The Good Old Days Nr



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ATTLEBOROUGH CHURCH & VICARAGE in 1864 You would hardly recognise this aspect today although both buildings are still there, the shrubbery in the foreground has turned into mature trees and changed so completely as to mask out the view. Both structures now can only be seen by peering through the boscage. Here it is all new and fresh and beautifully laid out. The buildings were erected on a portion of the former grounds of Attleborough Hall. After the death of George Greenway (1761-1835) who owned and completed the Hall in 1809, the estate was managed by his son in law John Craddock. John Craddock lived at Attleborough Hall for a few years before he had a house built on Camp Hill – Camp Hill Hall in 1838. Paid for by a legacy from his father William Craddock, Banker and Merchant who died in 1833 – the richest man in Nuneaton and left £120,000 in his will which was a considerable fortune in those days. The Attleborough Hall estate sold a piece of land for a new chapel of ease at Attleborough in 1842; this became its parish church in due course. The new church was erected at a cost of £3000. The structure was mostly of brick with the tower and spire in Attleborough freestone. The living of Attleborough Church was a perpetual curacy in the patronage of the Vicar of Nuneaton. The new church was to provide some modicum of Godliness to the labouring classes of the hamlet of Attleborough which was then somewhat remote from the town of Nuneaton. Most Attleboroughians did not bother to attend church which comprised a mile long walk into town.

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Editorial

By Peter Lee

In order to prepare the next selection of articles for your entertainment I decided to look at the ancient core of the town and parish of Nuneaton and its layout of ancient streets for which the pattern had been set for centuries. By our modern standards Nuneaton was little more than a village. One main street – Abbey Street which was about a mile long terminating at Abbey End. Other ancient town streets were Church Street as far as Church End, Bond Street which terminated at Bond End, Coventry Street which led to Chilvers Coton Parish (Coton Road), and two perimeter lanes, Back Lane, Derby Lane which led into Brick Kiln Lane (now Regent Street) and a few roads leading off but terminating in the middle of fields or stopped up by railway lines – Wheat Street, Oaston Road, Meadow Street, as well as the main roads out of town but still within the ancient curtelage of the parish – Attleborough Road, Wash Lane (now Queens Road) Arbury Lane, Coton Road, Swan Lane, Haunchwood Road, Hinckley Road, Derby Lane leading into Weddington Lane. Then to look in a bit more detail at the streets and buildings of the outlying communities close by. Not to forget the Market Place of course this played a pivotal role in town life.

By the end of the 19th century the town was starting to fill up with new streets but I am trying to set the scene at 1850 in the old town and review some of those streets and how they evolved in the 50 years following that date. One thing is for sure if you were a time traveller you would not recognise the old town as it was then. So decrepit, down at heel and crude it looked. The local population knew no better of course. For them it was home despite its many privations. They eked out a modest living amongst a plethora of kids in insanitary homes. You can get a flavour of the conditions prevailing in the area at the time by reading Judy Kennedy’s transcription of the Handloom Weavers Report published in 1835 on the Moral Conditions of the Ribbon Weavers. It helps you to understand what many of our ancestors were like.

NUNEATON’s ANCIENT TOWN STREETS

ABBEY STREET

Until the 19th century the principle street in Nuneaton was Abbey Street. With a local population of the town around 8000 two thirds of that total lived in Abbey Street. It was overcrowded and congested with former long back gardens built over and turned into courts and tenements. These courts were squalid, insanitary and damp. Daylight was limited by the closeness of the buildings which were often fully enclosed with windows on one side only looking out onto a scruffy yard. In other towns Courts were known as Yards. We are one up in Nuneaton we called them Courts, it gave them a kind of dignity, but they were just as grim as yards elsewhere. To add to the general filth and disease these courts housed vegetable patches, pig pens, and deep cess pools. When Abbey Street was first laid out it was built for the best people in Nuneaton. Abbey retainers, tradesmen, and town officials. There were good timber framed front houses fringing the street and long narrow gardens. With the reformation, and the general decline in the status of the town these houses were converted into shops and later a large number became pubs and beer houses. The owners built tenements to obtain more rent. Some were rebuilt with top shops with their large windows to let in plenty of daylight to illuminate the work of the silk weavers. In the early 19th century the principle trade of the town was silk weaving. Two thirds of the local population were either wholly engaged in making silk ribbons or to some extent dependent upon it. Most of these lived in Abbey Street.

