Category: Journal Extracts

From WLHS Journal No 22

Peter Meecham, Clockmaker, who has lived in Milton under Wychwood all his life, now has in his collection five clocks made by William Green of Milton under Wychwood. William’s name is inscribed on the dial and from the style of the clocks it would appear that William was a Quaker. The first mention of a Quaker meeting in Milton under Wychwood was at Robert Secoll’s house in 1655 with a meeting house built by 1669. It would appear that these properties were in Green Lane as that is the site of the Quaker burial ground and there are still properties called Quaker’s Meet and Quaker’s Piece.

Because of their religious convictions, Quakers were unable to swear the Oath of Allegiance and therefore were excluded from higher education or from joining a guild in a town. Clock making was one area where they could apply their skills and, working in country districts, they produced simple inexpensive clocks in localised family networks whose primary bond was one of religious affiliation. How much local fabrication was done by apprentices and to what extent they assemble movements and fitted cases is not known but the Quakers worked to a basic similar design, possibly obtaining engraved dial plates, chapter rings and spandrel castings (corner castings) from someone like Gilkes of Adderbury (1715-1787) another Quaker clockmaker who supplied parts to others.

The Gilkes were a large family of clockmakers working in north Oxfordshire and south Warwickshire in the eighteenth century. Many were one-handed clocks as these were simpler and cheaper to make, and of the four examples illustrated two are single and two have two hands. Again with cost in mind they are 30 hour long case clocks with a frame to hang on the wall without a case with two metal spikes to push into the plaster wall. Any clock without a case is more vulnerable to damage.

The addition of the case would have doubled the purchase price but protected the movement from dust and the hanging weight and pendulum from children, pets and draughts, thus prolonging the time between costly overhauls and improving the accuracy of the time keeping. The clock case would have been made separately by the local carpenter, undertaker or joiner and were usually in inexpensive woods like in pine or oak. Customers would have been local farmers and shop keepers.

It has not been possible to find out much about William Green but C.F.C Beeson in Clockmaking in Oxfordshire 1400-1850 suggests that he was born in 1722, possibly the son of Isaac and Joan Green of Tadmarton, and died in 1770. In John Kibble’s Historical and Other Notes on Wychwood Forest in 1928 he states ‘William Green of Milton under Wychwood had a clock club into which so much per week was paid to get a clock.

References
1 Clockmaking in Oxfordshire 1400-1850. CFC Beeson. Museum of Science 3rd ed 1989. pp 107
2 Historical and Other Notes on Wychwood Forest. John Kibble. 1928. pp 46

More about William Green: Milton’s Quaker Clockmaker

A 2014 article published in the Wychwood Magazine is taken from Tim Marhshall’s book “The Quaker Clockmakers of North Oxfordshire” >> PDF here

As we look at the Wychwood villages in the 1870s it may be helpful to consider the viewpoint and fate of a local agricultural labourer, such as Thomas Turner, a Milton man, who in 1873 was married with a family of eight children. What was lifelike for such a family? How much were they affected by, and aware of, happenings elsewhere in England and overseas?

Farmers at this time had been benefiting from a period of steady or rising prices; in fact, they were near the end of what was later seen as the ‘golden age’ of Victorian High Farming. The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 had removed protection from home-grown crops but was not immediately followed by a serious slump in prices, as had been feared. It was only after the mid-1870s that competition, first from increased grain imports and later from foreign refrigerated meat, began to have its effect. This was eventually reflected, as we shall see, in a shift to greater dairy and livestock production in the Wychwoods area. More immediately falling corn prices signalled the beginning of a time of difficulty and depression in farming, locally and nationally.

By the 1870s improved communication, not just by rail, but also along improved roads, had enabled the development of a cheap and efficient postal service and telegraph network. Speedy delivery of national, and a rapidly expanding number of local, newspapers was also possible. In Milton and Shipton educational provision had been considerably expanded during the mid-century. The Education Act of 1870 introduced national compulsory elementary education to the age of ten. Levels of literacy began to rise. All these developments were making it more possible for people of all classes to be more aware than ever before of what was happening in other places.

An Oxfordshire farm labourer, like Thomas Turner, in the 1870s was earning 11-12s a week, a basic average of about £35 p.a., allowing for loss of pay during bad weather or illness. Turner may not have read a newspaper, but he was probably aware than industrial workers’ wages were higher than his own (in fact some 50% higher), and that farm workers in the north were also able to command better pay. There farmers, faced with competition for labour from nearby manufacturing towns and receiving higher prices for produce because of local market demand, had to be more generous. In Milton Thomas was expected to work long hours, from sunrise to sunset, under very hard conditions for his small and uncertain wage. This pay alone was scarcely enough to feed a family, even on the poorest diet, and was inadequate to provide for reasonable clothing against wet and cold. Many local farm workers lived in cramped conditions, in tied or rented cottages with no security of tenure.

Things did not get better in the Wychwoods during the mid-century. Population rose considerably in both villages between 1801 and 1901, by 53% in Milton and 65% in Shipton. For both communities the most intense period of growth came between the 1830s and 1860s (Table 7 and Figure 4). By 1871 Shipton and Milton had reached a peak of population. Thereafter they experienced stagnation or absolute decline. It was the 1870s which set the seal on this change of fortune, for it was during these years that the village economies finally proved unable to sustain the rapidly enlarged population. The basic problem was clear in the Milton work force, of which Thomas Turner was part in 1871.

