Keswick is the most northerly of the Lake District’s towns lying on the northern shore of Derwent Water surrounded by the large fells of Skiddaw, Blencathra, Grizedale Pike and Catbells and about 22 miles from the coast at Workington and Maryport (by crow – it is further than that by road). There is a neolithic stone circle at Castlerigg to the east but there is little evidence of sustained settlement until the Middle Ages when in 1181 there are reports of a new church at Crosthwaite founded by the recently arrived Norman Barons. The Keswick market granted in 1276 majored largely in wool but by the late 1500s it was the arrival of copper mining that made Keswick rich, being the necessary material for the building of warships and weapons at Workington and Maryport. Quarrying for slate also became important to the town. Local graphite was mined and used to reduce friction in machinery, create heat-resistant glaze in crucibles, and to line moulds for cannonballs. Later local graphite was also the basis for the manufacture of pencils.
The Gaitskell family were living in Crosthwaite on the edge of Keswick and Borrowdale in the late 1700s. It was there in 1754 David Gaitskell married Margaret Dixon. Four known children arrived over the next 20 years with Hannah (1755), Mary (1764), Elizabeth (1772) and David (1775). David died in 1788 and Margaret in 1795, but Mary went on to marry Joseph Vickers in Crosthwaite in 1794.
The Vickers family however, prior to the late 1700s had for generations been at Bowderdale Farm in Nether Wasdale, next to the southern end of Wastwater Lake – the deepest lake in England – and 5 miles from Wasdale head at the end of the valley that lies in the shadow of Great Gable and Sca Fell Pike. This is remote country with steep scree sides running down to the lake from the summits of Whin Rigg and Illgill Head. The ancient and tiny St Olaf’s Church lies at the end of the road, at Wasdale Head. From here the River Irt flows to its estuary at Ravenglass. This is sheep country, providing wool and meat for consumption and for trade at the local markets. William Vickers was born there in 1735 along with two brothers and six sisters. Then in 1772, it was in the Presbyterian Church in Workington he married Mary Bushby, some 13 years his junior, presumably part of the Presbyterian congregation and probably from Deanscales near Cockermouth. They had 5 children, first Joseph in 1772, then twins Mary and William in 1774 and two more twins Thomas and Ann in 1777. Joseph, a farmer at Powter Howe in the 1841 census and a former Butcher in the 1851, went on to marry Mary Gaitskell in Crossthwaite, Keswick in 1794. Mary died in 1821 and is buried in Crosthwaite whereas Joseph lived another 39 years before he died in Thornthwaite in 1860.
Bewteen them we have found five children, three boys and two mgirls, but two of them died before they were 20, and one maybe from complications in childbirth following the birth of her sixth child. This left William Vickers to look after the Whinlatter Toll-Gate between High Mill (a Bobbin manufactory)and the Travellers Inn near Braithwaite, and his sister Elizabeth Vickers (Betty, born 1795) who in 1823 in Grasmere married Thomas Hayes of Nether Staveley, an area to the east of Lake Windermere, towards Kendal. Thomas Hayes was the son of Richard Hayes and Margaret (nee Minikin).
Aged around 30 Margaret Minikin and Richard Hays married by Licence in Warton, Lancashire in 1781. The marriage Licence states that Mary was from Yealand Redmain in the parish of Warton but her parents may have come from across Morecambe Bay at Dalton in Furness. Richard Hays shows as being a Mariner (as do his two bondsmen) from Arnside in the Parish of Beetham. In 1748 his father Richard Hays had been a Tenant Farmer on the Earl of Derby’s farm at Arnside Tower. As a widower already with two children, he had married Jane Cornes (also by licence, both described as being of the parish of Beetham) in Garstang (30 miles south of Beetham, the other side of Lancaster). Why they married so far away we do not know. With Jane we are aware of two further surviving children, the eldest of whom was also named Richard Hayes.
By 1785 this younger Richard and Margaret (nee Minikin) had two children in Beetham before moving to Longbank, Over Staveley where they had 5 more before moving to Low Farm in Ambleside where they had their last child in 1799. Richard at that point was a farm labourer. Margaret died in 1824 and Richard in 1826. Of their 7 children however, only the fate of four of the five sons is known.
