The Clog Iron Shop in Walsden

The photo below appeared in the Post of 13th March 2019. It shows workers outside the Clog Iron Shop in Walsden, taken around 1902, and was included with the permission of Ann Kilbey, Pennine Horizons Digital Archive. Harold Hiley is the young man on the middle row third from the left.

The census of 1911 showed Harold and his wife Ethel and son Sam living at 174 Hollins Road. He was a 'Clog Iron Maker for a Clog Iron Sundries Manufacturer'. This part of Hollins Road was known as Hollins Mount at that time. 

The Clog Iron Shop can be seen in the following photo from the 1950s - a view over Walsden taken from Gauxholme Stones. The chimneys in the background, left to right, are those of Hollins Bottom Mill, the Clog Iron Shop and Hollins Mill.

View over Walsden  © Pennine Horizons Digital Archive

The Finance Act of 1910 imposed new duties on land, including a tax on the increase in a property’s value over time. These taxes required that properties be assigned a current value, which led to the creation of tax valuation records from West Yorkshire. Harold's name appeared in the records. He is shown as the occupier of 4 Mount Place, the owner being the Good Intent Lodge. The property is shown with a gross annual value of £5 and a rateable value of £4. Mount Place is a small area between the houses of Hollins Road and Alma Street. The entrance off Hollins Road is shown in the 2015 photo below.

Above the entrance is this engraved stone:

The Good Intent Friendly Society was part of the Independent Order of Oddfellows. The aim of a Friendly Society was to provide financial security to members unable to work due to sickness or injury and to their dependants when they died.

The branch in Walsden, called the Mercy Lodge, was established in 1833, meeting at the Wagon and Horses and later moving to the Trinity Methodist Church. The Lodge closed down around 1980, all of the Lodges in the Todmorden District merging into one in 1989.

In 1933 centenary celebrations were held and The Todmorden Advertiser published an article about the history of the Lodge. The following excerpts are taken from the article:

During the hundred years of its existence the Lodge has not only rendered valuable help and benefit to its members during times of sickness and bereavement, but it has at all times tended to foster and encourage feelings of brotherhood and self reliance, and to stimulate a sense of civic obligation and social service.

Soon after the establishment of the Lodge it was solemnly enacted '"that any brother of this Lodge who is caught unwashed or uncleanshirted after two o'clock on any Sunday afternoon, upon proof thereof shall be fined 1s., and not less than 6d.", which minute, however, we find was rescinded two years later.

Perhaps the most noteworthy achievement of the Lodge in the early years of its existence was the erection of the Sunday School and Cottages at Bottoms.(Harold's grandparents Charles and Betty and their family lived in a cottage in Bottoms in the 1850s and 1860s)

The Lodge, in December 1861, decided to lend the Co-operative Society £500 at 5 per cent per annum. The Lodge was now in a sound financial position. (Harold's father Samuel was manager of Walsden Co-operative Society for a number of years)

In the late War (1914-1918) practically all the brethren of military age who were physically fit served in one capacity or another.............of the members of this Lodge no fewer than 26 laid down their lives.

With thanks to:

Paul Eyre for information about the Mercy Lodge.

The British Newspaper Archive for the excerpts from The Todmorden  Advertiser, (www.british newspaperarchive.co.uk)

On this day...Death of Cecil Frank Highley

Cecil Frank Highley was born in Willesden, London in November 1886. He is shown as a Telegraph Designer in the census of 1901. In 1909 he married Ethel Minnie James in Wandsworth Registry Office and in 1914 enlisted at Finsbury Barracks, joining the Royal Fusiliers 11th Battalion.

Cecil was killed in action on 23rd October 1917 aged 30, and his name is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial near Ypres in Belgium.

Courtesy of International War Graves Photography Project #46770518 (Find A Grave)

Tyne Cot Cemetery
GaryBlakeley, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The London WW1 Memorial 1914-1918 is a website dedicated to all the Londoners lost in action during the First World War. The entry for Cecil Highley is shown below:

Third Battle of Ypres
This was a campaign fought between July and November 1917 and is often referred to as the Battle of Passchendaele, a village to the north-east of Ypres which was finally captured in November. It was an attempt by the British to break out of the Ypres salient and capture the higher ground to the south and the east from which the enemy had been able to dominate the salient. It began well but two important factors weighed against them. First was the weather. The summer of 1917 turned out to be one of the the wettest on record and soon the battlefield was reduced to a morass of mud which made progress very difficult, if not impossible in places. The second was the defensive arrangements of concrete blockhouses and machine gun posts providing inter-locking fire that the Germans had constructed and which were extremely difficult and costly to counter. For 4 months this epic struggle continued by the end of which the salient had been greatly expanded in size but the vital break out had not been achieved.

18th Division had come into the line near Poelcapelle on 10th October, 1917, and had taken part in the First Battle of Passchendaele two days later. This had not been a success. 54 Brigade had been in reserve then but on 16th October they moved into the front line and 11th Royal Fusiliers occupied Cane Trench, remaining there until relieved on 18th October when they moved back to Canal Dugouts. On 22nd October, 53 Brigade, who had relieved 54 Brigade launched a successful attack from these positions and captured the Brewery east of Poelcapelle as well as the other enemy strongholds of Noble’s Farm, Meunier House and Tracas Farm. 11th Royal Fusiliers then moved up to these new positions and held them for two days in the face of considerable German resistance. They were subjected to constant artillery fire and as there had been little time to consolidate, they were also vulnerable to snipers. By the time they were relieved on 24th October they had suffered nearly 100 casualties. One of these was Cecil Highley who was killed on 23rd October.