There were ten farmers who employed 58 men, six women and 21 boys, whereas some 100 men were described in the census as farm workers. There was more labour than there were jobs, and despite the non-farming occupations of mason and quarry work for the men, and gloving for the women, there were insufficient alternatives to absorb this surplus (Figure 7). Some of those not taken on by farmers might hope for seasonal work like hedging, ditching, or harvesting, or do casual work like hoeing, stone picking or threshing, but unemployment was becoming an increasing threat to their existence.

Life had been less grim for villagers when they could still benefit from nearby Wychwood forest. There had been no royal hunting or strict control of the forest since the previous century and people grazed cattle, hunted game and collected fuel there. With enclosure and the clearance of the forest after 1856, there followed a few years when surrounding villages could enjoy surplus timber and venison and there was plenty of work to be had; all this came to an end when the new enclosed farms came into production. Not only were the villagers deprived of their source of game, probably their only meat apart from a household pig, but the Poaching Prevention Act of 1862 had brought in harsh new measures which enabled the police to search anyone suspected of carrying a bird or rabbit which had been taken illegally. The penalty for night poaching could be three months in jail with hard labour. To add to all this was the new Poor Law introduced in the 1830s and based on a punitive workhouse test.

The growing number of friendly societies in Shipton and Milton at this time shows the dread that labouring families had of becoming unable to support themselves, and worst of all, of suffering the stigma of a pauper burial. The Shipton Friendly Society was established in 1860. It met at the Crown Inn on the second Monday in February, May, August and November when its members spent two hours in friendly but sober company, and paid 4s into the box’. Of this 3s went to the Stock Fund, 6d to the annual feast, 3d to an incidental fund and 3d towards beer. Members had to meet definite conditions before being voted into the society; they must ‘bear a good character, be of sound habit of body, not labouring under known or concealed distemper’, and be between the ages of 12 and 45 years. After a year’s membership they would receive when ill or not working, 8s a week for up to 52 weeks, and then 4s a week. Society membership also ensured a decent burial, not only through help with the daunting expenses, but also through much valued marks of respect from fellow members before and during the funeral. The friendly societies also provided welcome opportunities for fellowship and a rare chance for labourers to organise their own affairs, although, as at Shipton, local clergy and notables were frequently involved.

Outside the quarterly meetings society affairs were operated by two stewards and their four assistants, whose job it was to visit sick members weekly (unless they had smallpox or some other contagious disease), to engage a ‘medical man’ when necessary, to account for all expenditures, and generally to maintain a well-ordered and respectable appearance. This was the tone of the Society as a whole, with its rules excluding from benefit any member who ‘wilfully ran himself into danger, such as cudgeling, or football playing, fighting, drinking or such like’, and expelling anyone claiming benefit whilst still working or found ‘at a public house or gaming, or engaged in any other improper way’. A door keeper was appointed to ensure that only members entered the Society’s meetings.

Despite these sober strictures Society events were enjoyable and important parts of village life. This was especially true of the annual feast, a rare day off work, In Shipton this took place on the Wednesday of Whitsun week and was paid for from the members’ quarterly 6d and an additional payment of 2/6d for the dinner. Feast day had an elaborate ritual of its own. Each member was required to attend divine service, walking in procession in twos ‘as they stand on the books’, or pay a fine of 1s.

The stewards were to solicit the local clergyman to preach a suitable sermon or be fined 2/6d. Festivities then lasted until ten at night with the feast in the club room at the Crown, followed by a more general fete and fair for the women folk and children of members. To belong to a friendly society was an important thing in a labourer’s life; it provided special occasions and fellowship in a hard life, and some relief from the constant threat of unemployment or sickness. Was it enough for the farm labourers of the Wychwood villages?

In the early 1870s rural workers started to take more radical action to remedy their situation. Joseph Arch, a Warwickshire hedge cutter and Primitive Methodist preacher, urged his fellow workers to fight for better pay and conditions by means of a trade union. In February 1872 Arch held his first meeting at Wellesboume, Warwickshire. Two months later on 16 April the first meeting of what was to become the Oxford District of the National Shipton Friendly Society Club Day, Whitsun 1908.

Agricultural Labourers’ Union was held on the green at Milton under Wychwood. Fifty men joined that evening, having appointed 35 year-old Joseph Leggett of Milton as their secretary. Leggett had been born in Windsor, married a Milton girl, and was not himself an agricultural labourer, but a carpenter employed by Alfred Groves of Milton. Like many of his fellow unionists Leggett was a Dissenter in -religion, a Baptist. The April meeting elected a committee of six, two from Milton (James Mills, agricultural labourer, and William Barnes, carpenter), two from Shipton William Ri ht and Charles Cox, agricultural labourers) and two from Lyneham. Once started the movement grew at an amazing speed. A week later they held a second meeting, also at Milton, at which rules and objectives were agreed. These included the demand for a nine-hour day, with extra pay of 4d per hour for overtime and Sunday work. The minutes of that meeting state that ‘After the rules were read a large number joined the Union from different parishes, an excellent feeling prevailed among the men, who quietly dispersed to their homes’.

By May, only a month later, 13 branches with over 500 members had been set up in the area. Demands were extended to include a basic minimum wage of 13s a week, and a day’s work at harvest time of 13 hours, including 2 hours for meals, paid at 4s a day without beer.

