On the Gouldings' move to Yorkshire

Last week I promised you a story from the sibling tidy-up of one of my ancestors.

The ancestor in question is Thomas Goulding, my maternal grandmother’s father. I already knew from my original research that Thomas moved from Nottinghamshire where he was born to the Wakefield area, sometime between 1891 and 1901. He didn’t move to marry my great-grandmother as they didn’t marry until 1910. However, his sister Amelia Goulding had married a local man, Charles Edward Coop in 1892, and in 1901 Thomas was staying in her household. Frustratingly, I haven’t been able to find Amelia on the 1891 census, so I don’t know whether she was in Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire or elsewhere. Also, while I know that Amelia and Charles married in Amelia’s home town of Gringley on the Hill, I have found evidence that the Banns were read in Charles’ parish of Ossett Holy Trinity, which I’ve never seen before. Their eldest daughter was born in Gringley in 1892, but by 1894 they were back in Ossett.

My mum was able to confirm that she had heard the name ‘Milly Coop’ mentioned in the family without knowing what the relation was. With no indication of how Charles and Milly met, but the certainty that she was the earliest of my Gouldings in the area, I had simply conjectured that it was simply a case of Thomas moving for work and living with his sister, or even just visiting occasionally, meeting my great grandmother and then settling more permanently in the area.

However, when I started investigating his siblings, it seems he wasn’t the only one to follow his sister to Wakefield.

Their sister Nellie Goulding moved there sometime between 1901 and 1904, and their brother Arthur Goulding had moved there by 1907. Again, there’s no indication as to why, but presumably  they did ‘follow’ Milly and Thomas. It also seems likely that their father may have died around this period, so perhaos this had an impact on their freedom to move?

It’s funny, because while I knew that my direct maternal line was very local, I’d never heard other Gouldings in Horbury mentioned, so I’d never thought that there were local relatives on that side, whereas now it seems quite likely that there are.

However, it would explain why, when in the early days of my family research I briefly made contact with a Goulding descendant of the Nottinghamshire branch, she was convinced that she had also been contacted by someone else in the area, but the names she gave didn’t quite add up with what I knew about the family – chances are, it was a descendant of Arthur Goulding she had encountered.

There’s another fairly interesting aspect to the story as well. Thomas Goulding’s wife-to-be Annie Louisa Hampshire might not have been considered the ideal bride for many. She had had an illegitimate daughter at a relatively young age. To this day the father is unknown, and the daughter was brought up by Annie Louisa’s parents, even after their daughter’s marriage. Also, unusually, Thomas was about 10 years older than Annie Louisa.

Interestingly, of Thomas’s other siblings who moved to the area, both had similar stories. Thomas’s sister Nellie had an illegitimate daughter of her own in 1896, eight years before she married yorkshireman James Thorpe at Horbury Bridge. They went on to have two sons.

And Arthur Goulding’s Wakefield-born wife Mildred Ambler had also had a an illegitimate daughter two years before she married Arthur – though the daughter went on to take the name Goulding, so perhaps Arthur was in fact the father? They went on to have four more Goulding children.

Is this just an odd coincidence, or is there a connection to be gleaned here? Did Thomas and Arthur have more sympathy towards the unconventional lives of their brides because of their sister’s experience? Or, perhaps, having moved away from their parents and being new to the area, with no longstanding family reputation to worry about nearby, they just worried less about any ‘stigma’? Perhaps the entire Goulding clan was just of a rather more ‘modern’ mindset than some of their contemporaries? Or maybe it really was just a matter of chance? I also can’t help but wonder what Mr Coop made of his wife’s slightly scandalous family? We’ll probably never know, but if I hadn’t investigated Thomas siblings’ movements, I would never have had these questions to ask!

