The Life and Times of Sicklefield House, Wigan
Introduction
Sicklefield House has lain out of view behind Wigan Lane in the picturesque Douglas Valley for over two hundred years. The property is accessed via Brock Mill Lane, but many generations of Wiganers will have had a glimpse of the house as they walked down the footpath known as Sicklefield, at the side of 339 Wigan Lane. Known as '64 steps’ by the author or '70 steps' by others, the path leads down to the bridge over the River Douglas and onto Wingates Road.
The footpath to Sicklefield via 64 steps on Wigan Lane
In 1818 Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III, the ‘Mad King’ had died. Country wide, the population was suffering economic and social upheaval following the victory at the Battle of Waterloo, marking the end of the decade long Napoleonic Wars
The Industrial Revolution was sweeping across the English countryside. In Wigan, mill owner William Woods introduced the first power looms to the town. At the same time there was much industrial unrest as out of work hand weavers known as the ‘Luddites’ attacked mills across Lancashire which were using the new technology.
That year, in the affluent Wigan Lane area, a mill owner and wealthy property developer by the name of Molly Penson had Sicklefield House built. The property, nestling in seven acres of land consisted of porch, living room, dining room, morning room, two drawing rooms, kitchen, box room and cellar. The hallway led to a long staircase and upstairs was a landing, six bedrooms, bathroom, and attic for servants living quarters. Outside was a paddock, stables, outhouses, and a cattle shed.
Molly never resided at Sicklefield herself, instead members of her wider family lived at the property. After her death on 19 July 1838 aged 72, the house came into the possession of her heirs who then leased the property out.
This article is a follow on to the Molly Penson story and takes a comprehensive look into the lives of most of the residents of Sicklefield House from 1842 to present day. Along with other records this is made possible with the assistance of the ten yearly National Census, the first of which was taken 6 June 1841.
THOMAS CROPPER RYLEY (1810-1889)
The first recorded lessee of Sicklefield House is Thomas Cropper Ryley who leased the property from Molly Penson’s daughter Ellen and son in law Arthur Heron on 3 March 1842 for the sum of £60, for a period of ten years. Thomas was born 22 January 1810 in Liverpool to James Ryley, a sail maker and Margaret Cropper. His mother came from an old Quaker family, and was born in Winstanley near Wigan,
Her brother was James Cropper, who was celebrated in the anti-slavery movement of the early 19th century. Their mother was Rebecca Winstanley, daughter of Robert of Winstanley Hall, Wigan. Thomas first worked for his uncle James Cropper in the Mercantile House of Messrs. Cropper, Benson & Co. of Liverpool. They were highly successful merchants who ran the first regular packet service between Liverpool and New York carrying passengers, mail and cargo. At its height the company made £1,000 a day profit. By 1836 his business skills and passion for engineering led to Thomas gaining employment at the Haigh Foundry located in Leyland Mill Lane in Wigan.
By 1778 a foundry, also known as Haigh Iron Works, was founded when Alexander Lindsay, the 6th Earl of Balcarres went into partnership with his brother Robert and iron founder James Corbett. The nearby Brock Mill Forge which had existed before 1766, was added to the foundry business, and blast furnaces were built at the Haigh Foundry site.
However the iron smelting business performed poorly, making financial losses. James Corbett died in 1790, and shortly after Robert Lindsay decided to withdraw from the partnership. After much negotiation the Lindsey brothers partnership was dissolved in 1793, leaving the Earl as sole owner. The blast furnaces were made redundant by 1815 and finally demolished in 1828. The Earl did not wish to take on an active management role and appointed a series of managers, all of which turned out to be unreliable. Finally in 1804 the foundry and engineering business recovered following the appointment of Scotsman Robert Daglish as chief engineer.
The works soon acquired a reputation for manufacturing winding engines and stationary steam engines to pump water from coal mines. In 1812 Daglish built Lancashire's first steam locomotive, known as the ‘Walking Horse’ for colliery owner John Clarke, establishing locomotive manufacture at Haigh. It came into service the following year hauling coal wagons from the Orrell coalfields to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Crooke. The company also made rolling mills, and in 1818 exported a sugar mill to Haiti.
The 'Walking Horse' Steam Locomotive built at Haigh Foundry in 1812
In 1835 the Earl leased the whole business to Thomas Cropper Ryley and Edward Evans for 21 years, soon after they were joined by a Mr. Burrows. The newly formed Haigh Foundry Co. was to become one of the principal engineering establishments in the country, with a worldwide reputation, specialising in the businesses of iron founders, engine makers, iron forgers, spade and edge tool makers, and also fire brick and tile manufacturers. The firm produced steam engines and a wide range of products in wrought and cast iron.
The foundry produced 114 railway locomotives between 1835 and 1856 for many railway companies including the Leicester & Swannington, Manchester & Liverpool, Manchester & Leeds, Lancashire & Yorkshire, Great Western, Grand Junction, and South Devon Railways. In 1850 the company shipped four railway engines to California, and in 1855 supplied two .locomotives to the War Department, intended to haul artillery guns up steep gradients in the Crimea.
Other major projects were swing bridges for the Albert Docks in Liverpool, and at Hull Docks, an immense cast-iron plate for the Plate Glass Company, Pilkingtons of St. Helens and pumping engines for collieries and lead mines. In 1853 Thomas and his partner Edward had a patent sealed in their names ‘for certain improvements in the construction of wrought iron wheels to be used upon railways, or for other purposes, and in the machinery or apparatus connected therewith’.
In 1855 local newspapers reported an awkward mishap.-‘ Last week, as a large iron casting table, thirty tons weight, from the Haigh foundry, Wigan, for the Union plate glass works, St. Helen's, was being drawn by eighteen horses over a canal bridge, near St. Helens, the bridge broke, and the wagon and table were precipitated into the canal. They were raised out in a day or two. Damage to the amount of £200 was caused by the accident'.
That same year sale of the lease of the works, comprising the extensive foundry, iron works, forge, fire brick and tile manufacture was advertised by William Peace, Esq., Mining Engineer, Haigh, Wigan, and Mr. John Mayhew, Solicitor, Wigan. In 1856 with the lease expired the company ceased railway building and Birley and Thompson took over the lease, concentrating on heavy engineering. Thomas Cropper Ryley retired but continued to live in Sicklefield House for the next twenty years.
Everything that Haigh Foundry made had to be hauled up the steep and twisting Leyland Mill Lane. Teams of up to 48 horses were needed, many hired from local farmers. However in 1860 following Thomas’s retirement a railway line was built from the Earl of Crawford & Balcarres colliery network at Aspull. This was replaced in 1869 by a link from the Lancashire Union Railway's 'Whelley loop line’. Haigh Foundry finally closed in 1884.
The original buildings of the old Haigh Foundry in Leyland Mill Lane still stand today, used by a dozen or so small businesses and now known as the Valley Gate Industrial Estate.
Liberal Beliefs and Charitable Causes
The census taken on 6 June 1841 shows that at that time Thomas Cropper Ryley was still residing with his parents at 3 Rakes Lane in Edge Hill. Two months later on 3 August Thomas married Eleanor Dawson, the second daughter of Edward Dawson Esq. of Aldcliffe Hall, located on the banks of the Lune Estuary, and Ann, daughter of Christopher Wilson of Rigmadon Park, Kirby Londsdale.
The ceremony took place at the Priory Church of St. Mary in Lancaster. The marriage certificate shows that his place of residence was now Haigh in Wigan. Two days previously Thomas had been baptised into the established church at St. Mary’s C.E church in Edge Hill, Liverpool. Three days after the marriage Thomas’s mother Margaret died in Edge Hill, she was buried in the Quaker Burial Ground in Hunter Street, Liverpool. His father James died in 1845
A generous benefactor to all worthy causes, Thomas was well respected and although often asked to fill important office he would never accept any public position. He was a liberal supporter of the Ant-Corn Law League, a political movement that campaigned for the repeal of tariffs on imported grain. The tariffs protected domestic landowners, thus raising the price of bread at a time when factory owners were trying to cut wages.
Thomas espoused the cause of Home Rule for Ireland, the movement to secure internal autonomy for Ireland within the British Empire. He was also a member of ‘The Society for the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage’ and in 1865 was a delegate at a conference held in Manchester.
He was a prominent member of the religious Society of Friends who met at one of the Hardshaw West Meeting Houses. Named after the one of the oldest meeting houses in the country at Hardshaw near St. Helens, the organisation covered the areas of Lancashire between Liverpool and Manchester which was eventually divided into Hardshaw East and Harshaw West.
In later years though Thomas drifted to the Congregational Church and worshipped at the West End Congregational Chapel in Southport. there being no Meeting House for 'The Society of Friends' in Southport.
Thomas was an activist in the anti-slavery movement and became involved in the emancipation of Black American slaves. He was Vice President of the Manchester Union & Emancipation Society which supported the union of the United States and to lobby for the passage of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. On 1 January, 1863 during the American Civil War President Lincoln did issue the proclamation. In it he declared that enslaved people in rebellious states were free ‘henceforward and forever’. It also declared that Black men could serve in the military.
Through his relative James Cropper, Thomas forged links with Harriet Beecher Stowe, the famous American author and abolitionist who published thirty books and countless short stories, poems, articles, and hymns. She rose to fame in 1852 with the publication of her best-selling book ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin’, which depicts the harsh conditions experienced by enslaved African Americans in the decades leading up to the American Civil War.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
On 1 May 1863 Thomas made a financial contribution to a New England organisation charged with the education of slaves freed during the Civil War. Harriet replied with a note of acknowledgement: Dear Sir. I take pleasure in acknowledging the receipt of your noble minded letter covering an enclosure of $210 for the emancipated slaves.
That sum I shall place in the hands of the Boston Educational Committee who have for a year past have been diligently and assiduously laboring for the mental and physical wellbeing of the emancipated slaves. Such a substantial token of sympathy from your side of the water outweighs a million of unworthy sayings and doings and makes us proud to remember we are of British origin.
I shall request the gentleman to whom I send your money to forward to your address some of the circulars of the society that you may see a little of what is doing.
Praying that God may bless our mutual countries.
I am your sincere friend. H.B.Stowe
(The circulars mentioned above referred to ‘The Freedmen’s Record’, a monthly publication which was the forerunner of the ‘New England Freedmen’s Aid Society’).
In 1866 Thomas undertook the English contribution of nearly $1000 to a testimonial being raised in the United States for William Lloyd Garrison, the well-known American journalist, abolitionist and social reformer, who was one of the founders of the American Anti-slavery Society.
Closer to home, Wigan Infirmary was officially opened in a lavish ceremony on 4 June 1873 by the Prince and Princess of Wales, opening its doors to patients the following year. Thomas was a keen supporter and benefactor. In 1874 he was elected as an Honorary Vice President of the Infirmary along with other prominent Victorians of that era such as Ralph Darlington, Henry Woodcock, William Walmesley, James Taylor, Maskell Peace, John Rylands, Thomas Wall, Thomas Part, James Taylor and Henry Woods.
Thomas was a supporter of the Royal Albert Asylum in Lancaster. It’s seventh annual report in 1872 shows it’s mission to be the training and education of imbeciles and idiots from the seven counties of northern England. It lists Thomas as a benefactor with a donation of £50 ( £14,500 today).
Not one for lavishness or self-promotion Thomas is said to have only ever made one speech. That was on the occasion of his retirement when he received a silver tankard from his workers at Haigh Foundry.
In 1876 Thomas moved his family to Birkdale, where he lived for the remainder of his life. Here he and his family continued to be generous benefactors to charitable causes, and involved in Liberal and Non-Conformist movements
After an illness of seven weeks Thomas passed away on 13 April 1889, aged 79 at his residence, 14 Grosvenor Road, Birkdale. He was laid to rest four days later in plot V 6569 in Duke Street Cemetery, Southport. Thomas died a very wealthy man. Probate records show that he left an estate valued at £161,534. (£26.5 million today).
After his death his wife Eleanor carried on his charitable works and was treasurer of the Birkdale Society for the protection of girls. Eleanor died of heart failure on 22 October 1898 and was buried alongside her husband in Duke Street Cemetery after a service at West End Chapel.
Thomas and Eleanor had four children, a son Thomas Cropper Jnr who died in infancy, and three daughters, Catherine, Constance and Emily.
Thomas Cropper Ryley Jnr was born in October 1842 at Sicklefield House. He died there aged three months in January 1843 and was buried at High Street Independent Chapel in Lancaster. Plot J. 19.199.
