Category: Work and Migration

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.

The distracting delights of background reading

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

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

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

A really good blog for Family Historians

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

Contemporary Fiction as a source of information

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

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

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

Different ways to read books!

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

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

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

The Whiteheath Mine Disaster

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those who died were:

Thomas Barker aged 23 years,

R. Cartwright aged 43 years,

John Sheldon aged 36 years,

Thomas Shaw aged 35 years,

Thomas Round aged 34 years,

John Walletts aged 28 years,

William Simpson aged 33 years,

Samuel Willetts aged 26 years,

J. Fulford aged 16 years,

John Bryan aged 13 years,

T. Hampton aged 18 years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hard times in Whiteheath?

Copyright unknown but will be gladly acknowledged if made known.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Powerful stuff!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A special education

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright unknown but will gladly be acknowledge if informed.

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

Day to day running of the school

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swinford Old Hospital Boys

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

William Cole

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

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

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

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

Uriah Gadd

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

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

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

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

William Jenks Milner

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright: County Express

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

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

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

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

To sum up…

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

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

The Waterways Connection: The Hopkins family

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

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

Edward Hopkins – or was he Edwin?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where did Edward come from?

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

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

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

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

So where were her brothers in 1851?

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

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

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

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

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

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

The younger Hopkins brothers

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

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

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

The missing James Hopkins Senior

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

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

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

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

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

The Waterways connection

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

The Great Mystery

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

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

What made me think that?

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

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

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

The paragraph reads :-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright: Tony Walker. Gloucester Docks, c. 1880.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Cole families in the Lost Hamlets

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

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

Perry’s Lake

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

The sons of Edward Cole and his wife Phebe

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

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

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

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

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

The family of John and Elenor/Nelly Cole

The Knowle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Freebodies Farm

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

 The Previous Generation:

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

The Lye Cross Coles

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

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

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

Summary

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

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

A Cole woman to be reckoned with

Not all of the Coles, as I have learned, stayed in and around the Rowley hamlets. And previous posts have noted that women often had to move with their husbands for work and make new homes in distant places. Sarah Cole was one of these women.

Sarah Cole was born, probably, in 1826 and was baptised on the 11th June that year, the third child of Edward Cole and Leah, nee Clift, whose address was given at various times as Oakham, Turner’s Hill, Portway and Lye Cross.  (Leah’s uncommon first name was useful as it enabled me to trace the family later and to be confident that I had the right family.) It is not impossible that all four of these locations are actually the same place, place names did vary with who was making the record and there do not appear to have been any definitive boundaries in this area. Even if they were not the same place, they are all quite close together.

I say Sarah was probably born then (and Sarah’s age does become of particular interest later in this story) because the baptismal registers do not show dates of birth at this period and civil registration had not yet started so there is no way of knowing her actual date of birth. But her older brothers were baptised Joseph in May 1823 and Edward in March 1825(who died in April of that year) so it’s pretty likely that she was born close to the date of her baptism.

Looking at Sarah in the Censuses

In the 1841 Census Sarah was living on Turner’s Hill with her parents and brother Joseph , plus two more siblings Edwin 12 and Mary Ann 11.

A baby Catharine Cole was born in the second quarter of 1843 in the Dudley Registration District, with no mother’s maiden name indicated which usually means that the child was illegitimate. The baby died the following year, aged 1 year and six months and was buried at St Giles on 10 Nov 1844, with her abode given as Lye Cross and the cause of her death as ‘inflammation’.  As far as I can see from the 1841 Census there was only one female Cole of child bearing age in Lye Cross and that was Sarah Cole who I think was her mother. A later child of Sarah’s was baptised Caroline but known as Kate, so perhaps she liked the name. Unless I buy the Birth Certificate, I will not know for certain so perhaps I will, one day!

By the time of the 1851 Census Sarah had married her first husband John Winwood on 29 Jul 1846 at Tipton St Martin. He was a widower, of full age, a Labourer.  And they were living with her parents on Turner’s Hill. Their firstborn child William, abode given as Lye Cross, had lived for only a few weeks but they now had two daughters Hannah, born in 1847 and Charlotte born in 1850. Sadly Charlotte died in June of that year, a couple of months after the Census.  Another daughter Caroline was born in 1852 and another Mary Ann was born in September 1855.

Alas, they did not have long together, John and Sarah. On 12 Apr 1856 John was killed in an accident at work at Rounds Green Colliery. He was on the top of an old pit frame to assist in taking it down when it fell with him, killing him outright, according to a Mines Accident Record.

So Sarah, with her three daughters was left living, presumably, with her parents and with little means of support, although like most women in this area, she was a nailmaker.  Eighteen months later, on 20 Nov 1857 Sarah married Jonas George Walker Holdsworth at St Edmund’s, Dudley. Jonas was a Yorkshireman, a collier.

In the 1861 Census, the family were living in Ashes Road, Langley along with Sarah’s mother Leah Cole, by now a widow, and Sarah’s daughters Hannah, Caroline and Mary Ann Winwood and a new baby, son Joseph Holdsworth, who was 1. So Sarah had already moved from Turner’s Hill/Lye Cross, albeit only a mile or two away, down the Portway.

At some point between this census and the next, the whole family moved to Yorkshire. Looking at family events helps to narrow donw when this happened. Another son William was born in the second quarter of 1862 in Oldbury. And another, John in the last quarter of 1864, both in the West Bromwich Registration District so probably in Langley.

Sarah’s daughter Mary Ann Winwood, from her first marriage and born in 1856, had died in April 1867, aged 12 and was buried in Oldbury Cemetery. Both Death Registration and burial, however, were in the name of Mary Ann Holdsworth, her stepfather’s name but that was not unusual in those days.  So it appears that the family were still in Oldbury in 1867. And Sarah’s oldest daughter Hannah was married to George Holloway in 1868 in Dudley and they had remained in Oldbury so it is possible that Jonas and Sarah moved north after that. But it is also possible that Jonas moved back first while Sarah stayed to see her daughter Hannah married.

In December 1870, Sarah’s mother Leah, who was living with Sarah in 1861, died in Yorkshire and was buried in Rawmarsh which is near Rotherham.

In the 1871 Census Sarah is living in Hall Street, Rawmarsh, apparently in the household of a Thomas Etheridge, aged 24, a labourer who gives his place of birth as Stourbridge. I say apparently because the enumeration is less than clear about where one household stops and the next starts.

 In the same household are Sarah’s daughter Caroline and her husband William Potter or Leather who had been married in the Rotherham Registration District in the first quarter of 1871. William was a Lancashire man, a miner or labourer. He was illegitimate and his birth was registered in 1847 as William Leather, his mother’s name. The following year his mother married Thomas Potter and it appears that William then used the name Potter – sometimes. Up until and including the 1891 Census the whole family were listed as Potter (apart from their daughter Sophia who was staying with Sarah and was listed as Leather. But from 1901 onwards the family were known as Leather.  It is, to say the least, very confusing!

Also in the household in Rawmarsh are Sarah’s youngest son John Holdsworth, aged 6 and another lodger John Henry Smith, aged 18, a puddler born in Oldbury. Puddlers worked in iron foundries, another skill which would enable people to move.

So where was Jonas Holdsworth, Sarah’s husband,in that census? And where were Sarah’s two other sons by Jonas, Joseph aged ten, born Rowley and William aged eight, born Oldbury? I found them listed as Inmates and Scholars in the North Bierley Union Workhouse, in Clayton, Yorkshire, which was thirty miles away from Rawmarsh and under a different Poor Law Union. There is no Jonas Holdsworth listed in the Workhouse and I cannot find a death for him in this period. But immediately above the two boys on that 1871 census page is a George Holdsworth, aged 44, a collier, born in Halifax. Jonas had a second name of George and he was a collier and also born in Halifax. An age of 44 gives a birth year of 1827, Jonas was born in 1825. I think that this is the same man. There is also a Jonas Holdsworth in the neighbouring Bradford Workhouse in the 1881 Census, place of birth not known and described as an Imbecile, which probably accounts for the loss of information over the period, especially as he appears to have moved from one workhouse in the group to another and possibly back again. This Jonas seems to have been chronically ill and died in 1885, aged 60 (so born in 1825, the correct age) after at least 15 years in the Workhouse system and was buried in Clayton St John, with his abode in the parish register entry for his burial marked as the Clayton Workhouse so I strongly suspect this is our man.

The Age Puzzle!

Meanwhile…in September 1871, Sarah Holdsworth, daughter of Edward Cole, was married at Rawmarsh. She gave her age as 43, which was a bit of a white lie because she was nearer 45. But either way, she was considerably older than her new husband Thomas Etheridge – yes, the one whose household she was living in earlier that year in the Census. He gave his age as 24 in the census but that is also slightly uncertain. I have not been able to find his birth registration but his baptism was in March 1848 which would make him 23 in 1871 so this census entry appears to be correct. He gives his age on the marriage record as 20 – four years younger than on the Census, she as 43, quite an age gap. In the 1861 Census, Thomas was living with his family in Parsonage Street, Oldbury but born in Brettell Lane which is in Amblecote, and he was then shown as 12. So it seems likely that in 1871 he was about 22, so it appears that neither the 1871 Census or the marriage show his correct age. Later censuses show him as 40 (in 1881), 45 (in 1891) and 57 (in 1901) – not exactly consistent!  But many illiterate people were not absolutely sure of when they were born.

There are no photographs that I can find of Parsonage Street, which was on the Oldbury/Langley border and which has several connections with Sarah’s family but this is the chapel there which probably gives an indication of the sort of houses which were there, probably of a design and size similar to thousands of other Black Country houses of this era. Copyright unknown but will be willingly acknowledged on supply of information.

Sarah’s ages in the Censuses are even more varied. Up to 1871 her age appears to be shown correctly but in 1881, her age is shown as 45, a drop of 9 years since the 1871 and in 1891 her age was given as 50. It appears that when you are living in a place where no one knows your history you can get away with quite a lot.