Thomas Hayes (b.1786), the eldest son, married Elizabeth Vickers in Grasmere in 1823 and becomes the course of our story. Initially he farmed at Hearthead near Rydal between 1825 and 1832 where he provided gardening services for private houses possibly under Gardener James Dixon. Family legend tells us that amongst others he provided these services to William Wordsworth – his next door neighbour at Rydal Mount.
John Hayes (b.1788) married an Innkeepers daughter from Ambleside and went to Keswick to drive coaches, returning after his wife died in 1838 to look after cows at the Rectory. His son Robert (b.1832) became a pencil manufacturer in Keswick. From here Hogarth and Hayes (Pencil Makers) were formed eventually became famous world-wide as Cumberland Pencils.
Richard Hayes (b.1791) by 1829 was in two local directories as a Gardener and Seedsman with a house on Smithy Brow. He died in 1838 leaving a wife and 5 young children, none of whom took to gardening
Robert Hayes (b.1793) took over Richard’s business probably around 1834 and by 1849 is in local directories under his own name. By 1851 he was in Bridge St employing 2 men (3 by 1871) but he died childless in 1876.
As his brother Richard became ill in the mid 1830s Thomas Hays moved back to Ambleside living in a house in Stock Gill Beck owned by Robert, presumably working together in the Nursery business. Thomas and Elizabeth had 4 sons who survived to adulthood and again three went straight into the family profession, while the eldest, Joseph, took a while to get there, but got there in the end.
- John (b.1832) became Head Gardener to the industrialist Henry Schneider first in Ulverston then at Besfield in Bowness
- William (b.1835) was also a Gardener who probably worked with his uncles and brothers.
- Thomas (b.1829) continued the business of providing gardening services for private houses in Grasmere. He was twice married, the second time to Martha Davidson. But Thomas died young in 1868 (aged 39) leaving his 4 surviving children to be looked after by Martha and her second husband George Hodson. There were two boys.
Robert (b.1859) by 1898 (85 years after Wordsworth left) reintroduced the rare Holly Fern into the garden at Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage before opening a nursery in Grasmere specialising in white heather.
The second son, Thomas Richard Hayes (b.1864) is shown in the 1881 census as an Apprentice Gardener living with his Mother. From there he went to work in the Royal Nurseries in Birmingham where in 1887 he was involved in the making of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee bouquet. In 1890 he returned to the Lake District to open a nursery in Keswick specialising in Alpine plants although he was also fond of pansies and violas. He became a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society and started to develop his interest in designing rock and water gardens to best show off his plants. He designed and built a complete Japanese water garden for Lord Lonsdale at Lowther Castle, and for a rock garden at Derwent Hill he moved stones weighing 5-6 tons and successfully transplanted mature pines to provide the background. The heather garden alone had 20,000 plants.
He always strived to lay the rocks naturally and avoid all appearance of artificiality. Thomas was a regular winner of prizes at Flower Shows at Shrewsbury, Birmingham and Stockport, before venturing to Chelsea in 1920 and in 1924 winning the Daily Graphic Cup and a Chelsea Gold Medal. He opened a new Nursey business in Ambleside in 1921 on a four acre site to grow alpines, shrubs and herbaceous plants, and closed down the Keswick site returning it to agriculture. Thomas died in 1927 to be succeeded by his two elder sons Robert and Arthur. Now yet another generation runs Hayes Gardenworld on the edge of Ambleside where it still exists today.
So it is probably no surprise that Joseph Hayes did not take immediately to Gardening. By 1842 Herbert Hill had moved to Warwick to take the position of Headmaster to the Kings School (now Warwick School) where he stayed for the next 34 years. Did Joseph move with him, or was he offered a position elsewhere by another member of the close family or its circle of friends? He has not yet been found in the 1851 census, but by 1854 he was a Butler at Sandhurst Military College when he married Harriett Budd in Upton-Cum-Chalvey near Windsor. Harriett was the daughter of Johnathan Budd and Maria (nee Wooldridge), where Jonathan was also a Servant at the Royal Military College.