Catherine Margaret Ryley was born in 1846 at Sicklefield House. She preferred to be called Kate and was known as such in all correspondence and in newspaper articles. Kate was to make her mark in Birkdale, a very wealthy spinster she devoted her time to championing women’s rights, animal rights, and promoting education. She was also prominent in political and religious circles in the Southport area.
Southport Women’s Liberal Association was formed in 1886, of which Kate became secretary. In June 1888 Kate and a Miss Pearson travelled to Coolgreany in County Wexford, Ireland as representatives of the Southport Branch of the Women’s Liberal Association. The visit was to support the campaign for victims of landlord tyranny following multiple evictions of tenants because of rent arrears.
On 31 August 1901 Kate was elected on to the Birkdale School Board, eventually becoming President. She presented the annual boy’s prize for religious knowledge at Birkdale School and sponsored the Kate Ryley Scholarship to Cambridge University. As well she was Honorary Secretary of the Southport and Birkdale Branch of the National Educational Association and the Honorary Secretary of the Southport Anti-Vivisection League.
In January 1906, on return from one of her frequent visits to a friend in Edinburgh, she travelled round Lancashire electioneering for the upcoming General Election in her chauffeur driven car. She visited Rochdale, Preston and Liverpool supporting Liberal and Free Trade candidates. The Liberal Party led by Henry Campbell Bannerman won in a landslide victory. That same year she was also a speaker at the Conference of Temperance Workers in Southport.
Kate represented Birkdale rate payers in a campaign opposed to Birkdale being amalgamated and absorbed into Greater Southport. It was to no avail as Birkdale once an independent township and later an urban district was merged with Southport on 1 April 1912.
A prominent member of the Unitarian Church in Southport she was a generous benefactor to various charities, especially the ones that benefited women and children. Between them Kate and her sister Emily, also a spinster, owned several houses in Broome Road and Chatham Road in Birkdale. Some of which they loaned out to women’s organisations and charities.
Following the death of their mother in 1899, the two sisters downsized and moved the short distance from 14 Grosvenor Road to number 46, which they jointly owned. The 1921 census shows Kate and Emily living at the residence with their companion Annie Desmond and no less than five servants.
Catherine Margaret Ryley died 15 October 1934 aged 88. She was buried in Liverpool Road Cemetery, Birkdale. Plot No. D.2.140. Probate records show that she died a wealthy woman, leaving £51,000, (£4.6 million today).
Constance Ryley was born on 26 January 1849 at Sicklefield House, in Wigan. Like her sister Kate and father, Constance was passionate about women’s rights and active in the abolitionist cause. In Wigan in 1869, thousands of women workers were employed by nearly 50 textile companies. In that year Wigan produced a women’s suffrage petition and on 7 July 1870 a meeting was held in the town to form a branch of the Manchester Society. Among its members were twenty year old Constance and her parents Thomas and Eleanor.
Constance remained an active member of the Women’s Suffrage Movement and was to become the representative of the Southport branch on the national executive of the National Union of Women Workers. Through her father she became friends with the abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe. The list of subscriptions for the New England Freedmen’s Society of 1864-6 notes a contribution of $75.55 cents made on behalf of Miss Ryley by Stowe.
The pair corresponded by letter and Harriet eventually met the Ryley family on a visit to England, when she was a guest of Harriet’s great uncle James Ryley at his home at Dingle Bank on the rocky promontory of Dingle Point, overlooking the River Mersey in the south of Liverpool. The ‘Dobkin Family of Feminism Collection’ holds the second letter by Harriet to Constance.
It was addressed to: ‘‘My Dear Young Friend’ and accompanied by an early photograph of Stowe.
If any photograph can be of the least pleasure to you. I have great pleasure in sending it to you. I think I recognise in you a former correspondent during the time of our late war and your father was one of the few who at that crisis understood and felt for us in what we were doing. Present my sincere regards to him and believe me.
Ever truly yours H.B.Stowe
Constance married Dr. Charles Dunbar Shepherd on Wednesday 29 January 1873 at West End Congregational Chapel, Southport. Charles was born in 1838 in Northallerton in Yorkshire. The UK & Ireland Medical Register dated 12 May 1862 shows the newly qualified Charles living in Standishgate, Wigan. He was admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons and of the Licenced Society of Apothecaries of London.
The 1871 census finds him as a general practitioner living with a housekeeper at 25a Standishgate, Wigan. After his marriage to Constance in 1873 Charles acquired the next door premises at number 23 Standishgate where he set up a surgery. (On the site of the surgery today is ‘Café Nero, The Italian Coffee Co.’ a white fronted building with a mock Tudor facade). It had previously belonged to Richard Hardy, a chemist.
The 1881 census finds him living at the property with Constance and their four young sons, Thomas Scot, Herbert Dunbar, Charles Burney, and Maurice Paul. Charles became the senior consultant surgeon at Wigan Infirmary but by 1891 he had relocated his family to Settle in Yorkshire where they lived at Marshfield, a large house built in 1780 and now Grade 2 Listed. Here Charles was the resident general medical practitioner. The couple then retired to Arnside in Westmoreland to live first at Greystone House, then at Shawleigh House.
Constance died at 3 St. Paul's Square, Southport on 25 November 1918, aged 69. She was buried in Liverpool Road Cemetery, Birkdale. After the death of his wife Charles left Westmoreland to live with his eldest son Thomas at Merton House, a large 14 bedroom property in Ross on Wye, Herefordshire (now a thriving hotel). He died there on 6 January 1925 aged 86.
Emily Ryley was born 3 July 1852 in Sicklefield House. There is no doubt that the youngest member of the family also held the same liberal views as her parents and older siblings.
Unlike her sisters though, there is a dearth of documentary information about Emily apart from an article in the London edition of ‘The Daily News’ On 19 February 1910 in which it published a list of donors to the Liberal Party led by Prime Minister Herbert .H. Asquith. Emily donated a Guinea (£1. 1shilling).
The Southport electoral rolls show that Emily owned dwelling houses in Chatham Road, Birkdale. An article in the Southport Examiner mentions Emily’s interests in women’s rights and that her and her sister Kate loaned these properties out to women’s charities.
Emily remained a spinster and lived all her life as a companion to her sister Kate. She died 27 June 1924 in Birkdale, aged 72. Emily was buried in plot D2. 141 in Liverpool Road Cemetery, Birkdale in a double grave next to her sister Kate.
JOHN FRANCIS CRAIK (1839-1903)
John Francis Craik was born in Southwick, Kirkcudbrightshire, south west Scotland.in 1839, the son of John Craik Esq. John, a commercial traveller married Dorathea Ackers on 15 November 1865 at St. John’s CE church in Abram, near Wigan.
Dorathea’s father was Abraham Ackers, a wealthy mine owner of Bickershaw Hall in Abram, who founded the Ackers & Whitley & Co., the 1851 census shows him owning four mines and employing 179 men. He was also a landowner farming 120 acres, employing five men.
Following their marriage John and Dorathea first lived at Bickershaw Hall where their first child Robert Francis was born. There then followed a move to Weaverham, near Northwich in Cheshire, where son James Jackson was born. By the time of the 1871 census the family was living at 58 Waterloo Road in Wolverhampton, where their daughter Catherine Agnes was born.
Following the death of Dorathea’s father Abraham in 1864, John became referred to on documents as a gentleman. Sometime after Thomas Cropper Ryley left for Southport in 1876 John took over the tenancy of Sicklefield House. The 1881 census finds John, Dorothea, and their three children being tended to be a servant, 36 year old Rachel Lee. The next census in 1891 lists him as a farmer living at Holly House, 465 Newton Road in Lowton. (The property, built in 1830 is still in existence today and is Grade 2 Listed).
By 1901 John had retired to Liscard in Wallasey, where he died on 16 June 1903 aged 64. His wife Dorathea moved to 12 St. John’s Road in Wallasey to live with her bachelor son James. She died there in 1920 aged 74.
Robert Francis Craik, John and Dorathea’s eldest child, was born in Bickershaw in 1867 and was baptised at St. John’s church Abram on 28 July of that year. Robert opted for a life at sea in the merchant navy and on 19 September 1885 became an indentured apprentice in Liverpool for a period of four years to Mr. N.J. Kidd. This was cancelled on 20 May 1887 and his indenture transferred for the remaining period a week later to a Mr. Marshall. On 1 September 1892 Robert was deemed qualified to fulfill the duties of Second Mate on foreign going steamships.
In 1894 he married Mary Frances in St. Asaph, Denbighshire. The couple settled at 36 Percy Street in Liverpool, not far from the docks. The following year on 28 March 1895 Robert received his certificate of competency from the Board of Trade confirming that he was competent to act as First Mate on foreign going steamships. He was also allowed to act as Second Mate on square rigged sailing vessels. On 8 June 1896 while acting as 3rd Mate on the SS Calabar, Robert died aged 28, of malarial fever while sailing off Cape Roxo, a headland in West Africa, the western most frontier of Guinea Bissau and Senegal.
James Thomas Jackson Craik was born in 1969 in Weaverham, near Northwich in Cheshire, and was baptised at St. Mary’s CE church in Weaverham on 6 May of that year. James a coal agent, married Mary Elizabth Clare in Birkenhead in 1911 at the age of 42. Mary Elizabeth, daughter of an agricultural labourer was born in Chester Road, Sutton Weaver, near Runcorn in 1878.
From the age of 13 she was a domestic servant in many locations. Prior to the 1911 census she was in service at addresses in Liscard and New Brighton, a mile away or so from James’s home in Liscard, where was living with his widowed mother Catherine. James died 19 December 1919 in Birkenhead, aged 50. Mary Elizabeth died 14 August 1952 at 14 Station Road, Winwick, near Warrington, aged 74.
Catherine Agnes Craik was born in Wolverhampton on 7 February 1872, and was baptised on 1 September of that year at St. John’s church, Abram, Wigan. On 23 April 1901 she married Alexander Inglis Barr, son of James Barr, a master mariner and ship’s captain, at St. James’s church, New Brighton. Alexander, a provisions broker was vice chairman of the Liverpool Provision Trade Guild and for several years was on the board of directors of the Liverpool Trade Association.
The marriage was a short and volatile one, with Alexander filing for divorce on 15 March 1903, before the birth of their daughter Dorothy Inglis Barr on 4 September. The petition for divorce which was contested by Catherine was granted on 24 March 1904. Alexander died three years later on 25 August 1907, aged 40. By the start of the Second World War Catherine had wisely relocated to Anglesey in North Wales, as the dockland areas of Wallasey and Liverpool were a prime target for Luftwaffe bombing raids. In late 1940 and in May 1941 Wallasey suffered heavy damage causing over 1,200 casualties. Catherine did not re-marry after her divorce and died on Anglesey, North Wales on 23 February 1955, aged 83.
LEVI BOOTH (1838-1915)
Levi Booth was born at the Willows, Bolton Le Moors in 1838 and baptised on 10 February 1839 at St. Peter’s church. His parents were Richard Booth and Sarah Crook, both of Little Hulton. His father was originally a colliery clerk but later went into business as a beer seller and shopkeeper. Sarah was the daughter of Noah Crook, a weaver.
Levi started a business as a wholesale brush manufacturer in 1860 working from 41 Cheapside, Newport Street in Bolton. He married a Yorkshire girl, Caroline Roberts Jackson, on 6 August 1863 at St. John the Baptist church in Halifax. Caroline was the daughter of Joseph Jackson, a toll collector who hailed from Knaresborough, North Yorkshire. In later years he ran a public house in Bradford.
Her mother Sarah Roberts was born in Howarth and as a young girl lived in the village at the same time as the famous Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. Levi and Caroline went on to have seven children, four boys and three girls.
The couple lived in Bolton for a few years but soon after their son Joseph’s birth in 1867, Levi moved his family and business to Wigan. He is listed in the 1869 Slaters Trade Directory as a brush maker living at 47 Wallgate, opposite the Victoria Hotel, calling his business the ‘Wigan Brush Works’. The census of 2 April 1871 finds Levi, Caroline, two year old son Richard and two day old baby daughter Sarah living above their shop in Wallgate. At the time their two older children Walter and Joseph were staying with their grandparents near Halifax.
