Family history – Page 2 – rowleyregislosthamlets.co.uk

Families of the Lost Hamlets – the Hill family 5 – Elizabeth

Here is the next instalment about the Hill family, about Elizabeth, the next daughter of Timothy Hill and Maria Hipkiss. It was going to be about Elizabeth and her sister Jane but was too long and complicated before I had even finished Elizabeth so Jane will be in the next instalment.

ELIZABETH HILL (1806-1892)

Elizabeth was the first member of the Hill family that I researched when I started my family history journey in 1980. She is my great-great-great-grandmother. And, because she lived in Gadd’s Green she was perhaps the start of my interest in that place and therefore planted the seed which grew into this One Place Study all these years later. So I have a fondness for Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was born, probably in 1806 or thereabouts and was baptised on 16^th March 1806 at St Giles, the daughter of Timothy and Maria Hill. There were no details in the Register at this period of abodes or occupations.

On 26 December 1825, at Tipton church Elizabeth married Thomas Moreton (thought, by me at least, to be Ralph Thomas Moreton, born in Harborne – see my previous article on this[i]). The witnesses were Henry Whittall, her brother-in-law, who had married her older sister Mary in the same church two years before. The second witness was Thomas Shorthouse.

Many marriages at this time took place on Christmas and Feast days as they were the only days working men got holiday. The 25^th December 1825 was a Sunday so presumably men got the Monday off instead.

I do not know why several weddings of Rowley people took place at Tipton at this time, there may be family connections in this case.

Another Moreton wedding at Tipton

And in November 1826, another wedding took place in this church which was of Phebe Moreton, (sister to Ralph Thomas Moreton) who married James Hipkiss. Another Hipkiss connection! The witnesses at this wedding were Thomas Moreton (brother of the bride and my 3xgreat-grandfather) and another familiar name – Thomas Shorthouse, presumably the same Thomas Shorthouse who had witnessed Elizabeth’s wedding a year earlier! Thomas Shorthouse does not appear on my family tree. Yet!

James and Phebe Hipkiss then settled – where else? In Finger I’ the Hole, later known as Gadd’s Green, just a couple of doors away from David and Ann Priest, and Phebe’s brother and sister-in-law Thomas and Elizabeth Moreton and their family.

Phebe Moreton, (also born in Harborne parish to Francis and Ann Moreton, like Ralph Thomas) had given birth at the Poorhouse in Rowley in 1822 to a ‘base-born’, an illegitimate son Thomas, according to the record of his baptism on 24 February in 1822. So Phebe had been in the Rowley area for several years. And Harborne was not as far away as it sounds – the parish of Harborne stretched right out to parts of Whiteheath so the family might have been there. This Thomas was living with Phebe and James on Turner’s Hill in 1841 so he had evidently not been cast off when his mother married.

Back to Elizabeth:

Elizabeth and Thomas Moreton had several children. The first, Emma, was baptised on 15 October 1826 at Dudley St Thomas, the daughter of ‘Thomas and Betsey Morton of Dixon’s Green, labourer’. Dixon’s Green is just past Oakham on the way to Dudley, so very close to home. Their next daughter Mary Ann was also baptised at St Thomas on 16 August 1829 but this time the parents were shown as Thomas and Elizabeth Moreton of Rowley. After that came Maria (1831) and Ralph Thomas (1832) and William, my great-great-grandfather who was baptised on 2 April 1837 . William was a posthumous baby, his father Ralph Thomas had died and was buried on 2 October 1836 at St Giles, aged 36 and of dropsy, according to the burial register. So Elizabeth was left with five children to bring up.

However Elizabeth went on to have three more children in the years after Thomas’s death – Elizabeth in 1839, Eve in 1842 and Edward in 1844. No clues exist in records as to the identity of their father but family legend has it that all three were the children of George Smith, of Oakham (just up the hill) who was the famous (or infamous) hangman. The other legend about him is that he sold, as grisly souvenirs, pieces from ropes he had used to hang people, allegedly giving rise to the phrase ‘money for old rope’.

Elizabeth continued to live in Gadd’s Green until 1871 when she is found living in Siviters Lane with her daughter Mary Ann, Mary Ann’s husband Joseph Taylor and their five children. But by 1881, she was back in Gadd’s Green, living with her daughter Eve and her husband Joshua Taylor and nine of their fourteen children. Elizabeth was also living with Eve and her family in Gadd’s Green in 1891.

Of Thomas and Elizabeth’s children:

Emma Moreton (1826-1895)

Emma was baptised on 15 October 1826 at Dudley St Thomas. Her parents may have been living in Dixon’s Green at this time. She had an illegitimate son John Moreton,( sometimes later known as Priest or Redfern – it’s confusing!) John was baptised on 13 June 1847 at St Giles. There is no indication who his father was.

Emma married Thomas Priest,( sometimes known by his step-father’s name of Redfern, just to add to the complications), on 10 June 1850 at Dudley St Thomas. Thomas was the illegitimate son of Ann Maria Priest, he was born in Rowley in 1826 and was living with his mother and stepfather on Turner’s Hill in 1841, listed as Thomas Priest. In the 1851 Census, Emma and Thomas were living in Gadd’s Green with Emma’s son John Moreton, now aged 4 and shown as Priest, their eldest child Sarah, then aged 1, in the household of Ann Hipkiss, aged 73 and Paul Hipkiss aged 32, although I have not yet worked out whether there is a connection with the other Hipkisses in this family group. It seems quite possible if I can just untangle it!

By 1861 Thomas and Emma had moved to Turner’s Hill where they lived between Thomas’s Redfern step-father Joseph Redfern and his half-brother – also Joseph Redfern. In this census Thomas Priest is listed as Thomas Redfern but as his family of Emma, John and their other children are living with them, it is clear that this is the correct family. I suspect that, living in a family group, the Enumerator Richard Bate who was local, perhaps knew that Thomas had grown up in the Redfern family, probably thought of Thomas as a Redfern and listed him accordingly! Or he may just have made an error in transcribing his notes.

Thomas and Emma Priest had nine children together: Sarah’s birth was registered in the first quarter of 1850, so just before Thomas and Emma married and she was registered as Moreton so she was illegitimate. It is quite possible though that Thomas was her father and she appears as Sarah Priest in 1851, 1861 and 1871Censuses. However, I have not been able to trace Sarah after that 1871 Census, neither death, censuses nor marriage as either Priest or Moreton so she will have to remain a mystery for the moment.

Thomas and Emma Priest’s other children were Joseph (1854), Thomas (1857), Ann Maria (1858-1858), Elizabeth (1859), Ann Maria (1859), Mary Ann (1862), Eliza 1864) and Emma (1867-1944).

Mary Ann Moreton (1829-1886)

Mary Ann, Thomas and Elizabeth’s second daughter, was baptised on 16 August 1829 at Dudley St Thomas.

This is getting to be a familiar start to these pieces – it appears that Mary Ann’s daughters Hannah (1853) and Sarah (1856) were illegitimate, born several years before Mary Ann married in 1859. Certainly the birth registrations for both girls showed no name for the father and were both registered under the name Moreton, although later they appear to have used the surname Taylor, their stepfather’s name. I cannot find a baptism for Hannah or Sarah. Although the family were living next door to the Methodist chapel between Perry’s Lake and Gadd’s Green at this time so it is quite possible that they were baptised there. Records for that chapel have never been traced.

I also noted the birth of an illegitimate Eliza Moreton in the second quarter of 1852 in the Dudley Registration area and her death in the last quarter of that year. I could not find a baptism for this child, but I found her burial at St Giles, aged 8 months, of Gadd’s Green. So I did not know who the mother of this child was. I was tempted to send for a digital copy of the birth certificate, as this would tell me. But frustratingly, the GRO Website told me that technical reasons, a digital copy was not available so I would have to send for a more expensive paper or .pdf copy. Then I thought of buying a digital copy of the Death Registration as with luck, this would fill in the gaps. And it did. Eliza was the daughter of Mary Ann, the first of her children. She had died at only 8 months of a ‘bowel complaint’ with no medical attendant involved. Poor baby.

There was also a baptism on 10 July 1859 at St Giles, for an Emma Moreton, daughter of Mary Ann Moreton of Gadd’s Green. It was one of two Emma Moreton’s born that year, both with no father shown so perhaps two of the Moreton sisters had daughters called Emma that year. Since this child does not appear with Mary Ann or in the area in the 1861 Census or thereafter, I suspect that she may be the Emma Moreton whose Death Registration was in the last quarter of 1860, aged 1. This Emma Moreton was buried at St Giles, on 11 November 1860, aged 1 year and 5/6, that is 1 year and ten months which would put her birth in something like September 1858, which fits with the second illegitimate Emma Moreton registered that year in the last quarter of the year. I have not yet discovered who the other illegitimate Emma Moreton was!

It seems that it was quite usual for the Moreton girls to have one or two (or more!) illegitimate children before they got married, whereas their mother had three after she was widowed! With Mary Ann, however, she had four which may all have been the children of one relationship or may suggest a certain promiscuity, or even that Mary Ann was following the ‘oldest profession’ before she married. I hope I do not offend any other Hill family historians with that observation but the family patterns do seem to indicate a fairly relaxed attitude towards extra-marital encounters and the outcomes!

Mary Ann Moreton then married Joseph Taylor, at Dudley St Thomas on 18 December 1859. Thomas was a Boilermaker and gave his abode as Dudley. The witnesses at the marriage were Eve Moreton, the bride’s half sister and Joshua Taylor. In fact it was a double wedding because Eve Moreton married Joshua Taylor the same day and Mary Ann and Joseph were the witnesses to their wedding! From their respective father’s names Joshua and Joseph were not brothers but may well have been related in some way. Research continues on that.

In 1861 Joseph and Mary were living in Gadd’s Green and all the surviving children were shown as their children and listed under Taylor but by 1871 they had moved to Siviters Lane where Mary Ann’s mother lived with them for a time, I also found the family there in 1881 although by that time Elizabeth Moreton had returned to Gadd’s Green to live with daughter Eve.

In all, Joseph and Mary family consisted of six children, five daughters and one son (only the latter four of these were apparently Joseph’s). These were Hannah (1853), Sarah (1856), Ann Maria (1864), John (1866), Elizabeth (1868),and Mary Ann (1869). (Hannah later married a Job Taylor, too – the mind boggles, I have not done any work on that generation yet!)

Mary Ann Taylor, nee Moreton died in 1886 and was buried at St Giles on 8 November 1886, aged 57 and ‘of Rowley village’. Joseph Taylor died in 1901 and was buried at St Giles on 7 November 1901, aged 70.

Maria Moreton (1831-?)

In the course of my researches into infant births in the Hill family, I found a baptism at St Giles for a Sarah Moreton on 26 Jun 1854, an illegitimate baby and her baptism gives her mother’s name as Maria Moreton of Gadd’s Green, who was Mary Ann’s next sister. Unfortunately I can find no trace of Maria after that census. It is possible that she married but if so, I cannot find the Civil Registration entry for it. Nor can I find a death. Perhaps Maria went into service elsewhere, although I have not found her in any censuses, I suppose it is possible that she emigrated, although the family seemed to stick very close to Rowley. Nor can I find any trace of Sarah after her baptism, no census entry in the next census in 1861, no death entry, just another brick wall. Watch this space!

Various trees on Ancestry appear to confuse Mary Ann Moreton and Maria but they are definitely separate people, both appear on the 1841 and 1851 Censuses and were each baptised on different dates.

Ralph Thomas Moreton (1832-1894)

Thomas Moreton was born to [Ralph] Thomas and Elizabeth Moreton in 1832, this is the approximate year which computes from six censuses and his death registration.He was not baptised, however, until 2 April 1837 when he was baptised at Dudley St Thomas at the same time as his younger brother William. By this time his father was dead, having died in October 1836. In most records he was recorded as Thomas Moreton but not all, at baptism he was baptised as Ralph Thomas, his death was registered as Ralph Thomas and he named his son Ralph Thomas, it seems to have been a family name!

Thomas was at home in Gadd’s Green with his mother and siblings in the 1841 and 1851 Censuses. On 6 September 1857 Thomas married Mary Ann Siviter at Dudley St Thomas.

Mary Ann Siviter was a minor, according to the record and no details were given of her father in the marriage record so she was presumably illegitimate.

Mary Ann’s year of birth has been a puzzle to work out. In all of her records Mary Ann gave her place of birth as Rowley Regis. But her age varies between censuses. In 1841, she was five months old, giving a birth year of 1841which is, let’s face it, most likely to be accurate, it is difficult to make a mistake of several years at that point! And in 1851, she was ten, then in 1861, 1871, and 1881 her age gives a year of about 1835 – but in those years she was shown as being the same age as her husband Thomas so this may have been an error or whoever was completing the form genuinely believed they were the same age. In 1891, the birth year is about 1841, in 1901, she was noted as 57, giving 1834 again and in 1911, it is back to 1841. But in 1911, she is listed as an Old Age Pensioner and to claim that she would have had to prove her date of birth. So it seems likely that this is the correct year. And there is an illegitimate Mary Siviter born in the last quarter of 1840 which would tally with the 1840/1 date. And this would make her seventeen at the time of her marriage so she was indeed a minor.

And I did find a baptism for a Mary Ann Siviter, born to Judith Siviter. This baptism was at St Giles on 12 November 1843 and Judith Siviter was the only parent listed. In 1841 Judith Siviter was living in Treacle Street which was in Springfield, with three children Elizabeth, aged 5, Samuel, aged 3 and Mary Ann. Judith was also from a Rowley family. So Mary Ann grew up close to the Moretons, who were living just up the hill in Gadd’s Green.

[Ralph] Thomas and Mary Ann Morton (at about this point the name began to be spelled without the ‘e’) lived in Cock Green, later described as Dudley Road, Springfield and had eight children. These were: Emma (1853), John (1855), Eliza (1860), Joseph (1864), Ralph Thomas (1866-1923), Sarah Ann (1869), William (1871) and Samuel (1877).

Ralph Thomas Morton’s death was registered under that name in the first quarter of 1894 and he was buried at St Giles on 28 March 1894, aged 58 and of 102 Dudley Road. His widow Mary Ann Morton died in February 1913 and was buried at St Giles on 18 February 1913.

William Moreton 1837-1899

William Moreton was my great-great-grandfather on my dad’s side. He was baptised on the 2 April 1837 at Dudley St Thomas. William’s father had been buried in October the previous year so he never knew his father. But his family continued to live in the Hill enclave in Gadd’s Green!

In 1841 and in 1851 the Moreton family, with the widowed Elizabeth as the Head of the household, were in Gadd’s Green, in 1841 with a couple living with them as lodgers. In 1851 Frederick Whittall, Elizabeth’s nephew and his wife and two young children were living with them. It must have been quite crowded with twelve living there. William was 15 in 1851 and working as a coal miner.

On the 4 April 1858 William married Elizabeth Beet at St Giles and their first daughter Mary Jane (also known as Polly) was born in August 1858. William and Mary eventually had thirteen children: Mary Jane (Polly) (1858), Emma (1861), Ralph Thomas (1863-1863), Elizabeth (1864-1865), Ann Maria (1866-1866), Alice – my great-grandmother – 1868-1902, Joseph (1871-1871), Sarah (1872-1872), William (1873-1928), Hannah (1876-1953), Ann Eliza (1878), Minnie (1881-1956, and Edward (1885).