Did Sarah and Thomas know each other before they arrived in Yorkshire? How did they come to be living in the same house in Rawmarsh? They had both previously been living in Oldbury. Why did Thomas move from Oldbury to Rawmarsh, near Rotherham? His brother John, two years younger was also in Rawmarsh in 1871, working as a Puddler so probably the brothers moved together for work but we do not know. Their father George Etheridge was a furnaceman and John had been born in Cwmbran where there was a large foundry and steel works, then George’s  younger children were born back in the Black Country so this is yet another instance of men moving to other places for work and then back again. In 1871 George was still in Parsonage Street, Oldbury but his son Pharoah was born in Jun 1873 in Wombwell , Yorkshire which is where two of Caroline’s children were born so George had obviously followed his sons up to Yorkshire quite soon. George Etheridge was born in 1826, the same year as Sarah Cole, I wonder what he thought of Thomas’s marriage?

Why was Sarah separated from her husband and older sons who were thirty miles away in the Workhouse? We do not know.

A bigamous marriage?

How could Sarah marry Thomas Etheridge when it appears that her husband Jonas Holdsworth was alive and would be for another 15 years? Again, we do not know. There are several possibilities. Jonas may have been injured or suffered a stroke which resulted in him being admitted to the Workhouse. If Sarah had no means of supporting all of her children, the two older boys may have had to go into the Workhouse with their father. Perhaps Sarah moved to Rawmarsh to be with her daughter Caroline who was married there. This part of the family appear  to have been in Rawmarsh since at least December 1879 when Sarah’s mother Leah died and was buried in Rawmarsh.

Did Sarah and Jonas separate for some reason after arriving in Yorkshire? Might Sarah have discovered that Jonas already had a living wife in Yorkshire, left behind when he moved to Oldbury to work, so that her marriage was null and void? I have not found any evidence of this but this would have left her free to marry Thomas Etheridge. Or was this a bigamous marriage? This was far more common than you might think at this period where marriages had broken down and divorce was very expensive and rare among working class people. So move to an area where you are not known and tell everyone you are a widow or widower. It is a total mystery but this last marriage lasted nearly thirty years, despite the age difference.  

Later Years

In the 1881 Census, Thomas and Sarah were living in Wath-on-Dearn , near Rotherham in Yorkshire, where Thomas was working as a Forgeman at an Ironworks. He gave his age as 40, Sarah as 45! Also with them was Sarah’s son John Holdsworth, though shown under his step-father’s name, now 16 and a labourer at the Ironworks and also Emma Holloway, aged 13, described as a visitor. Emma was born in Oldbury and was the eldest daughter of Hannah, Sarah’s daughter.

In the 1891 Census the surname for Thomas and Sarah is shown as Hedgewood. Which I suppose may be how the enumerator heard Etheridge. At a pinch – perhaps the Black Country accent strikes again! They were living in Widnes, Lancashire and I only found them because I was searching Sarah’s grandchildren through her daughter Caroline (who was also living in Widnes)and Caroline’s daughter Sophia Leather aged 6 was shown in 1891 living with Sarah and Thomas as a granddaughter. And Sarah is shown there as born in Rowley, Staffordshire and Thomas as Worcestershire so that all fits. Had it not been for the presence of Sophia that night of the census, I would never have found them!

Sarah appears to have died in Widnes in 1900, or possibly in 1887.

There do not appear to have been any children born to Sarah and Thomas Etheridge, which is not surprising given that she was already 45 when they married.

What became of Sarah’s children?

Of Sarah’s children, Hannah Winwood stayed in Oldbury with her husband George Holloway living in Parsonage Street for much of the rest of her life and had ten children there, of whom five survived. She died in 1917, aged 70.

William and Caroline Leather nee Winwood emigrated to Schenectady ,New York as did most of their family, appearing in US censuses from 1920 onwards. Their oldest child William Leather was born in 1875 in the Barnsley area and I discovered from a photograph of his original birth certificate, uploaded to Ancestry by an American descendant, that his birth was registered by Sarah Cole, his grandmother who had been present at the birth, rather than either of his parents. William and Caroline had seven children, the first two born in Barnsley, Yorkshire and the others in Widnes where Thomas was working in a copper  works. Caroline died in New York in 1928, aged 76.

Joseph Holdsworth survived his time in the Workhouse and was married in 1880 in Halifax. He stayed in the Bradford area for the rest of his life, dying in Bradford in 1926, aged 67.

William Holdsworth also survived but he appears to have moved back to the Oldbury area, marrying Annie Smith with whom he had seven children, (very possibly the Annie Smith who was living in Hawes Lane, Rowley in the 1881 Census) and later living in Halesowen Street, Blackheath where he was a hairdresser. If this seems an unlikely occupation for him, it is worth noting that many workhouses trained their young charges in occupations such as tailoring or hairdressing which would enable them to earn their living later.  His date of death is unclear but may have been in 1915.

There are no indications that either Joseph or William were in contact with Sarah, or with each other  but it is not impossible.

John Holdsworth , Sarah’s youngest child, was with his mother and stepfather Thomas Etheridge in Wath on Dearn, Yorkshire in 1881 when he was listed as Etheridge, born Oldbury and, aged 16, working as an Iron Works labourer – the family trade! But in records after that he used the name Holdsworth and on 22 May 1888 he had married Ann Hayfield (born in Oldbury) in Christchurch, Oldbury – both giving their address as 19 Parsonage Street and went on to have a first child in Oldbury and a further three children in Widnes.  John’s half-sister Hannah was living at 18 Parsonage Street in 1881 so they must have been in contact. By 1901 he was back in Watery Lane, Smethwick, working at a Silver Works and a further two children were born there.  He died in 1903, aged only 39.

A Wandering Cole

So, like many wives, Sarah moved for her husband’s work. More than once. And, as with quarries and sett making, the metal working skills and adaptability of Black Country men led them to find work in many other areas where metal working and foundry work were important.

Although Sarah left the Black Country in about 1869 and there is no record of her ever returning, at least three of her children remained or made their way back to the area. And from visiting grandchildren it is apparent that at least some of the siblings stayed in touch with Sarah and with each other too. We know from Shipping Passenger Lists that Caroline made at least three trips back to the UK after moving to New York, though we cannot know where she went on these visits.

There are recurring places – Parsonage Street, Oldbury, Widnes, areas of Rotherham, Yorkshire and Lancashire which crop up in the life stories of various children.  

One Rowley woman, three husbands, nine children, thirty-one grandchildren – (that is to my knowledge, there may have been more grandchildren). And her Cole descendants were scattered across the Oldbury area , Birmingham, Yorkshire, Lancashire and New York.

Sarah Cole, I think, was quite a woman to be reckoned with!

The Granite Connection 3 – The Threlkeld Connection

There was a report in the February 2013 Edition of the Newsletter of the Black Country Geological Society about Rowley Rag, the local granite which provided work for so many local people. One of their members Julie Schroder had visited the Threlkeld Quarry and Mining Museum  the previous year which lies in the valley between the Blencathra mountain and the village of  Threlkeld, close to Keswick in the Lake District. What, she pondered, is the connection with Rowley Rag?

Julie wrote

“The museum is housed in an unprepossessing building, but inside is an Aladdin’s cave of historical and geological treasures. We learned that the quarry opened in the 1870’s, initially to supply ballast for the Penrith – Keswick railway. The stone is a light grey in colour and was also used for kerbs and as dressed stone to face buildings. But there was also a demand for 4 inch ‘setts’ for roadways, which required the expertise of skilled stone dressers. And where better to find this expertise than in the quarrying community of Rowley Regis?

In the 1870’s some skilled quarry workers answered the call from far away Cumbria and took their skills to Threlkeld. One of these was our guide Donald’s grandfather. In Donald’s words: “My Grandfather on my mother’s side moved from Rowley in the 1870s as a sett maker. My Grandmother was a Levett. I believe they were butchers in Black Heath”. That was all Donald could tell us, but I felt that there’s a story here waiting to be unearthed.

I wonder how big was this exodus from the Black Country? Do you have any connections with the sett makers who went to Threlkeld?” asked Julie.

Copyright: The Black Country Archaeological Society

On the  ‘I remember Blackheath and Rowley Regis’ Facebook page a while ago Natalie Gazey mentioned that some families from Rowley had moved to Threlkeld in Cumbria in about 1900, as the quarry there needed their expert skills in making stone setts from granite. And Joyce Neech commented at the time that her great-aunt had retired there and wondered whether there was a connection.

So, yes, it seems that many Rowley folk, including myself, have a connection or two to the sett makers who went to Threlkeld. So I have spent a few hours finding out more about this expedition.

As with my previous information gathering about migrating workers, the Censuses were my first port of call. Mining for various minerals has been going on in the Cumbrian area since at least the 1600s and very possibly since Roman times. But Threlkeld is a very small village and it was a quick job to see in the censuses whether anyone born in Rowley Regis was living there. The 1870s had been mentioned as a possible start date and Natalie had said that her family had gone up there in about 1900.

The 1871 Census showed that there were Lead miners in Threlkeld who were from Devon and Cornwall but none from Rowley. In 1881, again, there were no Rowley folk there. Of course, these were only snapshots every ten years so it is possible that some people had come and gone in the intervening years. The overwhelming majority of the population there was native to Cumbria and mostly from an even closer area.

By 1891, that had changed. By then, there were thirty-six people living in and near Threlkeld who had clearly moved there to work at the quarry.

In the nearby village of Wanthwaite, St Johns-in-the-Vale, living in Blencathra Vue, there was a household headed by James Holcroft, a widower aged 38, a Granite Quarryman with his two nephews William Taylor, aged  16 who was a quarry labourer and James Taylor, aged 9, a scholar and Martha Haywood, aged 23 a domestic servant, all born in Rowley. James was still in St Johns in the next census in 1901.

Martha Haywood was to be married on 7 Dec 1891 to Thomas Smith, aged 22. Perhaps this was the Thomas Smith of Rowley Regis who was living along the row with Thomas Hill at the time of the Census. Or she may have married the Thomas Smith, a local lad, who was living with his family next door. Sadly this Martha appears to have died in Sept 1893 in St Johns, aged only 25 aand no children appear to have been born to this marriage.

Two doors away again in 1891 were John Clark aged 50, a sett maker born in Leicestershire and his wife Merriel, aged 39 who had been born in Staffordshire, although their four oldest children had been born in Shropshire, the next three in Yorkshire and the youngest aged 1 in Penrith, Cumberland, a familiar pattern from my previous studies, reflecting family movements between quarrying areas.  Moving on another house and there was George Burns, aged 33, a quarryman, born in Shepshed in Leicestershire where there was – of course – a large quarry, less than ten miles from Mountsorrel. His family were all born in Leicestershire. So not all the sett makers came from Rowley Regis.

