family, Ellen’s family – Sydney, do recur. Like the other Levetts, however, this John Levett was a hard working man, first as a butcher and later in the quarry. He left eight children and at least twenty grandchildren. No doubt there are many more descendants in later generations. Two of his sons and one of his daughters followed him into business, running shops in Springfield and the village and later in Blackheath so perhaps he had inherited at least the Levett capacity for business.
And although the family moved around the area in later years, John and Ellen and their daughter Lizzie Levett, with their shop and home lived at 7 Dudley Road right up to Lizzie’s death in 1956.
Copyright: Mike Fenton
This photograph, courtesy of Mike Fenton, shows Dudley Road in 1969, only a few years after Lizzie died and there are two shops on the left. Comments on this picture on Facebook say that the first of these was a butcher’s shop, and the second was known as Mary’s shop. I suspect that this shop was Lizzie’s shop before Mary!
The end of this part of the story of their lives has Lizzie ending up living for decades within yards of, if not actually on the site of Brickhouse Farm where the original John Levett, very possibly her grandfather or great grandfather, had lived when he moved to Rowley one hundred and fifty years earlier.
As I have commented before in this study, Rowley family roots go deep but it seems they also go in circles!
Taverns, inns, beerhouses and pubs have been in – indeed central to – our towns and villages for many centuries. The start of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, dating from 1387, begins with the pilgrims gathered at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, prior to their setting out on their pilgrimage, and doubtless there would have been many other such houses on busy routes such as existed then.
In smaller settlements some pubs were little more than drinking clubs in an ordinary house, rather than specially built institutions. Many families brewed their own ale for home consumption and many pubs did the same. (Brewed ale was safer than water often because it had been heated in the brewing process.) These successful brewers probably expanded to supply other houses and pubs, especially if it was known as a particularly good brew, big breweries did not exist until relatively recently. Some inns will have started as lodgings for monasteries and religious houses which probably moved seamlessly to independent provision after the Dissolution of the Monasteries and many hostelries, in cities, towns and on major routes will have acted as lodging places for travellers. Others will have developed as places for workmen to get a much needed drink on their way home from dry, dusty or dirty work. The Portway Tavern certainly is on record as having fulfilled this function for the quarry workers from the nearby quarry and some of the other functions from time to time, such as being the venue for inquests.
But formal countrywide legislation to regulate the operation of such places did not reach the statute book until 1753 when the Licensing Act inaugurated the recording of full registers of victuallers, to be kept by the Clerk of the Peace at Quarter Sessions.
In 1830 a Beer Act was passed whereby, upon payment of 2 guineas to the Excise, people could sell Beer, Ale, Porter, Cider and Perry without a formal license from the Licensing Justices and many of the smaller beer houses in the Rowley area fell under this category and were not permitted to sell stronger liquors.
The Licensing Act of 1872 remains in force today and it is illegal to be drunk in charge of a horse, cow or a steam engine. Other modes of transport have been included in later legislation! The Pub History Society tells us that “Under the Act some drinkers became infamous “bona fide travellers”, who could be served outside of normal trading hours. Travelling in good faith meant that you should not be “travelling for the purpose of taking refreshment”, but you could be “one who goes into an inn for refreshment in the course of a journey, whether of business or pleasure”. While people posing as travellers were regularly charged and prosecuted, it was difficult to prosecute licensees who had a handy escape clause in the law. To find the publican guilty, the prosecution had to prove that the licensee did not “honestly believe” that his customer was a bona fide traveller when serving outside of normal opening hours.” [i]
The Portway Tavern
Copyright:Mike Fenton.
The Tavern was, I am told, situated at the foot of Turner’s Hill, facing the road that went up and over the hill and the entrance to the Hailstone Quarry. As can be seen from this photograph, the proximity to the quarrying operations continued to the end. There were several houses around and behind the Tavern, in addition to a Brewhouse and other outbuildings. Some census entries call it the Portway Inn. Some do not even record the name at all.
Copyright: Alan Godfrey Maps.
This map from 1918 shows a ‘P.H.’ at Perry’s Lake, which was obviously the Portway Tavern but I am still not quite sure which building it was in those clusters of cottages. Probably one of the two corner buildings, I suspect and I am inclined to think that it was the building to the right of the new road leading down to Portway. That has several outbuildings and access to a yard which would fit with both the description at the time of the sale and the site described in the prosecution. But someone may put me right on that. It also shows the Rowley Brewery in Tippity Green and how close they were to each other.
Hitchmough records that the Portway Tavern was licensed from some point before 1849, his first names licensee was James Adshead Levett Snr, in whose family occupation it remained until it was sold after Mrs Sarah Perry who was the daughter of James Adshead Levett Junior, gave up the licence in about 1901.
But situated as it was, directly on the route which later became the toll road from Halesowen to Dudley, it seems very likely to me that a beerhouse or hostelry which later became known as the Portway Tavern existed there in some form well before licensing came into force.
The Licensing system was operated by the local magistrates and there was a Licensing Session annually when licences were renewed or not, sometimes, if the applicant had offended against the licensing laws in the meantime in which case he might lose his licence, a serious consideration. There are numerous reports in the contemporary newspapers of these sessions and in each case any offences which had been committed by the Licencee were listed, whether for exceeding licensing hours, permitting drunkenness or gambling or other instances the police reported on. There are also reports in most years that I have seen these reports of the landlords of ‘beer houses’ wanting to upgrade their licence to a full licence so that they could sell wines and spirits in addition to beer but these seemed mostly to be refused and this was obviously carefully controlled.
The Black Country Bugle, in 2003, published an article by Peter Goddard on ‘Tippetty Green and the Tromans Family and Rowley Quarries’, saying:
“Quarrymen were hard workers and hard drinkers. The Portway Tavern was the first port of call after a long shift, due to its closer proximity to the quarries. It had a small bar with a low ceiling, and a little used, long room adjacent.”
And in my blog post entitled ‘Tales of Old Portway’ I noted an article in the Dudley Chronicle in 1926 which said that:-
“The Portway Tavern is described as “the rendezvous of generations of quarrymen”, referring to recent renovations which had done much to modernise the exterior but it was noted that “the interior is pervaded with an old-world atmosphere. On a rack in the smoke room are twenty-two churchwarden pipes, numbered and tobacco stained, the blackest belonging to the oldest and most regular attendant at the pipe club which meets in the tavern on winter evenings.”
The Levett family and the Portway Tavern
In the 1841 Census James Adshead Levett the Elder is living in Perry’s Lake and listed as a Publican, although the pub is not named as such but this was undoubtedly the Portway Tavern. He had, according to the baptismal register at the time of the baptism of his son Richard in 1836, been living at Cock Green as a farmer but by the time of the baptism of his son John in December 1840, the family was living in Perry’s Lake although he was still described as a farmer then, a not unusual case of more than one occupation. In the 1851 Census he was shown as a Colliery Clerk and it was not until the 1861 Census that the Tavern was named and his occupation was shown as a Victualler. As early as 1842, James Adshead Levett Snr was listed in the Poll Books and Electoral Register as eligible to vote because he owned or rented ‘houses at Perry Lake’, so not just one house. Unsurprisingly, in view of this, censuses often show several Levett households living at Perry’s Lake, presumably in these houses, probably around or behind the pub.
Generally when James and Mary Levett were running the Tavern it appears that they kept their house in good order and I can only find one report of an offence in the newspapers. In August 1847 James was charged with permitting gaming with dice in his alehouse. PC Janson told the court that he had found
“two dice on the table and a cup, a man shaking it, and money on the table, for which they were playing. Defendant said there had been a raffle at this house that night, and afterwards the men did play for a few pence, but without his knowledge.”
He was fined 5 shillings and costs. In those days magistrates were local and the courts sat in local towns so people would have been well known to each other. And policemen had local ‘beats’ and would have known their licensees and kept a careful eye on them.
James Levett the Elder died , according to the Probate Record, on 23 Jun 1878, aged 75. His widow Mary retired to Gadd’s Green where two of her granddaughters Ellen (18) and Harriett (9) were staying with her in the 1881 Census. In his Will James had left to his ‘dear wife’ “such part of my household furniture and effects belonging thereto as she shall select for her own use except my clock and bureau which I give and bequeath to my son James”. The remainder of his property was to be sold and the proceeds to be shared equally between his four children. Interestingly, the Will notes that the house in which he lived belonged to his wife as tenant for life. The Will notes that as James the Younger had agreed on his father’s decease “to take it from her as tenant at a rent of twenty-five pounds a year, I direct that in the conversion of my said personal estate into money, my said son James shall be at liberty within a reasonable time after my death or on the happening thereof to exercise the option hereby given to him of taking the stock-in-trade fixtures and effects used by me in my business at my decease at a valuation to be made in the ordinary way in which valuations are made of stock-in-trade fixtures and effects of the like nature.”
It appears that the licence was transferred, perhaps initially to Daisy Levett but later to his son James Adshead Levett the Younger , by then a widower, who was listed as a Licensed Victualler in the 1881 Census at 29 Perry’s Lake, living there with his son William, aged 20, a carpenter, and daughters Daisy aged 23 and listed as a grocer, Kate aged 16 and a Pupil Teacher and Nelly aged 10 and a scholar. It is perhaps not surprising that Daisy should be listed as a grocer as this had been the occupation shown for her father James Adshead Levett Jnr in Perry’s Lake in the two previous censuses, so presumably when he took over the pub, she kept the grocery business going. Looking back at the time of James’s marriage in 1857 he had given his occupation as a grocer on the Tettenhall Road in Wolverhampton and this had been the profession into which he had been apprenticed at the age of 14.
So in addition to the pub, it seems that the Levetts ran a grocer’s shop in Perry’s Lake, very possibly in the same buildings. I have most definitely gained the impression that the Levett family were very flexible about their living and trading arrangements. And it seems the Levetts made sure their children were set up in suitable professions, their son Richard who was a shoemaker (and apparently part-time brewer) also lived in Perry’s Lake, William was a carpenter.
Licencing applications
Oddly, in August 1878, there were various advertisements in the County Express, giving notice of the intention of various people to apply for excise licences to sell various alcoholic beverages in their beerhouses and shops. The advertisement put in by James Adshead Levett was for an excise licence to sell “Sweets by retail, to be drunk and consumed on and off the house and premises thereunto belonging”. This is the only such application I can see, all the others are for licences to sell beer or cider or wine, why would you need an excise licence to sell sweets? Perhaps they were making home brewed soft drinks, as well as beer in their brewery?
I can remember as a child a van that came round selling brewed lemonade, ginger beer and American ice cream soda – strawberry ice cream soda or am I dreaming that? – in large pottery flagons, that was definitely quite fizzy and must have been brewed. I think the drinks were made in Oldbury but certainly very locally. Each week you returned the empty flagons for refilling, it was a rare treat because my father was chronically ill and there wasn’t much money to spare for such luxuries but I remember how delicious they were. And even today Fentimans produce botanically brewed drinks such as lemonade and ginger beer. Or perhaps it was a Printer’s error but I would be interested to hear whether anyone has any other suggestions!
Incidentally in the advertisement Mr Levett states that the house and premises were rated for the relief of the poor and that he was the tenant, the premises being owned by Thomas Auden. So it seems that the Levetts were not the owners after all. Since John Levett had been and appeared to be still bankrupt (See my first article on the Levett family for details) it would perhaps be slightly surprising if his son had the wherewithal to purchase multiple houses at Perry’s Lake in 1841.
Also in the Reports of the County Express of 14 September 1878, there is a report that the Licensing Magistrates approved the transfer of the licence for the Portway Tavern from the executors of the late James Adshead Levett the Elder to Daisy Levett, his granddaughter. But at some point it was obviously transferred again to James Levett the Younger as in the 1881 Census James was was described as the Licensed Victualler and Daisy as a Grocer.
You might think that James would be very careful because he already had a criminal record from an incident much earlier in his life so would not have wanted to be in trouble with the magistrates who obviously ran a tight ship. But alas, James Adshead Levett Jnr found himself in trouble with the police and the licensing authority more than once over the years. In September 1882 it was reported to the Annual Licensing Meeting of the court that he had been convicted of ‘permitting drunkenness on 30th November’, presumably the previous year, when he had been fined £5 plus costs. However, it seems he did not actually lose his license although it, along with several other similarly blacklisted landlords did have the licence suspended for a period.
There were two reports in the West Bromwich Weekly News about this incident, the first on 25th November 1881.
“Thomas Summerfield, Rowley Village, was summoned for being drunk and disorderly on the licensed premises of James Levett, Portway Tavern, Perry’s Lake. Prosecutor said the defendant went to his house on Sunday night, there were about 30 or 50 persons in the house, one of the men having paid for 20 quarts of ale, the defendant left but returned and commenced a disturbance, and knocked a woman down.
Superintendant Woolaston asked for the case to be adjourned, he visited the house on Sunday night in company with Sergeant Cooper and two PCs. There were about 70 persons in the house, and the landlord never interfered. A more disgraceful scene never took place. He was of the opinion that the summons was only taken out for a sham. There would be further evidence adduced. The case was adjourned.”
In the same paper in the edition of 3rd December 1881, this report appears, when James Levett was being charged with permitting drunkenness in his house:-
“PC Birch said at seven o’clock on the night of the 20th ult. He was sent to the defendant’s house in plain clothes, and remained there until 9.30. There was a large number of men and several women in the house, some of whom were drunk. There was a great disturbance, and the language used by the waiter and company was of the most disgraceful nature. Superintendant Wollaston said on Sunday night the 20th ult., he sent the last witness into defendant’s house, he remained outside with PS Cooper and PC Styles. About 8.30 he saw several persons stagger out of the house but they re-entered it almost immediately. About nine o’clock he entered the house, the passage and tap room were completely crammed with persons. There was an old woman, quarrelling with a man called Summerfield, who knocked her down and fell on to the top of her. There was great confusion. There were several men under the influence of drink. There were about 70 people in the house, every room being crowded. A more disorderly house he never saw. He spoke to defendant about it who said he was very sorry.
Cross-examined: Defendant had not been summoned before. PC Cooper corroborated.