The idea of working men joining forces to demand fairer treatment was resented and strongly resisted by the farmers. In July Mr Maddox of Shipton dismissed six of his 25 labourers for joining the union. Tensions affected all three Wychwood villages, including Ascott where, as John Calvertt of Fairspear Farm recorded in his diary, ‘Mr. Robert Hambridge …. told me how lie had been persecuted by the Josh Arch-ites, two or three years ago’. Union members paid a subscription of 2d per week to the union funds, which were used to assist those who suffered loss of employment because of their membership. Thomas Turner of Milton was one of those who claimed assistance; he was paid 9s for-one week in January 1873, perhaps because of a lock out.

In the spring of that year the Wychwoods attracted national attention over the notorious affair of the women ‘martyrs of Ascott’. In April Robert.. Hambridge who farmed some 400 acres at Ascott, was approached by his labourers for a rise of 2s per week in their basic wages. Hambridge refused and the men went on strike. Within a week, labourers on other farms in the village followed their example. In May Hambridge decided to hire men from Ramsden to take the place of the strikers. On the morning of 12 May, a group of wives and daughters of the Ascott strikers met two of these men as they came to work in the village and tried to persuade them to stay away.

Although initially deterred, the men subsequently returned, under the protection of a single police constable, and began work. For their allegedly intimidatory action 17 Ascott women were arrested and charged at Chipping Norton Petty Sessions with breaching the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1871, a piece of legislation aimed at restricting picketing by trade unionists. It was claimed that the women had threatened violence. Sixteen of the Ascott women were found guilty and sent to prison, seven of them for ten days and the remaining nine for seven days hard labour.

They were transported to Oxford jail under police escort. The sentencing magistrates were the Revd W,E.D. Carter, Phillimore’s successor as vicar of Shipton, and the Revd Thomas Harris rector of Swerford. The harshness of the sentences, and the fact that two of the women were nursing babies, which had to go to prison with them, caused an outcry not just amongst union supporters but nationally. The affair was debated in the national press and in Parliament. The Lord Chancellor required the Lord Lieutenant, the Duke_ of Marlborough, to investigate events. Despite the Duke’s stalwart defence of the rigorous action of the magistrates the Lord Chancellor disagreed, firmly pointing out to the Duke that ‘the authority of the law would have been in this case better vindicated by a different and more lenient course’. Many Wychwood unionists were Nonconformists; and the actions of the local clerical magistrates must have added religious resentment to social and economic grievances. When the Ascott Martyrs were finally released from prison there were large demonstrations, and on 20 June at the gates of Mr. Hambridge’s farm, Joseph Arch himself presented each of the 16 women with £5 and a silk dress in royal blue, the union colour.

By this time the NALU Oxford District had set up headquarters in Oxford with Joseph Leggett of Milton as organising secretary. The District was affiliated to the national headquarters of the union in Leamington. The Union made a major policy decision to assist families to emigrate, arguing that as long as there was surplus labour available the farmers would not give in to their demands.

In July 1872, when the first efforts of the Union were being blocked by the farmers, Charles Carter, an emigration agent from a New Zealand construction firm, Brogden and Sons, held a meeting at Shipton, at which he recruited ten families. They left on 13 September, and arrived at Napier, Hawke Bay on 28 December, a journey of over three months. Letters from these first emigrants, giving glowing accounts of life in New Zealand, were passed around at home in Oxfordshire, and did much to encourage others to take the same course. Fares were paid for families on condition that the men either worked for a stated period for the construction firm or agreed to refund the loan once they were settled.

This was the start of a period of massive emigration from the area. Over 200 per 100,000 of population left Oxfordshire, the highest figure for any county except Cornwall, with its special problems of a failing mining industry.

In November 1873 the emigration agent, Carter held another meeting at Milton. This took place in a large marquee, which was used frequently at this time for chapel and union functions. It was owned by Isaac Castle a typical example of the respectable Victorian radical working man. Isaac was a Primitive Methodist who ran a coffee tavern in Milton to assist the cause of temperance. In 1881 he appeared in the census living in High Street, Milton with his wife Anne. Castle was then aged 55 and described as a woodman.

In 1873 his marquee was pitched in a field near the village and there 5-600 gathered for a meeting lit only by lanterns. The audience had come from far and near to hear Carter speak for an hour and 40 minutes on the wonders of life in New Zealand, comparing it to the ‘march downhill with the workhouse at the bottom’, which they faced in England. A collection of £17 was made to help a group about to leave for Hawkes Bay.

We do not know the exact number who left Milton, but the shipping company records tell of about 100 adults and children going from the village, including Thomas Turner with his large family. By 1881 Milton’s population had fallen by 126, a loss of 13% during a decade when Shipton’s population fell by 5% and that of Oxfordshire remained stable (Figure 6). The Milton emigrants included several large inter-related families, and many of those active in the union movement and in the Nonconformist chapels. These Dissenting groups, which organised their own affairs and provided lay preachers from amongst their own ranks, did much to provide the determined, lively-minded men of independent and radical spirit who led Wychwood trade unionism in the 1870s.

