AUDLEY & DISTRICT FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

MAY 2004

 

 

Your Newsletter

 

Being the new editor of the Audley & District Family History Society Newsletter I have changed the style of the newsletter and increased the content. Do you like it? Is the content what you want? What else would you like to read about? E-mail your comments to me on the address below.

 

Now, for an open invitation. This newsletter is yours. Please contribute. Letters, experiences and anecdotes are all very welcome and wherever possible will be printed. Any contributions should be sent by e-mail to MayerFam@aol.com.

 

On the subject of e mail, if any member, who has an e mail address and currently receives the newsletter in hard copy, would like to e mail me then I will capture your e mail address and forward the Newsletter to you by e mail in future. This is far more convenient and offers a significant cost saving to the society.

 

Robert Mayer

 

 

REVIEW OF ‘ARCHITECTURE IN AUDLEY’

 

On Friday 5th March, Dr. Philip Morgan of Keele University gave a much-anticipated talk on Architecture in Audley. He began by explaining that the evidence from maps shows that the Parish of Audley, in the 17th century, had a dispersed settlement pattern with only the village itself being of any size. This meant that very few buildings older than the 18th century survive and the vast majority of properties were built as a result of the mining prosperity of the 19th century.

 

As a result the parish has only a handful of listed buildings and two of those are the Wedgwood Monument, on Bignall Hill and a metal milestone. Dr. Morgan was therefore able to demonstrate that there are few old buildings in the parish and even fewer that can be considered sufficiently ‘interesting’ to warrant listing.

 

However, there are gems to be found and the following are Dr Morgan’s personal choice of his favourite buildings: -

  • 19th century: William White’s Arcade. Please see Pevsner’s Buildings of England, Staffordshire, page 64.
  • 20th century: Eardley House. Alsager Road, Audley, and
  • 21st century: Beth Johnson Housing Association Development.

 

The talk was extremely interesting, well presented and very well received by an audience of some 50 people.

 

 

REVIEW OF ‘Arnold Bennett Life & Works’

 

On Friday 7th May John Potter delivered a talk entitled Arnold Bennett Life & Works. John Potter is the chairman of the Arnold Bennett Society and the talk was well attended by an audience of some 46 members and guests. Mr. Potter began by exploring Arnold Bennett’s background. We learned that he was born in 1867, the eldest of nine children and the son of a lawyer. He attended the Orme School at Newcastle and played the piano as a hobby.

 

By 1889 Bennett was living in Chelsea, working as a lawyer’s clerk, in his leisure time mixing with the ‘artistic’ set of whom his landlord, Frederick Marriott was part.

 

In 1894/5 he became the assistant and then editor of ‘Woman’ magazine.

 

In 1898, his first novel: ‘A Man from the North’, was published and in 1902 his first five towns novel, ‘Anna of the Five Towns’ was in print.

 

Arnold Bennett then moved to and married in France where he wrote ‘The Old Wives’ Tale’  during 1910/11 Bennett was occupied by a promotional tour of North America. His books were exceptionally popular in America and it was at this time that he started to enjoy a wealthy lifestyle indulging another hobby, yachting.

 

Arnold Bennett died in 1931. Mr. Potter considered ‘Hannah of the High Hand’ to be an excellent introductory Bennett novel.

 

Not surprisingly, given his chairmanship of the Arnold Bennett Society, John Potter was infectiously enthusiastic about his subject and the audience found the speaker knowledgeable, interesting and eloquent.  

 

 

NEWCASTLE WORKHOUSE

 

Pat Spode has a list of Audley people who died in the Newcastle Workhouse between 1866 and 1907. This includes date of burial, age and where buried.

 

 

WILLS OF PEOPLE IN THE PARISH OF AUDLEY

 

We hold an index of Audley Wills deposited at Lichfield Record Office and written between 1472 and 1858. If you contact Pat Spode, giving the approximate date of death she will look him up in the index and, if found, will give you the DATE OF PROBATE and the INDEX NUMBER. You will then need to contact the Lichfield R.O. with the above details at the following address---

 

Archivist -in-Charge,

Lichfield Library,

The Friary,

Lichfield,

Staffs

WS13 6QG

 

They make a charge for photocopying and postage.

 

We DO NOT have an Index for Wills AFTER 1858.

 

The Audley Wills project is underway and the initial publication of the Wills and Probate Inventories of the people of the Parish of Audley, (1650 –1700) has been transcribed and is available CD, please see the publications listing below. If you would like to take part in this project please contact me on: MayerFam@aol.com.

 

 

NEW RECORDS AND TRANSCRIPTS

 

Denis Allcock has now transcribed the following: -

 

Chesterton Parish Registers---

Baptisms 1846-1892

Marriages1852-1908

Burials1852-1900

 

Mike Norcup has provided us with

 

Marriages 1899-1977 United Methodist Free Church, Silverdale

Baptisms of: -

Silverdale Wesleyan1837-1926,

Silverdale New Connection 1887-1908, then the United Methodist 1908-1919.

Silverdale Primitive and Zion 1879-1903 --this includes Scot Hay, Black Bank and Leycett chapels, also from 1903-62.