Mr Shakespeare said the case arose under unfortunate circumstances. Defendant was away from the house some portion of the time and left someone else in charge. A friend of the defendant’s, from Birmingham, came to the house and left 10s to pay for some beer for the men who caused the disturbance complained of.
Mr Bassano [the Presiding Magistrate] said the Bench considered it a bad case and inflicted a fine of £5 and costs, and endorsed the license. Mr Shakespeare [defending solicitor] appealed to the Bench not to endorse the licence as this was defendant’s first offence. Mr Bassano said they could not alter their decision as they considered it a very bad case.”
One can imagine that if this was a regular occurrence, this might not have gone down well with respectable church going neighbours in this very small and presumably quiet community!
On another occasion Levett was prosecuted for brewing offences, which I have already described in detail in another article.
James Adshead Levett the Youngerdied, aged 63 on 26 Aug 1895, according to the Probate Record which was granted to his daughter Sarah Perry. The cause of death shown on his Death Certificate was Pernicious Anaemia and Exhaustion. His Will allowed Sarah Perry to continue the business of inn-keeping for a period of seven years with the option for a further seven if she wished and for her to have the use of the furniture, stock etc at the pub for this purpose. In fact Sarah died almost exactly seven years later but appears to have given up the pub before then, perhaps because of her poor health and other problems.
The licence, according to Hitchmough, passed then to his son William Levett who held it until 1896, when it passed to Mrs Sarah Perry, which does not quite accord with the intentions in the Will but we do not know whether Sarah was already in poor health. William’s sister. Daisy Levett, his eldest sister, had married Abner Payne in 1885 and she also continued to live in Perry’s Lake until her death in 1902.
Sarah remained the licensee until about 1901 when Hitchmough notes that the licence passed to Thomas William Williams whose family ran the Bull’s Head and had at one time been in some rivalry with the Levett family . However, I do note that Thomas William Williams was listed by Hitchmough as the Licensee of the Bull in Tippity Green from 1892-1900 so he had not moved far. He was also the owner of the Rowley Brewery in Tippity Green so had very local licensing interests.
Sarah died in 1902, as did her sister Daisy – only a few days apart and aged only 42 and 44, followed less than two months later by Sarah’s husband George Perry. But on 20 September 1902 the Portway Tavern had been put up for auction, in accordance with the Will of James Levett the Younger who had left it for Sarah to run the pub for seven years with the possibility of a further term if she so wished. It seems likely that, by this time, she was so ill that she could not continue. The children of Sarah and George Perry were taken in by aunts, uncles and others and left Perry’s Lake.
This was the preliminary advertisemment in the advertisement in the County Advertiser and Herald on the 6th September 1902:
In the full advertisement which appeared on the 20th September 1902 for the sale of the premises this fuller description was given:
“Rowley Regis, Staffs.
Highly Important Sale of a Fully-Licensed Free Public House
Alfred Hill has been favoured with instructions from the Exors. of the late Mr. James A. Levett, to Sell by Auction, on Monday, the 29th day of September, 1902, at the House of Mr. H. B. Darby, the ROYAL OAK INN, Blackheath, at 7-30 in the Evening, sharp.
Lot 1. All that Old-Established Home-Brewing, Fully-Licensed, Freehold, Free, Public House (Corner Property), now in the occupation of Mrs. Sarah Perry, and known as the PORTWAY TAVERN, Perry’s Lake, Rowley Regis, containing Tap Room, Smoke Room, Bar, Club Room, Bedrooms, Pantry, Extensive Cellaring, Brewhouse (with Maltroom over), Stabling (Six-stall), with Loft over, Range of Piggeries, and the usual conveniences, with large Yard and Gateway Entrance, and frontage to two Roads, with Tap Water laid on, and fitted with Gas throughout.
The Auctioneer begs respectfully to call the attention of Investors to these desirable Properties. The Public House offers to Capitalists the rare opportunity of securing a Fully-licensed, entirely Free, Home-brewing House, and an unusually sound Investment”.
Did it sell? I don’t know because I note that in 1911/12 the licensee was George Ward who was the husband of Hannah Levett, the daughter of Richard Levett, the shoemaker, so it seems the Levett family retained an interest in the pub for some time even if it was under another name or perhaps he took it on from Thomas William Williams. George Ward, living at 19 Perrys Lake, had also been one of the Witnesses to James the Younger’s Will.
But altogether three generations of the Levett family had run the Portway Tavern for about seventy years.
Copyright: Eileen Bird who is descended from James AdsheadLevett, shared this family photograph of the Tavern which she says was taken in 1971. I was interested how different it looked when it was painted white.
Over the next sixty or so years, there were nineteen other licensees, according to Hitchmough, most having the pub for only a few years. Because of 100 year privacy rules, it is difficult to find out much about them as individuals, although local people will still have memories of some of the more recent ones and some may even have lived there when their father or other relatives held the licence.
Local memoriesfrom Facebook
Below are some of the memories which have been mentioned on the ‘I remember Blackheath and Rowley Regis’ Facebook page over the last few years. Please let me know if you object to your name being mentioned and I will remove your comments but these memories are part of the history of the Lost Hamlets in a way which will never appear in history books!
More people than I can list had their first pints there!
Several people commented that the Tavern was known locally as the ‘blood tub’. David Stokes thought this went back to the early days. His first memories were of living with his great grandfather in the cottages opposite the ‘Tavern’ in the early fifties. He said “What I can remember very well is ‘they’re fighting again’! Hence, ‘the blood tub’…as I understood it? Thankfully, a bygone era!”
Vicki Noott says that she was born in the Tavern in 1955, as her grandfather Albert Harris was the landlord in the 1950s and Maggie Bridgewater said that she also lived there in the 1950s when her parents were the licensees. Two very local surnames there! Peter Wroe’s parents were the landlords from about 1961-1966, he remembered it as a good old fashioned pub. His sister Caroline was also born there.
Joyce Connop remembered that she always used to look at the clock inside through the window to check the time on her way to Doulton Road School, to make sure she wasn’t late for school.
Ann Teague said that she remembered that there was a dirt road down the side of the tavern. The houses there were mostly occupied by Tarmac workers.
Brian Kirkham recalled that there was a row of houses behind the Tavern called Heaven and a bit down from that there was a blacksmiths shoeing horses.
Kenneth Greenhouse remembered all the old penny’s on the ceiling by the darts board.
Marie Devonport – “The road seen in the bottom of the picture was the start of Turners hill, right over the road from the Tarmac entrance. If I remember right my family lived just up the road by the telephone box on the corner.”
William Perry had recently read Wilson Jones’s book on Rowley – “it’s very informative. There is a photo of a manorial windmill that stood on the side of Hawes Hill, also there was a large pool with fish in it somewhere about opposite where the Portway Tavern used to be.”
And indeed Wilson Jones asserts in his book that on a Pre-Inclosure map of Rowley, the main habitations were around Rowley Church from about Rowley Hall to Mincing Lane . But the Manor was at Brickhouse Farm with the Manorial Green at Cock Green and the fishpond on the site of Perry’s Lake. So the original Perrys Lake was a manorial fishpond. He also states that two Manor Mills were also marked on this map, one on the opposite side to Hawes Hill, near Tippity Green and one at Windmill End. The book has a photograph of the Windmill at Tippity Green so it survived for a long time.
Andrew in 2017 said that he lived at the top of Throne Road with his grandparents in the 70’s, he used to be sent to the Portway Tavern with empty Corona bottles to be filled with sherry !
Ant Bromley particularly remembered the really good cider served there.
Marie Smith remembered her brother Eric Oddy having his 21st birthday party there and her mother getting tired – Marie says she was a lady and she never got drunk!
Arthur McWilliams worked in the garage in the quarry opposite the Tavern and recalls that some days they would go over for a pint at lunchtime. He says he will never know how they managed to work the rest of the day!
The end of the Portway Tavern
The Portway Tavern closed in 1984 and was demolished shortly afterwards. This photograph shows it standing in isolation after most of the houses around it had been demolished. St Giles’s Church can be seen on the hill behind it, and some of the houses in Tippity Green to the right.
Copyright: Mike Fenton
David Duckworth shared this rather sad photograph on Facebook of the Tavern prior to demolition, (copyright of this photograph unknown as it appears in several places).
Standing at the foot of Turners Hill Road, the Portway Tavern had been a central part of the community in the area of the hamlets for probably the best part of two hundred years, from the time when it stood alongside the toll road from Halesowen to Dudley and it had served home brewed ale to many generations of quarrymen working in the nearby quarries. Inquests were sometimes held there and some lively parties, too!
And as so often in these days when so many pubs are closing, something was undoubtedly lost from the heart of the community when it was demolished, and it was the same fate which came to the cottages and communities it once served.
Rudkin is not a common name in Rowley Regis and I only came across it while I was researching the Levett family. Yes, another rabbit hole for me to explore!
Harriet Levett (1872-1956) was the third of the four daughters of Richard Levett, he the second son of James Adshead Levett the Elder and brother to James Adshead Levett the Younger. Richard, born in 1836, was married to Mary Merris and they lived in Perry’s Lake, where Richard was a Boot and Shoe Maker and he also helped his brother out with brewing, as mentioned in my recent article about a court case.
Harriet’s mother died when Harriet was only six and subsequently she was staying with her grandmother Mary Levett in Gadd’s Green at the time of the 1881 Census, while her father and other sisters were living in Hawes Lane, and in 1891 she was in Perry’s Lake with her uncle James Adshead Levett and his son William, (also mentioned in the court case), although her father was by then immediately next door with his youngest daughter Mary Ann, aged 16 and a visitor Ann M Parkes, also 16, a dressmaker, so perhaps a friend of Mary Ann.
On 13 May 1894Harriet Levett married John Rudkin at Holy Trinity, Old Hill, when he was 26 and she was 22.
John Rudkin, born in 1868, was not a Rowley native, but he was living at 17 Tippity Green in 1881 and at 24 Perry’s Lake in 1891, lodging with Edward Payne, along with his brother William so he had been living very close to Harriet for most of their lives, the boy next door, as it were. I say that John was not a Rowley native but his younger brother William was, born in Rowley Regis in 1875. They were two of the sons of William Rudkin. So I looked for John in the 1871 Census and found him living with his family William and Jane Rudkin in Cainham, near Ludlow in Shropshire. Now, where have we come across Cainham before? Ah, yes, when I was looking at migration patterns among the quarry workers in an earlier article when I found that quite a few sett makers had moved from Mountsorrel in Leicestershire to Rowley Regis to work, had married in Rowley and then moved on to Cainham in Shropshire. And sure enough, when I looked at this family, the pattern fitted again.
Copyright unknown, this photograph of the Clee Hills quarries in Shropshire shows that the quarrying area is not dissimilar to Rowley but without the surrounding heavy industry!
William Rudkin the Elder, John Rudkin’s father, was born in 1835 in Groby, Leicestershire. In 1851 he was living in Mountsorrel, Leicestershire where his father (also William) was a Quarry man and William himself was a Frame Work Knitter, another repeating detail as a Leicestershire occupation.In 1861, William was in Rowley Regis. The ten years between the two censuses were eventful for the Rudkin family.
The 1871 Census shows John Rudkin, with his father William, a Stone Cutter, who was living in Cainham with his wife Mary Jane (nee Parkes, I would later find). Jane, aged 25, had been born in Rowley Regis and their oldest child Sarah J, aged 14 was also born in Rowley Regis , while son Thomas aged 5 was born in Cainham, John aged 3 apparently born in Ludlow, and Elizabeth A, aged 1 also born in Cainham. And living with them were Thomas Parkes, his brother-in-law, aged 15, a labourer and his widowed mother-in-law Mary Parkes, both of them born in Rowley Regis. A classic Mountsorrel/Rowley/Cainham pattern!
And because I always try to find the birth registration in the GRO registers for my records, I was able to confirm that the mother’s maiden name of all the younger children was indeed Parkes. So that all tied together nicely. Except…
Looking at the family in 1871, I noticed that the oldest child Sarah J was 14, born in 1857, but Jane Rudkinwas only 25. It seemed very unlikely that she had had a baby at 11. Technically possible perhaps but unlikely. Sarah J must have been born to someone else. So I looked for Sarah’s birth registration – and there was no birth registration for a Sarah Jane Rudkin in the right period. There was, however, a registration of a Sarah Jane Parkes in the first quarter of 1856, with no Mother’s Maiden Name recorded which is usually an indication of illegitimacy. And then I found a baptism on 27 July 1856 at St Giles, Rowley Regis for Sarah Jane Parkes, the illegitimate daughter of Ann Parkes. Not Mary Jane, who was only eleven at this time. So, another puzzle – who was Ann Parkes?
Some more digging around showed that Ann Parkes was born in 1833 in Rowley Regis, the daughter of Joseph Parkes of Tippity Green. Ann Parkes and William Rudkin had been married on 26 Oct 1857 at Dudley St. Thomas, and their son Charles (1858-1861) was born in the last quarter of 1858, followed by Mary (1861-1862) and twins Ann and Maria in 1863, all in Rowley Regis. Now I was able to find William, Ann and Charles in Tippity Green in the 1861 Census. It appears that William accepted Sarah Jane into his household as she was shown as Rudkin in all subsequent censuses. Alas, Ann died, in childbirth or soon after the twins were born, as she was buried on 21 Jul 1863 at St Giles, Rowley Regis, aged 28 and of Perry’s Lake, shortly after the birth of the twins. Baby Ann died in October and was buried on 25 Oct 1863, followed a few months later by her twin Maria who was buried on 20 Jan 1864.
So poor William Rudkin had lost his wife and all four of his children in the space of six years. It is possible that Sarah Jane was also his child but equally possible that she was not as William and Ann did not marry until Sarah Jane was at least fifteen months old.
William, a working quarryman, must have had a lot of help for those new-born twins to survive even a few months. He was living close to his in-laws and no doubt they and other neighbours would have helped to look after the children. So perhaps it is not surprising that on 19 Oct 1863, (just three month’s after Ann’s death) William Rudkin married again, at Dudley Saint Thomas, this time to Mary Jane, usually known as Jane, Parkes. Who appears to have been Ann’s sister!
