Written by Charlie Hulme
Tracing my Barratt ancestry has been a difficult task; I only ever knew one of the family, my mother's cousin Louis.
A few photographs are all I have of my grandmother Edith (pictured above) who died in 1948, the year before I was born. On this page I try to pick up the trail of the Barratt family. As always, there are gaps in the story, and I have not attempted a compete Barratt family tree which would be very large.
My maternal grandmother, Edith Hill, née Barratt, was one of a large family of Barratts in the Portwood and Lancashire Hill areas of Stockport .
Unravelling their family tree is not easy, even with modern online tools. My mother was taught to spell the name with "two a's, two b's and two t's" but nineteenth-century census takers and later transcribers did not always followed this rule, as did earlier generations if the family. There were (and are) other Barratt (and Barrett) families in the Stockport area, many of them (but not all) related in some way to Edith Barratt.
However, my cousin James Morris, who tragically died young in a road accident, was interested in family history, and his wife Moira has kindly passed on his research notes, which include some family stories as well as family tree notes.
Uncle Louis
The one Barratt I knew well was my mother's cousin Louis James Barratt, son of Jack Barratt. He was a few years older than my mother, and they were good friends. We would often visit him and his wife Sally in Stockport and they would visit us in Whaley Bridge - unlike us and most of the people mentioned in this feature he owned a car! The photograph was taken near the now-notorious Toddbrook Dam some time in the 1950s.
Louis Barratt was born in 1918, after his father's return from the war. Could his name have been inspired by Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was very much in the news at the time for his wartime exploits.
Following the family tradition, he became a sheet metal worker, and found work at the Friedland company which established a business in a former textile mill in Reddish to manufacture chiming doorbells which became popular in the 1930s.
In January 1939 he married Sarah Jane Bentley, also born in 1918, always known to us as"Aunty Sally." Until I commenced this research I had no idea that Sally was a nickname for people christened Sarah.
They found a home at 17 Oxford Street in Heaton Norris, and had two daughters.
Unfortunately, in the 1950s Louis suffered an industrial accident and had to give up his job. He took on the bakery business which had been established by his uncle, Samuel Barratt, with a stall in the Produce Hall in Stockport market place. The products on offer were crumpets, pikelets and oatcakes, all favourite foods in the area and still enjoyed by myself. The business was eventually sold, but the name BARRATT above the stall remained for some time afterwards. The hall eventually closed, and re-opened some years later as an up-market 'food hall' type of operation.
Louis Barratt was something of a local hero in football circles. He helped to organise a league for youngsters; if we visited on a Saturday his phone would be ringing frequently with people reporting the scores of matches. A family story is that he travelled to a football match on the afternoon of his wedding.
He died in 1988, and Sally died in 2005 after a series of health issues. Unfortunately, we were not told, probably because her family didn't know our contact details.
Brunswick Chapel
Brunswick Wesleyan Chapel was opened in 1849, funded by the local Wesleyan community at a cost of £2530.
The name 'Brunswick' caused me some concentrated Googling, eventually lighting on the following entry in 'A Dictionary of Methodism':
It has sometimes been suggested that this was in honour of the marriage of the Prince Regent (the future King George IV) to Princess Charlotte of Brunswick in 1795, but for several reasons that is unlikely. The lifestyles of neither party were calculated to commend them to Methodists. It is more probable that the name was adopted with reference to the Hanoverian monarchy as a whole, which the first three Georges already represented, and to which Methodists were exhorted to show allegiance by Wesley and later by the Conference itself.
The next street along from Brunswick Street was Hanover Street, which seems to confirm this. By 1895 Brunswick Street had been re-named Epplestone Street.
The gothic-style chapel building, with seats for 770 and a surrounding graveyard, was well-attended for many years, but by the 1950s slum clearance was reducing the local population and the chapel was closed and demolished; the remaining members would have perhaps transferred their worship to the nearby Tiviot Dale Methodist Church.
The graveyard, however, remains consecrated ground, although sold to Stockport Council. The gravestones were removed, but the bodies are still there within the original boundary wall, including those of six World War I casualties, as well as some wealthy mill-owners, also my Great-grandfather George Hill and perhaps a number of Barratts. It is said that about 2600 people are buried there.
However, Edith was buried at Fernilee Chapel near Whaley Bridge with her husband James Hill.
Today the graveyard is in the care of the Friends of Stockport Cemeteries, and has 'interpretation boards' which showed signs of graffiti removal when I visited in June 2021. To reach the graveyard, I needed to negotiate a subway, as today is surrounded by Portwood Roundabout which is the eastern access (Junction 27) to the M60 road.
Comments welcome: charlie@davenportstation.org.uk
A family picture from around 1930, with James Hill's taxi. Front row: William Hill (brother of James), Edith Hill, Alice Hill (mother of James), Margaret Hill (wife of William). Behind: Alice Hill and Ethel Hill (daughters of James) and Annie Hill (daughter of William).