BACK LANE / BACK STREET

We often get confused today by just where Back Lane is or was. A little bit of the inner ring road known as Back Street exists between the corner of Bond Street and Leicester Road. This was formerly called Back Lane, but the lane continued some distance along Vicarage Street until it joined Attleborough Road. This was all Back Lane. Vicarage Street did not exist at the beginning of the 19th century. Back Street used to run at the back of the Market Place in a short stretch from Abbey Gate at the bottom of Abbey Street to Newdigate Square. It was called Back street because it was at the back of the Market Place.

BOND END

The origin of the name Bond End (Or Bond Street as it we now call it) has never been satisfactorily established beyond the thought that it was here that people in the town who were bound to their lord and master as Serfs were accommodated. Their Lord being various principle land owners and Lords of the Manor who owned the town at various times over the centuries. Serfdom died out in the Middle Ages and somehow the Bond(ed) end of town remained. Whether that attribution of the name is true or not I have no idea, but seem to be the one banded about by local historians in previous eras. It was the ancient way out of town towards Weddington Road, but not the original way to Hinckley. The ancient roadway to Hinckley was on a different alignment to the one we use now along Hinckley Road and the Long Shoot. The old Hinckley roadway left the town via Wheat Street, Horestone Grange and across the fields to Dodwells Bridge. Its close alignment in Wheat Street/Oaston Road is still there, but when you get to the Horestone Grange housing estate and beyond the trackway is lost. I assume the removal of the old road took place when Francis Stratford, (1705-1762) then Lord of the Manor, enclosed the Horestone Grange fields about 1730 and pushed the road out to the perimeter of the fields to what we now know as The Long Shoot (a long narrow field) and Hinckley Road. Returning to Bond End, this was the old entrance/exit to the town and was built up and widened in the 16th century to reduce flooding. If you look at it carefully you can still see it is wider than our normal town thoroughfares due to this ancient civil engineering work. In 1847 the Trent Valley Railway was opened which crossed Bond End with a level crossing used to regulate traffic. Unfortunately there were quite a few deaths at this spot as local people often circumvented the barriers to spring across in front of trains. The parish council clamoured for the railway company to bridge the line making it safer to cross. They did eventually agree to this and Leicester Road bridge was erected in the early 1870’s. The Bond end crossing was removed and the former exit to Hinckley Road blocked. In the early 1870’s a siding from the railway trailed down Bond End and entered John Knowles flour mill premises in Bridge Street (where Debenhams is now). Known locally as the Flour Mill Tramway it caused no end of trouble in its brief life. In tramway fashion it was first laid with rail track flush with the road surface, and then later on Mr. Knowles re-laid part of it with new rail which was proud of the surface. At least one horse had to be put down because it tripped over it and broke its leg, others had less serious injuries. The local population found it hazardous too. After a flurry of complaints Mr. Knowles was forced to abandon the tramway and remove the track. Why he did not simply relay it with track flush with the surface seems lost to history.

BRICK KILN LANE

At one time part of Regent Street, that section between Leicester Road bridge and Wheat Street was called Brick Kiln Lane. There was a brickyard about half way along it. Roughly where Cooper Street is today but extending back over the Trent Valley Railway line. The construction of the TVR obliterated the old brickyard, and the roadway was altered by the railway. At one time there was a clay hole on the corner of what is now Regent Street but was then Brick Kiln Lane which went by the name “Lord Hop’s Pit”. It received its unusual name from an association with Francis Stratford of nearby Horestone Grange. Stratford was given the name “Lord Hop” by the local population who knew him when he frequented the bar of the Bull Inn (now the George Eliot hotel), but the full story is so far fetched it lies outside the scope of this book.