Elizabeth Beet was born in 1839, the daughter of Joseph and Mary Ann Beet (nee Parkes). The Beet family were originally from the Nuneaton area but had been settled in Rowley Regis since the early 1800s. They were distantly related to John Beet, the ‘Squire’ who had also been born near Nuneaton and who lived at Rowley Hall until his death in 1844. Whether it is coincidence that Elizabeth’s father at one time lived in Spring Row which was apparently ‘retainer’s cottages’ for Rowley Hall or that they later lived in Beet Street, I do not know. Certainly John Beet’s widow was described in 1851 Census as the ‘owner of Land and houses’ so it is possible that she developed the land off the Causeway that became Beet Street, and allowed Joseph to rent a house there. Or it might simply have been that the street was named for a local family as so many were in Blackheath – Darby Street, Hackett Street, etc. My distant cousin (through the Beet family) Margaret Thompson will no doubt have more information on this than me! Our great-grandmothers were sisters.

In 1861, William, Elizabeth and Mary Jane and Emma were lodging in Rowley village. By 1871, they had moved to the fast expanding new town of Blackheath and were living in the Causeway, although this may have been what later came to be known as Beet Street, which was off the Causeway, as this was where they lived later. In 1881 and 1891 they were living at 14 Beet Street.

Health – Drainage and water supplies in the area

You may note from the lists of children that several of William and Elizabeth’s children died in infancy in the 1860s and 1870s. I do not know the specific reasons for the individual deaths but am reminded of a Report which I found in The National Archives a couple of years ago. This Report, entitled “Dr Ballard’s Report to the Local Government Board on the Sanitary Condition of the Registration Sub-District of Rowley Regis” and was dated April 1875. This Report was commissioned as part of the Government’s efforts to prevent Cholera outbreaks. Fortunately it is a typed copy of the report, rather than manuscript. Most of the correspondence in this file is manuscript so I’m not sure how this came to be typewritten but very grateful it is!

I will at some point do an article on the whole report because it gives a detailed account of how our ancestors in Rowley Regis were living but one paragraph had stuck in my mind. It is discussing the contamination of water sources in various places but singles out Causeway and Beet Street in Blackheath.

It reads:

“In one well in this village [Blackheath] where the surface of the water stood at a level of 8-10 feet from the surface of the earth, I was told that there was scarcely any water to be had in the summer time. It was situated in ‘The Causeway’, in an undrained, unpaved yard abounding in surface nuisances [Nuisances in this context has a specific meaning relating to sources of contamination], with a large accumulation of sewage water in one corner, and a row of leaking overfull privies at one side of it. In Beet Street, the pump well for the supply of a row of cottages is situated in a narrow passage between the cottages and a row of nail-shops. Slops and sewage were stagnant in an imperfect channel close to the pump, and the inhabitants told me that the water could not be drunk on account of its sickly and bad flavour and that they got water where they could. Not far from this place in High Street, I found in a yard a well about 40 feet deep to the surface of the water but water was trickling in from the surface soil through the brickwork at a depth of about 6 feet. The quality of this water thus polluting the well may be estimated from the fact that a few yards off from the well there were a privy ashpit full of excrement, an enormous heap of filth, and accumulations of sewage water, besides other surface nuisances.”

This Report was written by an experienced medical professional who had carried out inspections all over the country and prepared many such reports. The language may read more like a sensationalist report in a newspaper but I found it sobering to realise the terrible conditions our ancestors lived in and surprising, quite honestly, that so many survived at all. It is not a criticism of the inhabitants who were clearly doing what they could to obtain potable water and in another section Dr Ballard notes “Many of the cottages in the District are clean and decent, and if it were not for want of proper drainage and of good water supply, and for the abominable privy nuisances and filth about them, would be wholesome residences enough.”

So perhaps the high rate of child deaths should be viewed in the light of these findings. The yards the children, often barefoot I imagine, (and adults) had to walk through and play in were a constant threat to their health, it seems and there would have been little clean water for washing. It was to be more than twenty years after this report before any substantial improvements to drainage and water supply in the area were made and then only at the continuous strong urging of the Government officials. Cholera, enteric fever and similar diseases continued to be a problem in the worst areas during that time, the great frustration of the officers of the Government Health Ministry is apparent in the correspondence in the files at Kew between them and local officials.

Willliam died and was buried at St Giles on 18 March 1899, aged 63 and of Blackheath. In 1901 Elizabeth was living at 28 Hackett Street, a widow and the head of the household, with her sons William and Edward and her married daughter Minnie and Minnie’s husband Richard Woodward and their son Aaron. Elizabeth died in 1909 but I have not been able to find a burial for her.

Elizabeth’s other children

Now we come to Elizabeth’s other children Elizabeth (1839), Eve (1842-1912) and Edward (1844). As previously noted, I have been told that the father of all three of these children was George Smith, the Dudley hangman, who lived at Oakham. I have no proof of this but family stories often have more than a grain of truth.

Elizabeth 1839- ?

Elizabeth appears with her mother in the 1841 and 1851 Censuses at Gadd’s Green, aged 2 and 12 respectively.After that things are less clear. I suspect that it is this Elizabeth who married Frederick Parsons in 1860 at Dudley St Thomas, where no details are shown for the father of the bride.

In 1861, this couple are living in Blackheath where Frederick is shown as being born in Chadwich, Lancashire. However, in the 1841 and 1851and several later Censuses, there is a Frederick Parsons of the correct age who was born (and living in the first two censuses mentioned) in Chadwich, Bromsgrove, Worcestershire! Which is just a few miles away and seems a lot more likely than Lancashire.

I am fairly confident that this is the right couple as, in 1861, they have a lodger who is Pheby Moreton, Elizabeth’s aunt, previously living on Turner’s Hill. But by 1871 Pheby is living in the Causeway, as the head of her own household.

But of Frederick and Elizabeth Parsons, I can find no trace after that. I can find no children born to the pair, nor a death registration for a Frederick of the right age.

In the 1871 and 1881 Censuses, there is a Frederick Parsons of the right age, born in Bromsgrove, living with a William Parsons and his wife in Aston, Birmingham. But he is described as unmarried. Could the marriage have failed and Frederick moved away? Or had Elizabeth died? In 1882 this Frederick Parsons married Harriet Haynes in Aston and they continued to live in Erdington with their several children until I last found them in 1911. By 1921 Harriet was a widow but I have not been able to identify a likely death registration for Frederick. There is a death of a Frederick Parsons in the Aston Registration District in the first quarter of 1910 which is for a man of the right age but since our Frederick was alive in the 1911 Census and indeed completed and signed the Census form, it cannot be him. Another unresolved life.

So what happened to Elizabeth Parsons, nee Moreton? I cannot find any trace of her after 1861. She does not appear to have died or remarried and I cannot find her under either name in any of the later censuses. But, unless they obtained a divorce, how was Frederick able to re-marry? Perhaps, as people often did in those days, they split up, pretended to be unmarried or widowed and went through a form of marriage with someone else. Or Elizabeth may have been living with someone else, recorded under his name, there is no way of checking that. But she does not appear to be with any of her close family in later censuses so must remain a puzzle.

Eve Morton 1842-1912

Eve was baptised, the daughter of Elizabeth Moreton, on 16 March 1845 at St Giles. A note on the entry in the Baptisms Register says that she was aged 3 years but I cannot find any trace of her birth being registered in or around 1842. She was baptised on the same day as her future husband Joshua Taylor, I noticed when I looked at the register, who was six years old then, she was three! Their first meeting?

The rest of her life, however, is much better documented.

Eve Moreton married Joshua Taylor at Dudley St Thomas on 18 December 1859 when she would have been 17. The witnesses at the marriage were Mary Ann Moreton , Eve’s half sister and Joseph Taylor. In fact it was a double wedding because the two couples married the same day and were the witnesses to each other’s weddings! From their respective father’s names Joshua and Joseph were not brothers.

Eve and Joshua had twelve children, according to the 1911 Census (which asks how many children have been born alive to their marriage): Fanny or Frances (1860), Elizabeth (1861), Mary (Polly) (1862), Ann Selina (1864), George (1866), Elizabeth (1869), Emma (1870), Samuel (1873), Sarah Ann (1875), Eleanor or Ellen or Nelly (1879), Anne (1883), and Harry (1884). This last child is shown in the 1891 and 1901 censuses as the child of Eve and Joshua but his birth registration and baptism show that he is the son of Fanny, their eldest daughter. This leaves only eleven children that I have found birth registrations for. There are Birth and Death Registrations for a John Taylor in 1865 who may be the twelfth, although I cannot find a burial to confirm this.

The 1901 Census shows a Henry Taylor (aged 17), Mabel Taylor (7) and Ivan Taylor (1) all as children of Joshua and Eve. In fact, as noted above Henry is the son of Fanny, and was baptised as such on 16 April 1884 so he was their grandson. Ivan, whose birth was registered in 1899, again as an illegitimate Taylor birth, was baptised as Ivan Gould Taylor on 4 June 1899, the son of Nellie Taylor of Gadd’s Green so he was also a grandson.

Mabel Taylor proved difficult to allocate to one of the daughters, although her birth was registered in April 1894 again as an illegitimate Taylor birth, I could find no baptism for her to give me a clue, although I found quite a lot of other information. Mabel married Charles Knight (of Perry’s Lake, of course!) on 13 June 1915 at St Giles. He was killed in a mine explosion and buried at St Giles on the 27 October 1915, only four months later, his abode given as Perry’s Lake. There are numerous reports of the accident and a couple of reports of the funeral, one of which notes that Mabel was supported by her mother but the mother is just about the only person in the report who is not named! Mabel probably needed that support because she was heavily pregnant, giving birth to their daughter Edith Eva Knight on 19^th November 1915, only a couple of weeks later. Mabel re-married on 28 April 1919 at St Giles, to – ah, another Ingram connection! – Ernest Reuben Ingram of Tippity Green. All very close to home as usual. At the time of the marriage, Mabel’s abode was shown as the Portway Tavern, Perry’s Lake. They had a son Jack in 1920.

So who was Mabel’s mother? I had to buy the birth certificate to get the answer. Mabel’s mother was Emma Taylor, Eve and Joshua’s daughter, so again she was a grandchild, not a daughter as shown in the census.

But it does appear that Eve and Joshua were very happy to help raise their grandchildren and it is possible that some of them believed Eve and Joshua to be their parents.

Eve Taylor, nee Moreton, died and was buried at St Giles on 20 June 1912, her address given as Gadd’s Green where she had been born and where she lived her entire life. Joshua Taylor had died the previous year and was also buried at St Giles, on 26 Sep 1911, aged 71.

Edward Moreton 1845-1909

The last lap of what has been a complicated research project and the last of Elizabeth Moreton, nee Hill’s children.

Edward was baptised on 16 March 1845 at St Giles, the son of Elizabeth Moreton, father unknown but possibly George Smith.

Edward married Mary Ann Nock in the last quarter of 1867, at Dudley St Thomas. Mary Ann’s son George had been born in the Dudley Registration District, in the first quarter of 1867, so it was not clear whether Edward was his father. Nevertheless George is shown in the 1871 Census, in the Causeway, Blackheath, listed as George Morton, living with Edward and Mary Ann and their daughter Elizabeth, then 7 months old. They had also had a son Joseph in 1869 who had died in the same year.

Mary Ann Moreton died in the second quarter of 1872, aged 28. I have not been able to find a burial for her but it seems quite likely that she was buried at St Paul’s, Blackheath and those records have not yet been added to FreeREG. Baby Elizabeth Moreton also died in the third quarter of 1872, leaving only George of their children.

Edward re-married on 16 August 1874 at Halesowen, to Sarah Stokes. Sarah had been born in Cradley where she and Edward later lived but her parents Benjamin Stokes and Mary Bridgwater were both born in Rowley Regis.

I think this is the same Edward, he was aged 30, a miner and a widower which all seem to fit. In the 1881 Census this Edward was shown as born in Rowley which also fits. With Edward and Sarah in Overend, Cradley were Sarah’s son Arthur Stokes, aged 9 and Thomas (3) and Harry Morton (9 months).

Not listed is George. Nor can I find any trace of George Moreton or Morton after the 1871 Census. I cannot find a death, a burial, marriage, a census entry, he has disappeared. Perhaps he was taken in by a relative, an aunt or grandparent and appears in censuses under their name, but as I am not sure which of the several Mary Ann Nocks was his mother, I am unable to look into this at the moment.

At least, that is what I wrote then, anyway. But, as you know, I enjoy a challenge…

Where was George?

I thought that perhaps George had been taken in by family after his mother’s death in 1872 and that I might find him with family in the 1881 Census. And it has become clear that this extended family is usually very ready to take in any number of grandchildren!

But which family? I had checked all the likely Moreton parents, grandparents and siblings, no sign of George there. Hmm, perhaps his mother’s Nock family? Since I knew Mary Ann’s approximate year of birth was 1845, (from the 1871 Census and her age at death) I looked for the baptism of a Mary Ann Nock in Rowley in 1845 and there was, on 16 March 1845, a baptism of a Mary Ann, daughter of Hannah Nock of Yew Tree. This tallied with a birth registration in the last quarter of 1844 for an illegitimate Mary Ann in Dudley Registration District. So this seemed a reasonable possibility to look at first.

Now I already had some Nocks in my tree so I rootled around those and found that there was one branch which was in Yew Tree Lane. And, curiously this family – William Nock, a nailer of Yew Tree and his wife Mary had had three daughters baptised in one ceremony on 1 July 1845, with their ages shown in the Register entries. All were adults or at least teenagers, Eliza (13), Martha (17) and Susannah (24). This was just a couple of months after Mary Ann had been baptised. Another family, Titus and Phoebe Newton, a farmer of Blackheath, also baptised six adult children the same day and three other teenagers were also baptised. How odd. But no Hannah listed there with the other baptisms.

So I checked the 1841 Census for William’s family, and there was Hannah listed, aged 15 and with her younger sisters Martha and Eliza. The 1841 Census, remember, rounds ages down to the next five years so Hannah could have been up to 19. Were Susannah and Hannah the same person? I have sometimes seen Rosanna spelled Roshannah in local registers, might this name have been the same, a pet name, abbreviated?

So I decided to investigate Susannah a little more. She married Joseph Portman on 5 December 1847 in Christ Church, Oldbury and I was able to find them in 1851 in New Ross, Blackheath with their son William James, in 1861 in Shepherd’s Fold (very possibly the same place as 1851 with a new name and both of them yards away from Yew Tree Lane and Susannah’s family), with daughters Elizabeth, Susanna, Parthenia and Ellen, in 1871 in Halesowen Street, Blackheath with the same girls plus Samuel, and in 1881 now living in Coombes Wood Cottages, Gorsty Hill, with Ellen, Samuel, and – oh, look – her grandson George Nock, aged 14 and a labourer at the Tube Works! Bingo! So perhaps George was not Edward’s son, and his grandmother took him in when his mother died.

However George had survived to marry Mary Ann Oliver in 1896 at St Giles and they had six children, eventually moving to the Quinton area. George was a socket maker at the Tube Works, in the 1911 census he names this as the Anchor Tube Works but the enumerator has crossed the name out and added ‘Iron and Steel’. So perhaps not Coombs Wood, although he may have worked there earlier when he was living in Coombs Wood Cottages. I have been unable to trace any of the family after the 1911 census and wonder whether they emigrated as there is a George Nock, mechanic, on a ship sailing to Canada in April 1914. But it was satisfying to track George down to his maternal family and expand that Nock twig on the family tree.

Back to Edward and Sarah Morton who lived most of their married life in Overend, Cradley and went on to have more children, nine in all. These were Thomas Henry (1878), Harry (1880), Mary Elizabeth (1882), Leah (1885), Harriet Lily (1886), Katie Ann Eliza (1888), James Edward (1890), Howard (1892) and Francis William (1896). In the 1911 Census Sarah, by now a widow, states that she had eleven children in this marriage, of which one had died but I have been unable to find any other birth registrations. She may have included her son Arthur in her total. The family continued to live in Cradley until at least 1911.

There is a death registration for Edward Morton of a similar age in 1909 in the Stourbridge Registration District which I think is this Edward but I have not been able to find a burial for him. Sarah died in 1927, aged 75 but, again, I have not found a burial record for her.