Levi Booth Snr 1838-1915
Levi later moved his premises from number 47 to 18-20 Wallgate, nearer to Market Place in the centre of town. Here he advertised that he was a brush wholesaler and retailer, also selling baskets, washing lines, cord and twine. Later he sold sports equipment and a passionate angler himself, he was also a fishing tackle dealer. By the time of the 1881 census Levi was employing four workers at his business in Wallgate but was now living at 29 Upper Dicconson Street, next door to Oates Rushton the grocer and tea dealer.
In 1888 Levi found himself in trouble with the law, on 17 February of that year the Wigan Observer & District Advertiser reported that he had been prosecuted for failing to have his daughter Caroline vaccinated. Levi who was an ardent anti – compulsory vaccinator refused to pay a fine of 20 shillings and 8 shillings. He made no less than seventeen appearances in court before goods consisting of a suite of chairs were seized as recompense from his property and auctioned off in the Wigan Borough police yard.
By 1889, as his business grew he moved his family to Sicklefield House, where the 1891 census finds him with his wife Caroline, and five of their children, sons Joseph, Richard, and Levi Jnr, and daughters Sarah and Caroline. The family was tended to by three young domestic servants, Alice Pope, 20 from Herefordshire and Annie Hodkinson, 15 and her sister Mary,14 who came from Hanley in Staffordshire.
Advertisement in the Wigan Examiner 24 July 1895
From Sicklefield Levi moved out of town, firstly to Gathurst Lane in Shevington, then to Common Road in Parbold. In 1906 Levi advertised in local newspapers that he was having a moving sale and relocating his business premises from Wallgate to 25-27 The Wiend, off Millgate.
By 1911 Levi Snr and Caroline, who was now blind, had moved from Parbold back into Wigan. They were living above a shop at 25 Mesnes Street, opposite the Market Hall, that their divorced daughter Sarah was running. She was selling brushes that her brother Levi Jnr was producing in the Wiend.
Levi was an adopted Wiganer but proved his loyalty to the town by serving as a councillor for over a quarter of a century, being elected to represent the All Saints Ward in 1886. .On 30 March 1893 Levi was appointed overseer of the poor for Wigan Borough Council. He served on all the council committees, became Chairman of the Sewage Disposal Committee, and was made an Alderman of the Borough in 1901. As well as sitting as a Magistrate on the Borough bench Levi was also a Churchwarden of St. Thomas CE church in Wallgate where for a time he was an overseer of the poor.
For over 30 years he was a member of the Independent Order of Oddfellows, a fraternal order, set up to provide care for the needy in a time before the birth of the NHS and the advent of the Welfare State. As well he was instrumental in setting up the Wigan & District Amalgamated Anglers Association and was its first President.
Levi died 21 March 1915 at Arley House, 10 West Beach, Lytham St. Annes. He was buried in Wigan Cemetery in Lower Ince in a double grave alongside his six month old daughter Sarah who had died in 1874 and his wife Caroline who had predeceased him two years previously. His son Richard, who had tragically drowned, lay in an adjoining grave.
Walter Booth, Levi and Caroline’s eldest child was born in 1864 in Bolton and baptised at St. Peter’s Parish Church on 2 October of that year. On 20 November 1889 he married Mary Gee at St. Luke’s CE church in Upholland, near Wigan. Mary was born 25 April 1867 in Scholes Street, Wigan and baptised the following month at St. Catherine's church.
She was the daughter of Alderman John Fithian Gee JP, a very successful businessman who founded J. Gee & Son, a provisions merchant. John was a member of the Wigan Infirmary management board alongside Thomas Cropper Ryley. Mary’s brother Joseph Thomas Gee served two terms as Mayor of Wigan, 1898-99 and 1899-1900.
Alderman John Fithian Gee J.P
Walter entered the family business and started off as an assistant in the brush shop in Millgate. The 1891 census found Walter and Mary living at 7 Abingdon Street in Manningham, Bradford where Walter was a wholesale brush manufacturer like his father and Mary was a drapers assistant. The following year their son Eric Walter Booth was born.
Sometime after Walter and Mary separated but did not divorce. By the time of the 1901 census Walter had moved to London where he was living in St. Pancras and was earning a living as a commercial traveller. A further move followed to Islington in North London where he set up a small factory adjacent to his house at 45 Eden Grove manufacturing shaving brushes. Walter died in 1921 in Islington, aged 57.
Mary moved back to Wigan from Bradford to live at 22 Bridgeman Terrace, the 1911 census finds Mary and her son Eric living in Bedfordshire. During the First World War Eric served as a private soldier in the 12th Battalion Royal Fusiliers before gaining a commission in the Manchester Regiment. After the war they moved to 60 Rawlinson Road in Southport where Eric, now a Director of a Liverpool based oil company married Marie Roze Pearson. Mary Booth died in Southport in 1932, aged 65. Her son died the following year aged 40.
Joseph Booth was born 19 October 1866 in Bolton, and baptised on 11 November 1869 at Holy Trinity Church in Bolton Le Moors. At the age of 14 Joseph was working in his father’s brush factory and eventually became a commercial traveller for the firm. He married Mary Jackson at St. George CE church, Wigan on 9 March 1892. She was the daughter of George Jackson, a butcher of Hope Street, Wigan. Joseph and Mary were to have seven children, five girls and two boys.
Joseph branched out on his own and opened a general merchant’s shop at 32 Liverpool Road in St. Helens. He then moved to 96 Croppers Hill in St. Helens running a sports outfitters and brush dealer business. Then by 1921 to 13 &15 Hardshaw Street in St. Helens where he continued his sports goods outfitters business. The couple retired to 19 Derby Street, Prescot where Mary died in 1950, aged 80. Joseph died 19 February 1952, aged 85.
Richard Booth was born in 1868 in Bolton and baptised on 11 April 1869 at Holy Trinity church, Bolton Le Moors. He married Alice Rimmer at Holy Trinity church, Bickerstaffe near Ormskirk on 7 November 1894. Alice was the daughter of John Rimmer, a grocer. Their daughter Ethel was born in 1895.
Richard died in tragic circumstances aged 40 in 1908. He had been working as a commercial traveller for his father but had been in ill health for several years and had been unable to work for the previous month.
On Saturday 20 November Levi received a letter from his son dated the previous day, as a consequence the Leeds & Liverpool Canal near Richard’s home in Clarence Street in Ince was dragged. Richard’s body was found with two handkerchiefs tied around his legs. At the inquest held in front of Coroner Brighouse the jury returned a verdict of ‘Suicide while of unsound mind’. Richard was buried on 24 November in Wigan Cemetery, Lower Ince, Wigan. Plot H307 CE.
After Richard’s death Alice gained employment as a live in domestic housemaid for Charles Montague Sawyer, a cotton manufacturer at 19 Lancaster Road, Birkdale. Her daughter Ethel went to live with her grandparents in Bickerstaffe. Alice died in 1950 aged 77, in Duke Street, Southport, and was buried alongside her husband in Wigan on the 15th December.
Sarah Ethel Booth was born 31 March 1871 at 47 Wallgate, Wigan. She married William Charles Hatton Gee, a marine engineer, on 10 August 1892 in All Saints Parish Church, Wigan. William’s sister, Mary Gee married Sarah Ethel’s brother Walter Booth. William was the son of Alderman John Fithian Gee as previously mentioned.
Sarah and William had three daughters, Caroline Ellen, Nancy Jackson, and Ethel Mary, and a son Charles William. They first lived at 18 Bridgeman Terrace in Wigan, then moved to 22 Park View. Shortly after the birth of their youngest child Ethel, the couple separated, Sarah went with her children to live with her parents in Common Road, Parbold, where sadly Caroline died in 1901 aged eight. William moved to Russett Road in Blundellsands, near Crosby.
Sarah Ethel Gee with her husband William and daughters, Caroline, Nancy and Ethel
Sarah filed for divorce on 9 March 1911 on the grounds of cruelty and adultery with a woman by the name of Elizabeth Jane Mckie. The National Census taken three weeks later finds Sarah and youngest daughter Ethel Mary living above her shop at 25 Mesnes Street, Wigan where she sold brushes made in her father’s factory. Her parents Levi and Caroline, and her sister Caroline were also residing at the property. At the time of the census Sarah’s two elder children were staying with their father during a custody visit at his home in Blundellsands.
Sarah and William’s final divorce decree came through on 14 October 1912, two weeks later William married Elizabeth Jane McKie at Toxteth, Liverpool. Sarah Ethel later retired to 2 Stanley Road, Lytham St. Annes, where she died 29 July 1923 aged 52.
Her daughter Nancy, now married with children, emigrated to Australia in 1925. Nancy's son Charles served in a Territorial Army Royal Field Artillery unit during the Great War and he too emigrated to the Australian state of Victoria the following year with his London born wife Charlotte. William Gee died during the Second World War on 17 May 1941 in Rock Ferry Birkenhead.
Levi Booth Jnr was born in 1875 at 47 Wallgate, Wigan. His parents returned to their old place of worship, the Holy Trinity church In Bolton Le Moors for his baptism on 7 July of that year. He married Florence Beatrice Myers Tetley on 17 July 1901 at All Saints church in Chapel Fields Lane, Hindley. Their marriage certificate shows that at the time twenty six years old Levi was a watch maker by trade and living in Shevington. However the accuracy of this is in doubt as the 1891 census shows 16 years old Levi as an assistant brush maker to his father and all subsequent census and documents give his occupation as brush maker. Florence was the daughter of James Edward Tetley, a coal merchant from Bradford, Yorkshire and Sarah Elizabeth Myers, who was born in Newton Heath, near Manchester.
Levi and Florence set up home at 53 Hodges Street, Wigan, where their only child Margery Myers Booth was born on 25 January 1905. A move to Clifton Road in the Meols Cop area of Southport followed. Alas all was not well in their marriage and in 1918 they separated. Levi petitioned for divorce on the grounds of her misconduct with William Fairhurst at Levi’s home in Clifton Road. Fairhurst a publican from Woodhouse Lane in Wigan was a friend who had been a witness at their wedding.
The decree Nisi was granted in 1919 and the following year both Levi and Florence remarried, Florence to William Fairhurst at Southport Register Office and Levi on 15 July 1920 to Ada Sidebotham at Hope Congregational Chapel, Wigan. She had been living above his brush shop in the Wiend for a number of years, her brother was Ezra Sidebotham, a printer of long standing who also had a premises in the Wiend. Levi and Florence both died in 1933, Florence on 9 May and Levi on 12 August.
Their daughter Marjorie Myers Booth was destined to be a famous opera singer. In 1928 she made a successful audition with the Berlin State Opera House and became an established favourite with German audiences. She married Dr. Egon Strohm, a German businessman in Southport in August 1936 before returning to Berlin where she eventually became Adolf Hitler’s favourite singer. During World War Two she proved her allegiance to Great Britain by passing on secret information to a British prisoner of war who was working for MI9, the secret service organisation that assisted in the escape of Allied prisoners of war.
Opera singer and WW2 spy, Marjorie Booth.
For full story see Marjorie Booth – The Operatic Spy https://www.wiganlocalhistory.org/articles/margorie-booth
Caroline Booth the youngest of the Booth children was born 3 December 1883 at 29 Upper Dicconson Street, Wigan. She was baptised at Holy Trinity Church, Bolton- Le-Moors on 13 January 1864. The 1911 census finds Caroline living at 25 Mesnes Street in Wigan where she ran a shop selling brushes made at her father’s factory.
The following year on the 24th April Caroline married John Holcroft Rigby, an insurance broker who lived at 9 Swinley Road, at St. Michael & All Angels church. The couple set up home at nearby 24 Swinley Road and had two children, Joyce in 1913 and John in 1916. John Snr. died 17 April 1923 aged 37 and was buried at Christ Church, Douglas in Parbold four days later.
In 1929 Caroline was married for the second time at St. Martin in the Fields, London to widower Leonard Jackson Speight, a civil engineer born in Cleckheaton, Yorkshire. Owing to the nature of his job they moved locations, first to Epsom, then to Putney in London. By the start of the Second World War they were living in Newbury, Berkshire.
Leonard had a successful career and became Chairman of the civil engineering firm L. J. Speight & Partner. This enabled them to travel extensively, the UK Incoming & Outgoing Passenger lists shows them visiting multiple countries including Madeira, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Canada and America. Leonard died 3 June 1951 in Bournemouth, Hamsdhire aged 70. Caroline died 4 May 1965 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent aged 81.