BRIDGE STREET

The principle bridge over the River Anker was at one time in Bridge Street. In fact in the 19th century it was the only bridge over the river. The bridge erected in what is now Newdigate Street was not erected until the early 19th century because up until then the river was forded at this point. To confuse matters part of Bridge Street (which was longer then than it is now) was called Silver Street. At least it was so known up until the 1830’s. The part with this name was from the Bridge to the Market Place. The extremity of the Silver Street was later marked by the old Post Office, the one demolished in 1912. Later the buildings were demolished and the Market Place extended backwards to get more space. The Market Place then entered Bridge Street adjacent to what is now the George Eliot Hotel, formerly the Bull Hotel. At one time a small charge was extracted from market traders bringing their produce to Market over the Bridge which went into the coffers of the Abbey. This toll was known as “Pontage”, and was said to be towards the maintenance of the bridge to keep it under repair. The toll ceased when the Abbey was closed down by Henry VIII.

CHURCH STREET

This was the poshest and oldest street in the town at one time. Where the local gentry lived. As its name implied it ended at the parish church. Church Street was laid out when Nuneaton, then known as Ea-ton (Water Town) was first occupied as a settlement, probably before the Norman Conquest. It occupied a piece of higher ground above the river and was on a track way which passed through the great Forest of Arden to the Roman Watling Street. In those days Eaton was secluded and unknown to most inhabitants of the country. One street, a small church, a watermill, a few open fields giving a modest living to a few farmers and their families. When the Abbey was established Church Street was superseded as the principle street of the town by Abbey Street. Eaton became Nun-Eaton (denoting its new Abbey status predominated with female devoted clergy at the time of its founding) and the growth in the area of the town took place the opposite side of the River Anker to Church Street.

COVENTRY STREET

This was (and is) a very short street which led off the Market Place towards Chilvers Coton. Its length was determined by the bridge over the Wash Brook where Coventry Street abruptly stopped and the road became Coton Lane (now Coton Road). The border of the parishes of Nuneaton and Chilvers Coton ran through the brook at this point. From a Chilvers Coton perspective this point was one of the four “ends” of the village – Town End. (The other Chilvers Coton ends being Church End, Heath End and Virgins End).

DERBY LANE

As the name implies this roadway once extended to Derby. In the 19th century it was a complete stretch of the imagination that this dusty lane might end up in the industrial town of Derby. It must have seemed a very long way away. Derby Lane entered Nuneaton along what is now Weddington Lane, which came into a tee junction with Hinckley Road where the former Graziers pub used to stand. Derby Lane did not end there. Before the Trent Valley Railway was built the road did a dog leg and Derby Lane continued along what is now Regent Street to where Leicester Road Bridge intersects. Derby Lane is now Weddington Road.

HINCKLEY ROAD

As the name implies Hinckley Road led out of town towards Hinckley but I believe the alignment we know today is only 300 years old. I mentioned earlier and will explain in some detail dealing with Wheat Street that this road alignment was not used until Francis Stratford (1705-1762) who owned the manor of Nuneaton enclosed his fields in 1730 and pushed out the old roadway to the periphery of his Horestone fields.

MANOR COURT ROAD

Manor Court Road as we know it today is a product of the 1890’s although there has always been a roadway from the top of Queens Road (by the Cock & Bear Pub) to the top of Abbey Street at Abbey End since time immemorial. Effectively for centuries this was little more than a cart track used as a short cut and for carrying coal from the Stockingford collieries to the Abbey End of town. This was disrupted for several months in the 19th century when a small bridge which took the Manor Court Road over the Wash Brook was swept away in a flood. There was a clamour to have it reinstated because of the long diversion people had to take to get into Abbey Street via Wash Lane and the town centre. If you look at the map today you can see it was a long way round and the Manor Court Road was an ideal shorter route. As the 19th century progressed and the town’s population increased Manor Court Road was laid out as wide boulevard with extensive houses and villas erected along it. It became Nuneaton’s poshest address. A feature of the street was also the remains of the old Abbey. After the dissolution the Abbey was left to decay and it was not long before the gaunt stonework was taken away by local’s intent on using the abandoned buildings as a convenient source of building materials for their properties elsewhere in the town. As late as 1913 chunks of carved stone identifiable from the Abbey were discovered in old properties in Abbey Street then being demolished.

