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.
Copyright: Glenys Sykes, not to be used without my specific permission.
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.
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.
TimothyHill (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.
When, back in February 2023, I posted for the first time on the ‘I Remember Blackheath & Rowley Regis’ Facebook page about my then new One Place Study about the Lost Hamlets, I had some very encouraging responses, one of which was from Ronald Terence Woodhouse who told me that his family had been the original licensees of the Wheatsheaf and that his grandmother had lived in the first cottage going up Turner’s Hill, so right in the centre of the study area. And ever since, I have been meaning to do a piece on the Wheatsheaf. So here it is, at last.
Copyright: Mike Fenton. This shows the pub in about 1928 and the Water Tower on Turners Hill can be seen in the distance. This building was demolished soon after this and a replacement built.
The address shown in Hitchmough’s Guide [i] for the Wheatsheaf is 1, Turner’s Hill, or Darby’s Hill, Lye Cross, Four Lane’s End, Oakham, Rowley Regis. So quite which if those it is, I would not know. Probably all at one time or another. Perhaps part of the reason for this varying address is that these are all descriptions given in the different censuses, Lye Cross from 1841-1861, when the pub was managed by Benjamin Woodhouse from about 1834-1861, then by Joseph Cox from 1861-1892. Joseph Parkes was the Licensee from 1996-1904, Walter Woodall from 1911-1912, then it was managed by Howard Woodhouse in 1916 and then Thomas Woodhouse in 1919-1920. It is quite possible that the other licensees were related to the Woodhouses and Hitchmough does not have a complete list in terms of dates, but I have not looked at those families in detail at this stage.
In the 1871 Census, the pub’s address is shown as Turner’s Hill and in 1881 it is 35 Oakham, in 1901 it was 1, Turner’s Hill – Tavern – as in 1901. So this area seems to have been called various things. As late as 2022 the site was still described as 1 Turners Hill. But certainly there was a pub or tavern there at a very early date which continued until quite recently, only the Bull outlasting it.
The Wheatsheaf was situated at the junction of Portway Hill and the road which ran from Perry’s Lake up over Turner’s Hill. This area is not strictly part of the Lost Hamlets since it is not physically lost as the other hamlets have been, the area is still there although the pub has now closed. But there was a strong family spread across this area and the Turner’s Hill/Gadd’s Green/Perry’s Lake area with a lot of connections. Families from this area also often used the Dudley churches, rather than Rowley.
Benjamin Woodhouse Licensee 1834-1855)
In August 1826 and 27, August 1829 and again in August 1830 notices appeared in Aris’s Birmingham Gazette warning ‘Gentlemen’ against ‘sporting or trespassing’ on the land of various owners or they would be deemed ‘wilful trespassers. Signatories to this Notice included Benjamin and later Thomas Woodhouse, Benjamin Hadley and Thomas Smart, all names associated with Benjamin. There were similar notices relating to several other places, including Sedgley, Kings Norton and Sutton Coldfield although I do not know what gave rise to these nor whether they had any effect on the hunting /poaching and shooting parties. There was no police force as such in those days and people had to protect their land as best they could,in this instance by working together. However, it does show that at least Joseph Woodhouse was a well established landowner in this area by 1929 and the house may well have been operating as a beerhouse or pub by then but this is uncertain.
In November 1839, an auction was held at ‘the house of Benjamin Woodhouse at the Wheatsheaf’of a small freehold estate which was situated ‘at Portway’ within two miles of Dudley, by the side of the road leading to Oldbury, Titford and Birmingham, consisting of a Farm House, Barn, Cow-house, small tenement, and four closes of rich Pasture Land, containing about eight acres, ‘in the occupation of Thomas Woodhouse’. The notice emphasised that the property was in the immediate vicinity of numerous collieries and iron works, rendering it a ‘most desirable investment’. This may have been Portway Farm or another farm on that road.
Hitchmough lists the first licensee as Benjamin Woodhouse – from 1834-1861. In the 1841 Census Benjamin was there with his wife Sarah Woodhouse (nee Smart) and an Ann Woodhouse, aged 20, all born in Staffordshire. Benjamin and Sarah appear to have been married at Handsworth in 1812.
The 1841 Census does not give relationships but from what I have been able to research, it does not appear that Ann is the daughter of Benjamin and Sarah, I have only been able to discover one child born to them, Sarah Jane who was baptised at St Giles in 1832, when they had been married for twenty years and Sarah was forty four.
Sarah Woodhouse died in March 1854, aged 66 and Benjamin in early 1855, aged 69, both buried at St Giles. So clearly he cannot have been the licensee until 1861, as Hitchmough suggests. Perhaps the dates of 1861-1892 which Hitchmough suggests for the next licensee reflect the next licence record or possibly census that Hitchmough was able to find, there is sometimes a delay in finding records of licences changing hands.
Benjamin’s Will was made in October 1854, proved in May 1855 in which he describes himself as a publican of Lye Cross, so it seems that this was definitely the right Benjamin Woodhouse. In his Will, Benjamin leaves houses to the two sons of his niece Ann (so perhaps that was who was staying with him in 1841?) but most of his assets were left in a complex Trust for the benefit of his daughter Sarah Jane. The Trustees were his niece’s husband Enoch Hadley and Charles Cox of Oakham, both described as cattle dealers. Benjamin appears to have been quite well to do, leaving various properties and his Will leaves, amongst other things, his brewing equipment so, like many Victuallers at that time, he obviously made his own beer. But he also listed “furniture, brewing vessels, plate, linen, china, glass, books, prints, wines, liquors, consumable stores, and other household effects” amongst his possessions. Certainly it sounds like a well furnished and decorated house, I have not seen ‘prints’ listed in any other local Wills.
I began this piece fairly sure that I was not related to this family – there was not a Woodhouse to be found on my family tree with 7000 people on it. But then I found that Benjamin’s daughter Sarah Jane Woodhouse married a Major Rose – my mother’s maiden name was Rose. That started little bells ringing in my head as I have lots of Roses from Rowley on my tree. But Major Rose was from Halesowen, so not likely to be connected. It took me about ten minutes to find his father Aaron Rose, also living in Halesowen and a Gun Barrel Manufacturer – still no connection, no gun barrel makers amongst my lot. Then, in the 1851 census I saw that Aaron Rose was born in Rowley. Ah! And his parents were Moses Rose and Mary Stephenton, who were my 5xg-grandparents… okay, I am related, very distantly. Major Rose was my 1st cousin 5xremoved. I am beginning to wonder whether I am actually related to everyone living in the Lost Hamlets then…
Sarah Jane and Major had been married on 15 February 1854 at St Martins in Birmingham, where Sarah Jane was described as ‘of this parish’. This was only a few weeks before her mother died and I am slightly surprised that she was not married in Rowley. And her father’s Will went to great lengths to try to prevent her husband from benefitting from his estate, leaving most of his assets in Trust for Sarah’s benefit. Perhaps they did not approve of the marriage. Major’s family were involved in gun making and Benjamin Woodhouse would probably have been aware that Aaron Rose, Major’s father had been declared bankrupt in 1852. None the less, Sarah’s was a long and fruitful marriage, she and Major Rose had at least six children together, rejoicing in the names of Benjamin Woodhouse Rose (1855), Major General Rose, (1859), Sydney Herbert Rose (1861, Baron Rose (1864), Captain Rose (1866) and Sarah Jane Rose. The first two children were born in Rowley Regis (probably at the Wheatsheaf) but the later children were born in Halesowen where the family both farmed in the Frankley/Illey area and Major and his brothers continued to be much involved with gun barrel making.
On 18 April 1855, there is a notice in the Worcestershire Chronicle, stating that the transfer of the Licence for the Wheatsheaf had been sanctioned from Enoch Hadley (who was Executor for the estate of Benjamin Woodhouse) to Major Rose, Benjamin’s son-in-law.
Interestingly Hitchmough has a note that Hoof marks were reported on the roof of the Wheatsheaf in 1855!
And Major and Sarah Jane’s elder two children were born in Rowley in 1855 and 1859 so they may have stayed at the Wheatsheaf until then. In 1857 and 1858 Major Rose also took out Game Licences in Rowley Regis. But by the 1861 Census , Major and Sarah were back in Halesowen, he describing himself as an ‘ironmaster’ and certainly he remained involved with the family gun making business for many years to come. Also living with them in 1861, apparently as a servant, was Mary Smart, born Rowley Regis, aged 28. As Sarah’s mother was a Smart, I wonder whether she was actually related to Sarah.
The Woodhouses were numerous in Oakham and Lye Cross. There were three Woodhouse families on one page in the 1841 Census. I will do more work for a Woodhouse Family Study when time permits.
The other thing which is becoming clear from my research is that families who kept pubs tended to intermarry – their children were accustomed to the life, knew how things worked, and presumably met the children of other licensees socially. Looking at the marriages of the children of Thomas several of them and their children married into families – the Bate family, the Levett family, the Roses, the Woodhouses who were farmers , maltsters or farmers and especially publicans. Even when men marrying into the family were in other occupations, such as Joseph Cox who was a farmer, and Major Rose who was a gun barrel maker (although his father had been both a maltster and a licensee earlier in his life), these men turned their hands to becoming licensees when people were required to run the family pub. Keeping the businesses in the family!
Joseph Cox (licensee 1861-1892)
Ah, I thought – a completely different name, nothing to do with the Woodhouses then. It did take me half an hour of checking to discover that Joseph’s wife Sophia was a Woodhouse, the niece of the original Benjamin. So the Woodhouse family were still in control of the Wheatsheaf! I should not be surprised by now at how closely inter-related all the families in this area were.
In the Worcestershire Chronicle on 18th January 1860 there is a notice that a licence transfer had been permitted for the Barley Mow at Rowley from Joseph Cox to William Griffiths, presumably prior to Joseph taking over the Wheatsheaf. Hitchmough lists Joseph Cox as the licensee at the Barley Mow at Tividale from about 1855-1860, his time at the Barley Mow may have been sufficient to give him some experience in the licensed trade before taking over the Wheatsheaf.
In the 1861 Census, Joseph and Sophia were living at the Wheatsheaf with their children John, aged 6, Sarah Jane, aged 3 and Annie E aged 1, plus a house servant Sarah Rupp, aged 17 who was from Dudley.
In the 1871 Census, Joseph and Sophia were living at the Wheatsheaf with their children Eliza Ann, aged 18, John, aged 16 – a solicitor’s Clerk, Sarah Jane, aged 13, Ann Elizabeth aged 11, plus Mary Sophia, aged 9. (I don’t know where the eldest child Eliza Ann, then 8, was in the 1861 Census, as she is not listed with the rest of the family at the Wheatsheaf and I can’t immediately find her with other relatives in the area.)
There was an inquest held at the Wheatsheaf in October 1878 and details of this appeared in the Birmingham Daily Post on the 18th October:
Birmingham Daily Post 18/10/1878
“Yesterday afternoon Mr. Edwin Hooper, coroner, held an inquest at the WHEAT SHEAF INN, Turners Hill, on the body of Joseph Woodhouse (53), a milkseller, who died under circumstances already reported.
Mrs. Woodhouse said she had been delivering milk with her husband on Monday night, and when in Gipsy Lane, on the road home, she heard a great shouting, and saw a trap loaded with men behind them. Her husband pulled more on one side, but as he did so the horse became frightened, and bolted with them. She lost consciousness, and when she recovered her husband was lying by the road side insensible. She had fallen on her shoulder, and her collar bone was broken. At the time she recovered the men in the trap were driving off faster than ever. A young man helped witness home, and brought her husband. The men were to blame for shouting so loudly and frightening the pony.
Joseph Harvey, of Tividale, said he heard five or six men in a trap driving at full speed, and shouting to Woodhouse as though they wished him to get out of the way. When the pony bolted both were thrown out, and the trap fell over. He called to the men, but they would not stop.
Police-constable Gevin said he had made full enquiries as to the men in the trap, but had not learned who they were. He received no information of the man’s death until late on Tuesday evening.
The Coroner summed up, and asked the jury if they would have an adjournment to give the police more time. There seemed no doubt but that the men would say if brought before the jury that they were simply shouting for the old man to get out of the way. The wife evidently did not seem to think much of the blame to be attached to the men, for she made no complaint, and did not inform the police of the death of her husband for a long time.
The jury then returned a verdict of Accidental Death.”
So this, although not directly related to the Wheatsheaf, was related to the Woodhouse family, one time and perhaps continuing owners of the Wheatsheaf who continued to farm throughout this period in the immediate area of Oakham/Lye Cross.
In the 1881 Census, Joseph and Sophia are still at the Wheatsheaf with son John, now a Clerk at the Colliery, rather than a Solicitor’s Clerk, and daughters Annie and Mary.
In 1891, listed as 1 Turner’s Hill, Joseph is still listed as a licensed victualler and Sophia, Annie and Mary are still living at home and unmarried.
Sophia Cox died in 1894 and Joseph Cox re-married and retired to Smethwick with his new wife where he died in 1903.
Joseph Parkes (licensee 1896-1907)
In 1901, The Licensee is Joseph Parkes, aged 60 and his wife Sarah Jane Parkes.
So far was I know, there is no connection between this couple and the earlier licensees. Parkes is such a common local name that I have not been able to narrow down any more information. So it may be that this was the point at which the family sold the pub to Thomas Williams of the Rowley Brewery. Or it may be, of course, that Joseph Parkes or his wife may have been related to the Woodhouse/Smart/Cox families and I have simply not yet found the link! As Sarah Jane is a name much used by the Woodhouse and Cox families, it was tempting to consider whether Joseph had married into those families but it appears more likely that he was the Joseph Parkes who married Sarah Jane Adams in 1862 in Quinton.
During Joseph’s tenure as licensee, Hitchmough reports an amazing procession, starting at the Wheatsheaf in 1898.
“County Advertiser 24/9/1898
“On Sunday afternoon the annual friendly societies’ Sunday service, on behalf of the hospitals, was held in a field at the back of Mountford House, Siviters Lane, Rowley, kindly lent for the occasion by Dr. J. G. Beasley. The members of various societies met at their headquarters, and were formed into a procession as below. The Blackheath Village Band started from the WHEAT SHEAF INN, Turners Hill at one o’clock, with the Church of England Friendly Society, and proceeded through Portway and Perrys Lake, calling at the BULLS HEAD INN for the Sick Club, at the WARD ARMS INN for Court Foresters’ Pride, at the KINGS ARMS INN for Lodge Working Man’s Friend. It then proceeded by way of Ross, Holly Road, Tump Road, and John Street, to the GEORGE AND DRAGON Ground. The Woodgate Brass Band had in the meantime covered its route from the OLD BUSH INN, Powke Lane, with Court Little Band of Hope, calling at the MALT SHOVEL INN for Lodge Lily of the Valley, the VINE INN for Court Mistletoe Bough, proceeding along Station Road to the RAILWAY INN for Court Britannia’s Pride, thence through Halesowen Street, Tump Road, and Hackett Street, meeting the other Courts at the GEORGE AND DRAGON Ground. A united procession was then formed, and marched to Siviters Lane, reaching the ground at three o’clock. The proceedings opened with the hymn ‘All people that on earth do dwell,’ after which the Chairman (Mr. E. Pewtress, CC) delivered a short address.
The Rev. C. W. Barnard, MA, Rector of Kings Norton, then addressed the meeting, after which the hymn ‘Lead, kindly light,’ was sung. Addresses were also delivered by the Revs. W. Hall and N. Haigh, of Blackheath.
At the close a collection was taken on behalf of the Dudley Dispensary and Birmingham Eye Hospital. It amounted to £11 9s 5d.”
What an amazing event that must have been to see, I can imagine the local children dancing happily alongside the procession. It is clear from this that many of the local pubs, including the Wheatsheaf, ran friendly societies to assist people with illness and medical expenses, in those days when there was no health service, no national insurance and when fees had to be paid for a doctor to visit.
Walter Woodall 1907-1912
In 1911 Walter Woodall (35) was listed as ‘brewer [beer], licensed victualler’ and both he and his wife Elizabeth were born in Wednesbury and, again, there is no obvious connection to the previous owners. The elder two of their children Florence (11) and Walter (5) had been born in Tipton but the youngest Harold (1) was born in Rowley.
Walter Woodall appears only to have been there for five years and the only mention of him in the Press is for the transfer of the licence for the Wheatsheaf from him to Thomas Henry Holland in 1912. Which is rather odd because the same report also notes the transfer of the licence of the Barley Mow in City Road, Oakham to the same Thomas Henry Holland! And Hitchmough does list Holland as the licensee at the Barley Mow from 1911 -1916 but does not mention Holland in relation to the Wheatsheaf. Perhaps a reporter error, as Hitchmough lists the new licensee for the Wheatsheaf in 1912 as Howard Woodhouse, succeeded in 1919-1920 by Thomas Woodhouse. Yes, the Woodhouses, after a gap of more than 50 years (or perhaps 20 if you take into account the Cox family who were also close Woodhouse connections).