ELIZABETH MORETON, nee HILL died in February 1892, fifty six years after her husband and was buried at St Giles on 14 February, aged 87 ‘of Gadd’s Green’. She had had 8 children and at least 71 grandchildren, most of them staying in the lost hamlets, or in Rowley village and Blackheath.

You really could not be much more a part of the Lost Hamlets than this family.

The next instalment is about Jane Hill, the next sister.

[i] https://rowleyregislosthamlets.uk/2024/11/03/chipping-away-at-the-brick-walls/

Families of the Lost hamlets – The Hills 4 – John and Timothy Hill, a side branch!

JOHN HILL 1826-1896

Ann Priest nee Hill appears to have had an illegitimate son John who was baptised on 22 October 1826 at Dudley St Thomas, described in the Register as the ‘son of Ann Hill of Rowley’.

In the 1841 Census John was living with John and Jane Hackett in Perry’s Lake. John and Jane Hackett already had six children at that time so again, the house must have been fairly crowded and one wonders why they also took in a lodger. The answer quickly becomes apparent when I realised that Jane was Ann Hill’s sister, married to John Hackett in 1828. More of Jane elsewhere. But John was still very much in the care of the Hill family.

The next event I can find for John Hill (who is my first cousin 4x removed, through Timothy Hill) is his marriage to Fanny Cole, also of Perry’s Lake, (who is also my first cousin 4x removed but through Edward Cole) on 19 October 1851 at Dudley St Thomas. They had five children: Thomas (1852), Phoebe (1856), Edward (1859), Joseph (1861-1864) and John (1866). John and Fanny remained in Perry’s Lake for the rest of their married lives, Fanny only moving a little way away after John’s death.

John Hill died on 4 January 1896 and was buried at St Giles on the 8th January, aged 70, of Perry’s Lake. Probate was granted to his wife Fanny in February 1896 in the sum of £50.

Fanny later moved to Hailstone Terrace, Tippity Green and was living there in the 1901 Census, (where she was wrongly recorded as Frances, she had actually been baptised as Fanny) with her daughter Phoebe Ann and Phoebe’s second husband Alfred Brewer. Incidentally this was next door to none other than Reuben Ingram, who with his wife Mary Maria, Timothy Hill’s half-sister, had witnessed the marriage of John’s brother or half-brother Timothy all those years before.

Fanny Hill, nee Cole died in 1908 and was buried on the 11^th April at St Giles, aged 80 and her abode given as Tippity Green – she had never lived more than half a mile from her roots in the Lost Hamlets.

TIMOTHY PRIEST OR HILL 1830-

Timothy was something of a mystery to me for a long time. Timothy is listed in the household of Ann and David Priest in the 1841 Census. The 1841 does not give relationships but he is the first of the children listed as aged 10 (and children are shown with their actual ages in the 1841, not rounded up or down). As Ann and David were married in November 1830, it would be reasonable to assume that he was their eldest son.

[There is another Timothy Priest, son of Benjamin and Sophia Priest of Old Hill who was born in the same period in 1828 and many of the references I have found in my research relate to him so are not listed here. A marriage in Dudley in 1851 to Susannah Penn was for Benjamin’s son and a death of a Timothy in 1852 (suggested by another tree on Ancestry as being this Timothy) was for a child aged less than a year, so not our Timothy again.]

I could not find my Timothy Priest anywhere in the 1851 Census when he would have been about 20. But there was no death or burial recorded for any other Timothy Priest in the whole country between 1841 when he was present with his presumed family in Gadd’s Green and 1851 when he is not.

But there was someone called Timothy living with David and Ann Priest in the 1851 Census at Gadd’s Green who was aged 22 and a coal miner but his name is shown as Timothy Hill and he is listed at the end of the family list along with John Hill who was 24. As related earlier, John was the illegitimate son of Ann Hill, and I have puzzled during previous researches about where this Timothy Hill fitted in to the Hill family tree as I could find no baptism for him in the area.

Now I wondered whether Timothy was also an illegitimate son of Ann? David Priest and Ann Hill were married in November 1830 and Timothy was said to be 10 in the 1841 Census so born in about 1830 or 1831. So it is quite possible that he was born in 1830 before that marriage, was shown as Priest in the 1841 Census and reverted to the name of Hill later. This was before Civil Registration began so there are no clues to be found there. I cannot find a baptism under either name nor trace that Timothy to any other family.

But to all intents and purposes Timothy Priest, having appeared in the 1841 Census, disappears without trace after that date.

Interestingly, I then found a marriage on FreeREG for a Timothy Hill on 11 September 1853 at Dudley St Thomas, when he married Hannah Slater of Dudley, he was of full age (21 or over). There is no information entered in the Register for the father of this Timothy which implies that he was illegitimate. He was a miner and his abode was given as Dudley which fitted with the missing Timothy. (Remember that parts of Turner’s Hill and Oakham came under Dudley parish and many members of the Hill family used Dudley St Thomas for baptisms and marriages). One of the witnesses to this marriage was Reuben Ingram and the second was Mary Priest. And where was Reuben Ingram (born in about 1833 so pretty much a contemporary of Timothy Hill) living in the 1851Census? Why, on Turner’s Hill, just a few hundred yards from the Priest family. Was the Mary Priest the Mary Maria Priest who was the daughter of David Priest and Ann Hill, so a half sister to Timothy Hill/Priest? It seems likely to me. I later discovered that Mary Maria Priest married Reuben Ingram just three months later on 18^th December 1853 at Dudley St Thomas when the witnesses were apparently Timothy Hill and Hannah Slater (which is slightly odd as she was Hannah Hill by then but it takes brides a while to get used to their new names!) so the ties are strong.

The presence of these two, both of Gadd’s Green and Turner’s Hill as witnesses to this marriage made me consider that Timothy Hill and Timothy Priest might be one and the same person.

At the time of their daughter Eliza’s baptism at St Giles on 26 November 1854, Timothy and Hannah Hill were shown as living in Tippity Green, so very much in Hill home territory. By 1861, Timothy was living in Peartree Street, Old Hill, (another address which recurs in my research on this family) with Hannah and their children Eliza (1854), David (1856), John (1858) and Elizabeth (1860). Again, interesting names, especially David which may have been a nod to Timothy’s stepfather. Many of the men living in Peartree Street in that census were miners, either in coal or in stone mining so they may have moved to be near the mine where Timothy was working. In the 1871 Census, the family had moved to Halesowen Road, Old Hill with the same children and also an Elizabeth and a Stephen Slater, all born Rowley Regis, these latter two were the mother and brother of Hannah.

In 1873 there was a death registered for a Timothy Hill of the right age and a burial at St Luke’s, Reddal Hill which gave his abode as Old Hill. Hmm, could this be him? I could not find my Timothy Hill in any other records after this date.

So I splashed out and bought the digital image (£3.00!) of this Timothy’s death certificate to see whether there were any clues there. And oh, yes, there were clues, worth every penny, whoop, whoop! The place of death was Old Hill, the date of death the 19^th February 1873 and the occupation of this Timothy as Colliery labourer, all of which fitted my existing information. The cause of death was ‘chronic bronchitis’, poor Timothy who had been a miner all his working life.

But the real bonus of this certificate for me was when I reached the information about who registered the death. I saw that the death was registered not by his wife Hannah as I expected but by Ann Priest of Gadds Green, Rowley Regis. The very person I had suspected was his mother! Perhaps she had helped to nurse Timothy in his chronic illness. So far as I am concerned this is the clincher which confirms my theory – which documents the definite connection between Timothy Hill in Old Hill and Ann Priest nee Hill in Gadd’s Green.

So these were John and Timothy Hill, illegitimate sons of Ann Hill with no clue as to their fathers. But remaining very much part of the family of Timothy and Maria Hill, it seems and adding another nine Hill great-grandchildren to the tally in Perry’s Lake and Old Hill.

Families of the Lost Hamlets – the Hill family 3 – the older girls, Mary and Ann

MARY HILL (1801-1882)

Mary Hill was the oldest daughter of Timothy and Maria Hill. She was baptised on 12 January 1804, at St Giles on the same day as her next sister Ann. The Register entry notes that she was 2 years and 6 months old so must have been born in mid 1801. It appears that this branch of the Hills could be a little haphazard about getting their babies baptised!

The next event of note in her life was her marriage on 17 November 1823 to Henry Whittall, which took place at Tipton St Martin church. It was quite a grand building, erected in 1795-1797, so probably quite a contrast with the already dilapidated St Giles.

Henry was a Rowley Regis man, too and was baptised at St Giles on 24 March 1805, the son of James Whitehall and Phebe Downing, both good Rowley surnames. Whitehall and Whittall along with several variations seem to be interchangeable in records at this period. There were several weddings at Tipton involving the Hill family at about this time and Henry Whittall is named in many family weddings of the Hill family as a witness.

The Whittall name, I know, has persisted in the village. There was a Rita Whittall in my year at primary and secondary school so Whittalls were certainly still around in the 1960s and may well still be. This is perhaps not surprising as by my reckoning Henry had many male descendants who remained in the village and immediate area.

Henry and Mary Whittall had nine children: Frederick (1825-1915), Sarah (1825-1893), Eliza (1828-1829), Emma (1831-1896), James (1832-1879), Eliza (1835-1883), Thomas (1837-1903), Mary (1840-1853) and Fanny (1844-1913).

The family lived in Perry’s Lake in the 1841 Census where Henry was listed as a nailer. Alas, in 1848, Henry died, of dropsy according to a note in the Burial Register, and he was buried at St Giles on 19 November 1848, aged only 48, leaving Mary to raise their children. Mary continued to live in Perry’s Lake until her own death in 1882.

Of their children:

Frederick Whittall (1824-1915)

Frederick was born in late in 1824 or very early in1825, he was baptised on 16 January 1825 at Dudley St Thomas. He married Mary Ann Whitmore in Oldbury in 1846 and they had six children Ann (1848), Henry (1850), Eliza (1853), Joseph (1857, Mary (1863 and William (1866). They lived in Gadd’s Green at first but by had moved to Blackheath by 1861, living in 1871 in the Causeway and then in in Powke Lane for the next three censuses. Mary Ann died in 1895 and was buried at St Giles. Frederick re-married in 1897at Holy Trinity, Old Hill to widow Sarah Adams, nee Lowe. Sarah had been married three times before Frederick and had several children with each of her previous husbands, though none with Frederick – her family tree is, shall I say, very complicated… Frederick Whittall died in 1915 and was buried at St Giles on 6 April 1915, at the age of 91, his abode given as 46 Oldbury Road..

Sarah Maria Whittall

Sarah was born in 1826, or at least baptised on 26 March 1826 at Dudley St Thomas. She married John Blakeway, on 10 August 1845 when she was just 20, at Christ Church Oldbury, in 1851 they were living in Hawes Lane. They had five children, William (1848), Sarah Ann (1850), James (1857), Henry (1860) and Samuel (1861). John Blakeway was a Boiler Maker or Boiler Smith and this may have been why the family moved to Ross by 1861 and later to High Street Blackheath to be nearer his employment. Sarah died in 1894, John in 1906, both were buried at St Giles.

Eliza Whittall

Poor little Eliza was baptised on 1 Feb 1829, at Dudley St Thomas. She died of ‘chin cough’ (whooping cough) and was buried at St Giles on 2 August 1829, aged 1.

Emma Whittall

Emma was baptised on 12 Sep 1830, at Dudley St Thomas. She married William Jarvis, a widower, on 28 June 1852 , also at Dudley. They had seven children: James (1853), Henry (1854), William (1856-1861), Thomas (1859), Caroline (1861), Mary (or Polly) (1863), and David (1872). The family lived with Emma’s mother in Perry’s Lake in 1861. In 1871 William Jarvis appears to have been living in a lodging house in Dudley. He does not appear again in censuses with his family and must have died between the 1881 and 1891census, as Emma was described as a widow in the latter but I have not been able to identify an exact date for his death. So it seems likely that Emma and William were separated. Emma continued to live in Perry’s Lake until her death in 1896. I have not been able to find burial details for either Emma or William.

James Whittall 1832-1879

James was baptised on 12 August 1832 at Dudley St Thomas. He married Caroline Hill, his first cousin by his mother’s brother Joseph Hill, on 15 May 1865 at Dudley St Thomas. They lived in Siviters Lane where they had two children Eliza Whittall (1870) and John Fred Whittall (1875). Caroline had also had an illegitimate child Joyce before her first marriage in 1857, and a daughter Patience in 1859 by her first husband Joseph While (1833-1861). James Whittall died in 1879, aged 47 and was buried at St Giles. He had not moved beyond Rowley Village. Caroline subsequently married John Payne in 1881when she moved to Hackett Street, Blackheath, and later Powke Lane.

Eliza Whittall

Eliza was baptised on 29 March 1835 at Dudley St Thomas. She married Abraham Parish at Dudley St Thomas on 13 November 1853 and in 1861 they were still living in Tippity Green. They had seven children George (1855), Alice (1857), Sarah (1859), Charles Thomas (1860), Eliza (1864), Abraham (1866) and Mary Maria (1871). By 1871 the Parishes had moved to Grout Street, West Bromwich where they kept a pub and they remained there until Eliza’s death in 1883, aged 49. She was buried in West Bromwich.

Thomas Whittall (1837-1903)

Thomas was baptised on 24 January 1836 at St Giles. He married Phoebe Cole (also from Perry’s Lake) in 1861 and they had ten children: Kate or Katherine (1862), James (1863), Elizabeth (1866), Mary J (1869), John (1871), Edward (1874), Alice (1877), William (1878), George (1881) and Isaac (1884). In 1871 they were living in Siviters Lane, until 1891 when they were at 89 Rowley Village. In 1901, their address was shown as 87 The Village, so they may have moved one door along or the houses may have been re-numbered. Or the enumerator may have made a mistake! Phoebe died in 1900 and was buried at St Giles on 10 January 1900, having just seen in the new century. She was 57. Thomas died in 1903 and was buried at St Giles on 16 December 1903, aged 64, his address still given as 87 Rowley village. Another branch of the family who did not move beyond Rowley village.

Mary Whittall

Mary was baptised on 6 December 1840 at St Giles. In 1841 and in 1851 Censuses she was at home with her family, in 1851 at the age of 10, already listed as a nail maker, no doubt supporting her by then widowed mother. So there would have been six of them nailmaking, a crowded workshop if they were all working together at home. Mary died and was buried on 8 May 1853 at St Giles, aged 13 and Perry’s Lake, according to the Burial Register which added that hers was an ‘Accidental Death’. Curiously her death was registered in the West Bromwich Registration area, not Dudley so she did not die at home. The West Bromwich Registration area covered Oldbury so her death may not have been in West Bromwich itself. I have not been able to find any reports of an Inquest or details of this accident and am resisting the temptation to buy her death certificate!

But if anyone knows what happened to poor Mary, I would love to hear about it!

Fanny Whittall

Fanny was the youngest child of Henry Whittall and Mary Hill. She was baptised on 19 July 1846 at St Giles and would have been only two years old when her father died in 1848. In 1841 and in 1851 Censuses she was at home with her family, in 1851 when she was six, she was the only member of the family who was not listed as nail making but nor was she listed as a scholar so presumably she was not attending school. By 1861, still living at home in Perry’s Lake, Fanny was listed as a nailer although her older brothers James and Thomas had now become miners, rather than nailers.

On the 25 Dec 1863 Fanny married Henry Thomas Hemmings (later known as Thomas) at Dudley St Thomas. Their first three children Sarah Ann Hemmings (1864), Martha Susannah (1867) and Harry (1870) were born in Rowley Regis but by 1871 the family were living in Bordesley, Birmingham and their next two children Eliza J (1872) and John T (1875) were born there. The family remained in Birmingham, in Deritend and later Aston for the rest of their lives, Fanny dying there in 1913 and Henry Thomas in 1919.