MARKET PLACE

Whereas Church Street was the principle street up until the Norman conquest the owners of the manor of Nuneaton established a daughter house of the great Abbey of Fontevrault in the fields across from the town and where the edge of the Abbey grounds reached towards the River Anker they stamped their financial authority on the community by establishing a Market Place which served to provide a source of steady income from market tolls and charges on Market traders. There was at one time a Market Cross which stood in the centre of the Market Place which acted as an office to collect these taxes, and a set of wooden stocks were erected so that miscreants could be publicly humiliated by having the heads and arms tethered to be spat at, urinated on, beaten and smeared with anything the local unwashed population felt was appropriate. All this amidst the clamour of a busy market area with wooden stalls, butchers shambles and some semi-permanent sheds which regular traders used for selling their wares. Cattle, sheep and pigs were herded into the Market Place to be butchered on the spot. Frightened animals would often make a break for it overturning stalls, baskets of vegetables, trampling people and running amok before they could be captured and killed. They were cut up there and then before the eyes of the local market goers. The Market Place was a crude and frightening place in our 21st century eyes over 300 years ago. Close in to the Market Place, certainly between there and Stratford Street there stood a substantial house which is believed to have been the Abbot’s house or Habit. By the 17th century this boasted 10 hearths which equalled the size of Horestone Grange over the fields towards Hinckley also with 10 hearths. It is not surprising that the Abbot would want to live close to the Market Place when this was the point where a large part of the income for the Abbey was being generated. After the reformation this house passed to the Lords of the Manor and in the 1660’s it was used by the Stratford family as a Dower House. This is how Stratford Street got its name. It was built on the garden of the Hall, on a piece of ground known as Hall Gardens when the new street was laid out in the 1850’s. The Hall or Habit fell into disrepair in the 18th century and was a complete ruin by approximately 1800 when it was demolished. Probably by the 17th century a number of stall holders in the Market used permanent wooden sheds which clustered in the range of buildings that now stretch back from the Market Place to Newdigate Street. Threaded by the former Boffins Arcade. Over the years these wooden sheds and stalls were superseded by brick structures so that by the early 19th century the block was a rabbit warren of jitties and passageways interspersed with permanent shops and some public houses. At one end of this block on the corner of Newdigate Square butchers gathered and established a shambles. It was amongst the Shambles there was also an old pub known as the Plough. The Shambles had lean to sheds fronting the streets where animals were slaughtered on Market Day. Imagine sitting in the dust and gloom of the old Plough Inn enclosed by the Shambles, with its array of clay pipes strung along the fireplace for use by anyone who fancied a pipe of tobacco washed down with a gallon of ale amidst the blood curdling screams of pigs, sheep and cattle being put to death just next door. Their warm blood pooling on to the cobble stones in the entrance way for you to slip on as you wobbled unsteadily out of the door on to the street. That is how it was in the Old Market Place in the good old days.

MEADOW STREET

There were no streets which broke the traditional street pattern of Nuneaton up until the mid 19th century and encroached on the Abbey site save Meadow Street. Certainly by the 1840’s it led off Abbey Street at right angles and serviced a development of cottages erected on the former Abbey Meadow.

OASTON ROAD

If you look in the mid 19th century census’s for Nuneaton and old parish records you come across a curious name for a street. “Odd-Aways Lane”. This is, in fact, Oaston Road. Oaston Road was part of the ancient route to Hinckley which passed by the former mansion house known as Horestone Grange as it went over the fields towards Hinckley. The strange name “Odd-Away” refers to a former tenant or owner of the hall known as Horestone Grange. (Horestone, by the way, meaning grey-stone as it was constructed from grey Attleborough freestone). I cannot get to the bottom of who “Odd-Away” was. Some say it was Francis Stratford last lord of the manor of that name (whose family descend through the Stratford Dugdales at Merevale today) who gave rise to the name, but other evidence said it was a tenant of Horestone Grange which by then had been let as a woollen factory. The Stratford’s had large woollen business interests, and after they vacated the Grange rented it out to people they employed as woollen cloth weavers. By the mid 18th century it is reported that Horestone Grange was a woollen mill, but the person who occupied and worked the equipment was “odd”. Horestone Grange burned down in mysterious circumstances in the mid 18th century. No date has survived. However, its passing and the circumstances surrounding it gave rise to a well known ghostly legend and local people did not care to go near the ruins at night. It stood blackened, gaunt, abandoned and eerie across the fields from the top of Odd-Aways Lane until the construction of the Nuneaton-Hinckley branch railway cut through it in 1860 leaving only odd fragments of out buildings and filled in moats as evidence of where it formerly stood.