Purchase of the Wheatsheaf by Thomas Williams of the Rowley Brewery
Despite all my efforts to associate later licensees with the Woodhouse family, it may well be that in fact the pub was sold in 1896 when the Cox family retired and it is simply coincidence that Woodhouses were back in 1916. Hitchmough notes that the owner of the Wheatsheaf was T B Williams (who had taken over the Bull in about 1875 and who died in 1908) and the Rowley Brewery, followed by Thomas W Williams and Lizzie Bate, before being sold to Ansells in 1946 and subsequently Admiral Taverns. I had noted in my piece on the Bull [ii] that T Williams, the owner there had expanded his brewing and pub-keeping activities from when he took over as licensee of the Bull and had bought both the Wheatsheaf at Turners Hill and the Grange in Rowley Village. So it appears that although the Woodhouses were licensees in 1916, they no longer owned the pub.
Thereafter, Hitchmough listed thesucceeding licensees as :
Howard Woodhouse 1916
Thomas Woodhouse1919-1920
Edward Harrison (1920-1929)
Frank Green (1929)
Frank Jinks (1929-1957)
Walter Raymond Harris (1957 – 1960);
Frederick William Hughes (1960 – [1965]
Frederick Brown (1968 – [ ]
C Swarbrick (1970 – [ ]
Arthur Isherwood (1981 – [ ]
Glenn Whitehouse [1988]
Sara Harvey (2015 – [ ]
Twentieth century genealogical records are much sparser than earlier ones and I have no further information about these licensees although many Rowley people will have memories of more recent ones, as customers at the pub! The licensees in 1988, Mr & Mrs Whitehouse, complained that when the road over from Perry’s Lake over Turners Hill was closed, they lost a substantial amount of trade from Rowley Regis.
Copyright unknown. Taken in 2018, this shows the replacement pub, looking prosperous and well maintained.
The original pub was demolished in about 1930 and a replacement built behind it. This closed permanently in 2019, like so many pubs, still described as 1 Turner’s Hill and planning permission was sought in 2022 to redevelop the site with a very modern block of flats. However I note, from the Sandwell Planning website, that the Council Officers considered that this site was an adopted open space within the Strategic Open Space & a Wildlife corridor, no decision notice or withdrawal of the application is listed and there appears to be no further progress on this application since then.
So far as I am aware, the pub building remains boarded up on site at present, another previously well used pub which has now gone.
Faithful readers who ploughed through my piece about Hall Houses last week may recall that I had quite a lot to say about timber framed houses and the skills and production methods used in their construction.
The fire at the Cathedral, in April 2019, caused extensive damage to some parts of the cathedral but the windows and bell towers, relics and art survived the fire. But the spire fell, through the roof. The things which were extensively damaged were parts of the structure, some many centuries old, that most people probably didn’t notice when they visited. But, as the Telegraph noted, “as la forêt – the latticework of timber over the nave that had supported the roof for eight centuries – had been engulfed in flames and would need rebuilding.”
In the immediate aftermath, work began on finding craftsmen with the necessary skills to re-create the timbering exactly as it was and using the same techniques as 800 years ago, and also to find the timber required. That was the task of the French equivalent of the Forestry Commission who worked with the carpenters to identify the trees required for the work. Eleven principal trusses were needed and forty five secondary trusses, each 1.4m wide and 10m high. The task of carrying out the work was given to a group specialising in heritage projects – Charpentiers sans Frontières (Carpenters without Borders) – which brings together experts to work on historical construction sites.
English carpenter Mike Dennis is one of the small number of carpenters in the world with the skill and knowledge to undertake such work. And he was already living in France. Much of the work, according to him, had to develop from such plans and dimensions as they had available to them. The architect Remi Fromont had done a study of the roof in 2014 and his knowledge was vital. But to recreate the roof in every detail, as they were determined to do, meant drawing on many other resources, including trawling the internet for photographs visitors had taken, which might enable the carpenters to see details and angles of the trusses and tie-beams, including the carpenters’ assembly marks, to which I referred in my previous article.
Tree felling began in December of 2022 and the carpenters would go into the forests with a team from the commission to identify suitable trees for their purposes. They also had a team of blacksmiths who made tools, 13th century style axes, and gouges for them to recreate the marks on the timbers. The work was organised in much the same way as in a medieval workshop, Dennis says, the timber would arrive at the workshop, the carpenters would work on the trusses which would then be piled up ready to be sent to Paris as soon as the masons had prepared the walls. He describes the structure as “a flat pack on a massive scale”. All of the hewing and carpentry work was done by hand, with the carpenters working out the best and quickest ways to create what was needed with hand tools, just as the carpenters would have done originally. The only modern tool used was a circular saw to cut the joints.
The pictures from the restored cathedral look absolutely wonderful but you will not see la forêt – that is hidden above the ceiling but it is there, doing the job of holding up the roof, thanks to the wonderful skills of carpenters like Mike.
Mike Dennis is on Instagram and this is his page there – there are some amazing images of cruck timbers in various old buildings as well as his own work. https://www.instagram.com/mike_dennis_craft/?hl=en
Since completing this work, Mike has apparently been involved in a project to recreate the ship on which William the Conqueror sailed to England.
It was lovely to read about this work on Notre Dame and to realise that it was the same skills, on a smaller level which created timber framed houses in our past and in our neighbourhoods, and especially good to know, as the daughter of a traditionally apprenticed and trained carpenter, that there are still dedicated craftsmen keeping these skills alive today.
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 20th 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.
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.
Recently, on the ‘I remember Blackheath and Rowley Regis’ Facebook page Ronald Terence Woodhouse drew my attention to a serious fire in a mine at Lye Cross, just over the hill from the Lost Hamlets and probably where some of the miners who lived in the Lost Hamlets worked. I found some basic details fairly quickly for Ronald who had remembered being told about the fire when he was a child but I have since done more research.
The pit concerned was a coal mine at Lye Cross, notLye near Cradley Heath, it was just below Oakham off Portway Hill and was owned by the Earl of Dudley. The colliery became renowned as a ‘state of the art’ pit.
There were many local pits scattered around the area, and their activities later led to many problems with subsidence for houses and buildings built above them, including amongst many other buildings the second Rowley Church, Portway Hall and – a bit out of our district – the now famous and demolished Crooked House pub.
This map, which I found online shows the local pits.
Copyright: mindat.org.
It was surprising to me to realise quite how many pits there were. You can look at this map here https://www.mindat.org/loc-302392.html and if you zoom in, more detail is shown. A green dot with a figure on it shows the number of separate mines or shafts there were on the site or in the immediate area.
An old press article about the History of Mining in the Dudley Herald dated 18 May 1898 gave a lot of information about coal mining in the area. This claimed that originally, it had been thought by local engineers that there was a layer of coal below the basalt which is Rowley Rag but ‘expert geologists who had investigated the subject’ had a contrary theory , due to the geology of the Rowley Hills, that there was no coal underneath the basalt rock. So, according to this expert,
“for many years it was usually believed that either no coal existed beneath the basalt or that whatever coal might have existed had been burnt or otherwise rendered useless by the great heat of the basalt when it flowed from the earth’s interior.”
This, despite the known belief of the colliers of the district that workable coal lay beneath the basalt. Experts, it appears, do not always get things right! The article goes on:
“This important question was not, however, easily disposed of and mining men awaited further developments. One of the most suggestive of these followed the cutting of the Birmingham Canal in 1856: this tunnel passes through the base of the Rowley Hills and no basalt was met with during its construction.”
Trade was said to be in a depressed state at the beginning of 1865,
“though the coal trade improved through the year. There was a colliers’ strike and a lockout of the ironworkers that year. “The lockout took effect in the early part of the year and was indirectly due to a strike of ironworkers in North Staffordshire; in consequence of this strike the ironmasters of South Staffordshire decided to lock their men out as a measure of defence, and to support the masters of North Staffordshire. Towards the end of the year there were about 115 blast furnaces at work in the District.”
In the years 1867-68, the No.25 Tividale Pits were sunk through the hills without passing into any basalt in position. The thick coal was pierced at a depth of about 230 yards and at some distance from the shafts was found to be thrown down for about 100 yards by a great fault. More new shafts were later successfully sunk at Grace Mary and the presence of coal was now confirmed. In the year 1874, the article confirms, the Earl of Dudley’s pits at Lye Cross were completed but unlike those before described, these passed through about 65 yards of basalt which was met at a depth of about 11 yards from the surface. When the lower part of the basalt was reached a large quantity of water poured into the shafts, and this gave considerable trouble. Later parts of the article describe drainage problems in the various mines and the equipment required to try to extract water, mainly rainwater filtering through the rock into the mines. Much is said also about fluctuations in trade in both coal and in the iron industry which was such a big customer for coal for the many furnaces and how these affected the mines. In 1873, apparently, the iron trade began to fall off and later on the coal trade was seriously affected. In March 1874 it was decided to ask the thick coal miners to accept a reduction of 1 shilling and the thin coal miners a reduction of 9pence, owing to trade depression. The men refused to give way, and a strike of about 13,000 colliers was begun and continued for four months. After the strike ended, trade was only moderately good, there being only 80 furnaces in blast in December 1874, whilst 34 were idle.
Also coming into operation about this time was the appointment of a Royal Commission. The article states
“In accordance with the common practice of the Government, when about to take effective steps for remedying evils generally felt by the community, a Royal Commission to inquire into the occurrence of accidents in mines was appointed on February 12th 1879.”
If in doubt, appoint a Royal Commission – some government practices have not changed in f150 years, it seems! This Royal Commission was in response to a series of disastrous colliery explosions in numerous places. As a result of the reports produced by the Commission the operation of the previous Coal Mines Regulation Act 1872 ceased on 31 December 1887 after a period of 15 years, during which time, it had been, directly or indirectly, a great cause of improvement in mining operations, and a new Coal Mines Regulation Act 1887 came into effect on 1st January 1888.
What other records suggestabout early coal mining in Rowley
Despite the impression given in this article that there was little or no coalmining until the late 1800s, this is not really borne out by other local records.
In his Will proved in 1844 John Beet, the Squire of Rowley Hall, made numerous references to his coal copyholds and his coal mining interests and how they should be managed for the benefit of his legatees. Later the Rowley Hall mine became a large and active mine for many years, the Bell End pits may also have been his but I have no definite information on this. But clearly local business men were well aware of the potential profits of coal mining in Rowley and did not see this as impossible.
The Burial Registers at St Giles
In the parish registers for Rowley, there is an entry in July 1695 that “Hen. Sheldon of Tivydale, Kill’d in a Coal Pit in Tippon (sic. Presumably Tipton)” had been buried so certainly some form of coal mining was going on in the area at that early date, although there was not then the demand from the ironmasters which would help to drive demand for coal for their blast furnaces.
In November of the same year, William, son of Tho. Willets was also listed as having been killed in a coalpit so it appears that boys as well as men were working in the pits, as the name of the father is not usually given unless the burial is for a child.
In October 1803, the St Giles Burial Register has a description of the death of another child killed in a pit.
“Henry, son of John and Mary Edmands. He was killed in a coal pit near Brierley Hill. His cloathes were caught by a hook, or something of the kind, of the skep, which took him up a considerable way: at length his clothes tore and he held by his hands till being unable to hang any longer, he fell and spoke no more.”
Poor lad, how terrified he must have been.
Another boy, James, son of Joseph and Sarah Darby of Dudley, was killed by a fall of coals in a pit in 1806, a man John Lenton, killed in a coal pit in 1808 and William Thomas was ‘burnt in a coal pit, also in 1808.
Pits were hazardous places above and below ground – Thomas Williams, who was 35 was buried on 29 November 1810 after
“He fell into a coal pit in the dark about 8’o’clock on Saturday evening at Windmill End, It had lain uncovered and unguarded nearly twelve months & was about twenty yards deep in water!!!”
In 1811, William, son of Thomas and Ann Davies, aged 16 was also buried after being killed in a coal pit. Throughout the following years in the early 1800s there are frequent burials of mostly young men and boys killed in coal pits, with 92, for example, between 1813 and 1849.
In the 1841 Census 13 men living in the Lost Hamlets were listed as miners, in 1851 this had increased to 36. So there were certainly men and boys mining coal in the parish well before the period discussed in the article above.
The Lye Cross Colliery
In the Birmingham Gazette on 8th March 1841 an advertisement appeared, addressed to ‘Iron-masters, coal-masters and others’. This gave notice that a One-third share of the Lye Cross Colliery was to be sold by auction in West Bromwich on the 18th March, and stated “ the ‘above-named valuable colliery, together with the Plant in and thereon’ was offered for sale. The advertisement went on
“This property consists of seventy two Acres of Thick Coal in the fast, of undoubted good quality, and of unusual thickness. The sinking of the Shafts and the driving of a Gait Road about 100 yards into the Thick Coal has just been completed, and the latter operation has proved the excellence and superiority of the quality and substance of this important measure.
The Engine is complete and powerful, the shafts within 525 yards of the upper level of the Birmingham Canal and the whole Machinery and Mines (the latter entirely free from water) ready for immediate draught.
The Quarterly Payments, which are light, commenced on the 25th March last, under a lease granted by J E Piercy, Esq., of Worley Hall, from which date thirty nine years have to run.
The present affords an opportunity rarely to be met with for the prosperous investment of a moderate capital, and is therefore especially worthy of attention.”
Further particulars could be obtained from a Solicitor Mr G H Townsend, or Mr B R Smith, Surveyor and Viewer) both of West Bromwich.
Only a few weeks later a further advertisement, couched in identical terms with regard to the mine itself appeared in the same newspaper on 21 June 1841. However, this time, it was not a one-third share being offered but the whole enterprise, to be disposed of by private contract, rather than auction. Again the same Solicitor was listed as able to give further information, along with Mr B R Smith,( in this advertisement described as a Surveyor and Brewer, rather than Viewer!) plus another surveyor, Mr Joseph Cooksey, all of West Bromwich.
Why one third should be offered for sale by auction in March and the whole by private contract is June, I am not clear, it seems rather strange.
Whatever the individual circumstances, however, this makes it clear that there was a full, well equipped and potentially very profitable mine in operation at Lye Cross by mid-1841.
New Colliery Opening
An article in the County Advertiser and Herald dated 20 February 1875 reported
“Coal under Rowley Hills
The new Colliery which has just been opened by the Earl of Dudley, at Lye Cross, furnishes additional testimony of much value as to the coal deposits underlying the basaltic rock which overspreads the Rowley Hills, a section of the Dudley District which, until the last few years, was believed to be wanting in mineral treasure other than that of the famous stone known as the ‘Rowley Rag’. To the enterprise of Mess’rs W North, D North. E T Wright and others in this until recently untested portion of the coalfield the discovery of its great and rich stores of fuel is mostly due, and the success of these pioneers has stimulated enterprise on the part of others. The newly opened Lye Cross pit adds to the previously ascertained mineral wealth of the Earl of Dudley’s estate some 500 acres of best thick coal. The depth of the coal is only 280 yards from the surface but the diameter of the shaft is much above the average, and the plant and machinery, designed and erected under the superintendence of Mr Latham, are among the finest in the District. The time of ascending or descending the shaft is only fifteen seconds. The colliery is now in full operation.”
So, had the previous mine been closed for a time or was this ‘new’ pit a revival of the previous one? Or were there two pits with the same name but in slightly different places?
Experiments with dynamite
Developments in mining and quarrying technology continued during this time. This article in the Worcester Journal dated 2 October 1875 describes experiments in both the stone quarries at Turner’s Hill and in the Lye Cross mine with the use of dynamite to dislodge stone and coal for extraction. Dynamite, as a blasting explosive, had been patented in 1867 by the Swedish physicist Alfred Nobel and it rapidly gained wide-scale use as a more robust alternative to the traditional black powder explosives. The experiments described here were apparently very successful and, what is more, the dynamite reduced loss of coal to slack, made less smoke and was substantially cheaper than earlier methods.
Note that this article described the Lye Cross pit as having “without exception, the finest plant and opening out at the bottom in the whole of the South Staffordshire district”.
In another newspaper article, an obituary for a well known mining engineer a Mr Edward Fisher Smith in 1892, there is also a reference to the special geology of the Rowley Hills. This notes that the area was of special interest to scientific men because the leading geologists of the last generation were emphatic in their declarations that no coal would ever be found beneath the basaltic rocks of which the Rowley Hills were composed. Mr Fisher Smith had experiments made which convinced him that good coal and ironstone would be won under the basalt. He caused the ‘well-known Lye Cross Pits’ to be opened and these were often visited by the late Earl of Dudley and his friends and were regarded as among the best pits in the District, ranking with the Sandwell Park and Hamstead collieries, as well for their scientific mode of working. The present Earl, with distinguished visitors, also apparently often visited this pit at that time.