Later years of Mary Whittall, nee Hill

Mary’s age is correctly stated in the censuses in 1841, 1851, and 1861. But in 1871, when her daughter Emma and her family were living with her, Emma was shown as the Head of the household and Mary’s age as 74. So a few years had been added. In 1881, Mary was now listed as the head of the household, although Emma was still living in the house and this time Mary’s age was shown as 84. Which was at least consistent with the previous census.

It seems to me that these small changes merely reflect the fluid living arrangements which seem to have been a theme of the Hill family in the hamlets. In the following year, when Mary was buried at St Giles, the Burial Register lists her age as 88 so she had acquired yet another four years in only one year! But the truth is that in those days people did not generally keep such accurate records of their age and some may not have known their exact age. In fact Mary was 81. But she was one of the several Hill sisters who lived long lives.

So Mary and Henry Whittall gave Timothy and Maria Hill nine grandchildren, the vast majority of whom stayed very close to home, in the hamlets, in Rowley or Blackheath. And of those seven grandchildren who lived to child-bearing age, they in turn gave Timothy and Maria forty two great grandchildren, the majority again staying in the area.

ANN HILL (1804-1890)

Ann Hill was baptised (and probably born) in 1804.

Ann had an illegitimate son John in 1826 and another, Timothy in about 1830. They are the subject of a separate article.

She married David Priest on 30 November 1830 at Old Swinford. At first I had my doubts about whether this was the right Ann Hill but checking the entry on FreeREG I saw that one of the witnesses was her brother-in-law Henry Whittall, popping up again, and by 1841 David and Ann were living in Gadd’s Green, in what appears to have been an extended family group of various Hills and in-laws.

David Priest gives his place of birth as Rowley Regis but he is another whose age varies from one record to another. In the 1841 Census, his age was shown as 35 which means that, since adult ages were rounded down in that census to the nearest 5 years, that he could have been anything from 36-39, giving a birth year between 1802 and 1805. In the 1851 Census his age is given as 40 which points to 1811but this is very much the outrider and may have been a recording error. In 1861 his age is shown as 58 which gives a birth year of about 1803. His death registration and burial record in 1869 show his age as 65 which brings us back to 1804.

There is only one baptism for a David Priest in this period that I have been able to find and this was for a David who was baptised at the Park Lane Chapel, Cradley Heath in 1807, the son of Joseph and Elizabeth Priest of Rowley Regis, Elizabeth nee Sidaway. Entries in this nonconformist register include people from Dudley and Kingswinford so it seems that either people travelled to Cradley to worship or the Minister travelled around the area, baptising children when he visited, rather than immediately after their birth, as tended to happen in the Church of England. Another child of Joseph and Elizabeth, Abraham, was baptised in 1814 and recorded in the same register, with, again, the abode of the parents given as Rowley Regis. To add to the confusion, it appears that there was another Joseph and Elizabeth Priest couple in Rowley Regis one or perhaps two generations earlier. And, of course, they all used the same names for their children…

Ann and David Priest had five children listed in censuses: Timothy –see separate article- (1830-1873), William (1832-1907), Mary Maria (1834-1925), Elizabeth (1836-1858), and Ann (1841-1926). As described in a separate article Timothy was Ann’s son but almost certainly not David’s.

David Priest died in 1869 and was buried at St Giles on 28 July 1869, aged 65 and of Gadd’s Green. Ann lived in Gadd’s Green her whole life, until her death in 1890. She was buried on 16 February 1890, the burial register entry says that she was 88 and her abode Gadd’s Green.

Of their children:

William Priest (1832-1907)

William married Mary Bowater (1831-) on 28 November 1864 at Dudley St Thomas, and then moved to Dog Lane (later known as Doulton Road) where they lived with his in-laws. Mary had already had an illegitimate son William in 1855 and a daughter Elizabeth in 1860, father or fathers unknown. William remained living in this road until his death in May 1907, when he was buried at St Giles, aged 75. He and Mary had four children – Sarah Jane (1865), John (1867), Ellen (1869) and Sarah (1872).

Mary Maria Priest (1834-1925)

Mary who is also been mentioned in the article about John and Timothy Hill, married Reuben Ingram, on 18 December 1853, a marriage witnessed by her half-brother Timothy Hill and Hannah, whose marriage Mary and Reuben had witnessed in the same church just three months earlier. Reuben and Mary had eight children: Elizabeth (1859), Jane (1860), John (1861), Mary (1864), Robert (1867), Reuben (1868), Hannah (1873) and Ann (1875).

In 1861 Reuben and Mary were living with their children Elizabeth and John, with Mary’s parents David and Ann Priest in Gadd’s Green. They were still in Gadd’s Green in 1871, though no longer with Mary’s parents. In 1881 they were in Perry’s Lake, as they were in 1891 and 1901. In 1911 their address is shown as 15 Tippity Green but as the previous address shows in census returns as the first house in Perry’s Lake, it may well have been the same house! That was also the address shown in the Burial Register when Reuben was buried on 30 May 1919, aged 86. Mary Maria outlived Reuben by a few years and was buried at St Giles on 20 November 1925, ‘aged 92, of Tippity Green’ (the Burial Register actually has Perry’s Lake added in brackets so their house was apparently right on the border, I suspect that there was no gap between the two settlements!).

Elizabeth Priest (1836-1858)

Elizabeth was one of the few Hill girls not to live to a great age. She died of Typhus Fever in March 1858, of Gadd’s Green, aged 22 and was buried at St Giles on 7^th March.

Ann Priest (1841-1926)

Ann had a daughter Sarah Ann who was baptised on 24^th August 1862 and another daughter Phoebe who was baptised on 16^th November 1865, at St Giles with their abode given as Gadd’s Green. Both daughters appear in the 1871 Census, living with Ann and her mother at Gadd’s Green. Also in the house as a lodger is Joseph Leech, a farm labourerwhose place of birth was shown as Cheltenham in Gloucestershire. Ann married Joseph Leech on 15^th February 1874 at Dudley St Thomas.

Ann’s illegitimate daughter Sarah Ann Priest married Joseph Westwood Smith in 1885 (witnesses Reuben Ingram and Phoebe Priest, just in case I was wondering whether this was the right Sarah Ann!) and they had five children, living in Perry’s Lake and Tippity Green thereafter, within the Hill stronghold.

Her other illegitimate daughter Phoebe Priest married Edward Hopewell or or Oakwell or Brooks in 1890 at Reddal Hill. They had four daughters. They lived in Gadds Green, (with Phoebe’s mother Ann and her husband Joseph Leech) and Tippity Green until Phoebe’s death, at the age of 50 in 1916. They lived in Ross and Shepherds Fold. Readers of previous posts may remember that I did a piece on the Hopewells/Oakwells in the early days of this blog. At that time, I did not think that I had any connection with this family – but I was wrong.

After her marriage, Ann and Joseph Leech had two sons Joseph Richard in 1875 and David in 1878. Sadly they both died and were buried at St Giles on the same day 10^th February 1878, aged 3 and 1.

Without buying the death certificates it is not possible to know why these infants died at the same time although there are various possibilities, including childhood illnesses such as measles, diphtheria and whooping cough which frequently proved fatal in those days.

Ann and Joseph Leech’s daughter Ellen was born shortly afterwards in the July/Aug/Sept quarter of 1878. Fortunately she survived infancy but I see that on the 1911 Census there is a note that she had a ‘crippled leg’ which she had had all her life. Perhaps this was why Ellen never married and she died quite young at the age of 35 and was buried at St Giles on the 13^th December 1913, when her abode was given as Tippity Green.

The grandchildren and great-grandchildren tally again

So Ann and David Priest gave Timothy and Maria Hill five grandchildren, the vast majority of whom stayed very close to home, in the hamlets, in Rowley or Blackheath. And of those five grandchildren who lived to child-bearing age, they in turn gave Timothy and Maria twenty-eight great grandchildren, the majority again staying in the area. Making seventy great-grandchildren from these two sisters and more to come! I wonder how they were able to keep track…

The Hill family in the Lost Hamlets – so far!

I think these figures show why tracing and documenting even this one branch of the Hill family is such an undertaking and how very close to the area of the Lost Hamlets most of them stayed – the grandchildren may not have borne the name of Hill if they were descended from the girls but it becomes ever clearer to me as I research that apparently unconnected neighbours and family groups were quite often siblings and cousins, once the web is untangled. Essentially it appears that a majority of the residents of Gadd’s Green in the mid and late 1800s were related in some way to the Hill family! And other descendants clustered in Siviters Lane and Ross in later years, again living next door to cousins or siblings.

I have still to post on Timothy and Maria Hill’s other children Elizabeth, Jane, Joseph and Samuel Hill, all of whom also had children. But these two sisters have provided enough material for one article so the story will be continued in the next instalment, on Ann’s illegitimate sons John and Timothy!

Why I love family history, local history and my OPS…

There are many people who really do not understand why I love family history so much, why I spend so much time working on my One Place Study, what it is that keeps my interest. And, generally, those people have no interest at all in the subject. Fair enough, they have interests of their own which would undoubtedly bore me rigid!

But I recently came across this article by Marc McDermott which articulated very clearly what this research means to me. I will quote a few bits but the whole piece is worth reading.

https://www.genealogyexplained.com/blog/the-ghost-in-your-dna-why-you-feel-connected-to-ancestors-youve-never-met/comment-page-1/?unapproved=25838&moderation-hash=7d278591a7cf9756009806bf7a35cf24#comment-25838

Marc thinks that genealogy changes the way we see ourselves in the ‘grand tapestry of time’. I think he is right, that has happened to me, especially since I have been studying the Lost Hamlets in detail.

He talks about the feelings you get when you first see the handwriting and signatures of your ancestors on documents. “Because suddenly, this isn’t just data. This is a human being, moving a pen across paper, having no idea that their great-great-grandchild would be studying their handwriting centuries later.”

“That document you’re staring at? They touched it. Their hands were there. Their hopes were fresh. Their future – your past – was unwritten.”

He thinks of these documents as more than just documents, but as windows, portals, time machines transporting us to their lives all those years ago. The places they lived in, the paths and streets they walked, the churches where they married, many still standing, still holding services, still “echoing with centuries of prayer”, including those of our ancestors.

He describes how we find ourselves learning about the local history of where our ancestors lived, wanting to know what was happening in their day, what challenges they faced, why people arrived or left the village or even the country. And he has found that one effect of this is that time seems to diminish, that through studying maps, old photographs, the very landscape, we walk through their footsteps across time.

Then he talks about DNA, how we inherit their genetic code, the shape of your nose, the colour of your eyes, the way we laugh or walk – parts of them live in us. This is certainly true in my family, I realised only a few years ago that my brother and I had exactly the same laugh; a picture of my granddaughter at eight, bears a striking resemblance to a picture of me at the same age. I can trace the distinctive wavy hair at my forehead through several generations of Hopkinses. My hairdressers have learned that they have to work round it, it will not be straightened! Marc suggests that we inherit work ethics, talents, interests from our ancestors without realising it. “Whispers in your DNA”, he calls it, finding pieces of ourselves scattered through time.

Two hundred years, he points out, is just three or four lifetimes. “Your great-grandmother held your grandmother. Your grandmother held your mother. Your mother held you.” We are three embraces from history, three sets of arms link us directly to people who lived through events we read about in history books.

Of course, those ancestors never knew we would exist. They never knew that their decisions would “ripple through time to shape our existence”. They could not know that all these years later someone carrying their DNA would be learning about them. Someone marrying in 1875 would have had no idea that they would be creating a lineage leading to us. But we genealogists now are the people who get to join the dots, to see how their stories led to us. So we are living the culmination of “hundreds of lives, hundreds of choices, hundreds of moments of courage and resilience”. What a thought!

Marc points out that if any link in these genetic chains had been broken, we – as an individual – would not exist today, we would not be the same mixture of genes which produced us as people. Each of us comes, he avers, “from an unbroken line of survivors. Warriors. People who survived wars, plagues, famines, revolutions, who watched their world change and adapted”. We are each of us “the culmination of countless victories over death, disease, poverty and despair”.

We family historians are, he says, time travellers, story tellers, keepers of a flame which would otherwise go out. We find out old stories, rediscover forgotten names, draw back lives from the mists of time where no one remembered them. We can reclaim pieces of our heritage.

He goes on to suggest that in the future our descendants will do the same about us, google our neighbourhoods, walk our streets on Google maps, look at our signatures and photographs and feel that same sense of connection that we feel as we research. We are, he says, the link, the bridge between past and future, between what was and what will be. Genealogy, he says, is about “understanding your place in the grand sweep of time.”

He finishes by saying

“Remember: They lived their lives never knowing about you.

But you live yours knowing about them.

And that makes all the difference.

Own it. Honour it. Keep it alive.

Because you’re not just discovering your ancestors. You’re discovering yourself.”

I loved this article, I recognised many of the things he talks about, share many of his observations but he also made me look at some things in a new way, perhaps it will do the same for you!

War Time Memories and VE Day celebrations

In the late 1970s, I persuaded my mum to write down her memories of her life. I was so glad she did this as within a few years she developed dementia and lost all of this. These are my mum’s vivid memories of life in Blackheath, during the war and on the celebrations locally when the war ended.

Strictly, this is a little self-indulgent because it is not limited to the lost hamlets area but she mentions the gun emplacement and army camp on Turner’s Hill so I’m sneaking it in. And I think it gives a very personal and vivid account of what life was like then.

The picture of Mum is the one my father carried with him throughout his service as a Sapper (Royal Engineers), slightly dog eared but treasured.

War Time and VE Day Memories by Hilda Hopkins

During the war, each Friday night, I, together with Stella Hancock, Mabel Hooper and Mrs Southall, slept at the local clinic ‘on duty’ in case of air-raids. We were supplied with biscuits and a drink for supper-time and slept on camp beds with blankets. We had our personal Gas Masks which everyone carried around in those days, disguised in boxes with shoulder straps.

We laid out First Aid Equipment in case of air raids, there were de-contamination showers in case of gas attacks. There were air raids most nights and some in daytime. There were casualties and local people were killed, quite a few, but in our clinic area there was nothing like that.

At this time, men at home worked all day and some of them then ‘fire-watched’ or were Air Raid Wardens, all night, as we did, as part of a great rota. Often a policeman or Air Raid Warden would pop in to see if all was well and to see also if our blackout was secure. A cup of tea was always appreciated. We were each paid 10/- (Ten shillings, 50p in today’s money) for a night’s ‘duty’.

Turner’s Hill, the highest hill for miles around, was a gun battery, and a military camp. The guns from here could be heard for miles. There was a wonderful camaraderie during these times.

There were air raids and very often people had built air raids in their gardens. One evening, I was in the Rex Cinema when the screen notice said there was an air raid, in case anyone wished to leave. Some did but most people stayed. It appeared that incendiary bombs had been dropped, some on the cinema, and quite a few local people were killed, some at Rowley, near to the Grammar School, and one lady in Green Lane.

1945

It must have been very late in the evening that the Radio News reported that the War was over – because we were all in bed at home and John’s sister Alice came along to Birmingham Road and ‘knocked us up’ (a real Black Country expression – used to get workmen up in the early hours). Off I went with Alice to join a procession of ‘Blackheathans’, some with torches and all singing and calling out to each other with joy! We marched to Regis Road and walked up waking people up all the way with happy singing as we went along, the younger folk among us very quickly. It was so sudden – I just couldn’t believe it that the war was really over! The throng was led on and on, walking at will through blacked out streets, using our ‘Ever Ready’ torches as we sang our way and the atmosphere was so full of joy and for some sleepyheads like me a real awakening in every way. We circled the town and woke people up who were still in bed. Everyone was so excited. The joy was intense – we sang, we shouted and walked and walked – it seems like a dream now.

