By Jean Chatterley
An 1890 map of Carnforth shows a compact area of houses, within the parish of Warton, separated from Carnforth and the Ironworks by the railway and the River Keer, and labelled ’Dudley’ – the area we now call Millhead. Local lore has it that the earlier name, Dudley, was born as a nickname, many of the residents having come from the Dudley area of the West Midlands to work in the Iron works. This account is a brief investigation into this local lore.
Certainly at the time of the 1861 census the settlement did not exist1. In fact, of all the residents registered in Warton in that year, there were only eight to represent the beginnings of that rapid change which brought the Industrial Revolution to the heart of our parish. These were five railway labourers, a railway porter, a signalman, and one lady, Margaret Heigham, who in the space allocated for ’occupation, rank or status’ on the census, is described as ’A Railway Shareholder’, doubtless a status symbol of some importance, to her at least!
By 1871, the population of the parish had increased by nearly 77%, from 579 in 1861 to 1060. Analysis of the census data reveals that the intervening decade had seen a great influx of young people, mostly under 40 (single men and couples with large families), and that nearly all of them lived in Millhead rather than in old Warton village. Of the newcomers, about 180 were children under 10 years old. The census returns give place of birth, and it is interesting to note that in Dudley, only children of 5 or under are shown as being born in Warton parish, from which we can assume that the parents had been there only since 1867 or 1868. The Ironworks had opened in 1864. A study of the birthplaces of the older children reveals where the parents had lived before moving to work here. Some of them, like their parents, were born in the Dudley-Bilston-Wednesbury area of the West Midlands, giving basis to the general idea that many of Dudley’s people were from the Midlands Dudley, Many, however, were not only born elsewhere, but had travelled around with their parents from one industrial area to another, often gaining a baby brother or sister at each stop. In fact, it would seem that for many families, migration from one coalfield to another in search of work, perhaps spending a couple of years in each place, was the accepted pattern of life.
Thomas Patterson, for instance, was listed in 1871 as a 36 year old iron furnace labourer, born in County Down, Ireland, with two children born in Tunstall and Hanley (the Potteries, Staffordshire).
William Iniff, 31, a blacksmith, was born in Rochdale, and of his four children, two were born in Workington, and two in Warton.
Samuel Lunn, 31, a steelmaker, was born in Bradford, married and had one child in Oldham, and another in Manchester, before moving to Dudley.
Joseph Waite, 32, another ironworks labourer, was born in Northamptonshire and had come via Coldsgreen in the West Midlands.
Others had come from the Midlands via Barrow-in-Furness, from Ireland via County Durham, from Monmouthshire via Cumberland, and so on. If one plotted the birthplaces of these new families on a map, it would show that they had made their way to Dudley from every coalfield in Britain, but that a large proportion had come from or through the West Midlands. The houses in Dudley must have been crowded indeed.
The census shows us that many workers had large, young families, and also took in boarders or lodgers. These Lodgers were often relatives, and/or single men from the same home town as the ‘head of Household’. Sometimes the lodger is described as a married man, presumably working and waiting for a house to which he could move his own family. In William Street, for example, lived Benjamin and Katherine Evans, an iron furnace labourer and his wife, both in their 20’s, with three daughters aged 5, 3 and 1 all fron Wednesfield, and six unmarried men, all labourers in their early 20’a except for one, a 45 year old key-maker, and all but one from Wednesfield, Willenhall, and Bilston. Sometimes two complete families shared one house. The census also gives us the occupations of the workers. ‘Pig lifters’ and ‘steel blowers’ were not to be confused with the general ‘Iron Works Labourers’ who formed the largest occupational group in Dudley. It is remarkable now few jobs were given to local lads. Joseph Jackson, 17, the son of the quarrymaster, and John Newby, 54, a farmer’s son were taken on as clerks in the Ironworks, but only John Atkinson, the 19 year old son of a carter, was employed as a labourer from Warton itself. The employers were presumably after men with experience.
Jon Haven, who has researched into the everyday lives of workers of this period in the West Midlands and who has a folk museum there, told me that ‘at the time you mention, ‘1868-’71, the Dudley iron mines would have been very much in decline ….as were some of the coal mines. The district was investing its labour and skills in the upcoming engineering industry, and many workers were retraining…no doubt the failure of industry in this area was known to those opening the Ironworks, and I imagine an agent was sent down to attract people.’ Any such agent would have been sent by Mr Edward Barton. He was the Ironworks’ Managing Director, and had been engaged to a group of Manchester businessmen, originally as engineer in charge. In 1871 we know that he was living at Warton Hall Farm, with servants but without his family. The company later built what is now Warton Grange Hotel [Ed. now demolished] as his private residence, a measure of their opulence and of the status of the Ironworks in our part of Victorian England. Mr Barton is recorded in the census as employing 300 men. Although the census returns are a valuable source of facts and figures, they seem ‘dry and dusty* compared with the newspapers of these decades.
It is from these that we are learning much about the living and working conditions of those 300 men and their families, I refer readers to other pages in this magazine, and to the papers themselves. We are still seeking the answers to some of our questions, and perhaps you can help. For instance, when did the name ‘Dudley’ stop being used? And do you know anything about Mr Barton’s family? (One of his descendants, now living in the USA, has made a particular request for any details.) We understand that some men walked from Dudley to Dudley—do you know of any such? And we would welcome any songs, rhymes, or customs associated with the Dudley men.
Notes
- The census returns are housed at the Lancashire County Record Office in Preston and most libraries in the UK as well as Ancestry.co.uk and findmypast.co.uk ↩︎
Published in Mourholme Magazine Issue 2 Winter 1982