I also found references to a banquet being held inside the pit by the Earl of Dudley on one occasion in 1875. The most detailed account I have been able to find appeared in the Dudley Chronicle on 3 September 1925, fifty years later and this reads:
“The Lye Cross Banquet
A Worcester contemporary draws attention to the famous banquet which was served in the workings of the Lye Cross pit just 50 years ago. This unique event has been referred to many times in these columns. The pit was visited by a numerous party. Under the courteous guidance of Mr Thomas Latham (a well -known and highly respected Dudley mining engineer) they traversed the extraordinary workings but the novel and interesting feature of this additional celebration of the opening of the colliery was the banquet given in a spacious and commodious dining room which the plodding labour of the miner had hewn out of the solid coal. The repast was on the scale of unusual liberality, wines, viands and fruit, of rare quality being provided. Upon the table there was a profuse display of flowers and ornaments, and the really fine banqueting hall was brilliantly illuminated, the occasional lighting of various coloured fires contributing to form a scene never contemplated by the visitors. The late Earl of Dudley (father of the present Earl) was the host. His lordship was the owner of the colliery which was subsequently visited by distinguished geologists. The pit, in fact, was perhaps the best known of all in the South Staffordshire coalfield. It is not in operation now.”
What an extraordinary occasion that must have been!
Another visit to the Pit was made by members of the Midland Union of Natural History Societies in 1878 to Lye Cross Colliery, and gives some idea of the scale of the pit:
‘Members of the Union and their friends, to the number of nearly 400, made an excursion to Dudley and the neighbourhood, under the auspices of the Dudley and Midland Geological and Scientific Society and Field Club, representatives of which received the party at the Tipton Station of the Great Western Railway, and conducted them in the first instance to the Open Coal Work at Foxyards, where the Ten-yard Coal Seam exposes its point of outcrop on the east side of the obstruding ridges of the Dudley Castle Hill and the Wren’s Nest. Mr, Thomas Latham, the Earl of Dudley’s Mine Agent, gave interesting information as to the mode of getting the coal, and under his direction a fall of coal was displayed.’
‘After Luncheon came the crowning event of the day – the descent by more than 400 persons, including many ladies, of the famous Lye Cross Coal Pit at Rowley, which was superintended by Mr. Latham. This pit is remarkable as the first sunk through the Basalt, or Rowley Rag. Where the pit was commenced the thickness of the basalt was unknown; it proved to be no more than 68 yards, when the rock binds of the coal measures were reached. At 168 yards the Two-foot and Brooch coals were met with, and at 228 yards the Thick coal was cut into. The pit is 258½ yards deep.’ (Anon.,1878).
Since this is in a commercial photo library I cannot reproduce it here but it is worth you having a look as it gives an idea of the scale of the workings and of the hazards of the working conditions.
The Science Museum also has a Collection of black and white glass negatives of mine workings, chiefly underground, at pits in Staffordshire and Worcestershire taken by H.W. Hughes. ca.1900-1910. This collection totals over 360 negatives. Boxes V and VI (totalling 100 negatives) primarily concern Ramrod Hall Pit and Lye Cross Pit showing a wide range of human and horse activity, machinery and tools. What an interesting collection these would make if they were ever printed.
A few of these images do appear to have been printed and can be seen at the bottom of this page, including photographs from both Lye Cross and Ramrod Hall pits. They give a bleak impression of the working conditions in the mines which were both owned by the Earl of Dudley. https://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?txtkeys1=Mine%20Shafts
Herbert William Hughes, the author, was the colliery manager at the Conygre Pit at Dudley and wrote a book entitled ‘A text-book of coal-mining : for the use of colliery managers and others’ which is extensively illustrated with drawings of all sorts and I note from the index pages that there are seven references to Lye Cross mine in the book. It can be seen and/or downloaded free of charge from the Internet Archive if anyone would like to learn more about mining practices at that time. https://archive.org/details/textbookofcoalmi00hughrich
Mining and other accidents
The Lye Cross pit was not completely trouble free, of course. A report I found in several newspapers, dated August 1900, tells of a collier named David Robinson, aged 60 so presumably an experienced collier, who was crushed when part of the roof where he was working fell on him, even though it was described as ‘well timbered’ and after he had inspected it and considered it safe. By the time he was extracted from under the roof fall, he was dead.
Not all the hazards were inside the pit. In March 1902there are reports of an inquest into the dreadful death of Samuel Hinton, of Oldbury, aged 15 who was buried under a pile of burning ash at the colliery which he was trying to dig out to load onto a cart. (People were apparently allowed to take the ashes produced by the mine gratuitously). His employer was Enoch Richards of Portway Farm. Samuel had already visited the ash tip about fifteen times that week with Joseph Brooks who was also employed at the farm, to collect ash to repair a road. Samuel went on his own this time and his employer stated that he had gone without his knowledge and contrary to his wishes. As Samuel was digging ashes from the bottom of the pile it collapsed onto him, partially burying him. A witness Harriet Green gave evidence that she saw the lad loading ashes at the mound and subsequently saw a cloud of dust and she had shouted that the deceased and horse were buried, although it appears that the horse was not injured but panicked and plunging. Thomas Bishton heard shouts and found the horse plunging and he then saw that the wheel of the cart was on the boy’s leg. The body of the boy was covered in red-hot ashes and terribly burnt, it was very difficult to recover it.
Louisa Hickman of Portway told the inquest that she went to the mound (which was about sixty feet high and sloped to an angle of 45 degrees. However, some of the ashes were still burning and these were about ten feet high) she saw that the boy was partially buried in the ashes but when she attempted to rescue him a second fall occurred which completely buried him. When he was dug out his body was very badly burned.
The Government Inspector of Mines also attended the Inquest and he noted that the burning slope did not look safe, it was dangerous for anyone to get onto it, it was not a safe place to send a youth to.
A verdict of Accidental Death was returned.
Pit ponies
Horses or ponies were commonly used in mines for hauling coal from the coal face to the shafts and the ponies often lived underground for their whole working lives. This description of the underground stables at Lye Cross is taken from Hughes’s book, mentioned above.
Arrangement of Stables.—Pure water and plenty of ventilation are essential. The stables at Lye Cross Pit are shown in Figs. 214 and 215. Each horse has a stall 7ft long by 6ft wide, and a corn manger made with specially shaped bricks, 4ft wide. A water bosh is placed between each two stalls, and a 2in main pipe with down branch pipes that delivers water to each bosh, which has a hole and plug in the bottom to allow of easy emptying.
Photograph copyright: Glenys Sykes.
The 1902 Fire
The disasters were not over for 1902. In the early hours of Christmas Day 1902, a great fire broke out at the Lye Cross pit. The miners reported that all had been quiet and secure when they left the mine at 4pm on Christmas Eve but shortly after 9pm that night a watchman who was on duty at the colliery saw smoke coming from what was known as the spare shaft. He and several miners descended one of the other shafts and found that a ‘great fire’ had broken out in the principal roads and was spreading rapidly. These men tried to rescue eleven horses which were in the underground stable there but the flames almost overtook them and they were forced to abandon this work and give the signal to ascend the shaft.
The report notes that they were fortunate to reach the pit bank speedily for immediately afterwards the flames from the fire ascended the spare shaft to a height of at least 20 feet above the pit mouth and began to spread towards the engine house and it was feared that the valuable machinery would be destroyed. The Dudley Fire Brigade was called out but the manual pump was inadequate to cope with such a big fire and a steam fire engine was sent for. In the meantime a gang of men were employed in damming up the air roads leading to the shaft with tons of black sand. When the steamer arrived a large quantity of water from a local pool was pumped into the shaft . One newspaper report describes this, saying that when the water was pumped in to the shaft ‘steam and ashes were shot up as though from a volcano’. But it was not until five o’clock that the flames were extinguished. Fortunately the expensively equipped engine houses were not affected but the horses were lost, poor beasts. Ronald had remembered being told of this event as a child, and had remembered that the ponies had not been rescued. Obviously this aspect had stuck in the folk memory of this event for many years afterwards.
A slightly later report in the Tamworth Herald noted that throughout the whole of Christmas Day and the following day, the workmen were engaged in damming up the mouth of the shaft and the workings were expected to be closed for at least seven or eight weeks. It was fortunate that this occurred at holiday time so that no men were in the workings. About 130 men were thrown out of employment.
A report in the County Advertiser & Herald in August 1904, however, stated that
“there is little probability that the Lye Cross Colliery being re-opened for some months yet, due to the fact that there is a less demand for coal at the present time. About 100 miners who were thrown out of employment at the time of the fire are still out of work.”
This was twenty months after the fire so the mine had been closed for a long time. I suspect that in practice most of the miners would have sought work in other pits, few men would have been able to survive out of work for that length of time before the welfare state existed.
The 1911 Fire
Alas, this was not the last fire at the Lye Cross colliery. A further report in November 1911 described another serious outbreak of fire in the ‘Staffordshire Show Pit’ at Lye Cross which this time led to the closure of the pit and the loss of their jobs for 300 miners. I have not been able to find any trace of the pit re-opening after this.
So that is the story of the Lye Cross Pit, somewhere most of us probably did not even know existed but which almost certainly employed many men from the Lost Hamlets area. Mining has always been a dirty and dangerous business, but it was an important part of the success of the Black Country and must have contributed to the substantially both to the local economy and to the wealth of the mine owners.
While I was researching my piece on local shops, I came across a very tragic story which revealed that some general stores carried some unexpected wares.
Although this sad tale does not relate to Rowley itself, it took place only a couple of miles away in High Street, Cradley Heath and would no doubt have been well known at the time to local residents. And Anita Hall commented on Facebook on my piece on Ambrose Crowley 1 that she had a particular interest in Billinghams so I have decided to add this to the blog.
Much of the story comes from newspaper reports of the disaster and the inquests which followed. The first thing I came across was a report of an inquest held in April 1887 on two children who were killed in an explosion of gunpowder at the back of an ironmonger’s shop in High Street, Cradley Heath. This had occurred on 7th April 1887. Thomas Lot Billingham and Lily Birch were killed and the coroner deemed the case and the implications so serious that he adjourned the inquest to allow a Home Office Inspector to attend.
A gunpowder magazine is a building designed to store explosive gunpowder in wooden barrels for safety. Gunpowder, until superseded, was a universal explosive used in the military and for civil engineering: both applications required storage magazines. Most magazines were purely functional and tended to be in remote and secure locations.
Overcrowded housing
I was interested recently to read [i] some words of Charles Booth, the creator of the famous London poverty maps, in his analysis for the Royal Statistical Society on the Condition and Occupations of the People of East London and Hackney (1888), he stated how the process of densification of the city, with housing and workshops filling in every last piece of ground makes a mockery of the word “garden”, writing that “… many are the advantages of sufficient open space behind a house, whether it be called garden or yard, for economy, comfort, and even pleasure.”
“One can see what were the original buildings; in many cases they are still standing, and between them, on the large gardens of a past state of things, have been built the small cottage property of to-day. Houses of three rooms, houses of two rooms, houses of one room – houses set back against a wall or back to back, fronting it may be on to a narrow footway, with posts at each end and a gutter down the middle. Small courts contrived to utilise some space in the rear, and approached by archway under the building which fronts the street. Of such sort are the poorest class of houses.”
These observations referred specifically to housing in London but one can see how this also applied in these Black Country areas where industry and population had increased hugely and areas which had once been gardens, orchards and fields had additional housing squeezed in to every space. It happens today, too.
Gunpowder uses
It seems that the main use for gunpowder locally was in industry, quarrying and mining. Apparently this shop was registered to store 200lb (90kg) of gunpowder but it was certainly not in a remote location. It was stored in a brick building, about 5ft (1.5m) square, roofed with tiles, the inside being cased with wood, surrounded by dense housing and only a few feet from Cradley Heath High Street. The floor was composed of bricks covered with wood and one report mentions coconut matting. Police Inspector Walters, the inspector of explosives for the district, had inspected the magazine in the previous February when he found it in good condition and had given Mr Mould, the shopkeeper, advice about having the gunpowder in bags which Mr Mould had promised to see to.
Photograph courtesy of and from the collection of Mike Fenton: This photograph of Cradley Heath High Street is dated 1907 so a few years after the explosion. I note there is a hanging sign for a baker in the centre of the picture but do not know whether this was Mr Birch’s shop. There also appears to be an entry way on the left side which could well lead to the sort of yard where the magazine was situated.
Newspaper reports:
On the 9th April 1887, the Birmingham Daily Post reported that
“A terrible explosion of gunpowder occurred at Cradley Heath, resulting in the death of two children and in serious injuries to two others. The gunpowder was in the detached store which was about fifteen yards (13.7m) from the rear of the Ironmonger’s shop and some six yards (5.5m) from a row of half a dozen small cottages. This report says that several children whilst at play had discovered grains of gunpowder strewn about the yard and began to set fire to them with lighted paper. They gradually approached the door of the store where there was a quantity of scattered grains, which formed a train communicating with other powder inside the storehouse. Unaware of their danger, they ignited the powder, the result being that a tremendous explosion instantly ensued, the whole of the kegs being blown up. The store was completely wrecked, the bricks flying in all directions and falling upon the unfortunate children, most of whom were buried in the debris. Such was the force of the explosion that the windows of the six cottages were blown out, and the buildings more or less damaged, together with the adjoining shop of Mr Birch, Baker and also the establishment of Mr Mould. The explosion was heard at a distance of more than half a mile.
It was found that Lily Birch, about five years old, the daughter of Mr Birch before mentioned, had sustained terrible injuries and she was picked up dead. Another child, Thomas Lot Billingham died on the way to the Guest hospital at Dudley; to which institution were also removed Florence Billingham, aged 8 years and her brother James, six years old, both being seriously injured. Laura Tipton, ten years old, was also hurt but was treated at her home. Shortly after the occurrence Mr T Standish, surgeon, Mr D Denne and another medical gentlemen arrived and rendered prompt aid to the sufferers.
It seems that the powder had been removed to the store by George E Milward, Mr Mould’s assistant, who swept put the place about half-past five o’clock , and it is supposed that either the kegs had leaked or the contents of the store had been swept into the yard with the dust.
Yesterday the condition of the three children who are in the Guest Hospital, Dudley was much the same as on Thursday night when they were admitted. All are burnt about the hands, wrists, face, neck and scalp, Adam being the worst injured of the three. The surgeon at the institution gives but slight hope of his recovery.”
Photograph courtesy of and from the collection of Mike Fenton: Another photograph taken from possibly the same spot as the previous photograph, but in 1902. Many of the people in this photograph were probably living in Cradley Heath at the time of the explosion and would undoubtedly have had vivid memories of it.
Another report in the County Express on the 16th April 1887 gives a lengthy report on the first inquest on the first two children killed in the disaster. This relates:
“George Edward Millward, an apprentice in the employ of Mr Mould told the inquest that it was part of his duties to go into the powder store. The key of the store was kept in the shop and no one excepting his master and himself had access to the store. On Thursday afternoon, he went into the store to receive a consignment of gunpowder which had been brought from the Dudley magazine on a trap [Editor’s note: Traps were small open carts, drawn by a horse]. It consisted of a barrel containing 100lb and four quarters. The carter carried the powder from the trap to the store, and the large barrel was placed in the far corner on the left hand side. About six o’clock the same evening he again visited the store, for the purpose of supplying a man with two pounds of powder. He found the store in exactly the same condition as when he left in the afternoon. He opened the barrel containing the 100lb with a piece of wood and filled a tin can with the powder. In doing so he spilled about a tablespoonful on the floor. He then locked the magazine up and returned to the shop with the powder, and after serving the customer he went back again to the store. He did not label the parcel ‘gunpowder’ and he was not aware that he was required to do so by law. He had never read the Explosives Act and was not provided with a copy. When he went back to the store he took a broom with him and swept up the powder that he had previously spilt and with an iron shovel put it into the large barrel which contained 100lb. He did not know it was dangerous to do so. He knew the powder was used for blasting purposes, but he was not aware that there would be a danger of it exploding whilst being used by miners on account of the grit which was mixed with it. He returned to the shop and in about half an hour afterwards he heard the report of the explosion, and, upon going into the yard, discovered that the store had been blown up. He was quite clear that he did not sweep the powder from the store into the yard and he was not able to form any idea as to how the explosion occurred. He was confident that he did not spill any of the powder out of the can whilst conveying it from the store to the shop.
Mr E Mould, the proprietor, said he ordered the powder from the traveller on the day previous to the accident. In reply to the Coroner he admitted that he had never read the Act of Parliament relating to the storage of gunpowder.
William Felton, miner, residing in Walith’s Building, said he was walking up the yard to his home on the evening in question, when he saw some children playing with powder on the ground. They were gathering it in small heaps and setting fire to it with a lighted paper. He cautioned Adam Billingham and told him that he would have the children injured of he was not careful. The boy, who was about thirteen years of age, disregarded the caution. Shortly afterwards, whilst he was in his own house, he saw Adam Billingham with a lighted paper on the ground about a yard from the magazine. Presently he saw a flash and heard a loud report, and he was knocked down by the force of the explosion.
The witness said that he had lived in that locality for eight years and could testify that Mr Mould had been very careful in the management of the magazine and he had never seen loose powder lying about in the yard. He attributed the accident entirely to the conduct of Billingham in firing the powder close to the magazine.
