barton stacey in edwardian times stacey parish in... · 2018. 3. 14. · edwardian era, one in...

Barton Stacey in

Edwardian Times

A talk given in All Saints’ Church,

Barton Stacey 6 September 2013

Barton Stacey Parish Local History Group

We exist to preserve the archives of our parish and to do more research into its history. We do not organise a programme of talks of general historical interest - there are other local groups who already do this superbly. Instead, we talk to local people and ex-residents and we go to original documents and research the detailed history of this parish. All our findings are freely available on our website and through talks like this one. Of course, we have the inevitable Committee but we also welcome other people contributing memories, stories and research of their own. Our web site can be found at http://www.bartonstaceyhistory.co.uk/ You can contact us at [email protected]

http://www.bartonstaceyhistory.co.uk/

Barton Stacey in Edwardian Times

© Barton Stacey Parish Local History Group 1

Edward VII

1901-1910

Queen Victoria

1837-1901

The Victorian era ended with the

queen's death in 1901 and the

accession of her son Edward VII. He

had then been married to Alexandra

of Denmark for 35 years and was

aged 60 when he came to the throne.

He died in 1910, to be succeeded by

his son George V who with Queen

Mary took the monarchy through to

the time of the abdication.

In Downing Street the Liberals were in

power. Campbell-Bannerman led the

Liberal Party to a landslide victory over the

Conservative Party [led by Lord Balfour] at

the 1906 general election. Campbell-

Bannerman resigned as Prime Minister in

1908 owing to ill health and was replaced

by his Chancellor, Herbert Asquith.

The Liberals at this time enacted a number

of social reforms - including trades union

reforms, and the introduction of free

school meals for all children.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman,

Prime Minister 1905-1908

George V

1910-1936

Herbert Henry Asquith,

Prime Minister 1908-1916



The women of Barton Stacey did not elect these men, of

course. No women had the vote until 1918 and only 60% of

men. Only men who paid an annual rental of £10 or who

held land valued at £10 had the vote and of course, did not

get the vote until the age of 21. In 1918 The Representation

of the People Act extended the vote to all men over the age

of 21. The same Act allowed about 40% of women the vote.

A woman had to be over the age of 30 and some writers on

the subject say that this was because she was less likely to

have suffragist leanings and to have a household to care for.

Two censuses of the population were taken in the

Edwardian era, one in 1901, the other in 1911. This is our

analysis of the parish of Barton Stacey in 1911.

544 people in 1911Children:One-third of the total are children under 14122 of school age.

200 Men aged 14+:

172 Women aged 14+:

farmworkers122

otheroccupations69

retired16

housewives97

in service33

single daughters, nooccupation26other19



Of the total population of 544 in 1911

• One-third were children, far fewer than today.

• There were more men than women, a result of

incomers coming here for work.

• Three-quarters of the men worked on the land.

There were 7 farmers, 2 farm bailiffs, 5

gamekeepers and about 108 farm workers. The

same land is managed by a handful of workers

today.

• We have separated out the occupations of these

farm workers and found that one-third of them

worked with horses. There were a few grooms and

coachmen for the wealthier residents but the

majority in this category were carters on the farms.

This was the age of the horse.

• A number were carpenters and wheelwrights for

the second biggest employer here after the farmers,

whose name was Charles Pitt. Here is Charles on

the right with his workforce in 1903.



Charles Pitt came from Wiltshire in 1892. He had

established a business building trailers on the land

now occupied by Peter Goldings and Lionel

Hitchins.

• The other men were publicans, or gardeners for the

big houses - Wade's House, Drayton Lodge, Newton

Stacey Manor House and so on.

• There was no doctor in the parish. He lived in

Sutton Scotney and used to do his rounds on his

horse, coming down The Drove and then going on

to Bransbury via the Difford Track.

• There were a few women with professions - two

nurses, one of them a midwife, a laundress, the

wives of the publicans, one lady kept a boarding

house, and two teachers.

The shape of the parish was as it is today, and as is has been

virtually unchanged for centuries, surrounded by the six

adjacent parishes of Longparish, Bullington, Wonston,

Crawley, Chilbolton and Wherwell.



The parish, of course, is the ancient area of church

administration, with its parish church at the hub.

This modern map shows the distinctive shape of the parish

with Hill Farm in the south adjacent to the A272 from

Winchester. The A30 divides Hill Farm from the bulk of the

parish. The crossroads at Hill Farm leads north to Wherwell

and Andover via the B3420. The A272 was the Roman Road

from Winchester and this continues as a bridleway across

the parish, effectively dividing the hamlet of NEWTON

STACEY and its associated farmland from the hamlet of

BRANSBURY and the village of BARTON STACEY.

