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Next In “Scenes of Clerical Life” – Janet’s Repentance, George Eliot (1819-1880) wrote: “Paddiford Common which, by the by, was hardly recognisable as a common at all, but was a dismal district where you heard the rattle of the handloom, and breathed the smoke of coal-pits”. Paddiford Common was, in actuality, Stockingford Common and as late as the first two decades of the 20th century shoppers from the ‘Ford’ would assemble outside the gas works in Queens Road and wait for their horse and cart ride “up the common” as they used to say. Technically the common was known as Nuneaton Common and stretched from the corner of Croft Road and Tompkinson Road all the way to Hartshill. It stretched over into the Heath End area of Chilvers Coton and petered out in Arbury Woods. Miss Evans was right, it was not how you would think of a common, being a rather scrubby district of open fields pock-marked with clay holes and pit shafts. The coal was very close to the surface and where it outcropped or rose near the to the surface the contents of the common had been rifled by generations for the warmth and comfort its black heart provided. If you travelled over the common in the 19th century you would see these rough fields where poor farmers eked out a living, and those with a bit of enterprise had a clay hole, a brick kiln and in some cases operated the lease on a shallow coal pit. At least one went further than this because in addition to being a farmer, brick maker, and collier, Walter Handley opened a beer house – The Black Swan – and earned a few more coppers quenching the thirst of his destitute neighbours. When old Walter died his son in law David Wheway carried on the business until he died in 1868 and the business was sold out to Messrs. Stanley & Broadbent, Leicestershire businessmen. The rest, of course, is history. The poor fields previously farmed by Walter Handley were gradually subsumed in the tangle of brick sheds, kilns, engine houses and drying sheds belonging to Messrs. Stanley Brothers, one of the largest brick, tile and terracotta goods manufacturers in the kingdom. Stockingford was not a village in the usual sense. It was a straggle of poor cottages, tenements and hovels which intermittently lined the road from the Cock and Bear bridge up what we know now as Tompkinson and Haunchwood Road, up Croft Road known then as Swan Lane, and Arbury Road, joined at the top by what later to became Church Road. Church Road was not Church Road until the Chapel of Ease at Stockingford was opened in 1824 to attend to the spiritual needs of our distant ancestors who had until then only managed to get little religious comfort from attending Nuneaton parish church. It is not surprising that a stiff two-mile walk there and back on a Sunday morning deterred all but the most earnest “Stockingfordian”. What a revelation it was when the chapel opened in 1824 and its first curate was a hardworking evangelist the Rev. John Edmund Jones (Mr. Tryan in George Eliot). Imagine the situation, here in this secluded part of Nuneaton parish, a curate with definite opinions of his own, he preached extempore, that he founded a religious lending library, expounded the scriptures in the humblest cottages, and that his very preaching was attracting dissenters filling up his church on the Common. Now that was all well and good whilst the only beneficiaries of his largesse were the great unwashed of Stockingford but when Nuneaton townspeople got wind of a parson with a way with words that they had only heard stumble out from the old perpetual curate in Nuneaton church, that this man made the ladies swoon, was accepted and preached in the best houses, and was even thinking of giving evening lectures on Sundays in Nuneaton Parish Church, then the big wigs became un-nerved. The status quo of Nuneaton lethargy was being threatened. The rest of the story is amply covered in George Eliot’s “Janet Repentance” and any Stockingfordian trying to get a flavour of life in the early years of his or her parish should read that novella for the appropriate background. For Stockingford all this was cut short when the Rev. Jones died at the age of 54 in 1831 and was buried in his home parish of Withington near Cheltenham. There ended seven years of languid excitement for the parishioners of Stockingford. There were no big houses on the common, save one – Haunchwood House – and you cannot imagine today, there lived, amongst the pit shafts, brick kilns, and smoking chimney stacks a very venerable lady. Not just any old lady but one who was descended from virtually every crowned head of Europe! The Kings of England of the Saxon race back to Alfred the Great d.901AD, the Kings of Scotland back to Malcolm 1st who died in 953AD. The Emperors of Germany, of the Saxon dynasty back to Henry 1st, the Fowler, who died 936AD, the Emperors of Macedonia and the Russian Grand Dukes to Basil 1st, to the Kings of France back to Hugh Capet who died 990AD. and from Charlemagne whose ancestors we trace to 610AD. Not to mention just in passing the Norman and Plantaganet Kings of England, the Earls of Huntingdon, Chester, Pembroke, de Ruthyn, Hereford, Anjou, Mountbatten, de Greys, Verney, Pole, all for good measure. And that this game widowed old lady would be listed as proprietor of Charity Colliery in Bedworth in 1850 at the advanced age of 71 when most noble people would have retired into the tranquil heart of the countryside. Caroline Williams, formerly Brown nee St. Barbe of Southampton married Peter Unger Williams (1775-1837), solicitor of Middlesex, formerly of Exeter who chose to buy the mineral rights to a coal pit at Haunchwood and there became part of the history of this obscure part of England. So you might think Stockingford is a poor parish with little to recommend its story to people with a keen nose for the past. You would be wrong because I have hardly scratched the surface yet. There is so much more to know, not least that the bowels of Stockingford’s earth have been cast into the clay products that make up the great stores in London. That briquettes made in our local kilns still adorn the state rooms of that great ocean liner the Queen Mary moored in retirement at anchor off the coast of California. And it is said that the Empire State Building in America has Stockingford products in it somewhere.
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