Carr is a very common name in Stoke on Trent and across to Kingsley in the mid to late 1700s. In the 1841 and 51 census returns Hannah Austin (nee Carr) states she was born around 1778, and in the 1851 census says she was born in “the Potteries”. She was then living with her daughter Mary Bullock who was born in Kingsley in 1799, so presumably they knew the difference. Born in Stoke it is possible that she was a daughter born to William Carr and Ann in Stoke on 18 May 1778. Amongst the many Carr families there are no records of other children born to William and Ann.
Hannah married Francis Austin in St Werberghs church in Kingsley in December 1794. Francis was a son of William Austin and Mary of Warslow, a small village in the Staffordshire Moorlands in the parish of Alstonefield, some 20 miles north of Kingsley and William’s mother may have been of the Brindley family. Hannah and Francis had fifteen children all in Kingsley over the next 26 years and on the later wedding certificates of some of them, their father was the village blacksmith. There they are widespread over Alstonefield and Milldale. A number of the sons became involved in the Primitive Methodists, perhaps after their father died in Kingsley in 1834, Hannah, Eliza and Jane all moved to Oscott in Birmingham where they married into not only three of the major farming families of the area – Plant, Baines and Wells, but also into the Catholic religion based as Oscott College. It was Jane Austin, the sixth daughter and eighth child of Hannah and Francis, who in 1840 in the chapel at Oscott College, married George Wells, a farmer and the college Steward, a widow and 20 years her senior. The whole of the Hannah and Francis family is recorded on a gravestone in Kingsley Cemetery.
The Wells family were Catholics. The Vicar Apostolic is recorded as visiting Oscott twice – In 1789 Vicar Thomas Talbot confirmed 26 children from 15 families (including an Apollonia Wells); thirteen years later in 1802 the Vicar Gregory Stapleton confirmed 39 children from 24 families – 6 of whom were Wells – Thomas, Bridget, Joseph, Mary, Winifred and George. And also a Sarah Ross.
George was born in 1787 the second son of five known children born to Joseph Wells and Mary Mary’s parentage is currently unknown, and there may be more children if you look at the at the confirmations of the Vicars Apostolic above. There is a marriage record of George Wells and Sarah Ross (by Licence granted by Revd Dr Spencer so probably a repeat of a wedding that took place at the Oscott Chapel) at St Peter & St Paul Aston in January 1815, witnessed by Thomas Wells and Charlotte Ross. An Act of 1753 had required all marriages – including those of Catholics and non-conformists – to take place in an Anglican Church. This requirement was not relaxed until 1836 after which all denominations were allowed to perform marriages in their own places of worship. And indeed the non-religious could get married at a Civil Ceremony in a Registry Office. It seems that Sarah Ross died young and there have been no children identified from this union.
In 1820 George Wells is recorded as altering Short Heath House adding a Chapel, later referred to as Erdington Chapel. On Sundays the children still had to go to Oscott, but in midweek a priest from Oscott would attend at Short Heath House to say Mass and instruct the children. By 1831 George was a farmer at Erdington Hall, a large moated Manor House halfway between Gravelly Hill and Bromford Lane near the Bromford crossing of the River Tame, but separated from it by the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal (the Hall was demolished in 1912 to widen the Tyburn Road). He then became tenant of Oldford Farm which was bought by Oscott College with the intention of building the New Oscott College there. However in the event the College then bought Buggins Farm (later College Farm) on the corner of College Rd and Chester Rd and instead built it there, in the process re-naming the original College as Old Oscott (or Maryvale). At his second marriage in 1840 George Wells was the Steward at New Oscott College (the son of Joseph Wells (Gardener) and Mary (nee unknown) in charge of the farming concerns providing food for those at the College. In 1840 at the Chapel there, at the age of 53 he married a servant girl at the College – Jane Austin from Kingsley near Leek in Staffordshire, some 20 years his junior.
In 1841 the Census shows George and Jane living at Boldmoor Lake next to Sutton Park, George is still a Steward, with their first child already a month old. By 1847 they
had had 7 children although three died, leaving 4 sons George, Robert, Thomas and Augustine, the last three of whom were born at Stonehouse Farm (now part of Sutton Park). By 1851 George Snr was at Witton Lodge Farm in charge of 136 acres employing 4 labourers. After his death in 1857 his widow Jane shows in both 1861 and 1871 as the Farmer at Witton Lodge (now 214 acres) along with her sister Eliza (nee Austin) and her husband Francis Baines. Jane Wells (nee Austin) died later in 1871.
George and Jane’s eldest son George (b.1841) started off at Oldford Farm in 1871 but 10 years later was a valuer before moving to London to become a tavern manager in Holborn, and then ran a coffee house in West Ham.
