LANCASHIRE FAMILY HISTORY AND HERALDRY SOCIETY

Rossendale Branch Newsletter December 2008

On behalf of the committee I would like to wish you all

A Very Happy Christmas and New Year

David Burgess, the Membership Secretary, has asked me to remind you

that your subscriptions for 2009 are now due.

Rossendale Miscellany:

News, notes and queries

St. James Parish Church Haslingden Christmas Tree for Charity Festival

Monday 15th December – Sunday 21st December

There will be an Exhibition Gallery full of trees decorated in various ways… all collecting money for the Sir Malcolm Sargent Cancer Fund for Children.

The Rossendale Branch of the LFHHS has agreed to provide a tree for this exhibition. It will be entitled "The Family Tree – tree" We have the tree, we have the lights. We urgently need the decorations! These can take any Family History form that you can devise, e.g. the names and dates of loved ones or photographs. We will be decorating the tree, at the church on Friday 13th December. Please let me have your efforts then, or earlier if possible. My address is in the LFHHS quarterly journal.

The Mayor of Rossendale will open the exhibition on Monday 15th December at 7.00pm. On Wednesday 17th December, there will by a special evenings of Carols, Christmas Songs and Readings in the Tree-filled Exhibition Gallery with Buffet Supper £4.50 (children 2.50) Bookings 01706 215533.

Newchurch in Rossendale Registers

I know many of you have now purchased the CD of the Newchurch Registers, 1723 – 1772. I have been asked by the LPRS Society to point out that the normal purchase price is £8 and £6 for members of the Lancashire Parish Register Society. not members of the LFHHS.

The similarity in initials has caused some misunderstanding..

Finally, as editor of this newsletter, I would like to thank all those who have contributed so many varied and interesting articles. I hope you will find this month’s article to be equally interesting.

Clough Bottom Reservoir

by Judith Wheatley

Back in the 1980’s when he retired my late father, Jack Pickup, started to trace his family tree. A morning each week was spent in Rawtenstall Library looking at Census data and starting to piece bits of information together. This unfortunately fell into abeyance when he moved out of the area. Following the recent discovery of an index folder in which he kept the information, I thought I’d have a go at adding to it. I, of course, am blessed with the use of the internet unlike Dad who I imagined was cold-crawling through fiches week after week. Fill in a few gaps I thought. However, no one told me how addictive genealogy can be!

Many years ago I remember being up round Clough Bottom  reservoir and my Dad telling me about a family farm which had been purchased out around the turn of the century so the reservoir could be built. I had assumed it was the Pickup side of the family but I now believe it to be the Brown family. 

The Brown Family lived at Higher Clough Bottom Farm, Lumb

I have the marriage certificate for Ashworth Pickup and Susan Brown, my great grandparents, who were married 28 May 1887 at the Providence Chapel, Lumb . Ashworth was 23, a cotton weaver living at Father Robert Barn, Lumb. His father was James Pickup, a farmer. Susan was aged 26 and a cotton weaver living at Higher Clough Bottom Farm, Lumb. Her father was John Brown also a farmer. Witnesses were John Brown (I believe to be her brother) and Priscilla Pickup (Ashworth's sister). This was the Brown connection to the farm and reservoir.

Bury Corporation Waterworks Plans 1889

Clough Bottom Reservoir is shown on the 1895 OS map but not on a map I found dated around the 1840’s courtesy of the website www.old-maps.co.uk. Thanks to Google I came across "Plans and sections of the intended reservoir {Clough Bottom} aqueducts and other water sessions 1889" referenced as Bury Corporation Waterworks ABP/1/3/11 Nov 1888 and lodged in the Bury Archives. Off on the trail I went.

The plans showed that in the middle of the reservoir are buildings given as Clough Bottom and on the right hand side boundary is a building called White Lee House. These must have been compulsory purchased.  In addition I got a copy of the 1889 Session of Parliament re Bury Corporation.

As an appendix it has columns for Description of Property to be taken, Owners or reputed owners, Lessees or reputed lessees, and Occupiers. 

Great great grandfather John Brown features as Lessee and Occupier for fields, footpaths, brooks and streams, road, house, garden, cartshed, shippon, stable, calfhouse, piggeries, yard, outbuildings. Others are as follows:

The Right Honourable The Earl of Abingdon and Sir Nicholas William George Throckmorton, Baronet, Sir George Russell, Baronet and Henry Riversdale Grenfell as the Towneley Estate Trustrees (passage, plantations, brooks, occupation road, footpaths, goit, weir and sluice, fields, storeroom and shelter for sheep, house, barn, shippon, ,stable, fold, garden, washhouse, piggeries, sheep fold, and outbuildings)

William Walker and John Walker (John Brown was lessee and occupier for their land and buildings which I believe was the farm at Clough Bottom) John Tattersall (fields, stream and occupation road)

The Local Board of Rawtenstall, Thomas Woodcook, Clerk (this was a public road / highway) Mrs M Hargreaves (field and stream); George William Law Schofield (fields, footpath and steams); Amelia Halstead and Thomas Skyes (fields and streams owned individually with joint ownership of a road); Edwin Thomas Parkinson (Field, stream and footpaths); Ellen Ormerod (Fields and streams)

Lessees or reputed lessees:

Thomas Banks and John Hargreaves White (Passage); John Cropper (and occupier); John Hargreaves White (and occupier) John Brown (and occupier as detailed above) John Hargreaves (and occupier); Robert Cropper (and occupier); Edwin Thomas Parkinson (and occupier); John Heap Hargreaves (and occupier)

Other Occupiers:

Richard Law (fields, footpaths and streams) Robert Holt (fields and streams); Hargreaves Maden (fields footpaths, brooks, streams, storeroom and shelter for sheep, house, barn, shippon, stable, fold, wash-house, piggeries, sheep fold, outbuildings and plantation – perhaps this was White Lee House); James Cropper (fields, footpaths, streams and road); Frederick Barlow (fields, streams and road); Ashworth Cropper (fields, streams and foothpath; Elizabeth Robinson (fields,streams, footpath and road).

Others who were occupiers of the passage owned by the Towneley Estate were John Gregory, Thomas Riley, Samuel Clegg, Samuel Hargreaves, Richard Pilling, John Heap, Richard Cooper, Samuel Hunt, Abraham Riley, John Rayner, Joseph Fipps, Richard Nuttall, George Hey, Betty Nuttall, Henry Howarth, John White, John Parkinson, John Sisson, Alice Gate, Sarah Sellers, Alice Pilling and Ann White.

At this point, with so many names I have had to resist the temptation to add all the characters who went to Widdecombe Fair as well. I really can’t decide if the information is the amateur genealogists dream or nightmare. All I can say is that I hope the information may be of use to someone besides myself and Dad, if you’re looking down on me, you really have started something!!

email: jaystree@tiscali.co.uk

Research and Advice Sessions at Rawtenstall Library,

Christmas Holidays

Our regular Research and Advice sessions will not be held on

Tuesday 23rd December and Tuesday 30th December