Police Sergeant Hayward, who came on the scene immediately after the explosion, deposed to finding the children among the debris.
Major Condill (Her Majesty’s Inspector of Explosives) said that he had made an examination of the premises. He did not think that the magazine was a proper place in which to store 200lbs of powder. The utmost that should have been stored in a place so situated was 50lbs.
The Coroner , in summing up, remarked that if Adam Billingham had been older the matter would have assumed a serious aspect as far as he was concerned, as he would have been guilty of manslaughter. There was no doubt that it was through his act that the children lost their lives. He was astonished that a powder magazine should have been allowed to remain in the midst of a thickly populated neighbourhood; and if the store had been a proper distance away from the dwelling houses in all probability the accident would not have occurred.
The jury returned a verdict of Accidental Death and added to it an expression of opinion that the authorities ought to be strongly condemned for allowing such a place to be used as a magazine for storage of gunpowder in such close proximity to inhabited houses.”
A detailed and lengthy report appeared in the Dudley Mercury on 30th April of a further inquest which was held a few days later at Dudley on two more child victims of the explosion who had been injured by the explosion and taken to the Dudley Guest hospital where they had died. Both were Billinghams, Adam aged 14 and James aged 6, the sons of Thomas Billingham, chain maker. Adam had suffered burns to the face, scalp, face and feet, he had died on the 16thof April. James had suffered burns to his face, scalp, neck and hands and he died on the 22 April. So poor Thomas Billingham appears to have lost three sons in this explosion.
From this report it is clear that more investigations had gone on since the previous inquest and that Adam Billingham had spoken about the explosion before he died.
The apprentice George Millward again gave similar evidence (although his name this time was recorded as George Edwin Millward rather than Edward) to that given at the previous inquest. He confirmed that he had spilled a quantity of gunpowder on the floor of the magazine and had returned to sweep it up but stated that he had not given any of it to the children. Some of the children had come to the door while he was sweeping it but he could swear none of them had powder.
The store had been inspected by the Inspector of Explosives (sent by the Home Office), it was built of brick, lined with boards, and the floor covered by coconut matting (all precautions meant to reduce the chances of any sparks being struck by accident) and was said to be nearly airtight. George was quite sure that none of the powder he swept up could have got near the door. Poor lad, imagine what pressure he must have been under, as the one person who had accessed the magazine that day and who had then seen the magazine destroyed and so many children, who must have been known to him, killed and severely injured. The pressure to find the cause and allocate blame puts me in mind of similar accidents today.
Again, William Felton gave evidence, as he had previously. He was a miner and presumably familiar with gunpowder used in the mines and quarries. He repeated that as he passed through the yard shortly before the explosion, he had not seen any powder lying on the ground and he would have seen it if there had been any there.
Corry Keep, the House Surgeon at the Guest Hospital was a new witness. He told the inquest that he had treated the burned children. Adam Billingham had told him that he picked up some powder which he placed in the yard outside the powder magazine. He then went into the house, heated the poker and applied it to the powder, thus causing the explosion. He would give no further information. Up to the morning of the day on which Adam died he declined to give any information whatever but later in the day he told Mr Corry how the explosion was caused. Up to the time of his death he refused to say where he got the powder from. He had told the Government Inspector that he was in the yard but he did not see the explosion caused and knew nothing about it. But before he died he made a statement that he fired some spilt powder. In reply to this witness he said the powder might have been swept out of the magazine but he did not see it swept out. Florrie Billingham said she believed the powder was swept out of the magazine.
There was a detailed interview with Elizabeth Billingham, who was ten years old, who said she was playing in the yard with some other children on the in question, when she and a girl named Laura Tipton found some gunpowder near the door of the magazine. This is the reported exchange between the Coroner and Elizabeth which I reproduce in full as it has so much detail.
C: Can you tell how much powder he had? Two handfuls? (‘he’ presumably referring to Adam.)
E: No, only a little tiny bit.
C: When did he last pick it up?
E: He didn’t pick it up, it was Laura and I.
C: Did you pick some up just before the explosion?
E: Yes.
C: How old is Laura?
E: Ten.
C: What time was it?
E: About twenty minutes to seven.
C: How do you know?
E: When I got to the bottom of the entry it was rather better than a quarter to seven.
C: Did your father or mother tell you to say that?
E: No, Sir.
C: Did you see the boy sweep out the magazine?
E: Yes, with a big broom.
C: Who did you tell about it?
E: My father, when the Inspector came on Saturday. He asked me what I saw.
C: Didn’t anyone else ask you?
E: No.
C: Tell these gentlemen what you saw.
E: I saw him sweep the magazine out.
C: Did you go inside?
E: No, I stood outside with Laura.
C: Did he sweep the powder outside the door?
E: Yes.
C: Did he leave it there?
E: Yes, sir.
C: Was that the powder you picked up?
E: Yes.
C: Did he fasten the door?
E: Yes, he put the barrels in and fastened the door. When I went up the yard he had some little barrels outside with no powder in, and he turned them upside down and knocked the bits out.
C: Had you seen him do this before?
E: No.
C: Did you ask him for some powder?
E: No.
C: Have you ever asked him?
E: No.
C: Did you pick up the powder while he was there?
E: No, we waited until he had gone.
C: Did you hear Mr Felton tell you not to play with the powder?
E: No, I was near the magazine.”
Mr Shakespeare, the solicitor representing Mr Mould, the shop owner, pointed out that it was impossible to simply sweep the powder outside the magazine as the floor level was lower than the yard. He also noted that it was clearly proved at the previous inquest that there was not a particle of powder in the empty barrels. Mr Millward denied that he had turned the empty barrels upside down outside the magazine.
The Coroner told the inquest that he had not sworn the child as he felt she was too young in such a serious matter, she had been called at the request of the father but he had been advised by the South Staffordshire Coroner that the children were too young to give evidence. He understood that another adult witness was in a position to say exactly what Millward did when he swept up the store but she was not now present. The child’s statement suggested that Millward was careless and in such a case he would be deserving of their censure but it was for the jury to say whether they would accept the child’s statement and he was inclined to put it aside altogether, as he thought the child would have told her parents before Saturday if she knew anything about the matter. There was no doubt that Millward had swept up the spilled powder but probably it was suggested to the girl that he swept it outside.
In reply to a juryman it was stated that the proper course would have been to have slippers for use in the magazine but none were provided.
The Jury returned Verdicts of Death from Misadventure on Adam Billingham and Accidental Death on James Billingham.
On the 11th April the Birmingham Daily Post returned to the subject and had some interesting observations to make:
“All that is known at present is that on the day in question, Mr Mould received a consignment of some 200lb of [gun] powder which was stored, according to custom, in a detached shed, situated at the bottom of a yard in the rear of the main premises, and that a quantity of loose powder was subsequently found by the children of the neighbourhood, scattered about the yard. How the powder came there and why it was suffered to remain in such an exposed place are the main questions to which the jury will have to direct their attention.
It was only natural that the children, on discovering the powder, should proceed to ignite it; and as familiarity breeds contempt, that these improvised fireworks should be carried right up to the door of the storehouse where the explosive grains laid thickest. Unfortunately there must have been some loose powder inside as well as outside the shed, for presently the children fired a train which caused the whole of the contents to explode with disastrous consequences.”
“It is difficult to resist the conviction that gross carelessness was at the bottom of this lamentable accident and it will be the duty of the jury to find out who is to blame. It is supposed that the kegs may have leaked, in which case they must have been unfit for the conveyance of gunpowder, and ought not to have been used. But another theory is that the shed had been newly swept out and the sweepings, consisting largely of loose powder, suffered to lie about the yard instead of being removed to a place of safety. But the mischief, it is plain, could not have been caused by the scattered grains in the yard only. There must have been a considerable quantity of loose powder also on the floor of the shed or the train would not have been complete and the kegs could not have been fired. It will be important to ascertain who had the general handling of the powder, and what sort of precautions were adopted with it. Very stringent rules are enacted as to the storage and keeping of gunpowder by licensed retail dealers and the local authorities at Cradley Heath will be able to say how far these were observed in the case here”.
But, so far as I can see, the Jury, although berating the authorities for permitting the storage of such a large quantity of gunpowder in close proximity to dense housing , did not allocate any personal blame to any individual. Possibly the most likely to be censured would have been Adam Billingham who admitted to having heated a poker to light the grains of powder and who, only moments before the explosion, had clearly been warned by William Felton that what he was doing was dangerous to the other children but he paid the ultimate price, dying a few days later along with two of his brothers.
What really happened?
At this distance in time, we shall never know.
The last newspaper report refers to the possibility of the delivery kegs leaking which could account for a ‘trail’ of powder right into the magazine. There was also mention of slippers which should have been but were not provided and of coconut matting on the floor of the shed. Did some of the gunpowder, known to have spilled on the floor when George was measuring some out, get onto the matting and stick to George’s boots, walking a trail out of the door as he swept? Had the store been swept out earlier in the day in readiness for the delivery and the dust deposited in the yard, containing a few grains of powder? Or might those empty barrels have contained a few grains. There is more than a suggestion that the children might have played with gunpowder on other occasions, might have begged grains from George, might be familiar enough with it to look out for it and to enjoy creating their own fireworks – the ultimate ‘playing with fire’.
The miner William Felton also commented at one of the inquests that he had not seen gunpowder in the yard, so it was obviously distinctive and easily recognised, although I doubt many people would recognise it now, just as most modern people are not familiar with open fires, paper or wooden spills, fire irons and pokers, etc.
The Billingham family: On the 7thApril three children of Thomas and Lucy Billingham were fatally injured in the explosion. Thomas Lot, aged 2 had died on the way to hospital and was buried at St Luke’s Reddal Hill on the 12th April, his brother Adam, aged 14 was buried on 21 Apr 1887 and their other brother James, aged 6 was buried on 27 Apr 1887. What a dreadful time for them it must have been.
In the 1881 Census, Thomas Billingham, a chainmaker aged 33, had been living with his wife Lucy at 128 High Street, Cradley Heath, along with children Anne, aged 9, Adam then 8, Eva aged 6, Elizabeth 4, Flora 2 and James aged 4 months. By 1891, they had moved away to Fox Oak Street, Cradley Heath where only Elizabeth, Florrie and a new child Mary Ann aged 3 were with them. In 1889 they had another son who they also named Thomas but, alas, he also died in infancy.
I have been unable to trace a burial or any other information for little Lily Birch who also died at the scene.
No further details have emerged in my research about the apprentice George Millward. A George Millward, born in 1865, died in 1945 in the Rowley Regis Registration District but I do not know whether this was the same man. There was at least one other George Millward in the area and possibly more and it is possible that George left the area.
Finally…
I was astonished when I first read this story that gunpowder was apparently stored and sold in ironmonger’s shops and casually sold to members of the public in small quantities. There are so many questions raised by this whole episode. Who would have wanted to buy gunpowder and for what purpose? Where was it stored after they had bought it? If it was not supplied in tin cans as it apparently should have been, how was it kept safe? Was this the mine operators buying gunpowder? Or small quarrying ventures? One would have expected them to buy their powder direct from the magazine at Dudley but clearly there was a local demand for this in Cradley Heath. And there was sufficient demand for a traveller to be employed going round such shops taking orders for gunpowder and arranging for it to be supplied in open carts. When you think about the number of open fires and forges in the area, that mode of transport alone must have been risky, especially if the trap passed the large blast furnaces in the area. Did every small town ironmonger store and sell gunpowder? Were regulations changed to prohibit the storage of large quantities of gunpowder in built up areas? I do not know the answers to these questions or whether any changes were made to legislation as a result of this incident.
But even when I was a child in the 1950s we children could purchase individual fireworks from our local shops without any restrictions that I can remember, and many of these had screwed or folded paper tops which could be opened to expose the powder inside. I seem to remember that boys seemed to particularly enjoy buying bangers and ‘jumping jacks’ and even throwing them at people or setting them off to make people jump, so perhaps these children did not see their games with grains of gunpowder as being very different. And every now and again, one hears of firework factories exploding with spectacular results, so gunpowder is still dangerous but hopefully not stored close to houses these days. Gradually sales of fireworks have become more and more restricted in terms of age and I believe adults can now only buy prepackaged boxes and I suspect most people these days prefer to attend organised bonfires where they do not have to worry about setting them off.
The Crowley family were in Rowley Regis for much of the 1600s, later generations moving away to Stourbridge and then London. They were apparently comfortably off, were nailers, later ironmongers and perhaps farmers, Quakers, industrious and clever. And they left Wills! I don’t know for certain whether they lived in the area of the Lost Hamlets but they may have done…
A troubled century
First of all, it is worth considering what life in England generally was like in the 1600s. James 1 of England had come to the throne, following the long reign of Queen Elizabeth 1, in 1603. He was followed by King Charles 1 in 1625.
Rowley Regis was not untouched by national politics, the Gunpowder Plot against King James 1, thwarted in 1605, had led to fleeing plotters Stephen Lyttelton and Robert Winter taking refuge in Rowley Regis, and two local men Christopher White, someone called Holyhead and another man called Smart apparently sheltered them in their houses and legend has it that Holyhead was hanged for doing so. Wilson Jones[i] states that there is no trace of the fate of Smart and White and it is not known which houses they sheltered in. Edward Chitham in his book on Rowley Regis also mentions this story and notes that the plotters are said to have hidden in the cellars of what became Rowley Hall Farm but that building was later replaced on a different footing and no evidence remains of any cellars.
The Pendle Witches were tried in Lancashire in 1612. William Shakespeare died in 1616. Sir Walter Raleigh was executed in 1618. In 1625 Barbary Pirates raided Mounts Bay in Cornwall and took 60 men, women and children into slavery (and in 1645 they took a further 240!). The known world was expanding and the first settlers were sailing off to the Americas, the Mayflower sailed in 1620 with 100 Puritan separatists. Some 20,000 more emigrated to New England in the 1730s, the peak of the Great Migration. (By 1770 the population had reached 92,000), many of them migrating for religious reasons and to avoid persecution.
As a result of many plots against King Charles 1 and unrest in Parliament, a Protestation Oath was introduced in 1641 which required all adult males in England and Wales to declare allegiance to the King, Parliament and the Protestant religion. The names of those who refused was noted.
In 1642 the English Civil War began and continued until 1651. While there was no battle in Rowley itself, Chitham thinks that most Rowley people would have supported Parliament, certainly they would have been well aware of the conflicts as Dudley Castle – only three miles away – was twice besieged, the Lords of Dudley supporting the Royalist cause. The last battle of the Civil War was at Worcester, again, not very far away, so large areas of the country were affected, not just London. Approximately 3.7% of the English population died as a result of the Civil War.
In 1648 Quakerism was founded by George Fox who had strong links in the Midlands. The Quaker website[ii] notes that “Quakers have always refused to swear oaths, because it implies that there are only certain occasions in which the truth matters. Early Quakers were known for their honesty and straight dealing. This is partly why Quakers were successful in business and banking in the 18th and 19th centuries.” So this set up those of Quaker leanings to be in conflict with those in authority who wanted them to swear oaths of loyalty. As a result many Quakers were persecuted and imprisoned in this period.
Quaker records relating to the Stourbridge meeting show that as in other areas, Friends were subjected to persecution. In 1674, Sarah Reynolds was sent to prison for refusing to contribute to the cost of church repairs and in 1684 Ezekiell and Mary Partridge, Hannah Reynolds, Richard Jones, Edward Ford, Sarah Reynolds and Ambrose Crowley were excommunicated for non-attendance at church. I think this must have been Ambrose Crowley 2, who had given land for a Meeting House in Stourbridge but it is an early indicator of the family’s Quaker involvement.
At about this time a Committee began to investigate the political loyalties of church ministers and increasingly acted against those men who supported the King. Properties were sequestrated from Royalists who continued to fight for the King. There were battles between Royalists and Parliamentarians. In 1649 King Charles I was executed and the Commonwealth set up under Oliver Cromwell which made huge and unpopular changes to how people lived.
In 1660, the Monarchy was restored and Charles II came to the throne. A hearth tax was introduced to support the King and his household. A shilling was to be paid twice yearly for every hearth or stove in domestic buildings. Most Rowley homes had one hearth. Only four houses had more than three hearths and these were “Ye Brickhouse”, “Rowley Hall”, “Brindfield Hall” (at Tividale, the home of the Sheldon family) and “Haden Hall”.
The Great Plague killed more than 60,000 people in London in 1665, and in 1666 there was the Great Fire of London. No doubt news of these events would have filtered through to local people at some point.
In 1667 a ‘Pole Tax’ was imposed and the list for Rowley Regis, including all children and servants, amounted to 375 names. The total population of Rowley, according to Wilson Jones, excluding servants was 318, including children. The Bishop of Worcester sent out a questionnaire in 1676 to try to gather church statistics and the main question was the number of inhabitants. The number given in response was 420 but Chitham is convinced that this was seriously wrong and that other methods of calculating suggest a figure of nearer 1500.