Perhaps William felt Rowley was not a good place for him or perhaps better money was on offer as they must have moved to Shropshire soon afterwards. William and Jane went on to have four children in Cainham – Edward Thomas (1866-1923), John (1868-1949) who married Harriet Levett and Edith Ann, (1870-1942). As the dates show, these three children all survived into adulthood unlike most of their earlier half siblings. Another son George Henry was baptised on 13 Oct 1872 at Knowbury. But by the time of the 1881 census, everything had changed again.
By 1881, Mary Parkes, now 68, was back in Tippity Green, living with her daughter Elizabeth Parkes, aged 28, the three Rudkin grandchildren, a granddaughter AnnieParkes, aged 6 and another Rudkin grandson named William who was aged 5 and born in Rowley. (Also a lodger William Foley, a miner aged 43). When you think how small the cottages in that area were, it must have been quite crowded.
Where were William Rudkin and Jane? William had died in Shropshire in 1872, just a couple of months after the baptism of their new son George Henry and William was buried on 10 Dec 1872 at St Paul’s church, Knowbury. I do not know what he died of and can find no other records about him but he was only 37 so possibly an industrial accident or perhaps a disease. And Jane? She had obviously moved back to Rowley with her mother and the children by 1874 because George Henry died and was buried at St Giles on 15 Feb 1874, aged 1. And she had had another child William in Rowley Regis in 1875. There is no way of knowing who was little William’s father but it could not have been William Rudkin, her late husband since he had died in 1872.
Jane herself was not in that 1881 Census entry because she, too, had died and had been buried at St Giles on 21 Apr 1878, aged 31.
So poor Mary Parkes, herself elderly, was now responsible for her four Rudkin grandchildren, although by 1881 both Thomas and John were working at the quarry.
What became of the Rudkin children?
I have not been able to trace Sarah Jane Parkes or Rudkin after the 1871 census, there are no definite sightings of her under the name Rudkin and there are so many Sarah Parkes that it is not possible to be sure which if any of them is her. She could have married, gone into service, died under either name – it remains a mystery.
Edward Thomas Rudkin joined the army at some point shortly after this, and when he married Kate Cook in Buriton, Southampton in 1887 he was a Corporal. Presumably travelling with the army, they had two daughters in India, one of whom died there. When they returned to England, they lived in Army Cottages in Kempsey, Worcestershire, presumably based at the Barracks there and later moved to Saltley in Birmingham where Edward was working as a Commissionaire at the Motor Works in 1911. By 1923, they had returned to the Portsmouth area where Edward died in 1923 and Kate in 1936. Their surviving daughter Edith married George Henry Day in Portsmouth in 1915 and she was still living there until she died on 27 May 1941, listed among civilian war deaths there so possibly killed in bombing raids on Portsmouth. She and George Day appear to have had three sons, the first born in Leicester. I wonder whether she had gone back to her Rudkin family there? Pure speculation, of course!
Edith Ann Rudkin went into service and in 1891 she was living at 6 Siviters Lane, Rowley as a domestic servant to Dr Beasley. In 1901 she was still described as a domestic servant but was visiting a friend in Dudley. In 1908 she married a widower Charles Upton in Aston, Birmingham and in the 1911 Census they were living in Hednesford, Cannock with his two daughters from a previous marriage and Edith May, their own daughter born in 1910. Sadly little Edith May died in 1915. Edith Ann was a widow according to the 1921 Census and she died in Cannock in 1942, aged 72.
John Rudkin, my starting point for this family mini-study, had married Harriett Levett in 1894 at Holy Trinity, Old Hill and they had four children. In 1901 they were still living in Perry’s Lake with their son Lawrence (1895-1951) who was six. John was working as a hewer in a coal mine.
By 1911, they had left Rowley and were living in Rugeley Road, Hednesford, Cannock – yes, the same place as John’s sister Edith, nineteen miles from Rowley, according to Google maps. Whether Edith moved to be near John or vice versa, I don’t know but they were living less than a mile apart. By this time John and Harriett also had Edith (1904-1979), Mary(1907-1927) and WilliamThomas (1909 – ?). John was still working as a miner or Stallman at the pit face and now his son Lawrence, aged 16, was also working in the pit as a driver (underground).
In 1921, John and Harriett had moved again and were living in Kingsbury, near Meriden, the other side of Birmingham. All their children were still at home and again both John and Lawrence were working as miners at the Kingsbury Colliery.
Most of the children stayed in the Meriden area from then on, although it is possible that the youngest William Thomas settled elsewhere as he joined the Navy in 1927 and his service details note him as having been traced for his pension in 1949, though I cannot find any other definite information for him.
John and Harriet appear only to have had two grandchildren, one of them Betty, (the illegitimate daughter of Lawrence) who was born in Tamworth in 1926 and emigrated to the USA with her American husband in 1947, perhaps a War Bride. The only photograph I have been able to find of the Rudkin family in this country is of a young Lawrence in what looks like WWI army uniform, which was uploaded to Ancestry and was marked on the back as ‘Betty’s father’. Her application for naturalisation in the USA gives Rudkin as another name so it appears that this was an acknowledged connection. So the Rudkin genes stretch over the Atlantic, it seems.
Lawrence Rudkin as a young soldier, possibly in WW1. Copyright unknown.
John’s daughter – another Edith – had married William C Monk in Sutton Coldfield in 1941 and had one son Peter in 1942 so he was their only grandson.
The Rudkins in Rowley
So none of the Rudkin family stayed in Rowley Regis, mostly they and their descendants ended up in Warwickshire or further afield and the name will be unknown to most Rowley folk.
So why have I written in such detail about a family who had such a brief encounter with the village?
I have recently been reading some books by Gillian Tindall who is known, according to reviews, as a superb ‘micro-historian’. She is someone who writes about small communities, individual people, a village, a single house – in great detail. Her writing is fascinating and I learn from her writing constantly. The first book of hers which I read was ‘The house by the Thames’ and it is all about a single very old house which survives even now, between the Globe theatre and the Tate Modern on the Embankment in London. It is most interesting and I have learned much about the history of the area and the people who lived there. (I now have three other books by Gillian Tindall waiting to be read!) But it was in the first pages of this book that I read about the philosophy which drives her research and this sang to my heart. She wrote in the first chapter:
“the vast majority of men and women in every time do not leave behind them either renown or testimony. These people walked our streets, prayed in our churches, drank in our inns or in those that bear the same names, built and lived in the houses where we have our being today, opened our front doors, looked out of our windows, called to each other down our staircases. They were moved by essentially the same passions and griefs that we are, the same bedrock hopes and fears, they saw the sun set over Westminster as we do. Yet almost all of them have passed away from human memory and are still passing away, generation after generation –.”
“Witness to the living, busy complex beings that many of these vanished ones were tends to be limited to fleeting references on pages of reference books that are seldom opened. At the most, there may be a handwritten note or a bill, perhaps a Will, a decorative trade-card, a few lines in a local newspaper or a report from a long obsolete committee, possibly an inscription on a tomb. There may perhaps be a relevant page or two in an account of something quite other, or a general social description which seems to fit the specific case.
Scant evidence, you may say, of lives as vivid and as important to the bearers as our own are to us today. But by putting these scraps together, sometimes, with luck, something more coherent is achieved. Pieces of lost lives are genuinely recovered. Extinct causes clamour for attention. Forgotten social groups coalesce again. Here and there a few individual figures detach themselves from the dark and silence to which time has consigned them. They walk slowly towards us. Eventually we may even see their faces.”[i]
‘Neither renown nor testimony’
In Rowley Regis today, of course, there are very few old buildings and our ancestors did not live in our particular houses, look out of our windows or call down our stairs. But the landscape they gazed on has not changed so much and indeed with much of the polluting heavy industry gone or cleaned up, the local scene is perhaps now closer in appearance to the pre-industrial landscape our earlier ancestors would have known. They, too would have gazed across the valley to the Clent hills and been able to spot distant church steeples and the ruins of Dudley Castle, still visible today.
While I was researching Harriet Levett and her marriage to John Rudkin, I had realised that John had grown up in Tippity Green and Perry’s Lake, in the heart of the Lost Hamlets, and that his father had been married to not one but two Rowley girls, the older of whom had borne him four children in Rowley. The children had all died as infants, buried, like Ann herself, in Rowley Regis at St Giles and only one of her children Sarah J had grown to adulthood. Sadly this would not have been an unusual situation with babies in those days. Then I realised that, looking at other Rudkin family trees on Ancestry, that they only listed William Rudkin’s marriage to the second Parkes daughter Mary Jane. Poor Ann Parkes and her infant children had been lost in the mists of time.
I hope that my One Place Study is helping to make the history of the lost hamlets, with the complex web I keep finding of family relationships and intermarriages, more coherent , as Gillian Tindall suggests is possible. And I hope, in particular, that this piece has helped to preserve the memory of this family, and especially of Ann Parkes, (1835-1863), daughter of Joseph and Mary Parkes of Tippity Green. This ordinary and short-lived Rowley girl, has previously been lost in that ‘dark and silence’ to which Gillian Tindall refers, and, although we may not see Ann’s face, I hope that she has at least ‘walked slowly a little way towards us’.
[i] Copyright Gillian Tindall – The House on the Thames, published by Pimlico 2007. ISBN: 9781844130948
The Portway Tavern 1889 -– Concealment of Wort – a Midnight Brew – Heavy Penalty
I came across this story while I was researching material on the Portway Tavern but am posting it separately as it is fairly detailed and lengthy. There will be a more general post on the Portway Tavern soon.
In 1889, James Adshead Levett Jnr and another man Joseph Pensotti of Cross Guns Street, Kate’s Hill faced a more serious charge of concealment of Wort.
A quick diversion – An Italian in Dudley?
The name Pensotti sent me off down a rabbit hole because I wondered how he came to be charged with this offence and whether he was Italian. Mr Pensotti was not a Rowley man, in the 1891 Census he was listed at the Cross Guns Street address in Kates Hill but listed as a Post messenger. That was his occupation in a couple of earlier censuses too which showed that he had been born in Dudley but in 1851 he was a publican in Dudley and prior to that I found an entry for him in a trade directory when he was listed in Dudley as a “Barometer, Thermometer etc Manufacturer”, along with three other men, all of whom had Italian names – Charles Cassera, Carlo Cetti, Andrew Comoli and Joseph Pensotti!
Intriguing. I wondered whether the ‘etc ‘ they were making included hydrometers which are using for checking the alcohol content of liquids? (almost certainly yes, is the answer!) Every brewery would be required to have these, I would have thought, as part of their tools of the trade. Perhaps his specialist knowledge led to him being involved in the brewing trade with James Levett.
A little more research informed me that many makers of barometers in this period had originated in Italy and moved to London initially and gradually spread around the country, and it seems likely that these men were all of Italian descent although they may well have been born here. Another little glimpse of unexpected things in the Black Country! There is a most interesting website about Italian makers of fine instruments, many from the Como area of Italy[i]. Since the decorative cases for the barometers would have been made of wood, it is interesting to reflect that the fine woodworking skills required for this would not have been so very different from those famous Italian makers of violins, Stradivarius, Guarneri and Amato who were also from Northern Italy within a few miles of Milan. The barometer pictured here was not made locally and is a Torricelli barometer from the mid-1800s but illustrative of the sorts of instruments made by Italian craftsmen.
Torricelli barometer, copyright unknown but will be acknowledged on further information being provided.
It turned out from evidence given at the trial that Mr Pensotti took no active part in the business and both men were executors of the late James Adshead Levett. Who had died in 1878, more than ten years earlier! Evidence was given that the entry in the book was made jointly which was why they were both prosecuted. Quite why this was still happening so long after James’s death is another mystery but I will investigate further.
Back to the Wort
What is Wort, I hear you ask? Well, I had to look it up too. Wort is basically a liquid made from grain intended to be turned into beer by yeast. Mostly water—about 80% to 90% for most types of beer—wort is mixed with extracts from the grain. This is what goes into the brewer’s mash tun, which is a large vessel where the brewer combines barley or other grains with hot water, initiating the process called mashing. Mashing is like a hot bath for crushed malted grains (usually barley). Immersing the barley in hot water releases enzymes that break apart the barley’s starches into simple sugars. This sugary substance is the unfermented wort.
The charge against Levett and Pensotti was that “they, being brewers, did, on the 31st March, use certain malt, to wit, 8 bushels, the brewing of beer, without making or having made an entry in the book duly delivered to and kept by them, as such brewers for such purpose, as by the statute in that case made and provided, as was required to be made. “ They were also charged with concealing six gallons of wort, on the 1st May, so as to prevent certain officers of the Inland Revenue from taking an account of the said worts.
Tax evasion is nothing new, it appears. But I had not previously realised how strictly the brewing business was regulated by the authorities. But it appears that every single brewing had to be accounted for and recorded in this book.
The defendants pleaded guilty to the second charge which was therefore not gone into entirely, the reporter notes, although there was the information given below.
The entry for the two men in what was presumably the start of the brewing book, the court was told, stated that they intended to carry on the business of brewers for sale and which rooms within the premises were marked on a plan as those in which the brewing would be carried on. Other parts of the premises were not so marked but when an Officer (it is not clear whether this was a police officer or an excise officer) visited the premises on 1st May he found ‘practically six gallons of wort’ in the fowl house, which was not part of the approved area. Two brewings had apparently taken place during that day, one in the morning and one was in the course of being collected. These worts ‘for no apparent reason’ were in the fowl house and was not brought to charge with the other wort. When spoken to about it, Levett had said that the wort was part of the first wort and had been put there to cool. The officers thought this was a very funny place to put it! The officers alleged that while they were making their survey, a son of Levett’s was heard to remark “they had got it now”, though they did not at the time understand what this referred to.
As for the other charge relating to malt concealment, it seems that brewers should make an entry in the brewing book twenty four hours before it was to be used. There was such an entry on the 29th March, which made the officer think that there would be two brewings on the first April.
