James Hows was born in Chipping Campden around 1746, one of some four children to John Hows and Mary who had married probably there around 1740. John and Mary had three sons, Daniel who died age six, then Giles and James before having a daughter Mary in 1750. Their mother Mary died that year leaving James with three very young children. Hows is however a very common name around the Cotswolds at that time, so presumably he was able to call on help when necessary.
It was Mary who married first when in Blockley in 1774 she married a surveyor Thomas Bearcroft.
James was next, in 1780 when he married Mary Scott in Chipping Campden, witnessed by Mary Holtom. They had a son John Scott Hows in 1781 but Mary died that year and the following year in 1782 in Blockley he married Mary Holtom, a marriage witnessed by the Parish Clerk, Thomas Bearcroft. Then later in 1792 Giles married Elizabeth Scott in Chipping Campden, possibly Mary’s sister, but Giles then died five years later and is buried in the churchyard there.
James and Mary (nee Holtom) had four daughters in Campden. The eldest, Elizabeth born in 1783, married John Minors from a Tailoring family in Chipping Campden by Licence in 1804. Of John and Elizabeth’s 5 children – all born in Blockley – three died before the age of ten and both John and Elizabeth died before 1818 leaving Mary Minors (b 1805) and Major Minors (b 1809) as orphans. Once they were of a suitable age, at some stage maybe between 1825 and 1830, with nothing to keep them in Blockley, both Mary and Major moved to Pimlico/Westminster in London where Major took up trade as a carpenter. More of this in a minute.
Meanwhile, Mary (nee Hows) and Thomas Bearcroft had married in 1774.
Thomas Bearcroft was born probably between 1740 and 1750 and the name first appears in Blockley when in Blockley Church in 1774 he married Mary Hows from Camden by Licence in a ceremony conducted by the Vicar Charles Selwyn. Marrying a local girl at least suggests residence in the area for a while whether he was local himself or not – records show many Bearcrofts around Evesham, Worcester and Hanbury, and for 350 years an established Bearcroft family was living in Mere Hall outside Droitwich. Maybe Thomas came to Blockley with Charles Selwyn in 1761 or maybe he was a baker (two of his three surviving sons are known to have been bakers) filling the needs of a growing village? Maybe he arrived in Blockley to oversee the Mail Coach as he likely lived in the bakery located next door to the Crown and a family legend states that the Bearcrofts ran the post office and the bakers in Blockley for 150 years. Or perhaps more likely, as a surveyor, he came with the Blockley Enclosure Acts of 1773 when a detailed professional survey was undertaken to allot under-utilised and uncared-for land to those who would lay dry-stone walls and hedging and properly maintain them. In so-doing this defined the roads, bridleways and footpaths in the Parish, along with the quarry sites that would provide the material. Certainly in 1799 Thomas Bearcroft was asked by Bourton Parish to measure and mark the local Mere-stones (maybe because his son James now lived in Bourton). The records describe Thomas as being “used to measure land”. As such he would have had his own Surveyors Chain (22 yards long) and Rod (16ft 6”) in order to make his measurements. The “perfect” acre was a furlong in length (660 ft) by a chain wide (66ft), or 4840 sq yards or 40 by 4 Rods. A furlong was considered to be the length of land that a team of oxen could plough before needing to rest, and an acre was the area that a team of oxen could plough in a day.
Thomas Bearcroft oversaw many changes in Blockley in his lifetime. By 1782 he was the Parish Clerk and in 1799 when he guaranteed the marriage bond of James Hows and Anne Dutton, both of Chipping Campden, he was also a schoolmaster, presumably in the school set up by Erasmus Saunders.