Next door to him in Blencathra Vue was Thomas Hill, aged 24, a sett maker, born Rowley Regis, as were his wife Sarah aged 23 and their children Annie aged 5 and Edward aged 3. Lodging with them were Thomas Smith, aged 18, a Mason, born Rowley Regis (later to marry Martha Haywood in St John in the Vale), and John Bishop aged 18, also a mason but born in Mountsorrel, Leicestershire. Also William Dowell, aged 18 and William Dingley aged 36, both born in Rowley Regis, and William Wood, aged 36 from Graby , Leicestershire, John Sowell aged 30 from Yorkshire and Ben Derrey from Leicestershire. All these lodgers were single and all the last five were sett makers. These houses appear from later census details to have been two up, two down cottages without bathrooms or toilets, they must have been very crowded.

Their widowed neighbour George Noon, aged 40, was from Mountsorrel, all of his five children had been born in Durham.

A little way along the terrace was Thomas Clift, aged 22, lodging with a local family who was a general labourer and gave his place of birth as Portway, Staffordshire. (I have Clifts on my family tree, though somewhat earlier than this – but they lived in Lye Cross, Portway so were almost certainly connected! ) By 1901, Thomas was still in St Johns in the Vale but was married to a local girl and had three children born in Threlkeld.

A couple of doors down were Frederick Edwards who was 37 and a quarryman gave his birthplace as Staffordshire, as were his wife Ann Maria and their four children. I have been unable to find out for sure much about this Frederick Edwards. Edwards was a relatively common name in the area, well before the Rowley men arrived.

Two doors on again were Thomas Morton, aged 24 and a sett maker with his wife Maria, aged 21 and their son Thomas, aged 2, all born in Rowley. Thomas was my 1st cousin 3xremoved. They must have moved back and forth to Rowley at some point because by 1901, they were living in Northumberland (Thomas still working as a sett maker) and had three more children all born in Rowley Regis and then two more born in Blencathra, Cumberland in 1898 and 1900.  Also in his household in 1891 were seven single lodgers aged between 18 and 30, including William Dowell aged 18 and William Dingley, aged 30, both from Rowley Regis, the others from Leicestershire, all sett makers.

By Tango22 – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3826239

All of these were living in Blencathra Vue as it is listed in the census or Blencathra View in other records – and a glorious view it must have been, this is a very unspoiled area even now. The impression is that this must have been a terrace or terraces of cottages built for incoming workers. There is the pattern which became familiar when we were looking at the Mountsorrel and Shropshire connections in an earlier post, of young men moving to an area where their skills were in demand, where they lodged with local people or with fellow immigrants, often ten or a dozen to a cottage. I can find no reference to Blencathra View on modern maps but it seems likely that either it fell into dereliction or acquired other names in later years. Next time I visit my sister-in-law in Penrith, we may just go exploring and see whether we can find a likely row of houses!

Interestingly, in Church Street, Keswick, only a couple of miles away, was an Emily Mayo, born in Tividale who was a widow aged 60 and who was a Bookseller and Stationer, also there in 1901.

1901

By the time of the 1901 Census, there were still some Rowley people in the Threlkeld area. Thomas Hill who had been in St John in the Vale in 1891 was now living in Threlkeld village and giving his age as 39 (thirteen years older than the previous census!) and was now a quarryman and Innkeeper. His wife Sarah and children Annie and Edward were still at home, Annie working as a Barmaid and would marry a local man in 1904 and Edward gave his occupation as a Lead washer at the mines. Their domestic servant Elizabeth Davis, aged 18 was also born in Rowley Regis.

Also in the village was William Redfern, aged 25, a sett maker, born Staffordshire and married to a local girl with their 11 month old son.  

However, the overwhelming majority of Threlkeld residents were locally born.

Over in Quarry Cottages in St Johns in the Vale, Thomas Clift was still in residence and had married his local girl Laura and was still a granite quarryman.  Further along the row Samuel Knight, aged 22, born in Rowley, a Granite Kerb Dresser was lodging with a local family. It appears that young men who fancied a change of scene were still making their way to Threlkeld. Quarry Cottages seems to be the new name for Blencathra View because again, just along the row is James Holcroft, now 48 with his nephew William Taylor still living with him, but now with William’s locally born wife and their two small children. Both James and William were described as Granite Stone workers. Also still boarding with them was his nephew James Taylor, now aged 20, born Rowley Regis –  an engine driver in the granite quarry.

Next door was George Long, aged 45 who was also a quarry worker, born in Strensham, Worcestershire but his wife Rebecca, aged 43 came from Rowley and their three children had been born in Birmingham, Rowley Regis and Threlkeld.

Samuel Dowell aged 27 was also living in Quarry Cottages  with his wife Alice aged 29 and a boarder Frank Levett, aged 22, all from Rowley and both men working in the quarry. Samuel Dowell had married Alice Levett at St Lukes church in Cradley Heath on 16 Sep 1895, Alice was 23 and living in Rowley Regis , and was the daughter of John Levett who was a butcher in Garratts Lane, Old Hill. That Alice did have a brother Frank according to the 1881 Census so this was probably the Frank Levett boarding with them.

A few doors along was Frederick Edwards, a widower, aged 46 and his four sons, William aged 22, Joseph aged 20, Alfred aged 18 and Thomas aged 16, all born Rowley Regis and all working in the quarry. Frederick’s daughters Martha, aged 9 and Alice aged 7 had been born in Threlkeld.  

Next door to Frederick was Thomas Hackett, also a widower, aged 32 with his children William, aged 8, Ellen, aged 6, both born in Rowley Regis and Thomas aged 1 born in Threlkeld. There is only one GRO Death registration for a female Hackett in the Cockermouth Registration District in this period and that is for Sarah Ann Hackett who died in the June quarter of 1900, aged 32. The birth registration for Thomas, in the December qtr of 1899 shows her maiden name as Davis. Also in the household were Jesse Hackett (28) and what appears to be his wife Mary Hackett (28) who was described as a Housekeeper (Domestic). Jesse gave his place of birth as Baptist End, Worcestershire but Mary was from Rowley Regis.

Again, the majority of residents, including those working in the quarry were locally born in Cumberland though there was a sprinkling of workers from Leicestershire. It appears that marrying locally made it much more likely that you would stay in the area.

Emily Mayo was still in Keswick, still running her stationery and bookshop there.

Hailstone quarry workers, about 1910, shared by Ronald Woodhouse. Some of these may have been to Threlkeld or even been born there, they would certainly have known the families who went there.

1911

By 1911 the numbers of Rowley people had reduced considerably again. In Threlkeld there was only Robert William Stuart, aged 30, a quarryman who was born in Threlkeld and his wife Annie (nee Hill)  who was 27 and their lodger Edward Davies, aged 24 and also a quarryman and described as a cousin were both from Rowley so it is likely that Edward was Annie’s cousin. Robert and Annie had been married in the Penrith Registration District (which covers Threlkeld) in 1904 and Annie appears to have been the daughter of Thomas Hill who had been in the area for the two previous censuses.  

Frederick Edwards was still living in Quarry Cottages in St John’s in the Vale, with his son Alfred aged 28, a quarryman and daughter Alice aged 16 who was their housekeeper. Frederick and his wife Annie had been married in 1876 at Gornal, although Frederick was living in Perry’s Lake. Annie had died in 1896.

Also in Quarry Cottages Frank Levett , now 34, had married Annie Hindmoor Benbow in Threlkeld in June 1901 and they had three children, all born locally.

William Redfern , now aged 38 was also still living there with his wife Sarah Ellen (nee Airey) they had been married in 1900 locally and had four children, all born in Threlkeld.

James Taylor, now 29, (the nephew of James Holcroft) was by now married to Jane, nee Young Watson, and they had a one year old daughter.

Thomas Hackett, still a widower, now aged 42 was still in Quarry Cottages with his children William, (now aged 18 and a sett maker like his father), Ellen, aged 16, both born in Rowley Regis and Thomas aged 11 born in Threlkeld. The cottage is noted as having just four rooms so quite where they fitted in their boarder Elizabeth Harding, aged 38, a dressmaker and her two children aged 12 and 11 is interesting! Perhaps best not to ask…

In Keswick, Ellen Dora Long, aged 21 born in Rowley Regis and single, was a housemaid.

1921

By 1921, even fewer Rowley born people remained. Alfred Edwards, now 38 and still a quarryman, was living with his father-in-law Robert Stuart and Robert’s Rowley born wife Annie . Alfred’s wife Sarah Jane was the sub-post mistress in Threlkeld and they had a son Ernest, aged 6. Their boarder Edward Davies, aged 33 and born Rowley Regis was still with them, as in the previous census. So this family had strong Rowley connections.

In Lake Road, Keswick, Ellen Dora Long, aged 31, born in Rowley Regis and single, had advanced from housemaid to Cook!

So these are the official records I have been able to find which reflect the migrations between Rowley Regis and Threlkeld, apologies if I have missed anyone. There may have been shorter trips which were not captured by the censuses at ten year intervals but certainly the names mentioned by several members of the ‘I remember Blackheath and Rowley Regis’ Facebook page are included here.  And the Levett family mentioned by one of the volunteers at the Threlkeld Mining Museum.

GRO Births,  Marriages and Deaths

Another set of records which can show where families were at any given time since 1837 is the General Register Office Indexes of Births Marriages and Deaths. These are divided into quarters of the year and when I started working on my family history, you had to go to Somerset House in London and physically haul down the huge original registers and check each quarter separately. And it was very busy and if someone else had the volume you wanted to check, you just had to wait until they had finished with it. Time consuming, difficult to access, but still sometimes important. These days the indexes are available online, births and deaths through the GRO website, but also through Ancestry and FindMyPast . And they have been transcribed by FreeBMD, the sister organisation of FreeREG so I was able to spend a few hours today checking for births and deaths for some of the Rowley names in the Threlkeld area from 1880 through to 1930. And then to check some of those entries against marriages to see where those marriages had taken place. To do that in a matter of a few hours would have been unimaginable only a few years ago!

