MR. STRAW'S HOUSE, WORKSOP

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

LION SALT MUSEUM, CHESHIRE

A visit to the Lion Salt Museum at Marston near Northwich, Cheshire took three years to accomplish. A 2013 planned visit while I was staying with my cousin Jean in Congleton did not materialise as I had not checked their website beforehand. If I had I would have found that the works was closed for restoration. With a re-opening date of Summer 2014 planned by Cheshire Museums a second chance to visit the works was penciled in, but the restoration with the aid of a very large Heritage Fund grant took longer than planned & the opening took place in June 2015. 

So in August 2015 on a glorious summers day, cousin Jean & myself spent most of the day at the Salt Museum.

This old advert on a rusting brine tank for visiting the Works can be seen from the canal which runs alongside the Works. The Trent & Mersey Canal was used to transport the finished salt products both locally & to Liverpool, from where it was exported to Canada, North America & West Africa. The coming to the railways & then road transport superseded the canal as a more profitable & viable way of transporting the salt. 

If you follow in our footsteps & visit the Museum I highly recommend that you take up the option of the excellent free guided tour (if still available) as this informative but not too in-depth tour made it a more pleasurable visit. I have to note that there is a charge to go around the Museum, but the guided tour by local volunteers was free.

The guided tour starts at the reception with an introduction to the beginnings of the Works & how the salt was extracted from the ground below. This was follow by the tour of the buildings with each of the processes explained along the way. 

The salt brine was pumped by steam engine from underground salt streams via a bore hole & then stored in storage tanks before it was transferred to the pans via a network of pipes.  

In the Pan House coloured lights & dry ice are used to re-create the steam filled atmosphere of the men at work collecting the salt from the pan. The brine was brought to the boil thus creating the scene above, but conditions the men had to endure was not a pleasant one, hot & a constant taste of salt on their lips & in their nostrils.

One of the many pans in the process of being restored.

The salt was collected, put into moulds creating salt blocks. Then it was stored in the lofts before cutting & packing.

After the tour we revisited parts of the works to spend more time reading the story boards. This was followed by a walk along the towpath of the canal viewing the buildings & saying hello to the people on the many pleasure craft which now go up & down the canal.

This arial view of the works possibly 1970's/80's (with the look of the cars) is a very large black & white print on one of the walls in the final section of the museum. 

This re-creation of the Works office is in the main museum building & in this section there is a display board showing the Thompson Family Tree. It was John Thompson senior who started the family salt business in 1842. Joiner by trade John was also a timber merchant & brick yard owner. John initially traded salt & shipped salt in partnership with other salt merchants. He then sank his first salt mine & opened his first salt works in 1843. In 1846 John was joined by his sons John junior & Jabez in the business opening several more salt works over the next forty years. After John seniors death in 1867 the company was divided between the two brothers with Jabez running the Alliance Salt Works. In the 1880's Jabez then turned to brickmaking & this venture was a very successful one. The Alliance Works was then run by John junior's son Alfred until it's sale to the Salt Union in 1888. Meanwhile after John seniors death, John junior continued to run the rest of the families salt works & it was in 1894 together with his son Henry Ingram Thompson that the Lion Works was opened next to Red Lion Hotel on Ollershaw Lane. This new works was only a short distance from the Alliance Works. By the time the Lion Salt Works had closed in 1986 it had been run by six generations of the Thompson family.

These first two bricks made by Jabez are displayed next to the family tree board & the third one stamped Ornamental Brickworks was found during archaeological excavations & this photo was supplied to me by Chris Hewitson, archaeologist at the museum. Jabez owned two brickworks in Northwich one on Manchester Road & one on Warrington Road which now has Aldi built upon it. 

Many Thanks to Chris Hewitson for providing the brick photo & information for this post was collated from the Lion Salt Museum's guide book & Wikipedia. Also many thanks to our very excellent tour guide Mike.  

FELLEY PRIORY

I continue with my trio of local Grand Houses with Felley Priory & it's connections to Annesley Hall.

Felley Priory

1982

Felley Priory was founded in 1156 & followed the Rule of St. Augustine, comprising of 12 canons. This small priory was largely destroyed during the Dissolution in 1535 & the stone from the priory was incorporated into the present day building. The brick side of the house was built in 1557 on the site of the former cloisters with the rest of the priory being situated to the west end of the house. The central part of the house was constructed in the 16th & 17th centuries. The garden now covers the site of the Priory Church. 
The Chaworth-Musters of Annesley Hall became the owners of the property in 1822 but the family did not live there until 1973 when Major Robert Chaworth-Musters sold his ancestral home & moved the short distance over the M1 motorway to Felley. This is another one of my links which joins these two properties together.

1982

Soon after moving into Felley, Major & Mrs Chaworth-Musters set about developing the garden which you see today & 1982 may have been the first time that I visited the garden which was open under the National Garden Scheme with the proceeds going to nurses charities. I have since visited the gardens on many occasions mainly on days when it has been open for the specialist herbaceous plant fairs in May.

2007

Please note in this 2007 photo how the yew hedge has established itself in 25 years. In the 1880's the area of land looking from the house down the valley was an open field & was not terraced until the 1890's. The garden you see today was created by the hard work of Maria Chaworth-Musters. 
The garden has not stood still since the passing of Maria in June 2010 but is open 9am to 4pm Tuesday to Fridays along with the nursery & tearooms & is well worth a visit. The garden contains many rare & tender plants & trees which in theory should not be able to grow in this region.   http://www.felleypriory.co.uk/contact-location/opening-times/

Today Felley is the home of the Major's granddaughters Sophia & Victoria together with their father & stepmother.

A fairly comprehensive history of the origins & line of the Chaworth-Musters can be read at this link.
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/collectionsindepth/family/chaworth-mustersofannesley/chaworth-mustersfamilyhistory.aspx

2007

 2011

  2011

Peonies.

  2011

  2011

Tradscantia.

  2011

  2011

Tradscantia "Pauline"

  2011

  2014

Thalictrum Aquilegifolium.

  2014

Iris Sibirica.