By comparison with the adjoining village people in Shipton took little part in active unionism. Perhaps Milton’s larger population, the fact that it had undergone more rapid and radical changes in its property-owning structure in preceding years, and had no big house or strong Anglican presence, all contributed to its position as the real stronghold of local unionism. Certainly before 1874 only the Wiggins family had emigrated from Shipton. In May 1874

Shipton was described the NALU journal, The Chronicle as a ‘large respectable village with only about 14 or 16 in the Union’. Then a party of 17 from Shipton joined the ‘Cospatrick’, which sailed on 11 September. The ship caught fire in the South Atlantic and sank, leaving no survivors from the 429 emigrants on board. A memorial to this disaster stands on the village green at Shipton showing the names of more extended family groups, the Hedges and the Townsends, lost to the village.

After tragedy interest in emigration waned. The incident was a great shock to the area, and at the same time the outflow of workers that had been taking place during the previous three years was having its affect. Wages and conditions of work were gradually improving as the bargaining powers of the labourers strengthened. Even in Shipton, Union membership increased sharply in 1875. A very large demonstration was held at Milton on Wednesday 28 July 1875. Joseph Arch, the NALU President, was led in procession from Shipton station to Milton village green. Bands played, banners waved, and nearly 800 people had tea in Isaac Castle’s great tent. The demonstration was said to have been attended by 3-4,000.

The NALU members certainly had reason to be pleased with theft achievements during those first years. Basic wage rates had risen 20-30% between 1873 and 1874, and 40-50,000 people had emigrated under Union-sponsored schemes. Total Union membership had reached over 150,000. From this point however, the movement was destined to run into difficulties. A prolonged period of strikes and lockouts in East Anglia laid great demands on the Union’s central funds. When eventually the strike collapsed it led to bitterness in other parts of the country, as branches saw 75% of their contributions being diverted to the Leamington headquarters. There were disputes at the Oxford District HQ as to future policy, and the old strong feelings of united purpose gradually slackened as real wages improved. Of the pioneering leaders many had left for New Zealand, including Joseph Leggett, James Mills and William Barnes, all from Milton. All this weakened the Union’s position, but another factor was soon to become dominant.

By the second half of the decade the prosperous years of farming were well and truly over. John Calvertt’s diary tells of year after year of disastrous weather. Successive harvests were ruined by rain, and when there was a dry spell it seems to have been fatal to crops, cereal and fodder alike. In years past a bad season might have caused a rise in market prices, but now the American prairies had been opened up, and ship loads of cheap cereals were arriving at English ports, causing prices to fall. Some farmers like Calvertt were able to continue in their comfortable lifestyle despite these troubles, but many smaller farmers did not manage to survive this period of depression, and landowners were finding it hard to dispose of leases on vacant farms.

As things became genuinely difficult for farmers the labourers were forced to accept some cuts in wages, but since the cost of living had fallen their real wage was in fact still better than at the beginning of the decade. Although the period of heady agitation had died down, the villagers now had a sense of what could be achieved by co-operation. The Union lapsed, and many of the young and vigorous leaders amongst the working men had gone. Amongst those who were left was there some legacy of the independent spirit which had helped families to brave the long voyage to the other side of the world, and to risk hardship by challenging farmers for better conditions? Now in more defensive mode, it was into allotment schemes, friendly societies and chapel-going than energies flowed.

See and download this article as a PDF here.

Sources and References

Rules of Shipton Friendly Society, 1860, ORO Willis I/v/1;

Census enumerators’ books Milton and Shipton, 1881, PRO microfilm in LHL;

The minute books of the Oxford District of the National Agricultural Labourers’ Union, 1872-9, published in P. Horn (ed.), ‘Agricultural Trade Unionism in Oxfordshire 1872-81’, Oxfordshire Record Society., Vol. XLVIII (1974);

Rollo Arnold, Oxfordshire Emigrants to New Zealand during the Farm Labourers’ Revolt in the 1870’s (typescript of lecture to Wellington Group of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists, 17 June 1976).

A separate PDF of the article is available here.

The Cospatrick Tragedy: Memorial

On the village green at Shipton under Wychwood, next to the war memorial, stands a stone drinking fountain with a distinctive tall, conical spire. It was erected in 1878 in memory of the seventeen members of the Hedges and Townsend families from Shipton who lost their lives in the South Atlantic in a fire on the emigrant sailing ship, the Cospatrick, bound for New Zealand.

The brass plaque on the north side lists Richard Hedges aged 56, Sarah his wife (53); John Hedges (24) and Sarah his wife (22); Thomas Hedges (27), Charles Hedges (18) both sons of Richard and Sarah. That on the south lists Henry Townsend aged 62, Ann his wife (53); George Charter (31), Jane Townsend his wife (35) and their two children; Henry Hedges (30) and Mary Townsend his wife (30) and their three children. All the men were agricultural labourers.

Photograph from a postcard of The Green, showing allotments bordered by a wall. There is no seat around the tree at this date. Also photo taken pre-metal plates on the Cospatrick Memorial. Date: c. late 1920s

The Cospatrick Tragedy: Background

19th Century Emigration from Oxfordshire: See Our Book Review

In late Victorian England many agricultural workers and their families led desperately hard lives. They laboured by hand for long hours in harsh conditions for low wages, earning on average only half as much as industrial workers. Rural tied housing was often poor and insanitary, with no security of tenure. The country way of life was strictly regulated by the landlords and tenant farmers, the squire and the Church, with harsh administration of the Poor Law and of penalties for poaching. These conditions were made worse in the 1870s by a run of bad weather and poor harvests.

The early 1870s saw the newly formed National Agricultural Labourers Union beginning the fight for better wages and conditions, but many people emigrated to start a new life in Australia, New Zealand and Canada, a substantial number of these coming from Oxfordshire.