The Witnesses for the Prosecution
The Policeman’s Story
Police Constable Himan gave evidence that he knew both of the defendants, as James Levett ‘carried on the business of the public’ which was part of his division. He remembered something in connection with the 30th March. He went to the defendant’s house that night from something he had heard about 12.15. He waited a few minutes outside the doors and at length saw them open. There were lights and lots of steam especially from the direction of the Brewhouse. Noticing the lights, he thought there was a police offence being committed. He therefore kept quiet and watched, and ultimately saw the defendant Levett come to the doors and look down the road, and afterwards heard him remark “It’s all right, Will,now.” Then his son William came and shut the doors. After that they appeared to be busy in the Brewhouse.
There being a space between the gates when shut the officer inserted a stick and lifted the bar which was placed across inside, and went into the Yard. He there saw the defendant Levett, standing by the door of the Brewhouse. He commented to Levett that he seemed busy and Levett responded that “We’re only brewing”. The Brewhouse door was open and he could see inside. He saw the son William and Levett’s brother Richard standing by the mash tub. One was emptying malt into it and he believed Richard was pouring in the malt while William was stirring it. He could see the steam rising from the tub. He told the court there was no doubt in his mind as to what they were doing, they were mashing malt up, he felt confident.
He noted that there were two females in the house at the time. He had first observed the brewing at about a quarter past twelve and from the time he first observed it to the time he went into the Brewhouse would be about twenty-five minutes. He was on the premises about twenty minutes to one. He saw Mr Levett, his son and his brother but did not see Mr Pensotti there and had never seen him in the house. He also noted that he had frequently seen lights and signs of persons being busy on Saturday nights but since this night he had not.
The Excise Man
The Excise Officer was John Stanislaus O’Dea, a good Black Country name if ever there was one! In fact I understand that it was common practice in those times for Excise Men to be drawn from outside the area so that they had no personal loyalties to distract them from their duties.
Mr O’Dea told the court that the defendant’s house was in his division. He delivered the Brewing Book and had surveyed the premises and made entries in the book. There was an entry in the book on the 30th March to brew on the 1st April. He visited the premises on the Monday and took the produce of the morning’s brewing. His survey book showed the temperature as regular. He was on the premises at nine o’clock in the evening and the brewing was then in operation and the produce of that brewing was collected next morning.
On being cross-examined, he had said that he personally knew nothing about the alleged brewing on the Saturday night or Sunday morning. The first intimation he had from the policeman was on about the 15th April. He was asked whether he had sought out the policeman or whether the policeman had sought him out, to which he replied that he had met the policeman on the road and he had mentioned it to him. When he had gone to the premises, on the Monday evening, he found the produce was all regular and also the brewing which had taken place in the morning.
He had had considerable experience as an officer, and it would all depend on the circumstances as to the time it would take to remove the traces of brewing. They brewed nine bushels of malt which should produce 162 gallons of beer. There were worts in the vessels, the results of the brew, at one o’clock. The defendants had about eight barrels but he could not tell how many barrels were used for ale. Wort could be fermented at the temperature of the atmosphere. The fowl house was about 9ft by 6ft. On the Monday he went into the cellar; no barrels were gone. There were plenty of barrels in the yard of the defendants had chosen to use them.
The prosecution then asked further questions and he said that the brewing premises were close to the house and that Levett’s brother and mother lived near.
The evidence for the defence
The Levetts had a solicitor to defend them, a wise decision, I think. As lawyers in our courts do now, his first argument was that his clients had voluntarily pleaded guilty to the first charge of concealing the worts although he suggested that technically the question would have been raised as to whether it was or was not a concealment which had taken place, but over and above what the vessels would contain were these six gallons of worts which were put into the casks. Seeing the officer come onto the premises, the brewer, instead of letting them remain, foolishly, and, so far as the prosecution held, criminally, took the vessels into the fowl house. That was more a technical offence than a wilful intention to defraud the authorities of their proper due. No one could see why they wanted to conceal the worts as the duty on them only amounted to something like 1 shilling and 3 pence, knowing they were liable to such a heavy penalty.
The real point at issue with the other charge, however, was that it was alleged that on Saturday night or Sunday morning his clients used eight bushels of malt wort without entering it in the book. It was established beyond doubt that it was entered in the book that a brewing was to take place and that fact was in favour of the defendant. What became, he asked, of the 160 gallons which the prosecution alleged the defendants had brewed?
It would have been better if there had been any evidence to corroborate the police officer, because the witnesses for the defence would swear that the officer was never on the premises; his client was entitled to the benefit of any doubt about this. His client had pleaded guilty to one charge and could have pleaded guilty to the second charge but disputed this.
As regarded Mr Pensotti, he had nothing whatsoever to do with the business and was not liable for the first offence even if the prosecution held he was liable in the second. The prosecuting lawyer did not agree and said that Mr Pensotti had become liable by signing the entry.
The Witnesses for the Defence:
Richard Levett, the first witness, said that he was brewer for his brother. (Richard Levett was recorded in all other records I have seen as a Boot and Shoe maker, living in Perry’s Lake but this is another instance of people having more than one job and it may well have been that his brother did not pay him for this or perhaps in kind or he did this as a family habit or in lieu of rent.) He stated that he remembered the 30th March, the Sunday and the following Monday. He brewed on the Monday at one o’clock. He was on his brother’s premises on Saturday but went home about seven, and returned again at seven on Sunday morning. He did not see Police Constable Himan. He had brewed for his brother for twelve months and had never brewed for his brother on a Saturday night. He usually brewed on a Monday morning and it took him seventeen hours to get through the brewing. He lived next door to the public house and his mother lived next door but one. The prosecuting counsel commented that they were all relatives in that little corner with which he agreed.
He then referred to a date in May when the supervisor was about when he had begun to brew about one o’clock. They bought their malt ground. It took him six or seven hours sometimes to get up steam. He did not remember anything about putting wort down the pigstye(sic). His brother usually carried the malt down. It was then shot into the mash tub and was stirred up with the mash rule. The police had never come into the Brewhouse and spoken to him when he was brewing.
He could remember that he had never brewed upon a Saturday night or early on a Sunday morning, he had never seen a policeman at the Brewhouse door on a Saturday, Sunday or Monday night.
The magistrates wanted to know more about how the wort had got into the fowlhouse, the subject of the first charge. He put the wort into the fowl house. He told Mr Davies (the supervisor) that he put it there. He put it into cans. He could work well up to the standard, that was to say he could get more out of the malt than was generally supposed to be by the law. He was told by his brother to put the cans in the fowl house to cool. (This evidence does appear to be somewhat less than consistent!)
William Levett, the next witness, was the son of the defendant and he also denied that brewing was carried on on the 30th March on his father’s premises. They brewed the following Monday and he helped. He said that Constable Himan did not come into the Brewhouse and see them brewing, as they never brewed late on Saturday night or early on Sunday morning. On being cross-examined he stated that Himan had never been on the premises when they were brewing. His father had never said anything to him about the policeman being there. He did not know the cans were in the fowl house. He had no reason to say, when the officers were inspecting the premises that “It’s only the fowl house.” He did not exclaim “By —, he’s seen it now!”
Eve Taylor, charwoman, said she was cleaning the defendant’s house on Saturday night, the 30th March and was there till two o’clock. She had never seen any brewing there on Saturday night or Sunday morning. Cross-examined, she said that she was no relation to the Levett family. She had hot water to clean with and the small boiler was used to heat the water. She remembered the night because Mrs. Perry’s child had a fit. Mr Levett, his son and daughter were all the persons on the premises at twelve o’clock. She did not see Richard Levett there after she went at ten.
Sarah Perry, daughter of defendant Levett, said that she was at her father’s house till eleven, and there were no preparations for brewing. She did not see her uncle Richard there after seven.
Nellie Levett, another daughter, said Constable Himan did not come to the house at all on the 30th March.
The Verdict
The Magistrates then retired briefly to consider their decision. After only a few minutes they returned and Mr Bassano said that they had decided to fine Mr Levett on the first charge of brewing £40 and costs; in the second case of concealing wort he would be fined £5 and costs.
As to Mr Pensotti, they felt that they ought to make him feel he had some responsibility and fined him £5 and costs in respect of the charge of concealing wort.
The total amount of fines and costs was £56 1s 6d.
What a long and convoluted tale!
The Levetts obviously closed ranks in their evidence but it does seem odd to me to have a charwoman cleaning at two o’clock in the morning! A tidy up and clean around would surely not take several hours, especially when it was dark and lighting was probably quite poor.
I do not doubt that it would have been possible for some barrels of beer to have been spirited away to other houses before the Monday if an illicit brewing had taken place. I wasn’t at all clear either whether these offences all happened on the same night or whether there was one policeman or more. Why was the policeman on patrol at that time of night in this sleepy hamlet (unless it was to look for after hours drinking in the pubs and beerhouses, which may well have happened on a fairly regular basis!)? With dark streets and cold nights, it’s hard to imagine that there would have been much else happening in Perry’s Lake on a cold March night to require a regular police presence and I would have thought that he would have been quite conspicuous in his uniform, loitering in Perry’s Lake late at night. One can’t help feeling that Mr Levett and his establishment , for whatever reason, were being kept an eye on by the authorities!
A typical policeman’s uniform in about 1880 – copyright unknown.
There was also no reference in the evidence described to any smell of brewing – and yet the smell is quite distinctive – I can remember when I worked in Smethwick for a couple of years and travelled there past the brewery in Cape Hill, the smell when they were brewing was very strong, it must have been apparent to anyone nearby that brewing was taking place, late at night on a Saturday – perhaps local people knew and just kept their mouths shut! Or perhaps there was no brewing, as the Levetts claimed. I am surprised that the police constable did not mention this smell when he was saying that he was sure they were brewing.
Who do you believe? What would your verdict have been? I would be interested to hear your views!
The Levett Family – with side Orders of Gaunts, Nocks and Fletchers!
Among what I think of as the ‘core families’ in the Lost Hamlets, ie the families who appear in every census so far transcribed, are the Levetts.
I am ancient enough to remember a Levett’s butchers in Blackheath, just opposite my grandfather’s home in Birmingham Road. It was on the same side of the road as the Shoulder of Mutton public house and there is a story which tells that a Levett, who was a Butcher in Birmingham Road sold the land on which the pub was built and which had previously been used as his abattoir or shambles, and that he had specified that it should be called “The Shoulder of Mutton” as a nod to his trade. The Levetts Butcher, if my memory serves me correctly, was run by Fred Levett who was a very traditional butcher and still had sawdust on the shop floor in the 1950s. As the daughter of a carpenter, I remember the small of sawdust with nostalgia! My research so far has not yet established a link to these Levetts but may yet do so.
My starting point when looking at the Levett family was that there were Levetts in Perry’s Lake in the 1841 Census. James Adshead Levett, aged about 35, was a Publican, running what became known as the Portway Tavern with his wife Mary, 25 and his children Richard, aged 5 and John aged 8 months, plus a servant girl Eliza Cooper who was 12. James Adshead Levett (1805-1878) was the first Levett baptism to appear in the Parish Registers and he was baptised on the 6 Jul 1805 at St Giles, the son of John Levett and his wife Elizabeth. Adshead was Elizabeth’s maiden name. But I will start with:
Earlier Levetts – John Levett (1777-1861) of Brickhouse
James’s father John Levett farmed for many years at Brickhouse Farm which was then adjacent to Cock Green which was between Tippity Green and Springfield. John had married Elizabeth Adshead (1873-1822) at Wolverhampton St Peter on 22 December 1803. They had two children in Rowley, James Adshead Levett (1805) and also Katherine Elizabeth Levett (c.1813) who was baptised, for some reason, at Halesowen rather than Rowley on 30 Jul 1813 although it was noted in the register that her parents were ‘of Rowley’.
I have subsequently realised that there were extensive repairs to the roof and walls of the church in that period so the church may simply not have been in use.
John and Elizabeth Levett
If there were any other children born to the couple in that long period I have not yet found them although, as I found later, the Levetts moved around a lot more than I had expected and appear to have been nail merchants, so it is possible that there were children born to them and baptised elsewhere that I have not found yet. Elizabeth Levett, of Brickhouse, died in 1822 and was buried at St Giles on 5 Jun 1822, aged 39.
Elizabeth Adshead was the daughter of James Adshead of Wolverhampton and his wife Sarah Nock, born in 1783. James and Sarah had been married at St Giles, Rowley Regis by Licence on 16 Nov 1779, the marriage witnessed by her father Tobias Nock. In addition to Elizabeth, James and Sarah Adshead also had a daughter Harriet who was born in 1784. Sarah Adshead died in 1786 in Wolverhampton.
Please see my post on this blog about the Nock family for more details about them.
Where was John Levett born?
I have not been able to find John Levett in the 1851 census although he was at Brickhouse in 1841 when it shows that he was not born in the County. (The 1841 Census says whether someone was born in the County they were now living in but it is a simple Yes or No, there are no clues as to where if the answer is No.) In 1851 there is an entry at Brickhouse Farm that he was a farmer of 66 acres of land, employing men and the head of the household but that he was away from home on the night of the Census and was enumerated at Birmingham. If so, I cannot find him in Birmingham or indeed anywhere else – perhaps whoever he was staying with in Birmingham thought he was being enumerated in Rowley! In the 1861 Census John, aged 84 and a retired farmer, described as a ‘gentleman’ born in London was living in Queen Street, Smethwick apparently with a Partridge family.
The London Levetts
It appears, however, that John Levett, the father of James Adshead Levett, was born in Stepney, London and was baptised on the 18th Apr 1779 at St Dunstan and All Saints, Stepney, Tower Hamlets, Middlesex. In the baptismal registers John’s father John is recorded as being a Victualler or a publican in Ratcliff which is in the parish of Stepney.
But that does not mean that the family had no previous link with Rowley Regis. John Levett’s father was also a John Levett and his mother was Deborah Nock. They had married at St Giles, Rowley Regis on 13 May 1776 when John Levett Snr was a widower of St Dunstans, Stepney, London. This marriage was the first time that the Levett name appears in the St Giles Registers and the marriage was witnessed by her father Tobias Nock, just as he would witness his daughter Sarah’s marriage to James Adshead three years later. Perhaps Deborah and John Levett Senior had met while she was visiting her brother Tobias in Shadwell.
