5. Land Ownership
The Tythe Apportionment of givesthe at that time.
Gentleman Landowners
1. The Hampden Estate
The Hampden family had been in possession of their wealthy estate since at least the time of the Domesday Book. In the Posse Comitatus of 1798, which listed all able-bodied men and horses for use in conscription in the case of war, Lord Hampden declared just one horse and cart – presumably a considerable under-estimate! When the 3rd Viscount Hampden died in 1824, leaving no heirs, the estate devolved to another branch of the family through the marriage of a daughter in 1656, when Mary Hampden married Sir John Hobart, Bt.
The new head of the manor was George Robert Hobart, born in 1789, who thereupon additionally assumed the name of Hampden, becoming Hobart-Hampden (5th Earl of Bucks). He had married Anne Pigot in 1819, but they also had no children, so that when he died on 1 February 1849, the estate devolved to his nephew, the second son of his sister Lady Vere. In 1832 she married Donald Cameron of Lochiel, 23rd Chief of the Cameron Clan. George Hampden Cameron was only nine years old at the time, but became Lord of the Manor and sole owner of that vast estate. It is not clear why, because of certain legal complications, he inherited as second son, as his older brother Donald, then 14, eventually inherited his father’s title as 24th Chief of the Camerons.
At this time the Hampden Estate covered farms, woods and commons centred on Hampden House and extended to the northern section of Prestwood, especially that part forming a detached portion of Stoke Mandeville parish. It included Honor End in the NW corner, lands to the east of Hotley Bottom, and part of the original Prestwood settlement by Kiln Common. All of this, apart from Lodge (then Priest’s) Wood, was leased out and not managed directly by the estate. The estate also included lands to the west of Great Kingshill, bordering on Prestwood Parish and a small part (Hatches Farm) that was included within the boundaries of the new parish.
In 1851 Lady Vere (1803) and Donald Cameron (1796) had been in occupation of Hampden House for a few years. They had four daughters: Anne Louisa (1834), born in London, Julia Vere (1837), born elsewhere in Bucks, Sibella Matilda (1838) and Albinia Mary (1840), both born in Scotland. (At this time it was the custom of landed families with possessions scattered over the country to reside sequentially at a number of different seats.) Their sons Donald and the new heir George were then at Harrow and Eton respectively. They kept a large establishment including a ladies’ maid, cook and nine other servants. Most of these they had brought from other parts of the country, but three were local – Louisa Robertson (1830) and Emma Bignell (1827) from Great Hampden, and William Clifford (1829) from Great Missenden.
At this time Benjamin Disraeli had taken up residence at Hughenden Manor and was an occasional visitor. In a letter to his sister Sarah 16 September 1849 (Disraeli 1993) he gives a brief but revealing account of what appears to be his first visit to the Camerons:
My dear Sa,
I am not in very good sorts for writing – perhaps it is the transition from summer to autumn – but I am by no means myself this last week. I thought howr. you wd. like a line, howr. dull & ragged. I like the Hampden family very much. He is an invalid, & cannot rise from his chair but with aid – some spinal injury – but, once seated, has no sign of feebleness – but is very intelligent, lively, & light in hand. About fifty or so, very well looking, & perfectly bred. He is Lochiel & leaves that name on his card thus.
Lady Vere seems soft & amiable, & I shd think fairly intelligent. Her hair is quite white wh: gives her an appearance of much more advanced age than the truth. She has very young children, & the eldest boy, who was there, is only just going to Harrow: Donald, a very nice lad. I am not well eno’ to enter into all the queer history of the will & of the second son, the future Lord of Hampden who, is at school. We met at dinner, Lord & Lady John Hay, & a Mr. & Mrs. Stewart & daur, who were staying in the house. Lady John is Mr Cameron’s sister – a lively woman, like an active spinster but with several children. They left Hampden after a visit of only a very few days, in consequence of the death of Julia Hobhouse – a great blow to Sir John – wh: she told me of at dinner that day, & has since written to me from London, giving me some account of the H. family.
[Julia Hobhouse was John Hay’s niece, aged 19, who died suddenly after a very short illness 7 Sep 1849.]