During this period the New Zealand government provided free passages to assist over 50,000 English people to emigrate, while the Agricultural Union and others set up funds to buy clothing and equipment for the long and arduous journey, with Union officials often acting as emigration agents.

The voyage under sail in an iron clipper usually took about fifteen weeks, although newly-commissioned steamers were completing it in half the time. Animals, chickens and geese were taken on board for food but seasickness and epidemics of scarlet fever, measles and typhoid took their toll and many people, especially children, died on the journey.

However once the survivors had arrived and settled in, they frequently sent back enthusiastic reports of their improved conditions and of the many attractions of the new country’.

Emigration rose to a peak in 1873 and 1874, and during this period at least 160 people are known to have left for New Zealand from Milton and Ascott, many to settle in the Hawke’s Bay area, but until the autumn of 1874 only three folk had ventured from Shipton. Then Richard Hedges and Henry Townsend with their wives and families joined 400 other emigrants and 44 crew on the Cospatrick which sailed from Blackwall Dock in London on 11 September bound for Auckland.

About the Cospatrick

The Cospatrick was a two-decked, full-rigged wooden ship of about 1,200 tons, owned by Shaw Savill & Co, which had transported thousands of people during the previous nine years without incident. It had recently been inspected and pronounced sound. In addition to the passengers and their stores (which included coal for cooking and heating), it now carried iron rails and cement, and an inflammable cargo of linseed oil, turpentine and varnish, candles, rum, brandy, wine and beer. Fire precautions were strictly enforced, fires and lights being lit only by the cook and stewards while the emigrants themselves carried out fire-watch duty.

The Fire on the Cospatrick

Nevertheless fire broke out just after midnight on 17 November near the boatswain’s locker, and spread quickly. Panic ensued and most people died in the inferno or drowned when they jumped from the blazing ship, which sank after two days. Only two of the ship’s four lifeboats got away, laden with emigrants and crew. They were over 700 miles from the Cape of Good Hope and without food or drink, mast, sail or compass. After three days one boat drifted out of sight. The other was sighted by a passing ship after ten days but only four people, three of them crew members, were still alive. The remaining emigrant died after being rescued.

Aftermath of the Cospatrick Tragedy

This appalling tragedy shocked the nation. The Board of Trade enquiry later concluding that the fire probably started as a result of someone attempting to raid the liquor store. It was one of the worst maritime disasters of the century and probably contributed to the waning of interest in emigration thereafter. The steady drain of the labour force had also begun to concern farmers at home, and was providing a stronger bargaining position for the Agricultural Union to secure better wages and working conditions for its members, so there was now less incentive to leave.

In 1877 a committee in Shipton under Wychwood raised £70 towards a memorial to the local victims of the disaster and the fountain was erected on the green a year later. As time passed the carved stone lettering-weathered and faded, and brass plates bearing the original inscriptions were fixed on the north, south and west sides on 17 November 1934, the sixtieth anniversary of the tragedy. A fourth brass was also added, on the east side, recalling the original tragedy, and to commemmorate the coronation of King Edward VII in 1901.

The inscription on the west side reads:

Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.
John, Ch. IV v. 13 and 14

Bibliography
Rollo Arnold, The Farthest Promised Land, Victoria University Press, Wellington, New Zealand 1981. Dr Arnold portrays the national picture of emigration to New Zealand and the role of the infant trade unions.

R.R. Williams, The Survival of Twin Pen-Stryd, Cymgen (Wales), Anglesey 1975. The story of the disaster and the amazing survival of Able Seaman Thomas Lewis of Anglesey.

Wychwoods History No. 3,1987, pp45-52 gives an account of the social and agricultural conditions of the time. See the article here, or download as a PDF here.

Those who study the nineteenth-century census returns from 1841 onwards find that the names of persons living in households can usually be read, but, to find where those households were within the village is more difficult. The local enumerator for each census did not necessarily follow the same route as his predecessor and give only the vaguest indication of where people lived.

In 1841 Milton’s enumerator divided the parish into Upper and Lower Milton and names only three definite locations, most of them roads, in each area to cover the 118 buildings. By 1891 the census enumerator gave little more detail or specific names to the households he visited and in Shipton James Alfred Willis named 29 buildings or groups of buildings he called on, but he named no thoroughfares.

Mr Gilbert the Milton enumerator for 1891 named 17 individual buildings and four roads when he completed his census of the 215 households. Some of those named survive today, such as High Lodge, Springhill Farm and Sunrise; others are different through change of use, for example Coffee Tavern to the present Wychwood Surgery; or the same name has moved to another house. Heath House in Church Road, Milton kept that name until 1930 when the then owner Brigadier General Kirby changed it to Heathfield House. His reason for the change of name would seem to be to allow him to take the name Heath House with him when he married Mrs Paisley in March 1930. So, on her marriage Mrs Paisley not only took on the new surname of Mrs Kirby but her own home, Kohima, now took on her new husband’s choice of name, Heath House.

Kohima was the name given to the property in Lyneham Road, Milton by Mrs Damont whose husband had been killed at Kohima in north-east India in 1857 during the Indian Mutiny. Apart from the house there were stables and coach house complete with clock tower, a pair of semi-detached cottages and six bungalows with their exteriors built from corrugated iron and using the name Kohima. Today the name only remains on the bungalow built on the site of two of the former corrugated iron bungalows.

