Stanton St Quintin is in fact two small villages – Upper and Lower (or Nether) – situated on flat land at the top of the hill 4 miles North of Chippenham and 5 miles South of Malmesbury divided by the A429 out of Bath heading for Cirencester. Running close by is the old Roman road of Akeman Street (Cirencester to St Albans, known locally as Kingsway and now the A429) which was turnpiked in 1756 and not dis-turnpiked until 1874. Stanton is mentioned in the Domesday Book, and by 1090 was owned by Richard de St Quintin whose name was used for the villages from 1283.
The villages lie just south of Hullavington which in turn lies just south of Norton Coleparle. These three villages had been the home of the Pinnell and Greenman families for generations as the 1770s approached. The manor was owned by the Bache family for two centuries but in 1700 it passed to the Thornhill family through marriage and then to the Bouverie family, the Earls of Radnor. Since 1718 the farmers in Stanton had all been tenants of the Earls of Radnor who remained Lords of the Manor until 1909. But they were not distant landlords as 2 members of the family were Rectors at the church in the 1800s, and the family built the village school in 1848.
In 1764 a black man George Hartford was robbed and murdered by his companion in Stanton. His murderer was caught and hanged on Stanton Common. But in more normal times sheep and corn farming dominated the area as it had done for 700 years previously with some quarrying of the local Cornbrash limestone. By 1783 all the arable land had been enclosed. In 1802 the villages contained some 50 adults and almost half of these were on Poor Relief. In 1834 as the Swing Riots were spreading across Southern England the existing 14 acres of land available for allotments for villagers was increased to 50 acres provided by the Vicar Charles Cotes. Members of the Greenman and Pinnell families could still be found in these villages.
Moses Pinnell was born around 1730 in Norton Coleparle and in 1755 married Mary Pavy in Hullavington. Between them they had three sons and four daughters before 1769. All the children married and lived in the village but it was Sarah in 1784 who married George Greenman. In turn they had two surviving sons who both became Masons, while again the girls married locally. The youngest, Alice, married William Hickerton.
There are names that came from nowhere, without an explanation, and Hickerton is one of these. It was not necessarily made up for any reason for there are no villages or parishes, geographical features, trades or nicknames that explain the arrival of the surname Hickerton into Wiltshire in the 1700s. Maybe at the Chippenham Hiring Fair in the noise of the day the name came from a lack of understanding of a strong West Country accent, or another accent from elsewhere; perhaps it was a Parish Clerk unable to understand the name given to him as he wrote. But around 1796 the only known Hickertons in the World – Thomas, his wife Mary (nee Marsh, from a Salisbury family) and their daughter Elizabeth Hickerton arrived from Box, Wiltshire into Lower Stanton St Quintin. Later census returns show Thomas Hickerton to have been born in Box around 1770 while daughter Elizabeth is shown as born in Corsham in 1795, both places on the outskirts of Bath, ten miles to the South-West. There is a record of a Thomas born in Box in 1770 to James and Betty Richerton, but the surname Hickerton had arrived in Stanton, and was here to stay. For this reason, Hickerton is a potential subject of a One-Name Study. Until anyone proves me wrong it seems that every Hickerton that there is in the World today started around 1795, here in Lower Stanton St Quintin, with Thomas, Mary and their daughter Elizabeth and their subsequent family.
And although many of their children moved away they were still there 50 years later. The 1841 census confirms the nature of the villages showing Upper Stanton containing a farmer and his family, 2 sawyers, a basket maker, a carpenter, the Curate Charles Cotes and 15 more households of agricultural labourers. The same census shows Lower Stanton households contained 3 farmers and their families, a shepherd, a shoemaker, a mason, an innkeeper (shown as a carpenter at the Carpenters Arms), 2 households of farm servants, 3 aged/retired and 30 households of “agricultural labourers”. One of these families was Thomas and Mary Hickerton, now in their 60s living with their youngest daughter Rebekah who had two children Jane and Ann born out of wedlock.