The position of Parish Clerk was one of three (low) paid positions in a Parish, superior to the Sexton but inferior to the Vicar. The London Guild of Parish Clerks had been incorporated by Henry III in 1232 and later became a Livery Company of the City of London. When their Charter was renewed by James I and then again by Charles II it was stipulated “that every person who is chosen Clerk of a Parish shall first give sufficient proof of his abilities to sing at least the tunes that are used in Parish Churches”. Clerks were often entrusted by the vicar with making up the Parish Registers despite delegation of this role actually being unlawful. Being a Parish Clerk was an office held for life and commonly passed from father to son. The Clerk attended practically every service, keeping dogs out and people awake and collecting pew rents and customary fees. He (for in most cases it was a “he”) wrote the accounts if the wardens and overseers were illiterate, made out fair copies of the lists of church rates, assisted officers in their collection, and was capable of dealing with intransigent Independents and Quakers. He was perhaps assisted in towns by a Beadle. He collected tolls on sheep pastured in the churchyard (where the grass is considered too sour for cattle), and on those who hung their washing there and from those who set up stalls along the paths on market days. He collected money also on the approved ‘briefs’ or appeals circulated to assist those who had suffered loss by fire or other misfortune
As Parish Clerk Thomas would have been involved in the re-fit of the Church pews started in 1797. and in the replacement of the Church bell in 1804 in time to celebrate Trafalgar. He would have known the Blockley Prophetess Joanna Southcott of Rock Cottage. In 1806 he sent his bill to the Churchwardens for the cleaning and oiling of the fire engine used by the Volunteer Fire brigade in the village. And he was often the witness in the church registers when no-one else obliged.
And on a personal note in 1782 Thomas signed as witness to the wedding of his brother-in-law James Hows and Mary Holtom. I mention this because James and Mary’s grand-daughter Elizabeth Hows who married Thomas Bearcroft’s son John thus missing out a generation on the one side.
Meanwhile Thomas and Mary Bearcroft (nee Hows – are you following this?) proceeded to have 5 children in Blockley between 1775 and 1792, although at least one died young. Eventually Thomas died in 1819 and his wife Mary (nee Hows) died 4 years later. Both are buried in the churchyard probably near to the Church as recognition of their status in the village although the exact location is unknown. Earlier in 1819 their youngest son John (b.1792), who was like his father a baker, had married Elizabeth Shirley from Camden. John took over as Blockley Parish Clerk after his father’s death and with Elizabeth had 5 children in the 1820s although three were dead within a year, and Elizabeth herself died presumably through complications with the fifth in May 1829. And then, with only the slightest bit of romanticising, John Bearcroft went to London in March 1830 (by Mail Coach?) and there he found and married the girl who had been his childhood sweetheart, Mary Minors in St Anne’s Church in Limehouse. Mary would have been his first cousin (once removed). He brought his new wife back to Blockley where they lived and raised their family – three daughters, Elizabeth (b.1831), Eliza Susan (b. 1836) and Anne (b. 1837).
But the fairy story did not last long and tragedy and death continued to dog the family. John Bearcroft, aged 47, died of consumption in 1839 leaving Mary as a Widow for the remaining 45 years of her life. In his will he left his 8-day clock and case to his son Harvey (should he reach the age of 21), and a chest of drawers to his daughter Mary (the Will says she has had this for some time) with the remainder to his Wife. Jon was buried with his first wife Elizabeth, near to the church, perhaps near to his parents although the location of their grave is unknown. The 1841 census shows Mary as a Widow and Baker living next door to The Crown with her step-daughter Mary (who was to die in 1848) and her own three children. There is no sign of Harvey in the 1841 Census but in the 1848 Warwickshire Assizes register he is recorded as being charged with Larceny, found guilty, and sentenced to 7 years transportation. He arrived in Adelaide Australia in 1849 and after serving out his sentence, lived out the rest of his life in Australia with his growing family in Port Lincoln across the bay. We have some DNA links to the Australian Bearcrofts.
In 1844 Major Minor, his wife Lucy (a Chipping Campden girl) and his remaining three children returned from London perhaps fleeing insanitary conditions that brought cholera. Two of their daughters had died from consumption in London earlier that year and subsequently both Major Minors and his son Major Henry Minors died in Blockley towards the end of August. His Wife Lucy survived and returned to London after these awful events with her remaining daughter Elizabeth and son Major (also known as Edward) Minors. Lucy died in London and around 1858 Elizabeth emigrated to New South Wales, Australia but Major (Edward) returned to Blockley where the 1861 Census shows him living with his Aunt Mary Bearcroft at the Bakery/Post Office, where by 1871 he is described as a Journeyman Baker. From 1881 he shows living with his wife Mary Ann (nee Watts, a Blockley girl) and his son Major, as a baker in Lower St (next door to his cousin Ann Smith and her husband William), and from 1891 onwards he is in Park Road Promenade as a Baker with two more children. He remained there through the First Great War and died there eventually in 1927.