The road leading north to the village from the A30 passes

the Church in the village centre and continues over the river

Dever at Difford Bridge and on to Longparish.

In the Edwardian era there was, of course, no Roberts Road.

The army land was requisitioned at the time of the Second

World War, purchased from McCreagh in 1943 and the

construction of the Married Quarters begun in the 1950s.

There was no Kings Elms, which was built in stages from

1939 through to 1971.

We must not forget the area called DRAYTON north of the

A303 where in Edwardian times stood Drayton Lodge, the

home of the lord of the manor since the 18th century. This

fine old house is long gone and we have so far been unable

to locate a photograph. This area became, of course, the site

of four army camps.



We have chosen to illustrate life for a typical

family of farm labourers in our parish.

The DOSWELL family lived in the village itself. Sadly, we

have no photographs of them but we have found them listed

in our parish registers, and, of course, in the censuses that

were taken in Barton Stacey. Here they are recorded in the

census of 1901.

WALTER DOSWELL was born in the village and so was his

father before him. In censuses farm workers were usually

called 'agricultural labourer' or 'ag lab' for short. Walter

married SARAH COLLINS in 1881 so at the time this census

was taken they had been married for 20 years. Seven

children were living in their three-roomed cottage at the

time of the 1901 census but, in fact, Sarah Doswell had had

nine children since their marriage. Two had died by the time

this census was taken.



With a little detective work we have been able to pinpoint

where in the village they lived. To understand this, it is

necessary to understand what happened at census time.

The census enumerator was a local man, in our case Arthur

Froome who ran the shop and Post Office. The enumerator

would hand out a form, called a schedule, to each household

and on this form they would record the name of everyone in

that household, their ages, whether or not they were

married, what they did for a living and where they were

born.

Arthur Froome would then collect up all these forms and

record everyone in the parish in one book, roughly in the

order in which the houses occurred down the street.

In a town the streets had names and the houses had

numbers. This was not the case in a village and ingenuity is

required to work out where you are when looking at a

village census. The enumerator would specify certain

properties - the farmhouses, the shops and the houses

where the wealthier people lived, such as The Vicarage and

Barton Cottage, but when recording the address of the more

humble dwellings the enumerator wrote 'Barton Street'. In

Bransbury he would specify the Manor and the Mill, but the

majority of dwellings would have as their address

'Bransbury'. Similarly with Newton Stacey.

The entire page from this book that includes Walter

Doswell's family is shown on the following page. The

numbers which appear in the left hand column are not

house numbers, of course, but the number of the schedule

(form) he had allocated to that household.



North, the Vicarage is on the next census page



By looking at the census pages before and after this one, and

armed with a map of the time, we have established that Mr

Froome started his list of inhabitants, household by

household, moving from south to north along the village

street. The Doswells lived between the Methodist Chapel

and Wade's Farm.

The Ordnance Survey produced a map of Barton Stacey in

1910. Here is the portion of The Street north of Wade's

Farm as far as the crossroads at the centre of the village, and

the church.

1910Ordnance Survey,north of Wade’s Farm



Before moving to the area south of Wade's Farm towards

the Chapel - where we think the Doswells' cottage stood - it

is worth pausing to look at this more central part of the

village. The Doswell children went to the village school,

which was then in Bullington Lane, at the corner with

Gravel Lane (called the Back Lane locally). The school had

stood on this spot since 1819. The then Lord of the Manor,

Henry Wright-Wilson, had granted land at Barton Stacey on

the south of the road from Bullington to Sutton Scotney for

the 'erection of a National School for education of poor'. The

school was rebuilt in 1896 following a fire as shown by a

plaque on the wall.

This is the modern view down Bullington Lane with All

Saints at the bottom and the old school building on the

corner of Gravel Lane in the foreground.



Doubtless some of the Doswell children are in this

photograph, dated 1905, or the one following, of unknown

date.



There were 122 children of school age in the village around

1910, from all parts of the parish, though we think that the

small number of Newton Stacey children might have gone to

Chilbolton to school.

Walter Doswell and his sons had a choice of three pubs at

which to enjoy an ale. The village had The Swan, which was

so called way back. We know it was rebuilt after the Great

Fire of 1792. The Swan's pub sign can be seen on the left of

this old photograph of the village.

The Plough was on the opposite side of the street and a little

to the south. This property too was built after the fire and

was a pub for a hundred years of its life, becoming a private

house again in 1970. The bracket where the Old Plough pub

sign hung can still be seen.

If Mr Doswell fancied a walk, he could visit the Sheep Crook

and Shears Beerhouse in Bransbury, again now a private

house.



Where would the Doswells have worshipped?

There has been a church on the site of All Saints for at least

1100 years.