Soon after the building of Matthews mill in 1911, a pair of semi-detached cottages were built in Station Road, Shipton, to house employees at the mill. One of the first occupants was the clerk, Mr Goss and his wife, from the Reading area. He named the cottage Falklands after the island of that name where he was born and to which his great grandfather had emigrated in 1850. In the I920s the Goss family moved to another Matthews tied cottage, Pike House, Station Road. This was named after its former use as the gatekeeper’s house on the old turnpike (see photo page 63). As he approached his retirement Mr Goss had a bungalow built for himself in Bruern Road, Milton. He did not live long enough to live in it but is still carries the name he gave it – Falklands.

Like Falklands and Kohima, other house names have been brought to the area. The first Matthews home in Shipton was called Tothill from the family farm in Lincolnshire. This name was then changed to Holmwood, and changed again to Cromwell House and now back again to the present Holmwood. When called Holmwood before the Second World War, part of the grounds were used by Shipton Bowls Club, and during its spell as Cromwell House after the war it was home to the Wychwoods Tennis Club. In 1977 much of the grounds of the house were developed as a residential estate, taking the name of the original house, Tothill.

At the time of his marriage Samuel E. Groves of Alfred Groves and Sons built a pair of semi-detached cottages opposite the present Wychwood Church of England School. Mr Sam and his wife, Muriel, called their new home Berwyn to remind them of their honeymoon spent in North Wales.

A larger house was subsequently built for them on adjacent land and called Four Winds, after John Buchan’s book The House of the Four Winds.

About five years ago two members of the Basson family, whose relatives had been licensees at the Quart Pot at the turn of the century, called on me asking where The Anchorage was. They had been told that it was in Frog Lane, Milton, but having checked all property names they could find not find it. Luckily I could recall helping my father prune the roses for Mr Southam at The Anchorage some fifty years ago. Since then it has changed its name to Orchard House.

The Anchorage was built towards the end of the nineteenth century when two other neighbouring buildings in Frog Lane were built in non-vernacular style – Holmwood and Frogmore House. The former has been renamed Woodside and the latter became Forest Lodge in the I930s which it remained until the I950s when it became Forest Gate. The previous name of Forest Lodge was transferred to a newly-built house on the opposite side of Frog Lane, and the original name, Frogmore House, was adopted by another new house, as Frogmore, in Frog Lane.

The name St Michael’s was used in Shipton for the two houses below the Crown (now called Ivan House and Gales Green) when they were run as a boarding school/college for young ladies from 1869. The name transferred to a newly-built school/college in Milton Lane in 1881, and the name remained when the building was subsequently occupied by the Waifs and Strays Society and during its requisition by the military during the Second World War. The building then became a corn mill and chandlery for Alfred Meecham and Son and the name again transferred. This time it was to the site opposite on which council houses were built in the late 1940s – St Michael’s Close. The building built as St Michael’s in Milton Lane was demolished in 1989 and the site redeveloped as Willis Court.

One might have presumed that Jubilee Lane in Milton had some connection with the celebrations concerning Queen Victoria, but the name is derived from the 50th Jubilee anniversary in 1889 of the building of the Baptist chapel at the top of the High Street. At that jubilee it was decided to raise subscriptions for the building of a manse in the lane which had been variously known as Dix’s Lane. The Road, Groves’ Lane and Barnes’ Corner and is now known as Jubilee Lane

Ariel view of Shipton in Winter in the 1920s. The aeroplane wing can be seen in the bottom left corner. The white pathces in the fields in the centre are hoar frosts

From my limited research of records of Milton and Shipton it would appear that in the late nineteenth century very few residential buildings had names. Exceptions were farms and the larger properties – Shipton Court, Shipton Lodge etc, and the inns. Public buildings like schools, churches and chapels also had names. Small cottages had no names unless they were in a row or group when a collective name was used, as with Magpie Alley, Mount Pleasant and Fiddlers Hill in Shipton and The Square, Frog Lane and Hawkes’ Yard in Milton.

In the twentieth century the spread of the naming of buildings was slow, although new buildings were usually given names and there was some up-market naming of the already existing names.

In the early 1920s there was some attempt with numbering properties on the newly-built estates, a policy which continues today. But the numbering of the older roads has progressed little, with the exception of Milton High Street.

For some reason, unknown to me, it was around the late 1930s that more of the smaller properties were given names and by the same time the names of most roads and lanes had evolved into the names generally accepted today.

Today all buildings have a name or number (some both) as well as a road or street name, and both house and street names are displayed on boards or plates and are recorded on maps. Unfortunately for the local historian some house names have been changed in the last one hundred years, a few more than once, and any owner can change the name of their property at any time.

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The following are extracts from the letters of Thomas and Hannah Groves written in the year 1851 when they visited London in order that Thomas should receive medical treatment for a growth on his face. We are very much indebted to Mrs Marjorie Rathbone (a great-great-granddaughter of Thomas Groves) for not only preserving these letters over the years but also for allowing the use of them for this article. When quoting the contents of the letters, spelling and punctuation (or lack of it) is as in the original.  

Thomas was born on the 3 June 1789 and died on the 12 July 1860. The 1851 census shows Thomas and Hannah living with their family at Elms Farm in Shipton Road, Milton under Wychwood. He is described as a mason employing 16 men and a farmer of 12 acres on which he employed one man. His wife Hannah was born in 1792 and died in 1870. They are both buried in Milton churchyard. Members of his family, employees and local inhabitants are mentioned in the letters and a brief description of each one is given in the final paragraph of this article.   