2. George Lord Carrington
The Carringtons were major county landowners many properties in the area of Prestwood and Great Missenden. Many of their holdings were bordering the east boundary of the new parish, as their seat was in Great Missenden, but they also owned land in the parish west of the main Prestwood settlement and of Prestwood Common, as far as the Hampden/Wycombe road, part of the common-land on Denner Hill, and a few fields and residences in Prestwood between Kiln and Prestwood Commons. The major holding to the west of Prestwood was part of a large estate in the C18th, known as Hampden Farm and owned by Jane Waldo, that was reduced in 1791 by selling off the northern and southern sections.
In 1851 George Lord Carrington, who was 69, lived at Missenden Abbey, inherited from his father Robert John Lord Carrington who had purchased the estate in 1822 after the death of the previous owner (since 1787) James Oldham Oldham (sic). George Carrington described himself as a gentleman farmer, was Chairman of the Magistrates and Lord of the Manor. By then he was a widower, but his son, also George (39 and still single), lived with him and managed their estate, including the farmland and park at Missenden and woodlands scattered elsewhere, including Prestwood. Some of the land was managed for game-shooting. They employed 20 labourers and six servants who lived at the Abbey. The four older servants came from other parts of England, but Samuel Clifford (labourer) and George Pearce, both 18, came from Great Missenden.
The Carringtons were a diverse family descended from Hamo de Carenton, a Norman who came in 1066 and was awarded lands in Cheshire for his services, “Carrington” deriving from “Carenton”. There is still a town of Carrington in Cheshire. Many branches of the family emigrated to the United States and West Indies in the C17th-18th. Although George Sr. was born in Dorset, George Jr. was born in the Barbados, so that this branch of the family may have been related to Nathaniel, an English farmer who settled in Londonderry in 1615 and whose son Paul moved to Barbados in 1650 to become a sugar planter. His own son Paul, who became a doctor, was drowned on a voyage across the Atlantic in 1716, but another son Nathaniel and other children lived on in Barbados. After Nathaniel’s death in 1775 in Barbados his sugar plantation was sold by the Carringtons [deeds in the Bucks archive], including 242 slaves, 157 cattle and 30 mules. Like many country estates at this time, their wealth was founded ultimately on the slave-trade.
They enjoyed hunting and shooting and lived well – Benjamin Disraeli, in a letter to Sarah just after Christmas 1850, describes how:
Dear old Carrington ... prepared what in his grandiose language might be described as a
‘gorgeous banquet’ – double coups and double fish turbots and smelts, ancient Johannisberger & many fine wines and viands ...
[“Coup” is perhaps “coupe”, a dessert of fruit and ice-cream. Johannisberger is a German riesling.]
While some store was obviously placed on “entertaining” among the region’s nobility – what is the point of wealth if one cannot display it? – the sparsity of real “gentry” in this very rural area, coupled no doubt with the difficulty of travelling very far (while keeping one’s dress immaculate) on the poor muddy roads of the time, led to complaints of too little company, as in Disraeli’s letter to Sarah of 12 October 1850:
Lady Carington never came to her luncheon – it was so very wet. Another day, Lady Vere C [ameron] . came & 3 daurs. Poor Cameron is very feeble. I rode over to him on a pony I have, & paid him a visit & two or three times I have ridden to Bradm [Bradenham] . The Camerons complain of no neighbours – only two, ourselves & Lady F. Russell – we always away - & now, Ldy F.R. has entirely deserted Chequers for her fine Yorkshire place – Thirkleby, where she has built a prodigious church. Robinson, the gardener at Hampden, has gone as chief to Thirkleby. I believe he has 150£ pr.annm: besides house &c.
[At the equivalent today of just over £1,000, that is not actually a prodigious salary!]
3. Lord Dormer
The Dormers owned Peterley Manor, farmlands and woods north of the manor to Peterley Wood and south to just east of Heath End, and beyond there outside Prestwood Parish. They also had the farm at Peterley Corner and newly enclosed land on Great Kingshill Common around Cockpit Hole, also just outside the new parish. The Dormers seldom resided at the Manor, and all this land, and the house, were leased to tenants, so the family had virtually no impact on the day-to-day social life of the area at this time.
