LANCASHIRE FAMILY HISTORY AND HERALDRY SOCIETY

Rossendale Branch Newsletter June 2011

* Anyone wishing to go on the Out Visit should give their names to Maureen Hodginson. The price is £5.00 per head. if you want to book refreshmnts (tea and biscuits) it's £1.95 per head.

Research and Advice Sessions:

at Haslingden Library every Monday 5.30 – 7.30 pm

and Rawtenstall Library every Tuesday 1.30 – 3.30 pm

You will find us upstairs at Haslingden or Rawtenstall on the appropriate days, as indicated above. We may be able to do simple look-ups for distant members. When contacting us with an enquiry, please include your membership number.

The LFHHS Resource Centre.

The Society’s Resource and Research Centre at 2 Straits, Oswaldtwistle, BB5 3LU is open every Thursday from 1.00pm – 5.00pm and the centre is now open on the 1st Saturday of each month 1.00pm

Coming Events

Saturday 4th June

The Museum of Lancashire is hosting a "Collecting Local History Day" at Haslingden Library. This event is one of several being held across the County. They offer the chance for people to directly contribute to the displays and stories in the Museum's new Lancashire People Gallery. Do you have an interesting object, photograph or story, about you, or one of your ancestors? Do you have any traditional recipes you would like to share? Objects and photographs don’t have to be old or valuable but they should be about you, your family and your life in Lancashire The Museum will photograph items brought along to the Collecting History Days and record your story. Please only bring objects that you would feel comfortable loaning to the museum. A member of the Museum staff will contact you at a later date to arrange the loan of your items if you are happy to do so.

Saturday 25th June

York Family History Fair

The Knavesmire Exhibition Centre, The Racecourse, York

10.00am to 4.30pm Admission £4

The Society will once again be represented at this Fair. Anyone willing to help on our stalls should contact Stephen John Ward. Society Chairman, or you can make yourself known on the day.

Saturday 11th June

Irish Research using the internet

Lecture by Brenda Hustler at the LFHHS Resource Centre,2 Straits, Oswaldtwistle BB5 3UL This should be of interest to our many members with Irish ancestry.

Sunday 25th September

The Society’s Annual Dinner Hosted by the Chorley Branch the dinner will be held at Farington Lodge, Stanifield Lane, Farington, Preston, PR25 4QR It will be a Luncheon commencing at 1.00pm, followed by Sid Calerbank and Friends with “The Lancashire Cotton Famine in songs, stories and verse”. Full details and booking form were were inserted into your May “Lancashire” Journal..

Rossendale News, Notes and Queries

At our last meeting in May, Stephen Moorhouse, came from Yorkshire. Altough his talk was entitled “Life in the Middle Ages”, it was more acurately about his work in interpreting the Medieval landscape in the Yorkshire dales, paricularly in the Calder Valley.

The Society’s AGM and One Day Conference was held in Preston on the 21st May. It was disap-pointing that only two member of the Rossendale Branch were present i.e. your Chairman and your Secretary. We had three excellent speakers and the AGM itself went quite smoothly. However the Society’s Chairman Stephen John Ward, did stress that if a Society is to flourish, more of its members needed to take an active part. 

This month we have an article from Jeff Brown, a new member, who now lives in Chelmsford but who grew up in Stacksteads. He has many memories of this area and has also recorded the memories of both his mother and his father,

280 Newchurch Road, Stacksteads

The Bakers and Confectioners shop at 280 Newchurch Road was both the workplace and the home of William and Lucy Fielding, my maternal great grandparents. They were first noted there in the 1881 census when the address was 2 & 4 Newchurch Rd. William & Lucy had started their life in Chapel Street (nearby and off Booth Road) but soon moved to Newchurch Road where they lived ‘over the shop’. A modern picture of it – now known as ‘Bargain Booze’ – shows the original porch over the door to the upstairs accommodation. 

William and Lucy remained at 280 for the rest of their lives, together with their eldest daughter Margaret Ann; the widowed William and his daughter are listed there in the 1911 census. That census reported that William and Lucy had had six children in all – three of them dying in infancy, the two others who grew to adulthood were William Taylor Fielding and (my grandmother) Annie Ellen – who became an “Eckersley”. I have very recently traced the birth and death certificates of the three infants, Dennis only lived 17 days, Mary Ellen lasted 12 weeks and John Thomas lasted all of 7 months.

Both William and Lucy had been power loom weavers when they married; William was one of the ten children of Edmund and Hannah Fielding of Todmorden, who emigrated to Rossendale about 1840. Lucy had been born in New Accrington to Dennis and Ann Barnes – who became butchers, living and working in Abbey Street, Accrington for many years.

At the time of the birth of their first child, Margaret Ann, William Fielding was a warehouseman in a cotton mill; he went on to become a canvasser for a Bible seller, before adding confectioner to his occupations. By the time Annie Ellen was born he had dropped the “Bible canvasser” to be a full time confectioner. By the 1911 census he had eventually added “Baker” to his activities.

A Prosperous Business

William and his three children ran the shop – Lucy ran the household! The shop seems to have done quite well I have a notebook from the business, listing many sets of ingredients for cakes and breads, as well as for set meals such as “Dinners and Teas”.
The one for Teas states: - for 480 , included 62 Tongues, 78 Beef and 65 Hams – as well as 64 two and a half pound loaves and 280 teacakes. Dinners – (no numbers stated) starts by listing 256lbs of beef and an overall total of 498lbs of assorted meats.

As a measure of how well the shop did, both William and Lucy made substantial bequests to William Taylor Fielding and to Margaret Ann. I have not found any bequest to Annie Ellen- perhaps she received her share when she married. Annie Ellen did leave a reasonable amount to her husband John Henry, who also received the estate of Margaret Ann on her death. So over all he did quite well.

William Taylor Fielding followed his father into the bakery trade and set up his own shop at 100 Newchurch Road when he married. He did not remain a baker. His death certificate of 1916, records him as an “Insurance Agent” living at 193 Newchurch Road; the inheritance from his father was much reduced by the time of his death, though even then, his widow Annie (nee Horsman) had enough to live on.

The Fielding family were quite a close knit group, Margaret Ann had bought 22 Church Street after the death of her father and later offered to take in her sister’s daughter Jane (my mother), who was Annie Ellen’s daughter. When Jane married Tom Brown, the understanding was that Jane would provide company for Margaret Ann, and would eventually inherit the house. We later moved to 20 Union Street, where Jane had been born when Jane’s father John Henry moved to the “Top shop” at 31 Booth Road.

Jane had been employed at British Quilting Co. at Waterfoot before her marriage, her wages were 17/6d per week of which 2/6d went to a holiday fund. Just 2/- was returned to her to cover her bus fares, meals at work and spending money. Her father John Henry also worked at the quilting and would often pay her bus fare, when he and Jane went to work together.

I can just remember going to the shop at 280 Newchurch Road, although it was no longer in the family, it was still a Bakers and Confectioners. The 1918 directory gave a James H. Ingham as the proprietor. However, I was still referred to as “Annie Ellen’s grandson” by the people in the shop (both customers and servers).

A further family connection with shops and Newchurch Road came about when my widowed grandfather, John Henry, married his brother’s widow Alice Eckersley (nee Robertshaw). Alice had been widowed three months after her first wedding, and had established a sweets, children’s clothes & drapers shop, in Coronation Buildings (334 Newchurch Road), as a way of earning a living for herself. John Henry must have thought that since he had missed out on the Bakers shop, he might as well try for the Drapers shop!

Jeff Brown email jeffbrowntower@btinternet.com