From Another Age
I didn't expect to reach very far back in time, but thanks to the work of other researchers published on the Ancestry website, I have a copy of the Marriage Certificate of Susannah Johnson, aged 19, to Edward Barratt, aged 25, both of the township of Stretford in the Parish of Manchester in 'The Year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty Four'. Stretford, today a busy suburb in the borough of Trafford, was in the 1780s, as the map shows, a small rural township which grew up around a crossroads on the road from Manchester to Chester - a Roman Road, called Watling Street by some writers, although that name is usually applies to the road from Dover to Shropshire. The Bridgewater Canal, opened in 1765, passes nearby, and is shown at the bottom of the map.
The marriage document includes a consent by Susannah's father John Johnson, as she was under the age of 21. Edward and Susannah had four sons and five daughters; the eldest son John Barratt (1785-1870) Married Elizabeth Slater and was the father of my ancestor William Johnson Barratt.
Stockport Parish records include the baptism in 1821 of William Johnson Barratt, son of John and Elizabeth Barratt (née Slater), with an address in Chestergate. It is likely that they he moved from Stretford to Stockport to find work. The map extract from 1824 (above) shows that Chestergate was, as it still is, at the heart of the old town as well as the road to Chester as its name suggests. The new by-pass road, today's Wellington Road, was under construction at the time, and known as the 'New Road'.
John's occupation is given as 'weaver' which at that date would refer to a hand-loom weaver of cotton cloth. In the 1820s there were cotton spinning mills, many water-powered, in Stockport, but the spun thread was generally farmed out to home workers for weaving.
Victorian Days
The 1851 census found William Johnson Barratt and his family living in the house of hand-loom weaver Thomas Keslake, who had come to Stockport from Bath, Somerset. William, aged 31, was working as a porter. With him were wife Elizabeth, sons Thomas Slater Barratt (9), and John Slater Barratt (6) both listed as 'Scholar Out' meaning they attended a school, and baby daughter Mary Maria. All were born in Stockport. (Not all documents include their middle names which are their mother's maiden names.)
I believe that this house, a very small terraced house at 20 Castle Street, later converted to a shop, survives in 2021 as 'The Gold House'. A rare survival of a Stockport house occupied by my ancestors, these buildings date This part of Castle Street was, although functionally part of the Edgeley area of Stockport, in the township of Cheadle Bulkeley - the eccentric border can still be traced in places by the differing styles of street-name signs.
By 1861, the family had the house to themselves; while sons Thomas Slater Barratt and John Slater Barratt had left home, they had gained three more daughters: Elizabeth (9), Edna Jane (5) and Emma (3) all born in Edgeley. William was listed as a 'core maker' which is a foundry worker who makes the mould for metal casting; he gives his birthplace as Stretford, Lancashire. At the time, Thomas and John (aged 19 and 16) were sharing a room in the house of a street porter, William Owen and his family at 6 Matthew Street in Hulme, Manchester. They are both listed as 'iron moulders', no doubt learning the trade which, like their father's, involves making moulds for metal casting.
The Pool Lane area in 1895; Great Portwood Street is at the bottom right.
Thomas Slater Barratt married Jane Coxson in Manchester in 1864, and in 1871 the couple were living in Newton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire; their children were George (6), William (4), Jane (2) and baby Elizabeth A. who was the only one born in Newton. The others were Stockport-born, so they must have moved from Newton to Stockport soon after their marriage. In 1881 they were in Stockport at 15, Pool Lane in the Portwood area of Stockport with children William (14), Thomas (7) and Edith Barratt (2) plus a lodger Elizabeth Maynard, a cotton operative.
This aerial view is from 1946: I have marked Pool Lane, surrounded by mills. Some of the buildings had already been cleared away, leaving the Beehive Inn in Water Street still standing proud. The large mill at the top of the image was the Beehive mill; I don't know which was named first and why. Today very few, if any, of the buildings in this picture still stand, and the railway (Tiviot Dale station was just off this view at the bottom left) has been replaced by the M60 motorway.
James's notes tell of Thomas Barratt's metal-working skills: "He could make anything. He made some iron horses that were on the mantelpiece in Edith's later house at Tunstead Milton [on the Whaley Bridge - Chapel-en-le-Frith road]. They had fine detail." And he "killed one of his son Samuel's favourite cock chickens and took it to Edith when [her daughter] Alice was born."
Jane died in 1889; by 1891 Thomas Barratt was head of a household at 15 Pool Lane comprising William (24), Thomas (19), Edith (12), Walter (9), Samuel (7), John (5), and Eliza (3). Life was much the same in 1901, although without Thomas (junior) and Eliza. The house number in Pool Lane is listed as 23; maybe there had been some re-numbering of maybe that had moved. The family story is that Jane gave birth to 15 children in total, including two sets of twins, although census records account for just ten, none of them twins. Several must have born and died between the ten-year census taking.