L x

Y is for Yorkshire

What else could Y be for, really? Yorkshire is my home county, but more importantly, it has also been home to many of my ancestors – on nearly every branch I’ve managed to find at least one Yorkshire resident!  It shouldn’t be that surprising. Yorkshire is the largest county in England (when all its parts or combined), and so I suppose there’s a good chance that everyone has the odd bit of Yorkshire in them!

The great thing about having Yorkshire ancestors is that there are loads of really useful records, and lots of them are online.

The not so great thing is that it can be utterly baffling trying to wade through so many possible records, particularly if you’re not familiar with the country. The strong Yorkshire streak in my mother’s family was what encouraged me to start with them: I was comfortable with the names and the places. I could spot which were the most likely families based on geography without having to resort to a map every five minutes.  One of the most useful resources for those without this knowledge is Genuki’s Where is it in Yorkshire? page. This is absolutely invaluable for identifying the correct parish for your tiny Yorkshire place, and I also find it a very helpful list if you’re struggling with handwriting or transcription errors, as it’s pretty definitive.

Another possible complication for non-Yorkshire folk to get their heads around is the sub-division of the county, which has changed over time. Once upon a time Yorkshire was divided into three ‘ridings’. The term is essentially derived from ‘thirding’, meaning ‘a third part (of a county)’.  The three ridings were the North, West and East. 

However, modern Yorkshire was formed in 1974 from North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire, with the eastern part becoming Humberside.

South Yorkshire was formed mainly out of the southern part of the West Riding, as well as parts of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.

Humberside took in parts of the former East and West Ridings as well as places previously in Lincolnshire. However, after the abolishment of Humberside in 1996 a new local government district called the East Riding of Yorkshire was created. This includes most but not all of the old East Riding.

Other parts of the former West Riding became part of North Yorkshire, Lancashire and even Cumbria, leaving West Yorkshire now a much smaller area than the old West Riding, while the North Riding lost some of its territory to County Durham and Cleveland in the north.

Effectively, it is only the last six years that one can accurately refer to North, South East (riding of) and West Yorkshire! There is a useful map roughly showing how the old and new boundaries compare here.

What is so wonderful about Yorkshire as a country is the variety you can get in such a (relatively) small area. You have vast hills and moorland, particularly to the north and west, while in the south and east the landscape is generally gentler, stunning coastline which is made up of both rugged cliffs and sandy beaches, and you have vibrant metropolitan cities like Leeds contrasting with beautiful historic towns like York and the spa town of Harrogate.

Yorkshire was also historically home to a vast variety of industry and commerce. Agriculture dominated the rural north, while to the west there were coalfields but also centres for trade in textiles of all kinds. Fishing, unsurprisingly, dominated the coastal region, and Sheffield in the south was renowned for the steel industry. Much of the confectionery industry also developed here, and one West Yorkshire area was known as the Rhubarb Triangle! Of course, it is this variety that led to its attracting people from all over the country – my ancestors moved from South Wales to Yorkshire for the mines and from Lincolnshire to the steel trade in Sheffield, as well as to work on the railway, which of course was tied in with this explosion of industrial activity.

I could write on and on about the history, dialect and culture of Yorkshire, and I have already touched on it in a few other posts (ive given them all a Yorkshire label, so click on Yorkshire at the bottom to find out more).  If you do want to read a bit of general background, I would recommend the Wikipedia page, which gives a good overview. As you can probably tell, I’m really quite passionate about my home county! I think it’s impossible to come from Yorkshire and not be though – it’s testament to the character of both people and place that Yorkshire as a whole continues to be recognised despite all the divisions and name changes that have taken place in its history, and despite the vast differences in the landscapes and economies.

L x

On the Luddites

This week it is the 200th anniversary of one of the most destructive Luddite attacks in the history of the movement – and it took place in the village I grew up in.

The Luddite movement was primarily among textile workers, in revolt against the introduction of machinery that essentially replaced them, because it was able to do the same work more quickly and cheaply and required minimal manpower. The semi-organised movement was characterised by threatening behaviour, machine-wrecking and general disorder. It is generally considered to have begun in 1811 in Nottinghamshire, and by early 1812 had spread to West Yorkshire. The movement took its name from Ned Ludd, the ‘anonymous’ and semi-mythical leader of the movement.