As a result of that, I was able to establish that there were four children born in the Cockermouth Registration District between 1883 and 1889 to a Hackett family, with a mother’s maiden name of Billingham. Now there is a Rowley combination if ever there was one! And sure enough, I found a marriage for a James Hackett and Ellen Billingham in the Dudley Registration District in the June qtr of 1882. But in fact this James Hackett was not a quarry worker and he was living in 1901 with his family in Workington, on the Cumberland coast, where he was working at the steelworks there. One can never assume even when something looks so obvious!

Similarly the family of Hackett/Sloan who baptised three children in the same registration district came from Ireland and Lancashire and were also living in Workington.  And the family of Hackett/Walker who had nine children in the same Registration District between 1897 and 1914 were also in Workington, though James, the head of the household and his uncle William who as living with him were both from Old Hill. So some but not all of the local Hackett families in Cumberland came from the Midlands and not all were involved with quarrying. Quarrying was not the only mobile skill!

There were Redfern births registered in the area between 1895 and 1910 and, interestingly a marriage of a Redfern in 1937. Similarly there were Dowell births in 1903 and then with a different mother’s maiden name in 1913 and 1919.

The Levett births in this period relate to Frank Levett who married Annie Hindmoor Benbow in 1901 and they had two children in 1902 and 1907. By 1911, Frank and Annie, with their children Sidney, James and John were living in Threlkeld with Annie’s parents James and Elizabeth Benbow, both men working as stone dressers. James Benbow was born in Clee Hill, Shropshire, Elizabeth in St Johns in the Vale, Frank Levett in Rowley, Annie and their first two children in Threlkeld and the last child in St Johns. A real granite area blended family!

But also in the June qtr of 1901, when Frank Levett had married Annie Benbow, Amy Levett, Franks sister, had married William Henry Edwards also in the Cockermouth RD. It is tempting to think that this was a double wedding! Sadly, the original registers do not appear to be available online so I cannot check this but it seems a coincidence that brother and sister married in the same area and the same time period.

William Henry Edwards aged 32 and Annie, aged 35 were living in Threlkeld in 1911, with their two children and both William and Annie were born in Rowley. The local schoolmistress was boarding with them. So were these the grandparents of the tour guide who was quoted right at the beginning of this post? I think they probably were. And he was quite correct, the Levetts still had a butcher’s shop in Birmingham Road, Blackheath, just opposite my grandfather’s house, in the 1950s when I was growing up, I can remember the smell of the sawdust which used to be scattered on the floor!

Joyce Neech has noted that her great-aunt , a later Martha Haywood (born in Rowley in 1891 and the niece of the Martha Haywood who was in Threlkeld in the 1891 Census) retired to Threlkeld after working most of her life in Rowley Regis so some connections obviously remained so that she knew enough of the area to want to live there.  There were other Haywoods not so far away, including a family of Haywoods in Sheffield, at least one of whom was married in the Cockermouth area.  But all of the Haywood families who were registering births in this area from 1903 onwards were in Workington and working at the steel works, which is also a trade associated with Sheffield. So how Martha came to retire to Threlkeld remains something of a mystery. But this Martha had nine brothers and sisters and her father had ten, one of who was married to a Redfern so it was entirely possible that one or more of these retained connections with the Rowley people who had stayed in Threlkeld. And yes, Martha Haywood is on my family tree, too – my 5th cousin, once removed!

So there was a certainly strong connection at this period between quarrymen and their families in Rowley and Threlkeld and some of those who had travelled to the area stayed there and some apparently have descendants there to this day. I hope this might be of interest to anyone who has this connection on their family tree. Rowley genes are spread around the country, it seems! It will certainly add some interest to my next visit to Penrith to see my sister-in-law and I shall be viewing the countryside with new interest.

Daily life in the hamlets in times gone by

In our generally comfortable living conditions today, it can be quite difficult to imagine the conditions in which our ancestors lived and worked. These are some memories which relate to Rowley and Blackheath, so technically may be considered outside of the area of the Lost Hamlets but I am sure that many of them apply also to the houses and residents there. Some of my own memories of growing up in Long Lane and Uplands Avenue are also included.

What the Vicar thought…

The Reverend George Barrs, who was Curate of St Giles from 1800 to 1840. He did not seem to have a high opinion of his parishioners and he wrote in the 1830s:-

“In 1831 the number of inhabited houses in the parish was 1366, the number of families occupying them 1420 made up of nearly 7500 individuals, an equal number of each sex, within a very few, the males predominating by only 7 or 8. 82 homes were then without inhabitants and only 5 building. Since then the state of trade has considerably improved, many houses have been built or are in progress but few unoccupied.  

Of the above number of families 140 were occupied in agriculture and 909 in manufacture, trade etc. Many however who are ranked as agriculturists are frequently engaged in some branch of trade or manufacture. A very large proportion of the manufacturers are nail makers and nearly all the women and girls; that being the chief pursuit of the operatives in this and surrounding parishes. Here chains of various descriptions and the making of gun barrels especially in time of war, find work for many hands. Here also the manufacture of Jews Harps is carried on and sometimes employs a considerable number of persons.

 A great many of the manufacturers are very poor and their families frequently appear clad in rags, and as if they could obtain but a slender pittance of life’s comforts or even necessities. This however is not to be attributed to their being destitute of the means of procuring these comforts in a degree unknown to other manufacturers but in their want of frugality, domestic economy and good management. Their work is laborious but they can generally earn good wages, which, if discreetly applied would furnish them with a comfortable competence. Unhappily however many, from their very youth contract habits of idleness and prodigality and these are a certain and fruitful source of rags and wretchedness. Since the national pest the “Beer Act” came into operation in 1830 their manners have become more dissolute, their morals more corrupt, their habits more idle and unthrifty and of course neither their personal appearance nor their domestic comforts has much improved.

Such is the degraded and grovelling condition into which many of the nailers are sunk that during the late war when wages were high those who could make a miserable living by earning 2 shillings a day would not earn another 2 pence when they might by no great exertion have earned 2 shillings a day. Of all descriptions of individuals these appear most anxious to observe to the very letter that maxim of holy writ “take no thought for the morrow for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself” The wretchedness that results from their conduct is indeed an undeniable proof of its criminality and of the enormous evil of such perversions.”

[Note: It is likely that this statistical information is taken from the 1831 Census which is not generally available and did not include as much detail as later censuses. This information relates to the whole ecclesiastical Parish, including Old Hill, Cradley Heath, Whiteheath and Tividale, not just the village of Rowley.]

It is evident that Barr was a man of strong opinions and a striking contempt for his working class parishioners. He had married into the Haden family and apparently lived at Haden Hall, rather than in the village. The resistance he met from local people in his campaign to build a new church may have contributed to his dislike for his parishioners, but surely there must have been a few decent people? Excessive drinking was undoubtedly a general problem in those times, though not limited to the Black Country and certainly the non-conformist churches were strongly against alcohol because of the problems it gave rise to in society. And I suspect that non-conformism, particularly amongst Methodists and Baptists was already strong in the area, perhaps even encouraged by the contempt of clergy such as Barrs.

A visitor’s view of Rowley Regis

Walter White, a traveller from London, visited the Black Country in 1860 and wrote about his observations in his book ‘All round the Wrekin’ . He walked through the village of Rowley Regis and along Hawes Lane and noted the numerous quarries producing ‘Rowley Rag’. He would have seen the breathtaking view over Old Hill from Hawes Lane, a view I later gazed out at from RRGS many a time. Later he went through Tippity Green, Perry’s Lake and over Turner’s Hill to Oakham, right through the Lost Hamlets, a long walk! He also noted, echoing round the village, the click-click and thump-thump of hammers, finding that nearly every cottage had a workshop with a forge in place of a washhouse. In each workshop he and his friend observed the same scene, three or four women hard at work together, sometimes with children helping.

He noted “The fire is in common; and one after another giving a pull at the bellows, each woman heats the end of two slender iron rods, withdraws the first, and by a few hammer strokes, fashions and cuts off the nail, thrusts the end into the fire and takes out the second rod and gets a nail from that in the same way. So the work goes merrily on.”

For the women working thus, it may not have been quite as merry as he found it.

Memories recorded by Wilson Jones

In his book The History of the Black Country (now available as a reprint)  J Wilson Jones recounts that he, born in Walthamstow, had moved as a boy to Rowley Regis in 1921, following the death of his mother. He was often taken by his father to visit elderly relatives on Sundays – one born in 1839, one in 1844, one in 1845 and one in 1847 so their memories went back a long way. How fortunate we are that Wilson Jones listened to and remembered their tales and recorded them for posterity.

He tells that “One old lady had been sold as a bond servant at Halesowen Cross and had received three pence per day wages; another had been employed down the mines, harnessed like a horse and drawing tubs. They had all been nailers and had walked three miles to fetch iron, laboured 109 hours weekly for a penny halfpenny an hour, raised 11 children and saved enough to be owners of three houses. Recreational hours were unknown and children did part time work from seven years of age, school was voluntary and the majority could not read. “

Black Country houses were mostly of a pattern, and I recall that my first family home in Long Lane, my grandfather’s house in Park Street and my great-aunt’s house in Darby Street all exactly fitted this pattern. Built in terraces there was a long entry from the street to the back of the house (because the front doors were never used!)  At the rear there was a scullery or kitchen, in later years sometimes using what had been a nailshop or Brewhouse joined to the house with a bluestone or blue brick yard. There were usually two rooms up and down with a cellar below.  The lavatory was also in the yard at the rear – luxury was having a separate one for each house, often two or three or more houses shared one and people have commented on Facebook, remembering this arrangement in cottages in Tippity Green, Perry’s Lake and Gadds Green.  And a garden where vegetables could be grown and perhaps room for pig and some chickens was a bonus and not always provided.  My grandad Hopkins produced wonderful pickled shallots and grew beautiful flowers, in his garden and allotment. To this day I think of him when I see drumstick primulas which I remember him wearing in his buttonhole, in a tiny silver holder, when he visited us on Sundays.

Later, when nailmaking at home ceased,  many workshops or brewhouses were linked to the house, sometimes with a glass roof and became the scullery or kitchen, often with bathrooms or toilets later added on at the back. My grandfather’s Victorian house in Park Street, Blackheath and our 1930s house in Uplands Avenue still had cast iron ranges in the 1950s with a lovely coal fire and a kettle that could be put on it. The range in Uplands Avenue even had a little oven and I can remember my dad cooking some little lamb chops in there, they tasted wonderful. And toast made in front of the fire, using a wire toasting fork and slices of bread, fresh from the bakery in Bell End, lavished with tub butter from the shop at the top of Mincing Lane, (this was Danish butter, I think, I can remember it was cut from the block in the tub in front of you, according to how much you wanted. The shop owner could judge perfectly how much to carve off, showing long years of experience.) That toast was glorious! Toast made now with mass produced bread and toasted with electric devices doesn’t taste the same at all.

