Northwich Floods

London Rd was closed in Northwich after the River Dane burst its banks yesterday, but has just reopened.  Unfortunately it sounds as if some properties may have been badly affected but so far as I know, thankfully no-one was injured. 

The town has suffered several floods during its history, as I discovered while researching Regency Cheshire. In July 1828, the River Weaver burst its banks, inundating shops in the lower part of Northwich and destroying salt merchant R.P. Hadfield’s warehouse. A house in Witton St fell down; many inhabitants who took refuge in the upper storeys of their homes were rescued by ladder from boats. No coach services could pass through the town.

Not just Northwich was affected; the flooding of the River Dane caused ‘tremendous devastation through the whole line of its course’; many small farmers were said to be ‘irretrievably ruined.’ (Chester Chronicle, 25 July 1828.)  Northwich also suffered devastating flooding within living memory in 1946.

The Trent & Mersey Canal was breached yesterday, too, near Dutton Locks - there's an amazing photo on the BBC website here.  We often enjoy walks along the canal between Acton Bridge and Dutton, but I guess it will take a while to clear up the mess.

Images:  Northwich floods, 1872. There were similar scenes in the floods of 1798, 1799, and 1828. Daily Graphic.

Steam tug Kerne near Acton Bridge.

Dutton Locks before the flooding. Both photos © Sue Wilkes.

                                                      

An Olympic Torchbearer?

Recently we went to the Hollybank Vets’ fundraising day in aid of The Joshua Tree, a local children's charity.  The Joshua Tree's fundraiser very kindly let me hold the Olympic torch which they carried in the torch relay.  It was surprisingly heavy!  The Joshua Tree aims to provide short breaks and support in the Cheshire countryside to families of children who have battled with cancer or other immune-suppressing illnesses.  The charity has been chosen as the North West regional finalist in the Persimmon Homes 40th Anniversary Competition to win a house worth £250,000. You can vote every day here to help the Joshua Tree win a house, and the competition ends on 20 September.

A Peek at Preston’s Guild Merchant in 1802

Preston’s Guild Merchant celebrations began today with a float parade and festival. Preston’s charter gave it the right to have a Guild Merchant or trade association. The names of Guild members or burgesses were inscribed on a roll. A regular Guild Court was held at which a new roll of burgesses was compiled. 

The custom of holding Preston’s Guild Court every twenty years began in 1542. The carnival which marked each Guild Merchant was famed nationwide: great feasts were held and a grand time had by all. The Beauties of England and Wales (1807) reported that the Guild Merchant on 30 August 1802 was attended by ‘an immense concourse of people of all ranks’.
Processions took place through all the town’s ‘principal streets’. On the first day everyone took their allotted place in the parade: the mayor and corporation, and ‘the wardens of the different companies at the head of their respective incorporated bodies, each in their official dresses’ represented each branch of trade and commerce. A band of music marched with each company.

On the second day the mayoress did the honours. ‘The girls of the cotton manufactory’ took their place in a procession, followed by nearly 400 ladies ‘superbly dressed, and profusely decorated with jewels’. A ‘miniature model of a complete steam-engine’ was displayed which ‘performed every operation of the cotton manufactory’. ‘Proud’ Preston’s Guild Merchant has continued to the present day, apart from wartime interruptions.
You can find out more about how to use the Guild Rolls and other records to trace your Lancashire ancestors in my forthcoming book.
Image: Preston market place in the 1840s. Engraving by C. Nicholls after a drawing by G. F. Sargent. Pictorial History of the County of Lancashire, 1844. Author’s collection.

The Genealogist’s New All-in-One Search

Great news for family historians! TheGenealogist.co.uk has launched a brand new all-in-one search feature, which allows users to do a ‘single search’ across the website. The new all-in-one interface also incorporates the unique and powerful ‘keyword’ search. This is the first time that these two features have been brought together to aid research.

Now you can enter an ancestor's name along with an approximate year of birth and the option of keywords to trace their life through the records, from birth to census, marriage and more. ‘Address Lists’ are also included so you can view other residents and any other potential family links.

Mark Bayley, Head of the Online Division at TheGenealogist, feels the new search facility is an exciting new development:

‘Customers will get a much deeper insight into their ancestors in a fraction of the time. They’ll be able to find everything we know about someone almost instantly with a single linked master search'.

'This is a powerful tool not currently available elsewhere. TheGenealogist is all about user-friendly searches, not just records and this new feature further enhances what we offer… it’s now quicker and easier than ever with our new All-In-One Search’.

On the left are some sample results for an all-in-one search for ‘Gideon Tucker’ plus ‘Shaftesbury’, © theGenealogist, so you can see the type of results available – over half of century of his life is revealed.

I searched for one of my ancestors, Samuel Pickvance, and got some very interesting census results straightaway.

Growing Up at Work

If you search through the censuses for your ancestors , you may be surprised at how early youngsters were expected to work, compared with the present day. When my great-grandfather, William Kirkwood Dickman, was fourteen years old, he was a coach-painter’s apprentice in Gorton (1871 census). According to later censuses, when he grew up he continued working as a railway coach painter, and his death certificate in 1931 gives his occupation as railway coach painter.

Another ancestor, my great-great-grandfather Arthur Lomas, born in Alstonefield, Staffordshire, was a child silk worker – a ‘silk picker’ - he cleaned loose fibres from the warp threads for the weaver. Arthur, aged 12 at the time of the 1881 census, lived in Leek with his parents. He was a ‘half-timer’, i.e. he went to school for half a day, and worked the rest of the day.

Some of my other Lancashire ancestors worked in the county's famous industries, cotton and coal mining. My great-grandmother, Sarah Jane Pickvance, was a ‘sheet weaver’ at Farnworth when she was fifteen years old in 1881. In the same year, my great-grandfather John Richard Tudge (who later married Sarah) was a coal miner in Little Hulton; he was fifteen years old, too.

John was lucky to be born later in the century; the the 1842 Children's Employment Commissioners found children as young as five working in Lancashire pits. The 1842 Mines Act banned boys under ten, and all females, from mine work.

Images from the author’s collection:

A Spitalfields weaver weaving silk by hand in the 1880s. Engraving, unknown artist, Cassell’s Family Magazine, 1883.

A disused miners’ cage (lift) at Astley Green Colliery Museum.

This early twentieth century postcard shows a cotton weaving shed and a Lancashire lass in her holiday finery.

Beautiful Butterflies

The garden is really behind-hand this year with all the poor weather - our plum tree has suffered, and the few plums on it have only just started to ripen.

Our buddleia is flowering at last, and today I spotted a red admiral butterfly and lots of peacock butterflies, obviously making the most of it. The slugs and snails are doing well in the garden, though!

It's Peterloo time again

It's now over three years since my blog post that a permanent memorial was planned for the Peterloo victims.  The Peterloo Massacre Campaign has erected a temporary memorial today, not just to mark the occasion, but as a reminder to the council that the ordinary men, women and children who died that day- who were all attending a pro-democracy meeting, remember - still have no monument worthy of their sacrifice.

Image: Henry Hunt addressing the people of Manchester in 1819.  Cassell’s Illustrated History of England Vol. VI, (Cassell, Petter and Galpin, c.1864). Author's collection.