On the Radio news next morning all was happily confirmed and we weren’t alone in our carousing – it happened everywhere, I believe. The day folk had longed for for dreary hard worrying years had come.

VE (Victory in Europe) Day was formally announced on radio and in newspapers to be joyfully celebrated at a later date with great happy crowds, all over our land. Joyce Goreham, Ruth Gallagher and I went off by bus to Birmingham and met there – I never knew quite how because in the city thousands of people, young, old – all wildly happy – were dancing and singing. I am sure Queen Victoria’s statue smiled at this sight – Victoria Square will never look like this again. We did manage to meet Josie, Kathy’s sister who had previously booked theatre tickets for us. All we had to do was fight our way there through crowded and thronging streets. Through the human mass, singing or just being literally carried along by the excited crowds. Bells rang, crowds shouted and sang for sheer joy. Kathy and Josie had a brother who would now be coming home soon – each one in that massive crowd had someone to come home, sooner or later. This night in a blaze of light in Victoria Square (we hadn’t seen lights like this for years!) was a mighty outpouring of joy and thankfulness after so many years of wondering and waiting – now we knew loved ones would, in time, be coming home.

There was dancing and singing in the city streets, streams of happy people in a great surge of unbridled joy. People climbed lamp-posts to shout and sing, strangers joined hands and danced around in small groups – a very emotional and exciting time I will ever remember.

And the war was over, a new era ahead, a time of homecoming and home making. A new beginning for each person and every nation and Peace in our time, always.

Families of the Lost Hamlets – the Hill family 2 – Benjamin Hill

Timothy and Maria Hill had several children and for many years I have thought that Benjamin was the first of them. Now I am not so sure this is quite correct!

I have not been able to find a baptism for Benjamin Hill. The baptism of his sister Mary Hill took place on 12 January 1804 at St Giles, Rowley Regis when she and her younger sister Ann were baptised. Mary was noted in the entry in the baptisms register to be ‘2years six months old’ which means that she must have been born in the middle of 1801, which would have been almost exactly nine months after Timothy Hill married Maria Hipkiss. Which, in turn, was only three months or so after the death of Ann Priest. So Benjamin must have been born at least nine months before that – in 1800 or before.

At the time of his death in 1844, Benjamin’s age was given as 44 which again takes us back to 1800. I noted in my first piece on the Hill family that it appeared that Timothy and Ann had no children. But supposing that after all those years without children, Ann – at the age of thirty-five – actually gave birth to a son in 1800, and died in or after childbirth? This was before Civil Registration began in 1837 so sadly I have no way of checking. Could this – with the trauma of her death and the need for Timothy to care for this newly born son- account for why Benjamin was apparently not baptised? And why Timothy re-married so quickly – to provide his son with a mother? And was it possible that one reason that Benjamin lived a distance from the rest of the Hill family was that he was not Maria’s son and not particularly welcome? Pure speculation but possible.

The first documentary evidence of Benjamin’s existence is in 1821 when he married Ann Williams in Halesowen. One of the witnesses to this marriage was a Timothy Hill, the other was a George G Fiddian. (There are numerous instances of Fiddians acting as witnesses to marriages in Halesowen around this time so he was not likely to be a family member. The presence of Timothy Hill at this marriage is my strongest indication that I have Benjamin in the correct family. But I may be completely wrong, in which case all that follows is completely irrelevant to the Hill family of Gadds Green. But may be of general interest anyway.

In the 1841 Census Benjamin’s occupation is shown as a ‘cole miner’ and his age given as forty. He is living with Ann and their children Joseph, then 18, Timothy, then 15, Mary, then 12 and Benjamin, aged 8. All of these are regular Hill Christian names. Their address was New Street which was in Old Hill. So there were two odd things here. The first is that usually this branch of the Hills stuck pretty close to Turners Hill area, as will be shown by later pieces on Timothy and Maria’s other children. The second unusual thing is that Benjamin was a coal miner whereas most of the Hill family were nailers.

However, I found a newspaper report which may be relevant, (although there were two other Benjamin Hills in the area in 1841, only one other was described as a nailer), so it is possible that this case does not concern this Benjamin Hill at all.

The article appeared in the Worcestershire Chronicle, dated 24 January 1839. This stated, under the Police Reports,

“Richard Mountford charged Benjamin Hill, nailer, with embezzling iron he had taken out to work into nails. Hill stated, in his defence, that the plaintiff had induced him to leave another master to work for him, and had shortly afterwards given up business, when he was compelled to dispose of his stock to support his family, and afterwards to go to the workhouse; he was ordered to work in the stock 19 quarters in 19 weeks.”

This report throws up various issues.

Who was Richard Mountford?

Richard Mountford was listed in a report in Aris’s Birmingham Gazette in 1845 as a supporter of the proposed Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Stour Valley Railway, described a Stourbridge businessman merchant, and was living in Coalbournbrook, Ambleside in the 1841 Census, his occupation given as a nail factor which matches the occupation referred to in the court case. But it does imply that he had not given up his nail business as Benjamin Hill had claimed.

There are a few Mountfords in Rowley Regis itself in censuses, though generally not apparently of high status. There was at one time a Mountford House in Siviter’s Lane, for many years the Doctor’s residence and surgery, now the site of a new housing development. Perhaps the Mountfords built the original house?

However, nail factors would have bought nails from all over the area although presumably most workers were accustomed to dealing with particular individuals, (very possibly in family traditions) which would be why Benjamin Hill referred to being induced to leave his previous nail master.

I wonder whether, if this was our Benjamin Hill, Benjamin’s former master refused to deal with him again or whether his family had fallen out with him off as a result of this case. It may be that he simply could not find work as a nailer after this which may be why he became a miner, moving to Old Hill which was nearer the pit at Five Ways, Cradley Heath where he was working. However, when Benjamin’s oldest son Joseph was married at St Giles in April 1845, Joseph gave his father’s occupation as a nailer, so Benjamin, despite his death in a mine, had been a nailer at the time of the court case in 1839, so for most of Joseph’s life and Joseph obviously still thought of him as a nailer. But it is also possible that Benjamin worked as a miner in the daytime and still as a nailer when he got home, this was not uncommon as a way to increase income.

However the move to Old Hill came about, Benjamin stayed in Old Hill after this for the rest of his life and his children also stayed there. Other than Benjamin’s burial at St Giles, which was, in any case, still the parish church for Old Hill at this time, there is no evidence of any later contact between Benjamin and the Hill family in Gadd’s Green.

Richard Mountford might have had a liking for litigation against his workers. I found another report that in 1841 he had indicted a Richard Sutton for feloniously damaging a steam engine’ but this case was dismissed by the Magistrate and a verdict of Not Guilty was recorded.

The Dudley Wood Colliery Disaster

On the 19 October 1844, at the Dudley Wood Colliery, Benjamin Hill, aged 44, was amongst eleven miners killed in an explosion at the mine.

This colliery was situated between Netherton and Darby End, as shown on this map.

Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

This map dates from somewhar later than this incident and the mine is marked No.2, so may not be the exact mine, which may perhaps have been on the waste land opposite.

This photograph shows a picture of buildings on Dudley Wood Road, taken in about 1905-7, and showing the buildings affected by subsidence due to coal mining, some of the houses leaning backwards, the whole area must have been terribly undermined.

A report in the Birmingham Evening Mail on 28^th October gives details of the inquest, held at the Five Ways, Cradley Heath, on seven of the miners including Benjamin, the other miners must have lived elsewhere and some were the subject of a separate inquest held at Lye Waste. Other miners killed, according to newspaper reports, were William Brookes(aged 25), Thomas Botfield (aged 30), William Weaver (aged 10), and Joseph Bennett (22), John Evans (27), James Roberts(19) and William Parkes (unable to find any death registration for this name). There had been seventeen miners working in the pit that morning, the other six survived with burns and all but one were thought likely to recover. Both Richard Scriven, aged 64, the mine ‘butty’ and his son Thomas, aged 21 were also killed in the explosion.

The injured men were Thomas Evans (badly injured and not expected to survive), Benjamin Gray, Thomas and Joseph Wright (brothers), Thomas Pearson and Emanuel Hill. Some of the names appear to be incorrect in some reports but I have checked them against death registrations and entered the correct ones here, in case any readers might have family who were affected by this tragedy.

It could indeed have been worse. Also working below ground, some 16 yards below the explosion were several men employed in getting ironstone (this part of the Black Country was known for having all the materials required for iron working – ironstone, coal and clay – in layers, one above the other). When they heard the explosion above, these men instantly got into an empty skip (or basket) which happened to be at the bottom, and ‘were drawn up to light and life; had they remained a short time longer, death would have ensued from the foul air descending to the mine in which they were at work’. It was clearly a powerful explosion. The report adds ‘One skip, which was descending a shaft at the time the explosion occurred, on which was a bottle of beer, was blown into the air an immense height; the bottle was afterwards found more than 200 yards from the pit’s mouth.’

The report notes that the Inquest was conducted by Mr Hinchliffe, one of the Staffordshire Coroners and noted that there was a ‘highly respectable jury’. The pit was referred to as ‘Mess’rs Pargeter and Darby’s coal-pit’. Various witnesses gave evidence, Lemuel Miles (or possibly Emanuel), of Rowley, (a miner who had been working in the pit at the time and who had reportedly checked the pit for gas with Thomas Scriven that morning), and also including the local constable Samuel Garratt, Thomas Frederick the Mine Agent who had inspected the pit for gas that morning, and George Naylor and Thomas Weaver who had assisted with the rescue and recovery of bodies. The agent gave evidence that the proprietors of the pit had spared no expense to have it properly worked and managed, so as to insure the safety of the work people and to prevent accidents.

I was interested to note, from one of the newspaper reports, that the butty Richard Scriven was in the pit at the time of the explosion because the proprietor Mr Darby had requested him to go down to fetch up some lumps of coal, presumably to examine the quality. The explosion occurred immediately Richard Scriven reached the bottom of the shaft. So Joseph Darby, the owner of the pit, was on the premises at the time and, according to one report, immediately called in medical assistance for survivors as they were brought to the surface but he does not appear to have been called as a witness to either of the inquests I have found reports of, which seems a strange omission to me.

The verdict returned at Cradley Heath was “That the unfortunate men were suffocated, scorched and burnt by the accidental explosion of a quantity of sulphuric air or gas in Mess’rs Pargeter and Darby’s coal-pit.” Benjamin’s death certificate stated, under cause of death, ‘Accident: By an explosion of Sulphuric Air or Gas in a Coal Pit: Instant.” The death was registered by the Coroner.

A report in the Worcester Herald on the Lye Inquest noted that the coal-pit ‘belonging to Mr Joseph Darby’ produced thick coal of very excellent quality and the mine has long borne the character of being among the most dangerous in this part of the country’.

The report in the ‘John Bull’ paper has an interesting note I did not see in other reports. It relates “An interesting circumstance, in connexion with this lamentable tragedy is worthy of record. Emanuel [Lemmuel] Miles, a miner employed in the pit, and not given to prayer, was noted on the morning of the accident, before going down, earnestly imploring the Divine protection from accident during the day: his prayers were granted, and though in the pit when so many of his fellows were summoned to their final account, his life was spared, to become, we trust, a wiser and better man.”

Although I can find no further reports of the outcomes of inquests, one newspaper ends their report by stating “The explosion, there can be no doubt, was caused by negligence on the part of someone, in all probability by one of the unfortunate sufferers.” I note from the reports that the explosion happened just as Richard Scriven reached the bottom of the shaft and that he was particularly badly injured, so I wonder whether, since he was only going down to collect a few lumps of coal, he took down a candle, rather than a safety lamp and ignited gas at the bottom of the shaft. There was also mention in one report of an older adjoining mine which had been blocked off with rock and soil but it was thought that this was too well sealed to allow gas to seep through. But presumably gas could leak into the mine passages from fissures in the coal at any time and gather wherever air currents – such as those caused around the shafts by rising or descending baskets – took them.

Benjamin Hill was buried at St Giles, Rowley Regis on 22 October 1844, his abode given as Lawrence’s Lane. He left his wife Ann and four children.

In the 1851 Census Ann, shown as she sometimes was as Hannah, was in Cherry Orchard, Old Hill, still in the same area as she had lived with Benjamin, along with her youngest child Benjamin and her daughter Mary (Ann) who was married to John Pritchard in 1847, and Mary’s two children Ann and Thomas. Plus two lodgers, so a fairly full house!

I have been unable to find any trace of Ann Hill after 1851, either in censuses or in death or burial records, nor in marriages (as she might have re-married). She does not appear to have been with any of her children in later censuses.

Benjamin and Ann’s children all stayed firmly in Cherry Orchard area of Old Hill for decades, with or near their siblings.

Joseph Hill (1823-1903) married Sarah Tibbetts (1828-1902) at St Giles, Rowley Regis in April 1845. They lived for at least twenty years in Cherry Orchard before moving towards Netherton and appear not to have had any children but to have raised Louisa Dalloway, Eliza’s niece, as she is in their household in 1861 and 1871. They were both buried at St Andrew’s church, Netherton.

Timothy Hill (1824-1908) married Eliza Worton (1824-1865) on 14 February 1842 at Old Swinford. They had nine children – Phebe (1844), Emmeline (1845-1847), Sarah Ann (1848-1848), Eliza (1850), Louisa (1851), Timothy (1854), Thomas (1858-1859), Joseph (1860-1862), Anne (or sometimes Hannah, like her grandmother!) (1862). Eliza died in 1865, aged 42 (and worn out, I should think, having nine children!) and was buried on 11 June at St Luke’s, Reddall Hill. On 14 August 1865, just two months later Timothy married Sarah Marsh (nee Pearson), a widow, of Halesowen Road, Reddall Hill and they had two more sons, James (1866) and Isaac (1869). With Sarah’s children Leah (1855) and Edward Marsh (1859) the house must have been pretty crowded. Sarah died in November 1899, aged 71 and was buried at St Luke’s. Timothy died in 1908, aged 78 and was also buried at St Luke’s.

Mary Ann Hill married John Pritchard (who was born in Netherton) on 30 August 1847 at Dudley St Thomas, and they also lived in Cherry Orchard until at least 1891, next door to her parents at first and two doors away from Mary Ann’s brother Benjamin and his family. They had five children: Ann Maria (1848), Thomas (1850-1851), John (1852), Mary Ann (1865) and James (1868).

Despite a lot of searching, I cannot at present find definite Death details for either Mary Ann nor John Pritchard. And neither can any of the numerous other people who have them in their trees on Ancestry. They both appear in the 1901 Census, still together in their home of many years in Cherry Orchard, then aged 74 and 73, respectively. And I cannot find either of them in the 1911 Census. There is a likely looking death and burial at Netherton for a John Pritchard of about the correct age in 1900 but since our John appears in the 1901 Census, this cannot be he. The only other likely death appears to be in 1910 in the Stourbridge Registration District but since that covers parts of Blackheath, where at least one of their children was living, this may be him. I would have to buy death certificates to be sure. That applies also to a possible death for a Mary Ann Pritchard of the correct age who died in the Dudley Registration District in 1913 but I have not found burials for either of these deaths so this remains a mystery at present.

The last child of Benjamin and Ann, another Benjamin, married Mary Steadman at Dudley St Thomas on 16 March 1856, the marriage was witnessed by John and Mary Pritchard, Benjamin’s sister and brother-in-law. In 1861, they were in Garratts Lane but by 1871 they were back with the rest of the family in Cherry Orchard where they stayed for the rest of their lives. They had eight children: Thomas (1857), John (1859), Emiline (usually known as Emily) (1861), Mary Jane (1865), Benjamin (1867), Ellen (1870), Joseph (1872) and Harriet (1875). Benjamin died in August 1913 and Mary in December 1916, both were buried at St Luke’s Church.