OSWALD PECK (1864-1902)
Oswald Peck was one of fifteen children, eight boys and seven girls born to John Henry Peck and Martha Finch. He was born 5 July 1864 at Denmark Villa, Hawkshead Street in Southport, John Henry inherited the Peck’s oil cloth and tarpaulin business in 1839 on the death of his father George. The company produced waterproof covers for outdoor use such as sheets widely used on carts and railway wagons, sacks, coal bags, horse cloths and nosebags, rope tents, and ambulance stretchers.
The company, which had been established in 1808 then became known as J. H. Peck & Co. He was initially assisted in the business by his younger brother Edwin, who moved to Ormskirk to set up his own small business employing one boy as an assistant. He later emigrated to British Columbia. John Henry created the Peck coat of arms with which he marked all his tarpaulins. The family motto was ‘malo mori quam foedari - I prefer to die than be disgraced’.
Oswald was educated at Wigan Grammar School then attended Hutton Hall Academy Boarding School in Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland between 1875 and 1879. On his return to Wigan he joined the family business where they lived on the factory site at 78 Wallgate. Eventually he became manager of the Limited Liability Company into which the business had been converted.
By the time of the 1881 census John Henry had relocated to North Meols in Southport to live at 52 Hoghton Street. Following his death at his home in 1888 his wife Martha moved back to Wigan. with six of her children, including Oswald to live at Gidlow Lodge in Gidlow Lane.
Oswald Peck 1864-1902
Oswald married twenty year old Mary Evelyn Bryham on 27 April 1892 at St. Andrews CE church in Springfield, Wigan. Mary lived at Pagefield House adjacent to the church where her father William, a mining engineer was a church warden along with William Wanklyn of nearby Springfield Hall, who was the Wigan Borough Treasurer. Her grandfather, also William Bryham was a coal proprietor, and a county and borough magistrate residing at Ince Hall, Wigan.
Oswald's older sister Clara married Revd. William Arthur Wickham, the celebrated vicar of St. Andrew’s Parish. He was a keen amateur photographer and his photographs record the daily lives of ordinary Victorians with images of coal miners, mill girls, pit brow lassies and fish hawkers. In particular his poignant images of young children being fed at a soup kitchen during the miner’s strike of 1893 are remembered. (Wigan Archives hold the original lantern slides and negative plates for this valuable historical collection).
Clara Peck and her husband Revd, William Wickham of St. Andrew's church, Springfield
Oswald moved into Sicklefield House sometime between 1896 and 1898 with Mary and their three eldest daughters, Elfrida, Margaret, and Beatrice who had been born at 19 Park View, Wigan (later renamed Bridgeman Terrace). In the short time that Oswald and Mary lived at Sicklefield they had three more daughters, Kathleen, Edith, and Barbara. The 1900 Electoral Register reveals that Oswald was starting to invest in the property market and owned two freehold houses, numbers 5 and 7 Springfield Road, Wigan.
An article in the Wigan Examiner dated 18 August 1900 reported on a special event that had been held at Sicklefield the previous week. A large number of poor children were collected from different parts of the town and by 2pm nearly 2,000 had assembled on the Market Square. Accompanied by a band the children were transported up Wigan Lane to Brock Mill Lane by a convoy of horse drawn carts. On arrival in the fields at Sicklefield a large number of workers were in waiting to serve each child a mug of milk.
The fields in Brock Mill Lane surrounding Sicklefield House
Entertainment then followed with the youngsters being entertainment with a punch and Judy show, ventriloquist and singers. At 4.30 pm the whole party sat down in rows of fifty’s and were waited upon by one hundred ladies and gentlemen, when a large quantity of the best of food was provided.
After tea there were field sports such as football and tug of war, there was also rambling through the woods which was opened by Mr. Peck for the recreation of the children. Many ladies and gentlemen were engaged in throwing sweets to the children. After the children’s tea the workers, carters and bandsman were invited to the lawn in front of Sicklefield House where light refreshments were served by subscribers and friends.
At 8pm the return journey commenced and all the children once again assembled on the Market Square, the proceedings were closed by all singing the National Anthem before the children were taken safely home.
Oswald contracted tuberculosis from a clerk in the factory whom he would not discharge even though he was in a highly infectious condition. He died from TB and toxemia at Sicklefield on 30 June 1902 aged 37, He was buried in St. Wilfrid’s CE churchyard in Standish by his brother in law Revd. William Wickham, the vicar of St. Andrews church, Springfield.
In January 1908 his wife Mary advertised Sicklefield available for let in the local newspapers. She then moved her family 165 miles south to Bedfordshire where the 1911 census finds Mary and her six daughters living at 86 Castle Road, Bedford. Mary later moved to Bushmead Drive in Bedford where she remained with her daughter Edith.
Sicklefield To Let, Wigan Observer & District Advertiser 18 February 1908
After Oswald’s death the tarpaulin business continued to flourish and two more premises were opened at Varley Street in Manchester and Fontenoy Street in Liverpool. Later the firm won a prestigious contract to supply the War Office and Admiralty. By 1933 the head office was at 66 Wallgate, Wigan and a later move followed to Pottery Road.
The firm was eventually taken over by Andrew Mitchell of Glasgow. Under their name tarpaulin manufacture still continues in Wigan at Unit 7 Swan Meadow Industrial Estate.
Elfrida Mary Peck, Oswald’s and Mary’s eldest daughter, was born 4 March 1893 at Sicklefield and was baptised by Revd. Wickham at St. Andrew’s church, Springfield on 27 April. Following her father’s death and her family’s subsequent move to Bedford, she was educated at Bedford High School for Girls, as were her sisters.
Elfrida worked for the Board of Trade as Secretary of the Bedford Road Transport Committee. The supplement to the Edinburg Gazette dated 1 April 1920 lists Elfrida as being awarded the MBE for services to food control during World War One. Elfrida married William Benjamin Stimson, a school teacher in St. Paul’s church, Bedford on 25 January 1922, they had a daughter Margaret Elizabeth born 1925.
During the Great War William enlisted as a private soldier in the 19th Battalion Royal Fusiliers and attained the rank of Corporal. William entered the theatre of war in France on 14 November 1915. Eight months later in July 1916 he was awarded a commission to Lieutenant and transferred to the 4th Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment. William was awarded the Military Cross for bravery on 27 September 1918. He also received the 1915 Star, British War Medal, and Victory Medal for his military service.
After the war William became a civil servant working as a schools inspector in Africa, the UK Incoming and Departure Passenger lists show him making several trips on his own to Nigeria, sailing from Liverpool. On 25 May 1930, William, Elfrida and their daughter Elizabeth arrived at Southampton having embarked at Tiko, Cameroon, Central Africa. William’s occupation is shown as Superintendent of Education.
At the start of World War Two the 1939 Register finds Elfrida and William living at Hawtrey Drive in Ruislip, Middlesex. William is listed as a school proprietor, headmaster, commissioner in the boy scouts, and an Air Raid Precautions Warden. Elfrida is shown as the headmistress of a kindergarten.
William volunteered his services during the war and was recalled to the Colours as a Major in the Army Education Corps. Tragically William was killed in a flying accident in Nigeria on 8 June 1946 at the age of 53, when a RAF transport plane bound for Lagos crashed killing all twenty two of the crew and passengers. The plane came down in dense bush near the remote village of Oni, sixty miles east of Lagos. A new cemetery was created close to the crash site to bury the victims.
The twelve soldiers and six airmen were from the UK, of the four civilians, two were employed by the Ministry of Supply, the other two were Syrian nationals. In 1967 all the bodies were exhumed and re-interred in Yaba Cemetery in Lagos. William was laid to rest in Plot A, Row K, Grave 6. His headstone has the simple personal inscription of ‘In Loving Memory of Billy’. Elfrida died in Ruislip, Middlesex on 12 January 1981, aged 88.
Margaret Evelyn Peck was born on 18 January 1895 at 19 Park View, Wigan, and baptised at St, Andrews Wigan on the 8 March. She married John Murdoch, a doctor on 21 November 1917 at St. Peter’s church in Parkstone, Dorset. John was a native of Kinross in Perthshire, Scotland.
In the Great War John enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a private soldier. He was promoted to Acting Sergeant then gained a Commission to Captain attached to the 7th Battalion Argyle & Sutherland Highlanders, a Territorial Force unit. John entered the theatre of war in France on 27 May 1915, on 1 January 1916 he was Mentioned in Dispatches, and later was awarded the Military Cross for Gallantry.
The couple had two sons, John McKay Murdoch born 9 October 1918, who became a solicitor and James William Murdoch born 12 October 1921, who followed in his father’s footsteps and became a registered medical practitioner.
John and Margaret first lived in Dorset after their marriage, the 1921 census finds them now living in West Hyde, near Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire. A further move followed to Hove, near Brighton in Sussex, where Margaret died on 30 November 1959, aged 64.
Beatrice Finch Peck was born 10 June 1896 at 19 Park View, Wigan, and was baptised at St. Andrew’s church, Springfield on 20 August. She married Alan Gordon Grierson, a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, at St. Paul’s church, Bedford on 15 August 1918.
Alan was born 13 May 1891 at 45 Hartington Road, Toxteth Park, Liverpool, the second son of Richrd Mansell Grierson, a real estate dealer. The family later moved to a large property in Sefton Park Road, in the leafy suburbs of south Liverpool between Princes Park and Sefton Park.
Alan was awarded an officer cadetship in the Royal Navy in November 1905 at the age of fourteen, eventually being promoted to Lieutenant in 1911. Beatrice became a service wife moving locations as and when her spouse’s naval career dictated. Initially she stayed in Bedford but eventually the couple set up home in Liverpool in Alan’s old family home in Sefton Park Road, his parents having left.
Their son Richard Bryham Grierson was born 24 May 1919 in Bedford, that year Alan was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. Their daughter Beatrice Pauline Grierson was born 4 August 1924 in Havant, near Portsmouth. The Navy List of 1934 shows that Alan retired from the Royal Navy with the rank of Commander. Alan and Beatrice then settled in Chichester, Sussex before deciding to emigrate to South Africa.
The UK Outward Bound Passenger List shows that on 6 August 1950 Beatrice travelled alone on the SS Kliffontein on the month long trip from Southampton to Cape Town, Alan having travelled earlier to make all the necessary arrangements.
They returned to the UK in 1954 to stay with their daughter Beatrice in Camberley, Surrey. The purpose of the visit was to see Beatrice and their three grandchildren before her daughter departed for Malaya to join her husband Captain Anthony Hugh Gye who was serving with the Royal Engineers in Singapore. On their return to England Anthony became one of three military member of Aldershot Council and also Aldershot District Assistant Quarter Master General, retiring with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
On 16 September 1954 Beatrice and Alan embarked at London on the SS Athenic for their return journey to their home at 9 Rue de Jacqueline Somerset in the West Cape Province. Four years later on 16 May 1958 they arrived at Plymouth on board the MV City of York, this time staying with their son Richard in Frinton on Sea, Essex for five months.
Beatrice died 31 March 1960 in South Africa, aged 63. Following her death Alan returned to the UK. He died at the age of 69 on 25 April 1961 in the Galloway Nursing Home in Wash Lane, Clacton on Sea, Essex, a few mile up the coast from his son Richard.
Kathleen Helen Peck was born at Sicklefield House 15 June 1898 and baptised at St. Michael’s & All Angels CE church, Swinley, Wigan.
Kathleen Peck with her Governess at the turn of the 20th century outside the coach house at Sicklefield
Kathleen married Indian Army Captain Robert Victor Proudlock at St. Paul’s church, Bedford on 22 July 1920. Two months later on 17 September she accompanied Robert to Rangoon in India via France and Ceylon on board the SS Yorkshire.
Robert was born 19 May 1897 in Ootacamund, India, the eldest son of Robert Lewis Proudlock who had been the Arboriculture Adviser to the government of Bengal. He returned to England to be educated at Bedford School before returning to join the Indian Army. During World War One he served with the 1/69 Punjabis in the Middle East on the Suez Canal, in the Gallipoli campaign, and later on the Western Front.
Kathleen and Robert’s daughter Kathleen Mary Helen Proudlock was born 3 September 1922 in Bedford, Robert retired from the army shortly on 5 October. His brothers also had distinguished military careers – they were Brigadier Arthur George Proudlock DSC OBE, and Brigadier John Lewis Proudlock DSO.