4. The Mayhews (Nanfan estate)
In 1794 James, a member of the Nanfan family who originated in Cornwall, married Jane Waldo, whose property of Hampden Farm once extended between Honor End Lane and Prestwood Common west to the Hampden Road, one of the largest holdings in Prestwood parish at that time. They settled at the farm (built only 30 years earlier on the site of a much older farm), at the west end of the main Prestwood hamlet, which subsequently became known as Nanfans. As mentioned above, this estate had been reduced in 177 by sale of the more outlying parts to the Carringtons. The remaining part, lands south and west of the farm, including The Hangings and most of Nanfan Wood, descended to James's daughter Mary on his death in 1806. She had married Henry Barney Mayhew in 1770 ("Gentleman of Lincoln's Inn" and a Knight of the Shire, who died 1800), and she continued to reside at Nanfans.
In 1841 her daughter Mary (1793) lived at Nanfans with (a niece?) Caroline (1811). They kept two servants, Eliza Stockwell (1830) and William Leckie (1836). They were still there in 1847. Mary owned most of the remaining estate, which she managed herself, but a number of fields and Stonygreen Wood, SE of Nanfan Wood, were owned by her unmarried aunt Sarah Nanfan (baptised 1777) and these were rented out. By 1851, however, the house was in the hands of Thomas West from London (below), as Mary had died in 1849. Caroline was then living in Back Lane, High Wycombe, with her sister Mary (1808), who was married to the Curate of Loudwater, Edward Arnold (1808) from Ireland. They kept two servants. Both Caroline and Mary had been born in London, as the family had several houses.
5. Honnor family (variously also Honner, Honor)
In 1851 professional surveyor Joseph Honnor (1794), widowed in 1849, lived in a fine house at Rignall Farm in the valley to the north of Prestwood. He owned and managed much land in the Great Missenden parish, where his family were major gentry, including most land immediately NW of Prestwood Parish and the farm at Andlows. At Rignall Farm they housed a dozen or so farm-workers and three domestic servants. His son Joseph Jr. (1813), still single, lived with him. Rignall Farm has a long heritage, because its name is Anglo-Saxon rygen healh or “small hollow in a hill-slope with rye”. The rye would have indicated a fertile soil, such as that typical of river sediments, as in earlier times a tributary of the Misbourne ran along the valley here. His brother Thomas (1797) was also a landowner, although his only holdings in Prestwood were the Green Man row of cottages and a neighbouring plantation. He lived in Mapridge House in 1841, and, after his marriage to Sarah Ferron in 1847, Mobwell House, Great Missenden, with three servants (including Jane Evans, the daughter of Great Missenden blacksmith, Charles Evans) and a sixty-acre farm. Both Joseph and Thomas had been born in London and were sons of Timothy Honnor, gentleman and "overseer of the poor" of Great Missenden, who died in 1839. The family was of long-standing in the district: Henry Honnor was listed in 1784 on the Poll for Knights of the Shire.
6. Jane Baker
In 1837 Jane Baker was the owner of a large number of fields just south of the Nanfan/Mayhew estate and at the north end of Denner Hill, all of which she rented out to farmers. I have found no trace of such a person in the 1841 or 1851 Bucks censuses, so she would seem to have lived further afield or to have died before 1841.
7. Reverend Francis Hawkins Cole
In 1837 Revd. Francis Hawkins Cole (born 1787 in Cornwall, ordained 1810 after taking a BA at Christ Church, Oxford) owned land around Longfield Wood between the Hampden Road and the north tip of Kingshill Common, including Fry’s Farm, all of which he leased to farmers, apart from Longfield and Lawrence Grove Woods. At the same time he leased from others some lands around Peterley Manor owned by the Dormers and lands on the NE side of Great Kingshill owned by Richard Davis, including Ninneywood Farm. He was the tenant at Peterley Manor at this time, leaving about 1841. His son Francis Sewell was born in 1818, but his wife died in 1828. Their main home was at Childown Hall, Chertsey, Surrey. The Coles were from an illustrious line, descended (nineteenth in line) from King Edward III. The younger Cole attended All Souls College, Oxford, where he was able to obtain admission more easily by being related to the founder. Nevertheless he did write two books in the 1850s that had some success - “Britain : its earliest history and connection with other nations ” in 1851 and “ The Suez and Nicaragua Canal Plans Considered ” in 1856. His mother was Elizabeth Blake Sewell, daughter of Thomas Bailey Heath Sewell, a Lt.Col. in the cavalry, and Lady Elizabeth Sewell, who at that time lived at Ottershaw Park. His paternal grandfather was Captain Francis Cole of the Royal Navy, 1760-1798. The latter was descended from Edward III by two lines, through the union of a great grandson of Edward’s younger son John of Gaunt (Edmund, Lord Grey, created Earl of Kent 1465) and a great great granddaughter of Edward’s elder son Lionel Plantaganet, Duke of Clarence (Lady Katherine Percy). In 1849 Revd. Francis Sewell Cole married Julia Crawshay, also of Ottershaw Park, her father Richard having bought the former Sewell mansion in 1841.
