OXENHOPE        SCARBOROUGH        FOLKESTONE

OXENHOPE - WEST YORKSHIRE

Shaw Lane from Hawks Bridge Lane / Dunkirk Mill.  On the left are the Brooksmeeting Mill buildings, followed by the hamlet of Coldwell.  On the small hill is Uppertown, now Oxenhope (where John Fletcher lived with his wool comber brother Thomas in 1851).

My great great grandparents, John Fletcher (1824 - 1894 (69)) and his wife Maria Dixon (1837 - 1911 (74)), were a remarkable couple.

John was born into a family of wool combers, a shitty occupation at the bottom of the feeding chain in what was a marginal part of the wool world (the West Yorkshire crofters).  In fact, we now know that Fletcher woolcombers had lived in Coldwell since at least the mid 1700s.

You can see the Fletcher combers, children and grandchildren of Thomas and Grace, in this 1841 census page of the crofters of Coldwell.  As shitty as their lives were, John's dad Thomas lived to 84, and his grandfather, also Thomas, lived to 82.  They also owned the cottages where they lived, and thus qualified to vote. 

John obviously decided to break out of this life, learned a trade (described as tin and iron plate worker and gas fitter (plumber and welder)), and only lived to 69 as opposed to the 84 and 82 years achieved by his dad and grandad!

The  cottage at Brooksmeeting Mill (built 1826, for sale in October 2009) is next door to Coldwell - see also the Shaw Lane photo above.

William Dixon was Manager, and his family may have lived here before the newly appointed Vicar made it his base.

Builders' plate on the Brooksmeeting Mill cottages

On Monday 29 December 1851 John (28) married the 14 1/2 year old Maria Dixon.  She was the daughter of William Dixon and his wife Susan Sutcliffe.  Her family lived at Brooksmeeting Mill (photo above), and she had had a Wesleyan Methodist baptism somewhere in the Calder Valley where the family were living.  John and Maria chose to get married in the distant (5 miles) and massive (1500 seats) new Wesleyan Methodist "Chapel" in Keighley, long before the days of the Oxenhope to Keighley railway (opened 1867).  One of the witnesses was Henry Yates Rushworth, a young blacksmith who was probably a cousin of John's (his mother Mary was a Rushworth).  Hitherto the Fletchers of Coldwell had been parishioners of the distant Haworth Chapel of St Michael & all Angels (now famous through the residency of Rev Patrick Bronte and his girls - in fact he probably christened John and certainly married his father Thomas), though a new Chapel for Oxenhope had opened in 1850.  The Parish Church was in very distant Bradford.

The Keighley (pron Keefly) Mosque - built in the mid 1800s as a Methodist "Chapel" - photographed 2009.

John and Maria made the long road journey here to get married at the end of December 1851.

After their marriage John and Maria lived in Lowertown (now part of Oxenhope), which would have put him near to the big Lowertown Mill (below, as converted into residences) which was probably a good source of work. 

Lowertown Mill (now residential) - photographed 2009

There was another mill (Denholm) just up the next hill, and the Brooksmeeting Mill back down Shaw lane, and in fact some 17 other mills within walking / working distance. 

Denholm Mill - photographed 2009

The Keighley (pron Keefly) and Worth Valley Railway (KWVR) opened in 1867.  The railway was funded by mill owners and led to the naming of the location of its southern terminus station  "Oxenhope", hitherto the name of a farm.  This led to "Oxenhope" being used as an umbrella name for places hitherto just called Uppertown, Lowertown etc.

After their marriage at the end of 1851, John and Maria's first child, Mary, took nearly four years to arrive, but they made up for the delay with a vengeance.  Frank Edward (Adrian's great grandfather) was child number 6 born in February 1864.  In 1877 child number 12 (George) was born in Oxenhope.  By that stage and through to 1880 the Electoral Register shows John as the owner of a freehold house and shop in Lowertown.  So they probably moved to Scarborough in 1880. 

SCARBOROUGH

LINK TO MAP OF PROCTER AND FLETCHER SCARBOROUGH

In the final years of the 1870s something decided them to move to Scarborough - a seaside spa resort on the distant East side of Yorkshire.  Having sampled both Lowertown and Scarborough one can see their point, but it would have been a much bigger decision than breaking out of wool combing.  Maybe they had friends / family already in Scarborough (which had had its railway station since 1845).

In Scarborough they lived in 14 (with shop) then 39 North Marine Road (now a hotel) - both places were still there in 2009 .....

39 North Marine Rd (above mid-right) is now the Thornhurst Hotel

none of the houses had a third storey then, now they all do.

At some stage John moved his Ironmongers' shop to 20 North Street (since demolished, but the "Black Swan" next door is still there)

North Street follows the route of the old city wall, and T junctions with what is now the main (pedestrian) shopping drag - named Newborough here then Westborough a little bit further along.  When John Fletcher set up his ironmonger shop here, the Newborough gate or bar still existed on this junction, originally one of only two entrances through the wall around the medieval port town of Scarborough. 

Maria had child number 13 (Arthur) in Scarborough in 1881, and Ethel (number 14) was born in 1884.  By then  Maria was aged 47 and had been birthing for one year short of 30!  At no stage in the various censuses are they shown as having a servant - there were no doubt enough kids for that task, though son Frank Edward got another message (and a trade heiress) and had servants (plural) pretty much from the word go in distant Folkestone!

In 1881 17 year old Frank Edward Fletcher (Adrian's great grandfather) is an ironmonger too, but his heart lies in playing the organ (he is already a church organist) and meeting up with 16 years' old Lily Procter who works at her parent's Drapers shop just round the corner in Westborough.  They marry in the Scarborough Queen Street Methodist Chapel in April 1889, then live down south in Folkestone for the rest of their long lives.