Following a direct threat to Mr Joseph Foster, on the night of 9 April 1812, Foster’s Mill at Horbury Bridge came under attack from between 300 and 600 men. They had come from all over the surrounding area and were well organised. They were either masked or their faces were blackened, to protect their identities, and they carried weapons. They also surrounded the Fosters’ house. They forced the sons of the mill owner (who was not at home) to let them into the mill, and proceeded to wreck the place. They particularly focused on the shearing frames, but also on other modern machinery, as well as more traditional tools and even the cloth itself. They then set fire to the warehouse, and left two of the Foster boys tied up. The men got away over Grange Moor towards Huddersfield, or through Horbury itself and along Wakefield Road . On 14 April soldiers were sent to guard the other mills in and around Horbury,

Similar riots continued in the area throughout April. One attack left two of the Luddites fatally injured, following which the events became much more violent, and one mill owner was murdered. The Luddite movement continued, spreading into Lancashire. It finally came to an end in early 1813, following a mass trial at York Castle, which resulted in the execution of seventeen men, and the transportation of several others.  The machinery against which they had protested was here to stay, and the number of skilled croppers in the area decreased dramatically.

I have to say, I don’t know of a direct connection to my ancestors. However, what I do know is that they were definitely living in Horbury at the time, and so they would have been first-hand witnesses to the events, whether they were supporters of the Luddite cause or simply living in fear of the unruly mob that was roaming their streets. John Phillipson was born in Horbury just three years after the Luddite attacks and went on to be a woollen spinner. His father, also John, was a weaver, though whether he was originally from Horbury I don’t know. On the other hand James Wade, who was a stonemason and so not directly involved in events, and his wife Mary, were almost definitely living here at the time of the attack.

There is some debate about the Luddite movement. Is it a simple industrial dispute, albeit a very violent one, among a contained group of workers? Or, does it represent something more – an organised revolt against capitalism? An alternative political movement? These arguments are something that I am still considering, but I hope to write a blog post on them later in the week – partly as an exercise in constructing an historical essay, something which I haven’t really done since I left university nearly four years ago!

I remember learning about the Luddites at school. To be honest, at the time this sort of industrial history didn’t really grab me. I don’t remember ever being told that my own village was such an important part of that history, if we were told, I don’t believe that the teacher really took advantage of the fact in order to teach the history. Had she done so I think we might have been much more engaged by what we were learning.

I have been following the Luddite movement here. This blog posts relevant documents and some narrative of its own date-by-date, to show the progression of the Luddite movement as it happened 200 years ago – a brilliant idea that brings the history to life!

L x

On Yorkshire dialect

Every so often I’ll say something and everyone will either laugh or look baffled. Having grown up deep in Yorkshire my language is smattered with dialect words. At school it was never a problem because we all spoke the same, but as soon as I moved away for university it became apparent that I was speaking an alien tongue!

One of the first words that caused a problem was ‘mash’, meaning ‘to brew’. It can either be used as ‘the tea’s mashing’ i.e. it’s brewing, or ‘mash some tea’ – make some tea, literally ‘pour the water onto the teabag so it can brew’. The first time I said that at university, no one got it.

When I moved into my second year university house, I was giving my boyfriend directions and said ‘down the ginnel’ – he had no idea what I meant. A ginnel is an alleyway or passage, sometimes with a roof. The word comes from the French ‘venelle’, which itself must be a derivative of ‘venir’, the verb ‘to come’. Interestingly Durham, my university city, is full of vennels’, but it wasn’t until much later that I connected the two words.

Both of these were words that I’d never realised weren’t ‘real’ English. I thought everyone said them. Even now I’ll read somewhere that something is a dialect word, and I had no idea, to me it was just the name for something!