Robert Francis Wells was the second son (b.1844). He stayed his whole life at Kings Vale Farm, growing it from 87 acres to 160 by 1881 and 239 acres in 1901. He died in 1918. He was married twice, first to Flora in 1866, the daughter of an Erdington Victualler. They had a son and three surviving daughters over the next 6 years. It is possible that his relationship with his children of this marriage was not good. In 1881 the youngest Cecelia at 9 years old is shown as living in the Maryvale Orphanage next door to the Farm, and in 1891 two of the girls are in service in Lancashire. Eventually the son Austin stayed to become a Cowman on the Farm, but the three daughters all emigrated to Fresno County California in 1892. His second marriage in 1876 was to Rosa Clews whose sister Elizabeth had married Robert’s brother Augustine at Maryvale 7 years before where Robert and Rosa both acted as witnesses. Over the next 7 years he had 5 more children, 3 sons and two daughters.
- William (b.1876) became a stockbroker. He married Nellie Hughes in 1900 and had three daughters, but appears to have died possibly from Spanish Flu in 1920.
- Rosa (b.1877) married Arthur Foden in 1906 and became a Farmer’s wife on Park Farm in Hamstead, Birmingham having 4 children.
- Robert (b.1880) married Jessie Cotterill in 1906 and lived next to Kings Vale Farm where he worked. In 1939 he is a retired farmer living on the Birmingham Road in Aldridge. He had 3 children.
- Oliver (b.1881) took over Kings Vale Farm from his Father. In 1901 Oliver was granted a 21 year lease at a very low rent on the Farm which at that point was 239 Acres (3 roods and 36 poles). At the same time he took a 21 year lease on a cottage at 2 Chester Rd next to the Beggar’s Bush possibly so he could live separately and out of the family home with Alice Smith, the maid at Kings Vale Farm who was 6 years his senior. In 1906 they married and had two children within two years, William James Wells (April 1905) and Harold Oliver Wells (July 1906). In 1921 the freehold of Kings Vale Farm was advertised for sale and presumably it sold granting Oliver a further lease, or it is possible that he bought the Freehold. In 1928 Birmingham Council Housing issued a Compulsory Order to acquire 450 acres of land occupied by Warren Farm and Kingsvale Farm Estates finally ceasing the Wells family interest in local farms.
- Alice Wells (nee Smith) died in 1936 and Oliver married again in early 1939 when Marion Chandler became his wife. However in September the 1939 Register only shows Oliver and James living at 358 Chester Rd North on the edge of the old Kings Vale farmland where they are described as Farmers. Here the 1940 Kelly’s Directory still describes him as a farmer living in the house, now known as “ Vale House”. James shot himself there in 1943 while Oliver and Marion moved to Thorpe Bay in Essex where Oliver died in 1951.
- Eleanor (b.1883) married William Foden in 1908 and became a farmers Wife at Bullocks End Farm in Drayton Bassett. They had no children but lived next to the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal just short of what is now Drayton Manor Park and Zoo.
Thomas (b.1846), George’s third son, was married at 21 to Jane Costiff (from an Oxfordshire Catholic family) at Maryvale Chapel. They lived mostly at Witton Lodge Farm growing it from 76 acres to 140, but on the death of Jane in 1891 moved to Manor Farm and then Old Oscott Farm with his new wife Ursula Beauviosin, the sister of his brother Augustin’s new wife, from a Yorkshire family.
The fourth and youngest son of George and Jane (nee Austin) was Augustine Lewis Wells (b.1847). He ran Warren Farm for many years. A devout Catholic, at 21 he married Eliza Clews from Erdington – the sister of Rosa Clews who was later to marry his brother Robert – at Maryvale Chapel. He started on a small farm of 100 acres. In 1877 he became the tenant of 300 acres at Warren Farm. In the following 20 years he bought two more farms to raise this to 700 acres. In 1877 he was elected onto the West Bromwich Board of Guardians and was responsible early on for bringing a fresh water supply to the local Workhouse. In 1893 Augustine Wells had been instrumental in separating Perry Barr into a separate Parish from Handsworth and a year later he became Chairman of the new Perry Barr Urban District Council named despite the rural nature of the new Parish. The Church schools of Perry Barr had always been well funded and residents objected to being asked to pay a new School Rate for the new Handsworth School for which they received no benefit. On separation the General Rate was also kept very low, with initial success in pressurising landowners to improve sanitation.
Augustine Wells was of the view that:
“if a farmer takes a farm at a fair rent, is intelligent and industrious, always up to date, of a sanguine temperament and capable of prodigious exertions, he will have no difficulty obtaining a livelihood. To begin with he must be a good businessman, able to buy and sell to his advantage. In addition he must be a tolerably good meteorologist, a bit of a botanist, a student of nature generally, a geologist at least to the extent of understanding the nature of soils it will be his business to bring into cultivation, a veterinary surgeon capable of attending to his livestock when attacked by disease or injured by accident, and a knowledge of chemistry so that he can best understand what food and manures will best suit his stock and land”.