John Fletcher's North Street ironmonger business is listed in the Bulmer's Directory of 1890 and the Hagyard Directory of 1892.  He dies in Scarborough in 1894 aged 69, leaving an estate of £771 11s 2d. 

9 Trafalgar Square (black window surrounds - photographed in 2011)

where Maria lived after the death of John, now the only house without an ugly extra storey.

The back windows have a dress circle view over the famous Scarborough Cricket Ground.

Maria, 14 years' younger than John, moved to 9 Trafalgar Square, just off North Marine Drive (and overlooking the Yorkshire Cricket Culb's famous Scarborough Cricket Ground), looked after by a spare daughter or two.  She died there in 1911 aged 73. 

Maria and John are both buried in the Manor Road Cemetery, Scarborough (grave P 18 - 25) - the gravestone has fallen over and broken in two, but the inscriptions are clear.

IN LOVING        MEMORY OF

EMILY JANE

DAUGHTER OF

JOHN & MARIA FLETCHER

LATE OF OXENHOPE

DIED NOV 24 1882, IN HER 17^TH YEAR

“THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD”

ALSO OF THE ABOVE

JOHN FLETCHER

BORN FEB 13 1824

FELL ASLEEP JAN 25 1894

“THE ETERNAL GOD IS MY REFUGE”

ALSO OF

MARIA

WIFE OF THE ABOVE

WHO WENT HOME MAY 30 1911

“UNDERNEATH ARE THE EVERLASTING ARMS”

ALSO THEIR DAUGHTER

SUSAN ANNIE

DIED MARCH 6 1939

AGED 71 YEARS

FOLKESTONE

And if you think that a bit of get up and go is genetic, you will not be surprised to learn that John and Maria's 6th child, Frank Edward Fletcher (1864 - 1946 (82)) (Adrian's great grandfather) developed an early passion for organ playing.  Though his day job was as an ironmonger in his dad's shop, by the mid 1880s he had been organist at Scarborough's South Cliff church, followed by the huge Wesleyan Methodist "Chapel" in Queen Street, and had also qualified externally as a Mus Bac (Trinity College, Toronto).

Frank Edward became the Organist and Choirmaster of Christ Church Folkestone in 1886.  In January 1937 there was a commemoration for his 50 years' of service.  In his speech he described how he, born in West Yorkshire on 28 February 1864, was already a small church organist there before he moved with his family to Scarborough c1878.  He told the gathering in Folkestone that ....

.... it might interest some of them to know how he had come to be organist of Christ Church.  Before coming to Folkestone he had been organist at two churches at Scarborough.  He had really played his first Church service in a little village in the West Riding of Yorkshire, when he was about 12 or 13 years of age.  That was on a rickety little organ tied together with string.

“I had only fulfilled my second Scarborough appointment a few months” Mr Fletcher went on “when I received a letter from my old coach, Dr Storer, then organist at the Folkestone Parish Church, asking me to come to Folkestone at once as an organist and choirmaster was required for Christ Church.  That was over 50 years ago.”

“Dr Storer wrote a strong letter of recommendation to the Rev Claude Bosanquet, the Vicar of Christ Church, and Mr Bosanquet was kindness itself.  I played to him just after the week’s service, and a few weeks later, after my references had time to be investigated, I was offered the appointment.”

Left behind in Scarborough was Elizabeth Stringer Procter (b Boxing Day 1865), Frank Edward's other passion and daughter of Joseph (well off high street draper and silk merchant) and Elizabeth (milliner) Procter who ran a successful business from a large shop / residence in Westborough - Scarborough's developing post railway new main drag.  The attractive cast iron window framed facade of the Procter shop is today the only interesting facade in the otherwise numbingly bland rebuilt Scarborough centre.

How agonizing the next three years must have been for Folkestone Frank and Scarborough Elizabeth, though it may well have been quicker to train it from Folkestone to Scarborough then than now!

On 24 April 1889,  Frank and Elizabeth were married in the original Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Queen Street, Scarborough.  One of the witnesses was Elizabeth's sister Martha.  There must have been photographs, which would have included four of Adrian's Great Great Grandparents - Please, PLEASE come out, wherever you are !

The new Mrs Elizabeth Stringer Fletcher (Stringer was her motjher's maiden name), enjoying a speedy pregnancy, came down to Folkestone to join Frank Edward and servant at 6 Brockman Rd, and little Frank Rex Fletcher (Adrian's grandfather) was born on 9 January 1890.  Doris was born on 29 May 1893, and Gwen in January 1896.  Later in the '90s they bought the new number 20 up the road as a long term family home, and sons Jack and Hugh got added to the family.  Most of the children lived into the mid / late 80s.

20 Brockman Rd is the house on the left.  The church at the end is not Christ Church!

LINK TO LOTS OF PHOTOS OF FRANK EDWARD & ELIZABETH FLETCHER & FAMILY

Christ Church was destroyed by a German bomb on Sunday 17 May 1942, mercifully before the main congregation arrived.  The tower still stands as a memorial.

Christ Church Tower Memorial, Folkestone

The much loved Frank Edward Fletcher was literally heart-broken they said - he eventually moved to Chatham and died in 1946 aged 82.  Elizabeth lived till 1953 when she died aged 87.

Years later nobody in Folkestone talked about their Yorkshire roots (my paternal grandfather Frank Rex would have had 20 or so Aunts and Uncles from Scarborough / East Yorkshire)  -  what a shame.

Adrian Fletcher - February 2015