So John Levett, the son of John Levett and Deborah Nock and his wife Elizabeth Adshead, daughter of James Adshead and Sarah Nock were first cousins by their mothers. Definitely Rowley roots!
The Great Fire
In 1794, many houses in Ratcliffe and Shadwell were destroyed by a fire which “consumed more houses than any one conflagration has done since the Great Fire of London”, and also destroyed many boats, including one laden with around £40,000 of sugar[i]. In fact only one house in Ratcliff survived, so John Levett’s pub must have gone, too. Deborah Levett nee Nock had died in 1794 so I thought for a moment that she might have died in the fire but she had been buried on 15 May 1794 and the fire was on 23rd July. So in less than 2 months, John Levett Snr had lost his wife, leaving him with at least five children to care for and then his pub. John Levett Jnr was 17 and the youngest Elizabeth only five. More details on the fire in the piece already posted to this blog on the Nock family.
John’s uncle Tobias Nock the Younger, newly married to his second wife Mary Kitson, and his businesses would presumably also have been affected by the fire.
One has to wonder whether John Levett decided to send one or more of his children back to their maternal Nock family in Rowley Regis, while he rebuilt his business in Stepney. Many residents there were apparently accommodated in tents in the churchyard and it would inevitably take time to sort out insurance claims and rebuild properties. Perhaps this was how John Levett Jnr came to be in Rowley and an established part of the community there.
Eileen Bird, who is descended from James Adshead Levett, tells me that she thinks John was the only child to return to Rowley. Certainly the other Levett children appear in Stepney in many later records, though I have not looked into these in any detail.
John’s maternal grandfather Tobias Nock the Elder had died in 1791 and his grandmother Nock in Jan 1794 so perhaps he came back to Rowley to assist other members of the family. He is not mentioned by name in Tobias Nock’s Will, nor are any grandchildren, but his mother and aunts and uncles are all named and are beneficiaries.
Some background – The Economic Situation
In 1815 the Battle of Waterloo had taken place and, as the war with France ended, demobilisation of the Army led to mass unemployment as tens of thousands of men returned to their homes. In the same year the first of the Corn Laws was passed, which were tariffs and other trade restrictions on imported food and corn, including all cereal grains including wheat, oats and barley. These restrictions were designed to keep corn prices artificially high to favour domestic farmers but had a disastrous impact on the poor. Not only bread would have been affected, barley was used for making ale or beer so that trade would have been affected, too. In 1816 harvests were dire due to poor weather, causing widespread hunger and large scale emigration to North America, particularly from Ireland. 1816 became known as ‘the year without a summer’ due partly to a volcanic eruption the previous year in what is now Indonesia which disrupted weather patterns and caused famines across the world. Riots broke out in England against the Corn Laws which were seen as benefitting the landowners and farmers but keeping prices high for everyone else. Many in the working classes also saw their wages cut, compounding the problems. Armed guards had to defend MPs as ordinary people saw the laws as showing little thought for them. The Corn Laws, by the way, stayed in place until 1846.
Rowley Regis was clearly also affected by this. A report in Aris’s Birmingham Gazette on 2 September 1816 says “The subscription for the relief of the poor is now about £37,000. – The Committee have already extended relief to the poor of Spitalfields, Hinckley, Bilston, Bolton-le-Moors, Stockton, Dudley, Rowley Regis, Kingswinford, Sudbury, Bridport and Stockport; and also voted considerable sums for the relief of distressed parts in Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire.” I was surprised to see that the distress in Rowley Regis and other Black Country towns was such that they were listed alongside other much bigger areas.
In the same paper on the 11th November that year a notice appeared signed by George Barrs which is shown here, which acknowledged a donation of £250 from the Right Honourable Viscount Dudley and Ward ‘for the relief of the almost unexampled Distresses of the Poor Manufacturers in this Parish”. Just above it is a notice from the Birmingham Workhouse about the claims being made on it, and to the right there may be seen a reference to a Committee for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor in Staffordshire, which had already raised more than £6000 for this purpose.
The problems were widespread in the area. It is possible that the individual nature of nail making in small workshops and without an overall employer contributed to these problems in the Black Country as nailers were reliant on what they could sell their nails for, there was no overarching employer to assist them.
John Levett in 1818
John seems to have been in Rowley for some years by 1818, (by then aged about 40) because he had married locally in 1803 and had been a Church Warden and the Overseer of the Poor for some time, which were roles generally only assumed by known and respectable members of the community. This must have been a considerable responsibility in this period of poverty and distress. Although it appears that relations between the Curate George Barrs and his church officers in this period left much to be desired.
The year 1818 seems to have been a busy one for John Levett.
On 25 May 1818, in Ariss’s Birmingham Gazette, the following advertisement appeared:
“To Iron and Coal-Masters
To be disposed of by Tender, the Mines of Coal and Ironstone in an Estate at Rowley Regis, called the Brickhouse Farm, in the holding of Mr John Levett.
Proposals addressed to Mr John Lowe, of the Ravenhurst in Bordesley, near Birmingham (Postage paid) will be duly attended to. “
The Brickhouse Farm estate, according to J Wilson Jone’s book[ii], had been given on 21 August 1677 by Humfrey Lowe, the descendant of the Stewards of the Manors and Sheriffs of Stafford, as an endowment for the maintenance and repair of St John’s Chapel, Deritend, an old Roman Catholic church. It would have been let by the trustees to John Levett (and many others before him) but the chapel presumably retained the mineral rights to what was under the ground.
So it seems possible from this that some of his farmland was going to be taken for mining of coal and ironstone and certainly Edward Chitham[iii] notes that a colliery at Brickhouse was leased by Joseph Fereday and John Jones, possibly as a result of this advertisement. They were not very successful as a geological fault known as the Russell’s Hall fault ran through Rowley Parish and surveyors reported that the terrain was ‘very much thrown up and down by faults’. Such were the problems that Fereday and Jones went bankrupt in June 1829, followed in subsequent years by several later owners.
In July 1818 John Levett published this Notice in the Birmingham Gazette, after an apparent dispute about the accounts he had kept in his role as Overseer of the Poor in the previous year, which were, however, subsequently found to be correct.
In August 1818 about three months after the previous sale, an advertisement appeared in Ariss’s Birmingham Gazette for the sale of land at Old Hill. The advertisement in August was for two lots of properties and John Levett of Rowley is described as the Proprietor. The ad reads
“Freehold Land and Building at Old Hill
To be sold by auction at the Dudley Arms, in Dudley, on Tuesday 25th day of August inst. at Four o’clock in the afternoon, in the following lots:
Lot 1: A desirable Public House, Stable, Garden and other Outbuildings, in the Occupation of Mr B Stokes, at Old Hill in the Parish of Rowley Regis and County of Stafford with a large Nail Warehouse adjoining, which, at a small expense, may be converted into a Malthouse, and two other Dwelling Houses and Nail Shops adjoining, with twelve acres of rich Arable, Pasture and Meadow Land, Tythe-Free, called the OLD HILL FARM, with the valuable Mines of Coal, Clay and Ironstone under the same.
These premises are bounded by Lands belonging to Lord Viscount Dudley and Ward and Mr Daniel Granger and front the Turnpike Road leading from Dudley to Hales Owen.
Lot 2: Eight other Dwelling Houses, Nail Shops and Gardens, in the Occupation of John Johnson and others, nearly adjoining the above Lot, together with five Acres if exceedingly good Meadow and Pasture Land with the valuable Mines of Coal, Clay and Ironstone under the same.
These premises are bounded by Lands belonging to the Rev G Barrs and Mr Pearce and adjoining the said Turnpike Road.
The above Lands and buildings may now be let for £150 per year.
This estate is within a few hundred yards of the Netherton Canal and Mess’rs Attwoods Iron Furnaces near Dudley.
*The land is very valuable for building upon, as a great part is fronting the Turnpike Road; and for further particulars enquire of William Bunch, Auctioneer, Dudley or the Proprietor Mr John Levett, Rowley. “
Now this sounds to me very much like the land and houses that had been left to Elizabeth Nock by her father Tobias the Elder. Even down to the name of one of the tenants.
Land at Old Hill
In 1793 Tobias Nock the Elder had left the following bequest –
“I give and devise unto my daughter Elizabeth Nock her heirs and assigns forever all those several closes or points of pasture land and also those five dwelling houses shops gardens and appurtenances situate at Old Hill in the parish of Rowley Regis in the County Stafford now in the several holdings of John Westwood, John Johnson, Shelley Garrett, Hannah Garrett and the Widow ohara.”
So, since Elizabeth did not die until 1842, how was it that John Levett, her nephew, was described as the Proprietor? Had Elizabeth made over the properties to him? In her own Will, drafted in 1835, Elizabeth leaves most of her property to her niece Harriet Adshead including her ‘real estate (if any)’.
Whether the sale took place and how much money that raised we do not know. Did John Levett need money because he had bought the rights advertised previously and some of which, perhaps, he was selling on? It seems unlikely we shall ever know.
Ariss’s Birmingham Gazette is a rich resource for local historians! In February 1819, another Advertisement appeared, concerning John Levett. This stated:
“Valuable live Stock and Farming Implements
To be sold by AUCTION, on the Premises, by W Bunch on Monday next, February 19, all the Farming Stock, etc belonging to Mr John Levett, at the Brick House Farm, in the Parish of Rowley Regis and County of Stafford, who has let the principal Part of his Land; consisting of one Cow and Calf, seven exceeding good cows in calf, four useful Draught Horses and their Gearing, black half-bred Colt, 3 years old, bay Waggon Colt 2 years old, grey Filly Colt, of the Cart Kind, three Sows in Pig, five Store Pigs, three six-inch Wheel Carts with Iron Arms, six-inch Wheel Waggon with Iron Arms, three Pair of Harrows, two ploughs, Land Roll, Winnowing Machine, new Tax Cart with good brass mounted Harness, two Ricks of Oats – about 26 tons, two ricks of Hay – about 25 tons, and a large Quantity of other implements, which will appear in the Catalogues.
The Horses are well known to be good Workers; the Waggons, Carts, Ploughs and Harrows are nearly new; the Cows are known to be good milkers; the Hay and the Oats will be sold by the Ton, in such Quantities as will suit the Purchasers; and the Whole will be sold without Reserve.
The Sale to begin precisely at Ten o’Clock in the Morning.”
Now that is a substantial sale of seemingly all the stock, equipment and effects of a substantial farming operation. By someone who is leaving that profession of farming behind, it appears. Perhaps this was a reaction to the poor summer the previous year when crops failed because of the weather, as related above. But as we will see, John Levett continued to be described – including by himself – as a farmer of Brickhouse for many years to come. It’s a puzzle!
A new marriage for John Levett
Following his wife Elizabeth’s death in Rowley in late May or early June 1822, John Levett of Brickhouse Farm, Rowley Regis married barely nine months later for a second time to a widow Alice Ryan, in Edmonton, north of London on 25 Feb 1823. I was puzzled as to how he came to know Alice Ryan well enough to marry her in such a short time when she lived so far away but, of course, John Levett had London roots and probably had business dealings there as well as family connections. And she was a fairly wealthy widow so he probably wanted to marry her before someone else stepped in!
I have detailed this part of the story in a separate piece on my blog – A side helping of Gaunts, although it is only the history of this very small part of the prolific Gaunt family in a very restricted period!
John Levett the Bankrupt
In view of the economic woes in manufacturing in the period, perhaps it is not surprising that John Levett was not immune to financial problems. On 25th November 1826, only three years after his marriage to Alice, from Notices in Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, we find that John Levett was declared bankrupt. He was described as a ‘farmer, nail ironmonger, dealer and chapman’.
Copyright: Glenys Sykes
This description appears in this newspaper notice relating to his declaration of bankruptcy! I have also seen similar descriptions relating to other bankrupts at about this time, so perhaps it was not unusual for men of business to have several areas of interest balanced against each other. Various further notices followed of the usual procedures involved in Bankruptcy, including meetings of creditors, usually held in Birmingham and later Dudley. This process went on for some years.
In July 1827 a Warehouse in Oldbury, adjacent to the Birmingham Canal and previously used as a Nail Warehouse by John Levett, was put up for sale by Thomas Goode, a solicitor of Dudley, who had been appointed by the Court to deal with this process, with the proceeds to be distributed to creditors presumably. In June 1828, Thomas Goode gave Notice in the newspaper that Creditors who had proved their debts against John Levett would receive a second and final dividend on their respective debts, on application to his office. There is no further mention of the bankruptcy then for many years and John and Alice disappear from public notice for some years.
Alice’s Will
On the 13th Jan 1844 , following Alice’s death on 6 Nov 1843, John Levett and Alice’s sister Hannah Finney, nee Gaunt were granted:-
“Admon (with the Will and codicil annexed of all and singular the goods chattels and credits of Alice Levett (wife of John Levett/ late of Rowley Regis in the County of Stafford deceased was granted to the said John Levett, the husband and Hannah Finney (Wife of William Finney), formerly Gaunt, spinster, the sister of the deceased the surviving executors named in the Will as having both first sworn by common duty to administer. The said John Levett being as the lawful husband of the said deceased entitled to all her goods chattels and credits over which she had no disposing power and concerning which she is dead intestate.”
So John Levett was claiming the whole of Alice’s estate. What is unclear is whether this included the property which had been put in trust in their Marriage Settlement, presumably with his agreement, and it seems likely that the Trustees would have been duty bound to resist any attempt to set aside this trust. But by this time, all but one or possibly two of the Legg family whom Alice had tried to benefit from her London estate were also dead and, as will be shown in a separate piece, the family appear not to have derived any benefit from Alice’s Will.
And it appears that the matter of bankruptcy was still not resolved in 1844 as this notice appeared in the paper:
“12 January 1844 – Birmingham Court of Bankruptcy
In the Matter of John Levett, of Rowley, Farmer Mr Bolton of Dudley, applied to the Court for a meeting to choose trade assignees under this bankruptcy, which occurred eighteen years ago. It appeared that both the original assignees were dead and that a fresh appointment was necessary in consequence of property to the amount of £200 having recently fallen in to the estate. The application was granted with the proviso that the choice, the audit and the dividend should take place on the same day.”