During the Second World War Robert was temporarily re-employed with the Royal Corps of Signals. On 10 May 1946 Robert and Kathleen sailed from Tilbury on board the SS Stratheden to begin a three year signals assignment in South Asia. He was Commandant of several Signals units and advisor to the Frontier Constabulary and to the Afghan Army.
Robert period of service coincided with the Partition of the British India Empire that led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan (which later split into Pakistan and Bangladesh) and the Union of India (later Republic of India) on 15 August 1947
The Scottish Electoral Rolls lists Robert and Kathleen as owning a property in the village of Kemnay, Aberdeenshire in the ten tear period from 1949 to 1959. In later years, the couple settled in Tenterden, Kent, the name of their house was fittingly called Sicklefield after Kathleen’s childhood home. Robert died in Tenterden on 6 March 1974 aged 76. Kathleen died 29 September 1986 in Gillingham, Dorset, aged 88.
Edith Bryham Peck was born 30 June 1900 at Sicklefield House and baptised at St. Michael’s & All Angels church, Swinley Wigan. She attended Bedford Girls High School like her sisters. Edith remained a spinster and lived with her mother Mary in Bushmead Drive in Bedford.
Edith died 12 October 1935, aged 35 at Beeches Brook, Wisborough Green, Sussex. She was buried alongside her mother who had died eight months previously in Foster Hill Road Cemetery, Bedford.
Barbara Bryham Peck, Oswald and Mary’s youngest daughter, was born at Sicklefield House on 11 November 1901 and was baptised 3 May 1902 at St. Michael's & All Angels church, Wigan. She married Robert Kennedy Emerson on 16 July 1924 at St. Pauls church, Bedford. Robert was born 3 April 1900 in Workington, Cumberland, the eldest child of Louis Perrottet Emerson and Dinah Sharp. His father, a civil engineer, worked for the Irrigation Department of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
On 16 Dec 1918, just after the cessation of hostilities of World War One, Robert enlisted as an officer into the Indian Army. His promotion to the rank of First Lieutenant came twelve months later. In 1922 Robert transferred to the RAF with the rank of Flying Officer. On 12 Jan 1924 he sailed from Liverpool to Port Said in Egypt aboard the SS Chindwin as part of a RAF draft. Six months later he returned to the UK to marry Barbara in Bedford, who then accompanied him back to Egypt. Their daughter Joan Bryham Emerson was born in Cairo on 19 May 1925.
Barbara and Joan returned alone for a visit to the UK on the SS Ranchi, arriving in London via Gibraltar on 26 April 1928. The three of them sailed from Port said for the final time on board the SS Razmak, arriving in London on 18 July 1930. The electoral register of 1937 show Robert and Barbara living at Hillcrest Road, Purley, near Croydon Airport in Surrey.
A move to RAF Doncaster followed where they lived at 43 Ellers Drive throughout the war years from 1939 to 1946. On 10 March 1939 Robert qualified as an Air Traffic Controller, the UK Register taken that September after war had been declared, showed that he had been seconded to the Air Ministry and was posted to Heston Aerodrome in West London.
Barbara had enlisted into the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and the register lists her as still residing in Doncaster, while their daughter Joan was at Blatchington Court Girls Boarding School in Seaford, Sussex.
The London Gazette dated 3 December 1940 shows that Barbara, now with rank of Corporal had been appointed as an Assistant Section Officer. The Gazette published on 19 March 1941 lists Robert as being granted a Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve Commission. His rank being Pilot Officer on probation for the duration of hostilities, working in the Administrative and Special Duties Branch.
After the war Robert and Barbara settled in Stroud, Gloucestershire before retiring to Essex. Their last address was Bryham Cottage, Gambles Green, Terling near Chelmsford. Barbara died there on 3 December 1972, aged 71. Robert died 31 March 1979, aged 78.
A SLAVE OF THE RING – A VICTORIAN TALE .
In the 19th century the majority of working class families couldn’t afford to purchase books, so most Victorian novels first appeared as instalments in weekly newspapers or monthly periodicals. These were narrated by a family member who could read and write or they were read out aloud in public meeting places. Once a serial had been completed it was reprinted in a one volume edition.
In 1889 Wigan author J. Monk Foster mentioned Sicklefield in one of his romance novels ‘A Slave of the Ring’. John Monk Foster was born in Ashton’s Court, Wigan on 30 July 1857, the oldest child to Richard Foster, a miner who later went into the grocery trade, and Ellen (nee Grundy). He was baptised at All Saints Parish Church on 27 September of that year.
After rudimentary schooling John started work at a coal mine at the age of nine. He was passionately fond of reading and clubbed together with like-minded lads to buy, read and share various penny journals. With the opening of the Wigan Free Library in Library Street in 1878 John was free to explore the world of literature and spent all his spare time reading.
He married Ellen Barlow, a dress maker on 20 June 1880 at nearby St. Catharine’s church. The couple first lived at various addresses in Darlington Street East before moving to 7 Foy Street where they remained for the rest of their married life and brought up their eight children, five boys and three girls.
John became a gifted writer and called on his real life experiences of working down the pits in a northern working class town as the basis of his novels. ‘A Slave of the Ring’ was a tale of romance, mining disasters, intrigue, betrayal and murder, centered on the fictitious Lancashire mining town of Ashlynton.
There is no doubt that Ashlynton is Wigan as there are references to the steam whistles of the textile mills calling the workers to their place of toil in the early mornings, a public park in the centre of town at the side of a railway line with a duck pond and a pavilion. He also mentions the parish clock near the old cobbled market square, and the streets of Standishgate and Chorley Road.
The hero of the tale is Paul Massilon, a colliery under manager who was also an up and coming author, specialising in mining stories. Massilon was in love with Mary Stanley, a mill worker who accepted his proposal of marriage but continued seeing another suitor by the name of Harry Grant. Mary and Harry often went for walks along the Douglas Valley and along Brock Mill Lane. Paul was tipped off anonymously about the pair so hid in bushes at Sicklefield, where he secretly over heard the pair in conversation and making plans.
A view of the picturesque Brock Mill Lane from an old postcard of 1906.
The author describes a group of empty buildings, the remnants of what had been the most famed workshop in Lancashire. River Mill Forge (Brock Mill Forge) that once made engines and boilers that few workshops could equal or surpass. A little downstream from the forge a wooden foot bridge spanned a river (River Douglas), near the bridge was a row of cottages (Brock Mill Cottages) where Mary’s friend lived.
From the bridge a long flight of rude steps (64 steps) wound up the steep side of the river bank. At the top of these steps the path went along the side of a rich meadow called Sicklefield which – so tradition said – owed its name to the fact that the grass grown there once a year was so strong that it had to be cut with sickles.
For the final decade of the nineteenth century John enjoyed a degree of popularity, particularly in northern England and Australia where his ‘romances of industry’—tales of the mines, factories, and foundries—were regularly serialised in provincial newspapers in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
John Monk Foster died at his home in Foy Street, Wigan on 30 November 1930, aged 73 and was buried in Wigan Cemetery, Lower Ince, Plot P Grave 71 CE
SUICIDE PACT AT SICKLEFIELD
A real life incident occurred in 1911 that bore a similarity to the ‘Slave of the Ring’ story by J. Monk Foster written some twenty years previously. Thomas Conroy a twenty six year old police constable formed a relationship with a seventeen year old girl by the name of Polly Lloyd, who was employed as a cleaner at Wigan Borough Police Station.
Despite being a married man with three children, Conroy who lived in Pennyhurst Street, in the Wallgate area of Wigan told the young cleaner who lived in Harrogate Street, Wigan that he was single.
After walking out together in public for several weeks the couple became the source of gossip and Conroy was reported to the Police Constable, who suspended him from duty pending further investigation. On the night of 7th August the couple met at their regular rendezvous place in one of the fields adjoining Sicklefield House where Conroy told her he had been suspended. He asked Polly to stay out all night with him, but she refused. She stayed out until 1am and promised to meet him in the same place the following evening.
On the 8th they stayed out all night at Sicklefield where they made a suicide pact. The next morning Conroy went into town with the intention of selling his overcoat and buying some poison He returned with a bottle of Laudanum (a mixture of ten percent opium powder and alcohol, it was the Victorian era’s most popular pain killing medicine, used for a wide range of complaints).
They agreed to stay in a gravel pit at Sicklefield for the remainder of the day and take the poison after dark. After writing suicide notes, him to his wife and Polly to her parents the couple took the Laudanum. Conroy went to sleep but Polly was sick before succumbing to the potion herself. The couple awoke next morning but still under the effects of the drug slept most of the day. They were found by the police the following afternoon, they had been there from the 8th to the 11th, Conroy making several trips into Wigan for food.
Reynolds Newspapers 5th November 1911
Conroy was remanded on a charge of abducting a girl aged seventeen years and a charge of attempted suicide by poisoning. A jury at Liverpool Assizes found him not guilty of abduction but he was sentenced to nine months for attempted suicide.
WILLIAM BALL (1865-1920)
William Ball was born 11 February 1865 at 1 York Street in Wallgate and baptised two months later at St. Catharine CE church. His father, Southport born James, was the son of a farmer and was a joiner by trade.
He relocated to Wigan where the census of 7 April 1861 finds him lodging with widow Elizabeth Hilton at 64 Standishgate. On Christmas Day of that year he married Ann Hilton, Elizabeth’s daughter at All Saints Parish Church, Wigan. James and Ann lived at various addresses including Brunswick Road in Newtown, Woodhouse Lane, and Church Villas in Ince. The couple had six children, four boys and two girls.
William the second born child started off as an assistant in the grocery trade, before becoming a miller, later joined by his younger brother James. He married Swinton born Sarah Crippin Siddall, daughter of a Gentleman, on 3 September 1891 at Christ Church CE, Ince. They first settled in Ince Green Lane before moving to Orrell House in Gathurst Road, Orrell. Here William started in business with his brother James as corn dealers and provender’s, providing animal fodder for domestic livestock.
In 1908 William moved his family to Sicklefield, where they resided for nine years. At some point William made the transition to explosives merchant, whose offices were based at the Prudential Buildings in Library Street, Wigan.
The Ball family pictured on the lawn at Sicklefield with their domestic servant, William and his wife Sarah (seated centre), son Reginald standing between them, Doris (left), Mildred (right), and Maurice (2nd right).
In 1908 William moved his family to Sicklefield, where they resided all through the First World War. At some point William made the transition to explosives merchant, whose offices were based at the Prudential Buildings in Library Street, Wigan. In August 1917 he advertised the contents of Sicklefield for sale by auction and moved his family to 62 Caudray Road, Southport.
Advertisement in the Wigan Observer & District Advertiser August 1917 offering the contents of Sicklefield House foe sale by auction.
William died, aged 55, on 24 August 1920 at 62 West Parade, Rhyl in North Wales. He was buried four days later at Christ Church CE, Douglas in Parbold. Grave No. A6. After her husband’s death Sarah moved back to Wigan from Southport, living at Denstone House, Wigan Road, Standish. She carried on running her late husbands’ explosives business until her son Reginald was ready to take over. She died 12 August 1934 aged 68 and was buried alongside her husband four days later on the slopes of Parbold Hill.
Lilian Ball, William and Sarah’s eldest child was born 9 June 1892 in Ince Green Lane. She was baptised at nearby Ince Christ Church six weeks later on 24 July. Whilst living at Sicklefield Lilian married John Heaton on 3 August 1916 at All Saints Parish church. John resided at the Sables in nearby Spencer Road and was a timber importer and merchant working for his father’s business at 20 King Street, Wigan. The family also owned premises in Sweeting Street in Liverpool, near the Docks.
After the First World War John and Lilian moved to Southport, living at 21 Roe Lane. John died in 1928 aged 37. They had two children, John Stanley who died in 1919 aged eight months and John Roland who was tragically killed in a flying accident whilst serving in the RAF during the Second World War, aged 20.
Roland was a pilot Officer serving in No. 2 (Observation) Advanced Flying Unit based at Millom in Cumberland. On 19 August 1942 he was navigator in an Anson aircraft taking part in a night navigational exercise over the Isle of Man. The plane flew into the side of Snaefel Mountain 200 feet below the summit.
Lilian remarried in 1932 to 52 year old widower Edmund John Chambers, a wholesale provisions merchant. The 1939 Register finds them living at 90 Grange Road in Southport. Edmund died in 1948, Lilian died 19 Dec 1963 aged 71, and was buried alongside her second husband in Liverpool Road Cemetery, Birkdale.
