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LANCASHIRE FAMILY HISTORY AND HERALDRY SOCIETY
Rossendale Branch Newsletter August 2003
Programme 2003
Wednesday 6th
August
Research Evening
Wednesday 3rd
September
Private William
Tomlinson and the Opium Wars. - W. J. Taylor
Wednesday 1st
October
Members Miscellany.
(Short talks by members on a subject of their choice)
Wednesday 5th
November
The Lancashire
Cotton Famine (1862 - 1865) - Fred Holroyd.
Wednesday 4th
December
Christmas
Celebrations.
Coming Events
Saturday 13th
September. The Great North Fair
Gateshead Stadium,
Neilson Road, Gateshead
10.00 am - 4.30pm.
adults £2.50, children free.
The new national
event for Family Historians, supported by the History Channel and
the 2003 Genealogy Project.
Saturday 8th
November
The North West
Family History Fair will be held this year at Manchester Velodrome.
Irish Ancestry
Group Meetings at 2 The Straits, Oswaldtwistle.
20 September 2003
Advice & Research 1pm - 4.30pm
with a short talk on Griffiths Valuation at 2pm.
4 October 2003
Programme as above
At both meetings refreshments will be available.
There will be a contribution of £1.00 per person towards expenses.
Any
surplus from meetings will be used to buy useful research additions
to the
library holdings.
Numbers have to be limited. Please let Margaret Purcell know which
afternoon you will attend.
Margaret Purcell, 128 Red Bank Rd., Bispham, Blackpool, Lancs., FY2
9DZ
Tel 01253 353909
E-mail
mpursell@redbankmp.fsnet.co.uk
Civil
Registration: Delivering Vital Change - Consultation Document
The General
Register Office has now published the long awaited Consultation
Document following on from the contentious White Paper "Civil
Registration: delivering Vital change" which was published 18 months
ago.
Naturally. the
Federation of Family History Societies will be examining it
carefully to see what concessions and relaxations may be have been
made, following the many protests at some of the original proposals.
You can download a
copy of the consultation document (PDF format) from
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/ registration/whitepaper/default.asp
Branch views on
this paper will be forwarded by the Executive Committee to the
Federation. Individual members are encouraged to respond.
Responses have to
be in by 24th October.
Rossendale
Ancestry
BRAMILL/ HEYES
Childhood Memories.
Will Bramhill’s
father (William Frank Bramhill) was born in Liverpool in January
1913, he came that same year to live in the Valley, Last month we
published his early memories of life at Touch and Take, and Irwell
Vale. We continue with his memories of Crawshawbooth, where he went
to stay after his parents’ marriage broke up, probably towards the
end of 1917.
CRAWSHAWBOOTH
submitted by Will Bramhill.
".....The journey
ended at a little house where Dad's Aunt Lizzie lived, probably at
Reedsholme. She worked in a cotton mill and her husband Walter Heyes
"showed me how to make beads from tightly-rolled Woodbine packets.
Aunty Lizzie wore such a necklace."
Dad appears to have stayed with Lizzie and Walter for some time, and
was firm friends with their son Jim. He also got up to mischief with
a boy named Bert Cole, who lived next door, and Dad's punishment was
Lizzie locking him in a cellar "for hours on end".
Dad writes: "I had happy days there too, I can remember going with
Walter over the moors , sitting for hours looking down towards
Rawtenstall or northwards at Crawshawbooth. The abject poverty of it
all was hidden from the top of the moor. One could only see the
smoking chimneys of the mills, but there was no beauty down there
... the workers had grey faces, pinched faces, few smiles. They wore
clogs and shawls and worked a long week for little money, or faced
the workhouse."
Dad can also remember going up to the mill with Uncle Walter's
father, whom he called Granddad Heyes. Granddad allowed him to sit
amid the roaring machines of a machine shop and he remembers being
fascinated with the slap slap of the belts driving looms in the
adjoining building. Granddad Heyes also let him fish in the stream
adjacent to the mill, but it was so polluted, he never caught
anything. Home for tea, and Grandma Heyes's house in Crawshawbooth
was spotless; poverty had its mark here, too, for the only furniture
was two chairs and a table, covered with clean newspaper at meal
times; the grate was pitch black and the fender shone, but only on
Sundays as it was protected by newspaper in between times.
Every Saturday, Dad had the job of taking scrap wood from Walter to
Granddad Heyes, and he enjoyed this weekly chore, even when he was
chased by a bull over a meadow to Crawshawbooth, when "fear gave my
feet wings". He recalls having the sweetest cup of tea ever after
that incident.
Dad’s time in the
valley appears to have ended when Lizzie and Walter's marriage ran
into problems or, at any rate, when she went to work in Liverpool.
Walter looked after Dad and Jim for a time, before packing them on a
train for Liverpool, where Dad went to stay with his mother's
family.
So how does the story end? Towards the end of Dad's life, he died in
1977 and had lived in the South from 1946, I set out to find where
Touch ‘n Tack actually was. We located it thanks to Lancashire
Libraries ... beneath a roundabout on the A56.
Because of Dad’s
folks poverty we knew little of his family. His father died in 1922,
and the Bramhills were, by and large, a mystery. Without his book
(sometimes colourful, possibly inaccurate) the ancestors of the
early 1900s would be just names with no characters, no smiles, no
frowns... It is a wonderful record to pass to my own sons.
I would urge others to ask elderly relatives to compile their own
records of their lives, however mundane they think life has been.
They should also get scribbling themselves....
You can contact
Will at www.bramhill.net
TRICKETT
Linda Tyler (#7416)
is researching the Trickett family of Newchurch. She wonders whether
anyone would be willing to share information. She is descended from
William Trickett (born 1876) son of John (Stott) Trickett.
John was born in
1843, the son of Sarah Trickett.
In 1841, Sarah was
living at Turnpike, Newchurch. She was listed as a "washerwoman"
aged 35. At the same address were John and Mary Trickett, both given
as aged 65, and two other sons of Sarah. These were James aged 7
(bapt. 1834 at St. Nicholas, Newchurch) and George aged 5 bapt. as
George Stott Trickett in 1836.
Sarah never
married. She died of TB, 27 June 1845 at Back Street, Newchurch.
It is 50 years
since Linda left Rossendale, she now lives in the States. She would
be grateful for any help in finding Sarah’s siblings. email
gootsy42@sbcglobal.net
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