I know that once again I have gone slightly off topic, but I think my visit home at the weekend has given me the urge to celebrate my Yorkshire roots. I like the fact that I have this dialect (which is becoming increasingly rare), and that it connects me to my family history.

Language is connected to place of course , but it is also passed down through the family generations. After all, our first words are learnt from our parents, and their first words were learnt from their parents too. My very local dialect is a fitting reminder that I have 200+ years of family history in the same small area.  If you want to truly understand where your ancestors came from, most genealogists would probably agree that a visit is a good idea. Even though places change over time, they all retain some vestiges of their history and culture.  

This is why one of my next daytrips will be taking in the Forest of Dean, where many of my ‘Welsh’ grandfather’s family came from. It’s right on my doorstep here in Cheltenham, and it will give me a fantastic opportunity to get a feel for the history, culture and language of a branch of thr family that I know relatively little about.

So, for those of you with West Yorkshire ancestors, here’s a little taster of some local dialect. These are a few of my favourites, and ones that I would use without even stopping to think. I’ve essentially cobbled together the spelling based on my instincts, which probably gives you some idea of how I hear them:

‘Buffet’ (the t is pronounced) meaning a stool

‘Clap cold’ meaning gone completely cold, usually of food or drink

‘Frame yourself’ meaning ‘hurry up’ or ‘get on with it’

‘Gip’ meaning to retch

‘Lathered’ meaning hot, usually used as 'I'm lathered'

‘Morngy’ meaning sulky or whingeing, usually of a child

‘Parky’ meaning cold (of the weather)

‘Stalled’ meaning to be fed up or running out of patience – ‘I’m getting stalled’

L x

In memory of Horbury Methodist Church

Not strictly a genealogy post, but certainly of local and historical interest to me and my Yorkshire ancestors.

This weekend I ventured back to Horbury to visit the parents. Sadly, my hometown was not quite its usual self. Structural problems have resulted in the demolition of the Methodist church on the High Street, and so it now stands, a half-unbuilt pile of rubble, looking like a bomb went off.

I can only imagine what a gaping hole there will be when the whole structure is gone. The building was huge and sort of stately – grand and beautiful as a church should be, but also unassuming, as if it had always been there and always would be. I regret now that I never went inside it or even spent enough time studying it.

I haven’t been able to find out much about the building’s history. It wass Victorian certainly, built in the Gothic style. Apparently it housed a memorial to William Baines (1899–1922), the Horbury-born pianist and composer, whose musical father had been an organist in the Methodist church. This plaque will now be moved to the former Primitive Methodist church hall.

I’m not sure whether this refers to the church hall that is located behind the now-demolished Methodist church, or elsewhere, because, as Stan Barstow explains: “There were four Methodist chapels within a couple of hundred yards along Horbury High Street”

He goes on to say of Horbury:

[It was] a puritanical town, of course. What other could it have been under that great weight of Methodism? Drink was a blatant evil, sex a vast unmentionable mystery.

It hardly sounds like the Horbury I know – it has a lot of pubs for such a small place, for one thing! I trust his judgement though, as I’ve never read anything that evokes my home town more than his novels Joby and A Kind of Loving.

In any case, it is true that the Methodist church building will always be a part of Horbury to me; it won’t quite be the same with it gone. I remember going to birthday parties in the church hall when I was a little girl, and taking the little cut through from Queen Street via Ring O Bells Yard that brought you out behind the church – it wasn’t a route we took very often, so it was always a bit of an event if we did. I believe my auntie got married in the church, but I have no idea whether any of my more distant ancestors were of Methodist persuasion.

Lastly, I send my best wishes to the members of the Horbury Methodist congregation, and hope that they can soon raise the funds necessary to build us a beautiful new church to fill the void.

L x

I would like to add my thanks to Betty for allowing the use of this image - Copyright Betty Longbottom and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.