Deep in the heart of the Gloucestershire countryside, 30 miles to the East of both Gloucester and Worcester but still 40 miles short of Oxford, sits Chipping Campden at what is now the northern end of the long distance Cotswold Path whose Southern end is Bath, some 75 miles to the South West. With its unmistakeable yellow stone, thatched cottages and wide streets characteristic of the Cotswolds Hills there was little to identify Chipping Campden before 1100. There are no Roman Roads passing through the town although both the Fosse Way and Ryknild Street are close by. There are references in the 7th Century to “Campa Denu”, a valley with cultivated fields ringed by unfenced hill pasture where there may have been a decisive battle between the Angles, the Saxons, the Irish and the Welsh in 689. The Domesday Book recorded a population of about 300 scattered dwellings between the hamlets of Berrington, Westington and perhaps Broad Campden.
It was in the late 1100s that the lord of the Manor Hugh de Gondeville planned and set out a new streetplan joining some of the original dwellings with a curved High Street that followed the bank on the side of the River Cam and in 1185 the new town was given one of the many Market Charters granted by Henry II. At this point the town became known as Chipping Campden – “Chipping” denoting a market. Along the High Street were laid out regular plots of land (Burgages) to be occupied (for a fee) by craftsmen and traders essential to a small town. Further out of the new village this High Street was extended as part of a route connecting the Town to Stow and Cirencester in the South, and to Mickleton and Stratford-upon-Avon in the North.
The reason for this activity was commercial. In the 1200s and 1300s wool from the Cotswold Lion sheep was high quality and in much demand. English wool was prized across Europe and made up probably half of England’s economy. While the new Chipping Campden did not have suitable water supply to power mills (as does Blockley three miles to the South for instance), its location made it perfect as a centre for buying and selling local produce. And development followed. In the 1300s it was ‘wool money’ that financed the building of what is now The Eight Bells Inn, originally constructed to house the stonemasons and the bells while next door the Church of St James was built. In 1380 William Grevell, one of Campden’s and England’s most successful wool merchants, built Grevel House in the High Street. At the same time, opposite was built the Woolstapler’s Hall where Cotswold wool was graded and priced. Campden was now the centre of the Cotswold wool trade where the whole district brought their products to be weighed, graded and sold. After the early 1400s the dominance of woollen cloth lessened a little as other materials of higher quality – silks, satins, velvets and taffetas – entered the marketplace and were demanded by Royalty, the Gentry and increasingly by the well-to-do members of society. But Wool remained an important commodity for many years as shown when The Burial in Wool Acts of 1667 and 1678 decreed that all bodies had to be buried in wool – unless the body was sworn by affidavit to be that of a plague victim when it should be burned. These Acts were only repealed in 1814.
Sir Baptist Hicks, a wealthy Silk Mercer and supplier to Elizabeth I and King James I was born in London around 1550 but attracted by the trade he adopted Chipping Campden as his home. He is thought to have been the 2nd wealthiest man in all England during his lifetime. He was knighted by James I in 1603 and made a Baronet in 1620. In 1628 he became Baron Hicks and Viscount Campden of Campden. The Marketing Hall, The Almshouses and The Banqueting Hall were all built in the early 1600’s at the order of Sir Baptist Hicks. The Lygon Arms and The Noel Arms were also built at this time. In 1612 he had Campden House built next to the Church as his Manor House and home at a cost then of £44,000 but £millions today, all in the latest style. Contemporary accounts include sumptuous gardens with water features that included a canal, terraces, fountains and a parterre. He died in 1629 and is buried in St James Church while his Manor House was burned to the ground in 1645 on the orders of Prince Rupert to stop it falling into Parliamentary hands. Little trace remains of it today.
By the mid 1550s some 1200 people lived in Chipping Campden. The Muster Rolls of 1608 identifies 161 men fit enough to fight for the King. This list also shows their profession, amongst whom were 9 Tailors.
William Minors was probably born in Chipping Campden at around the time of the English Civil War between 1642-1651. His ancestors may have lived there many years previously and perhaps knew Sir Baptist Hicks and had seen Campden House before it was demolished. William will have lived during Oliver Cromwell’s Rule of Parliament and the Restoration of the Monarchy under Charles II. At some point it is assumed that he married as in 1669 records show that he had a son Thomas but the Mother’s name is not recorded. For ease of reference I shall call him Thomas(1).
William’s profession is unknown but Thomas(1) became a Tailor in the High Street as confirmed by his Last Will and Testament. Young Thomas(1) would grown to adulthood through the hard Winter of 1683-4 when the Thames froze over and the Ice Fair was held on the River in London. The daily Stage Coach would have brought news of the death of Charles II in 1685, then the short rule of James II which lasted until The Glorious Revolution brought in William and Mary in 1689. It was about then that he married, although no record of this has yet surfaced and the name of his wife is not known. Of Thomas’s 4 surviving children, Edward (b1692) became a Wig-Maker, and Henry (b1703) if I read the writing correctly became a Hemp Dresser. His daughter Elizabeth (b.1699) married Thomas Freeman another Tailor in Chipping Campden in 1717. His son Thomas(2) born in 1701 followed his Father in becoming also a Tailor in in the Town, maybe working with his brother-in-law. It seems that Thomas(2) and his brother Edward (the Wig-Maker) saw fit to introduce the idea of calling one of their sons “Major” Minors, a habit that persisted through a number of subsequent generations.