My grandparents had rag rugs on the floor, no fitted carpets in those days – from memory these were made of rags clearly from old suits and any other sturdy fabric available, hooked into pieces of sacking and warmer on the feet than lino or brick floors, though the floor in the entry and in the link from the house to the scullery was made of blue bricks. The range in our house was taken out at some point in the late fifties and replaced with a fireplace with a posh gas fire with a Baxi Bermuda boiler behind it which made the whole house warmer and undoubtedly less dusty. And yes, like many people of my vintage, I can remember ice, exquisite ferny patterns, on the insides of the (unheated) bedroom windows in bad winters, hot water bottles were an essential and when it was really cold my dad used to put his army greatcoat over the bed, it was very heavy.  

When we moved from Long Lane to Uplands Avenue in about 1957 we had an indoor bathroom for the first time – at Long Lane the bath was a tin tub which hung on the wall, filled on bath nights from the copper in the outside washhouse. There were still gas brackets on the wall at Uplands Avenue, (though disused) which had provided the lighting originally, and I remember we had a gas fridge, not something you hear of today with a tiny freezer section which just accommodated a little metal ice-cube tray. Not that we got ice-cubes out of it very often, as the freezer box accumulated frost around itself so that it usually became a block of ice itself. And your fingers stuck to the metal tray if  you tried to extract the cubes. The trick was to hold it under the tap and hope the ice-cubes came out before they completely melted!  If the little gas pilot light on the fridge went out, as it did periodically, my dad had to crawl into the space under the sink with a taper to relight it through the tiny hole at the back with a distinct ‘whoomph. Funny memories!

In most houses, including my home well into the 1960s, the front room or parlour was rarely used. In Victorian times it might have had an aspidistra, hard uncomfortable horsehair stuffed furniture, and a glass display cabinet. Perhaps a harmonium or a piano – my grandad Hopkins loved playing piano and had a white one!  I can remember my great-aunt’s middle sitting room in Darby Street had a dining table with a deep red velour cloth with a fringe I loved playing with as a child, with a lace-edged white cotton table cloth over that. My aunt could remember visiting the same house in Darby Street when she was a child in the 1920s when her grandfather still made nails out in the workshop and she could remember that she was sometimes allowed to work the bellows for the forge for him. Despite being asthmatic, he walked regularly to the bottom of Powke Lane with a little cart to collect iron rod and coke for his forge from the Gas works, and to take his completed nails to be weighed.

On one occasion, Aunt Alice remembered, while ‘helping’ her grandfather, that she had got some ashes on her white pinafore and, realising that her mother would be cross with her, my great grandmother washed, dried and ironed it before she went home. In the days before washing machines, tumble driers and electric irons, this was no mean task and speaks volumes of her kindness. My aunt also remembered that her granny was a wonderful cook and she remembered freshly baked cakes and particularly custard tarts set out to cool on the window sill. Is it coincidence that my father, myself and my son all loved custard tarts? Who knows, perhaps there is such a thing as genetic memory!

Black Country dress remained the same, probably  until the 1920s. Women nailmakers wore black lace-up boots, woollen stockings, long black skirt with a shawl , sometimes a man’s cap. Men wore checked shirts and sturdy leather belts.  The photograph here shows my great grandmother Betsy Rose and my great aunts, taken in the doorway of their shop in Birmingham Road probably in the early 1920s or thereabouts, and her dress fits this description although her daughters are more fashionable! Old photographs from the time of chapel gatherings show that many of the older ladies appeared to be still wearing their ‘Sunday best’ outfits and hats from some decades before. ‘Sunday best’ was definitely a feature of life in those days and even in the 1950s with new outfits for children for the Anniversary each year and I can remember that the men in church always wore smart suits and ties, the ladies dresses or costumes and often hats – no dressing down!

My great-granny Rose with her daughters. Copyright: Glenys Sykes

Weekly routines

Each week in earlier times apparently had routines. Monday was washday and nailmaking , Tuesday brewing and nailmaking, Wednesday and Thursday house cleaning and nailmaking, Friday ess-hole and grate cleaning, knife polishing and nailmaking, Saturday Window cleaning and nailmaking, Sunday   – preparing the Sunday dinner, church, chapel and Sunday school – no work, not even sewing! The days were long, starting at six and often not ending until 10pm. For women, all of this on top of bearing children, caring for and feeding them,  there was little time for rest. Men often worked during the day at outside jobs, in the quarry, mines or farms but also made nails when they got home.

Meals also followed a routine – Sunday, the joint, Monday cold leftover meat, Tuesday broth, Wednesday boney pie, Thursday stew, Friday faggots or tripe. What they would have thought of our supermarkets, online shopping and ready meals I do not know!

But Wilson Jones notes also that, in his words,’ Black Country people had “hearts as big as buckets”, they would laugh with the merry and weep with the sad. Neighbours would share the duties of a sick woman, share their meals, deliver each other’s babies. There was never any knocking at the door, they lifted the latch and walked in. They would draw a pint of home brewed beer for the visitor, be he a vicar or insurance agent. Brewing reached an art that no other district shared. Each home had its ‘secret’ upon how many hops or what kind of malt was to be used. The fermentation had to be produced by no synthetic yeast but from the ‘barm’ passed from one relation to another. The visitor would be handed the glass of beer after it had been inspected for clearness and he had to express his opinion that it was better than ‘so-and-so’s’  – their beer was too muddy, too sweet or too sour’.

Looking back

So – living in tiny overcrowded houses with earthen floors, no running water or sanitation, big families, polluted air, deadly diseases when no cures were available leading to high infant mortality and often early deaths, men working in dangerous jobs in mines and quarries or in the constant heat and grime of factories and the nailshop, children working in nailshops, mines, quarries and factories from the age of seven or so, few shops,  little money, little or no healthcare provision, plenty of hard work – our ancestors had tough lives, and few luxuries but often a strong faith and caring communities.  I am deeply proud to be descended from them.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

A ‘Fleet Marriage’ for a Rowley lad

While researching my 6xg-grandfather Edward Cole, some years ago, I had found what appeared to be his baptism in Rowley in 1680, the son of John and Joane Coal/Cole/Coles.  Spellings were flexible in those days as most people were illiterate and spellings varied with the priest or clerk who was making the record. Most people stayed within or near to their own communities and I think it is entirely possible that these Coles lived in or near Fingeryhole, marrying within the community, as they did for many future generations.

So I was very surprised a few years ago when Ancestry (where I keep my family tree) offered me a hint that Edward had been married in London in what is known as a Fleet Marriage. Ancestry hints can be useful but always need to be treated with caution and the original sources they refer to always have to be checked before I consider adding any information to my tree.

Feeling rather doubtful , I looked at the Fleet record for this marriage. But there was Edward Cole, a Nailer, marrying Diana Land in 1730. And in the Parish Records for Rowley Regis, over the next 27 years Edward and Diana Cole were baptising eleven children in Rowley Regis, so it does appear that this was the right marriage.

All sorts of queries arise. Why was a humble nailer from the tiny village of Rowley Regis in London? How did they meet? Edward was already fifty in 1730, so a very late marriage. Where was Diana from? Both of them were recorded at the time of the marriage as being from the Parish of Christchurch, Surrey . Why were they married in a Fleet Marriage? Most of these questions remain unanswered nearly twenty years after I first found out about this!

Fleet marriages or Fleet Registers: From the Middle Ages onwards, the ancient Fleet Prison was a prison for debtors and bankrupts and for persons charged with contempt of the Courts of Chancery, Exchequer and Common Pleas; it was also a place of confinement for persons committed from the Court of Star Chamber. It stood on the east bank of the Fleet River in London. More than 200,000 clandestine or irregular marriages were performed in London between 1667 and 1754. The area around the Fleet Prison was particularly notorious, hence the name ‘Fleet Registers’.  In the 1740s, over half of all London weddings were held at the Fleet (over 6500 per year) with a further thousand conducted at the May Fair Chapel.

By the late 17th century, provided that a couple exchanged vows and had some proof of this, then a marriage would be considered valid. Marriages by a form of ceremony conducted by an ordained clergyman, but without banns or licence, and generally not in a church or chapel, usually away from the parish of the bride or groom were termed clandestine marriages. The main appeal of clandestine marriages was seemingly for reasons of cost. Other reasons for their popularity included the avoidance of the need to obtain parental consent, and also to conceal embarrassing pregnancies.

The marriages performed at the Fleet involved all classes from London and the surrounding counties, but mainly catered for artisans, farmers, labourers and craftsmen from the poorer parishes of London, soldiers (including Chelsea Pensioners), and particularly sailors so this popularity with artisans would tally with Edward’s occupation as a nailer.

This drawing, copyright unknown, shows a Fleet marriage, not taking place within the Fleet prison but in the vicinity. The notebooks of the clergy taking the marriages are in the National Archives.

I can find no trace of Diana/Diannah Land anywhere before she marries Edward Cole, although there were Lands in Norfolk who had individuals over a period of years with the name Diana so that is a possible home area for her. Presumably she would have been about twenty or less when she married, as she had children for another 27 years.  If I have the correct Edward Cole, he was 50 at the time of the marriage so 77 when their last child was born – possible but unlikely, I suspect. He is the only Edward Cole baptised in Rowley Regis at that time.

Another possibility is that the Edward Cole who married at the Fleet was not the Edward Cole originally on my tree who was born in 1680. Going from his date of marriage to Diana (1730) and the dates of birth of his last child (1757), I would have expected his date of birth to be about 1705 but there is no Edward Cole born in Rowley in that period. Perhaps he was baptised nearby but if so, I have not yet found him. There are numerous other Cole births, the family was here and, from the fact that Edward and  Diana settled in Rowley and all their children after them, makes me think that there is a strong likelihood that Edward came from Rowley or at least had strong family links here.  So at present Edward and Diana are my earliest known ancestors in Rowley and many but not all of the Coles in and around the Lost Hamlets are descended from them.  However, Edward’s burial in 1766 seems to be the only mention of an Edward around that period.