Meanwhile in the 1851 Census Mary Bearcroft (widow) is shown as the Post Mistress and Baker. From this central point she would have seen many of the changes in the village, starting of course with the Penny Post from 1841 and the printing of the first ever stamp -the “penny black”. In 1847 all railway and Post Office clocks across the land were set to Greenwich Meantime in order that they all worked to the same time. The first Pillar boxes were installed from 1852. For 3 years from 1850 gangs of Navvies descended on Blockley under the direction of Isambard Kingdom Brunel building the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton railway line. These were rough gangs between whom fights would often break out. The Crown Inn and the Bell Inn refused to serve them so the Railway Inn was opened to cater for their needs. The railway line from Stourbridge to Evesham was opened in June 1853 and a huge party was thrown attracting (it is said) 2000 people. The bells rang and cannon fired.
At the time there was a cricket club in the village who beat Evesham in 1855. Compensation from the railway company provided the community with funds to improve the local roads properly setting out (literally in stone) those boundaries defined in the Enclosure Acts of 1773. Richard Belcher – who also provided the guard rail along the high pavements in parts of the village – widened and flattened out the paths to make them safe. Lord Northwick funded the building of the viaduct at Dark Lane/Breakneck Hill finally making the road to Camden safe for carriages. He also purchased a new organ for the church in 1860 and he funded a new sewage system for Blockley removing the fear of Cholera from 1868. Having married William Nichols in 1863 Mary Bearcroft’s youngest daughter Ann died in Childbirth in 1864. A new fire engine was purchased by the parish in 1865. The Post Office began providing wired Telegraph services from 1870.
Although the silk mills were now almost all closed there was a brief flicker of activity in the in the next few years as French imports were suspended during the Prussian War but by 1874 there were only 2 mills still working and by 1880 the silk trade was gone. Having said that a number of the Mills reinvented themselves turning out piano frames and shirt fronts, another to rope making, or soap-making and another turned the clock back to corn-threshing and cider-making but all of it was small scale. Smallpox still came and went largely through a lingering resistance to Inoculation of the new Jenner vaccine, and the two Blockley Friendly Societies overstretched themselves on the 1870s and were wound up. In 1879 came the Blockley Riot arising from the resultant poverty, unemployment and a crackdown on poaching stirred by an over-zealous village policeman. One evening in March Sergeant Drury was chased from The Crown by a mob that grew larger as it went down the Street. He reached the supposed safety of the Police Station but the mob destroyed it, dragging the policeman into the street and beating him severely, his life only being saved by a few who pulled him away and tended to his wounds. Blockley men were prosecuted. Mary Bearcroft (nee Minors) died in 1884 leaving her daughter Eliza (Susan) to run the Post Office and probably from this time, her nephew Edward Minors took over the bakery. In 1878 Eliza had married James Powell, a local Carpenter and Wheelwright. From her vantage of the Post Office Eliza would have witnessed the Vicar Canon EJ Houghton causing much disquiet by silencing the 5 O’Clock Bell from the Church tower, relied on for centuries by many to rise from their slumber and go to work.
Eliza would have been there in 1888 when electric light first illuminated the church, and indeed Blockley claims to be the first village in all England to have electric light – a development probably led by the Churchill family recently married into Lord Northwick’s family and who had only lit their London House with electricity 3 years before. Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee in 1887 and her Diamond Jubilee in 1897 both occasions would have been well celebrated in Blockley. In the 1890’s the last gates were removed from the Turnpike Roads.
On 4th February 1907 there was a devastating fire at the Post Office (probably attended by the 1865 fire engine) followed by a great storm that hit the village on 20th July but everything was back in place for the 1911 Census still showing the Powell family once again at the Post Office next door to the Crown. In 1907 Marconi had developed wireless telegraphy that could send messages across the Atlantic and a national telephone service was opened by the Post Office in 1912.
Mary’s other surviving daughter Elizabeth Smith (nee Bearcroft) also lived in the village until her death a month before the fire in 1907. In 1863 she had married William Smith who for over 50 years until his death in 1912 was a Carpenter at Lord Redesdale’ estate a mile or two away at Batsford.
Eliza Powell (nee Bearcroft) died in 1916, and being childless, the Blockley Post Office passed on to her niece Evelyn Bearcroft Hayes who never married and bore no children, and who apparently was a fervent Communist and quite a character. It was when Evelyn left Blockley between the Wars to pursue a career in the Post Office in Birmingham, and once Edward Minors died in 1927, that the Bearcroft line finally left the village. For maybe 200 years they had looked after both the village Bakery and the Post Office in the centre of Blockley village. It is only in Australia that the Bearcroft name in this line perhaps lives on.
But Came They All to Birmingham 