Since this is only a few weeks after the death of Alice Levett, it seems likely that this claim relates to her estate. And her estate was certainly originally worth a great deal more than £200 so where that figure came from is unclear. And where the rest of her money went. Presumably not to her husband as nearly twenty years after the original declaration, this advertisement implies that John Levett was presumably still a bankrupt.
John Levett’s death was registered in the Smethwick area, he died on 15 September 1861 and was buried at St Giles on 19 Sep 1861.
The next odd thing is that in John Levett’s Will was not proved until 1876: The following is the statement at the end of his Will:
11 December 1876
Administration of the effects of John Levett, late of Rowley Regis in the County of Stafford, a Widower, who died 15 September 1861 at Smethwick in the said County was granted at the Principal Registry to James Adshead Levett of Perry’s Lake Rowley Regis, Licenced Victualler the son and one of the Next of Kin.
And ten days later:
21 December 1876
Special Administration of the effects of Alice Levett (wife of John Levett) late of Rowley Regis in the County of Stafford who died 6 November 1843 at Rowley Regis, leftunadministered by the said John Levett and Hannah Finney (wife of William Finney) the sister the surviving Executors was granted at the Principal Registry to James Adshead Levett of Perry’s Lake Rowley Regis, Licenced Victualler. Special Administration (with Will) granted by the Prerogative Court of Canterbury January 1844.
So John Levett had not administered Alice’s estate and his son James Adshead Levett did not apply to administer his father’s Will, and that of his stepmother, until fifteen years after his father’s death. How very mysterious!
That convoluted tale deals with the Levetts up to John Levett’s death in 1861. I shall deal with John’s children James Adshead Levett and Catherine Elizabeth Levett and later family in a separate article I am working on which will follow shortly.
This piece arose from my research into the second marriage of John Levett of Brickfield to a widow Alice Ryan, in Edmonton, north of London on 25 Feb 1823. I was puzzled as to how he came to know Alice Ryan well enough to marry her in such a short time after the death of his first wife Elizabeth in June 1822 when Alice lived so far away. John’s children James Adshead would have been seventeen and Katherine nine when their mother died, so perhaps they stayed at Brickhouse or with family in Rowley or perhaps they went to London with their father. It was very common for widowers to remarry very quickly in those days especially if they had small children to be cared for but these children were somewhat older and could probably have been left at home, with James or other family in charge.
So I checked for Alice Ryan’s previous marriage and found that she had been married to Thomas Ryan (1777-1819) on 3 Apr 1800 at Bath Abbey, again by Licence.
Married by Licence
The use of Licences for marrying seems to have been quite common in this little group of families. A Licence cost a considerable sum of money to obtain and although it dispensed with the need for banns to be called on three successive Sundays in the parish church, most common folk used the traditional Banns which were free. Familysearch says that “From quite early times people of social standing who did not wish to attend the parish church to hear their banns called married by license. A marriage by license therefore became a standard symbol of social status.” Other reasons for the use of a licence may have been that the parties differed in religion or did not attend the parish church because they were Nonconformists or Roman Catholics. Or that the parties were of full age but still faced family opposition to their marriage. Was Thomas Ryan a Roman Catholic, as he apparently came from Ireland and his mother and sister were still there? Was Alice a Quaker? I shall try to find whether the Licence still survives which might tell me more.
Alice’s marriage to Thomas Ryan
The witnesses at Alice’s marriage in 1800 in Bath to Thomas Ryan were Joseph Start (who was later named in both Thomas’s and Alice’s Wills as executor or trustee and who was a Woollen draper of Smithfield) and Lydia Gaunt – another Rowley name. But both bride and groom were described as ‘of this parish’.
Thomas Ryan was a haberdasher. A haberdasher at this time was someone who sells sewing notions including cloth, pins and thread or possibly clothing for men. At this period sewing machines had not been invented and many people made their clothes at home so this would have been a good trade to be in. At the time of his death in 1819 Thomas had premises at Number 80 Charlotte Street, on the corner of Goodge Street, in Fitzrovia, London so it seems he was quite a successful businessman, perhaps in 1800 he had been in business in Bath, which in 1801 had a population of 33,000. By the standards of the time, it was a large and important town. There would have been a tempting market for a haberdasher in fashionable Bath although Bath was by then apparently past it’s heyday. However, historians in Bath have very helpfully digitised some historical directories for the period and sadly for my purposes none of these surnames appear in those directories.
Perusing the newspapers of the period, however, I did come across this extract from the Journal des Dames in January 1825.
Copyright unknown.
This gives some indication of what ladies – and gentlemen – of fashion might be looking for, and therefore haberdashers in such fashionable places as Bath might be stocking, although I doubt whether many ‘bonnets called bourrelets’ or ‘velvet great coats, lined with silk and trimmed with fur’ found their way to Rowley Regis!
When Thomas Ryan died on 13 Nov 1819, in his Will, proved on 3rd May 1820, he left all his property by now in Charlotte Street, London to his ‘beloved wife Alice’ with a request that an annuity of £20 per annum be paid to his mother Mary Moore in Dublin and provision was also made for his sister Susanna Byrne, also in Dublin, so it seems likely that Thomas Ryan was born in Ireland. I can find no trace of any children being born to Thomas and Alice and neither of their Wills make any reference to children. Thomas was buried on 21 Nov 1819 at St Giles in the Fields, Holborn, aged 42.
Alice wasn’t having much luck was she? Because at the time of her marriage to Thomas Ryan, she was already a widow – Alice Oakley, although Thomas appears to have been a bachelor.
Who was Alice? Her first marriage
So now it was time to find Alice’s first marriage to someone called Oakley (yes, another name which is familiar in Rowley although I have not yet found any link back to Rowley).
Nicholas Oakley was born in 1760 in Bathampton, Bath and died in January 1798 in Bathampton, aged 38. On 15 Sep 1794 at Walcot St Mary, Bath he had married – wait for it!… Alice Gaunt. There was an advertisement in the Bath Journal for creditors and debtors to his estate to apply to his widow Alice Oakley in April 1798. So were the Gaunt family of such a status that their daughters spent time living in fashionable Regency Bath? Perhaps they were.
But I had found the link – Alice was a Rowley girl, born in Rowley in 1768, the daughter of Richard Gaunt and Lydia Fletcher. Suddenly, things fell into place. Alice was likely to have known John Levett from Rowley, albeit she was a few years his senior. That marriage to a widow in Edmonton links back directly to Rowley Regis.
Alice’s Will
Alice appears in the 1841 Census at Brickhouse Farm with her farmer husband John where she died on 6 November 1843 at Rowley Regis and was buried at St Giles on 11 Nov 1843. The Burial Register entry says that she was aged 75 and died of a diseased heart.
She left a nine page Will which I have transcribed – and a long laborious task it was. But it was worthwhile. Alice left complicated bequests and it appears that she and John Levett had had a Marriage Settlement when they married which was designed to protect much of the property which she had been left by Thomas Ryan, leaving the London properties and a property in Edmonton on the Great North Road in trust to provide the annuity for his mother Mary Moore which had been requested in his Will by Thomas Ryan and also for the benefit of her sister Lydia and specifically her eldest son Thomas and other children who were named in the Will. It seems likely that this was the Lydia who had witnessed Alice’s marriage to Thomas Ryan, although Lydia seems to be very much a Gaunt name, there are numerous Lydia Gaunts in records.
Alice’s sister Lydia Gaunt 1779-1837
This Lydia Gaunt was married to William Legg, a coachmaker of Chandos Street, London on 27 Jan 1805, (five years after Alice’s marriage to Thomas Ryan) at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, London and both were ‘of this parish’. We know this is the same Lydia as this is detailed in Alice’s Will. So, had Lydia visited her sister who was living with her husband Thomas Ryan in London and met William Legg there? It seems likely.
Most of the people who appear in records in connection with Thomas Ryan were tradesmen of one sort or another and it is quite likely that Thomas Ryan knew William Legg, as Charlotte Street and Chandos Street are just half a mile apart, barely ten minutes walk. They may have attended the same church or used the same pubs. And they would have been serving the same sort of customers. If, as it appears, Ann had no children of her own, what could be more natural than that she should become close to the children of her sister Lydia, living only half a mile away and whom she was leaving behind when she married John Levett and moved back to Rowley Regis? In her Will, Alice made specific and generous bequests to each of Lydia’s children, Thomas, Charles, Arthur and Lydia.
The London Picture Archive has a picture of some premises in Chandos Street, taken in 1910 which shows some ladders and coach wheels leaning against a wall. The caption notes that the rear of the premises was “formerly a coach manufactory” – I wonder whether it belonged to the Legg family? The site specifies that photographs may not be reproduced without specific permission but this is a link to the photograph.
Back to the maps again – Edmonton where Alice Ryan nee Gaunt, was living at the time of her third marriage, was on the Great North Road, eight miles from Shadwell where John Levett was born and where he had strong family connections.
Suddenlyit did not seem so strange that the widowed John Levett should have known the widowed Alice, as it seems likely that Rowley families in the area would have known each other and certainly the Levett, Gaunt and Nock families, all business people of one sort or another, would have known each other well in the tiny village of Rowley Regis and were also apparently clustered in the same small area of London.
The Legal connotations
Part of the apparent intention of the marriage settlement referred to in Alice’s Will was to preserve the income from her properties in Charlotte Street and Edmonton, partly to meet her late husband Thomas Ryan’s annuity for his mother but mainly for Alice’s ‘sole and separate use exclusively of the said John Levett’. In her Will Alice later left these valuable Charlotte Street premises to her sister Lydia’s family, although it seems that they may never have got them or possibly any benefit from them during Alice’s lifetime.
And Alice had good reason to try to protect her assets, bearing in mind that the first Married Women’s Property Act was not passed until 1870 and until that point, under the legal doctrine of ‘couverture’, a married couples were deemed to be one legal entity and all the attributes of that person were vested in the man. Married women could not own property, sign contracts or make Wills, though Alice tried to do so. The property of even widowed women passed to their new husbands on re-marriage. Another Married Women’s Property Act was passed in 1882 to close some of the loopholes in the first act.
So anything Alice had inherited from Thomas Ryan would become the property of John Levett, just as, if she had inherited anything from her first husband Nicholas Oakley (although I have not yet found a Will for him and since he died so young, it is possible that he did not make one), that would have become the property of Thomas Ryan on their marriage. I suspect that this is why Alice tried in her Marriage Settlement and subsequently in her Will to put much of her London property in trust for her heirs. With limited success, if any, as we shall see.
The Legg family
William Legg, Alice’s brother-in-law died in 1835, and was buried on 10 Jul 1835 at St Paul’s Covent Garden, which seems to have become the ‘family church’, leaving a handwritten but unwitnessed Will (apparently written in 1818). This left all his estate to his wife Lydia, according to a note on the Chancery copy of the Will, after two people had given evidence that the handwriting was that of William. Lydia Legg was granted authority to administer the estate on 18 January 1836.
But two years later, on 26thJanuary 1838, a second note on the Will states that Lydia had now died, leaving the estate unadministered and permission to administer was granted to Charles Legg, their second son. Lydia had died and was buried on 18 Aug 1837 at St Paul, Covent Garden, the same church as her husband.
So why was Thomas, the eldest son not doing this? Because he too had died and had been buried at the same church on 23 Jul 1837, not a month before Lydia died. Thomas was the son to whom Alice Gaunt had left most of her London property in trust with the request that he pay annuities from it to his brothers and sister. A third note on the Will states that just over a year later, on 5th February 1839, permission to administer was now granted to Arthur Legg, the last son, as Charles had also now died. Charles’ death was registered in the March quarter of 1839 so he must have died during January or at the very end of December 1838 for Arthur to be making this application at the beginning of February.
This is by far the most complicated ‘will’ I have ever seen, because it was not properly drawn up and witnessed and the Legg family seem to have been very unfortunate in this period with both Thomas and Lydia Legg and two of their sons dying within a period of three years. But all the entries in various registers give their location as Chandos Street, where William had long had his coach building business and there is no hint that the family had any connections with Tottenham or Edmonton where Alice Gaunt had left her property in Trust for them, so I suspect that the family never got any benefitafter . Indeed, all but Arthur predeceased Alice, although she made no alteration to her Will after January 1833. The Lesson seems to be ‘Make a proper Will’, folks, it keeps things much simpler!
The remaining surviving Legg children were Lydia (born 1813) who may have married James Howes at St Paul Covent Garden on 15 Jun 1837, again weeks before the deaths of her mother and her older brother Thomas though I am not certain as this lady’s later census records give three different places of birth, none of which is in London! Or it is possible that she also died as there are several possible burials for that name.
Arthur Wellington Legg (born 1816), and the last surviving son, also became a coachmaker . He married Sarah Judith Goward at Westminster St Margaret’s in 1841, and they had one daughter Lydia Alice Legg. Arthur died in 1851 and was buried in St Paul’s, Covent Garden, he was only 35. What a tragic family. So it seems that William’s Legg name died out with this generation as his only daughter had no children.
Lydia Alice Legg (1844-1892) had an interesting life though, she was an actress with the stage name of Lydia Foote and there are numerous photographs of her online in various roles. There is also a short film about her on YouTube:
So on her mother’s side she was connected with a very successful and established theatrical family. She died unmarried and without issue in Thanet in Kent on 30th May 1892, aged 48 – not one of her paternal family made old bones – and she was buried at the Kensal Green Cemetery where her memorial, erected by “a dear friend”, described her as “a good daughter and a true friend”, adding that “her loss was irreparable” – her mother, also described in one census as a “Theatric” had died in 1891 and was also buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. The headstone for Lydia also mentions her mother and on the reverse records the death of “her devoted friend Charlotte Louisa Geater” who had died in 1944, aged 84. There is a touching image of a plaque with a picture of Lydia on the headstone.
So that is the tale of two Gaunt sisters Alice and Lydia and their families. They had numerous other siblings which no doubt I will do some further work on when time permits.