All of the four children of Benjamin Hill lived for years in Cherry Orchard, three of them for their whole lives. Cherry Orchard which appears to have been off Wrights Lane, so within sight of Rowley village, was not exactly the rural idyll the name might seem to indicate but was obviously ‘home’ to this branch of the Hill family.

So this is the tale of Benjamin Hill, who I believe to be connected with Timothy Hill of Gadd’s Green and Benjamin’s descendants in Old Hill. A little outside the Lost Hamlets area but within a couple of miles. More pieces will follow on Benjamin’s other siblings shortly.

Families of the Lost Hamlets – the Hill family 1 or ‘The Hills are alive…’

The Hill family were in Rowley Regis for several centuries, (and still are) and can also be found in the surrounding parishes, from Dudley, Halesowen, Cradley, Warley, Halesowen, Tipton, Sedgley and some even further afield in Wolverhampton.

Hill is not an easy name to research in the Parish Registers. The early Registers, with their lack of place names are not too difficult – if you search the first section of the St Giles digital register for Hill, you have to skip over all the Phillips and Phillises, and most of the entries then are for members of the Hill family. But once places of residence start to be regularly recorded there are hundreds of them – Turners Hill, Gosty Hill, Reddall Hill, Old Hill, Darby’s Hill, Kates Hill, Hyams Hill – very frustrating to plough through the later records only to find that the entries contain an abode or place name, rather than a family name which includes Hill!

The Hailstone (Copyright Glenys Sykes) was close to where the Hill family lived and would have been a familiar sight to them, until it was taken down.

The first entry relating to the Hill family in the Rowley Parish Registers was in the preface written by Henrietta Auden, who was a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and who apparently transcribed many other parish registers as well as Rowley Regis. Her father was the Rev. Prebendary Auden. Miss Auden notes that in 1604, in the first parish register, John Hill is noted as ‘owner’. This makes me wonder whether, at the time when surnames began to be formalised, this John had owned land on and lived on Turner’s Hill, as many later generations of Hills did, and he became known simply as John of the Hill, then John de Hill, and then John Hill? As I set out in my piece on Hall houses^[1], I think it is likely that the Hill family was wealthy enough at one time to build a Hall house in what later became known as Gadd’s Green and certainly some branches of the Hill family locally were well-to-do even centuries later, as I have discovered from various Hill Wills in the 1700s and 1800s. But that is possibly simplistic thinking on my part.

An early postcard image of Turner’s Hill, copyright unknown.

Other early Hill entries in the Parish Registers

Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Hill was baptised in September 1604 and the John Hill mentioned above was buried in the following March. In 1607 Lucy, daughter of Christopher Hill was baptised at Rowley and in 1612 Elizabeth, daughter of Francis Hill so it appears that there were in the early 1600s several Hill families – fathers Thomas, Christopher, Silvester, Francis, Richard and William – living in the parish and of an age to be baptising children, perhaps brothers or cousins. And a John Hill of Warley had married Anne, daughter of William Darby which was another family of some standing in the area.

The Hills had some common but regularly used names such as Thomas, Richard, Joseph and William but it also used several more distinctive names – Silvester, Jerome, Timothy (especially Timothy!), Francis, Daniel – and Elizabeth, Ann and Rebeckah also recur amongst the women which can be useful in spotting likely connections between branches of the families.

There was an entry for the marriage of Thomas Hill and Ann Cooper at St Giles on 26 June 1687 but there is no indication where either of them came from, nor does there appear to be a baptism for either of them nor a baptism for An, daughter of Pheles (Phyllis is the modern name) who was buried on 29 February 1687/88. After that there are baptisms for John and Ann Hill, a burial for Selvester and for Thomas Hill in 1689, a burial for Elizabeth Hill, widow in 1691, baptisms for William and Hannah Hill and a burial of a Rebeckah Hill, widow in 1694. In 1695 a burial of a son John for Thomas Hill describes Thomas as from Upperside. In 1696.a child Hannah, daughter of John Hill, has a note saying ‘by non-conf.’ so perhaps the family were early dissenters or non-conformists although there are no consistent indications of this. But certainly there appear to have been several branches of the Hill family in the parish at this time. The Registers at this date do have gaps and missing pages and the entries were by no means detailed so it is not possible to know whether this was one family who had moved into the parish from elsewhere or whether they had been in the parish for some years and earlier records baptisms are lost.

In 1717 an Ambrose Hill of Dudley married Esther Dudley at St Giles, Rowley Regis. In 1723 a Job Hill married Jane Dudley at St Giles so that was two Hill grooms marrying brides named Dudley in six years, so they may well have been related to each other. And my research indicates that there are many later connections between Hill families in Dudley and Rowley Regis.

It is not feasible in this article to describe all the people named Hill in the hamlets and villages over the centuries, there are simply too many of them and some very complicated family trees. There are 123 entries for Hills in the first section of the digital parish register alone, and another 35 in the next section, before place names start to appear which adds to the number. So between the first Hill entry in1604 and 1721 (when place names start to confuse the issue) there are 158 entries in the St Giles Registers for people named Hill.

So I will concentrate on some of those Hills who were in the Lost Hamlets in the 1841 Census, and their families which I will expand in a later article.

Timothy (1763-1831) and Maria Hill nee Hipkiss (1782-1855)

Timothy, that favourite Hill name, was my 4xgreat grandfather. He had been baptised at Dudley St Thomas in 1763 and Maria Hipkiss was a Rowley girl, baptised in 1782. Maria was Timothy’s second wife but he appeared, at first sight to have had no children with Ann Priest, his first wife. Ann was also a Rowley girl and her marriage took place in St Giles, and she appears to have been buried at Dudley in May 1800. I have a little more to say on this in my next piece. Timothy made up for it with Maria, who he married at Halesowen in September 1800 and he had at least seven children, four daughters and three sons with Maria.

Timothy is a particularly commonly used Hill Christian name and can make it difficult to decide which branch of the Hills particular Timothys belonged to.

This Timothy died in 1831 so was not listed in the censuses but Maria appears in the first two – 1841 and 1851, both times living with one of her children, the first time (1841) with her youngest son Samuel when they were living in Blackberry town which appears to have been in Springfield below the Hailstone quarry, and in 1851 she was living in Perry’s Lake with her widowed daughter Mary.

Maria’s family, the Hipkisses, like the Hills, are another of the ‘core families’ of the hamlets who appear in all the censuses there between 1841 and 1881 and later, and although I have not yet transcribed the later censuses I strongly suspect that I will find them in the later censuses, too. Another of those families who lived in these small hamlets for at least three hundred years and possibly much longer, with numerous intermarriages contributing to the complex web of relationships between the core families.

Timothy Hill (1763-1831) was baptised in Dudley, the son of Joseph Hill (1720-?) and Jane Bridgwater, the grandson of Samuel Hill (1684-?) and Martha Wright, and great-grandson of Samuel Hill (1660-?) and Issabill ?(Dates unknown) These earlier Hills had connections in Dudley and possibly, before that, in Oldswinford. But that is a tentative theory at present and there are numerous Hill families in the area so it is possible that is a different family. At some point, when time permits, I will research whether these people appeared in later registers in Oldswinford as that may rule them out. But there are so many Hills in the Dudley and Sedgley area, this might not be possible. But Timothy married two Rowley girls.

Maria was the daughter of John Hipkiss (1744-1818) and Mary Worton (1742-1832). Maria was baptised on 15 September 1782 at St Giles Rowley Regis and her forebears also go back in Rowley Regis for several generations and earlier in Dudley,too.

So this pattern is emerging of close kin living together in Gadds Green and Perrys Lake whose descendants continued to live there or very close by for several generations afterwards.

I have also noticed in the course of my research that often people from the Turner’s Hill/Oakham area used Dudley church, rather than St Giles and it may well be that many of these residents regarded the area on and below Turner’s Hill as separate communities, rather than a hamlet of Rowley Regis, even though most of this area was in Rowley parish.

I shall continue this theme on the Hill family with more posts to follow on the children of Timothy and Maria Hill.

The children of Timothy (1763-1831) and Maria Hill nee Hipkiss (1782-1855) – details of these will be the subject of my next articles.

[1] https://rowleyregislosthamlets.uk/2024/12/01/a-hall-house-at-gadds-green/

A Hall house at Gadds Green?

I have been working recently on another family study for my blog, this time about the Hill family, one of the core families who lived in the hamlets for centuries, mainly at Finger-i’the-hole and Gadd’s Green. As usual, it has proved more complex than I had anticipated and I have got sidetracked into considering where exactly the branch of the family I am looking at lived in the village. Many of them, it appears, lived for centuries in a group of houses in Finger-i’the-hole or Fingeryhole , or Gadd’s Green.

Regular readers may recall that I have posted previously in this blog about the whereabouts in Rowley village of Finger-i’the-hole or Fingeryhole[i].

And, in a separate post [ii] I wrote last year about a newspaper article I had found, in the Dudley Chronicle in 1925, about the delights of what the writer called Portway but which clearly included the wider area of Perry’s Lake and Gadd’s Green. The article referred to the dilapidated cottage in Gadd’s Green as “Finger o’the hole cottage” which the author had visited in 1925, a cottage where the front wall had collapsed in a storm some time before and never been rebuilt.

As a reminder, and for new readers, the name Finger-i’the-hole originates from a very old local story – but which was subject to several variations in later years. A lonely old widow, the story goes, lived alone in a small cottage on Turner’s Hill. A thief or rent collector, depending on which version of the story you look at, knowing that she was unprotected, put his finger into the hole in the door to lift the latch, with a view to robbing her- or perhaps collecting the rent! – only to discover that the feisty widow, hearing his approach, had picked up her axe and chopped off the offending digit as it was poked through the hole. Though there are no names attached to this tale, there is a locality and I believe that it is likely that some incident of this sort actually happened.

The date of this event is unclear but must have been before 1727, as Christopher Chambers of “Ye ffinger I’the hole” was buried then, according to the Parish Burial Register. And the name of Finger-i’the-hole for the area persisted until the 1841 Census but had dropped from official use by 1851 when the area , with exactly the same families, was called Gadds Green.

The Chambers family appear, although I have not done any detailed research on them, to have been well-to-do, they appear in the Parish Registers as living also in 1724 at ‘the Brickhouse’ and in 1723 and in 1744 as ‘of Freebodies’ so were perhaps brothers as tenant or yeoman farmers. At that time ‘the Brickhouse’ appears to have been at Cock Green, with land extending down towards Powke Lane which later was developed in the 20^th century as the Brickhouse housing estate. Brick was not a commonly used building material at this earlier date and the use of bricks for a whole house was obviously distinctive and worthy of a special name.

Photograph copyright: Glenys Sykes

This is an illustration shown in Wilson Jones’s book of what the barn of the ‘Brickhouse’ farmhouse might have looked like. Note the ragstone wall and what appear to be large chunks of ragstone lying around. I took a photograph recently of the pieces of ragstone still in Tippity Green/Perry’s Lake, at the entrance to the former Hailstone quarry, they have a familiar rugged shape.

Ragstone blocks at Tippity Green November 2024, photograph taken at the entrance to the former Hailstone Quarry. Copyright Glenys Sykes.

There were lots of the Chambers family in the village throughout the parish registers. An entry in 1723 refers to a Thomas Chambers of Portway and in 1732 an Edward Chambers of Tividale so they did seem to live at this end of Rowley. There was an Edward Chambers at Freebodies Farm in the 1841 Census, albeit described as a farm servant but there were no Chambers that I can find listed in the later censuses in the Lost Hamlets and it appears that they dispersed around a wider area, including Oldbury and Birmingham.

Picturesque Portway

In the newspaper article on Old Portway, which had been written in 1926, I remembered a comment in that article about the cottages at Finger-i’the-hole and this is what it said:

“Our representative visited the now dilapidated cottage where the incident is reputed to have taken place. The cottage is the fourth of a row, and is known in the neighbourhood as “Finger ‘o the hole cottage. “, The article continues “The front of the building was blown out one winter’s night many years ago when the occupant was a Mrs Cox, now of Gornal, and it has never since been repaired. The cottage is said to be over 300 years old and one family – that of Hill, members of which reside in an adjacent cottage – lived there for nearly 200 years.

It is constructed of rough grey sandstone, and originally had two rooms, one up and one down. A stout roughly hewn oak beam, crossing the building from gable to gable, indicates where the first floor once rested, and shows that the height of the living room was under six feet. Occupying one-half of the building is a spacious old-fashioned fire-place, with a large open chimney and contiguous bake ovens.”

This description of the house known as “Finger ‘o the hole cottage. ” is very interesting.

“The cottage is the fourth of a row.” So it could originally have been the end of a much older hall house.

“The cottage is said to be over 300 years old” – which takes it back to about 1600 or even earlier.

“It is constructed of rough grey sandstone.” Would this have been Rowley Rag? Something substantial to last more than 300 years, unlikely to have been simple wattle and daub.

“A stout roughly hewn oak beam, crossing the building from gable to gable, indicates where the first floor once rested and shows that the height of the living room was under six feet.” Was this beam a later addition to divide the hall and add extra accommodation?

“one-half of the building is a spacious old-fashioned fire-place, with a large open chimney and contiguous bake ovens”. I can remember when I first read that description, something jarred with me. The original article goes on “No fewer than ten men can comfortably stand in the aperture once occupied by the grate and its side seats.”

A humble cottage in a terrace does not have half of the single living space taken up by a fireplace big enough for ten men to stand inside it and nor does it have ‘contiguous bake ovens’, it was unusual for small cottages to have even one oven, certainly not two. There may have been an external bakehouse or oven for a farmhouse or larger dwelling and with large fireplaces in bigger buildings an oven was sometimes built into it. There is an interesting piece with a brief history of baking here – https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/a-brief-history-of-baking/

So something is out of the ordinary here. Perhaps there are more clues in the rest of the description of the cottage.

“it originally had two rooms, one up and one down.”

Was this a Hall house? Hall houses had one great room which might well have had a great fireplace installed at some stage – I knew that originally such halls had a central hearth and the smoke floated up into the roof. Later fireplaces and chimney breasts were added. But why the need for such a big one?

But if it was a hall house occupied by a large family or was a busy farmhouse with farmhands to feed, two ovens might well have been provided.

And at a time after the original construction the hall might have been divided into more rooms or cottages and even divided into an upper and lower floor, although if it had been designed to have two floors surely the ground floor would have been higher than six feet when it was first built?

Hall houses

So I began to suspect that this may well have been a very old hall house, perhaps the home of a farming family but that later it was divided and subdivided. And that the Hill family lived there for centuries.

I decided to research a little more about ‘Hall houses’, to see whether my thoughts seemed reasonable. This information is taken from Wikipedia:

“The hall house is a type of vernacular house traditional in many parts of England.

Origins

In Old English, a “hall” is simply a large room enclosed by a roof and walls, and in Anglo-Saxon England simple one-room buildings, with a single hearth in the middle of the floor for cooking and warmth, were the usual residence of a lord of the manor and his retainers. The whole community was used to eating and sleeping in the hall. Over several centuries the hall developed into a building which provided more than one room, giving some privacy to its more important residents.

By about 1400, in lowland Britain, with changes in settlement patterns and agriculture, people were thinking of houses as permanent structures rather than temporary shelter. According to the locality, they built stone or timber-framed houses with wattle and daub or clay infill. The designs were copied by their neighbours and descendants in the tradition of vernacular architecture. [a] They were sturdy and some have survived over five hundred years. Hall houses built after 1570 are rare.”

When considering this house I was slightly concerned that I cannot find any mention in other records of a substantial house at Gadd’s Green, although Wilson Jones in his book[iii] lists all the other significant manors or large houses.