The weather was much harsher then, too. In 1683, a Frost Fair was held on the frozen Thames in London, I doubt other areas of the country were much warmer so simply surviving the winter would have required fuel, shelter and food for people and animals.
In 1685 the French King revoked the Edict of Nantes, which started the persecution and killing of Huguenots and thousands fled to England bringing their skills, including – amongst many others – glass making and certainly many settled in glass making areas of the Black Country and possibly elsewhere.
In 1689, under the new monarchs, William3 and Mary 2, the Toleration Act permitted nonconformists to worship, provided they licensed their meeting places.
A window tax was introduced in 1696, to replace the Hearth tax, leading to widespread bricking up of windows.
So, that is a quick summary of events in the 1600s which would have affected local people and families, even in sleepy Rowley Village, and even smaller places like the hamlets. The 1600s were turbulent times of great changes and people must have wondered what was coming next.
The Crowley Family
I have touched on the Crowley family in a previous article about Ambrose Crowley III who became an Alderman of London.
But the first Crowleys appear in the Rowley Regis Registers in the early 1600s. M W Flinn, in his book Men of Iron, when talking about the Crowley family in Rowley and speculating about their prior origins, noted that there were Crowley families in Kings Norton but considered then (in 1961) that there was no evidence to connect the two families. I beg to differ. But then, I have the benefit of computers and access to digitised and computerised records which were not available to earlier researchers.
The first Crowley mentioned in the Rowley Registers is Ambrose Crowley 1. I call him that because his son and grandson were also Ambrose so I am numbering them for easy differentiation. Ambrose does appear to be a Crowley name, they continue to crop up in various places for centuries afterwards.
So where did Ambrose 1 come from? With the power of FreeREG at my fingertips, I searched for baptisms of surnames beginning with Cro* between 1500 and 1700 (I searched just with Cro*because spellings of the name varied considerably at that time but they all began with CRO so searching with what is called a ‘wildcard’ brings a list of them all. Crowley became quite settled by the late 1600s but there were Croleys, Croelys, Crolyes, Crolys, all popping up with the recurring family Christian names, according to whoever completed the Registers in different places and at different times.). I set the centre point of the search as Rowley Regis but included ‘nearby places’ which includes a further 100 places within 7.7 miles. This list appeared in date order and showed that there were indeed Crowley families in the 1500s and early 1600s in Kings Norton (which is, these days, a suburb of Birmingham but which was then a separate village) and, later, also in Harborne which again is now a suburb but was previously a separate village. I then did the same exercise with marriages and burials and all three show the same pattern of a family moving from one settlement to the next.
Copyright: Glenys Sykes. This 1819 Map by John Cary, (which appears in ‘The Black Country as seen through Antique Maps’) shows how the settlements of Kings Norton, Harborne and Rowley Regis lined up, with Halesowen just to the left of Harborne. Birmingham was still a fairly small place then and these villages were separate places, rather than suburbs.
Three Crowley brothers, (or possibly two brothers and a nephew) baptised in Harborne in the few years either side of 1600 start to appear in the Rowley Registers in the 1630s. And their sister Alice married in Halesowen at the beginning of this period. Had it been just Ambrose, it is conceivable that it was not the same family (although this is the only baptism for an Ambrose Crowley that I could find anywhere at this date so it does narrow the field) but there was also Richard, and later Edward. Other family Christian names from Harborne also recur amongst their offspring over the next generations. Also, none of those names appear in the Harborne registers after they appear in the Rowley Registers so it seems fairly certain that they had moved to Rowley.
So I am fairly confident that Ambrose Crowley 1, along with several brothers, sisters and probably cousins, was born in Harborne and he was baptised there on 16 June 1607. I do dearly wish that I could find out where the parish boundaries at that time were for Harborne, as I have another line on my family tree where a marriage took place at Harborne and they were described as ‘of this parish’ when I know they lived in Oatmeal Row in Cakemore. It does appear that the parish of Harborne extended well towards Quinton which was not a separate parish at that time, did not have a parish church and came under Halesowen parish. So Harborne parish register entries may be for people living much closer to Rowley than appears at first glance at a map.
On 19 May 1633Ambrose Crowley 1 married Marie or Mary Grainger or Granger at Rowley Regis. Mary had been born in Rowley, daughter of Henry Grainger and she was baptised in Rowley on 17 Nov 1602, although some early Grainger entries in the Rowley Registers note that the Grangers were from Halesowen.
Initially I thought that Ambrose’s marriage was the first Crowley connection away from Harborne but checking for local marriages, I was interested to note that, three years earlier, on 18 July 1630, a Thomas Granger married Alice Crowley in Halesowen. Was Mary Grainger Thomas’s sister or cousin? It seems very possible. (And later records suggest that the Grangers had links with Illey which is on the Harborne side of Halesowen which would reinforce my observations about the proximity to the Harborne boundary.)
There was certainly some long lasting connection between the Crowleys and the Grangers. When the Inventory was drawn up for Ambrose 1’s Will in 1680, one of the signatories to that was a George Granger and Mary did have a younger brother George. More research needed on the Grangers when time permits. However, this marriage in Halesowen does reinforce the impression of a continuing drift of members of the Crowley family in a westerly direction.
On 2 Aug 1635 Ambrose 1 and Mary’s first child was baptised at St Giles, he was Ambrose 2. More children followed – Joyes (Joyce in modern English) in 1637, William in 1639 (buried in 1655), John in 1642 (buried in 1643), Margerie in 1644 and – at some point – another daughter Mary. There are gaps in the Rowley Register, some of them quite prolonged so some other baptisms may be missing. A daughter Margaret is named in Ambrose I’s Will, written in 1680, but I have been unable to trace a baptism for her. I wonder whether Marjorie and Margaret were the same person, as spelling of names was so variable then.
I assume all of these children were the children of Mary but names of mothers are not listed in the Registers at this point in time. But Mary was buried in Rowley on 31 Oct 1674, so it seems likely that Ambrose 1 and Mary were together for forty years which must have been a long marriage in those days of short lives.
Ambrose Crowley I, having moved to Rowley, possibly on his marriage to Marie Grainger, stayed there for the rest of his life. I know this because I have read his Will, written in 1680 and he is described in that as ‘of Rowley Regis’. His son Ambrose II moved to Stourbridge at some point, married and settled there and I know that because I have also transcribed his Will, proved in 1720 and that tells me so!
The Will of Ambrose 1, which was proved in 1680, (and of which I obtained a digital copy in less than 24 hours, all kudos to Worcestershire Archives, great value for £10 and saving me a trip to Worcester) is a fascinating document for the picture it gives of the life of this family then. It is not long, all of it written on one page of parchment, and this is what it said:
“In the Name of God, Amen. The Thirteenth Day of June in the year of our Lord God One Thousand six hundred and eighty, I, Ambrose Crowley, Esquire of Rowley Regis in the County of Stafford, Naylor, being of sound & perfect memory praised be God do make this my last Will in manner following:
First and principally I commend my soul to God who gave it in hopes of a joyful resurrection at the Last Day. And my body I commit to the earth where it came to be buried at the discretion of Executrix hereinafter named.
And as for my worldly estate whereof it hath pleased Almighty God to give and bestow upon me I dispose hereof as follows:
Item: I give to my daughter Mary Francis twelve pounds in silver and to her eight children twelve pence apiece
And I give to my son Ambrose twelve pounds in silver. And I give to his wife and eight children six shillings eight pence apiece
And all the rest & residue of my goods and personal estate whatsoever my debts being first paid and my funeral expenses discharged I give and bequeath to my daughter Margaret Crowley whom I make & ordain full and sole executrix of this my Will revoking all former Wills by me heretofore made In witness whereof I have hereunto put my hand and seal today and […] first above Witness.
Signed Ambrose Crowley
Signed, sealed published and endorsed
In the sight and presence of
Jo. Grove
John Hobbes
Paulus Rock”
There are one or two words I have not been able to read but nothing of great significance. Ambrose did not sign his Will. He appears to have signed his initials, as shown on this photograph, the names Ambrose and Crowley on either side of the initials are in the same handwriting as the body of the Will so Ambrose Crowley 1 was not literate although his son Ambrose2 and later generations were.
Copyright: Glenys Sykes.
So, of his children, it appears that only Mary, Ambrose and Margaret survive at this point, or at least that we know they were alive. (It is possible that others were alive but no provision was made for them. Joyce had married Edward Johnson at Rowley in 1657 and two children were baptised in 1658 but after that there is no trace of them locally. Two other sons had already died without issue.) The bequests are very simple, money to Ambrose and Mary and their respective children, both already well established with their own households. Everything else goes to Margaret who presumably lived with Ambrose and probably kept house for him.
I find it slightly odd that there is no mention of property, land, real estate in this Will. In Wills I have previously seen any land or houses or real estate are carefully listed and disposed of. The whole process of disposal of land, whether by sale, lease or inheritance was and still is always carefully recorded in writing, verbal contracts for the disposal of land are not valid, unlike other forms of contracts. The wording is detailed, specific, hedged about. If Ambrose had had any land or house to dispose of, we can be pretty sure it would have been listed in his Will. But it wasn’t.
The Inventory, which I will show next, shows that Ambrose 1 was living in a substantial house, not a cottage, perhaps a farmhouse. There is a list of the rooms and there were outbuildings, including a barn and a workshop, plus a yard and, presumably somewhere his cows were kept. So why wasn’t this listed? And where was Margaret, who was at that time apparently unmarried, to keep all the goods and chattels she had been left? Where was she to live?
One possibility which occurs to me is that the house – wherever in Rowley it was – was actually the property of the Granger family. Perhaps they were prepared to continue to allow Margaret to live there? I have been unable to find a Will for Mary but the property rights of married women were very limited so she may not have left one. Wilson Jones, in his book, notes that there were various large mansion houses including Graingers Hall, near Cradley Heath (the name presumably preserved today in Graingers Lane) so it appears that the Grainger/Granger family were well to do. I do not think that this house was a mansion but it appears to have been more than a cottage, and perhaps operating as a smallholding. But the Crowley name does not appear in any of the various surveys of holders of weapons, hearths or householders that I have seen so they appear not to have been of any great social standing in Rowley although Flinn states that “The Court Rolls of the Manor in the seventeenth century contain many references to the Wheeler, Parkes, Haden, Foley, Darby and Crowley families”.
Flinn,in Men of Iron[iii], also reflects on the nature of the nail making business, where a fairly elaborate system of exchange developed. Raw materials and finished products in small lots moving between small independent producers and many dispersed consumers offered a route for the economic advancement of even the humblest producers, as dealers or middlemen. Many merchants, he says, who came to dominate the iron manufacturing industry of the Midlands came from the ranks of domestic nail makers, a surprising number of them from Rowley. The rise of the Crowley family, from domestic nail making in mid-1600s in Rowley to opulence in London and beyond in three generations illustrates this.
The Inventory attached to the Will
An Inventory is a list of all the possessions of a deceased individual and is drawn up at the time of his or her death by independent people, as part of the Probate process and fixing a value on what was left. This inventory is most interesting in showing what was presumably a typical household of a yeoman family at that time and I note that the signatories to the Inventory are all local Rowley names and at least one of them was probably a family member.
The values, naturally, are shown in pounds, shillings and pence. For those too young to remember, there were twenty shillings to the pound and twelve pence to the shilling. A shilling was also known colloquially as a ‘bob’, hence the ‘ten bob note’ which was half of a pound in value. Pence had nicknames, too – and coins for threepence (thruppence) and sixpence and parts of pence were also in circulation, half-pennies (ha’pennies) and farthings (fourthings, a quarter). I can just remember silver farthings, tiny coins which were often saved for use in the Christmas pudding but copper farthings later superceded the silver ones.
This is my transcription:
A True and Perfect Inventory of all and singular the goods chattels and heredits of Ambrose Crowley late of Rowley Regis in the County of Stafford, Nailer. Done, taken and apprised the twelfth day of September 1680 by those whose names are subscribed:
Description £ s d
The wearing Apparel and money in his pocket: 1 3 4
In the Hall House
Some Chyrurgery Instruments 2 6
Andiron, fire shovel, Tongs, potgailes, bowls and chafingers 4 0
One greate table board and forms, three chairs, two stooles,
one little falling (folding?)table
4 6
One little safe, pailes gawn piggins & other Earthern Ware 3 4
Brasse & Pewter and an Iron Pott 1 6 8
Two scissor & Other Trumpery 2 0
In the Chamber
One Bedstead, feather bed and all that belongs to it 2 0 0
One old Warming Pan 2 0
One hanging presse one old cupboard and chair and other oddments 10 0
In the Buttery
A Cheese Press, churn, two barrels, two firkins, five little shelves
and other odd things 8 6
In the Chamber above the Buttery
One joint bedstead and flock bed and all that belongs to it
Linnen in the House 2 10 0
One old forme one tubb one strike measure and other trumpery
3 4
In the Chamber Over the Hall
One old Bedstead good bedding and all that belongs to it 1 2 6
One Joyne chest one Joyne Box three shelfes and one pair of
yarn blades & other odd trumpery 14 0
In the Kitchen Chamber
One greate wheele, one little wheele two poker odd things 3 4
Cheese in the House 1 10 0
In the Kitchen
One old Cubbert one paire of cobberts & spit one , one poker, old
skeele & other things 5 0
In the Shopp
Double paire of Bellows, one Birkhound hammers shiddies
and other working shoppe tools 1 13 4
Hay in the Barne 3 2 6
Four ladders and other husbandry implements 5 0
Marl in the Yard 3 4
Two cowes and one weanling calfe 4 10 0
Two old cow tawes 4 0
Some old boots 2 6
Things forgotten & out of sight 4 0
Sum Total 24 4 8
Apprized by us:
Charles Colbourne
George Granger
Jo Grove
The National Archives has a currency converter on their website and shows you what a sum would be worth today and the purchasing power of the amount. This says that the value of the total of £24 pounds, 4 shillings and 8 pence in 1680 would be worth £2,773.50 in 2017 (presumably when the site was set up) :
In 1680, you could buy one of the following with £24 (pounds), 4s(shillings) & 8d(pence):
Horses: 4
Cows: 5
Wool: 40 stones
Wheat: 12 quarters
Wages: 269 days (skilled tradesman)
So this was not the Will of a rich man but of one who had the necessities of life and the means of working to keep himself and his family. I found it interesting that the most valuable things in the Inventory were the two cows and a calf, and the hay in the barn – the means by which the animals could be kept alive through the winter and ensure production of cheese which also had a substantial value in this list.
With the assistance of the book ‘Words from Wills’[iv], I can disclose that:
In the Hall House
Chyrurgery Instruments were surgical instruments. So Ambrose had some special skills. Possibly these would have included scalpels, clamps, saws but no details are given.
An Andiron was a horizontal iron bar, supported by a short foot at one end, and an upright pillar or support , usually ornamental, at the other. A pair of these were placed at either side of the hearth, to support burning logs. The uprights may also have hooks for pots, etc, to hang above the fire, or may support a spit. Potgailes appear to have been hooks for hanging pots on, (the rootform of gales is also appears in the word gallows, which was also used but for hanging people, rather than pots, today’s slightly bizarre useless information!) And chafingers were dishes for keeping food warm, even today chafing dishes are used in restaurants. Wikipedia says that historically, a chafing dish (from the French chauffer, “to make warm”) is a kind of portable grate raised on a tripod, originally heated with charcoal in a brazier, and used for foods that require gentle cooking, away from the “fierce” heat of direct flames. The chafing dish could be used at table or provided with a cover for keeping food warm. I suspect that chafingers in 17thcentury Rowley were probably rather simpler.
The little ‘safe’ would have been a cupboard, perhaps for meat. Before refrigeration came along, most households had meat safes to protect the meat from flies, etc, (I can just picture my mother’s, before we acquired our first fridge which would have been in the late 1950s I think, with a painted green wooden body with fine metal mesh sides to allow air to circulate, kept in the depths of the pantry or cellar, or the coolest place in the house. Pailes were buckets, of course. A gawn was a gallon or a ladle or pail holding half a gallon, a Piggin was “a small wooden milk pail, with one stave longer than the rest, to serve as a handle”.
These items, all concerned with preparation of food, were located in the main room of the house, according to the Inventory, the Hall, implying that this was a Hall House, a substantial dwelling but where most of the day to day life was in this room. A kitchen is listed, with various cupboards (cubberts), spinning wheels, a spit and a poker but clearly most of the household cooking did not happen there, perhaps it was used more as a pantry and store – a skeele, a wooden tub or bucket for milk was also listed in there and it appears that the production of cheese and perhaps butter was an important part of everyday life. There were also some scissors and ‘trumpery’, or items of little value.