Mildred Hannah Ball was born 6 June 1894 at 208 Ince Green Lane, Ince and baptised at Ince Christ Church on the 19 July. The 1911 census finds sixteen year Mildred at a girls boarding school in Birkdale. She married John Prescott Johnson in 1920 at the Emmanuel Church in Southport.
John was in partnership as a surgeon/physician at 220 Gidlow Lane, Wigan, a detached house on the corner of Rylands Street. He had qualified as a doctor in 1916 in Liverpool. Mildred trained as nurse at Myrtle Street Infirmary for Children in Liverpool and qualified 18 January 1924. By 1927 the local telephone directory shows that John had moved his family the short distance to 280 Gidlow Lane. By coincidence this is now the current site of Beech Hill Medical practice.
Mildred died in Preston in 1986, aged 92. They had two children, Derek William 1921-2008 who went into the medical profession like his father and Margaret Lois 1926-1978.
Reginald Timmins Ball was born 26 July 1897 at Orrell House, Greenbank, Gathurst Road. With the Great War just a few months old nineteen year old Ronald answered his country’s call and on 9 January 1915 enlisted into the 17th Service Battalion (1st City), The Kings Liverpool Regiment. At the time he was an explosives merchant’s apprentice clerk working for his father.
On completion of his basic military training on 29 April 1915 Reginald joined his battalion, part of 89th Brigade of the 30th Infantry Division at Belton Park Camp, near Grantham in Lincolnshire. On 4 September the Brigade moved to Lark Hill Camp on Salisbury for further training before embarking at Folkestone on the SS Princess Victoria bound for Boulogne on 7 Nov 1915.
Reginald served on the Western Front for two years and nine months with 17th Battalion. Apart from local leave in France and Flanders he managed just five days home leave at Sicklefield between 8-13 September 1917.
In August 1918 17th Battalion was reduced to Cadre strength and Reginald was posted to its sister battalion the 13th. On 1 October he was promoted to Lance Corporal while the battalion was on the front line at Ribecourt in the Cambrai sector.
On 8 October the battalion was involved in a brigade attack on the German lines. It suffered heavy losses of ten killed, 111 wounded, and 18 missing in action. Reginald was wounded in action, suffering a gunshot wound to his right leg. He was quickly moved along the tried and tested casualty evacuation chain back to the UK.
After being treated at his battalions Forward Aid Post he passed through No.46 Casualty Clearing Station at Delsaux Farm, near Beugny in the Pas de Calais. From there he was treated at No.18 General Hospital in Etaples, near Boulogne. He was then transported back to the UK by hospital ship and four days after being wounded he was being treated in Wharncliffe War Hospital in Sheffield.
Luckily the wound was a clean one with no bone or nerve damage, his only impairment was temporary loss of movement in his big toe. After 103 days in hospital he made a full recovery and was discharged on 17 January 1919. A month later he was demobilised from the Army and returned to the family home in Caudray Road, Southport. He was paid a gratuity of £35 (worth approx £6,600 today). For his war time service Reginald was awarded the 1915 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal.
The 1921 census finds Reginald staying at the Castle Mona Hotel in Douglas. In 1924 he married Orrell born Jane Gore in Southport, their son William was born the following year. Reginald Timmins Ball died in Ruthin, Denbighshire, North Wales in 1970.
Doris Ball was born 5 July 1900 in Upholland. The 1921 census find Doris and her widowed mother staying lodgings near Uttoxeter in Staffordshire. They were visiting her younger brother, 13 year old Maurice who was a pupil at Denstone College Boarding School.
Doris Ball with her mother Sarah in pony and trap at Sicklefield
In 1926 she married Pemberton born Richard Pennington Gore, at the Emmanuel Church in Cambridge Road, Southport. His father was the proprietor of the Southport & Birkdale Motor Carriage Company in Nevill Street, Southport.
Richard was a veteran of the Great War, he enlisted into the Royal Flying Corps as an Air Mechanic, serving on the Western Front. On 9 April 118 he was compulsory transferred to the Royal Tank Corps at Blandford in Dorset. He was awarded the British War Medal and Victory Medal for his war time service. On his discharge he returned to work as a mechanic in his father’s garage in Southport.
Richard died 1 November 1962 aged 65. Doris died 17 July 1979 aged 79 and was buried alongside her husband in Liverpool Road Cemetery, Birkdale, Plot No. T.1.
Maurice Hilton Ball was born 14 November 1907 in Orrell. The 1921 census lists him as a student at Denstone College Boarding School, near Uttoxeter, Staffordshire.
Maurice Hilton Ball with his mother Sarah in their chauffeur driven car shortly after moving to Sicklefield House.
Maurice married Bessie Blacow, a local girl from Holme Terrace, at Whitley Methodist Church in 1935. The 1939 Register finds them living at nearby 25 Whitley Crescent with their two year old daughter Eileen Carole Ball. Maurice’s occupation is shown as a pelt sorter at a firm of fell-mongers. Bessie died 7 October 1985, aged 80. Maurice died in 1997 aged 89.
JAMES DODSON (1862-1935)
James Dodson was born at 38 Lodge Lane, Toxteth Park, Liverpool on 1 December 1862, the son of James Dodson a butcher and Ellen Fowler. He was baptised at St. Peter’s CE church, Liverpool on 25 January 1863. On leaving school James followed his father into the butchery trade.
James married Jane Garnett, a farmer’s daughter in 1884 in Toxteth Park. After his marriage he opened his own butchers shop in Smithdown Road in Liverpool before moving to Tyldesley where he ran another shop at 14 Castle Street for several years. The 1911 census shows that James and his family were now living in Crosby Green, West Derby where he was employed as a meat shop superintendent.
By 1920 the Dodson family had moved into Sicklefield following the departure of William Ball to Southport. The 1921 census finds James and Jane living at the house with six of their children. James’ occupation was now the District Manager for the British & Argentine Meat. Co. Ltd. His brother George Dodson was a visitor to Sicklefield at the time, he was a servant to G.H. Melly, the Booth Shipping Line owner who resided at the prestigious Abercrombie Square in Liverpool.
Wigan Corporation’s rate book of 1926 shows that James leased Sicklefield House and gardens but now owned the stables. Whilst at Sicklefield James became a stock breeder and built up a herd of pigs but in 1928 he decided to retire. On 13 December of that year he advertised in the Ormskirk Advertiser his entire herd of 65 pure bred Berkshire and First Cross pigs and his pure herd large white boar for sale by auction.
The electoral roll shows that by 1935 James was living at Myles House in Wigan Road, Standish, he died that year 72. After his death his wife Jane went to live with their eldest son George in Stoke on Trent. She died in 1948 aged 85.
Janet Garnett Dodson, James and Jane’s eldest daughter was born 9 January 1890 at 65 Smithdown Road, Liverpool and baptised on the 29th at St. Peter’s church, Liverpool. On 8 September 1915 she married Henry Edmund Robinson at St. Mary the Virgin church in West Derby village.
Henry died three years later just before the end of the Great War whilst serving in the 1016th Motor Transport Company, Army Service Corps in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq). He is buried in Tehran War Cemetery, grave I.V.12.
Whilst living at Sicklefield House Janet was married for a second time. Her wedding to John James O’Donnell, a widower and manager of a butcher’s shop, took place at St. Michael’s & All Angels church in Wigan on 11 July 1927.
The 1939 Register find the couple living at 3 Royston Park Road in Harrow, Middlesex where John was the managing director of a retail butchers shop. John’s daughter from his first marriage, 26 year old Elsie was secretary to a newspaper editor. John died in Harrow in 1955, aged 74. Janet died in Wigan in 1969, aged 79.
Elizabeth Garnett Dodson was born in Smithdown Road Liverpool in 1892 and baptised on 10 April at St. Peter’s church in Liverpool. Elizabeth was the first of the Dodson children to be married whist living at Sicklefield when she married Arthur Henry Bennett at St. Michael’s & All Angels church on 6 September 1922.
Arthur, an engineer’s draughtsman for the Dunlop Rubber Company lived at 14 Kenyon Road, Wigan. His father William was the chief clerk for Peace & Ellis, solicitors of King Street, Wigan. The couple moved to Moorlands House in Haigh were Arthur was engineer for a group of twelve collieries. Their son Roger Sefton Doson was born there in 1926.
Arthur died in Haigh on 3 July 1955 aged 63, Elizabeth died 18 April 1976 aged 84, her address at time of death was 19 Chorley Road, Standish.
Isaac Garnett Dodson was born on 2 March 1896 at Crosby Green, West Derby. He married Phyllis Broughton at St. Michael’s & All Angels, Swinley on 27 August 1932 At the time Isaac was living at Myles House, Wigan Road, Standish.
Phyllis was living at Windyridge, 32 Brock Mill Lane, near to Sicklefield House. Her father was John Jarvis Broughton, a well-known local sports outfitter. His business was later purchased by John Bradburn in 1948.
As the business was known locally as JJB's, Bradburn retained the name, as did Dave Whelan the ex-professional footballer and future owner of Wigan Athletic, when he bought the shop from Bradburn. JJB Sports became one of the largest sports retailers in the UK. The couple had a daughter, Ann, born in 1934.
Isaac and Phyllis first lived at 38 The Northern Road, Great Crosby before moving to Homecroft in Back Lane, Chorley. By the start of the Second World War Isaac was the District Manager for J.H Dewhurst the retail butcher. A further move followed to Ribchester Road, Clayton-Le Dale. Phyllis died 13 December 1960 in Park Lee Hospital aged 58, Blackburn. Isaac died 10 June 1981 aged 85, at the time of his death he was living at 248 Preston New Road in Blackburn.
William Dodson was born 3 August 1903 in Liverpool. He married Irene Rebecca Worthington on 26 February 1930 at King Street Baptist church, Wigan. Irene lived at ‘Strathley’, Brock Mill Lane near to Sicklefield House. After their marriage William and Irene first lived in Oswestry in Shropshire where they had three children, two boys and a girl. They then moved back to Lancashire to settle in Lafford Lane, Upholland where William was employed as a farmer and assistant to a cattle dealer. Later they moved to live at ‘Mistletoe Cottage’, Shop Lane in the village of Duddlestone Heath, near Oswestry. William died 15 April 1973 aged 69 in Shropshire, Irene died 20 April 1981 aged 77.
Margaret Garnett Dodson was born 8 September 1905 in 1863 in Liverpool. After leaving Sicklefield House she lived with her parents and younger sibling James in Myles House, Wigan Road, Standish. She married William Barton at St. Wilfrid’s church, Standish in 1935, shortly before the death of her father.
The 1939 Register taken just prior to the Second World War finds Margaret and William living at Hanfield Cottage in Marylebone Place, off Wigan Lane. William’s occupation is shown as builder and iron and steel merchant.
During the war William was part of the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) services which included demolition and rescue roles, primarily focusing on making bombed buildings safe for other services and, if necessary, demolishing unsafe structures. Light and heavy rescue teams were employed for these tasks, with the latter often involving demolitions and shoring up weakened buildings.
The couple had no children. William died in 1993 aged 84 in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, Margaret died in 1995 aged 89.
James Dodson was born 11 May 1910 at 60 Crosby Green, West Derby and baptised at St. Mary’s church, West Derby on 2 August. He married Edith Mary Campbell on 29 October 1938 at St. Michael’s & All Angels, Swinley. Edith who lived at 297 Wigan Lane, her father Joseph Campbell was a solicitor who had a practice located in the Prudential Buildings in Library Street, Wigan. Joseph was to play a prominent role in the future of Sicklefield.
After their wedding James who was a chartered surveyor and Edith lived with her parents in Wigan Lane. James who was a chartered surveyor by occupation and Edith had two daughters and a son. They later relocated to Mansfield in Nottinghamshire where James died in 1976 aged 66, Edith died in 1998 aged of 86.
JAMES WALKDEN (1872-1939)
The deeds to Sicklefield House had been passed via Molly Penson’s daughter Ellen and son in law Arthur Heron down through the Heron family to Molly’s great granddaughters, Edith Mary Heron and Evelyn Helen Greenup.
In 1932 the sisters sold the house, it was acquired by solicitor Joseph Campbell (father in law of James Dodson mentioned above), in partnership with James Walkden a builder and contractor. James was born in 1872 in Wigan and started off as a cabinet makers apprentice then progressed to foreman joiner.