Thomas Groves visited Dr Batty of South Newington, Middlesex for treatment in the summer of 1851. He and Hannah were able to obtain lodgings in the Pegasus Tavern near to Dr Batty’s residence.

In an undated letter Hannah wrote: ‘we was much put to get lodgin we thought we couldnt get a bed in the place we pay 2 pound a week at this place your father is so well he has never been laid up one day since we have been from home that is a great comfort to me in a strange  place’.  

On 25 July Thomas writes:   

‘Mr Batty informs me that he can cure my face’.  

On 1 August he again writes:   

‘I received Sarahs letter yesterday and was happy to heare you are all well and that Alfred is able to get out in the mornings I have named his case to Mr Batty and he say^.he must leave off those destructive pills He says he will send him something that will remove it’.  

On 4 August he is obviously anxious about his mason’s business:  

‘Have Alfred seen Harwood of Charlbury about the rim of the arch is the coping set on Upstones wall [Upstones lived at what is now Holly Corner, Upper Milton] Use plenty of lime in the foundations of the bridge’.  

8 August:   

‘Mr Batty has taken the lump off my face this morning they put in arches here like the one I have sketched [drawing of  elliptical arch of the style used by Isambard Brunei when building the Great Western Railway a few years earlier] if the centre is made as I proposed’you will want 4 or 5 stiff pieces of larch large enough to make two it would be better to stand on edge 5″ by 8″ or 9″ and 20″ long Matthew had better do it be sure to have it strong enough’.   

11 August:   

‘I am pleased to hear you are getting on with the bridge hope you will endeavour to please Mr Bayliss’.

14 August:   

‘Philip if you have finished at the quarry you had better get the harvest started but let it stand till ripe have Matthew finished The Carfax how does the old arches turn out’.  

A very cheerful letter is dated the 21 August:   

‘Dear Children, Pleased to hear that you are all well and that you have plenty of business and plenty of money and to inform you that we had £10 pound off Uncle Silman if Edward should come he may bring us some cash for this is a very expensive place’.  

However a following undated letter was very much back to business:  

‘Dear Edwin, I should be obliged if you would call on Mrs Edward if she has not been to pay her rent Also if John Miles and Richard should pay thers you must not give them anything back as we have to pay the takesis (taxes) and that is 8 or 10 shillings a year and ther rent is £3-3s a year and Mrs Edwards £3-10s’.  

On 4 September:   

‘Pleased to hear the bridge is making good progress should wish to have the ashlar for the parropet etc worked well as the season is rapidly advancing for using to much mortar Philip had better set on more men to get out more [stone ?] block if he takes on more men it may be getting dry and fit for use how is he coping with the harvest you may get the coping sawed for the bridge as soon as you can and some of the best dry block your coping on the wing walls will finish under the string courses Sarah will please bring me a warmer waistcoat’.  

A very descriptive letter follows on 1 October:   

‘I fear you will think we have quite forgot as I have not rote to you before my hand has been shaking that I could not rite We left Purfleet yesterday morn at 10 oclock by boat to Blackwall then took train and came to London took a cab and came to the Bank and took the bus I gave order to the conductor to put us down at Rathbourn Place instead of that he took us nearly to Camden Town we had to walk to Woborn Place took a bus then to South Place your mother was tired down we took a coop of tea and spent a very pleasant evening after a very tiresome day Send me a line today to say how you get on with the bridge if the plowing is wanting to be done get Pratts team plant some winter beans if you think best Tell Ellen you must let her please herself about staying with us another year’.  

Evidently one of his men had an accident for on 31 October he writes:

‘Pleased to hear R Pitts is likely to occupy his place so soon and trust it will be a warning to him to fasten the ladder How are you getting on in the feild and in the quarry do not come from the quarry without a load of wallstones let them be chopt a little off the rough and be laid at the end of the house on the left of the stable door opposite Mr Bursons door or Alfreds shop Your mother says she shall want a great many loads when you have time you may draw some mortar by doing so you will oblige your affectionate Father & Mother T & H Groves’.   

The good news came on 1 November:   

‘I am just returned from Mr Batty and he says my face is perfectly cured of the disease I wrote tonight as I knew you would be very pleased do not talk much about it the less the better at present’.  

21 November:   

‘We intend coming home by the Moreton coach if we can if we cannot we must come by the other to the top of Burford Hill hoping that we shall arrive safe please send the rag cloak yours affectionately T & H Groves’.  

These extracts are but a small selection of the total so carefully kept by Mrs Rathbone. The total lack of any punctuation and the rapid change of subject require them to be read very carefully. However, they do give a good idea of life 130 years ago.

The remarks about the cost of living in London would apply equally well today. London apparently had quite a comprehensive transport system from the remarks made by Thomas when travelling by boat, train, cab and horsedrawn omnibus, even if the conductors were not too reliable. With today’s banking services it is easy to forget the problems of those days when one must have had to carry any cash that was likely to be needed.  

Unfortunately I have yet to discover a great deal about the masonry work that made Thomas so anxious – I would particularly like to know more about his elliptical arches.  