I also puzzled about what a nailer from tiny Rowley Regis was doing living (presumably) in London, at least for long enough to meet and woo a bride. No doubt there were people then who got itchy feet and wanted to see the streets paved with gold, just like Dick Whittington, so perhaps Edward just wanted an adventure. Or – here it comes again – perhaps he travelled for work.

There was a family called Crowley in Rowley Regis in those times. They were nailmakers and iron mongers. The first Ambrose Crowley had a child baptised in Rowley in 1639 and the name appears in the Registers until well into the next century. One of the Crowleys moved to Stourbridge where he was a nailer and ironmonger and his son Ambrose moved to London where he became a hugely successful merchant , supplying nails and ironmongery to the Government and especially the navy. The navy used a lot of ironmongery! In the National Archives there is a lot of correspondence from this Ambrose Crowley, concerning the orders and deliveries.

I may do a separate article about Ambrose Crowley, later Sir Ambrose because he did have Rowley connections and he was obviously a very interesting man. However, I can’t definitely associate him with the lost hamlets!

He issued detailed instructions on how the nails he was buying should be packed (this document is still in the British Library)and it is clear that some of his supplies came from the Black Country, possibly through his father. Sir Ambrose listed all the kinds of nails made for him, with the marks placed on the bags before they were shipped to London. That the nails were transported in bags is plain from the detailed instructions he gave to his managers for ‘the bagging of Nails and Baggen’. He wrote:

“The unsizeableness of Baggen I have found to occasion Short and dumpling baggs or else extreme long so that it is impossible to regularly Pile them when at London. For remedy I do order my Baggen to be only of 2 breadths, namely 22 inches for weight na : Dock na : and Tile Pinns and for other sorts that will admit of a greater breadth to be 25 inches wide”. He then specified exactly how the bags should be cut and sewn to minimise waste of fabric and at the same time to ensure against any loss by leakage during transport. J Wilson Jones in his book says that in Rowley therefore, as soon as any one workman had made enough nails to fill a bag, his stock was weighed and his number put on a tally amd sewn up inside the bag, which was to be ‘well shaken’ before the end was ‘sewed up well not with too wide stitches’. To the outside of each bag the nailkeeper was to attach a tally of ‘seasoned white wood and holes burnt in for a fastening’. The words Crowley’s Best Tough’ were to be written on every tally with the mark appropriate to the nails inside as ‘Cowley’s Best Tough L7’ – Lead nails. So substandard nails could be traced back to the individual nailer, 17th century quality control! He certainly paid attention to detail, a very shrewd businessman.

He also set up a huge factory up on the Tyne.  There are numerous letters in the National Archives collections from him to the Government, requesting safe conducts for his named couriers and people making deliveries especially to naval dockyards, even for his lighterman who remained in London criss-crossing the Thames. The reason that he needed safe conducts was that this was the period when able bodied men anywhere near the coast were at risk of being press-ganged into the navy. Since Crowley’s business involved sending men frequently into precisely these areas to make deliveries, this would be a real hazard for them. He got his safe conducts!

When Sir Ambrose died in 1713, aged 54, he left over £100,000. He had premises in London at Greenwich and in Thames Street. His family continued the business and the naval contracts so it is more than likely that supplies from the Black Country continued to be sent to London.

This made me think about how the nails themselves would have been transported from their place of manufacture. From his factories on the Tyne Crowley apparently used ships. Were young men from Rowley recruited to escort the nails and other ironmongery by land to Crowley in London? Presumably, in the quantities he was selling them, they would have had to be transported by cart so they would be vulnerable to theft, so perhaps an escort was necessary. Perhaps Edward Cole took the chance to travel to the big city with nail deliveries and stayed a while or even visited regularly and got to know Diannah Land there.

Another possibility is that the Edward Cole born in 1680 worked for the Crowleys as a courier/nailkeeper, married and had children in London and that it was one of these children that married Diana Land. There was a marriage in  Jan 1704 between an Edward Cole and a Mary Downer at Southwark St George the Martyr who may, just possibly may, have been the parents of the Edward Cole, son of Edward and Mary Cole who was baptised in 1705, at St Martin in the Fields. This would fit with this scenario but there is no information in the register about their origins or abode and records are sparse at this early period.  So I may have a missing generation on my tree.

Edward Cole was buried in Rowley in 1766 and Diannah in 1770. They have many many descendants around Rowley.

All speculation on these connections but fun! 

The Granite Connections 2 – The Bedworth and Nuneaton Connection

Another place which appears from time to time in all of these quarrying communities as place of birth is Bedworth, near Nuneaton. I had noted some time ago from my own family history research that Nuneaton and Bedworth seemed to have various links with Rowley Regis. So, who shall I choose to look at with Nuneaton connections?

‘The Squire’

John Beet (1775-1844) who lived at Rowley Hall in the early 1800s and was known in Rowley as ‘The Squire’ was born near Nuneaton in 1775. I have a head start here as he was my second cousin 6xremoved, so I have already done quite a bit of research on him.

Rowley Hall 1893, Copyright unknown, drawing thought to be by H R Wilson, if details of Copyright are known please let me know.

In his will, proved in 1844, John Beet  left legacies to his cousins and family in Nuneaton in the event that his only daughter Elizabeth died childless (which she subsequently did. Her Clergyman husband contested the Will to try to prevent a substantial legacy going to the grandchildren of John Beet’s cousin but was unsuccessful, John had made very specific and unmistakeable provision for £3,000 to go back to his Nuneaton family although Rowley Hall and the mineral rights passed to the son of the clergyman by his first wife; he never lived there). John Beet’s Will makes it clear that he already had a substantial income from coal mining by 1844 and he disposed of his coal mining rights very carefully.

John Beet and his family have an impressive tomb still surviving in St Giles’s churchyard.

The memorial on one side of the Beet Tomb. John’s sister Elizabeth and her husband are also buried in this tomb and also his daughter Elizabeth, although apparently not her husband.

There have been a couple of mysteries for me about John Beet. First, how did he come to settle in Rowley Regis? His parents Thomas Beet and Sarah Dunn were married in Feb 1744 in St Philips in Birmingham. John was from and presumably raised in Witherley in Leicestershire.

I say presumably because John and his sister Elizabeth were the only two children of their parents, both baptised in Witherley but orphaned when John was six and his sister five.  I have the Wills of both John’s father and grandfather who both died in 1761 and both left what appeared to be substantial property to the two children. Thomas Beet Senior, John’s grandfather, describes himself as a Yeoman in his Will and left John  “my house and land situate and being in the parish of Halesowen in the County of Worcester now in the tenure of Cottrell together with all outhouses, edifices, buildings, Barns, stables, Yards, gardens, orchards, Backsides Homesteads, trees profits and appurtenances whatsoever thereunto belonging or in any wise appertaining. My will is that my grandson John Beet aforesaid take possession and enter upon the aforesaid estate when he arrives at the age of seventeen.”

It sounds as though it was a very substantial farm. So there was a first indication of connections not far from Rowley. Plus he  left John another house in Bond End in Hinckley, Leicestershire.

John’s father Thomas, who died a few months before his father, described himself as a Husbandman in his Will, (which is defined as a farmer dealing with animals), and had also left him his own farm in Witherley, again to take possession when he was seventeen – which would have been in 1792. His sister was also left substantial bequests, including a house and all of Thomas Senior’s domestic goods which again would come to her when she was seventeen, in 1793. In the meantime trusteeship and guardianship of John and his sister appears to have been vested in Richard Beet of Nuneaton, who was a cousin and Benjamin Kirkby who I think was John’s  brother-in-law.

So where was Sarah Beet, John’s wife and mother to the children? There was no mention of her in either Will so it seemed likely that she was dead. Or perhaps she had run away, never to be spoken of again? She was certainly not buried in the Witherley area at that time, where both Thomases were.  And she had been married in Birmingham but that could cover many surrounding places. There was no formal registration of Births and Deaths before 1837 so you are looking for burials, or possibly a Will. But a will would be unusual for a young married woman.

So, whilst writing this article, I decided to try one resource which I was not familiar with when I last looked for Sarah’s burial. I searched FreeREG. (This is slightly ironic as some of my readers will be aware that I have been transcribing Rowley Regis and Blackheath church registers for the last couple of years for FreeREG.) So I entered the dates of daughter Elizabeth’s baptism (5 Dec 1776) and Sarah’s husband’s burial (23 Apr 1781) – such a short period, only five years. I searched the whole country. There were only two entries found. One was in Sheffield, not very likely, I thought, no known connections with that area. Then I looked at the second entry. St Giles Church, Rowley Regis. Sarah was buried in Rowley Regis….. and I was then able to find a baptism of a Sarah Dunn, also in Rowley Regis. (Not transcribed by me, I’m pleased to say, I surely wouldn’t have failed to make that connection had I transcribed the record!! ) There was a loud clunk in my brain as various things dropped into place – that was John Beet’s connection with Rowley, it was his mother’s home.  I have a new line to explore! 

I wonder whether John and his sister may have been less than popular with their Nuneaton cousins, with whom they were probably brought up.  The family seems to have practised primogeniture, the eldest son got all or most of the land and property which might account for other branches of the family being poorer. Thomas Beet the elder, having made very generous provision for John and his sister, left twenty shillings each – £1 – to each of his other grandchildren in the Nuneaton area, a very nominal sum. 

 Elizabeth Beet had apparently moved to Rowley with her brother John and she married William Sprigg a Gentleman of Dudley, at St Giles on 11 Apr 1799, when she was 23 so presumably brother and sister were already established in Rowley by then.  When the Enclosure Act went forward in 1807-1808, John Beet, of the Hall Farm, was relieved of manorial dues under that Act and, giving his occupation as ‘butcher’ he purchased land at Whiteheath, adjoining his existing property.  He married a local girl Sarah Higgs in 1818, before starting mining and quarrying on his property sometime later.