By 1911 he was living at Monument Lodge in Wigan Lane and went on to develop the Monument Park Estate. Along with his eldest son, also James, he built and owned scores of properties around the Wigan Lane, Swinley, Gidlow, Standish and Aspull areas and it is probable that Walkden Avenue was named after him as the road was only developed around the turn of the century, and first appeared on the 1907 Ordnance Survey map.
He was well known as a rugby player, playing for several local clubs in the amateur era then signing for Wigan in the days before the breakaway Northern Rugby Football Union in 1895. Although in theory the game was amateur in reality the players were paid and James saved all his appearance money in the bank to start his own successful building firm when his playing days were over. He also pursued a political career and was a Justice of the Peace, town councillor and eventually Mayor of Wigan in 1919.
James married Fanny Sharples in 1893 at All Saints Parish Church, they had ten children, six boys and four girls. Two of his sons, James and Peter, followed their father into the building trade working for his firm.
On acquiring Sicklefield in 1932 James used his building firm to divide the house into two separate properties. The west side became No.1 and the east side became No. 2 Sicklefield. The east side was leased by James’s son Peter Walkden, the west side by Albert Edward Atherton, a well-known local sportsman.
Fanny died 11 February 1961 at 288 Wigan Lane. James died just after the start of World War Two on 1 December 1939, at Cheadle Royal Hospital in Cheshire.
PETER WALKDEN (1902-1982)
Peter Walkden was born at 32 Vine Street, Whelley, Wigan on 1 April 1902. He followed his father and older brother James into the building trade working for his father’s firm, becoming a master builder.
He married Vera Parsons on 28 April at St. Michael's & All Angels church. Vera, who had been born in Fleetwood lived at 107 Wigan Lane, a tobacconist shop on the corner of Penson Street owned by her father Ernest. Peter and Vera had two children, Elizabeth born in 1930 and Peter in 1934.
In 1933 James moved his family into the now divided house, living on the east side. The 1936 Wigan Corporation Rate Book shows that Peter was paying a rate of £2. 19s. 1d, collected half yearly, this included a domestic charge of £1 15s 1d and a special charge of 12 shillings each for W.C and bath.
In 1939 following the death of his father, Peter left Sicklefield and moved back into his old family home, Monument Lodge in Wigan Lane. Peter died 13 November 1982, aged 80. His address at time of death was 292 Wigan Lane. His wife Vera died in 1993, aged 90.
ALBERT EDWARD ATHERTON (1897-1987).
Albert Edward Atherton was born 3 December 1897 in Chapel Street Ashton in Makerfield and was baptised 23 January 1898 at St. Thomas’s church. He was the eldest child of George Henry Atherton, a collier and Margaret (nee Jones).
The 1921 census finds Albert at 21 Salisbury Street, Chester where he was a boarder, whilst a full time student teacher at Chester College. The following year on 26 January 1922 he married Hannah Seddon Clephan at St. Oswald CE church in Chester. Hannah, a teacher who resided at 10 Bridgeman Terrace, Wigan with her widowed mother. Over the years her father ran an ironmonger/whitesmith/electrical business at various addresses in Standishgate, Ormskirk Road and Dicconson Street.
In September 1933 Albert, by now a councillor for St. Andrew’s ward was one of the joint organising secretaries of the Wigan Motor Trials and Coachwork competition on behalf of the Mayor of Wigan Infirmary Appeal. Gracie Fields, the famous singer from Rochdale was one of the judged in the coachwork contest and the starter for the speed trial.
In 1933 Albert and Hannah moved into the west side of Sicklefield House, Hannah died there on 14 March 1935 aged 54, she was buried in the Clephan family grave in Wigan Cemetery, Lower Ince, Plot G508 CE. The following year on 17 August 1936 Albert married for a second time to Lillian Sefton Worthington, thirteen years his junior, at St. James CE church in Poolstock, Wigan The wedding was attended by the Mayor of Wigan, Councillor T. Smith, his wife and several aldermen and councillors. The reception was held in the Victoria Hotel, Liverpool.
Albert Edward Atherton and his bride Lillian Sefton Worthington, 17 August 1936
Under the banner ‘Lancs sportsman to wed’ the Liverpool Evening Express dated 29 July 1936 describes Albert as the manager of Liverpool Stanley Speedway track and well known racing motorist. Lillian is reported to be an amateur stage actress and a member of Toc H (an abbreviation for Talbot House, a Christian movement founded in WW1 by the Revd. Tubby Clayton in Poperinghe, Flanders. It was a place where all troops, irrespective of rank could go for a brief respite from the battle field).
In a newspaper report dated 17 August 1936 the Liverpool Echo describes Lilian as a well-known amateur actress and Albert as an ex Wigan Councillor, well known racing driver, golfer and rugby player.
The 1939 Register of the UK taken on 29 September shows Albert and Lillian living at Sicklefield. At some point Albert had chosen a career change as his occupation was now shown as a commercial traveller for medical supplies. He was also a wartime volunteer in the Auxiliary Fire Service.
Living with them was Albert’s parents George and Margaret, and their two year old daughter Lilian Wendy Atherton. She had been born at Sicklefield on 16 August 1937. A month before declaration of war being declared in September 1939 Lillian gave birth to their son Peter Neville Atherton at Sicklefield. Albert died in Wigan in 1987 aged 90. Lillian’s death was registered in Preston and South Ribble in 1997, she was aged 86.
JOHN LENNOX BARBOUR
John Lennox Barbour was born to Richard Barbour and Annie Lennox on 4 September 1884 in the parish of Urr in Dalbeattie, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland. A draper by trade, he came to Wigan in the early 1900’s where the 1911 census shows him lodging with Margaret McLeod at 6 Wrightington Street, Wigan. The following year John married Christina Marsden in Wigan. They set up home at 3 Wrightington Street and had three children, Alexander Marsden Barbour in 1913, Nancy Lennox Barbour in 1917, and Margaret in 1922
John enlisted into the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) as an aircraftsman on 24 September 1917, mid-way through the Great War. His period of engagement was for the duration of hostilities and he was to be involved in land operations only. John was attached to HMS President II, not a ship but a shore establishment that looked after his pay, the forwarding of mail and other administration.
He first went to the RNAS training establishment at Sydenham, near Crystal Palace in Kent. After two weeks of basic training he was posted to RNAS Withnoe, an aircraft storage facility near Plymouth in Devon. There then followed a seven week spell in the Eastern Mediterranean Theatre of Operations, before returning to the UK and the RNAS Depot Tregantle, again near Plymouth.
On 23 March 1918 John was promoted to Aircraftsman First Class but a week later on 1 April the Royal naval Air Service combined with the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) to form a new service, the Royal Air Force (RAF). John was issued with the new service number of 238698 and a new rank of Private First Class. He was posted to the Mediterranean theatre again, this time to the Air Personnel Department at Spinola Bay in Malta.
John was transferred to the RAF Reserve on 5 April 1919 and finally discharged from the RAF a year later on 30 April 1920. A master tailor, he set up a drapers business, J.L Barbour Ltd. at 51 Mesnes Street, Wigan and eventually moved home to live at ‘Blair Atholl’, 387 Wigan Lane. The 1939 Register finds John and Christina living there, during the war years he was a special constable driving patrol cars.
In 1942 John bought the deeds to 1 Sicklefield, the west side, from Albert Atherton and leased it out to the Taylor family, Mrs. E.M. Taylor was the Honorary Acting Secretary for the Wigan Branch of the RSPCA. The following year in June 1943 John was appointed to be a Wigan Magistrate.
Christina his wife died in 1946 aged 58 and was buried 24 April at Christ Church Douglas in Parbold, grave No F45. Following her death John transferred the deeds for the west side of Sicklefield to his son Alexander who removed the dividing wall, making the property one house again, but with the facilities for two families to live there. About 1948 his wife’s parents, Stanley Corsellis and Bessie Randall moved to Sicklefield to live with them.
John Lennox Barbour died 25 July 1968 aged 83 and was buried alongside his wife in Parbold.
STANLEY CORSELLIS RANDALL MM (1882-1962)
Stanley Corsellis Randall was born in Wrightington on 16 December 1882, the son of Robert Woodhouse Randall a railway telegraphist who worked at Wigan North Western Station, then Springs Branch at Lower Ince, Wigan. His mother was Ann Smith, a blacksmith’s daughter from Wrightington became a retail hosier in Wigan Market Hall. Stanley was baptised on 31 December that year at Christ Church, Douglas in Parbold. On leaving school he followed his father onto the railways and became a clerk.
Stanley married Bessie Jane Tarver on 19 August 1908 at St. Andrew’s church in Springfield, the service was conducted by Revd. William Wickham, the celebrated Victorian photographer. Her parents, John who was a railway clerk and Rebecca both originated from Westmoreland and came to Wigan in 1877 with their four eldest children, settling in the Springfield area. In 1909 Stanley attended Victoria University in Manchester to study railway accountancy.
Bessie Jane Randall (nee Tarver) 1882-1963
Stanley and Bessie had five children, sadly four of them, three sons and a daughter were still born, their daughter Eileen born in 1913 was the only survivor. Stanley became a Governor of Appley Bridge School and on 25 October 1913 he was initiated into the Peace Lodge of the Freemasons at Wigan.
In 1917 with the Great War three years old, thirty four year old Stanley enlisted in the Royal Engineers. After basic military training, owing to his railway background he was allotted to the Waterways and Railways Section, a specialized branch of the Royal Engineers. He was posted to the newly formed 12th Light Railway Operation Company based at Bordon Camp in Hampshire, a few miles south of the garrison town of Aldershot.
At 6am on Friday 11 May 1917 three officers and 251 other ranks left Bordon for Southampton. They disembarked at Le Havre the following morning at 7am and moved to a rest camp. By the morning of the 18th the Company had arrived at Romarin on the French Belgian border, to the north west of Armentieres. Here they took over the control and operation of the railway system.
On 7 June the week long Battle of Messines commenced in Flanders. During this period the Company established a record 2,250 tonnes of ammunition supplied to the front line, and despite persistent enemy shelling oversaw the smooth passage of hospital trains to a nearby dressing station and Field Ambulance. On the 17th the camp and rail yards were badly hit by heavy shelling. Three huts and the cookhouse were destroyed and every building damaged. A week later the area was bombed by enemy aircraft.
W.O.1 (R.S.M) Stanley Corsellis Randall M.M Royal Engineeers, 1882-1962
On the 4th of July 1917 His Majesty King George V visited the Front and the men of 12th Light Railway Company lined the route on the Neuve Eglise to De Seul road to see the Royal party drive by. By 24 August 1917 the Company was operating in the Ypres Salient during the Third Battle of Ypres, more commonly known as the ‘The Battle of Passchendaele’.
On 14 April 1918 at Westonhoek in Flanders, a railway wagon carrying miscellaneous ammunition caught fire and started exploring. Despite the extremely dangerous situation five men, including an officer, Stanley now an Acting Warrant Officer, a Sergeant and two Sappers tackled the blaze and extinguished it. There were several injuries, including the officer who had a hand blown off and a Sapper who lost a leg.
There is no doubt the prompt action by the soldiers saved the lives of many troops, by preventing the entire ammunition dump going up in flames. For his part in the incident Stanley, now with the rank of Warrant Officer First Class and the appointment of Regimental Sergeant Major was awarded the Military Medal for Gallantry in the Field. His award was confirmed in the Supplement to the Edinburgh Gazette published 18 July 1918.
Certificate congratulating Stanley on the award of his Military Medal for gallantry signed by General Herbert Plumer, Commander of the Second Army
Two weeks later on 30 April Stanley was involved in a similar incident a train full of ammunition had been shunted into an ammunition refilling point. After the engine had been detached and was being run off the train the second truck suddenly burst into flames. The remainder of the train was uncoupled from the two blazing trucks and the driver immediately drove the engine back and pulled them away to safety to isolate them. As they uncoupled the trucks again the ammunition exploded wrecking the engine and both trucks. The fireman and two Sappers who was assisting were killed and the driver was seriously injured.
In August 1818 the Engineers were operating in the Poperinghe area to the west of Ypres. On 31 October 1918, two weeks before the signing of the Armistice, 12th Light Railway Company was disbanded at Bailleul in northern France and it’s personnel posted to other units. Stanley stayed on in France and was present at the signing of the treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919, the date when the First World War officially came to an end.