Edith Barratt started work when 10 years old; She went to school half-time for which her father paid 4d per week. This half-time system, a first stage towards the end of child labour, was by that time being condemned by many politicians, but it would be many years before it was banned.
Twentieth Century
In 1906 Edith Barratt, who was to become my grandmother, married (apparently in some haste) James Hill, an up-and-coming mechanical engineer who she would, most likely, have met at the nearby Brunswick Methodist Chapel; they lived at first with the Hill family in an old cottage in Portwood Hall Place. not far from Pool Street on the other side of Great Portwood Street. Edith's story continues in my article 'James Hill and his Daughters'.
Edith's wedding certificate.
By 1911 there had been much change at No.23. Old Thomas Barratt was still living there, but was listed as the father of the householder, who was 27-year-old Samuel Barratt. Samuel's wife of two years was Ellen Barratt; with them were step-son John (aged 4) and sons William (2) and Samuel (4 months.) Samuel had broken away from the family iron trades and trained as a master baker (see left column).
In 2021 there is little trace of any of the buildings which existed in 1911; in fact Pool Lane had few houses remaining as early as 1939. If you walk to a back corner of the large Tesco store you can look over the waste land where once stood the home and bakery of the Barratt family.
Uncle Jack
Edith's brother - my mother's cousin - John Barratt (known as Jack), born on 11 December 1886 was listed in 1901 (like his brother Walter) as an apprentice tin-plate worker, living at 23 Pool Lane. He married Florence Barnett on 2 Sep 1908 at All Saints Parish Church, Heaton Norris. The marriage witnesses were Edith Hill and Samuel Barratt; one of their sons was Louis James Barratt, the only member of the family I really knew (see left column).
A 1910 directory finds Jack at 12 Borron Street, Portwood, listed as a Tinplate worker, although the 1911 Census lists the couple at No.2 Railway Road, off Wellington Road South. By that time they had had two children, both of whom had already died. Living with them was their a one-year-old niece, also named Florence.
Called into the army in 1916, he spent some time in France, as part of a Labour Corps - formed of soldiers with specific skills and conscripted men with health too poor for fighting were also assigned to these battalions. After serving 99 days in the battlefields of France he was discharged on hernia-related health grounds and returned to Stockport via the Hospital Ship Aberdonian and his family at 58 Middle Hillgate. The house at No.58 disappeared some time around 1930 when the adjacent Sun & Castle pub was rebuilt and enlarged.
Jack was quite a character, it seems. It appears that he helped his brother Samuel in his bakery business, and James's notes relate that "He used to bake flat out from Thursday to Sunday and then visit Edith's and stay till Wednesday. Didn't arrive home till Wednesday night if there was a rugby league match at Salford or Swinton in the afternoon."
'Fast-forward' to 1939, and the National Register taken in preparation for war, shows the family are living at 43 Penny Lane, off Lancashire Hill, Stockport. Jack was deploying his sheet metal skills in an Aircraft factory, possibly the Fairey works in Heaton Chapel, which had been opened in 1935 in buildings which had previously built aircraft in the First World War.
Florence was listed as 'domestic duties' and three of their children were living with them: George, born 1921, was working as a 'carman' (delivery driver, or perhaps a tram driver), Arthur, born 1927 and Bernard, born 1930 were at school. Son Louis had recently married and moved away. The entry for Jack is notated 'Heavy Worker' which qualified the family for extra rations of food; clearly his hernia problems were solved in later years.
I have no recall of these Penny Lane relatives, but curiously I do remember climbing the hill to visit them, maybe when I was four or five years old, because the walk from the Mersey Square bus station passed a shop selling toys which I hoped could be purchased. There was a plastic furniture van in the window, which came with plastic furniture; I don't think I ever owned one, though. My mother told me that we sometimes travelled by tram up Lancashire Hill, but the last tram ran in August 1951 when I was two years old, so sadly I have no memory of this at all. ( I do remember catching a bus on Merseyway when it was still a road. ) Jack died in 1958, and Florence in 1961. A few years later the Penny Lane area was drastically altered, all the old houses were swept away and replaced by a modern-style estate including the tower blocks which dominate the Stockport skyline.
Published Sources
For genealogy information I have relied on Ancestry.co.uk (especially a family tree posted by Janice Barratt) and Findmypast.co.uk.
The 1824 Stockport map, along with general historical information, is from Peter Arrowsmith, Stockport: A History. Stockport Metropolitan District Council, 1997.
The 1782 map is from Don Bayliss, Historical Atlas of Trafford. Self-published, 1996.
The 1895 Ordnance Survey map is courtesy of the National Library of Scotland.
The 1946 aerial photograph is an extract from the Britain from Above website.
Written by Charlie Hulme, June 2021.