This photograph shows the church looking down Bullington

Lane. It really was a lane in Edwardian times. It led

eastward from the Church up to the school, the fenced

playground of which can been in the foreground, and then

on to Bullington. Note the triangle of green and the finger

post. The Parish Council minutes tell us that the finger post

was installed in the early 1900s.

The Doswells probably also went to the Methodist Chapel

which once stood at the southern end of the village. It was

customary for many families to go to Church in the morning

and Chapel in the evening.



This is the only picture of the Chapel so far found. It was

taken in the 1960s from the garden of Sunnydene. It was

derelict at this time and regretfully was eventually

demolished in the early 1970s. The parish History Group

has the original marker stone bearing the foundation date of

1844.

It is necessary to return to the 1910 Ordnance map, and the

area south of Wade's Farm, to discover where the Primitive

Methodist Chapel once stood. This was opposite the point

where the footpath from Gravel Lane meets The Street.



The Chapel was surrounded

by five cottages.

We are very fortunate to have

this photo of one of the Chapel

Cottages. It was taken in the

1920s but it would have

looked much the same in the

1900s. In fact, we think these

cottages were built at the

same time as the Chapel

around 1844.

1910Ordnance Survey,south of Wade’s Farm



All of these cottages were thatched so we can dispel the

myth that there have been no thatched properties in the

village since the fire of 1792.

This photograph was given to us by Enid Gilpin who was

born in the village in 1920 – this is her Granny Sims in the

1920s. Enid reports that the cottages had brick floors. The

only window downstairs was the one seen, so it was pretty

murky inside. Their water came from a well, of course.

We believe the Doswells lived not in the Chapel Cottages but

in one of the thatched farm cottages shown in the following

photograph. They lay between Wade's Farm and the

Methodist Chapel. Three lay parallel to The Street, two at

right angles. The people are walking south, in the direction

of Winchester. This is where Greenacres & newer houses

and the electricity sub-station now stand.



The photograph was

taken from the

position of the tip of

the arrow.

The owners of the Chapel Cottages - and the ones a little

further north where the Doswells lived - decided in the

1930s that they were not prepared to spend the money

renovating them and they were pulled down in 1939. The

residents were rehoused to Kings Elms, where Andover

Council had just built 12 new houses. These are the houses

on Bullington Lane, beyond the junction with Gravel Lane.

Walter Doswell and his sons were some of the parish's 108

farm workers. Walter was born in 1850 and at the age of 10

he was a ploughboy, probably at Cocum Farm. He was

certainly living at that farm at the age of 20. Walter Lewis,

the farmer there, housed his farm workers in one of Cocum

Cottages. If Walter Doswell later worked for farmer George

Judd at Cocum, then he was a fortunate man, since Sir

George was said to have the welfare of his workers at heart.



Sarah Doswell and her daughters would have shopped in

one of at least two shops we believe were in the village in

the 1900s. The present shop and Post Office existed as such

at that time. It is likely there was a bakery on the premises.

It was called Sycamore Cottage then and had a large

Sycamore tree in front of it.

Another shop was built in 1904. It was attached to the front

of what is now Virginia Cottage. The house had stood there

since the 1790s. It was bought in 1904 by Mr Albert Barter,

the village policeman, who was due to retire. He applied to

Andover Rural District Council to add a shop and a

bakehouse to the existing property. We have dated this

photo to 1934.



This little addition at the front was the shop and the

bakehouse was added on at the back. The shopkeeper seen

here was Mrs Collins. Her son Vic Collins took this over after

his mother died and turned it into a cycle shop.

If the Doswells wanted to shop further afield, they would

have used the carrier, whose name was James Webb. He

went into Winchester on Wednesday and Saturdays, and

into Andover on Tuesdays and Fridays. Presumably, his

horse and cart could be hired at other times. If you wanted

to get a train, the nearest railway station was at Sutton

Scotney.

Walter Doswell died in 1916, survived by his wife who died

in 1936 at the age of 81.

Lilly Doswell married George Ernest Stone in 1909 and

moved to Hunton, Stoke Charity.

Olive Doswell was a cook at Manor Farm House at the other

end of the village. She, like many of the girls of her age, 'lived

in' at the houses where they worked. She later married Eli

Hatcher, a farm worker from Wonston.

Kate Doswell was a servant at Wade's House. She married a

Barton lad, a farm worker from Cocum called William

Gilbert.

Ernest Doswell worked as a roadman for Andover Rural

District Council, maintaining the hedges and ditches for his

allotted roads.

Robert Doswell emigrated to Toronto in 1913, where he

married.

Herbert was a shepherd. He, along with a cousin called

Sidney Doswell, enlisted with the Rifle Brigade during the

Great War. They were both killed in action in France in

1917.

barton stacey in edwardian times stacey parish in... · 2018. 3. 14. · edwardian era, one in...

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