By the 1860’s the old name was no longer used and Oaston Road (a corruption of Horestone) was in common use.

The new railway to Hinckley which was completed to Leicester in 1864 formed a physical barrier at the top of Oaston Road, and was as far as I can tell the only roadway in Nuneaton blocked by two railway lines. In this case though the level crossing remained in use well into the 1970’s until the Leicester loop closed. The old level crossing provides a route to the new housing estate known appropriately as Horestone Grange.

QUEENS ROAD

This road today is one of Nuneaton’s two principle streets. Abbey Street being the other. In the 19th century Queens Road did not exist. There was a road way there for sure, but in those days it was a watery lane called Wash Lane. Water was the reason it was not built up. There were two streams running down it on both sides of the lane and occasionally when these were in full spate after a rain storm the water level rose and met in the middle of the roadway. That is why Wash Lane was called Wash Lane because it was all awash on a regular basis. Another interesting facet was that the border between Chilvers Coton parish and Nuneaton parish ran down Wash Lane so one of these streams was in the former parish and the other in the latter. Neither side could agree whose responsibility it was to do something about the flooding problem. By the late 19th century pressure to provide building land for a burgeoning population meant that the local authorities had to take this issue seriously, and then the administration of both parishes merged. It was decided that they needed to divert the flow so that the streams could be prevented from bursting their banks so the entire water output was transferred into a culvert which led to an outfall in the river Anker. This solved the problem and paved the way for the road becoming built up. In the 1830’s Nuneaton Gas Works had been established in Wash Lane and for a time it stood in splendid isolation on the outskirts of town. Then around 1870 the bottom end of Wash Lane became Gas Street, whilst that beyond the gas works Arbury Lane. In 1887 Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee and the part of Gas Street between Stratford Street and the Market Place was called Queen’s Street to commemorate the occasion. From that day if you passed along Queens Road you travelled through Queen’s Street, Gas Lane and Arbury Lane before you got to the Cock & Bear Bridge. Then when the old Queen reached her 70th year of her reign the confusion of the names in Wash Lane was swept away and the whole roadway to the Cock & Bear canal bridge over the Coventry Canal was called Queen’s Road. By that time the street had been properly culveted and buildings were rising either side as Queen’s Road spread out into the Countryside.

STRATFORD STREET

As mentioned earlier Stratford Street took its name from the Stratford family who owned the manor of Nuneaton for well over 100 years. They were, in fact, the second wealthiest family in England with estates stretching from Stow on the Wold in the Cotswolds to Tewkesbury. They grew tobacco and traded in wool. They had large estates in Ireland. Business interests in Germany. In the first part of the 17th century they gradually acquired land In Warwickshire. They purchased Horestone Grange, gradually acquiring more land in Nuneaton including the former Abbot’s house – the Habbit on the perimeter of Nuneaton Market Place was part of their estates and where this stood Stratford Street was laid through on its gardens. Stratford Street provided a cut through from Abbey Street to what was then Wash Lane. One of its earliest residents was William Smith a local builder and undertaker (still trading today at Attleborough). A police station was erected with a small cell block to replace the ancient lock up in Abbey Street.

WEDDINGTON LANE

The town end of Weddington Lane was called Derby Lane, as it eventually led to Derby, but once you got into the country it was a roadway leading to Weddington so was appropriately known as Weddington Lane. In those days there were no houses and up until about 1920 only 100 souls lived in Weddington. After 1930 it became rapidly built up as a suburb of Nuneaton.

WHEAT STREET

I mentioned earlier that Wheat Street up until the 18th century had been the way out of town towards Hinckley. The re-alignment of this main road about 1730 reduced Wheat Street’s importance then the construction of the Trent Valley Railway went across at the top. At first the road alignment was preserved by providing a level crossing, and a tunnel under the track was provided for pedestrians. The level crossing created additional operating difficulties for the railway company at the south end of the station as they had two sets of level crossings in close proximity to each other. When Leicester Road Bridge was erected in the 1870’s the level crossing was dispensed with. Wheat Street blocked up leaving just the tunnel for foot traffic more or less as today. This tunnel led to Oaston Road which is dealt with elsewhere. Another small detail was that there used to be a trackway with an iron fence that led away from the top of Wheat Street alongside the railway to the loco shed. This was called the Birdcage by generations of footplate staff going to work. When the line was electrified in 1962/3 and gantries erected for the overhead wiring the concrete bases of the gantries impinged on this cinder path, so it was closed. The cast iron railings were simply moved back to the fence line of the houses in Glebe Road and were still there a few years ago, and may still be but the fence line has become thoroughly overgrown.