However, David Hay, in his book The Grass Roots of English History[iv], says that although it was once believed that all timber framed houses had been built by the wealthier inhabitants of local societies and that medieval peasant houses were so insubstantial that they could not survive for more than a generation, more recent systematic recording of houses by members of the Vernacular Architecture Group and the new technological advances in dendrochronology, have overturned these views and it is now known that of the thousands of medieval houses, some of which are still standing in many parts of rural England [though not in the Lost Hamlets!] belonged to ordinary farming families. Hey states that “The sheer numbers of cruck [timber framed] houses in the Midlands confirms that they must be peasant dwellings, some villages have ten or even twenty such houses.” So it seems quite possible that there would well have been such a house in Gadds Green inhabited by a farming or working family, rather than a more aristocratic one.

Cruck framed houses

Many larger houses at this time were ‘cruck-framed’, that is the central frame, the load bearing members that supported the weight of the roof of the building was made from suitable trees – often oak, which carpenters could split lengthways into two identical ‘blades’ which were set either side of the building and then joined at the top with techniques varying from place to place to support a ridge-piece, the crucks sometimes resting on stone bases to protect them from damp and rot. Half way down the roof, between the ridge-piece and the wall plate other long timbers, known as purlins, were fixed to the outer part of the blades in order to carry the rafters which supported the roofing material, often thatch in earlier times. Because the crucks, and not the walls carried the weight of the roof, the walls could be filled in with whatever material was most easily available to them locally. This could easily be replaced in later centuries without endangering the roof.

The frames were constructed in the carpenter’s workshop or in the wood where the trees were felled before they were assembled at the site according to the sequence of the marks the carpenter had made with his chisel or gouge. Different types of marks can still be seen on timbers in old buildings and it appears that each carpenter had their own marks and systems; some buildings had several hundred pieces of timber and hundreds of joints so carpenters needed a way of sorting these efficiently when they arrived at the construction site. This construction method was a skilled job and not to be undertaken by home builders!

Copyright Wikipedia. This is a cruck house in Worcestershire where the cruck frame can be clearly seen, along with other timbering, in this case infilled with what is probably wattle and daub. In Rowley, with the abundance of local stone, the walls would have been infilled with stone and quite possibly the timbers clad with stone to protect them from the weather so that the cruck frame would not be obvious from the outside.

If the house at Gadd’s Green was constructed in this way, with a cruck frame, this might account for why the front wall of one section could be blown or fall down in a storm but the remainder of the structure remain apparently quite stable for many years afterwards, as mentioned in the article, especially if the inhabitants did not have the skills required to make the repairs.

Peasant Houses

Note: Hey suggests that “peasant” is still a convenient term to describe a small-scale farmer, the type of person who would have been the head of household in most of the surviving timber frames houses. I have continued his usage so this is not intended as a derogatory term. There is an interesting article on this here: https://archaeology.co.uk/articles/peasant-houses-in-midland-england.htm

Houses were typically arranged around a central hall that was open to the rafters. These halls could be lengthened by the addition of an extra bay or two but their almost standard width was regulated by the roof span. A wood fire in a central hearth originally provided the heating, with most of the smoke escaping through the roof but timber and plaster smokehoods attached to an internal wall were starting to replace central hearths in the wealthier districts. Sometimes later refinements, ceilings, floors, partitions, etc completely conceal this original use and it is only when the smoke darkened timbers are seen in the attic at a much later date that it is realised that the building started life as a hall house.

The lower end of the building may have housed a workshop or a kitchen, dairy or buttery. And a very large fireplace in a cottage at Gadd’s Green may have been a remnant of this earlier use.

“At the other side of the hall, larger peasant houses had a private parlour, sometimes with an upstairs room known as a solar.” Is this what the family memory of the Hills referred to when they talked about the house originally having one room downstairs and one upstairs?

Poor families had to build with whatever materials were to hand, such as clay and wattles for wall panels or earth for mud walls, as in Devon, probably ragstone in Rowley. The many timbered buildings surviving in small towns in Herefordshire, Hey notes as an example, were in well-wooded areas and where woods were managed to produce suitable crops of timber over a long period. And in poor areas, solid houses would not have been readily replaced with more modern structures. So if a substantial house had been built which lasted for centuries at Gadd’s Green, why would the family expend money to replace it? Some of the Hill family later were nail factors or nail ironmongers and relatively well-to-do but others showed no sign of great wealth.

House layouts

In Midland villages, Hey suggests, “each house was separate and protected from unwelcome intrusions. The whole property, including a garden or yard, was surrounded by a fence, hedge or wall, and accessed through a gate leading on to the street and a door with a lock, (finger hole?). Excavations on village sites show that barns, stables, cowsheds and other outbuildings usually stood close together around a yard, kitchens and bakehouses were often detached, to reduce the risk of fire”.

In the view of Hey and other scholars, “the idea of separate living and working spaces would probably not have seemed a meaningful concept to member of a peasant household. There is plenty of documentary evidence for the conversion of bakehouses, carthouses and stables into dwellings for retired peasants”, indeed barn conversions and such continue to this day!

Why and where?

There were many cruck buildings in some parts of the country and none in others for reasons not fully understood. It is possible that the native pendiculate oak trees, whose shape is ideal for cruck construction, predominate in areas such as parts of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cheshire, along the river Severn in parts of Wales and in other Midland Counties. In eastern England, where cruck framing is conspicuously absent, the less suitable sessile oaks are the major type.

Hey notes that the medieval houses of Midland England are predominantly cruck framed and three bays in length. The chief limitations of cruck framed buildings are in their height and width, because their dimensions were dependent on the size of the blades that could be cut from suitable local trees.

“When it became fashionable to insert a ceiling into a hall that had previously been open to the rafters, the space in the upper storey was very constricted “- or perhaps sometimes the lower storey which might account for the low ceiling mentioned in the 1925 article.

This restriction did not apply to the other main construction method which was where posts and beams were made to create a box like frame and where the roof was supported throughout the frame and the walls. It is possible to find both methods of construction in one house, perhaps with a cruck framed hall having additional wings built with box frames.

These are other things that Wikipedia has to say about hall houses.

“The vast majority of those hall houses which have survived changed significantly over the centuries. In almost all cases the open hearth of the hall house was abandoned during the early modern period and a chimney built which reached from the new hearth to above the roof.

Fireplaces and chimney stacks could be fitted into existing buildings against the passage, or against the side walls or even at the upper end of the hall.

Once the clearance within the hall was no longer needed for smoke from the central hearth, the hall itself would often be divided, with a floor being inserted which connected all the upper rooms.

In smaller hall houses, where heat efficiency and cooking were the prime concern, fireplaces became the principal source of heat earlier.

In the earliest houses combustion of wood was helped by increasing the airflow by placing the logs on iron firedogs. In smaller houses the fire was used for cooking. Andirons provided a rack for spit roasting, and trivets for pots. Later an iron or stone fireback reflected the heat forward and controlled the unwelcome side draughts. Unsurprisingly the hearth migrated to a central wall and became enclosed at the sides.”

So it does seem to me that all of these points, both from Wiki and Hey, tie in with my theory of the house at Gadds Green having been, at one time, one large dwelling, later subdivided into two storeys and into separate cottages.

On the ground

We cannot look at the house or the site now, it has literally been obliterated.

There are no detailed maps before the mid-1800s.

Photograph copyright Glenys Sykes, apologies for the poor quality. Map Copyright: https://maps.nls.uk/

Maps of the area on the NLS website include this OS Map, at six inches to the mile, which was apparently surveyed in 1881-83 and published in 1887. This shows a row of dwellings at Gadd’s Green, with what may have been a yard or fold at the North end.

Incidentally this map also shows a stretch of water at Perry’s Lake which presumably gave this area its name. I have seen suggestions that this may originally been a fish pond for the Manor farm at Cock Green.

Map Copyright: https://maps.nls.uk/

This second map is at 25” to the mile, was originally surveyed in 1881, revised in 1937 and published in 1947. This shows a row of four dwellings and a further one at the rear, plus an additional block of buildings. But the shape of the site including the fold or yard remains. There are also springs marked just along a lane which would have provided the essential water supply for a farmhouse. On both maps, this is the last building in Gadd’s Green before the road continues up Turner’s Hill, and that is where the home of the Hill family always appears in censuses.

There is no sign of water at Perry’s Lake on this later map. Although there is a mysterious building halfway between Perry’s Lake and Gadd’s Green which I suspect may be the Methodist chapel which appears in various records but later disappears. It appears to be a square building with an entrance porch at one corner and a small room at the back, perhaps a vestry or schoolroom.

And farm houses in the area do appear to have survived better than most other buildings in the Rowley area. They were probably bigger to accommodate some farm workers as well as family and it is also possible that an undercroft or part of the building could also have been used to shelter animals. There may also have been buttery or cheese stores, as well as outbuildings, barns for the storage of crops, stables for horses and vehicles and tools, plus workshops on the site any of which may have been incorporated into the farmhouse in later years.

A Will I have recently been transcribing relates to a farmer who was related to the Hills and who owned farms in Hagley and Belbroughton. The description of the Hagley Farm reads: “my Capital Messuage or dwelling house wherein I now reside with the Brewhouse, stable, Coachhouse, cowhouse and other outbuildings, Courtyard ,fold yard, Garden Ground and orchard thereunto adjoining and belonging (comprising all the buildings and the Courtyards Garden rounds Orchard and premises adjoining together on that side of the road.

Which illustrates the number of additional buildings and grounds a substantial farm might have. But even a smaller farm, like the one in Rowley village described in the Will of Ambrose Crowley, had outbuildings of a barn, workshop and yard. Thinking about this, it is clear from even later maps that the Grange site and the Portway Tavern site at Perry’s Lake were arranged in a very similar way and may also have been on an older sites and originally used as a farm.

Old Buildings in Rowley

There has been an interesting discussion this week on the “I remember Blackheath and Rowley Regis” Facebook page, after I asked where the oldest buildings in Rowley were now. The answer appears to be – several pubs, more than one farmhouse, a few well built cottages still survive. It would be fascinating to see the rafters in the roof of some of these houses to see whether any of them were cruck buildings and whether they were once blackened by the smoke from a central hearth!

So the long gone ancestral home of the Hill family in the Lost Hamlets is the rabbit hole I have been exploring for the past few days. Perhaps, – although I shall never know for sure since the house is one of those which disappeared when the quarry expanded – possibly a Hall house, probably a farm house, later four cottages – including the famous Fingeryhole cottage – which I think I have identified on the map. A fascinating – for me, anyway – glimpse of how the local families lived in centuries gone by, and how local legends may have an element of truth and a thread reaching back through the centuries.

[i] https://rowleyregislosthamlets.uk/2023/02/17/finger-i-the-hole/

[ii] https://rowleyregislosthamlets.uk/2023/10/15/tales-of-old-portway/

[iii] J Wilson Jones, The History of the Black Country, ISBN unknown, published c.1950, Cornish Brothers Ltd.

[iv] David Hay, The Grass Roots of English History ISBN: 978-1-4742-8164-5, Bloomsbury Publishing

Chipping away at the brick walls…

In family history research, all researchers, sooner or later, come up against what we call ‘brick walls’ in our research. These are people on our family trees who present a puzzle or a blockage that we cannot get past, whatever records we try, we cannot find some crucial bit of information, a baptism, a marriage, where they were born, where they died. They are brick walls between our present research and earlier generations. Sometimes those brick walls stand for a very long time.

Quite early in my research, probably soon after I started researching in about 1980, I hit a brick wall in the form of my 3 x g-grandfather Thomas Morton. I just checked, he appears on my very first paper family tree that I drew up starting in 1980, (yes, I still have that paper tree, it’s the foundation of all my research!) so it must have been quite soon after I started. I had found his marriage to Elizabeth Hill at Tipton in 1825, I had found his death and burial in Rowley in 1836 and I deduced from the age given at his burial that that he had been born in about 1800. I was able to track his descendants through succeeding generations. But I could not find any earlier trace of Thomas Moreton anywhere in the area, no baptism, he died before Civil Registration started in 1837 and before any censuses to tell me where he had been born. So he was a brick wall for me.

When I later made contact with my distant cousin Margaret Thompson, who is also descended from this couple, I discovered that she had had the same problem. We were both experienced and careful researchers but both of us were standing in front of that wall. At least I knew it wasn’t just me!

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been working on another piece for this study on one of the ‘core families’ who were living in the lost hamlets over many decades, even centuries. This time I am working on the Hill family. As I was writing about them, I double checked all my earlier research and added to my tree any new material which has become available since I did the work originally. Since the 1980s a huge amount of material has become available online, including censuses, parish registers, indexes – there were not even computers when I started! – and, very usefully in the case of Rowley Regis, within the last couple of years, copies of the Bishop’s Transcripts have become available through Ancestry, filling some of the gaps caused by the destruction of registers in the church fire at St Giles.

Although I always check my sources carefully and never simply copy from other trees– (which is possible on Ancestry but ill advised, there are many errors which are duplicated from tree to tree), it can be helpful to look at other trees to see whether there are any properly recorded facts which I had not seen before and which I could verify independently. Similarly, I look at the wonderful Black Country Connections Tree online[i] as I have often picked up useful snippets from that – such the marriage of one 3xg-grandparent which I had not found anywhere else, which was not at that time available online but which another researcher had found at Dudley Archives and made available through that tree.

So, after checking through my research on Thomas Moreton, today I took a look to see whether he appeared on the BCC tree. He does, though sadly there was no information on his parents, that brick wall was still intact. But I checked the other information there against my information and found to my surprise that there was an additional child listed who did not appear on my family tree. Another researcher had noted that Ralph Thomas Moreton had been baptised at Dudley St Thomas, on the same day as another child William Moreton who does appear on my tree and to the same parents – Thomas and Elizabeth Moreton of Rowley Regis. This baptism took place on 2 April 1837. The other researcher had correctly noted that Ralph Thomas Moreton had been born in or before 1837. Perhaps he and William were twins? You can tell this in later records from looking at Civil Registration Records because the entries for twins have consecutive reference numbers. But Civil Registration began in July 1837, this was just a few weeks too early… sounds of teeth grinding …

Ralph Thomas Moreton did not appear again in any records – for another fifty eight years. He was absent from his family in the following censuses, did not appear to have married or had children, there was no record of a death or a burial for him. But two of his brothers, William and Thomas had named sons Ralph Thomas.

But the BCC tree had one other entry for him. In 1895, a William Morton, marrying in Oldbury, gave the name Ralph Thomas Morton as his father, a miner. So it appeared that he had a) survived into adulthood and b) married and had children. How odd. And the couple getting married later named one of their sons Ralph Thomas so it was obviously a family name. But where was he?

I looked up the Civil Registration records for the bridegroom William Morton who was 24 in 1895, so he had been born in about 1871. There was only one William Moreton (The two spellings, with and without the e become interchangeable in records in this period) in Civil Registration records who was born in that period in the area and I found from this record that his mother’s maiden name was Siviter. And when I looked at my family tree for a William Moreton born in 1871, there was one William Moreton and his parents were Thomas Moreton and his wife Alice nee Siviter. Thomas was apparently the older brother of the mysterious Ralph Thomas. So, even though the name Thomas appeared in every other record for him – census, marriage, baptisms of his children – as Thomas Moreton, this son knew that he was actually Ralph Thomas Moreton. He was the Thomas on my tree born in 1832 for whom I had not been able to find a baptism, he had been baptised at the age of five, with his new baby brother. So Thomas and Ralph Thomas were the same person!