But Alice’s third husband John Levett was much more than a simple farmer in Rowley Regis. He had other strings to his bow. He had certainly had considerable land holdings in the area, in addition to his tenancy of Brickfields Farm. And perhaps the disputes about Overseer of the Poor accounts and the land transactions and sales in 1818 may indicate that he was already in trouble financially.
But you will have to go to the piece on the Levetts to find the rest of this story!
Addendum: I thought I had finished this article yesterday, apart from some tidying up but decided not to post it until the accompanying piece was ready. As I have mentioned in this blog previously, I know very little about London and the churches there and knew nothing about ‘St Paul’s Covent Garden’, the family church of the Legg family.
St Paul’s, Covent Garden, copyright unknown.
Imagine my surprise (and delight) just now to log onto Instagram to find that Lucia, the art restorer on The Repair Shop, had just posted a short film about this very church. She says “This is St Paul’s Church on the West side of Covent Garden – London’s West End. It’s the ‘Actors’ Church. [There are plaques to various famous actors shown]. Built by Inigo Jones (1573-1652) in 1631 at a cost of £5k, along with him designing the market square that is Covent Garden. He was also a set designer, loved the theatre. This church has a delightful ‘secret garden’ and lots of famous names. Of course I was only interested in finding the lucky cat that lives here… gone fishin’ ” If you would like to see the little film have a look at Lucia’s Instagram – whichis often packed full of fascinating knowledge on all sorts of subjects – she is luciainlondon123 on Instagram.
This piece started out as part of my piece (still in progress!) about the Levett family but has got rather long so that I have decided to post it separately. But the Nock and Levett families were closely linked so keep an eye out for that instalment. And then there will be the Gaunts…
According to the Halesowen Parish Registers, on 6 October 1581, Johane, the daughter of Thomas Nocke, was buried there. This appears to be the only Nocke entry in the Halesowen Registers between 1559 and 1643 but I include it out of interest. There were Nocks in Dudley, too but I am still exploring these, there was certainly a Tobias Nock baptised there in the mid-1700s and a Tobias who was a cordwainer in business there in 1784 so it seems likely there is a connection. I shall continue to investigate this but have concentrated on the Rowley Nocks for the moment and have grouped these together below, although some of the connections are not clear.
The first Nocks to appear in the Rowley parish registers are in 1607 when Olyver Nocke married Jane Murlow. An Oliver Nock was baptised in Sedgley on 11 Mar 1575 and it seems likely that this is the same man and is another indication that there are family connections within the Dudley area. There are no baptisms of children recorded to Olyver and Jane in Rowley so perhaps it was the adult Olyver who was buried on 27 Jan 1612/13.
William and Anne Nocke Entries 1610-1623
On 18th November 1610 a William Nocke married Anne Grove. The baptism of two daughters to this couple were noted in the register – Elizabeth on 28 March 1610 and Mary on 6 Mar 1611. It was noted in the Register in March of 1613 that William Nock had been one of the Church Wardens for the past year so William was obviously well respected in the village. Where exactly he lived is not clear. This was followed by the baptism of son John on 15 May 1615, and Richard on 2 Nov 1617 and this is possibly the Richard Nock who was buried at St Giles on 19 April 1647.
On 17 September 1620William, son of William Nock was baptised. This was followed on 23 Oct 1620 with the burial of a William Nock. Father or child? It seems likely that it was the child baptised in September 1620, as on 3 October 1621 another William, son of William Nock was baptised. Then on 25 September 1623William Nock was buried – father or child? There is no clue in the register but there were no further baptisms for children of William Nock so perhaps this time it was the adult William.
John Nocke, Clark (sic) was buried in Feb 1624. The introduction to the Registers suggests that he may have been Parish Clerk. If so, he was an early example of the literate Nocks. Perhaps William and Thomas whose details I am listing were his sons, we do not know but certainly unless there are substantial gaps in the Registers, there were not many Nocks about then in Rowley so it seems quite likely. And there were recurring Nock family names, for both boys and girls in these families in the records that follow.
Thomas Nocke Baptisms 1624-1639
Another family of Nocks appears in the Registers in 1624 when Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Nock, baptised on 6th November, there is no marriage recorded for Thomas so perhaps he was married elsewhere. This is the second time that the eldest daughter was named Elizabeth, William Nocke had also called his first daughter Elizabeth. If, as I suspect, William and Thomas Nocke were brothers, might their mother’s name have been Elizabeth?
Then there is a record of the burial of a Thomas Nock in March 1626 and then, thirteen years later, the baptism of Jane, daughter of Thomas Nocke on 26 Jan 1639.
John and Anne Nocke 1641-1655
In 1641, on 10 February, a John Nocke married Anne Hill. This may well have been the John, son of William who was baptised in 1615, as he would have been about 25 in 1641. Hill is also a common name in Rowley and there were many Hills in the very early registers so they were definitely a long term Rowley family. I cannot find a baptism of an Anne Hill in Rowley at this time but there are notes of torn pages, etc so it is possible that a record is lost or that she was baptised elsewhere.
The baptisms of several children of John and Anne then followed. John, on 12 May 1642; William on 31 Dec 1643; Anne on 14 Feb 1646. Then there is a baptism of a Mary Nock on 6 October 1651.Mary was recorded as the daughter of John Nocke and Mary, not Ann. So were there two John Nockes baptising children at the same time? Or was the name of the mother in the record for Mary an error, substituting the name of the child for the mother? It is impossible to be sure but there were no other baptisms for John and Mary in this period so it seems feasible that it was an error. Two more children were later baptised to John and Anne, so certainly it does not seem that Anne had died and John remarried – an unnamed child of John Nock was baptised on 16 Jul 1654 and Elizabeth on 29 Sep 1655. After that, no more children were baptised for this couple.
Josiah and Judith Nock Baptisms 1657-1663
In 1657, during the Commonwealth period, when the recording of life events was much changed, a new family of Nocks appears in the Registers. John, the son of Josiah and Judith Nock was born on 25th December 1657and baptised on 17th January 1657, followed by his brother Josiah, born on 5 June 1660 and baptised on 18th June. Another son Thomas was baptised on 13 Dec 1663 (after the restoration of the monarchy so the Commonwealth requirement to record dates of birth had gone!)
Nock burials in this period include Thomas Nocke who was buried on 5 July 1659 and William Nocke on 25 Dec 1664.
John Nock 1665
The name John Nock reappears in 1665, ten years after the last baptism for a child of John and Anne Nock, when Anne, daughter of John Nocke was buried on 23 January 1665, perhaps the Anne who had been baptised in 1646.
John and Joan Nock 1667-1680
Then on 19 October 1667, William, son of John and Joan Nock was baptised, followed by the baptisms to the same couple of Joseph on 22 September 1672, Thomas on 5 March 1675, and Mary on 7 September 1680. Was this the John who was earlier married to Anne? That would make this John 65 by the time the last child was baptised so I am inclined to think it was not but the next generation.
MoreNock burials
Elizabeth Nock, widow, of Hales (Halesowen) Parish was buried at St Giles in July 1684 and Joane, wife of John Nock was buried on 5 September 1684. John Nock was buried on 20 December 1693 and Ann Nock, widow was buried on 22 January 1694.
Following the death of Joane, there is a confusing series of entries.
William and Dorothey Nock – Baptisms 1687-1706
I have not been able to find a marriage for William Nock to a Dorothey but a Dorothy , daughter of John Williams was baptised at St Giles on 22 Mar 1662 which would make her about the right age to be marrying and having children in these dates so this may be her. On 25 Dec 1687John, son of William and Dorothey Nock was baptised, followed on 21 April 1689 by their daughter Jone. On 8 April 1692 daughter Sarah followed and on 20 May 1694 another son Joseph. On 26 December 1695 Thomas was baptised and on 4 April 1697 Samuell, then Ann baptised on 26 Dec 1701, Moses on 15 May 1704 and Mary on 14 Jul 1706.
Right in the middle of that sequence there was an entry on 2 Mar 1690 for the baptism of a William, son of John and Dorothey – or should that be William, son of William and Dorothey? There are no other baptisms to a John and Dorothey at this period. John and William are both Nock family names and it appears that William and Dorothey already had a son John in 1687. It seems very odd that a second Dorothey should appear for this one baptism so I am inclined to think that this is an error and that this child was another child of William and Dorothey, and the date, a year after the baptism of Jone in April 1689 and before Sarah on 8 April 1692, means that he would fit very naturally into the sequence. That’s my theory, anyway! I may be wrong…
Joseph & Ciceley Nock appear just once together in this register when their daughter Sarah was baptised on 6 Oct 1695. Joseph Nock was buried on 23 November 1697, Ciceley Nock, widow was buried on 18 April 1710.
Thomas and Dinah Nock Baptisms 1695-1718
Also in 1695 another family begins baptising children at Rowley. John, son of Thomas and Dinah Nock was baptised on 2 February 1695/6, followed by daughter Ann on 14 May 1699, son Joseph on 4 January 1701/2, Elisabeth on 17 Dec 1705, William on 21 Nov 1708, James on 20 May 1711, Benjamin on 16 Feb 1716 and finally Sarah on 8 Jun 1718.
John & Hannah Nock Marriage and baptisms 1711-1718
On 21 May 1711John Nock married Hannah Foley. It seems likely that John was the son of William and Dorothey who was baptised in 1687. And perhaps Hannah was the child of Thomas and Hanah Foley who had been baptised on 10 February 1688 at St Giles.
Their daughter Mary was baptised on 23 March 1712 but buried less than a year later on 21 Feb 1713. Their son William was baptised on 15 May 1715, and daughter Sarah on 27 January 1717/18.
William Nock & Elizabeth BibbMarriage and baptisms 1714
A couple of years after John’s marriage, William Nock married Elizabeth Bibb on 7 November 1714. Again, it seems likely that William was the son of William and Dorothey, he had been born in 1690, and was the brother of John. Elisabeth may well have been the Elisabeth who was baptised at St Giles on 1 August 1692, the daughter of Benjamin and Elisabeth Bibb.
On 19 July 1715, their first child Elisabeth was baptised, followed by Jone on 8 Oct 1716, Benjamin on 8 Dec 1717, William on 15 Nov 1719, Tobias on 8 May 1721 who was buried on 29 Jan 1723/24, Joseph baptised on 28 Sep 1723, Dorothy on 11 Jun 1726, Tobias on 10 Jun 1727 and Phebe on 29 Sep 1731, the last child of the couple listed.
Enough, enough!
I am not going to attempt to list all the Nocks in Rowley (and all the Nocks entries from 1733-1744 are recorded as Knocks and occasionally as Nocke which adds to the fun!) from here on, as they now become too numerous but I suspect that most of the later Nocks in Rowley parish are part of this family, although many of them fall outside the immediate area of the Lost Hamlets.
The child of William and Elizabeth I am following up from here on is Tobias Nock, baptised in 1728 and his descendants because he appears to have stayed in the village and possibly in Portway and he is the one who is linked to the Levett family which was where this research started. I will continue to research the other Nock children in this family as these Nocks are on my family tree so I will be researching them in more detail at some point.
Tobias Nockthe Elder 1728-1791
Tobias Nock (1728-1791) was a Rowley boy, probably born early in 1728 in Rowley as he was baptised at St Giles on 10 Jun 1728, the son of William and Elizabeth Nock. He had married Catherine or Kitty Fletcher, apparently in Coventry, in 1750. They had at least seven children – Sarah in 1751, Deborah in 1753, Catherine in 1760, Tobias in 1764, (dying in 1765), another Tobias in 1766, Elizabeth in 1769 and Henry in 1773, all apparently in Rowley Regis. It is not possible now to be sure where Tobias lived but in his Will he left a substantial number of properties in Rowley, Old Hill and Oldbury, as well as his nail ironmonger’s business and specifically left the house in which he was living in Rowley to his wife Catherine. His son Henry also lived in Rowley at this time, probably in Portway House or Hall so it may be that Tobias lived there, too. Tobias’s house was evidently a substantial house so Portway Hall is a possible candidate.
Tobias Nock the elder died on 5 March 1791, presumably in Rowley but he was buried on the 10th March 1791 in the Friend’s Burying Ground at Dudley. (Quaker records are very detailed) Interestingly another daughter of Tobias and Catherine, Elizabeth, born in 1769, died in 1842 and there is a note in The Annual Monitor of Quaker Published Memorials for that year that Elizabeth Nock, aged 74 and living in Dudley had died – and she was described as a Minister, most unusual for those days for a woman, though possibly more common in the Quaker movement. And I have noticed that amongst these Quaker or Presbyterian families, not only are the men literate but many of the women are, too, really quite unusual for those times. And also I have noticed that these men often left property or businesses to their wives, so that women were treated much more equally than elsewhere in society generally then.
The Nock family do not feature very much in the books about the history of Rowley Regis, I can find no mention of them in J Wilson-Jones’s book and only two mentions in Chitham’s book, one of those about a James Nock who kept a pub in Reddal Hill, rather than Rowley village. Chitham notes that by 1860, amongst the Coalmasters in Rowley Regis were Nock, Wood and Nock in Rowley village so they were still active in business and commerce then. But neither writer mentions the earlier Nock family so I was quite surprised to discover the extent of their businesses in the area and wealth by the late 1700s and later.
And Tobias Nockthe Elder was a very wealthy man. In his will, proved in 1792, he left a large number of properties in Rowley, Oldbury and Old Hill to various relatives, plus a cash sum of £200 to his daughter Deborah, (married to John Levett Snr and living in London). £200 would be worth about £38,000 today. He also left £50 each to his two Adshead granddaughters, worth about £9,500 now.
To his wife Catherine Nock:
“all the house and appurtenances wherein I now dwell and also all those twelve dwelling houses, shops, gardens and appurtenances situate in Rowley Regis aforesaid in the several holdings of Daniel Davis, William Downing, George Taylor, Josiah Winsor, Samuel Perry, Esther Bridgwater, Isaac Parkes, William Collouth, Joseph Windsor, James Carter, Joseph Smith and William Bolton and also all that croft of land called the Sling adjoining in his own possession with all his household goods and furniture to hold the same to his said wife during her natural life”
After her death, his household goods and furniture were to be divided equally between his two daughters Catherine and Elizabeth;
After his wife Catherine’s death, all the said buildings and land above mentioned to his son Tobias Nock of London, Ironmonger, his heirs and assigns forever subject to the payment of two hundred pounds to his daughter Deborah Levett.