FOR VALOUR

By Ron Hartill

The VICTORIA CROSS (VC) is by far the world’s most coveted medal for bravery. It is the UK’s highest military decoration, and takes precedence over all other orders, decorations and medals.

During the First World War it was awarded to two Nuneaton men: Cecil Leonard Knox, and William Beesley.

The deeds for which the VC has been won are as varied as the backgrounds from which the winners have come. For it is the most democratic of medals open to every rank and grade of the Armed Forces. All have one thing in common; it is awarded for, “outstanding and conspicuous gallantry above and beyond the call of duty in the face of the enemy”.

It was founded by Royal Warrant on 29 January 1856, although there have been “back dated” awards for acts of 1854.

In direct contrast to other countries awards the VC is of a rather simple and plain design. It is the form of a bronze Maltese cross ensigned with the Royal Crest and a scroll inscribed “For Valour”. It is connected by a V-shaped link to a bar engraved on the face with laurel leaves and having a space on the reverse for the recipient’s name. The medal is suspended from a one and a half inch wide crimson ribbon. The bronze used in the medal is taken from Russian guns captured during the Crimea campaign. The remaining ingot is entrusted to the care of the Royal Logistic Corps and held securely at Donnington Ordnance Depot in Shropshire.

Since its inception it has been awarded for 1356 separate acts, to 1353 individual recipients, so we see that three persons have been awarded a “double” VC, (VC and Bar). With a large proportion of the total being awarded posthumously.

The nearest public display of VCs is held at the Royal Warwickshire Regiment Museum, St John’s, Warwick, where they hold 4 of the 6 awarded to the regiment. The largest collection is held at the Imperial War Museum in London.

The most recent awards have been to:

1), Private Johnson Beharry, of the 1st Battalion Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, for acts on 1st May and 11th June 2004 in Iraq. He is currently still serving in the British Army as a Lance Corporal.

2) Corporal Bryan Budd, of the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment, posthumously for action in Afghanistan on 20th August 2006.

What cost can we place on heroism? Due to prestige and rarity VCs now fetch astronomical prices, with them regularly selling at £400000 plus. A VC and Bar has been sold for £1.5 million!

CECIL LEONARD KNOX.

We have read recently about Haunchwood Brick & Tile Co Ltd, and the Knox family.

The son of James Knox (along with eight other brothers), Cecil Knox was born on 9th May 1889. The resided at “The Chase”, Higham Road, Nuneaton, which to quote Peter Lee, (who knows about such things), “was the perfect advert for Haunchwood Brick & Tile products”. He was educated at Oundle School, (motto: “God Grant Grace”), as a boarder, which specialised in science and engineering. After schooling he was articled to a firm of electrical engineers in Birmingham.

As the result of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, in

a place few Britons had heard of-Sarajevo, by a Serbian nationalist, Europe was soon ablaze. In company with the great majority of his generation Cecil volunteered to do what they all considered was their patriotic duty, by volunteering for the Army. With his training and background he joined the Royal Engineers, (RE), also known as the “Sappers”. This is the branch of the Army that provides engineering assistance for the forces to work, live and fight. In former times they were even more involved in our infrastructure and construction, two Royal Engineer officers designed the Royal Albert Hall!

“When the Waters were dried an the Earth did appear,

(It’s all one, says the Sapper),

The Lord He created the Engineer,

Her Majesty’s Royal Engineer,

With the rank and the pay of a Sapper!

Kipling.

Cecil trained at the RE depot Chatham, which is still in use today and also contains the stunning RE museum. He was appointed as a “Temporary” (a term used for all WW1 non regular officers) Second Lieutenant. Posted to Bhurtpore barracks Tidworth yet another fine Victorian edifice, also occupied by the British army in 2012; for further training. Then onto Northern Ireland, usually then called Ulster. Where he was posted to 150 Field Company RE, who were a constituent part of the famed 36th Ulster Division. This was formed from Carson’s Ulster Volunteer Force, almost entirely of Protestants who opposed Home Rule. They became a division in Kitchener’s “New Armies”, and adopted as the divisional sign The “Red Hand” of Ulster.