Contemporary silhouettes of Francis Hawkins Cole & his wife Elizabeth
8. Edward Grubb
In 1837 Edward Grubb was the owner of most of Denner Hill Common. This was part of the large Grubb estate based at their Manor of Horsenden near Princes Risborough, which included other properties to the west of Prestwood at North Dean, Piggots, among others. Edward Grubb (1758) spent his time between Horsenden and his London house at 29 Holland Park. His bailiff in this area was John Cartwright who also ran Piggots Farm in 1851 and came originally from Princes Risborough.
9. Reverend Thomas Evetts
Evetts (1821) was a wealthy man from Oxfordshire who was ambitious to acquire his own living, and the combination of his wealth and enthusiasm was no doubt essential to his selection as the first incumbent of the new parish. The church and parsonage cost over £3,000, raised partly from private benefactors and subscriptions, but very largely by more than £2,500 from Thomas Evetts himself, who also bought up additional lands in 1849, combining two fields into parkland behind the church, where he planted various trees such as horse- and sweet-chestnut, beech, lime and a Lucombe oak. Rents from these included a proportion devoted to the Bounty of Queen Anne, a fund for the “maintenance of poor clergy” set up in 1704. This requirement was included in conditions of sale.
Benjamin Disraeli, however, was apparently no admirer of Evetts. As he wrote to his sister in 1849:
We dined at Newman’s on Thursday, who rose 20 pr Ct. from his appointments &c. There we met Evetts, a wretched looking hound, & the Alves, & G. Carrington.
And the sequel to his account of Carrington’s “gorgeous banquet” was equally scathing:
To eat them the Alves, whose pretence to the county has already evaporated, as their holding is to let, the little pair of Evetts, the male one snuffling thro’ a grace like a puritan, & a Mrs. Hobgoblin & two Miss Hobgoblins or some name like that ... I got off as soon as I cd; I feel much worse to dy – a renewed cold I fancy – I feel particularly wretched.
To these long-established landed gentry, Evetts was no doubt a nouveau riche upstart without the easy manner of the nobility. Born in 1821 in St Thomas parish, Oxfordshire, he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree at Oxford University in 1842, and was still “wet behind the ears” when he came to Prestwood after a short time as curate at Clifton Reynes. All Evetts’s holdings postdate the Tithe apportionment, but they were mainly the block of what was previously Richard Davis land on the west side of Wycombe Road. In addition, he purchased Ninneywood Farm and that part of Great Kingshill Common left for public recreation purposes after the enclosure of the rest of the common.
10. Thomas Tyrwhitt-Drake
Thomas Tyrwhitt-Drake, a Sheriff of Bucks, owned much land to the east of Prestwood, including Hobbshill Wood, and at the south end of Denner Hill, also just outside the new parish. In 1851 his brother John Tyrwhitt-Drake (1791) was Rector at Amersham, having been born in Oxfordshire. He kept 9 servants and a coachman.
The Drakes had an illustrious line, with many aristocratic connections, which can be traced back to John Drake in the C15th. The fifth in a line of Johns descended from him became Sheriff of Devon in the middle of the C16th and his daughter Alice married Sir Walter Raleigh. One of his sons was Sir Bernard Drake of Ashe (a title derived from the first John Drake’s wife Christiana, daughter of John Billet of Ashe), whose grandson Francis of Esher married Joan Tothill, daughter of William of Shardeloes. A great granddaughter Mary married Sir John Tyrwhitt, 5th Baronet. Another line led to their great great grandson, William Drake of Shardeloes, whose son William became an MP and set about building in 1758 the grand house and park of Shardeloes that still stand above the town of Amersham. He was one of the wealthiest commoners in England at the time. His son Thomas was the first to assume the surname of Tyrwhitt-Drake of Shardeloes, and his son Thomas, born in 1783, was the resident of Shardeloes in 1851. He and his brother John married the Annesley sisters, Barbara and Mary, daughters of Arthur Annesley, just as his father and his uncle Revd. John Drake (previous rector of Amersham) had married the Wickham sisters, daughters of Revd. William Wickham. Revd. John’s wife Mary died in 1827 and he took as his second wife in 1830 a cousin Emily Garrard. With their wealth (largely acquired through judicious marriages), lordship of the Manor of Amersham and a major say in the appointment of the Rector, they were essentially the ruling family in the town for several centuries, different members regularly serving as rector or MP. None of their land, however, actually fell within the bounds of Prestwood parish, although bordering it.