To sons Tobias and Henry:
all his stock in trade, money, outhouse and cart and all implements belonging to his trade. Subject to the payment of all his debts and also subject to the payment of forty pounds apiece to his three daughters Deborah, Catherine and Elizabeth to be paid to them at his decease and his son Henry shall have one hundred guineas out of his trade [more]than his son Tobias.
To sons Tobias and Henry all that the freehold estate in Oldbury in the parish of Halesowen in the County of Salop in the several holdings of Henry Richards, Joseph Darby, Peter ffisher, Thomas See, William Stevens Kilsey, Thomas Danks, and Iseury Holloway to hold the same to their joint use during the natural life of his said wife Catherine Nock and after her decease he gave and devised the same to his son Henry Nock, his heirs and assigns forever subject to the payment of fifty pounds apiece to each of his granddaughters Elizabeth and Harriet Adshead.
To Catherine Nock:
All the freehold estate situate in the parish of Rowley Regis in the County Stafford in the holding of Job Hawkner.
To Elizabeth Nock
all those several closes or points of pasture land and also those five dwelling houses shops gardens and appurtenances situate at Old Hill in the parish of Rowley Regis in the County Stafford now in the several holdings of John Westwood, John Johnson, Shelley Garrett, Hannah Garrett and the Widow O’Hara.
Jointly – what appears by my Stock Book to be saved by his hand from the date of his decease he gave equally amongst all his five children”
So, a detailed and extensive estate distributed around his family. Were his tenants nail-makers producing nails for him and his son to sell? It seems likely.
And in 1805Catherine, daughter of Tobias and Catherine Nock, was married at the Quaker Meeting House in Stourbridge to Thomas Martin. She died on 9th March 1816 and was also buried at the Dudley Quaker Burial ground where her father had also been buried. So the Nock family clearly had a strong connection with the Society of Friends. In fact in his fascinating book ‘Men of Iron’ Michael Flinn states that “the greater part of the iron industry of the day was controlled by closely linked Quaker groups”. So it would not be surprising to find such a link. The Nock family appear to have been amongst the Rowley folk who were more than just nailers but also, like the Crowley family, moved during the late 1700s and onwards into selling and distributing the nails made in the Rowley area in London and possibly elsewhere.
The London connections of the Nock family
All of this is in the period when my 6xg-grandfather Edward Cole married in London in a Fleet marriage. It seems to me increasingly likely that families like the Crowleys and the Nocks employed local men from Rowley to transport the nails from Rowley to their London warehouses or to work for them there, leading to their presence in London at that time. Tobias’s Will leaves his business to his sons, along with “all my stock in trade, money, outhouse and cart and all implements belonging to my trade” so he definitely had a cart as part of his business.
Incidentally, the family of Ambrose Crowley of Stourbridge, blacksmiths, nail factors and ironmongers, who had originated in Rowley Regis, were also Quakers, albeit some years before this. And their son Sir Ambrose Crowley II, who I mentioned in a previous post, was the ironmonger to the Navy so they were in the same trade, buying nails made in the Black Country and selling them in London. Crowley is known to have had a warehouse in Ratcliffe, Stepney and may have started his business there after he completed his apprenticeship but there is no definitive evidence on this.
Tobias Nock the Younger
Tobias the Elder’s son Tobias Nock the Younger moved from Rowley to London at some point in the late 1700s to set up as a nail monger and is described in his father’s Will dated 1791 as ‘Tobias Nock of London, Ironmonger ‘. Tobias the younger had married Frances Darby in St Giles church in Rowley on 17 Aug 1789 and their daughter Mary was baptised on 17 May 1790 in Shadwell. FrancesNock nee Darby died in March the following year, presumably back at home, perhaps visiting family, as she was buried in St Giles on 6 Apr 1791.
On 20 Mar 1794 Tobias remarried to Mary Kitson, a widow, at Saint George In The East: Cannon Street Road, Tower Hamlets, and their daughter Katherine was born in Shadwell on 17 February 1795 – we know this because her date of birth was given at her baptism. Alas, Mary died in 1797 and there is a burial at St Paul, Shadwell of a Mary Nocks of Shadwell High Street on 1 Mar 1797.
Tobias had a son Tobias born on 22 February 1799 in Shadwell. Again we know his date of birth from his baptism. Tobias was followed by Eliza in 1803, Deborah in 1806, William Cane Nock in 1811, Frances in 1814 and Edgar Hynson Nock in 1819.
On 26 November 1807, Tobias Nock Junior (who was by then described in a Baptismal Register a “Nail Ironmonger” in Shadwell High Street ) had all five of his children baptised at once at St Paul’s Shadwell, just six days after he had married his third – or possibly fourth – wife in the same church. The mothers of the children are listed against each child and the last three – Tobias in 1799, Eliza in 1803 and Deborah in 1806 – are said to be ‘by his present wife Sarah’. But Tobias had only married Sarah in the previous week so did she bear those children out of wedlock? Or is there yet another marriage to a different Sarah followed by a death and a burial that I have not yet found? Or did the priest misunderstand who their mother was? I do not know but will continue to ferret around this little rabbit hole, watch this space!
Had Tobias followed the Quaker practice of not baptising his infant children but succumbed to pressure from his new wife? It seems quite likely.
Looking at maps
I am not familiar at all with London and have had very little need to consider it up to now in my family researches so, unlike the Rowley area, I generally have not the faintest clue how most areas relate to each other. But I have now found three Rowley families – the Crowleys, the Levetts and the Nocks – with strong connections to the Shadwell/Ratcliffe/Stepney area in the 1700s. So I now have to look at maps to see where people from Rowley lived in London in relation to each other. I had no idea where Shadwell , the home of Tobias Nock Junior was nor Stepney where John Levett (his son-in-law) was born, nor how far apart they were. Google maps tells me that they are less than a mile apart, indeed Shadwell was within the Parish of Stepney. Is that coincidence? M W Flinn in his book ‘Men of Iron’ notes that Thames Street was traditionally the habitat of London Ironmongers’ and the road running through Shadwell and Ratcliffe was a continuation of this road.
Shadwell is in the docklands, on the bank of the river Thames, not far from Tower Bridge. According to Wikipedia, the area’s history and character have been shaped by the maritime trades. Shadwell’s maritime industries were further developed with roperies, tanneries, breweries, wharves, smiths, and numerous taverns, as well as the chapel of St Paul’s where seventy-five sea captains are buried in the churchyard. The early growth and prosperity of Shadwell in this period has been linked to the road connections into London, which were maintained by wealthy taxpayers from Middlesex, Essex, Kent and Surrey, and presumably used on the way in from the Midlands.
I had hoped to include a map of the area but alas, it was held by the British Library which has been the subject of a disastrous cyber ransom attack which has disabled much of their operation for several months now so I cannot access it now.
There is apparently even today a Shadwell Basin, which is now a fashionable housing area in the Docklands.
St Dunstan’s church in Stepney, where John Levett and his siblings were baptised is recorded as being founded (or more likely rebuilt) by Dunstan himself in 952, and was the first church in the manor, was also known as “The Church of the High Seas” due to its traditional maritime connections. St Dunstan’s has a long association with the sea, with the parish of Stepney being responsible for registration of British maritime births, marriages and deaths until the 19th century. There is an old rhyme:
“He who sails on the wide sea, is a parishioner of Stepney”
I have noted previously that the maritime trades were very large users of nails, and ironmongery for ship building, etc. So perhaps this was an obvious place for a nail monger to have a business, in the docklands, near to the river.
The old saying ‘Birds of a feather flock together’ has some wisdom in it, what could be more natural than to choose to live near to other folk from your home community when settling in a new place where you knew no-one?
John Levett was not mentioned in his grandfather Tobias Nock Senior’s Will but his mother Deborah was. There will be a separate piece on the Levett’s shortly but John Levett was a farmer in Rowley in the first part of the 1800s and the Levetts were among the core families in the lost hamlets. His father was also a John Levett and his mother was Deborah Nock, they had married at St Giles, Rowley Regis on 13 May 1776 when John Levett Snr was a widower of St Dunstans, Stepney, London and a victualler or publican by trade. The marriage was witnessed by her father Tobias Nock (the Younger), just as he would witness his daughter Sarah’s marriage to James Adshead three years later.
Another Great Fire of London
In 1794, many houses in Ratcliffe and Shadwell were destroyed by a fire which “consumed more houses than any one conflagration has done since the Great Fire of London”, and also destroyed many boats, including one laden with around £40,000 of sugar. In fact only one house in Ratcliff survived, so John Levett’s pub must have gone, too. Deborah Levett nee Nock had died in 1794 so I thought for a moment that she might have died in the fire but she had been buried on 15 May 1794 and the fire was on 23rd July.
This is how the fire was described on historic-uk.com
At 3pm on 23rd July, an unattended kettle of pitch boiled over at Clovers Barge Yard, Cock Hill setting it on fire. These flames quickly spread to a nearby barge loaded with saltpetre, a substance used to make gunpowder and matches. The barge exploded violently, scattering burning fragments in all directions. Fires spread to the north and the east, consuming timber yards, rope yards and sugar warehouses.
Narrow streets and a low tide hampered fire fighting, and within a few hours the fire had destroyed 453 houses leaving 1,400 people homeless and displaced. The government erected tents as temporary shelter near St. Dunstan’s Church, whilst the Corporation of London, Lloyds and the East India Company contributed almost £2,000 to the relief of the homeless.
Copyright: Unknown
I have a lot more material on this fire and the area and would be happy to write more on this if people would be interested.
Tobias Nock the Younger apparently stayed in Shadwell after the fire. He and his only brother Henry had inherited their father’s nail monger’s business in 1792 and appear to have managed it together until 1820 when a notice appeared in Ariss’s Birmingham Gazette stating that the brothers – Tobias of Shadwell High Street, Middlesex and Henry of Rowley Regis , nail ironmongers, had dissolved their partnership on 29 January 1820. But some if not all of Tobias’s descendants appear to have stayed in that area for some decades afterwards.
Meanwhile, back in Rowley… The Midlands Nocks – Henry Nock (1773-1835)
At this time Henry Nock, the only brother of Tobias, was living in Rowley and his address is shown in the records of the Presbyterian Chapel at Oldbury as Portway House.
Henry Nock had married Elizabeth Dixon (1777-1852)in 1793 at St Martins in Birmingham and he had stayed in the Rowley area, his children’s place of birth is shown in Presbyterian records as Portway House and the family appear to have later moved to Oldbury where he died in 1835.
Their children were Henry Dixon Nock, (1794-1870) who later moved to farm in Wigginshill in Warwickshire. Why Wigginshill I don’t know as there isn’t much information online about it, except that it had an early Quaker Meeting House. Perhaps coincidence but those Quakers do keep cropping up. Then came Elizabeth in 1796, Hannah in 1799, Agnes in 1802, Catherine in 1808, Ellen in 1809, Philip in 1812, Fanny in 1814, Edwin in 1818, and Joseph in 1820, all born in Rowley. I have not managed to research all of these but I am working on it!
One later descendant Harry Arthur Nock (1865-1946), son of Edwin above, lived for much of his life, according to census entries, in Delph House, Brierley Hill where he was apparently a Corn Merchant or Factor although intriguingly in just one census in 1891 he gives his occupation as a Civil Engineer and Surveyor as well as Corn Merchant – but only in that one census, in all the others he is a Corn Merchant. However, in 1923 he was well enough off to buy Ellowes Hall in Sedgley which was a substantial house and where his children were still living in the 1939 Register, although he was still at the Delph in 1939, retired and living with his eldest daughter Jessie who was an Elementary School teacherand appears not to have married. Harry died at Ellowes Hall (according to the Probate Grant) in 1946 but the house remained in the ownership of his family until 1963 when it was sold to Staffordshire County Council and demolished.
The Henrys and the Harrys
There are dozens of Henry/Harry Nocks in the area, often close in age to each other, it was very much a favourite family name. They take some careful sorting out. For example, in 1851 there were two Henry Nocks, one living at 10 Dale End, Birmingham and a grocer and one at 44 Dale End, Birmingham and a Corn Dealer. This caused me some confusion although at present I have only been able to link the second Henry to this branch of the Nocks. Nevertheless the other Henry Nock was born in Tipton/Dudley so it seems likely that they were related in some way.
Tobias was another recurring name, in the Nock family, which may indicate an early connection between branches.
So that is a limited look mostly at the early Nock family, of Rowley Regis and Portway, with their many descendants, who appear mostly to have been in business in the Midlands, Dudley, Birmingham, Coventry, Oldbury, Brierley Hill, Sedgley, Sutton Coldfield, Smethwick – some as corn factors, some as farmers, others in various professions. They were a family of businessmen, dealers, shopkeepers, iron-founders, nail factors, iron-mongers and were mostly well-to-do by Rowley standards. They were literate, they kept a low profile, they left Wills – often leaving their estates to their wives, they appear as executors in the Wills of relatives, they were generally very respectable and very industrious. They appear to have been dissenters for many years and possibly to have Quaker connections.
As I have shown at least one branch moved to London in the late 1700s and it seems very likely that some descendants from that branch remained there. For any readers who have Nock connections, and I know there are many still in the area, I hope you find this interesting and even that this may give you some clues about your family tree – or perhaps you can give me some. Contributions welcome!
When I started looking at this family, I did not think I had any connection and had only one Nock on my family tree, William Henry Nock, known as Harry (of course!) and born in Waterfall Lane, Blackheath and who had married my second cousin Edith in 1959. I remember Harry with great affection, he was a lovely man, what Edith and my mother described as ‘one of nature’s gentlemen’.
Now I have dozens of Nocks in my tree, though most of them are very distantly connected to me.
rowleyregislosthamlets.co.uk 