And I had been unable previously to find a death registration or burial for Thomas Moreton, despite knowing that he had been alive in the 1891 Census but that his wife was shown as a widow in the 1901 Census so I knew he had died in that ten year period. With this new information I searched for a death registration in that period for a Ralph T Morton and there he was, Ralph Thomas Morton who had died in the Dudley Registration District in the first quarter of 1894. Bingo! How satisfying. I was now sure that Thomas Moreton/Morton and Ralph Thomas Moreton/Morton were one and the same person. I haven’t found his burial yet but I’m working on it!

Three successive generations of this family had named sons Ralph Thomas Moreton. My mind went back to the original Thomas Moreton, (1800-1836), the one for whom no-one had been able to find any baptism. Might he have been Ralph Thomas too?

So I searched FreeREG for a baptism of a Ralph Thomas Moreton anywhere within ten miles of Rowley Regis for a period of five years either side of the birth year of 1800 which had been indicated by the age shown at his burial. And up came a baptism in November 1798 at Harborne when Ralph Thomas Moreton had been baptised, the son of Francis and Anne Moreton. And when I then searched Ancestry and FindMyPast for this Ralph Thomas Moreton, I could find no further trace of him, no burial, no marriage, no trace. I think he had morphed into Thomas Moreton and moved to Rowley Regis.

Is this a chink of light, a brick nudging out of my brick wall after nearly forty-five years of chipping away at the mortar? I really think it might be. I shall do some more research on the Harborne connection and the family there, when time permits. I already know that other members of my family at this period who were living at Oatmeal Row, Cakemore were married at Harborne and described as ‘of this parish’ so the parish boundary of Harborne at that time might well have extended well into the Cakemore area.

So this sort of diversion is why I do not manage to post every week to my blog. I get side-tracked into all sorts of side alleys and rabbit holes and it all takes time to work through. So, I promise that another ‘families of the Lost Hamlets’ post is in progress for my blog and my apologies for those of you who wait hopefully for new posts on Sundays. Hopefully in the next week or two there will be another post on the Hill family – unless, of course, to mix my metaphors, I find myself down yet another rabbit hole, digging furiously!

Edit: The bricks from this particular brick wall now lie scattered around my feet! Checking out Ralph Thomas’s siblings, also baptised at Harborne, I now find that at least one sister – Phebe – married James Hipkiss also at Tipton a year after her brother and lived thereafter in Rowley, on Turner’s Hill and in Gadds Green and Perrys Lake, yards from the Moreton and Whittall families – so I am now fairly certain that I have broken through the wall. And I have now confirmed that the Harborne Parish Boundary appears to have extended right through to the Oldbury Road in Blackheath and Whiteheath so it is quite possible that the Moretons lived as close to Rowley as that. More research ongoing!

[i] https://bcconnections.tribalpages.com/tribe/browse?userid=bcconnections&view=9&ver=659117

“The Grass Roots of English History”

This is the title of a book by the renowned historian David Hey, which is subtitled “Local Societies in England before the Industrial Revolution” and I recently noted it from an online comment as recommended reading for those of us with an interest in particular localities, whether in the form of a One Place Study or what I have heard called ‘micro-history’ or more general interest. So I acquired a copy and it has sat on my study table in a pile of other interesting books for a couple of weeks. Until a few days ago when I wanted something to read, out in the garden, sitting in the September sunshine.

Regular readers may remember that recently I commented that in the course of my research for my One Place Study, I had come to the conclusion that many of what I had called the ‘core families’ of the Lost Hamlets in particular but also Rowley village, had been there since time immemorial .

That felt rather a brave thing for me to proclaim, since I am neither academic nor a scholar, but I have come to believe this and certainly the idea seemed to strike a chord with many local people who commented on the ‘I remember Blackheath and Rowley Regis’ Facebook Page who appeared pleased to think that they were so deeply rooted or grounded as one person put it, in this small village.

I had started to observe this pattern when I first started transcribing parish registers for Rowley for FreeREG and realised that many of the names in the 19^th century Registers which I was transcribing were names that had also been in the Attendance Registers of my classes at school, both at Rowley Regis Grammar School but especially at Rowley Hall Primary School. I had not seen many of those names, I realised, in the forty years since I had moved away from Rowley so perhaps they were local to the area. This observation was confirmed and reinforced by every subsequent record source I looked at.

I noticed what I came to think of as ‘local faces’ in old group photographs but which I also recognised from school. And I knew from my own family history research that physical likenesses had passed virtually unchanged over – in my instance – a period of seventy years and at least five generations, from my great-uncle who died without issue at Passchendaele in 1917 to an uncanny likeness to him which popped up in my son, born seventy years later, five generations apart. The likenesses were there in the men of the intervening generations when I looked properly at their photographs, too but my son not only had the same face but the same stance, the way he held his shoulders and, it appears from other records, similar aptitudes and skills. Other observations, over time, brought the realisation that gaits, stances, voices, aptitudes, skills, and mannerisms also passed unchanged through generations.

All of these elements also indicated to me that many families stayed close to their home ground over centuries. Some, of course, moved elsewhere for work or opportunity (and transmigration patterns between Mountsorrel in Leicestershire, Rowley Regis and the Clee Hills in Shropshire, due to particular granite working skills, have emerged clearly during this study) but most families stayed put, even if individual members moved away, often only for a time. I identified the ‘core families’ who lived in the hamlets over hundreds of years, intermarrying and mostly staying very close to home.

At the Black Country History Conference which I attended at the Black Country Living Museum last year, Simon Briercliffe gave a talk on Irish immigrants in the Black Country. He showed a chart (seen in this photograph, I can obtain the fullchart if anyone would be interested to see it) with the proportions of the population in various local towns and villages who had been born there or elsewhere, based on the places of birth shown in the 1851 census, the first census to show this specific information.

Of all the villages Simon had looked at, Rowley Regis had the largest proportion of people who had been born less than ten km away from the village, the smallest number of people born between 10 and 49 km away , even less who had been born more than 50km at all and none from Ireland. As I recall, this raised a little chuckle in the audience as he reviewed the various results with a comment to the effect that Rowley Regis was well known for the people there not moving far!

And when I began to read David Hey’s book, I found myself nodding happily at just about every sentence in the introduction. David Hey, who died, sadly, as the book was in production, I think in about 2016, noted in his introduction that he had been ‘much involved’ in the study of English local and family history at both the professional and amateur level over 50 years and had noted that the local approach, also sometimes called ‘micro-history’, to give it, he says, academic respectability, had helped to transform the understanding of the history of the nation at large.

There are chapters in the book on The people of England, England’s historic towns and cities, Organizing the countryside: Villages, hamlets and farmsteads, Earning a living in the countryside, The greatest buildings in the land, Parish churches and chapels, Timber framed houses, and Population, family life and society.

He notes the importance of considering the administrative framework of a place, and a familiarity with the natural surroundings, the study of farms and field systems, the pattern of highways and lanes, the buildings, the interpretation of place names. But all the while, he says, “we must have at the forefront of our minds the people who inhabited these landscapes, the ordinary English families as well as the high and the mighty.” He welcomed the interest in family history that reinforces the value of the local approach.

This was only the first page of the introduction and yet I was feeling as though he was directly addressing me and my work on the One Place Study!

He goes on to talk about the differing nature of the various local societies throughout England and notes that people used to speak of the neighbourhood with which they were familiar as their ‘country’ , (just as, of course, we refer to our neighbourhood as the Black Country), by which they meant not the whole of England but the local district that stretched as far as the nearest market towns. He says “The core groups of families that remained rooted in these neighbourhoods were the ones that shaped local culture and passed on their traditions.” He notes that they often bore distinctive surnames which were unique to their area, still evident today.

He notes a tenet of social history that most people in the Stewart and Tudor periods moved from their place of birth at some stage in their lives. Some will have moved but many will have left members of their families behind. He argues that the character of a local community was determined not so much by such comings and goings but by the families that stayed put, even though in time they may be outnumbered by incomers. These formed the core of the community and provided it with a sense of continuity. Networks of families were formed and repeatedly strengthened by intermarriage. He calls these ‘urban dynasties’ and quotes Arnold Bennett, writing in 1902 about families in the Potteries (also in Staffordshire, of course) who said “those families which, by virtue of numbers, variety and personal force seem to permeate a whole district, to be a calculable item of it, an essential part of its identity”. Hey notes that many of these old urban dynasties continued to run matters in their locality over several generations. I have also noted in the course of my research familiar names cropping up in reports of parish offices, of local councils, of those involved in the administration of local affairs, centuries after those names were recorded in the Court Rolls and the Parish Registers for Rowley, so this applied in the Rowley area, too.

Hey also discusses how the study of surnames has altered in recent years and his belief that each area or ‘country’ had its distinctive collection of surnames which had been formed locally in the Middle Ages. There is also now a school of thought, he says, that very many English family names, including the common ones as well as the rare, should be treated as having a unique history that must be traced back in time and that many would prove to have a single family origin. So each time I have looked at the first entry in the Rowley Registers for a name in my family tree, and wondered whether I could actually trace my line to that person, it seems that yes, I might well be able to and that this would not be too unusual.

In particular Hey notes that where surnames have been mapped from the 1881 census, the great majority of those distinctive surnames – those that appear to have had a single family origin – were still decidedly local in character. He notes that Staffordshire provides many examples of surnames which have remained concentrated in their county of origin. Examples relating to the area of the Potteries are described in the book, and he also discusses those which appear to have derived from small places, and discusses the use of detailed maps in this respect to identify the origins of some names, which may have been as small a place as one farmstead.

Of particular interest to Rowley folk, perhaps, is a paragraph in the introduction about Rayboulds. This name, he says, derived from an old personal name and appears to have had a single family origin in the Black Country. The 903 Rayboulds in the 1881 Census, he notes, included 306 in Dudley and 259 in Stourbridge. I could tell him somewhere else to look too! And that Francis Raball who appears in the Rowley Marriage Register in 1614 is surely one of those very early ones of that name.

And so for all the Darbys, Groves, Wards, Bridgwaters, Hipkisses, Willetts, Whites, Rustons, Whiles, Jeavons, Dankses, Lowes. Hadens, Detheridges, Mucklows, Parsonses, Cartwrights, numerous others – any of those family names still in the Rowley area and appearing in the mid-1500s in the first few pages of the Rowley Registers, it seems that it is not actually fanciful, to think that you are, very probably, a direct descendant from those original families in Rowley then.

Later in the book, talking about the structure of settlements, Hey says that “Hamlets are found in every English region, even in the heartlands of the Midland open-field villages. Far from being a somehow inferior type of settlement, as was once assumed, they were often more suited to communal farming than were large villages. Their versatility, adaptability, resilience and tenacity enabled most of them to survive the late medieval economic and demographic depressions, though many suffered and a proportion succumbed. They ensured that England was a country with complex and different rural economies.”

There is a fascinating breadth of knowledge in this book, distilled from a lifetime of study of local and family history by David Hey, about all sorts of details of living in earlier times. Thinking of my piece recently on the Inventory of Ambrose Crowley 1, I was interested to read in this book that livestock were far smaller than now and they produced less milk and meat, while disease was a constant threat. A cow gave 120-150 gallons of milk a year, about one sixth of present day yields. In Yorkshire the average dairy cow produced just 72 pounds of butter and cheese annually. Medieval hay meadows were valued at three or four times the level of surrounding arable lands because they provided the essential winter fodder to keep breeding stock alive over the winter, confirming the reason for the relatively high valuation given in the Inventory for the hay in the barn.

Yet Hey suggests that the inhabitants of England’s medieval towns formed only about 10% of the national population. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most English towns remained small, they were not yet divorced from the surrounding countryside and their fields and meadows could usually be seen from the market place. This rings true to me because in the small Gloucestershire town where I now live, where expansion and development were crippled for a long period by the collapse of the wool trade, one feature of the landscape is that the surrounding countryside is clearly visible from many of the town streets, including especially long views from the Chipping, originally the Cheaping, the market place.

Hey also considers the position of London, then, as now, not typical of other English towns and with a higher proportion of non-native residents, but he notes also that, at least since the early 1600s and probably well before, London had been connected to smaller cities and market towns in every part of the kingdom by weekly carrying services. A document of 1637 lists the London inns where provincial carriers arrived and departed and their regular schedules. A study he refers to has calculated that about 205 waggons and 165 gangs of packhorses entered and left London every week, carrying a total of about 460 tons of goods each way. By 1715, regular carrying services by road in and out of London had more than doubled since 1637 and coach services to the most provincial centres numbered nearly 1000 a week.

Amongst the goods carried, I reflect, would have been nails from Rowley Regis. Small wonder then that the more ambitious of the families in Rowley, perhaps the young men wanting to expand their horizons, opted to move, at first to larger towns such as Stourbridge where there was a thriving market for nails, possibly transported from there on the river. Nails were heavy, and dense, they could be transported by pack horse or cart but roads were generally poor and travelling slow. Water transport allowed large quantities to be moved more easily, hence the development of canals to places which did not have access to rivers. But I now know of at least three Rowley families whose descendants moved to London to trade as ‘nail ironmongers’ in the city where their wares could be sold on the London markets and also shipped across the world from the London docks where they set up their businesses. They would doubtless have arranged their own transport, from the Midlands, cutting out the middleman, the carrier and probably improving their security en route. It seems that at least some of our ancestors may have been a lot more mobile than I had always thought.

Also, some young men (not many women), from all parts of the country, came to London to be apprenticed to various trades, as can be identified from Apprenticeship Registers in the archives of the various Livery Companies, as was Ambrose Crowley 3. Hey gives very interesting descriptions about how these apprenticeships were arranged and also how many families in the provinces had one or more members who were in London. Again, this brings my mind back to my ancestor Edward Cole who was married in a Fleet Marriage in London in 1730, then returning to live in Rowley Regis for the rest of his long life. I had already, as a result of earlier research, been wondering whether he and his father had been involved in transporting nails to London, now I am wondering whether there had been an apprenticeship somewhere along the line, too. So now I am going to have to learn more about Apprenticeship Records.

Thoughts

This man is speaking my language.

By learning about this early period I am seeing not only how our ancestors lived then but how this earlier period shaped the times and society that followed.

Most dry days now, I take the book and a large mug of tea out to a sunny spot in the garden and read a few more pages, not rushing, because almost everything he writes is worth understanding and thinking about. If you have found this interesting and fancy a longer read, look out for copies on Amazon or Abebooks or try ordering it through interlibrary loans. For myself, I am enjoying every page and feeling a new confidence that my researches have been leading me in the right direction and that further research is worthwhile.

David Hey was Emeritus Professor of Local and Family History at the University of Sheffield, his roots were in the Hallamshire area of Yorkshire, on which he has published numerous books, he was a hands on family historian, as well as a renowned academic. A review on the book describes it as “a magnificent overview of England’s past, which serves to unite the worlds of landscape history, family history and local history”. Another review notes that it is “highly readable, an excellent interpretative work, up to date, wide-ranging in themes, regions and chronology.”

It is also meticulously referenced and provides details of a range of other books which could tempt me, not to mention Hey’s other publications, some of which I already had. His books ‘Family names and family history’ and ‘Journeys in Family History’ have already found their way onto my TBR pile this week! I am now valiantly resisting the temptation to acquire his book “Packmen, Carriers and Packhorse Roads : Trade and Communications in North Derbyshire and South Yorkshire”, as I suspect that many of the trading conditions in metal working in that area may have been similar to those in the Black Country. And ‘Surnames, DNA, and Family History’ by George Redmonds, Turi King, and David Hey – also sings seductively to me – at this rate I am going to need another bookcase…

I have always been an avid reader and had considered myself reasonably well informed about English history, since it has always interested me. What a joy it is, in my mid-seventies, to have my knowledge and understanding of English history, of ordinary English people, (not just the powerful and wealthy who have always been well documented), and how common folk lived, my perceptions so greatly enhanced and expanded as they are being, in the course of this One Place Study and by such gifted writers as David Hey and Gillian Tindall. My only problem is that there are just not enough reading hours in the day!