11. Thomas West (of London)
After the demise of the Mayhews, the wealthy goldsmith and jeweller Thomas West, aged 35 and single, who was heir about 1830 to his late father's business in 3 Ludgate Street (later Hill), London [now Costa Coffee!], either bought up or inherited their estate and acquired some Carrington land, moving into Nanfans. He held 306 acres and employed 43 labourers in 1851.
Small property owners
1. Samuel Eedle
Saumel Eedle was 77 and a widower in 1851, a bootmaker lodging at The Crown in Great Missenden. He had acquired a few properties on the west side of Prestwood Common shown in the tithe apportionment, including Michaelmas Farm. His son, Samuel Jr. (1803), ran a shoemaking business in the High Street, Great Missenden, assisted by his son George Adams Eedle (1829), while another son Richard Lambourne Eedle (1827) was a confectioner. All the properties were leased out and the Eedles did not seem to have a presence in Prestwood, although the family had long lived in Missenden. Samuel Jr., who was married to Mary Lambourne, died in 1854.
2. Thomas Furnivall
Thomas Furnivall was a retired draper (aged 81) from Hemel Hempstead living at Finchers [now Furnival Cottage], Beamond End near Little Missenden, in 1851. He owned Prestwood Common Farm and leased it to the Clarkes. His wife Violetta (1796) was from Bromley and they had a married daughter Jane Wood who still lived in Hertfordshire. The couple kept a cook, two domestic servants and an outdoor servant. A trade directory for Hemel Hempstead in 1797 shows Thomas Furnivall as a “linen draper”.
3. John Gibbons
Farmer John Gibbons owned a house [Stockens], one pasture and three arable fields [originally Little, Middle and Upper Fields, they were later combined into one field known to this day as “Gibbons”] just north of Great Kingshill. In 1851 Winslow Page, the blacksmith, had this land.
Yeoman farmers
1. Richard Davis
At the time of the Tithe census Richard Davis owned nearly 200 acres of farmland, woods and buildings south of Prestwood Common and as far as Great Kingshill, to the west of the Dormer properties. These included Knives Farm, which was sold a decade later for the building of the new church, Ninneywood Farm, and the field off Hampden Road that is now Prestwood Picnic Site and Nature Reserve. All these lands were leased to tenants. By 1850 he had accreted more properties in the parish, most notably on Denner Hill, where he acquired the former holdings of Jane Baker and Thomas Ives.
In 1851 Richard Davis (1787) was a farmer of over 200 acres at Kingsash, The Lee, with two servants and employing 15 labourers. He and his wife (Harriet, née Wren) were both from Berkshire but had been farming at The Lee since at least 1820. Two of their sons, Edward (1820) and Arnold (1821), had just taken over farms on Dennerhill (see below), while Edmond (1826) worked for his father. There were also three daughters still at home. Another son, Richard (1835) was at that time a farm servant for George Reading, a farmer in Great Missenden, and there were at least two older children no longer with their parents (William and Charlotte). William (1824) was running Bowles Farm (66 acres) at The Lee and already had four children.
2. Thomas and Elizabeth Ives
In 1837 Thomas Ives (1807) owned and farmed over 100 acres of land on the east side of Prestwood Common (Atkins Farm) and on the south end of Denner Hill (Newhouse Farm). He leased further fields to the south of Atkins Farm, down to Heath End, from the Dormer estate. He died in 1843, when his widow Elizabeth went to live at Prestwood Hall, living on the proceeds of sale of the land to Ann Daniel (who does not appear to have been a resident of the county). Before that the Iveses had lived at Atkins Farm (see below) with a domestic servant and two farm-servants. In 1851 John Edmunds leased Atkins Farm.