His wife Eliza died tragically in an accident on a foggy morning in 1888 when her trap overturned in Aldridge when avoiding a heavy wagon. She was thrown to the floor and died instantly leaving 7 children under 18 years of age. Five years later Augustin married Agnes Beauvoisin from Sheffield.
Meanwhile as early as 1913 an inquiry into the state of housing in next-door Birmingham had concluded that the shortage of appropriate houses for the working class in the City was acute and that the need could only realistically be met through the Council gaining control of previously undeveloped districts currently looked after by neighbouring Councils. But the Great War halted any progress and its immediate aftermath brought many difficulties for the City’s planners. By 1925 the Public Works Committee estimated that at least 100.000 new houses would be needed in the following twenty years to meet the existing demand of the city’s population and to take account of slum clearance. With backing from national Government in terms of financial grants for the provision of new municipal and private housing, in the next five years the city embarked on a massive house building programme.
There were however particular difficulties with finding land in the north of Birmingham. These difficulties were, at least partly, eased by the acquisition of Perry Barr. Up to 1st April 1928 the Perry Barr District Council had responsibility for the area but its poverty meant that the district lacked any adequate sewerage or refuse system and it had only recently introduced street lighting, the big problem being that this area was still mainly rural – there was the occasional farmhouse and cottage but essentially this was countryside. All this was to change once Birmingham City Council gained responsibility. As the Birmingham newspapers reported: ‘it was the poverty of the defunct Perry Barr District Council’s resources which has kept the area in an undeveloped condition. Now, with the powers of a great city available, striking advances were made in the next few years’. Development began with the Kettlehouse Farm estate in 1928 and almost as soon as the City gained control over the remaining area it applied under the Birmingham Housing Compulsory order of 1928 to acquire the 450 acres of land occupied by the Warren Farm and Kingsvale Farm estates to provide the land for 6,700 new municipal houses, the largest estate in Europe at the time. The picture is of Kingstanding in 1938.
Augustine Lewis Wells had been the first man in Perry Barr to own a Rolls Royce, and the first to have a telephone installed in his house. Yet he was the architect of both the rise and the fall of Perry Barr Urban District Council. He died in 1934 just as the building programme was beginning and the bulldozers were moving onto the land that he knew, changing the landscape forever.
Harold Oliver Wells married Dorothy Hayes in 1929, the daughter of the Second in Command of the Birmingham Fire Service. Initially they lived in Watt Road in Erdington but by the 1939 Register they were living at 284 Court Lane with two of their eventual three children, John Wells (b.1932) and Peter Wells(b. 1936) – Dorothy Wells came along later in 1944. In the same Register, next door, at 286 lived Dorothy’s parents, and at 296 lived her sister Evelyn, a Telegraphist with the GPO (Post Office), while up the road at 146 lived Herbert Clark and Ruby (nee Hickerton) and their daughter Rita.
Harold and Dorothy moved to Devon in the mid 1960s, taking just their daughter with them. Harold Wells died in Barnstaple in 1967, Dorothy not until 1998. Their daughter Dot married Ivor Stevens in Barnstaple in 1973 but had no children. Peter married Lilian Tucker in Dudley in 1959 and went to live in Kendlewood Road in Kidderminser, completing the ’Ks’ by calling their house Kingsvale. They had two children, Janet (who with her husband Pete Dearden had two children, Sasha and James, before boarding their small sailing boat in England and sailing it to the Caribbean, where they still are) and Nigel, who married Margaret Whittaker and had two daughters Rebecca and Lianne.
It was in Short Heath Park, opposite Jerry’s Road, that 16 year-old John Wells first met fourteen year-old Rita Clark at a birthday party in 1948 that, to be honest, he had not been invited to. They married in June 1952 the day after John was 20 and the day before Rita was 18. They lived initially in Streetly and then in Aldridge near Sutton Coldfield and quickly had three children, Susan in 1953, John in 1955 and David in 1958. Dave has not married, while John married Sharon Patterson in Las Vegas in 1999, and in so doing inherited a step son Kyle before having a son of their own, Clark.
Sue West (nee Wells) went to St Mary’s Grammar School in Walsall before going on to the modern University of East Anglia in Norwich where she achieved a First Class Honours degree in Mathematics. She then qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Deloitte & Co. in Birmingham (later Deloitte Haskins & Sells and now part of Price Waterhouse Coopers or PWC). It was there that she met another Accountant, Ian West the third son of a Birmingham Brass family and they married in 1981 in Fillongley. Between them they have a son Andrew and a daughter Jane, and now live in Knowle, Solihull while Andrew lives in London and Jane and their grandchildren Aimee and Ben live in Stratford upon Avon. Rita Wells (nee Clark) died in 2021 aged 86. John Harold Wells died in 2024 aged 92.
But Came They All to Birmingham 