In the Chamber
In addition to the great Hall, there was a chamber perhaps adjoining it, clearly what we would now think of as the’ Mastersuite’ but without the ensuite! This had the best bedstead and a feather mattress, and ‘all that belongs to it’ perhaps bed hangings or pillows or bolsters and an old warming pan. Household linen is listed separately and also had a considerable value, two pounds and ten shillings, nearly ten per cent of the value of the entire inventory. So being left a bed with all the bedding was obviously a worthwhile legacy in those days. There was also a ‘hanging presse’, a wardrobe for hanging garments, rather than laying them out in a chest, an old cupboard, a chair and some oddments. Not an overfurnished room.
The next room is the the Buttery where the cheesemaking went on and where the equipment for this was listed.
In the Chamber above the Buttery
Over that was another bedroom with a jointed (wooden) bedstead with a flock mattress, not as luxurious as a feather bed! The household linen (perhaps made at home)was also listed in this room and also an old form (presumably a bench), a tubb, one strike measure and other trumpery. There are two possible definitions of a strike in the book. One is that it was a measure of corn, from a half to four bushels, varying by locality, or a measuring vessel of this capacity. The other is ‘a bundle of hemp or flax’. I lean towards this definition because there is “a great and a small wheel” listed in the house, these were spinning wheels and for spinning flax to make linen. And when Mary Crowley was married in 1657 she was described as a ‘spinstress’, so it would make sense to have a supply of flax or hemp in the house for spinning and linen making which was probably also done by her sister(s).
The next room described as another bedroom, In the Chamber Over the Hall , where there was another old Bedstead with good bedding and all that belongs to it and also a wooden (joyne or jointed) chest , a wooden jointed Box , three shelves and one pair of yarn blades – another indication that spinning was a household activity.
In the Shopp
This was the workshop, the forge, where the nails were made and a pair of bellows is listed. There is also a description of the hammers and tools there but I am unable to provide any translation of what sort of hammers they were! It looks like Birkhornd but that doesn’t mean anything to me – expert advice on this most welcome if there is anyone out there who knows.
In the yard there was Marl, valued at three shillings and fourpence. Marl is another word for clay and is still used in that way now but in the book there is another definition of ‘a type of calcareous clay used as fertiliser’, further confirming that this establishment was more in the nature of a smallholding that a simple house. I also had to look up what tawes were (two old cow tawes are listed) and it appears that a taw was a whip or lash, so something for herding the cattle.
And even some old boots were mentioned. MW Flinn read this in the Will as some old books but this appears to be the area of the yard and barn which would be an unlikely place to keep books which would have been of some value, and being old does not necessarily make books less valuable. I think books would have been treated with more respect by him and kept in the house. And even old boots would be kept until they literally could not be worn any more, clothing and footwear was expensive.
Conclusion
So there we have a glimpse of how a household in Rowley was furnished in 1680. Some trumpery and little things are listed but mostly the inventory lists very practical goods which enabled the household to earn a living and to grow or buy enough food to see them through each winter.
Where did the Crowleys live in Rowley? I have not been able to work out where exactly this Hall house was, it is unlikely that it was Rowley Hall as hearth tax records show that this was occupied by Thomas Willetts, or Portway Hall occupied by the Russell family at that time. Richard Amphlett was at Warren’s Hall in 1670. Wilson Jones mentions some large houses at Perry’s Folly and Isabela de Botetourt’s house at Isabel Green, which he says became Ibberty and later still Tippety Green. These were not the only Crowleys in Rowley, there were two other Crowley families baptising children in the mid-1600s and up to the early 1700s so it is possible that these families were also living nearby.
Edit: Since first publishing this, a thought about the possible location of this house has occurred to me. Supposing that the farmstead next to Rowley Church was known then as Granger’s Farm, rather than Grange Farm or the Grange because it belonged to Mary Granger’s family? This building later became a pub, the Grange. It would have been about the right size and maps show that it had the yard and outbuildings described in the Inventory, only in later years did it become a pub. The name might just have lost that final ‘r’ through the years, especially if no-one could remember that it had been owned by the Granger family. It is common in Rowley for farms to be known by the name of their tenant, rather than the formal name shown on the deeds, so it seems possible and this is one of the few substantial houses in the village which is not accounted for by other families. Maybe, just maybe…!
What became of Margaret after Ambrose 1 died?
Probate was issued on 3 October 1680 to Margaret Crowley. On 30 Jan 1680/81 – just four months later – she married William Jones (alias Gadd) at Clent Parish Church. Had she waited until her father died? Did she suddenly become an attractive bride as a result of the Will? Did she need to marry to find a home? Where did they go? I don’t know. I do not know why they were married at Clent instead of Rowley as there were William Gads, father and son, in Rowley in the period and the parish register states that she was ‘of Rowley’ so this does appear to be the correct person. Because I have been unable to find a baptism for Margaret I do not know how old she was at this time but most of her siblings were born in the 1630s and 1640s, as was William Gad Junior, so she may well have been a mature woman. A simple search for baptisms does not appear to show any children born to the pair, although there are baptisms for a William Gad and his wife Mary!
In the Will of Margaret’s brother Ambrose 2, written in 1716 and proved in 1720, he lists a bequest to Margaret – “Item: I give unto my sister Margaret Gad ten guineas and to her husband Ten Guineas.” So presumably they were both alive then and on good terms with the rest of her family. William Gad alias Jones was buried at St Giles on 12 Jun 1720. I cannot find a burial for Margaret but then I cannot find a burial for her father in 1680 either and I think it is possible that both were buried in Quaker Burial Grounds, possibly at Stourbridge.
I shall continue to do more research on this Ambrose and his son, Ambrose 2 and may at some stage do a piece on his Will which is much more extensive!
I hope you have found this look at an early Will and Inventory relating to Rowley interesting.
[i] The History of the Black Country, J Wilson Jones, published c.1950 by Cornish Brother Ltd of Birmingham
[iii] Men of Iron, M W Flinn, published by Land of Oak and Iron, ISBN: 978-0-244-43925-5
[iv] Words from Wills and other Probate records by Stuart A Raymond, published by the Federation of Family History Societies (Publications) Ltd, ISBN: 1 86006 1818
When I look into my family history and into life in the Lost Hamlets, I do find the history of the place interesting, especially how the landscape affected industries and work and transmigration for Rowley people, but I am also very interested in what everyday life was like for people then, how they worked, worshipped, moved around, socialised, amused themselves, how they shopped and cooked and celebrated. I want to know the minutiae of their lives – which is probably very boring to most people but which provides a rich vein for research for me!
Of these activities, shopping has changed in the most amazing ways even since since I was a child.
In the 1950s, my mother took a weekly grocery order to George Mason’s shop in High Street, Blackheath (not least because my father worked for George Masons at their Head Office in Birmingham, although I don’t think they got such a thing as a staff discount) and the order was boxed up and delivered by a boy on a bicycle later.
Copyright: Mike Fenton. This was a few years before my time, of course, taken in about 1925. Aren’t the staff all smartly turned out? And the store had their own brand tea, I see, from the poster on the right, 8d a quarter it appears, for those who still know what the weight and price means – old weights and old money!
Sugar was still sold in the 1950s in packets made of thick blue paper then, (this paper was saved by the thrifty and used to cover school books in the days when we had to do this! My granddaughter started secondary school this week and commented on all the books that she was being given which brought back some memories of RRGS for me, though I don’t think they are expected to wrap them these days! But even now there is a type of paper called sugar paper which is used for crafts, thick and slightly rough, just like the paper sugar was bagged in)
And biscuits – custard creams, Nice, pink wafers, rich tea, Bourbons, plain and chocolate digestives – were also sold loose from large aluminium cube shaped tins in grocerrs’ shops, Woolworths and on the market. Mixed broken biscuits were sold at a cheaper price. Mum bought meat for our Sunday roast from Levett’s butchers in Birmingham Road, bacon and other groceries from Mr Darby’s shop, also in Birmingham Road, where the shop always smelled of coffee beans roasting and smoky bacon. I can’t remember us drinking coffee much at home, Typhoo tea was the beverage of choice for the adults although I hated it then, although I seem to remember a bottle of Camp coffee on the shelf in the pantry. It was there for years, probably because it tasted so awful. But later instant coffee became available which in our house was made with hot milk and lots of sugar! Mum always made a cup for my Grandad Hopkins when he visited us on Sunday mornings.
I can’t remember where Mum bought vegetables, perhaps in the local shops or in Blackheath market although my grandad probably gave her some produce sometimes from his garden and allotment. My father brought ham, sausage and bacon from George Mason’s curing house at their Head Office in Digbeth, every Friday and he probably also brought home fruit and veg from the Bull Ring market just up the road. I can certainly remember him bringing home tangerines and pomegranates, usually just before Christmas and him teaching me to prise out the pomegranate seeds with a silver pin, though I have no idea where that method came from. I still think of my dad whenever I get a pomegranate.
Milk, of course, was delivered to the door in glass bottles and bread could also be delivered. Although sometimes, I can remember going up to Bell End to the bakery at the bottom of Newhall Road, where we could knock at a side door and buy freshly baked bread- it smelled delicious and rarely survived the five minute walk home without a corner of crust being torn off and nibbled!
But for oddments and urgent items, we had the local shops –there were several near Uplands Avenue, the little one on the corner of Uplands Avenue and Mincing Lane which had a bell above the door which pinged as you went in, another shop a hundred yards or so up Mincing Lane and two or three more in a row on Bell End just at the junction with Mincing Lane, the biggest of them also run by a Mr Darby, another member of the indefatigable trading family with grocery and other businesses all around the area.
Copyright: Anthony Page. This picture from Anthony’s first book on Rowley is looking along Uplands Avenue from Mincing Lane, with the corner shop on the left here. We lived about half way along here on the right so we were pretty close to this shop, a two minute walk.
These shops were the ones my family mainly used for convenience shopping although there were more shops down on the Oldbury Road, several at the bottom of Uplands Avenue and one at the bottom of Mincing Lane, below the Pear Tree Inn. From these local shops we would get items we had run out of at home, ham – freshly sliced to order, butter – carved from the tub of Danish butter and wrapped in greaseproof paper – they were very skilled at carving exactly the amount requested. and as children, we would buy our sweets, chocolate and crisps. And in October the Fireworks would come into stock, displayed in a glass case under the counter and in those days individual fireworks could be bought as pocket money permitted- my brother loved bangers and I liked Roman Candles, Catherine wheels and sparklers! Every one saved their fireworks up at home ready for Bonfire Night and begged for pennies with a guy to buy more. And there were no age restrictions on sales in those days so even as little ones we could buy explosives…
On Saturday mornings we would walk along Bell End and down the Birmingham Road to Blackheath where my dad would take us to the market where we were allowed to choose some sweets from Teddy Gray’s stall. I expect we got other things from the market as well but the sweet stall is a vivid memory. Chocolate covered coconut ice, chewy toffee and coconut teacakes, chunks of rock, herbal tablets and herbal candy, coconut mushrooms, we each had our favourites.
Over the road from the market in Blackheath was Robinsons the cake shop where again we had favourites. I loved the pineapple tarts, chocolate tarts, I seem to remember big puffy choux buns. And they also sold bread – light airy Viennese loaves for special occasions and tiny bridge rolls, as well as sliced ham to go in those rolls, cut in the shop. Hovis was available if you wanted brown bread but wholemeal, rye, seeded and sourdough loaves were unknown in the 1950s.
These excursions to Blackheath usually ended with a visit either to my Grandad Rose in Birmingham Road, next to the Handel Hotel or to my Grandad Hopkins in Park Street, opposite the back entrance to the market. Here we might be allowed to go down the back garden and pick the raspberries which grew along the fence or to accompany Grandad to his allotment further down Park Street, just behind a mission hall.
What would our ancestors have thought of the colossal choices of goods which are now available to us at the touch of a button, delivered to our doors, though not generally by a boy on a pedal bike these days? Instead of the high-ceilinged shops with wooden counters, shelves stacked with familiar tins and packets, the wire pulley system which zinged your cash payment around the store to the cashier upstairs and back; how bewildering would they have found the tens of thousands of items from all over the world? Fresh food available regardless of season – though not necessarily the better for that – displayed in a modern supermarket? What would they have made of people waving small cards over machines or pointing little gadgets in their hands at another gadget to make their payments?
So where did the people living in the Lost Hamlets shop in and access the services they needed in centuries gone by?
There were no supermarkets or chain stores until relatively recently. Chain stores did not start until the second half of the nineteenth century for chain stores and in then only in towns. Small local shops tended to sell all sorts of useful things, besides food. And there would be specialists such as butchers or bakers, perhaps shoemakers, other specialists such as fishmongers or greengrocers were probably uncommon, at least in small villages such as Rowley in early days. Where did people buy their tobacco, their alcohol, their medicines, their tools and needles, thread, yarn, cloth and clothes? Some of these, perhaps, from village stores, beer from the off-licence door at the pub, probably or home brewed by many. Medicines perhaps from the local shop or from some local person known to be knowledgeable about such things, a herbalist in effect. This was touched on in my piece on this blog entitled “Murdered by his wife”. People had to use what was available to them, be it services or goods. There were few doctors, few midwives and dentists, no vets. Yet people with these skills would have been known to local people and sought out when needed. The 1680 Will of Ambrose Crowley of Rowley Regis, Naylor included some ‘Chyrurgery Instruments’ – surgical instruments, perhaps scalpels or similar, but whether these were for use on humans or animals is unknown. Items such as pins, needles, scissors – like nails, these tended to be made in particular areas of the country – needles in Redditch, cutlery and scissors in Sheffield – would have been costly and loss or breakage would present a difficulty until a replacement could be obtained.
Before shops developed, most such occasional needs would have been met from the visits of pedlars who travelled around the country and from weekly markets, with some items sought out at annual ‘fairs’ when traders from afar would work their way round an established and ancient round of such fairs, when not just fairground rides featured but also hiring of labourers and servants and exchanges of goods, including luxuries such as ribbons and fancy goods.
You may hear, even now, occasionally, of ‘market rights’. Towns could not simply start a market because they wanted to, the right to hold a market was a valuable commodity and was organised carefully, often negotiated or sponsored by a benefactor or Lord of the area. There were generally two ways early markets were held, either by the by virtue of a specific royal grant, where there is likely to be a charter recording it, or by prescriptive right, that is, based on immemorial custom, where there may not be any charter to be found. There are also unlikely to be charters for markets and fairs held on the land within the royal demesne.
Market rights were so highly prized by towns because they attracted both shoppers and traders and the market fees went to the owners of those rights. Grants of such rights also usually included the right for the town to hold an annual fair which would have been a much bigger affair and would have been held on a specified Saint’s Day each year. These rights were carefully calculated not to clash with other nearby markets and fairs and indeed to allow regular fair traders to move from one to another on a regular circuit and to this day these ‘fair families’ mourn when places no longer hold their fairs, as I know from my time working for my Town Council. We were approached repeatedly by the family which had historically provided the fair in the town to reinstate the annual fair, impossible now alas, because of the constraints of narrow roads, development of traditional fair sites for other purposes and the size of modern fairground rides. To this day, ‘fair people’, families who travel the country between fairs still prize their traditional circuits between towns to coincide with their annual fairs, although most of the trading aspects of the fairs have long since disappeared. And to this day, the trustees of market rights still actively protect and control the markets within their towns, such as Cirencester.
Such markets and fairs had to be within reach of their customers, preferably within a reasonable walking distance because roads were poor or non-existent and it is noticeable, certainly within the countryside area where I live now, that towns tend to be about seven to ten miles apart (so at most a five mile walk or horse ride each way for people living between them, such as farmers wanting to take goods to market) and bigger centres seem, generally, to be about twenty miles apart.
Rowley village was not big enough to support a full market, although both Blackheath and Cradley Heath grew big enough eventually to do so. So where were the market towns which served Rowley?
Dudley was the obvious candidate and nearest market town for centuries. Blackheath did not exist as a town until the middle of the nineteenth century so although it still today has a good market, it did not exist in early times. Birmingham was not then a bustling city. And no doubt Rowley folk would have walked over Turner’s Hill to Dudley for some purposes. But the official market town for Rowley, as revealed by notes in the Parish Register at the time of the Commonwealth (1649-1660) was designated by the Government of the day to be Walsall, much further away then Dudley by several miles and without an obvious connection. But Dudley was in Worcestershire and it seems that Cromwell’s new laws applied within County Districts so Walsall, in Staffordshire, was deemed the local market town, although in practice I have my doubts that many people chose to walk the additional miles to get there, unless forced to do so by the requirement to publish notice of impending marriages. Perhaps there were also shops or facilities at Halesowen or Oldbury or Stourbridge or Kidderminster to attract people. Certainly Stourbridge was apparently a busy trading centre for nails.
But on a day to day basis there were small local shops within and near to the area of the Hamlets, especially in Rowley Village, perhaps Hawes Lane and certainly in Tippity Green and Perry’s Lake. These appear to have sold groceries and perhaps some hardware or clothing items. Perhaps some vegetables, potatoes, onions, carrots, beans etc were grown in people’s gardens, pigs for bacon were commonly kept in back yards, sometimes shared between households and it seems likely that many people kept chickens for eggs but certainly there were numerous butchers’ shops and most butchers slaughtered their own animals on the premises. Those who kept a pig at home might call in a pig butcher to slaughter and joint their pig when the time came but for beef, mutton and lamb, they needed a butcher.
