From New York to Well Hall, the story of the Cooper family in the 1850s

Well Hall in the April of 1844

I am fascinated by the people who history has neglected.

The rich, the powerful and those of influence have had their lives inspected, their achievements judged and their homes open to the public gaze.

But the poor and the ordinary have not fared so well.  They have been consigned to walk on parts in the great events of the past, living out little lives in great centuries.

And this pretty much sums up all we know of George and Francis Cooper who lived in Well Hall with their five children in the April of 1851.

In total they have left just two official documents to mark their existence but they are enough to shed an interesting light into the couple.

In the spring of 1851 they appear on the census and may have lived in one of the six cottages just north of Kidbrook Lane.  Neither had been born in Eltham, George who was 42 came from Surrey while Francis who had been born in 1815 came from Hove in Sussex.

Well Hall Cottages in 1909

Now this was not unusual and gives the lie to that old school book myth that few travelled far.  Just under 30% of the people here in Well Hall in 1851 had been born elsewhere.  Had you walked the lanes around Well Hall in that spring you might well have heard the accents of the Home Counties mixing with those of Yorkshire, Ireland and the far south west.

And it might just have been possible to pick up a slight North American influence in the words spoken by George and Francis’s eldest two children who had been born in New York in 1839 and 1842.

I don’t suppose we will get to know why they went to America or why they returned.
Perhaps the clue is in the fact that George described himself as a servant so perhaps they crossed the Atlantic with an employer.  Either way they were back here in Greenwich by 1844 for the birth of their third child and there they still were in 1849.

And two years later they were in Well Hall but not for long, because by 1861 they are missing from the census record.

Well Hall Cottages in 1909

In fact the family disappear completely until 1891, when Francis shows up in the census return for that year living in two rooms of a six roomed house in Greenwich as a sub tenant of a Mr Read who was a Railway guard. She lived alone describing herself as a widow and “living on own means.”

I suspect there will be more, and there are tantalizing hints about the fate of the children.

But at present I shall leave Francis in her two roomed house near Ravensbourne Road determined to follow up the address on the OS Map of London for the period and to check out the Rate Books for Well Hall to pinpoint the time the family were in Eltham.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; Well Hall in 1844 from the Tithe map for Eltham courtesy of Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, http://www.kent.gov.uk/leisure_and_culture/kent_history/kent_history__library_centre.aspx Well Hall Cottages from The story of Royal Eltham,  R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm, 

In Well Hall in the April of 1851

History is messy and rarely fits with that neat simplistic model we were taught at school. 

So take for example that idea that people rarely travelled and that most of us would have lived our life in the same village amongst the same people in communities that pretty much stayed the same.

Well even before the 19th century I doubt that this was completely accurate, and certainly by the middle decades of that century people were on the move and Well Hall was no exception.

Had you walked Well Hall Lane in the spring of 1851 you would have heard accents from all over the south and east of England mixed with some from the far west and north as well as Ireland.

Look closely at the 1851 census and there is evidence that while a parent might have been born in Eltham the children were born elsewhere and only later did the family return.

One such couple were George and Francis Cooper.  In 1851 he was 42 and she was 36 and they had been in New York.

I don’t suppose we will get to know why they went to America or why they returned.  But the fact that they did is evidenced by their children two of whom were born in New York in 1839 and 1842.

Perhaps the clue is in the fact that George described himself as a servant so perhaps they crossed the Atlantic with an employer.  Either way they were back here in Greenwich by 1844 for the birth of their third child and there they still were in 1849.

They were both from Surrey and were part of the 30% of Well Hall residents who had not been born in Eltham.  Now most of this 30% were from Kent, but that still left others who were from as far away as Yorkshire and Ireland.

Part of the explanation was that those who employed domestic servants preferred not to use locals for no one wanted the secrets of the household to become the gossip of the neighbourhood which explains why none of the vicar’s six servants were from Eltham.

But in other ways Well Hall was typical of a small rural community.  Most of the workforce was engaged in agriculture either as labourers or in trades related to farming and these included four blacksmiths and two bailiffs.

And there is much more but that as they say is for another time.

Location;Well Hall, London

Pictures; Tudor Barn, Well Hall courtesy of Scott MacDonald, and data from the 1851 census, Enu 1b, Eltham Kent

At Candelmas in Well Hall

At Well Hall, December 2012, © Chrissie Rose

"If Candelmas Day be fair and bright,
Winter will have another flight;
But if it be dark with clouds and rain,
Winter is gone and will not come again.”*

Now I missed Candelmas which was February 2nd.

It marks the midpoint of winter, halfway between the shortest day and the spring equinox and it is a traditional Christian festival commemorating the ritual purification of Mary forty days after the birth of her son Jesus and when Jesus was presented in the Temple.

In pre Christian times, the day was the Feast of Lights and celebrated the increase in strength of the life giving sun as winter gave way to spring.**

So for our farmers here in Well Hall Candelmas was a significant moment in the farming year and as you would expect there were plenty of proverbs which had grown up around this mid point of winter.

Now Well Hall is no longer a rural community and our link with the land is pretty tenuous but I remain drawn to that period when most of us would have gained a living from farming.***

And while I suspect our farmers and market gardeners were realistic enough to know that proverbs were not always sound predictors of the coming weather many will have uttered them on the course of that day.

After all these rural proverbs were rooted in the experience of life of the countryside and will have stretched back centuries.

At Well Hall, May 2013, © Scott MacDonald

So for no other reason than I like them and because I have never lost my interest in the Well Hall of the past here are a few more Candelmas proverbs.

“As far as the sun shines in our Candelmas Day,
So far the snow will blow afore May.”

“Where the wind is on Candelmas Day
There it will stick till the end of May.”

And my own favourite which pretty much points up that we are still only midway through winter,

“Lock in the barn on Candelmas Day
Half your corn and half your hay.”

So given that Sunday was a bright sunny day with a spot of wind I am at a loss what to predict.

*quoted by H. Rider Haggard, A Farmer’s Year, Being the Commonplace Book for 1898, 1909

**Project Britain, Folklore Calendar, http://projectbritain.com/year/candlemas.html

*** The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton

Pictures; The Tudor Barn, in December 2012 from the collection of Chrissie Rose, and the Tudor Barn in May 2013 courtesy of Scott MacDonald