In 1856 at the birth of his first son, he is recorded as a Butler living in Gt Barlow St, Marylebone. In 1858 at the birth of Alfred and of Ernest in 1860 he is in Yorktown in Sandhurst and is a Gentleman’s Servant. He is missing again from the 1861 census although his wife and family (3 children) are now living with her parents in YorkTown, just outside the Sandhurst Military College where her Father is still described as a College Servant.
And then in 1865 and 1867 Joseph and Harriett’s next two sons Albert and Frank were born in Hartlebury outside Stourport in Worcestershire. Finally his only daughter Harriet was registered as being born at Bromsgrove in 1870. At the census in 1871 Joseph Hayes is found living in Rock Hill, the road out of Bromsgrove to the south, and it is here and for the rest of his life that the wheel has turned full circle and he is now a gardener in both the census returns for 1881 and 1891. In 1892 when his son Albert gets married, Joseph is described on the certificate as a Professional Gardener but by 1901 he is at nearby Hill Top as a retired Gardener. He died in 1903 and is buried in Bromsgrove.
None of the five sons of Joseph and Harriett picked up the Gardening gene but they all took up professions. Fred became a Whitesmith in Stafford, Alfred joined the Police force and was Superintendent at Redditch, Herbert became a Solicitors Clerk in Bromsgrove whereas Albert joined the Post Office living in Kingston on Thames although in 1916 he was jailed for 4 years for stealing postal orders from the post in Kingston upon Thames .
It was the youngest son Frank (Walter Thomas Francis Hayes) who married Annie Bearcroft Smith a daughter of the Postmistress at Blockley and it appears that they eloped to Balsall Heath in Birmingham for the ceremony. Annie had only been 18 for 5 days and Frank was just 19 although both state 20 years on the wedding certificate, which also shows Frank as being a Carpenter.
Within a year of marriage Frank Hayes joined the Birmingham Fire Service but their first born, a daughter Olive, was born back in Blockley where she continued to live throughout her life, brought up by her grandparents William Smith and Elizabeth (nee Bearcroft). Olive eventually married Jack Ellis, a butcher from the village, although a year after their marriage, and after the death of her grandparents in 1907 and 1912, they also moved to Birmingham where Jack worked in the motor trade. Thereafter Frank and Annie lived their lives at fire-stations in Birmingham mainly at Linguard Street, then at the main Fire-Station on Lancaster Circus (now student accommodation) and after the Great War they got their own house in Washwood Heath Road, Ward End. After an initially patchy disciplinary record resulting from a weakness for drink, Frank gradually rose up the ranks to become third officer in the Birmingham Fire Brigade, junior only to the celebrated Tozer brothers.
In all they had six children – four daughters and two sons – between 1888 and 1906, the remainder of whom were born in those Fire-Stations. The two boys both served in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment during the Great War, Bill being awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal and later becoming an Electrical Engineer, while John was posthumously awarded the Military Medal for his actions in the Machine Gun Corps. John had sailed for France in February 1917 and by October had been promoted to Lance Corporal and then to Corporal. His death was accepted as a fact in March 1918 after the Battle of St Quentin. His body was never found but his name is recorded on the Poziers Memorial at Albert, near the Somme, France. Of the girls, Ethel’s husband Sam Duncombe also joined up for the War but was shot in the thigh in March 1918 and invalided back home. The third daughter Evelyn was a staunch Communist who never married and worked in the Post Office first with the Bearcroft family in Blockley and then in Birmingham.
The youngest daughter Dorothy Hayes (born in 1906 at the Linguard Street Fire Station) in 1929 married Harold Wells, a farmer on the agricultural land north of Birmingham then Kings Vale Farm, Kinsgstanding. They went to live in nearby Court Lane in Boldmere just off the Chester Road. In the 1930s the farm was sold to Birmingham Council for housing but farming activity continued through Harold’s Father (Oliver) and Uncle (James) who remained farmers in the area right up to the outbreak of war in 1939. They had threechildren John (b.1932), Peter (b.1934) and Dorothy (known as Dot b.1944) and moved to Devon with Dorothy around 1961.
Harold died in 1967 in Instow aged only 61. Dorothy Wells (nee Hayes) died in 1998 aged 92 having spent her remaining years looking out of her favourite window across the sea from Instow to Westward Ho!
But Came They All to Birmingham 