The Ives were a long-standing family of yeoman farmers in the Great Missenden area. There were three of that name in the parish in the late C18th (James, Thomas and Joseph). The second, who also appeared on the 1784 list for the Poll for Knights of the Shire, was the father of Thomas Ives above. The latter’s cousin William was running Road Farm, just north of Great Missenden in1851; both were involved with local affairs as trustees of the Lady Boys Charity. Two other brothers or cousins, Samuel and Job, were butchers in Great Missenden. Thomas's own son William had had Hampden Bottom Farm just north of Prestwood parish since 1844. Another Samuel Ives held a farm on Cobblershill in 1841, again just north of Prestwood.
3. The Bougs
The Bougs were yeoman farmers living at Bloomfield [now Broomfield] Farm in the valley north of Prestwood. They owned no land in Prestwood parish, but in about 1840 they built, within the north boundary of the parish and extending from the edge of Prestwood Common, the row of six cottages that came to be called Long Row. These were intended to house some of their farm labourers and a cobbled lane (called Blind Lane) in front of them led to a track directly down to the Bougs’ farm.
The name Boug, which appears to be Norman rather than Anglo-Saxon in origin, in which case it would have been a soft g rather than a hard one, has several possible derivations, including “maker of leather bags” and “person with a big mouth" (Old French bouche)! It is likely that the original pronunciation would therefore have been “booj”, although local oral tradition has it that the pronunciation was “bug”. There was only one adult male of this name in the 1798 Posse Comitatus for Buckinghamshire, a Thomas Boug who was indeed a leather-worker or shoemaker in Great Missenden parish. He must have been at least 21 at that date.
The 1830 Trade Directory includes Thomas and also George and Frances (or Fanny). The latter two are presumably children of Thomas, although their professions are quite different. There is no record of other sons of that name in the first half of the C19th. Fanny was the elder, born in 1795 in Great Missenden, and remained single throughout her life. She had a business in the High Street, finishing straw bonnets, the products of a thriving home-industry at the time occupying most of the women of Great Missenden not engaged in the equally laborious lace-making.
George Boug, born in Great Missenden in 1806, began life as a butcher, but by about 1840 was a substantial farmer, occupying Bloomfield Farm, which by 1851 covered 500 acres and employed 26 agricultural workers, while at home he kept three domestic servants. His wife Sarah had also been born in Great Missenden in 1810. They had at least ten children, all born in Great Missenden. The oldest were Sarah Ann (1831) lodging with her brother George Jr. in 1851; Julia Hannah (1832) living with her parents in 1851; and George Jr., (1833) who, by the age of 18, was farming a large (200 acres) farm at Little Kingshill, employing 8 agricultural workers.
4. The Masons
Charles Mason farmed a large part of Kingshill (Brand’s Fee) in the C18th, owning Hoppers Farm and renting others. In 1798 he is recorded as owning 12 horses, three wagons and four carts. In the early C19th his son George (born 1778), who was also a timber dealer and valuer, took over Hoppers Farm at Great Kingshill, south of the parish boundary along with a few encroachments on the east side of Kingshill Common (behind the Rising Sun). He also rented Acrehill Wood on Denner Hill and Hatches Farm from the Hampden Estate. He was still at Hoppers in 1841, with his son Richard (then 20) actively managing the farm. Another son, Allen, training to be a surveyor, was in charge of Hatches Farm at this time, with the labourer William Collins acting as his “foreman”. Richard married and took over Hatches Farm, while Collins rented Hoppers to farm as his own. Meanwhile, George’s brother Thomas (1766) farmed Fry’s Farm [Cherry Tree Farm], rented from Francis Cole, and his son William took that over in 1847, when he was 32. George Mason retired to a house beside Fry’s Farm (not far from Hatches) in 1851.
5. John Edmonds
John Edmonds (1800) farmed Sedges Farm just outside the east boundary of the parish in the 1830s and 1840s. By 1851 he also leased the neighbouring land inside Prestwood parish, Atkins Farm, moving there from Sedges. His total holdings were then nearly 400 acres. Originally from Hertfordshire (the son of farmer Thomas Edmonds), he first acquired a farm at Hyde Heath, where he and his wife Sophia (also from Hertfordshire) lived in the early 1830s, moving to Sedges about 1835. Their two eldest sons John (1831) and Evan (1832) helped with the farming, while Thomas (1834) worked as a shepherd at Hotley Bottom.