Subj:Everton-cum-Tetworth
Date:6/20/01 4:04:11 PM GMT
Daylight Time
From: arnsby@lpatrick.fsbusiness.co.uk (Linda
Patrick)
Wednesday, 20 June 2001
To Bernard Quirk,
Having found your site
through reading about it in Family Tree Magazine, I was so excited and pleased
to read about Everton-cum Tetworth. As
a family history addict I have been researching my family in the area for the
last three years. No mention of them in
your records though, so I thought I should tell you about them.
John Arnsby the elder, my
Gt.Gt.Gt. Grandfather was the tenant of Village Farm, which is shown on the
1851 Census between Warden Hill Farm
and Waterloo Farm. He farmed 500 acres
and employed four labourers and four boys.
I believe he, and his family, moved into the area from Raunds, Northants
around 1830. At the time of his death,
in 1859, he was a Farm Bailiff. In the 1881 Census his grandson William
Hendry was shown as a Foreman to Estate( Farm Bailiff) of Sandy. John was a widower in 1839, when for his
second marriage, he married Elizabeth Brewer Church, daughter of James Brewer
of the Black Bull Inn. She was only five years older than his eldest
daughter. One of the witnesses was
Olney Folbrigg of Port Mahon Farm. John
had two sons (and many daughters).
His son John was my Gt Gt
Grandfather and while a tenant at Story Farm had fifteen children, by two
wives. You can find John the younger on the 1841,51,61,71 Census for
Everton. In the 1881 he and his
unmarried children, apart from my Gt Grandfather are shown living in Audenshaw,
now part of Manchester, where he retired. Your piece on the decline in Everton
may well explain the move. His body was returned to Everton after his death in
1889, and he is buried in St Marys Church between his two wives ( the three
graves being the first you see to the rear of the church)
I am led to believe, by
family legend that my Gt Grandfather Lot Arnsby was something of a
character. He was a noted runner and I
believe he would run for purses put up by the local gentry. I am told he made so much money that he
would not work, which caused a rift in his relations with his father. All family talk of course, although we do
still have in the family, a large silver cup he won in 1870 for a three mile
race at Eaton Socon, St Neots, at the age of twenty.
John Arnsby the elders other
son, William, moved to Kings Street, Potton, where he had a Market Garden. This site became a housing estate after the
Second World War.
I don’t know if any of this is
of interest to you, perhaps you knew this already and did not find it of
sufficient interest to include, in which case please accept my apologies for
bothering you.
Yours etc,
Linda Patrick (ne Arnsby)
To Bernard Quirk,
The
Arnsbys of Everton cum Tetworth, (eventually there were thirty of them) came to
what is now Everton in Bedfordshire, between 1814 and 1822. They lived
there, until that bad period in Everton’s history of agricultural depression in
the late 1870s. No one now remembers them and all that is left are three
graves, all alone, at the front of the graveyard, John junior in the middle,
his first wife, Sarah, on his right and (my Gt. Grandmother) Amy on his
left. The graveyard abuts the land John junior farmed, Storey Farm.
The farm is still there today, and can be seen from the footpath, which runs,
from the church in Everton village through Story Farm land, on past Woodberry
(sic) Hall and on to Tetworth Hall, but the farm house you see today from
that path, is not his farm house, as the present house was built in the
1880s. So apart from those three graves there is nothing left to remember
them by, except for the land they worked, and even that has changed. The
tree lined avenue from Everton church to Storey Farm was uprooted in the Second
World War to allow planes from the secret airfield at Tempsford an easier take
off over the top of the Greensands Ridge. Tempsford was an important
place then, it was the place where the SOE operated from, and at night, flew
agents such as Violette Szorbo, Odette Churchill, Peter Churchill, and
Yeo-Thomas into France, but I digress. Lets go back to the beginning.
The
Arnsbys who came to Everton were John Arnsby 1783-1859 and his elder son John
Arnsby 1809-1889. To avoid confusion I shall call them John senior and
John junior as they appear in the local directory of the time.
They
came from Raunds, Northampton where a number of Arnsbys had lived during the
eighteenth century, and this line descended father, son, each the eldest, each
called John from John and Anne Arnsby. The first son found so far in Raunds was
christened in 1731. By the 1800s there were rather a lot of Arnsbys in
Raunds, all living close by one and other and all with the same names, (very
confusing). So many in fact, that there was a place named Arnsby Hill.
So
who were these people, who came to Everton and what did they do. Well
first there was John Arnsby senior. He came with his first wife, Sarah
Ivens Arnsby 1786-1835, whose grave is back in St Peters, Raunds churchyard and
reads “Sarah wife of John Arnsby daughter of John and Sarah Ivens 13th
August 1835 aged 50”. Also with John were his older daughters and his
sons, John and William.
John
Arnsby senior is shown on the 1851 Everton census as a farmer of 500 acres
employing 4 labourers and 4 boys and living at Village Farm with his second
wife Elizabeth Brewer Church Arnsby, his second son William, his grandson David
Murray Arnsby, and a female servant Sarah Russell. John married the widow
Elizabeth on September 19th 1839. She was the daughter of
James Brewer, landlord of The Black Horse which was on the corner of Church
Road and Potton Road,. The witnesses at the wedding were James Brewer,
Christopher Edwards and Olney Folbigg ( of Port Mahon Farm)- not his sons you
notice, perhaps because Elizabeth was only five years older than John’s oldest
daughter, who knows.