After the war Stanley and Bessie lived with Bessie’s father John Tarver at Hill View in Appley Bridge, her mother having died. He returned to his old job on the railway and was eventually promoted to regional auditor. This involved him relocating to Middlesex, the 1939 Register lists him and Bessie living at 1 Hadley Gardens in Chiswick.
The Grey Man Murders
At 8.50am on Tuesday 11 November 1941 (Armistice or Veteran’s Day) Stanley Corsellis Randall was in his bedroom at 1 Hadley Gardens when he heard a commotion outside and what sounded like gunshots. He looked out of his bedroom window to see a man stood in the road holding a shotgun pointed towards his garden. He looked to one side to see a man slumped on the ground in front of the locked side garden gate. Stanley ran outside to see the gunman drive off in a dark blue saloon car. The victim was Leslie Ernest Ludford, a twenty eight year old disabled solicitor who walked with the aid of two wooden crutches. He managed to say a few words to Stanley, ‘Brent, it was Brent.
A few minutes earlier Leslie Ludford had left his home in nearby Foster Road to walk to work. On the way in Hadley Gardens he stopped briefly to buy a poppy from poppy seller Ada Dancy. Outside Stanley’s home he was shot twice, the gunman then turned his weapon on Mrs. Violet Mary Pinder who had been walking a few paces behind Leslie Ludford. Violet survived the injuries to her right thigh and buttocks but Leslie died shortly after arriving at Chiswick Hospital.
The gunman then went on a killing spree in the Chiswick, Hammersmith and Acton areas where he shot another seven woman, two of them fatally. All the witnesses described the gunman as tall, wearing a grey suit and grey trilby, the police immediately dubbed him the ‘The Grey Man’. Luckily Ada the poppy seller had seen the registration number of the car, GGC 83.
After scouring the West London car hire firms the police discovered that the renter of the blue Hillman Minx car was a Mr. P.J Ward who was staying at a boarding house in Barrowgate Road, Chiswick. He was also a Gunner in 3 Troop, 317th Searchlight Battery, Royal Artillery stationed at Newmarket racecourse in Suffolk. Armed police were mobilised in Flying Squad cars all over London to search for Ward, after being spotted and chased his car was finally stopped on the Watford by-pass and arrested.
Philip Joseph Ward was a troubled young man, in 1927, at the age of seventeen, Maida Vale Hospital for Nervous Diseases had recommended that he be committed to an asylum. After a later suicide attempt he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and in 1932 became a voluntary patient at Stone House Asylum where he was declared insane. In 1936 he discharged himself and went to live alone in lodgings in Hom Lane, Acton.
That year he joined the Brentford & Chiswick Young Conservative Club on Chiswick High Road where he insisted on being called by his alias ‘Ross Brent’. Soon complaints were made against him regarding inappropriate behaviour towards several females, for which he received a warning. He later had his membership cancelled by the club committee for attacking the Chairman, who was none other than Leslie Ernest Ludford, the solicitor who was to become his first victim four years later.
His resentment and bitterness smouldered and in November 1941 he decided to take revenge against the committee members who he thought had conspired to have him dismissed. He planned his attacks meticulously and hired the same car several times to drive the route between his planned victim’s addresses. However on the fateful day he was unable to track down some of them and in his unbalanced mind decided that everyone was against him, so decided to kill innocent people.
His trial began on Wednesday 21 January 1942 at the Old Bailey where Justice Gerald QC stated that Ward was unfit to stand trial and should be be detained at the King’s pleasure. He was committed to the secure Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital in Berkshire on an indeterminate sentence, where he died in January 1972 aged 61.
In 1948 on his retirement from the railways Stanley and Bessie returned to Wigan to live at Sicklefield with his daughter Eileen and son in law Alexander Marsden Barbour. Stanley died in January 1962 aged 79 and was buried in the churchyard of Christ Church, Douglas in Parbold. Bessie died the following year on 2 February 1963 aged 80.
ALEXANDER MARSDEN BARBOUR (1913-2006)
Alexander Marsden Barbour was born 14 February 1913 at 3 Eccleston Street, Wigan. His father John, a draper by trade was born near Dalbeattie in Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland and settled in Wigan in the early 1900’s. Alexander followed his father into the drapery trade, eventually taking over his business, J.L Barbour Ltd at 51 Mesnes Street, Wigan.
Alexander married Wigan girl, Eileen Randall at All Saints Parish church on 20 April 1938. Eileen was born in Shevington to Stanley Corsellis Randall and Bessie Jane Tarver. A very accomplished musician, she studied at the Royal College of Music before her marriage to Alexander.
Professional door plate belonging to Eileen Randall
In 1939 Alexander and Eileen rented 2 Sicklefield House, his close neighbour in the other side of the house being Albert Edward Atherton as previously mentioned, The 1939 Register shows that Alexander was a master tailor and at the start of World War Two he served as a special constable along with his father John, his wife Eileen is shown to be a telephonist at Wigan Infirmary.
The following year Alexander enlisted in the Royal Air Force, with the assistance of his service records it is possible to trace his movements during the Second World War. On 18 July August 1940 he reported to the newly opened No.3 RAF Depot at Padgate near Warrington to undergo his month long recruit basic military training.
On 22 August Alexander was sent on a month long trade training course at the No. 8 Recruit Centre, belonging to the RAF’s 4th Wing at RAF Manston, located on the Isle of Thanet in Kent. He then proceeded on another month long course of store accounting and book keeping at the Equipment Training School at RAF Cranwell located at Sleaford in Lincolnshire.
Now fully trained and with the rank of Leading Aircraftsman, he received his first operational posting on 22 November 1940 to No.16 Maintenance Unit which was a large storage and supply depot at RAF Stafford in Staffordshire, here he was involved with the distribution of aircraft spares and equipment.
In early 1942 the war came to Sicklefield House when a German aircraft jettisoned it’s bombs in the fields close to the house. At the time air raids were still continuing in the Manchester and Salford areas and it is likely that a Luftwaffe plane was diverted away towards Wigan by the RAF.
On 19 March 1942 Alexander embarked on a troop ship at Liverpool on his way to war in the Middle East. To reach it’s destination the convoy had to sail the long route round the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of South Africa, the Mediterranean route being closed at that time to all but the Malta convoys. After stop overs at the ports of Freetown in Sierra Leone and Durban in South Africa the ship finally arrived at Suez in Egypt on 26 May 1942. From there the RAF personnel were transported to the Personnel Transit Camp, known as the Middle East Pool, at Kasfareet on the Great Bitter Lakes.
After two months in Egypt Alexander was posted to RAF Haifa in Palestine, a Fighter station where he spent eleven months before being transferred on 1 April 1943 to 233 Wing base Camp who were in the Western Desert in Egypt. Six weeks later on 20 May he was posted to the Air Ammunition Park belonging to 121 Maintenance Unit, also in the Western Desert
Following lessons learned during ‘Operation Torch,’ the Allied invasion of Morocco and Algeria in November 1942, it was decided to form beach parties from personnel of the army, navy, and air force for use in combined operations during the upcoming invasion of Sicily and Italy. These parties became known as ‘Beach Bricks’ or just ‘Bricks’ for short. Middle East Command formed six Bricks, numbered 31 to 36.
The RAF component of these bricks comprised of five officers and 32 other ranks of all trades, Alexander was one of the two officers and 17 other ranks from Air Ammunition Parks chosen to be part of 32 Brick for explosive duties, They trained for their new role on the beaches of Egypt.
‘Operation Husky’ the Allied invasion of Sicily, aimed at forcing Italy out of the war and diverting German forces away from France and the Eastern Front launched on 9 July 1943. It involved a large amphibious assault, with over 180,000 soldiers disembarking on 26 different beaches.
Attached to the 5th Infantry Division, 32 Brick were among the first to land on Beaches 45 and 46 near Cassibile to the south of Syracuse, in support of the landings and the subsequent establishment of logistical support. The defence and security of 32 Brick was provided by 2nd Battalion Highland Light Infantry. Following the successful landings which led to the downfall of the Italian Fascist Government, 32 Brick came under the command of the North West African Air Force (NAAF), a joint Allied and American organisation.
An R.A.F Beach Brick on one of the invasion beaches in Italy 1944
Two months later on the night of 2nd/3rd September Operation Baytown, the invasion of the Italian mainland, across the Straits of Messina from Sicily commenced. As in Sicily, Alexander was part of 32 Brick attached to the 5th Infantry Division of 13th Corps for the assault landings in Calabria.
The task of 13th Corps was to cross the Straights and land in two small bays north of Reggio. The 1st Canadian Division was to capture Reggio and the airfield south of that town, while the British 5th Division took San Giovanni, to the north, and the coastline to Canitello. The object was to secure safe passage for naval forces through the Straights of Messina and engage enemy forces to assist Operation Avalanche that was to begin six days later.
In October 1943, with no further operations imminent, a reorganisation of R.A.F Beach Units in the Mediterranean was planned and in November the R.A.F Components of Beach Bricks were disbanded. On 5 November 1943 Alexander was posted back to the U.K to No.67 Equipment Unit, based in Taunton, Somerset. Here he was promoted to the rank of Temporary Corporal.
On 31 March 1945, just before the end of the war Alexander received his final posting, returning to No. 16 Maintenance Unit at R.A.F Stafford, his first posting nearly five years previously. At Stafford his rank of Corporal was made substantive. Finally on 21 February 1946, after five years and seven months of service Alexander reported to No. 101 Personnel Despatch Centre at Kirkham on the Fylde Coast, to be released from the R.A.F. For his war time service he was awarded the 1939-45 Star, Italy Star with Africa clasp, War Medal 1930-1945, and Defence Medal.
Alexander Barbour, his wife Eileen, their three children John, Graham and Christine along with Eileen's parents Stanley and Bessie Randall at Sicklefield about 1957.
Alexander returned to No 1 Sicklefield to continue his career as a draper and raise a family, he and Eileen had three children, two boys John, and Graham Alexander, and a daughter Christine, who remembers her time growing up at Sicklefield fondly.
‘After Sunday lunch, my mother use to send me to Mrs. Brookwell, who lived in the Brock Mill cottages at the bottom of the steps, for Gold Leaf cigarettes and a Kit Kat. Mrs. Brookwell use to sell these from her front door. Oh happy memories. Once lost half a crown on the seventy steps, bet it’s still there in the undergrowth.’
Pictured in 1920, the steps from Wigan Lane that lead down to Brock Mill Cottages and the bridge over the River Douglas.
Brock Mill Cottages by the River Douglas bridge where Brock Mill Lane and 64 steps meet
The old Sicklefield coach house in 1972 prior to demolition
In 1980 Alexander and Eileen moved into the west side and sold the east side of the house to their son Graham and his wife June, who converted the property back to two separate dwellings. The east side of the house was sold on in 2007 The coach house then came into the possession of Christine and her husband in 1972 who demolished it and built a new property, Stabledene House on the site.
Christine Barbour-Moore at Stabledene House
Alexander Barbour died on 3 July 2005 aged 92, Eileen had predeceased him six years earlier on 24 January 1999 at the age of 85. In 2015 the west side was also sold to new owners, ending the Barbour family's nearly eighty year association with Sicklefield House.
21st Century
After 207 years Sicklefield House still sits peacefully in the Douglas Valley. Since its construction in 1818 during the reign of King George III, the 'Mad King' it has seen eight monarchs come and go, witnessed world events, and been the home of numerous people who led fascinating lives. It is testament to the vision of Molly Penson, the woman with a mania for houses.
Graham Taylor 2025
Acknowledgements Many thanks to Christine Barbour-Moore for access to photographs and to her many years of research on Molly Penson and Sicklefield House.
Sources
Ancestry
Ancient & Loyal website
British Forces Records
Find My Past
Google Maps
Graces Guide to British Industrial History
Haigh Foundry and Brock Mill Forge – A Brief History by Ted McAvoy 2010
Lancashire Archives
Lancashire Online Parish Clerks
Lancashire Births, Marriages, & Deaths
Murder Mile – True Crime Podcasts
National Archives
UK Navy Lists 1888-1970
U.S. Quaker Periodicals 1829 – 1929.
The Family of Peck by Herbert Peck of Lincoln’s Inn, Barrister of Law
The John Rylands Library
Wigan Archives
Wigan Buildings .co.uk
Wigan Local History & Heritage Society
Wigan World
Wikipedia
WW2 Talk