After Mary Hickerton (nee Marsh) died in 1846 Thomas moved in with son James in nearby Kingston St Michael before living out his final years with his daughter Sarah and husband Charles Reeves in Foxham, just the other side of Chippenham. He died there aged 80 – a good age back then.
William, the eldest son, and the first child of Thomas and Mary to be born in Stanton St Quintin, was always going to be a farm labourer. Born in 1798 he married Alice Greenman (a widow, Alice Hayward) from nearby Hullavington in 1829. But there being no work available in Stanton, and maybe after a visit to the Hiring Fair in Chippenham, within a year they had moved 50 miles to the North and started living and working in Forthampton 3 miles to the West of Tewkesbury across the River Severn, and in Deerhurst on the other bank.
Forthampton was a larger settlement than Stanton, although just as rural, lying just high enough above the river to avoid flooding. Joseph Yorke of Forthampton Court was the local Landowner, and he was also the Magistrate. The 1841 Census lists households headed by 9 farmers, 8 carpenters, a wheelwright, a bailiff, a gardener, an innkeeper, two basketmakers, 2 cordwinders, a thatcher, a mason, a gamekeeper, a millman, a poulterer, a tilemaker, a bricklayer, a shoemaker, a curate, a schoolmaster, 6 paupers and a gentleman. The patronage of the Yorke family was important to the village, and the Yorke’s funded the church, the school repairs to local buildings in addition to planting potatoes to feed the poor in times of hardship. They also improved the local roads including links to the new Mythe Bridge where previously there had only been a ferry. This was completed by Thomas Telford in 1826, built to the same style as his Galton Bridge that spans the Main Line Canal at Smethwick in Birmingham.
It was in Forthampton that William (Agricultural Labourer) and Alice had their 6 sons and 3 daughters between 1831 and 1844. William died in 1859 aged 61 and Alice 20 years later. Of their children Thomas married in Forthampton but died childless, James died aged 31 having spent the last 3 years of his life in the County Asylum at Gloucester, and William died aged 7.
George married a local girl and became the village postman while his son George later moved to Hockley in Birmingham becoming a railway fireman marrying Emily Sinderbury – their 3 eldest sons went to war, and one – William – died in 1918 on the Western Front in Flanders.
John also married locally but by 1881 was living in Balsall Heath in Birmingham where he became a Soda Water Bottler, probably for Cadbury’s. Two of their sons ran off to join the Army travelling to Malta, the East Indies, and eventually fought the 2nd Boer War in South Africa.
It was the sixth son, Charles broke the trend of general labouring and went into service, initially as a servant and then as a Groom and Coachman in Cheltenham where he met and married Emma Davis (daughter of John and Elizabeth Davis who both seem to have managed to avoid every census return). Charles and Emma had 9 children all born in Cheltenham before moving to Saltley in Birmingham around 1891 where Charles continued to be a Coachman and Groom despite the growing city environment. In1891 two sons Ernie & Tom emigrated to Ohio, USA from where their sons fought in the 1stnd World War and their grandsons fought in the 2nd World War. Another son Harry emigrated to Brisbane, Australia in 1916 with his wife, 5 sons and a daughter where it is understood that his son Archie became a well known horse-racing Jockey while and other offspring similarly fought World Wars for their Mother Country.
Meanwhile daughter Emma married and became a coffin-polisher and Charles and Frank entered the precious metals trade as goldsmiths and silversmiths. Charles’s son Arthur married Rene but he died on active service in Greece in December 1943 four months before the birth of their only son.
Frank Hickerton married Mary-Jane Musto (a gold chain maker) in Ladywood and had 3 sons and a daughter. Frank fought in the First World War and died in 1928 aged only 48 while Mary Jane lived for another 26 years. Of their sons Ernest became a wedding-ring maker while Fred and Frank ran fruit and vegetable shops. Daughter Ruby went on to marry a Jewellery Maker, Herbert Clark, living in Barnet Road in Erdington before moving to Court Lane in the 1930s.
Ruby Clark (nee Hickerton) later ran a general store in Balsall Heath but smoked heavily and died in 1965 age 56, leaving a daughter Rita aged 30 and 3 grandchildren.
But Came They All to Birmingham 