By
1859 when John senior died of dropsy aged 76, he was shown on his death
certificate as a Farm Bailiff and living in Girtford, Sandy. The death being
reported by his son in law William Hendry. By this time his second son
William was married to Frances and living in Potton as a Market Gardener.
William’s son, also called William, became a clockmaker and there are still
clocks around bearing the inscription William Arnsby, Northampton.
So
on to John junior. In 1836 John Arnsby junior married Sarah Seal and
around this time took over Story Farm, and by 1837 their first child, another
John, was born followed by William1838, Sarah1840, Hannah 1841 and Elizabeth
1843. Sarah died on the 14th September1846 aged 35, and was
buried in St Mary the Virgin churchyard, where her gravestone can still be
seen. It has a very nice verse on it, she seems to have been well loved,
however, within three months, eighteen-year old Amy Holmes was pregnant with
John’s third son James Arnsby Holmes.
James
was registered with no father’s name and when Amy married John by licence, on
the 27th April 1848 with William and Sara Holmes as witnesses, he
was taken into the family home and ever after known as James Holmes
Arnsby. It is rather sad that having been born illegitimate, in his old
age, his life ended in the workhouse infirmary at Erdington, Birmingham.
Following
her marriage, Amy Holmes Arnsby then had Jane 1849, Lot 1850, Emily1854, Mary
1855, Harry 1857, Katherine (Kate) 1860, Lucretia 1862, Annie Maria 1867, and
in early summer 1869, Agnes May (May). Poor Amy died of a fever, just six
months later, on 14th December 1869. Also living in the house
was Alice Middleton. She was the illegitimate daughter of Hannah who was
born in 1867. She seems to have been brought up as if she was another
daughter of John and Amy, and lived in the family home after Hannah left.
So these were the Arnsbys of Story Farm.
Story
Farm what was it like? Well it is just south of Woodbury Hall, east of Story
Moats, west of White Wood, and north of St Mary the Virgin church.
Woodbury Hall was the home in the 1830s of the young naturalist Emily
Shore. She kept a journal and described White Wood in it. There was
at that time, a wide variety of plants, trees and birds there, and in the
twentieth century, it was for some time, a Site of Special Scientific
Interest. In 1991 there was a count of 113 species of birds, and
sightings of muntjac deer, badgers, weasels and foxes. Nightingales in the
trees and lily of the valley under foot, so all in all White Wood and the
surrounding area would have been a lovely place in the mid eighteenth century.
Emily’s journal is now held at the University of Virginia. Story Moats
appear to date from about the thirteenth century the site is now overgrown and
a pond above the site has been banked up and is used today as a reservoir for
Story Farm. The area used to be covered with primroses, violets, kingcups, etc
and wild birds nested on the waters edge. Here and in the nearby meadows
villagers used to gather cowslips, elderberries, crab apples, sloes and
blackberries. Sounds lovely doesn’t it?
The
1870s saw the start of the agricultural depression, workers were laid off and
some ended up in the workhouse. Times were hard and the once prosperous village
of Everton began to change, for the Arnsbys of Story Farm things changed as
well, once they had employed servants in the house, but no
longer.
The
older girls, with the exception of Hannah had married by this time, and married
well by their standards. Amy had died, business was bad. John junior was lucky
in that his uncle Lot Arnsby a Corn Merchant of Fenstanton, Huntingdon had
named him as his heir and so he was able on his uncle’s death (17th
September 1873) to retire, and take his remaining unmarried children with him
to a new life in Audenshaw, Manchester. This was a growing city, a new
industrial centre.
John,
eldest son of John junior, who seems to have left in the 1860’s was a Gardener,
presumably on an estate as he gives his address as The Lodge, Papworth Everard,
Cambridge. The only unmarried son who didn’t go north was Lot who had (pipe)
dreams of his own and had already run away, around 1870, to make his fortune –
he hoped.
Lot
Arnsby was an athlete who on the 18th of April1870 had won the three
mile race at Eaton Socon, St Neots and been given a large silver cup. He
had started running races for money and thought that he could earn far more
this way than by working. This attitude did not make his father happy, so
he left. He used to run handicapped races against horses, he was very
good at it, and for a time did well, but of course it did not last.
Of the children who went north, Jane stayed at
home and looked after her father until she married Mr Bagshaw, and Emily, Kate
and Lucretia became dressmakers. The boys, well they had been brought up to
farm, and now there was no farm, so they slid down the social scale.
William who went north, became a Carter and lived first in Wigan and then in
Ashton upon Mersey, Cheshire. James became a Hairdresser in Chorlton,
Manchester but died in Birmingham. Harry became a Drayman and lived for
some time in Ashton under Lyne, and then I think he moved back to Audenshaw, to
37 Hawthorne Street where his family remained until 1989.
I
don’t know really any more about these people, but my grandfather Herbert Lot
Arnsby, told me as a child, about Lot who was Herbert’s father, but that
does not relate to this story of Everton Arnsbys, except for the following.
When
John junior died in Audenshaw on the 9th October 1889 his body was
brought back to Everton for burial and his family came back for the
service. My grandfather remembered the journey and the day. We have
photos of Lot and Herbert in their brand new clothes brought for the
occasion. Herbert always remembered Lot walking him to the top of the
hill and showing him the place of his childhood, and Herbert smiled when he
spoke of it when he told me in the 1950s. A sad day, but a happy memory, of
that walk with his father, to his father’s place of birth.
So
today still, John junior lies between his two wives, Sarah on his right and Amy
on his left, all that is left to remind people of the thirty members of the
Arnsby family who lived in Everton.
Linda
Arnsby Patrick 2004