Blore is a small hamlet in the parish of Loggerheads on the western edge of Staffordshire, lying south of Mucklestone and next to Almington and Drayton Hales. “Hales” refers to a much larger ancient district that covered the whole area. Blore’s only claims to fame are being close to the remains of an AD100 Roman villa and being next to the site of the Battle of Blore Heath that began the Wars of the Roses in 1459. Blore lies up the hill 3 miles to the east of Market Drayton in Shropshire just off the road to Newcastle under Lyme.
Drayton Hales (just “Hales” on today’s maps) contains the small Anglican church of St Mary’s and in historical documents can be easily confused with St Mary’s Church in Market Drayton, also originally referred to as Drayton-in-Hales, and just for a laugh, the church in Mucklestone is also St Mary’s. Additionally church records such as Bishops Transcripts are often copies of church registers maintained in outlying churches but brought back and recorded in the main church of the parish and it is not always clear from where the original record arose, yet alone providing multiple opportunities for mistakes or misunderstanding of original writing.
Sarah/Elizabeth Randalls was born into this area probably around 1753, possibly a daughter of John Randalls and Martha (nee Wiiliams) who lived in and around Hales. Other researchers have found siblings for Sarah/Elizabeth. Our uncertainty about her name comes from two marriage records, one of which states that Elizabeth Rondals married William Jervis in Market Drayton on 18 May 1777, and the other which states Sarah Randles married William Jervis in Drayton-in-Hales on 23 May 1777.
Jervis is a common name around Drayton in the late 1700s and early 1800s. William’s parents Richard and Mary Jervis may have married in 1750 in Hinstock a couple of miles to the south of Drayton. Again, other researchers have found siblings but William will have been also born around 1753 and there is a baptism record from Mucklestone in that year. It appears that William married Sarah Randalls in Drayton in May 1877. William may well have been a carpenter because in December 1790, a William Jervis of Blore Heath is taking on an Apprentice Carpenter, Samuel Momford. The year before, in 1789, it may have been their son, William, aged only nine, who was taken on as an apprentice Taylor in nearby Hinstock.
Now married and living in Market Drayton, Sarah and William Jervis are recorded as having seven children, but only the last two, Ann born in 1796 and James in 1801 seem to have survived through to the census returns in 1841. James married Mary Martin, became a farmer and raised a large family in Winnington, a hamlet just to the north of Mucklestone, while Anne married Charles Crutchley, a local wheelwright. The Crutchley family had been in and around the Hales area since before 1700 and it was a very common name across the Shropshire/Staffordshire area for the next 200 years.
Charles Crutchley’s parents were James Crutchley and Sarah (nee Perry). Sarah Perry was a parishioner of Mucklestone when she married James who had been born there, although Sarah was probably born in Hinstock from where her parents, Thomas Perry and Eleanor (nee Prinold) also came. James Crutchley’s parents, Joseph and Anne (nee Smith) had been married in Cheswardine, then had their first-born christened in Hinstock before the remaining six were baptised in Mucklestone. Joseph’s parents marriage in 1729 was recorded in Latin as taking place in Market Drayton. In the census of 1841 James and Sarah were elderly farmers at Brownhills Farm between Betton Moss and the new Victoria Wharf on the canal that had opened 6 years previously – both having been born possibly in Mucklestone some 60-65 years before and married there in May 1799. Of their eight known children (five sons and three daughters) seven of them went to live for some 70 years or more. It was into this world that Charles Crutchley was the first-born, baptised in Drayton in October 1799.
Of Charles’ siblings Thomas became a tailor and moved to Egham in Surrey, William became Master of the Workhouse in Drayton for some 20-30 years, James became a potter in
Tunstall, Eleanor married a farm labourer, of Sarah there is no firm trace, John took over Brownhills Farm on the death of his father and Alice married a butcher before becoming farmers themselves at Norton. Charles however was a Wheelwright. After marrying Ann Jervis in Drayton in 1821 he continued acting as Wheelwright and then Master Wheelwright for the villages of Almington and Drayton for 50 years to his death in 1875.