But John’s Beet family in Nuneaton and Weddington were graziers, people who raised and traded in cattle, an occupation which often includes farming or the butchery trade or both. As graziers and drovers they would travel round the countryside, buying up cattle, taking them back to their own farms and then fattening them ready for slaughtering and butchering. This may have been why Thomas Beet Senior owned a farm in Halesowen, to raise cattle there. The Beets may not have been the only graziers in Nuneaton, there was a Graziers Arms there, now demolished but sited on the Weddington Road, next to the railway station where probably they moved stock by rail once the railways had been built. Presumably as graziers they had their known routes and regular suppliers. Nuneaton would have been well placed, near to centres of population in Leicester, Coventry and Birmingham. Another branch of his family later settled in Coventry where they were butchers and poulterers, all in the butchery trade. Nuneaton had easy access to farming country and excellent transport links, situated just off Watling Street.

This 1841 map, copyright unknown, appears to be based on the Tithe Map and shows that although Nuneaton had a long main street and appeared prosperous and busy, it is surrounded by pasture, perfect for raising cattle.

There was another Beet living in Rowley, in Tippity Green, my 4xg-grandfather Thomas who was also born in Nuneaton in 1764 so was a few years older than John Beet. He also moved to Rowley Regis, probably twice. I was not sure, at first, whether there was any connection between Thomas and John Beet because certainly their stations in life were very different, wealthy squire and labourer/pauper. In 1841, 1851 and 1861 Thomas was living in Tippity Green, probably in the Poorhouse there.

There is a Removal Order from the Poor Law authorities in Nuneaton in 1820 relating to Thomas who was widowed and his two young sons who were deemed to have no Right of Settlement in Nuneaton, that is they were not entitled to go into the workhouse there or to parish relief and they were removed, sent to Rowley Regis. (Many thanks to my fourth cousin Margaret Thompson for sharing this with me, Thomas’s son Joseph was our mutual ancestor). The reason for this settlement decision is unclear as Thomas was born and married in Nuneaton and his sons were born there. One reason might be that he had previously lived and worked in Rowley which meant that the Poor Law Authorities in Nuneaton could repudiate him when he fell on hard times.  He died in the Poorhouse in Tippity Green in 1852, aged 88 and was noted in the Census as being blind.  But it seemed such a coincidence that both came from Nuneaton. It took a lot of digging amongst records and sideways clues but in the end I was able to confirm that Thomas and John Beet were second cousins.

They must, in a village the size of Rowley, have known each other, even if John Beet, for all his wealth, made no specific provision for his cousin in his Will. I have wondered whether Thomas worked for John Beet at an earlier date which might account for him losing his settlement rights in Nuneaton.  Thomas’s son Joseph was living in Spring Row which was the row of tied cottages behind Rowley Hall in 1851 and 1861, working as a labourer, so perhaps Joseph also worked for the Beet family, John Beet’s widow continued to live at the Hall after her husband’s death, until her own death in 1861. But John Beet’s line died with his daughter, whereas his cousin Thomas’s persisted for much longer. Beet Street in Blackheath may have been developed by John’s widow, who gave her occupation as ‘owner of houses’ and certainly some of Thomas’s descendants lived in Beet Street for some years.

However, in his Will, John Beet made the following bequest:

“I give and bequeath unto the clergyman of Rowley Church and the occupier of Rowley Hall for the time being the sum of three hundred pounds. And it is my wish and I direct them to nominate and appoint under their hands in writing six proper persons to be trustees jointly with them for the purposes hereinafter mentioned, that is to say: Upon trust to invest the said sum of three hundred pounds upon freehold or governmental security and to crave the interest and proceeds thereof and give and divide the same unto and between such poor persons residing in the parish of Rowley as they or the major part of them shall consider fit and proper objects for relief, part in clothes and part in money. I hereby direct that the clergyman and occupier of Rowley Hall for the time being shall in case any or other of the said trustees to be appointed by them shall die or refuse or become incapable or unwilling to act are to appoint other trustees or trustee in the place of the trustee or trustees so dying or refusing or becoming incapable or unwilling to act so that with the clergyman and occupier of Rowley Hall there shall always be eight trustees.” Perhaps John Beet had his cousin in mind when he made that provision. I have not found any reference to this Trust anywhere else so have no idea whether it was implemented, amalgamated with another Trust or, at some point, wound up.

I was also interested to note that one of Thomas’s sons Daniel was recorded as a ‘Horse Doctor’ and as a horse dealer in Quinton and then West Bromwich in later years, carrying on the family association with the trading of animals.

Other Bedworth connections

But in looking at these migrations for work, I have discovered more things in common for Bedworth/Nuneaton and Rowley Regis – Bedworth was the site of large stone quarry, with dolerite amongst the rocks found there – more quarrymen!  Industries in Tudor Nuneaton included leather tanning and brick making. From the mid-16th century, there was also an ironworking industry. Furthermore, although coal mining began in the Nuneaton area as early as the 14th century it boomed in the 17th and 18th centuries. And there were coal mines in Bedworth, too. Did Thomas come to Rowley to work in the quarry or a mine? Did he move with John and Elizabeth or was he here first? Was he blinded here in an accident or was it simply a medical condition such as cataracts? I shall never know.

In the 1851 Census, 78 people living in or within 5 miles of Rowley Regis gave their place of birth as Bedworth and 101 as Nuneaton. Many of these lived in the Dudley, Tipton and Tividale area.  John Darby, 49, Engineer lived at the Brades and gave his place of birth as Oldbury so he was not far from home. But his wife Jane was born in Blaenavon, South Wales and also in his household was a May Darby, a widow of 73, perhaps John’s mother, who was born in Bedworth. What do these three places have in common? Ironworks!

Job Millichip, aged 51 was living in St James’s Terrace, Dudley, he was an iron stone miner, born in Bedworth but his wife and all of his children were born in Dudley. 

Two women Susan Darby and Mary Haygill who were in Dudley Road described their husbands as Boatmen, presumably away from home on the night of the census and both women gave their place of birth as Bedworth. Canals would also have been an easy link between the Nuneaton/Bedworth and the Rowley area. Certainly in the 1861 Census, Joseph Eaton, in Hurst Lane Tipton, gave his occupation as a boatman and his place of birth as Manchester. But his wife Harriet was from Worcester and their son Joseph, aged 2 was born in Bedworth. Those with boatmen ancestors, including my husband, know well that when families lived on the boats, children could be born anywhere on the canal and river systems!

I was interested to see that two men Thomas Arnold, 24 and Henry Beasley, 37, listed in Tipton in the 1851 census gave their place of birth as Nuneaton and both were hairdressers, not a common occupation locally. Henry’s son George, aged 15 was also listed as a hairdresser, also born in Nuneaton. 

There were other Beasleys who came from Nuneaton in the 1861 Census.  Another Henry Beasley, aged 29 was living in Lye Cross, close to the Rowley and Oakham quarries, and he was a Stone Cutter. His wife Elizabeth, was a ‘riband weaver’ and their three children under six were all born in Nuneaton, so they had probably moved here recently.  Their boarder John Lilley, 47, also a stone cutter was also from Nuneaton. A visitor Mary Lilley, perhaps John’s relative, was from Wolvey near Nuneaton and was also a ‘riband weaver’. Coventry, only a few miles from Nuneaton, was well known for ribbon weaving – another skill on the move!

In the 1861 Census, 60 people living within 5 miles of Rowley gave their place of birth as Bedworth and 113 more as Nuneaton. Most were coal miners or stone cutters, this time many of them were in West Bromwich. In Tipton, John Butler, aged 60, was a ‘Pork Dealer’, another instance of the meat trade originating in Bedworth.

By contrast, only a handful of people living in Bedworth and Nuneaton in 1861 gave their place of birth as Rowley Regis. Familiar Rowley names – Enoch Hipkiss, 22 a nailer; Jesse Parker, aged 15, born in Rowley but son of a coal miner born in Bedworth; Benjamin Baker, 49 and his son David aged 14, Captain and Boat Boy respectively of a canal boat called ‘Industry’, more evidence for the existence of a canal link;  Josiah Whittal, aged 50, a whitesmith. In Nuneaton, John Smith, 16 year old was the Rowley born son of a Colliery Clerk born in Sedgley.

So a familiar pattern emerges, though not as pronounced as with Mountsorrel, of workers moving from Bedworth and Nuneaton to the Black Country for work, marrying locally and then often moving on or moving back. Two members of the ‘I remember Blackheath and Rowley Regis’ Facebook page have already told me that members of their family moved to or came from Bedworth/Nuneaton.

As I transcribe more censuses I may revisit this topic if any more of interest emerges.

The Clergy Connection

And there is one more link between Rowley and Nuneaton. The Reverend George Barrs, the notable Curate of Rowley Regis from 1800-1840, was also born in Caldecote in 1771, four years before John Beet. Caldecote is 2 miles north of Nuneaton and less than three miles from where John Beet’s family lived. 

Copyright unknown.

A coincidence? Perhaps! Might they have been at school together? There may be school records somewhere, I shall investigate. There is a family tree online for George Barrs, I shall also look at that to see whether I can find any links to the Beet family. Might the Squire have had some influence in the appointment of the curate and chosen someone he knew of from home? It does not seem unreasonable.

One more post to come on people moving for work – to Threlkeld in Cumberland, definitely connected to stone quarrying. But I have more research to do on that so it will not be for a while. Again, members of the ‘I remember Blackheath and Rowley Regis’ Facebook page have already mentioned this in comments, any further information would be very welcome.

The Granite Connections 1 – The Mountsorrel and Shropshire Connections

I have noted from Census entries for the Lost Hamlets over several decades that while most residents were from the village or the hamlets themselves, some people came from other areas. If a place recurs several times when I am transcribing, I look the place up to see whether I can work out the link and I often find that these places had granite quarries, just like Rowley.  Researching around this theme, I have found so much information that I am splitting the results into three posts.

To illustrate this migratory pattern, I have concentrated initially on looking at one family, the Hopewell  brothers who came to Rowley from Mountsorrel in Leicestershire, fifty miles away, in about 1841. There were numerous other migrant workers but I picked this family because there were three brothers to work on. I do not appear to be related to them, at least so far!

In the 1851 Census Thomas Hopewell (aged 30) and his brother Charles (24) were living in Tippity Green, probably lodging at the Bull’s Head. They both gave their occupation as Stone Cutter and both were born in Mountsorrel, Leicestershire. Thomas had already been living in Tippity Green in the 1841 Census, but the 1851 Census is the first which actually shows the place of birth, usually County and place. The 1841 Census does not show relationships within a household and just says whether someone was born in the County or not. In Rowley’s case, this means that someone could be born as close as Dudley, parts of Whiteheath or Gorsty Hill, Oldbury or Halesowen and still tick No so this is not a good indication of how far people had moved.