Was bread made locally or did everyone make their own? I know that there was later a bakery in Bell End but there may have been others. Did flour come from the local mill or was this one of the items sold in the small shops?
I recall that in the press reports about the deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning of a family in Cradley Heath in 1873, the bodies were discovered by one of the neighbours who had gone to the house because she wanted to use their oven for baking. So it appears that not every house had such facilities and that it was commonly accepted that neighbours would go into each other’s houses to use them. I have also seen many reports from other areas and sources that it was common for people to take their Christmas goose or joint of meat to the baker on Christmas Eve so that these could be cooked in the bakery ovens. So it seems likely that in earlier times, few small houses would have had ovens and much of the home cooking would have been done over the open fires in houses, limiting the range of dishes possible.
Tea and sugar were comparative luxuries and I suspect that exotic items such as coffee and chocolate were not commonly available in these remoter parts of the area until relatively recent times. Local dairy herds would have supplied milk and perhaps cheese and butter, although many families in earlier times would have used dripping, collected from roasting of meat and bacon, for spreading on bread. Nowadays, if you seek out dripping in supermarkets or butchers, you will find it as beef or goose dripping or lard, according to which animal or bird it comes from but I believe that in earlier times, any dripping would have been collected together and saves carefully for later use, all mixed together and all the tastier for it.
So the whole experience of shopping would have been much more limited than it became in later times, and, of course, because many of the families in the area were poorly paid, every penny of expenditure would have been carefully controlled. Perhaps many poorer folk would have obtained food on ‘tick’ where goods would be taken and then paid for later when the man’s wages were brought home at the end of the week. Provided he did not spend too much of his wages in the pub on the way home. Was this why the Levetts ran a shop as part of their pub business? Different customers, perhaps but from the same families. Many women probably never went to the pub and many men probably never did the shopping!
Another aspect of shops was the Truck or Tommy system. This was a system where employers paid their workers partly in ‘truck or Tommy tokens’ which could only be used in specified ‘truck shops’, usually also controlled by them or their families. This system was doubly unfair in that the employers and/or truck shop owners could set the prices of the goods, usually considerably higher than in independent shops and they also controlled the quality of the goods supplied, frequently substandard or of poor quality, adulterated or even inedible foodstuffs. Although the ability to make bulk purchases could in theory benefit the customers by offering lower prices, generally, it was the employers who made profits from the system. An Act of Parliament was passed in 1821 to outlaw this system but as late as 1860 it was reported that it still operated in the area around Tipton. I have not seen anything to suggest that any such shops operated in the area of the Lost Hamlets, possibly because there was no one dominant employer in the area as there tended to be around the major iron works.
Chains of shops began to appear in the mid 1800s, nationwide chains such as Home and Colonial and Liptons had thousands of branches by 1900 but of these chains the only one which survives today is the Co-op. Home and Colonial had, I believe, a branch in Blackheath High Street until as late as the 1950s and there were branches of the Co-op in Blackheath and, at one time, opposite Bell End. W H Smith had begun to appear in the 1840s, mainly originally at railway stations but the local stations were not big enough to merit this facility. Boots the Chemist was another High Street chain which is still on our High Streets – or some of them – and I am old enough to remember Timothy Whites which was a similar chain but again, the hamlets were not big enough to support these.
More legislation affecting shops followed in later years, in 1892, restricting the hours that young people under the age of eighteen could be required to work to seventy four hours, inclusive of meal times. Shops were also required to provide stools for staff (though whether the staff felt able to use them is another matter!) and the Shops Act, passed in 1911, was a United Kingdom piece of legislation which allowed a weekly half holiday for shop staff. This became known in Britain as “early closing day”. However, provisions of the act of 1892 did not apply to members of the same family living in a house of which the shop formed part, or to members of the employer’s family, or to anyone wholly employed as a domestic servant so, yet again, most of these protections did not apply to the sorts of shops in small villages and hamlets.
So the shops in the Lost Hamlets area were mostly much smaller outfits, often in front rooms of ordinary houses and run by local business people, often by the wives of men who went out of the house to work.
In the 1841 Census, Elizabeth Lewis, aged 40, was listed in Tippity Green as an Ironmonger. There was no adult male in the household so perhaps she was a widow, we cannot tell from this census which gives no indication of marital status or relationships. Among so many people who worked with iron, this seems a little contrary but perhaps she sold such items as buckets, pots and pans, small tools and implements, lamps or candle holders – items which could not easily be made in small forges. Joseph Bowater, aged 50 and the landlord at the Bull, was listed as a butcher in Tippity Green, and Edward Richards, aged about 50, was also listed there as a shoemaker. There are no other shop trades mentioned.
By the time of the 1851 Census, Joseph Bowater, again listed in Tippity Green and now 64, was described as a ‘vittler and butcher’ and was now employing a second butcher who was living with them. Sarah Parkes, also in Tippity Green aged 50 and the wife of a Nailer, was a dressmaker but it not clear that this meant that she had an actual shop. No other shopkeepers were listed.
In the 1861 Census, William Badley, aged 26 and a House Agent was listed living with his father and family but it is difficult to imagine that this involved shop premises as modern estate agents do. In any case, it is likely that he was employed by an estate or owner of houses in the locality, to manage them and collect rents, rather than to sell properties. James Levett, then 29 was listed in Perry’s Lake as a grocer. I have included information about the grocery business run by the Levett family in my articles about that family. Also in Perry’s Lake were two ladies born in Ridgmont, Bedfordshire who were both ‘bonnet sewers’, although again, one cannot imagine there would be sufficient trade for a shop, bonnets may well have been sold from their house.
There is an interesting article on the hat making and straw plaiting industries in Bedfordshire in this period, much of which was a cottage industry in the 1800s, much like nail making in Rowley.[i] However, it seems unlikely that there would have been the logistical set-up for straw plaiting in Rowley village so perhaps these ladies were making the end product of actual hats for local customers.
Also in the 1861 Census, Benjamin Rock was listed in Tippity Green as a Blacksmith and grocer, immediately next to the Bull Inn. Living very close to them were the Whitehouse family in their private residence which included William Whitehouse, the Registrar of Births and Deaths (his signature well known to many Rowley family historians and his father had performed the same role before him) and his brother Thomas who, aged 19 was listed as a Chemist and Druggist but with no indication of where he practised this profession. Benjamin Bate was listed in Perry’s Lake as a grocer and his house described as a Grocer’s shop; other members of the Bate family kept the Cock Inn in Cock Green and Mary Ann Batehad married into the Levett family so this shop may have been associated with the Levetts .
In the 1871 Census, James Whitehouse, aged 40 is listed as a grocer at Tippity Green but no other shops are mentioned.
In 1881, Daisy Levett is shown as a grocer in Perry’s Lake. Again, this is the only shop that I have found mentioned.
There would have been more shops just a little way away in Rowley village and probably also in Hawes Lane but I have been concentrating on the area of the Lost Hamlets. Later there were shops at Springfield and Doulton Road and on the Dudley Road.
In 1901, in the Census, my paternal great-grandfather Arthur Hopkins, lived at 3 Tippity Green ‘the fish shop’ and his occupation was shown as a ‘fishmonger’.
Copyright: The National Archives. This is the only reference I have ever found to a wet fish shop in this area and obviously didn’t last long as he was living in Coventry by the time of the next census in 1911!
My mother could remember in the early 1920s, as a small child, being taken to visit elderly ladies in Bell End. In her memoir, she said “I particularly liked Aunt Mary Ingram, mother’s first cousin. She lived in Bell End, where previously the Pits had been until they were worked out. Now it was all fields, with a row of small terraced miners’ cottages. There was a tiny pantry with a front facing window. Aunt Mary made it into a little shop with sweets and chocolate, lucky bags and pop.” [Editor’s note: There was at least one sweet manufacturer in Holly Road in Blackheath but perhaps some sweets, such as toffees, were home made.] “ I suppose she sold groceries too but they wouldn’t have interested me! Oh, yes, I can remember blue paper bags of sugar. Well, of course, as the grown-ups chatted, I was continually asking for pennies and usually got a penny or two for goodies. I loved this tiny windowed shop. Inside was a huge wooden screen or settle padded with cushions – the back was tall and right to the ground and the wooden arms kept one very cosy by the big deep open fire. Hot ashes were falling and glowing cascades as we poked the fire and ‘made it up’ with new coals. Further along the road my mother’s Aunt Liza lived with her grumpy husband Alf. We never stayed too long here. She never had a family but Uncle always retired to his precious garden and greenhouse. He can’t have been too bad because he was kind enough to show me his precious plants and vegetable garden”
Also in the 1920s mum remembered buying vegetables from a greengrocers run by “the Bird family, who traded as greengrocers in Blackheath for many years.” Dick Bird visited my dad’s cobblers shop every day for a gossip or ‘cant’, as did some other men, especially in winter. A good coal fire was a great attraction.” My mother remembered arguments about football – her father and brother were loyal West Bromwich Albion supporters and other customers favoured Aston Villa! This is another aspect of these small shops, the social life which revolved around them, much more than a simple cash transaction.
By the later 19th and most of the 20th century, with a hugely expanded population by comparison with even fifty years earlier, there were dozens of small ‘corner’ shops of varying size, serving small local communities with all sorts of goods. Many of them are remembered with affection by those of us who grew up in that time. But alas, most of them are gone now, overtaken by changes in shopping and cooking habits, long trading hours, the loss of tobacco sales and post offices, perhaps excessive regulation, business costs, the increased availability of personal transport making it easier to shop somewhere else, especially as more people work a distance from their homes and may pass supermarkets on their way home. Not to mention home delivery services, now offered by all the big supermarkets with the exception of Aldi and Lidl, I believe. Ironically, the nearest equivalent to these corner shops now is probably the small local stores introduced into small towns and neighbourhoods by the big supermarkets- the Tesco Expresses, the Sainsburys Locals, the Morrison’s Daily, the little Waitroses – going back to small convenient local shops which sell a big range of goods and are open for long hours.
These are some of the Facebook Comments over a number of years on the ‘I remember Blackheath and Rowley Regis’ page, about memories of local shops:
There was some discussion about one shop at Perry’s Lake:
Le Hughes – “I used to live in Regent Road and walk to the local shop every Sunday with my dad and the dog 😊”
Cynthia Cole – “I remember the shop – Always known as Peggy’s.”
Andy Jakdaw Dawes – “How about the one at the bottom of Turners Hill by the Portway Tavern, it was the only shop open Sunday afternoons where we could get suck from little old lady ran it, if I remember right.”
Carl Fisher – “Yes, I do, we used to go in there when we went to my nan’s
Maggie Smith – “Alison, do you mean the shop at the top of Oakham Road on the corner of Turners Hill? That was also Peggy’s – belonged to the Slim family.
Alison Prosser – Yes Maggie, Aunty Peggys maiden name was Slim.
Maggie Smith – We must have known each other then. I was good friends with her nieces Ann and Joan Davies and Peggy’s daughter. Also Peggy’s other niece whose parents had the shop in Hilton Road. I think Ann and Joan must have been on Peggy’s side. Their mother, I think, was a Slim. I remember Kathleen, she was younger than me. I spent a lot of my childhood at your Aunty Peggy’s house. I hadn’t seen her for about 50 years and popped into the shop a couple of years ago – I was really surprised that she actually remembered me. We lived in Ashleigh Road, just down from Hadley’s farm. Ann and Joan lived a few houses away. I think it was Peggys brother who was a minister at the mission we attended at the top of Portway Hill.”
Diane Williams asked “Who remembers Bob Woodhouse, he owned the tyre yard & the big house behind Peggy’s shop…..
Peter Hackett – I remember it! Used it once!
Marie Devonport said “I walked past Peggy’s old shop today. Went for a walk over to Warrens Hall park. When you walk down the side of the old people’s home, feed the ducks in the pond and then walk down past the riding stables you’re in a different world. You could be anywhere. I love it on a sunny day.”
Paul Scerri remembered“I worked with a bloke on the buses in Wolverhampton, whose mother had the shop before Peggy and George.”
Sue Lynn Babington said “There is still a little paper shop there as I get off the bus there when walking over Turners Hill and pop in for my Kit Kat.”
Joyce Connop – Yes, I can remember that nice to pop in for and ice cream when we’d been for a walk over the golf links.
Doris Crump recalled “There was a green shed across Portway Road, it was a cafe to start with then it was a sweet shop, years ago, sold the best icecream.”
Kath Harris also remembered shops in that area: “I also remember Mrs McKay and Brenda in the sweet shop, Agnes and Ted king Frank the butcher (possibly Tippity Green but not sure)!”
Tony Holland said “ I think Tippity Green started from Portway Tavern to the junction, Bulls Head facing you. I was born in Portway Road in 1959.
Kelvin Edmunds said there were two shops in Tippity Green, just past the Tavern on left was Faulkner’s two sisters who kept that last, the House on the right before the junction, he thought it was Mrs Tromans.
Keith Fenton commented that he had been told that there was a sweet shop in Tippity Green, he didn’t remember it, did anyone else?
He remembered one of the terraced houses opposite the entrance to golf range used to be a shop.
Sean Comfort agreed that was exactly where it was, opposite his grandparents who lived in the cottages over the road that backed onto the quarry. Jane Davies agreed, she had lived at number 8 Tippity Green from the 70s and her mom only moved from there about 11 years ago. That’s exactly where the shop was.
Janet Harris said “My uncle had the sweet shop in the terraced house about 65 years ago, his name was Albert Haden.”
Mike Fenton noted that in 1939 Albert Haden was living at No. 11 Tippity Green but was listed as a worker in Seamless Steel Tubes. Presumably, the sweet shop came later perhaps he worked at both with his wife Ada?
So many local connections came up!
Jill Tarr said “My auntie Renes full name was Ada Irene.”
Shirley Jordan said “There was 3 shops across Tippity Green, Mrs Haden and then Mrs. Vine took it over and there was Mrs Faulkner’s shop. Over the road a little further along was Mrs Mullets who sold grocery and sweets. Terry Greenhouse believed Mrs Mulletts husband was Reuben if his memory was correct.
Sharon Whitehouse said “Yes I remember it very well, my dad took me in there for sweets, on the way to my nans. I remember it had a red door with a large black knob in the middle of it and all the jars were in the window2.
Peter Wroe had lived in the Portway Tavern as a kid and remembered “going to the shop for sweets, especially flying saucers or rainbow drops, yummy.”
Andrea James also had more reason than most to remember the shop – she noted “Yes there were actually two, one up the steps was owned by two old sisters and it burnt down through faulty electrics. We lived 2 doors away and lost our house in the fire too.
Susan Bowater said her nan had a cafe just below the Port way Tavern on the other side of the road. She remembered going to the sweet shop for yellow kali. Joyce Connop asked whether that was Ada’s cafe? She remembered Ada well. She said “On the way to school we used to call and she would sell us cakes left from the day before for a penny and I remember when she moved to a new house in Throne Rd with her daughter .
Brian Kirkham remembered that he used to like the barley twist canes with the chocolate centre. He also recalled that Joe and Johnny slater lived next door, he thought the row of houses was the villa and the pub was the Portway Tavern.
Roger Harris said “I remember the little shop owned by two sisters on the left hand side past the Portway Tavern. It was the only shop open on Sunday afternoon, there was nothing to do on Sundays in the 60s as everywhere else was closed on the afternoon when the newsagents closed at lunchtime .
David Hilton also had family connections with the shop: He said “The sweet shop up the steps was owned by my aunt, Sarah Faulkner. Three of her sisters, Edna, Doris and Mon also worked in the shop.
As a child I lived directly opposite the shop. At quiet times the shop would be locked but regular customers knew that if they stood on the step, one of the sisters would run over the road from where I lived and serve them. It was often my job to “watch the shop”. It was not only a sweet shop but sold most things from food to a few clothes.
I thought the greengrocers was Levers and the other shop was Parkes.”
Gaynor Brockley asked whether anyone remembered the hairdressers, ‘Maureens’ right next to the Bull’s Head in Tippity Green? And she remembered a greengrocers , she thought his name was Jim Levett .
Those shops in Tippity Green certainly provoked a lot of memories, even today but alas, I have not been able to find any photographs of them or even of Tippity Green. There were also various shops on the Dudley Road , including the Post Office at Springfield and in Doulton Road and later at least one fish and chip shop on Dudley Road which was remembered with appreciation by many people on the Facebook page.
Another memory on Facebook which makes me smile is one from Tracie Evans who said in 2014 “I used to work on the cake stall at Blackheath market, every Saturday we would get the lovely pensioners saying ‘I’ll tek a pound of bosted biscuits and mek sure they ay bosted'” , wonderful, I can just hear them, pure Black Country in word and wit!
