A visit to Mr. Straw's House in Worksop owned by the National Trust had been on my list of places to visit for many years. So on a glorious day in June 2018 I made the relative short trip to Worksop.
In this post I have only briefly write about the lives of the Straw family at Worksop & a more detailed account can be read at the links at the end of this post. I have concentrated on bringing you information not previously written on the web about the Straw's & my day visiting the house. It's at this point I must thank Danielle Brown at Mr. Straw's House for supplying me with the Straw's adverts, Pegg & Sons photo & giving me permission to use my photos of the inside of the house in this post.
With the house only being a Edwardian semi-detatched house, entry is by pre-timed ticket which starts off in the Parlour & then continues to the kitchen. All of the Straw's furniture & possessions have been left in the same place as they were found in when the Trust took over & very little has changed since the Straw's first modernised the house in the 1920's, apparently they threw nothing away. So it's a snapshot of how a grocer's family lived in the 1920's & then continued to live to that standard.
I then made my way to the upstairs rooms & it was while I was waiting to go in the next room that I heard one of the guides telling visitors in that room that the Worksop Straw's were related to Walter Straw, pot & earthenware maker in Sutton in Ashfield & it was a possibility that the earthenware wine cooler in that room may have been made by Walter Straw. Of course my ears pricket up in hearing this information as I am from Sutton & have wrote about Walter Straw on my brick blog. I was totally unaware that there was a connection between the two Straw families in Worksop & Sutton & this intrigued me. I then moved though to this room the lady guide was in & she began to tell me the same story about the wine cooler (shown later in the post). She then went on to tell me that they had a spreadsheet of the Straw Family Tree downstairs to view. It was through this document that I could see the connections. The following week included a visit to the library to source the census records to tie all this information together. As said Danielle sent me two adverts & a photo & the following information is what I found from my investigation.
It was Walter Straw pot & earthenware manufacturer of Sutton in Ashfield 2nd & 3rd son's, Benjamin born 1862 & William born 1865 who moved to Worksop to take over & run Mr. Aves Worksop grocery business in April 1886. Benjamin had secured a £700 loan from his family to purchase this Market Place business & William joined him in this new venture. From the advert below Benjamin advertises that he is selling his father's garden pots & glazed earthenware. Walter Straw's eldest son, Walter junior had joined his father as a pot maker & then at a later date became a brickmaker in Sutton.
I go slightly back in time & the 1881 census records both Benjamin, 19 & William 16 as Grocer's Apprentices & living with their parents at Red House Pottery on Mansfield Road, Sutton in Ashfield. Danielle has sent me the 1881 photo below of Pegg & Sons of Mansfield, who were grocers & dealers in fancy goods with Danielle writing that William is the young boy on the left in this photo, but I am think William may be the young man in the middle. I have thought that Benjamin may also be in this photo, which he may be, but I have found another lead to where Benjamin may have served his grocer's apprentice & this was in Farnsfield. Benjamin's uncle, William Straw (elder brother to Walter Straw in Sutton) was a pot maker in Farnsfield & is also recorded as owning a grocer's shop in the village in the 1891 census. I know there is a ten year gap in this evidence, but in the 1881 census Benjamin's cousin Alex (William's son) is listed as a grocer in Farnsfield, so it looks like the Straw family had established a grocer's shop in Farnsfield before 1881. If I do find concrete evidence to where Benjamin served his grocer's apprenticeship, I will update the post.
Sissons' 1888 Almanack records Benjamin Straw as Grocer & now a Tea Dealer. William also trained as a Tea dealer. Again garden pots & glazed earthenware are advertised for sale, but this time his father's name is not recorded, but the reason why could be that his father, Walter Straw died in 1888. We next find that William purchased the grocers business from Benjamin in 1889 & in 1903 with the business prospering William purchased the shop that he & his brother had rented since 1886. William had also purchased two public houses & several cottages, so his business must have been doing well & a few years later he was to become one of the wealthiest merchants in Worksop. William had married Florence Winks, a local butcher's daughter on the 15th September 1896 & they had three sons, Willian junior b.1898, Walter, b.1899 & David, b.1901 who died in infancy in 1903. So in 1920 with William's business flourishing, the Straw family moved from the flat above the shop to 7, Blythe Grove. As said a more detailed account of the family can be read at the links below.
Florence & William at Scarborough.
Endcliffe Villa, 7, Blythe Grove.
I now turn my attentions to what happened to Benjamin after 1889. It is thought by Danielle at the Trust, that with his father dying in 1888 he returned to Sutton to run his father's pottery business, but this was in the hands of his brother Walter junior. So I checked the 1891 census, nothing came up for Benjamin being in Sutton or even with his cousin's in Farnsfield. I did however find in the 1891 census a Benjamin Straw with the correct age of 29 living in Fulstow, Lincolnshire & being born in Sutton in Ashfield. I am almost certain that this Benjamin is our man. He is listed as an Inn Keeper at the Nelson Inn in Fulstow & married to Eliza Ann aged 38. Now his brother William is recorded as purchasing two Public Houses, so could this Nelson Inn be one of them or did Benjamin pay for this Inn from the money he received from William ? There is the option Benjamin only rented this Inn. All this info found seams to fit. According to the NT's Family Tree speadsheet Benjamin died in 1918, his brother Walter in Sutton died in 1915, with William in Worksop dying in 1932.
A visit to the house was rounded off by a walk around the gardens.
This photo of Walter Straw, father to Walter jnr, Benjamin & William hangs in one of the bedrooms at Mr. Straws House & below is the wine cooler thought to have been made at one Walter's two potteries, either his Red House Pottery on Mansfield Road or his Eastfield Side Pottery.
In the garden there are some path edgings & quarry tiles (photos below) which are also thought to have been made at Walter Straw's potteries & according to the Trust they where in the garden when they moved in. Consensus is that William brought them from the shop when he moved there in 1920. They are certainly the same kind of items as described in the two adverts which Walter Straw was producing in Sutton at that time.
I have added this 2018 photo of Walter Straw junior's Herne House, Sutton in Ashfield (William's brother) to show that he too had prospered as a successful businessman. Although now turned into flats the front of the building remains the same as when built by Walter, other than new windows & a new roof have been fitted.
If you you like to read more about the Straw Family in Sutton & Farnsfield, please click on my link below.
https://eastmidlandsnamedbricks.blogspot.com/2013/10/walter-straw-brickmaker-sutton-in.html
Special thanks to Danielle Brown, House Steward at Mr. Straw's for helping me with info etc in bring this post to the web.
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/mr-straws-house
https://www.countryimagesmagazine.co.uk/featured/straws-house/
https://medium.com/@MyWorksop/myworksop-visits-mr-straws-house-bd405fc8620a