“Old Days ! The wild geese are flighting,

Head to the storm as they faced it before !

For where there are Irish there’s bound to be fighting,

And when there’s fighting no more, It’s Ireland no more !

Ireland no more !”

Kipling.

Moving via Sussex they arrived in France between 3-6 October 1915. They were committed from the first day of the Somme offensive, and the division in their attempt to reach Thiepval and the Schwaben Redoubt suffered some 5500 men killed wounded and missing in just a few hours! This attack is still revered in Northern Ireland today, especially by Orange Lodges. The striking memorial to the “Missing of the Somme”, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, is now situated at Thiepval, where are the names of 73367 soldiers who died in 1916-17, and have no known graves! Close by is the Ulster Tower, that commemorates both the Irish of the Battle of the Somme and to all Ulstermen who died in the Great War. This structure is an exact replica of the memorial to Helen, mother of the Marquis of Dufferin, in the family park at Clunboye, Co Down; where the division trained before moving to France.

“Helen’s Tower here I stand

Dominant over sea and land

Son’s love built me I hold

Ulster’s love built in lettered gold”

Alfred Lord Tennyson.

In the grounds of the tower stands a plaque to honour the nine VC winners from the

36th division. Including of course Cecil Knox. Incidentally news of other Knox brothers: Andrew Ronald Knox who served in the RE was killed by a sniper at La Boisselle on 12th December 1915. Thomas Kenneth Knox also served with the RE in the Ulster Division and was awarded the MC and bar.

Should members require further information on Thiepval, Ulster Tower, La Boisselle, kindly consult your Treasurer, who has visited them all, and been fully briefed!

Following action on the Somme, Messines and Cambrai early in 1918 the 36 division was situated in the front line centred on Aisne, opposite St Quentin, France. Cecil Knox then a 29 year old officer was tasked with the demolition of 12 bridges. On 22nd March 1918 at Tugny, near Aisne. He successfully carried our this task, but in the case of one steel girder bridge the time fuse failed to act. Without a moments hesitation he ran to the bridge under heavy enemy fire, and when the enemy were actually on it, he tore away the time fuse and lit the instantaneous fuse, to do which he had to clamber under the bridge. As a practical civil engineer 2Lt Knox undoubtedly fully realised the grave risk he took in doing this. In spite of his close proximity to the blast he suffered only minor injuries; it did however affect his hearing for the rest of his life. The VC was listed in the London Gazette on 4th June 1918, and was presented to him by King George V.

He was made a Freeman of the Borough of Nuneaton, and became a director of Haunchwood Brick & Tile Co Ltd.

Between the wars he joined the Royal Auxiliary Air Force and suffered from a rather serious parachute accident. In 1940 he joined the Home Guard and was appointed Major commanding the Nuneaton Company. He was sadly killed on 4th February 1943, aged 53. It was reported that he lost control of his motor cycle on ice at Tuttle Hill. He is buried at Gilroes cemetery, Leicester. The whereabouts of his VC are not known, the register states: “not in the public domain”.

Situated in Nuneaton are two crescents: Cecil Leonard Knox Crescent, in Bramcote, off the Lutterworth Road, and also Knox Crescent, off the Higham Road, so maintaining the family name in perpetuity.

THE MORAL CONDITION OF THE RIBBON WEAVERS

(from the Handloom Weavers Report) 1835

Transcribed by Judy Kennedy (2006)

The population divides itself morally into two distinct portions: that engaged in the engine weaving in the city and suburbs, among which superior habits and intelligence prevail: and the dispersed and ignorant inhabitants of the rural parishes, employed chiefly in the single-hand trade, and retaining most of their original barbarism with an accession of vice.

The better class of (city) weavers are decent, well-doing people, with habits generally good. They are not drinkers in the bad sense of the term, though to take a couple of glasses of ale and a pipe costing altogether 5d. in the smoking room of a public house is a common habit with them.