Of the names mentioned in his letters I have been able to discover a little more. George, his eldest son, was born on 25 September 1817 and died on 2 August 1886. He is buried in Milton churchyard. At the time of these letters he was married to Charlotte (nee Pargetter of Lutterworth) who was nine years his junior. Their first child, also Thomas, was born  in May the next year and was followed by seven more children. At this time he shared a house with his brother Phillip at Upper Milton but later moved to Jubilee Lane. On his father’s death he took over the Milton quarries.  

Philip was born in 1821 and also became a stonemason. He died on 9 April 1900 and was buried in Milton churchyard where his wife Mary, who predeceased him on 18 May 1860, was also buried. Sarah was Thomas’s only daughter. She married twice but had no children. She and her first husband, James Ellis, had a bakery and grocery shop in Milton High Street. They are both buried in Milton churchyard.  

Edwin, the third son, was born on 20 December 1825 and was unmarried when he died on 13 April 1873. He had a tailor’s business in the High Street next to the Baptist chapel.  

Alfred the youngest son, was born on 28 December 1826 and died on 16 January 1914. He is buried in the Baptist burial ground at Milton. Locally he is possibly the best known of the family as he carried on the family business as a stonemason at The Elms and formed the modern company of Alfred Groves & Sons. His first wife, Ann Shepard, bore him three children but died in 1855. His second wife, Mary Reynolds, gave him another ten children and thereby ensured the direction of the family business unto the present day.  

Matthew was Thomas Groves’ younger brother, born in Shipton in 1796. He was a carpenter by trade and lived with his wife Ann Sophia Pratt from Leicestershire in Milton High Street next to the Butcher’s Arms. So far we believe they had three children, some of whose descendants correspond regularly with this society.   

Ellen Miles was a living-in servant to the Groves family. Thomas’s remark ‘tell Helen she must please herself about staying’ was presumably a reference to the end of her year of service when a servant would then go to the hiring fair (possibly Burford Fair) to seek employment for the coming year. Thomas gave her the option of staying with them. Evidently she thought they were good employers and we can see in subsequent letters (not quoted here) that she stayed. Her parents Richard and Elizabeth (nee Puddle) were tenants of Thomas Groves and lived in a now demolished cottage on the site of Poplar Farm Close. From Thomas’s letter their rent was £3 3s a year.  

The tenants quoted in these letters were John and Jane Miles (nee Hunt) who lived in Lower Milton. They were in their late seventies and obviously John was beyond working as a farm labourer as both were living on parish relief.  

The last tenants to be noted were Thomas Edwards and his wife who lived in a cottage on the Shipton Road at Milton, possibly now part of the present house ‘Hoplands’. They were both newcomers to the village. They had three children and Thomas worked for Groves as a plasterer.    

Information used to supplement these letters was obtained from:  

Family papers in the possession of Mrs Marjorie Rathbone.  

1842 Milton under Wychwood Tithe Returns.  

1851 Oxfordshire Census.  

Milton under Wychwood Graveyard Surveys compiled by Jack Chapman.  

Acknowledgements are made to Roy Groves of Illinois U.S.A., Keith Barrie of Newport Beach, Australia and Keith Miles of Milton for information received

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The Burford-Shipton omnibus was started in 1870 by William Matthews. In 1888, the date of this timetable, the proprietor was T. Paintin & Son who ran the coach three times a day to connect with trains at Shipton station. The journey time was a little under one hour.

They also ran a daily coach to Witney Station, leaving at 9.15am and returning at 5.05pm. The first Witney station was opened on 13 November 1861 when the Witney Railway opened its line to Yarnton Junction near Oxford. On the 15 January 1873 the East Gloucestershire Railway opened its line from Fairford to a junction with the Witney Railway just south of the old Witney station. A new station was opened on the East Gloucester line and the old station was used for goods traffic. It is still in use today but sadly without its railway.

The timetable is headed with the title ‘The Original Burford Omnibus Service’. This in conjunction with the final paragraph suggests that there had been competition for these services. A little over thirty years after this timetable was printed the service ceased. A photograph taken about this time shows the coach in Shipton station in a run down condition and near the end of its days. The proprietor was then Walter Holloway.

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In October 1732, Sir Thomas Read and George Read were granted a faculty or licence by the Bishop ‘to appropriate a Place in the Parish Church of Shipton under Whichwood commonly called or known by the name of the Scull house being under the respective Pews or Seates of the aforesaid Sir Thomas Read Bart and George Read Esq.,…’. They were to dig another ‘Scull house’ near the old one ‘to put all sculls and bones in for the future’ and were granted the old ‘Scull house to be a Dormitory or place of Buryall’ for their families provided they kept it in ‘constant and decent’ repair at their own expense.

Efforts to locate these ‘Scull houses’ with any certainty have so far proved unsuccessful. They were presumably under what is now known as the Read chapel. The old one, which became the Read’s family burial place, measured about fourteen feet from north to south and about nine feet from east to west, measurements which are difficult to reconcile with those of the present chapel, the floor of which is at two different levels above the main floor of the church. There is perhaps a clue in what appears to be the top of an arched entrance to a vault low down on the outside of the east wall immediately under the centre of the memorial window.

It is within living memory that the area of the chapel was screened off from the rest of the church and that the Pepper family used the small door on the south side to go in and out unobserved. But we have so far failed to find any record of the building of the chapel in its present form.

We should be glad of any information which might help us to discover the history of these burial places and the use of the chapel for the private pews of the local gentry.