Thomas Hopewell had married Mary Trowman on 18 Sep 1843 at St Giles Church. His occupation then was given as a Stocktaker, perhaps at the quarry but there is no way of knowing for sure.  Mary gave her abode at the time of the marriage as Club Buildings and she was the daughter of Benjamin Trowman, a Jews Harp Maker. Thomas signed the Register so he was literate, as presumably he would need to be as a Stocktaker but Mary made her mark as most people in Rowley did at the time.

The marriage registers tell us that the father of the brothers was Septimus Hopewell and his occupation was given as a ‘Frame work slitter’ who does not appear ever to have moved from Leicestershire.  That would have been a very unfamiliar occupation in Rowley, and I think he was actually a frame work knitter. The framework knitting trade was common in Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, making stockings but, like nailmaking, work at home which was very badly paid which is perhaps why Thomas and his brothers sought other employment. I have put a link at the end of this article to an interesting website about the conditions of Framework knitters.

There was at least one other Hopewell brother in the area, George Hopewell who married Mary Ann Masfield/Masefield in Rowley in 1842. George was also living in Tippity Green at the time of the marriage and was also a stone cutter. He died aged 47 in 1862, leaving his widow with his stepson. They do not appear to have had any other children.

Charles Hopewell, the youngest brother I have found in Rowley,  married Elizabeth Lowe in St Giles in 1852 but died aged only 32 in 1860 leaving his widow with five young children. Lowe is another Rowley name which will recur in this family tree. The children from Charles’s marriage appear to have stayed in the Rowley/Blackheath area although their mother had at least two more children and then remarried in 1870 to John Brooks, living almost next door to the Gadds in Ross. The Hopewell name in this part of the family appears to have been spelled as Oakwell in various records for some time, a hazard to the illiterate (and to the family history researcher)!  If you say Hopewell and drop the ‘h’ you can hear how that might happen. Later some of the children used the name Hopewell and some Oakwell and some swapped between the two…

Both George and Charles Hopewell were buried at St Giles.

In 1861 Thomas and Mary were living in Hawes Lane, Rowley with five children:  Annie, born 1844, Sarah, born 1847, George born 1850, Elizabeth born 1853 and Septimus born 1860, all in Rowley Regis. He was now described as a Stone Cutter.

Living next door to them were Joseph Lowe and his sons including Samuel, then aged 20 and Joseph, aged 18, both of whom feature later in the Hopewell family story. Thomas and Mary’s eldest daughter Annie married Samuel Lowe in Dudley in May 1861 and they stayed in Rowley for some years after her parents moved to Shropshire although her later children were also born in Shropshire.

Mountsorrel in Leicestershire, where the brothers came from, is described even today as ‘The village renowned for its granite quarry, the largest in Europe…  and the local area is built on granite. Organised quarrying of the granite in Mountsorrel Quarry began in the late eighteenth century, and the quarrying trade had around 500 employees by 1870.’ So there was certainly expertise in granite quarrying there.

Clee Hills, Shropshire:

There were apparently numerous granite quarries around the Clee Hills in Shropshire at this time, most of which are long closed now. Interestingly, there were a few Hopewells living in the area in the 1841 and 1851 censuses but I have not been able to link them to the brothers.

This map shows the locations of Mountsorrel in Leicestershire, Bedworth in Warwickshire, Rowley Regis and Cainham in Shropshire, all places which had a notable interchange of workers and their families.

Copyright Google maps.

By 1871 Thomas, Mary and three of their children were living in Cainham (now Caynham), Shropshire, thirty three miles from Rowley.

Most people in earlier censuses in Cainham were involved in agriculture but by 1871 there were many stone cutters, most of them incomers.  There is no mention of a quarry at Cainham in current information online about the village but in the 1871 Census there was a Quarry House and ‘The Stone Inn’ in Cainham, which are pretty good clues that there was a quarry operating then.  Quarry House was occupied by  a Quarry Man, his two lodgers were from Leicestershire – one from Mountsorrel and one from Sileby which is a nearby village, both stone cutters.

Next to the Stone Inn were the ‘New Buildings’, eight or nine houses, presumably built specially to accommodate incoming quarry workers,  as  six of these were occupied by stone cutters or sett makers, mostly born in  the Mountsorrel area  of Leicestershire, one from Bedworth in Warwickshire  plus a Clerk of Works who almost certainly also worked at the quarry. Amongst these were a sprinkling of wives and children from other granite producing areas, including several who gave their place of birth as Rowley Regis.

A few doors along the street from the New Buildings Thomas and Mary had living with them their sons  George aged 20, Septimus aged 11 and Benjamin aged 7. All the children were born in Rowley, plus two boarders.  Joseph Bissell, a familiar Rowley family name, aged 20, listed as from Staffordshire (but in all likelihood the Joseph Bissell who was baptised at St Giles on 26 Sep 1849, the son of Joseph and Mary Ann Bissell of Hawes Lane). Another lodger in their household was a Thomas Baum, born in Leicestershire, the Baum name recurs later in the Hopewell family history, too. Thomas Hopewell, his two older sons, George aged 20 and Septimus aged 11, and their two lodgers were all described as ‘stone cutters’. 

Next door was Thomas Rudkin, also born in Leicestershire and also a stone cutter, with his wife Jane and his daughter Sarah who were both born in Rowley Regis, three further children born in Cainham and his brother-in-law Thomas Parkes and mother-in-law Mary Parkes, both born in Rowley Regis.  Samuel Sharpe, aged 22, a few houses away was also a stone cutter, he was born in Mountsorrel, his wife in Cainham. A real mixture in Cainham of Mountsorrel , Cainham and Rowley Regis origins.

By the time of the 1881 Census, Thomas and Mary, both now 60 , were still living in Shropshire but had moved three miles along the road to Hope Baggott. Their son Benjamin, now 16, was still at home and their son George, with his wife Hannah and children Mary, aged 8, Joseph aged 6 and Anne, aged 2 were living next door. All of the men were stone cutters.

Interestingly, although George had been with Thomas and Mary in Cainham in 1871, his wife Hannah and two older children were all born in Rowley Regis, clearly in the interim George had gone home to Rowley to get married and stayed there for long enough to have two children before they all m oved to Shropshire. His bride Hannah Bissell, daughter of Joseph Bissell, lived in Tippity Green, so still in the Tippity Green area. It took me some time to find the record of their wedding in 1872, as the bridegroom’s name was recorded as Oakwell!  Was Hannah the sister of the Joseph Bissell who was lodging with the Hopewells in Cainham a year earlier? Yes, she was. What you might call close family links!

By 1891 Mary Hopewell was living in Clee Hill, Shropshire, a widow, although I have been completely unable to find a record of the death or burial of Thomas Hopewell in this period. Mary had two lodgers aged 20, Albert Varnham (her grandson by daughter Elizabeth) and James Masefield, both stone breakers.  The Masfield/Masefield/Macefield name has occurred in this family before, too – Mary’s brother-in-law George Hopewell was married to Mary Ann/Maria Masfield in 1842 so it is possible that there is a family connection here too. 

In 1901 Mary was still living independently in Cainham, still with two (different) lodgers, one of whom was born in Rowley Regis, sadly I cannot read his name but he was, as you might expect, a stone cutter.

Mary Hopewell, nee Trowman, died in March 1907, aged 88 and was buried at St Paul’s, Knowbury.

I have created a family tree for the Hopewells on Ancestry; if anyone has connections and would like to see it do let me know and I will give you a link. At present the tree is private.

I have not yet been able to trace all the Hopewell descendants although I know that Septimus Hopewell moved to Pistyll, near  Pwllheli, where he was working as a sett maker in 1881 and lodging with Daniel Baum and his family, (in 1871 a Thomas Baum had been lodging with his parents). Septimus appears to have been with his brother Benjamin in the Bradford area by 1901, both working as sett dressers. He returned to Cainham later and was living with his sister Elizabeth and her family there in 1911. He had then returned to Rowley Regis by 1921, still single, when he was living at 1 Tippity Green, as a lodger and working as a quarryman, full circle for this Hopewell! He appears to have died in the Dudley Registration District in 1930.

There are some connections with the Bradford area where some of the family worked as sett dressers at one point but I have not done a great deal of research on that. Again, the granite dressing skills, this time used in road making, are the connecting factor.

Several of the Varnham family, children of Elizabeth Hopewell, later moved to the Alnwick area of Northumberland, where most of them were sett makers! Follow the granite…

A moving pattern

So there is a pattern in the mid-1800s of stone cutters moving from Leicestershire, in particular the Mountsorrel area, to Rowley Regis, marrying local girls and having children there and then moving on to other quarrying areas.  The family patterns felt rather like ribbons intermingling on a maypole at times when I was trying to sort them out. Suddenly a familiar name would pop up again!

 It was obviously very common, even for families with several children , to accommodate and living in what were probably quite small cottages, for young single men to be taken in as lodgers, though it appears that in the case of the Hopewells they were often related or in close friendship groups.

Stone cutters were clearly not simply labourers, there are other entries in the censuses for labourers, both general and agricultural but stone cutters and sett makers, wherever their origins, are listed by their skill.

This photograph (brought to my attention by Ronald Terence Woodhouse) shows workers in the Hailstone Quarry and shows the size of some of the rocks they were working with. Imagine the effort needed to manually reduce that very hard rock down to small evenly shaped setts. Hard and dangerous work. It is also used on the front over of Anthony Page’s book on Rowley in Old Photographs and he notes that it was from the Ken Rock Collection: the photograph itself refers to BlackCountryMuse.com. Whichever owns the copyright, due acknowledgment is made!

Whether these movements of workers happened because the quarries sent recruiters to particular areas which had the skills they needed is not clear or whether word was spread by the men themselves that work was available or a combination of both. Some of these skilled workers settled in their new areas and many moved on again to another granite quarrying location where their skills would have been at a premium. If you have ancestors in Rowley who you know came from Leicestershire, or who subsequently moved to Shropshire, this may well account for it!

I will do another post about the Nuneaton/Bedworth connections to Rowley.  

And there was another migration wave, a little later on in the century , which I will write about in another piece – The Threlkeld Connection, to follow soon!

Other resources:

The Framework Knitters 1821