Knutton, United Methodist 1914-1933.

Knutton, Wesleyan 1879-1932.

Silverdale, Congregational 1909-61,includes marriages and burials.

Middle Madeley, Methodist 1864-1964.

 

 

SNIPPETS

 

  • Sometimes noted in Census Returns------A ''nursechild'' was a baby sent to be nursed in another family. If a child was a few years old it was possible the local Poor Law Union Board boarded out him or her.
  • Surname variations and dialect pronunciations should always be considered as part of the research.
  • If you wish to use the IGI as a guide-- you should always check what you find back to the original registers. Use the IGI only to build up a framework.
  • At her marriage, if a woman was illegitimate, she would sometimes give the name of a grandfather or other relative instead of leaving her father's name blank.

 

ANGELA’S CORNER

Unusual Sources

 

Rentals, a Will and Some People Who Lived in Balterley.

 

My fifth great-grandfather Joseph Dean farmed at Knowlend from approximately 1770 until 1788 and in 1788, and he made a will just before he died. The beneficiaries of this will were Ellen his wife, his two sons Joseph and George and his daughter Mary. The witnesses were George Steele and John and Rachel Bloor.

Joseph had property in Balterley Green in the occupation of Randle Major and Ottwell Crosby. In Balterley he had a dwelling house and garden in the occupation of Joseph Lovatt. Joseph was buried in the churchyard of Barthomley Parish Church.

 

In 1824, a document was compiled showing the owners of property, their tenants and rentals paid for this property. From it, I learned the following:

 

Joseph Dean

 

  1. House and garden in Balterley Lane occupier James Porter.

 

  1. House and garden in Balterley Lane occupier Jon Whalley

 

  1. Meadow, barn stable, barn field in far Gorsty Croft Balterley Lane

 

  1. House garden and piggery in Balterley Heath, occupier William Hollins

 

  1. House and garden in Balterley Heath, occupier Ephraim Pepper

 

  1. House and garden at the Blue Bell occupier James Barton

 

  1. House and garden at the Blue Bell occupier Samuel Astbury.

 

George Dean

 

  1. House garden and piggery in Balterley Green, occupier Thomas Newton

 

  1. House garden and piggery in Balterley Green occupier George Higgins

 

  1. House and garden in Balterley Green, occupier Ann Lovatt.

 

Joseph Dean my fourth great-grandfather died in 1827 at Cross Farm, Eardley End, Audley, Staffordshire and is buried in the churchyard of St James the Great Audley. His brother George died in Haslington, Cheshire in 1839. He is buried in the churchyard of Barthomley Parish Church Cheshire. His brother George died in Haslington, Cheshire in 1839. He is also buried in the churchyard of Barthomley Parish Church Cheshire.

 

Sources:

  1. Will of Joseph Dean 1788 Lichfield Record Office
  2. Owners and occupiers of land D 3098/8/8 Record Office Staffordshire.

 

Your comments and suggestions would be most welcome.

 

Software Review

LDS Companion V2.12. Published by Stephen Archer and available at www.archersoftware.co.uk £18.00.

 

LDS Companion is a utility program that has been available for some time and is designed to enhance data downloads from the various databases published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, both on CD-Rom and on their website at www.familysearch.org.

 

Do you use the CD-Rom and web-based family history indexes compiled by the LDS Church, like the IGI and the 1881 Census? Do you export the data but want to do more with it, like converting to databases / spreadsheets? Then try LDS Companion, which can do all these things.

 

LDS Companion reads files exported from these LDS indexes: IGI, 1881 British Census, Vital Records indexes (British, North American and Australian), 1851 Census (Devon, Norfolk and Warwick) and the US Social Security Death Index.

 

LDS Companion is a time saving, easy to use program that can be recommended to anyone extracting data from the above named sources.

 

 

Tecky Stuff

LDS Companion runs under either Windows 95 or later, on a PC with around 8 Mbytes of RAM. The program and sample files together require about 2 Mbyte of disk space.

 

Robert Mayer

 

 

Book Review

 

‘All Quiet on the Home Front’, by Richard Van Emden and Steve Humphries (Headline, 2003). My interest in the First World War was rekindled by the project to record something of the people on the war memorials of the old parish of Audley; this led to work on three sets of Great War letters, all of which will be published in due course.

 

This work required some background reading and I’ve read a number of good books on the period.  Books on the fighting are easily available and plentiful, but the majority of soldiers would have had families at home in Britain.  What was life like for them? 

 

An excellent book on the subject has been published recently: ‘All Quiet on the Home Front’, by Richard Van Emden and Steve Humphries (Headline, 2003).  The subtitle has it exactly: ‘An oral history of life in Britain during the First World War’.

 

The book is well researched by the authors without being academic and daunting.  Best of all, it uses plenty of quotations from people who experienced the war and were still alive a couple of years ago when the book was researched.  There are, of course, problems with remembering events so long ago, which is why the background research is important.

 

Everyone in the country, and their descendants, have been affected by the Great War. If you wish to gain some understanding of what their lives were like during those four years, you couldn’t do better than start with this book.

 

Ian Bailey.