For the majority of this period he lived at Clod Hall where the road from Almington reaches the Newcastle Road with Lt. Col. Peter Broughton the major resident landowner. Having a trade probably protected Charles and Ann from some of the seasonal up and downs of being a worker dependant on agriculture. Between 1822 and 1837 they had 10 children (9 sons and a daughter) all born at Clod Hall and all of whom survived. Charles and his family would have seen the agricultural boom of the Napoleonic period decline into the subsequent depression from 1815. The Speenhamland System (introduced in the 1790s) that tied a minimum wage to the price of bread was slowly coming into disrepute as encouraging not only idleness but also young marriage and large families. It was abandoned in 1834 when Workhouses instead became national policy. Poaching and burglary became commonplace and certainly a number of Crutchleys appear in the Staffordshire Assises in the 1830s and 40s imprisoned for larceny although two were transported for that crime along with two others for assault or robbery. The Swing Riots of 1830 where the labourers rose in revolt at low wages largely affected the south of England but a northern agricultural area such as Drayton may have seen some of the troubles. These were often led by more educated men with trades and Charles would certainly have been aware of them. He would have seen the changes brought on by the arrival of both the canal and the railway into Market Drayton.
And Charles certainly taught his children his trade. There were two of the 10 who went their own way – daughter Alice was in London by 1851, married to a publican, while Thomas married in Bath in 1849 before moving to London and becoming a plumber. The remaining 8 sons stayed with wood and four became local Wheelwrights – William in Hodnet from 1851 (both his sons followed the family line), Samuel in Ashley in 1861, then Woore in 1871 then Buerton, Cheshire in 1891, while John moved back into Clod Hall probably after his mother died (1863) and carried on the business in Almington after his father died in 1875. The youngest son, Henry, started as an apprentice butcher but eventually is described as a Wheelwright first in Salford, Manchester, and then in Stoke on Trent. Between 1848 and 1860 the remaining 4 – James, Joseph, Charles and George – all moved to the back-to-backs in Birmingham in Saltley and Aston and are described as Carpenters or coach-builders probably working for the Metropolitan Carriage and Wagon Company. By 1900 either they or their children who worked for the railways had the advantage of the Company providing cheap travel to employees and their families.
Today both Shifford Bridge and Clod Hall are Grade 2 listed buildings. When John moved into Clod Hall in the 1860s he brought with him his wife Mary, his three daughters, Martha, Alice and Mary, and his son John. In 1869 Alice at age 17 had a child to an unknown father. While Alice was put out into service, then married in 1877 and died in 1887, her son George grew up first with his great grandfather Charles and then with his Grandfather John at Clod Hall.
He too learned the Wheelwright trade , and when he married Betsy Frost in 1893 it was his grandfather John who moved into the house next door on Little Heath Green. George and Betsy remained in Clod Hall as Estate Wheelwrights until George died in 1946 and Betsy in 1952. They had a daughter Annie in 1892. Clod Hall had been the home of the Crutchley family for over 150 years.
Of the Crutchley families that moved to Birmingham:
James died in 1880 leaving 4 children. Francis died young in 1880 but second son Oliver became a solicitors clerk, Alice married a Pattern Maker and Herbert became a railway clerk.
Joseph married 3 times and had 6 children.
Charles had 3 surviving children all of whom ended up in the railway trade.
Finally George married Mary Whiston in Stoke on Trent before he moved to Birmingham where he became a Coach Maker living in Saltley and Washwood Heath where he and Mary both died in 1902. They had ten children – five sons and five daughters – of whom George married Annie Hardman, a girl from Hereford. George and Annie had four daughters, Lizzie, Louisa, Nellie and Winnie and a son John George Crutchley who was awarded the Military Medal in France in 1918 – he survived the war and went to live in Lincolnshire where he died aged 48 in 1933.
Unfortunately George’s wife Annie (nee Hardman) was placed in Kings Norton Asylum in 1901 and although she appears to have come out at some stage, she was readmitted in 1906 and died there the following year. Meanwhile George continued to look after the family until he died in 1938. Of their four daughters :
- the fearsome Lizzie married Charles Davis, a Railway Goods Clerk in 1909 but Charlie died in 1924. They had no children and Lizzie died in 1976, 52 years as a widow.
- Louisa married Fred Hampson, a Railway Inspector. They had two children and she died in 1979 in Bromsgrove, 28 years after Fred.
- The youngest, Winnie married Herbert Clifford in 1917, a Commercial manager for a Paint firm. They had one child and Winnie died in 1959, the same year as Herbert.
But the third daughter Nellie married Len Cork, a draughtsman, in 1912 and they had three children, Leonard, Reg and Edith. He husband Len was not a well man, and he died of TB in 1932 aged 44.
Nellie Cork (nee Crutchley) lived for another 38 years and she died in Birmingham in 1971.
But Came They All to Birmingham 