Copyright Anthony Page. This is the older of two images in Anthony’s first book of photographs of Rowley, of Bayley’s Post Office at Springfield, which would have been very familiar to residents in the Lost Hamlets, this one is dated about 1920. Not much traffic about, so the many children are quite safe gathering in the road, possibly to gawk at the photographer, although there is one motorcar parked by the Post Office, I wonder who it belonged to?!
And from the mid 1800s onwards an evergrowing range of shops was established in the ‘new town’ of Blackheath which would have drawn many local people to the shops and market there. Hopping on the 140 Bus, probably! And as roads and bus sevices improved, trips to Dudley and even the grand shops in Birmingham would have become possible.
The Tibbetts shop-keeping ladies of Rowley Regis
Copyright: Anthony Page. This picture gives us a glimpse of the interior of one of those shops in Rowley village, with members of the Tibbetts family.
So I have done my best to consider how and where our ancestors in the Lost Hamlets shopped and what they might have bought there, I hope you have enjoyed this little exploration of shopping in years gone by.
Over the last few weeks, I have done quite a lot of work on the Levett family in Rowley Regis. After the terrible year for that family of 1902 I suspected that most of the remaining Levetts had moved away from the village. Having a quick look at the 1911 Census for Rowley to confirm my theory, I was surprised to see a John Levett aged 67 living in Springfield because he did not appear to be part of the other Levett family in any of the earlier work I had done. On searching further, I found him in Rowley and Blackheath right back to 1871, originally working as a butcher and later at the quarry. I knew that there were later generations of Levetts who were butchers in Rowley and Blackheath who did not appear to come from the branch of the family which I had been working on – was this where they came from?
This John Levett appears in his first census under this name in Rowley in 1871 and he was consistent in records thereafter over a 50 year period about his age and place of birth which showed that he was born in Rowley Regis in 1847. So who were his parents? Where was he in 1851 and 1861? He did not appear under this name in the censuses for those years.
I looked in various records for a birth or baptism of a John Levett in Rowley Regis in 1847, + or -1 year. No birth registration or baptism. Odd. Checked surrounding parishes – still no John Levett. Odder. After mulling this over for a while, it occurred to me that perhaps his birth and baptism had not appeared because he was illegitimate and his birth might have been registered in his mother’s name?
The illegitimate Johns baptised in Rowley Regis in 1847
So I checked the Baptismal Register for St Giles for 1847, looking for a child named John, illegitimate, and baptised in that year. There were only two.
John Hobbiss
One was born to Rosannah Hobbiss at Slack Hillock on 28th February 1847 and was baptised at St Giles on 9 May 1847, according to his Birth Certificate. Although the mother’s name is given in the Baptismal Register as Louisa, I cannot find any trace of a Louisa Hobbis before or after this date and I suspect that either this is a clerical error or she lied about her name! But a John Hobbis of the right age appears in the 1851 and the 1861 Censuses, apparently the son of Rosannah Smitten, nee Hobbis, in both censuses living in Old Hill. But after that John Hobbiss is nowhere to be found. Rosannah Hobbis married Thomas Smitten at Dudley St Edmund on 25 Oct 1847 and in 1851, when they were living in Old Hill, John is described as Rosannah’s son so it appears that he was not Thomas’s as their other child Emily is specifically noted as his child. Rosannah was born in Bromsgrove so was not a Rowley or Old Hill girl. In 1861, the family were living in Cherry Orchard, Old Hill and John is again shown under the name of John Hobis, by then 14 and a coal miner. In 1871 Rosannah, by now widowed, was living in Elbow Street, Old Hill with her children by Thomas Smitten but John is no longer living with her. I have not been able to find any trace of him under that name after that date.
So this boy had associations with Slack Hillock and Halesowen Street, where the mystery John Levett was later living in 1871 and where his bride Ellen Smith lived, was only a few hundred yards away. However it is more difficult to see whether John Levett of Rowley, the farmer, had any direct connections with this area that would bring him into contact with Rosannah Hobbiss but that cannot be ruled out either.
John Moreton
The second illegitimate John was born to Emma Moreton, (who just happens to be my 2xgreat-aunt) on 16th March 1847 at Finger-i-the-Hole and was baptised at St Giles a few weeks later on 13th June 1847. Emma, who grew up in Perry’s Lake, married Thomas Priest (or Redfern) a couple of years later in 1850 and they had ten children together. But in the 1851 Census her four year old son John is living with them in Gadds Green under the name Priest and also in 1861, by then aged 14 and listed by the name Redfern – but that was because his stepfather Thomas Priest also used both names in different censuses, either that or it was an enumerator error, as the family was living literally between two households of Redferns – see my article on the Redferns for more on that! At that time John was a furnace labourer, a common occupation for the Redfern men. But after that John Moreton – or Priest or Redfern – depending on which name he was using at the time – is nowhere to be found on the area.
So both of these illegitimate Johns seem to disappear after the 1861 Census when they would have been 14 and going out to work – no help there, then!
However, a John Moreton, aged 22, was married at St Giles on 21 Aug 1870 to Eliza Caddick. He gave his abode as Turner’s Hill, (where the Priests/Redferns lived), and did not enter any name for his father. And the witnesses to this marriage were Solomon and Mary Ann Redfern, Solomon was only a few years older than John and was a half-brother to Thomas Priest or Redfern. He actually lived for some years next door to John so would certainly have been known to and associated with this John.
Had this John reverted to his original name for his marriage? I think he had.
John and his wife were living in Church Row, Rowley in 1871 with their 10 month old son Samuel and this John gives his place of birth as Rowley Regis. There was only one John Moreton born in Rowley in that period, so it seems likely that this is the same John Moreton who was baptised in 1847. By 1881 the family had moved to Barrow-in-Furness in Lancashire and John was working in the iron works there. Again, this fits with his previous occupation as a furnace labourer when he was in Rowley.
Barrow-in-Furness Migration from Rowley
Incidentally, on this page of twenty six people in Parker Street, Barrow-in-Furness, there are no less than twenty two people who give their place of birth in the Black Country – Rowley Regis, Cradley, Brierley Hill, Tipton – on this page and those around it there are Mortons, Whitehouses, Gaunts, Willetts,Siveters, Priests, Ingrams, Westwoods, Billinghams, and Taylors, all familiar local Rowley names. It looks as though there was a considerable migration amongst the iron workers from the Black Country iron works to the Barrow area.
This Moreton/Morton family (The spelling changes at this time) remained there afterwards and it appears that John Moreton died there some time between the 1901 and 1911 censuses when Eliza Morton is shown as a widow in the latter. If this is the John Moreton who was baptised in 1847, he is not our man.
Back to the mystery man –John Levett the Butcher
At this new John Levett’s marriage in St Giles in 1867, aged 21 and a butcher, of Blackheath, he gave his father’s name as John Levett, farmer. The information given in such records is only as accurate as the priest or Clerk is told so the use of this name is not necessarily true. But his use thereafter of the Levett surname does seem to indicate that he believed that he was a Levett. Perhaps he knew who his father was and decided to name his father and use his surname when he got married and thereafter.
As to the identity of this John’s father, there is only one John Levett in Rowley Regis in the 1841 and 1851Censuses, and that was John Levett of Brickhouse Farm, father of James Adshead Levett. Did the recently widowed John Levett find solace with a local girl in 1846? Perhaps he did. Was he the father of this John Levett? He would have been nearly seventy by 1847 so not impossible but perhaps unusual.
Or might James Adshead Levett, living in Perry’s Lake, and aged 42, and previously described in records as a farmer, be responsible? It appears from the variations in the descriptions of James’s occupations that the pub-keeping was only one of various occupations and as late as 1851 he was described as a colliery clerk. It may well have been that he also assisted his father with running the Brickhouse Farm.
Of the two possible illegitimate Johns baptised in Rowley, I tend towards thinking that the John Levett in Rowley is more likely to be the son of Rosannah Hobbiss. He was later living in Halesowen Street, Blackheath at the time of his marriage, just up the hill from Slack Hillock and it does seem likely that the other John reverted to his original name of Moreton and moved away from the area.
I can find no Bastardy Orders to help. Perhaps a DNA test would throw up some links or perhaps descendants of this couple actually know the story but otherwise this has to remain pure speculation.
John and Ellen Levett
This John Levett married Ellen Smith on 14 Oct 1868 at St Giles, Rowley Regis. He was 21 and a butcher of Blackheath. She was 19 and also of Blackheath, so presumably her father had given his consent to the marriage. The groom gave his father’s name and occupation as John Levett, farmer. Her father was Sydney Smith, a Manufacturer. The witnesses were Job and Sarah Siviter but these people were the Grave Digger and Church Cleaner for St Giles so this may have been the only connection, they may have acted as witnesses on a regular basis.
John was marrying into a respectable family, perhaps he felt under pressure to be able to name his father in the marriage record. Later in life their sons and daughters went into service with wealthy families and ran businesses so they must all have been presentable and capable.
Ellen Smith was the eldest daughter of Sydney Smith of Halesowen Street , Blackheath who was a Rivet Manufacturer, employing five men in 1871. From the description in the census then it appears that they were living towards the Gorsty Hill end of Halesowen Street, perhaps somewhere near the junction with New John Street.
After their marriage, the couple were living in Halesowen Street in 1871, in Garratts Lane, Old Hill in 1881 and by 1891 had moved to 2 Dudley Road, Springfield where he was described as a Labourer, (also in 1901 when he and his two remaining sons at home were stone breakers) whereas previously he had always been shown as a butcher. 2 Dudley Road was next to the Bull Inn and there is some evidence that this had been a shop, possibly a butcher’s shop previously. By this time John and Ellen Levett had had five sons and three daughters. They remained in Springfield until their deaths, both attaining grand old ages for that period. John Levett died in 1926 aged 81 and Ellen in 1929 aged 80, both are buried in St Giles Churchyard.
Their children were:
Harry (1870-1886), who died aged 15 and was buried at St Giles on 9 May 1886, his address was shown in the Burial Register as Tippity Green so their Dudley Road home appears to have been very close to the Bull Inn.
Their eldest daughter Alice (1872-1915) had in 1891 been living in as a servant in the household of Mr T Danks, Boiler manufacturer, at 77 Dudley Road, along with her sister Amy. In 1895 Alice married Samuel Dowell at Reddal Hill and they moved to St Johns-in-the-Vale, in Cumbria, where they were living in 1901, where Samuel was working in the stone quarry. (Regular readers may remember that many Rowley sett workers moved to St John’s-in-the-Vale in this period, this has been referred to in other pieces on this blog.) Alice’s brother Frank was also living with them, also working at the quarry. However, their stay in Cumbria does not appear to have lasted long as both of Alice and Samuel’s children were born in Rowley, Winifred in 1903 and Donald in 1907. In 1911 they were living in New Buildings, Tippity Green. Alice died in 1915, aged 42 and was buried at St Giles.
Frederick (1873-1932) This little Levett stayed at home! Frederick became a butcher, in 1901 and 1911 he was listed as a butcher in Rowley Village. In 1894 Fred, then a quarryman, married Elizabeth Payne at Holy Trinity, Old Hill, and they had six children, two daughters and four sons, one of the latter died in infancy. By 1921 Fred had a butcher’s shop at 35 Penncricket Lane and his son Harry (by then 24) had his own butcher’s shop at 48 Birmingham Road, Blackheath. It was this shop that I remember although by then it must have been run by Fred’s grandson or great-grandson.
Frederick and Elizabeth had four sons and two daughters, Harry (1896-1958),John (1899), Ellen (1902), George Frederick (1903-04), Alfred(1908) and Amy (1909). Harry continued to run the butcher’s shop in Birmingham Road and it was still run by Levetts up to the 1960s.
Copyright – Steve Pearce
This photograph, posted on Facebook by Steve Pearce in 2014, shows Levett’s butcher’s shop in Birmingham Road, alongside the never to be completed car park construction. The abattoir was originally behind the shop, I understand and the family sold the land on which the Shoulder of Mutton was built, the name of the pub specified as a nod to the butchery business! There are many comments on Facebook from people who remember David Levett and his son still running the business and how well respected, obliging and friendly they were, as I remember myself.
Amy (1875-1952) also went into service and after leaving Mr Dank’s household, she moved to Stoke Prior where in the 1901 Census she was a nurse to the children of Mr Victor Drury, a boot manufacturer. Her sister Lizzy was Cook in the same household. However, soon after the Census Amy married William Henry Edwards (a Rowley boy) on 27 Jun 1901. And they married in St Johns-in-the-Vale, in Cumbria (popping up again!). This family stayed in Cumbria, however, their children Frederick and Ellen were born there and they later moved to Cockermouth where they died, William in 1940 and Amy in 1952.
Frank, (1877-1938) who had been living with his sister Alice in the 1901 Census, also stayed in Cumbria. On 8 Apr 1901 he married Annie Adelaide Hindmoor Benbow at St Johns-in-the-Vale, Cumbria and they had three sons Sydney (1903), James (1904) and John (1908) He and his family moved to the USA in 1913, probably to join Annie’s brother JamesBenbow, and Frank is still listed as a sett cutter at this time. However, Annie died in Massachusetts in 1917 and Frank returned to Cumbria with his two younger sons James (1904) and John (1908) (their eldest son Sydney (1902) staying in the USA for the remainder of his life) in 1919. They were living with his sister Amy and brother-in-law William Edwards in Threlkeld in the 1921 Census. Frank died in 1938, his death registered in the Carlisle area so it is possible that he continued to live in Threlkeld or perhaps died in the Infirmary in Carlisle which is the main hospital for the area.
Lizzie (1880-1956) or Lizzy (the spelling varies throughout her life!) also remained in Springfield, Rowley for many years, listed as late as 1940 in trade directories as a shop keeper at 7, Dudley Road, where she lived with her parents until their deaths. Whether she kept the shop open is unknown but she died at 7 Dudley Road in 1956, the last of her generation, and it appears likely that she is the Elizabeth Levett who was buried at St Giles then. She had been Lizzie all her life and her birth was registered as Lizzie but formality overtook her at the end! Records show that Probate was issued to her nephews Harry and John Levett, both butchers!
Peter (1883-1944)
Peter’s is a sad story. He was unmarried and shown as a stone quarry worker in 1911, living in Dudley Road with his parents. He served in WW1 with the Worcestershire Regiment but was discharged ‘insane’ in 1919 and in the 1921 Census was shown as a patient at Barnsley Hall Mental Hospital. He was still there in the 1939 Register, shown as an ex- soldier, which probably implies that he had been there ever since. He died at Barnsley Hall in 1944.
Ernest Levett (1877-1919)
Ernest, the youngest of the children of John and Ellen Levett, was born in 1877. In 1911 he was working as a labourer at the stone quarry. He married Beatrice Taylor at St Giles on 25 Oct 1908 and they had five daughters and one son, including twin daughters Nellie and Amy born on 28 Oct 1919. He died and was buried at St Giles on 6 Dec 1919, when they were barely a month old. No mention is made of his cause of death and he may have died of Spanish flu which killed many people then. Beatrice, at the age of only 26,was left with six children aged twelve down to a few weeks old. Ernest having returned from the war, unlike many men, this must have seemed very hard to Beatrice. In the 1921 Census, Beatrice was still at 2 Tippity Green, the address given on Ernest’s enlistment papers but by 1939 she had moved with all her children except Elsie to Queens Drive, Whiteheath. It appears that Elsie died in 1927, aged 11. The other children – Lizzie (1909), Herbert (1911), Annie (1913), Elsie (1916), Nellie and Amy (twins – 1919) mostly appear to have married fairly locally, although this is entering the period when tracking people becomes more difficult because of data protection.
Summary – the other Levett family!
This John Levett was not mentioned in any of the Levett Wills I have looked at and it is not known whether the other branch of Levetts in Rowley acknowledged them. The names John and his wife used for their children are not the same names, generally, that recur frequently in the other Levett family, although the names from the Smith family, Ellen’s family – Sydney, do recur. Like the other Levetts, however, this John Levett was a hard working man, first as a butcher and later in the quarry. He left eight children and at least twenty grandchildren. No doubt there are many more descendants in later generations. Two of his sons and one of his daughters followed him into business, running shops in Springfield and the village and later in Blackheath so perhaps he had inherited at least the Levett capacity for business.
And although the family moved around the area in later years, John and Ellen and their daughter Lizzie Levett, with their shop and home lived at 7 Dudley Road right up to Lizzie’s death in 1956.
Copyright: Mike Fenton
This photograph, courtesy of Mike Fenton, shows Dudley Road in 1969, only a few years after Lizzie died and there are two shops on the left. Comments on this picture on Facebook say that the first of these was a butcher’s shop, and the second was known as Mary’s shop. I suspect that this shop was Lizzie’s shop before Mary!
The end of this part of the story of their lives has Lizzie ending up living for decades within yards of, if not actually on the site of Brickhouse Farm where the original John Levett, very possibly her grandfather or great grandfather, had lived when he moved to Rowley one hundred and fifty years earlier.
As I have commented before in this study, Rowley family roots go deep but it seems they also go in circles!
rowleyregislosthamlets.co.uk 