Among the more active-minded young men the strange theoretical confusions of all the relations of civil life, commonly called 'socialism' with its community of property and exchange of women, has great sway, but the older men have generally no intellectual excitements whatever. The occupation of the ribbon weaver leaves his mind at liberty to ruminate, and the loom is here frequently called 'the weaver's study'. Foleshill Evidence of Richard Holmes, undertaker and Constable:

The mass of the people are brutally ignorant, and the intelligence which is to be found in the exceptions has manifested itself only within the last half-dozen years. It is not the population which has gone down into ignorance; it has never emerged from it. There is more profanity, more Sabbath-breaking and more immorality than formerly. At any little holiday time, the public houses will be thronged with girls ready for the lowest excesses. Both sexes are great drinkers, chiefly of ale. The place is also notorious for poaching and robberies:

Evidence of Robert Cantrill; One of the most notorious depredations is robbing the barges on the canal. They are robbed of every kind of goods, which here find plenty of receivers. A principal article is silk, for the disposal of which it is asserted that there is a very complete organisation. The thieves have their throwsters, their dyers, their undertakers, their warehouse and their travelling agent to sell the goods. Bulkington Mr. John Slingsby's evidence:

The working in the night injures the sight, injures the health, and injures the habits. A parcel of fellows meeting in the night... .encourage each other in small disorders and pilferings, gradually extending to large offences. Orchard and garden robbing are generally on the Friday night; sometimes on Saturday night. The next step is to knock over a duck, goose, fowl or turkey and to fetch it to some one of their houses or haunts. Besides six regular public-houses in Bulkington and three in the hamlets, there are two beer-houses in the village - the exclusive and favoured resort of the ill-conducted.

There are many sheep stolen... .three years ago the church was robbed... .and four youths were transported for robbing a travelling tinker whom they left for dead in the road. Many of the houses have no furniture

but a stool and a table with perhaps an old chair, a loom on which the man works and often neither bed nor bedstead. The girls, before marriage, are sometimes forced to find money for the debauches of their sweethearts. Certainly seventeen out of twenty are 'far gone' in the family way at marriage. They don't care to be married until they are that way. They generally marry very young, approaching or just at full age.

Nuneaton Mr. Stephens, one of the oldest undertakers, showed that a similar state of things was there by no means of recent origin; the habits of the weavers in his own youth being rude, idle, dissolute and barbarous in every respect. He drew an amusing picture of the old dress and manners - the poor cottage; the deadness to religious influence; the ignorance and drunkenness; the early working of the children - much earlier than at the present day, and more severely - and the barbarous amusements. There is a well-known feeling among the farm-labourers, the bricklayers and the other ordinary artisans that it is very hard upon them to be turned out at early hours every day instead of being able to take what hours they please like the ribbon weaver and, like him, take Saint Monday and Saint Tuesday, too, if they choose.

Notwithstanding the wretched state in which, until recently, the trade had long been, it was impossible for the respectable families to procure domestic servants. There is the greatest difficulty in prevailing upon parent to let their children come to service. The young women look down with scorn upon it. As housewives, there are none worse. They can neither make nor mend their own clothes; they cannot sew; they know nothing of domestic management; they cannot make a house comfortable; and the men, not expecting it, seek the beer-shops. But they are neighbourly among each other, generally well-disposed, and send their children to Sunday School.

In Foleshill, Bulkington, Nuneaton and Exhall, the livings are held by non-resident clergymen, officiating only by curates, frequently removing, who cannot have that permanent acquaintance with, or exercise that permanent influence upon, the mass of the population. The spontaneous efforts of the people themselves, partial and ill-directed though they be, to attain to a Christian civilisation, in spite of this neglect, have led to the erection of many Dissenting places of worship. These are pretty well attended, but sauntering the fields is a very favourite occupation with great numbers on Sunday.

Bedworth has, however, happily had of late years a resident rector, who found it the worst spot amid all the barbarism and demoralisation by which it was surrounded. Fights among the men were incessant; even the women stripped in the streets to fight. Bull-baiting, cock-fighting, drinking and disorder of every description had full sway; it was impossible for any one to pass free from insult through the mixed gangs of colliers, weavers and others of the neighbourhood, and the surpassing grossness and degradation of the place obtained for it the proverbial designation of 'Black Bedworth'.

From the Archives:

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The Nuneaton Historian

NEWSLETTER OF THE NUNEATON LOCAL HISTORY GROUP

July 2012

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Cecil Leonard Knox VC

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