Tailoring is the art of designing, cutting, fitting, and finishing clothes. The profession had its beginnings in the trade of linen armorers, who skillfully fitted men with padded linen undergarments to protect their bodies against the chafing of both chain mail and later plate armour. Men’s clothing at the time consisted of a loosely fitted tunic and hose. In 1100 Henry I confirmed Royal rights and privileges to the Taylors of Oxford. In London, the Guild of Taylors and Linen Armorers were granted arms in 1299. They became a Company in 1466 and were incorporated into the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors in 1503. There are two spellings of “Taylor which regularly intermingle. “Taylor” with a “y” is the original English spelling of the word, “Tailor” with an “i” comes from the French “tailleur” and was introduced around the 14th Century but the usage is inconsistent.
By the 1500s and 1600s tailors were responsible for making a variety of outer garments including capes, cloaks, coats, doublets, and breeches. They gave shape to them by using coarse, stiff linen and canvas for interlining with horsehair cloth and even cardboard stiffened with whalebone for structural elements. Imperfect or asymmetrical body shapes could be evened out with wool or cotton padding. Luxury garments were often lined with satins or furs to keep their wearers warm. Tailors were the structural engineers for women’s fashions and made whalebone stays or corsets until the nineteenth century. The 1800s tailor added trousers, fancy waistcoats, and sporting clothing of all sorts to his repertoire. The tailor was particularly adept at working woollen fabrics, which he shaped and sculpted using steam and heavy irons. Menswear had long used wool as a staple fabric. In Britain wool connoted masculinity, sobriety, and patriotism and in the early 1800s it became extremely fashionable again, almost completely replacing the silks and velvets used in the previous century. At the same time, men began to wear trousers rather than breeches and by the 1820s, tightly cut trousers or pantaloons could be worn as evening wear. Though they no longer made corsets, women’s side-saddle riding habits and walking suits remained the province of the tailor and were cut and fashioned from the same fabrics as male garments. Master tailors were always men – women were sewers and seamstresses.
Because tailoring was taught by traditional apprenticeships, skills were passed on from master to apprentice without the need for written manuals. The most skilled aspect of the trade was cutting out garments from a bolt of cloth. In G. B. Moroni’s painting The Tailor (c. 1570), the fashionably dressed Craftsman prepares to use his shears on a length of cloth marked with tailor’s chalk. These markings would probably have been based on a master pattern. The earliest tailors used cloth patterns because paper and parchment were too expensive at this period. Paper patterns became widespread and commercially available in the 1800s.
The typical workshop had a master tailor, who dealt directly with the client and cut out garments. There might be several cutters in a large establishment and they were at the top of the tailoring hierarchy because ‘cutting out’ was the most skilled part of the trade minimising waste. Under them other journeymen tailors were responsible for a variety of activities, including padding and sewing in interlinings, pockets, and the difficult task of assembling the sleeve and turning the collar, as well as manipulating the heavy shaping-iron called a goose. Apprentices were usually responsible for running errands and sweeping up scraps of fabric before being taught basic sewing skills.
Back in Chipping Campden Thomas(2) married Susannah Fletcher from nearby Ebrington at St James’ Church in 1726. They carried on their trade and lived in Chipping Campden where they had 8 children that may have lived beyond infancy. Both their 7th and 8th children were apprenticed to be Tailors in London. Major Minors was born in 1738 and stayed in London where he married Alice Holding in Holborn in 1763. Thomas(3) however, born two years later in 1740 returned to Chipping Campden where he carried on the family business. In 1774 he married Sarah Potter in St James Church but life was not to be kind to Thomas(3) and Sarah. Although the following year they had a son, whom they called John, the next year in 1776 Thomas(3) died in March, and then three months later Thomas(2) his father also died leaving 2 year-old John in the sole care of his Mother.
At the tender age of 14, in 1790, John Minors followed in the family footsteps and was indentured as an Apprentice to Jeremiah Blakeman, Citizen and Merchant Taylor of London. There he stayed for the necessary 7 years learning the trade. At the end of this period John returned to the Cotswolds to live in nearby Blockley, marrying Elizabeth Hows from Chipping Campden in 1803. There they had 5 children but again illness and death from consumption, smallpox and cholera was not far away. In 1813 John died aged only 38 along with their youngest daughter aged only 2, bringing to an end at least 150 years of Tailoring in the area. But tragedy did not end there.
The following year in 1814 two more daughters aged 10 and 7 also died, and in 1818 his widow Elizabeth also died leaving Mary aged 13 and Major aged 9 as orphans. Given the lack of close relatives nearby it appears that Mary and Major were sent to London to live with other members of the family. I say this because back in Blockley, Elizabeth, the wife of John Bearcroft, Baker and Parish Clerk died in 1829 leaving him with two children aged 6 and 3 to look after. Through the Hows family, John Bearcroft and Mary Minors were first cousins (once removed) , and within 9 months of the death of his first wife John travelled to London where he married Mary Minors in St Anne’s Limehouse in February 1830. He brought his new wife and her brother back to Blockley, and although he himself died in 1839, Mary took over as the baker and ran the new Post office for 45 years until her death in 1884. And while Major died from illness along with much of his family in 1844, his surviving son Major Minors took over as Baker in Blockley on the death of his aunt and ran it until the mid 1920’s. There are no Minors living today in Chipping Campden or Blockley.
But Came They All to Birmingham 