The Life of Henry Hiley Part 10 - life in Littleborough (Slaughterhouse, Tripe Shop, Peg Factory)

Today is the last post in Henry's description of life in Littleborough as he was growing up.

United Gathering on the Square, Littleborough
Whit Friday 1909 

The Slaughterhouse

At the top of Victoria Street there was a slaughterhouse. Milner Eastwood was the pork butcher and he would buy little pork pigs, keep them for a day or two, perhaps a week or two, I don’t know what, and that was in a place down at the very bottom of Victoria Street. Then when the time came for the pigs to be killed he would drive them up, a couple at a time. There would be Herbert, as I think of him now he was a weedy sort of chap, but there was Charlie, he was much stronger, and he was much better at actually killing the pig. We used to look through a crack in the wall, and with a poleaxe Charlie would stun the pig and then he’d cut its throat. Then he had Herbert to help him put the pig into a big bath of very very hot water. That allowed him to shave it. He took off all the bristles and then he went through the process of taking out the inside and all the rest of it.

The Tripe Shop

There was a tripe shop in the village as well. I can’t remember if that belonged to Milner Eastwood as well or whether it was a different man but he boiled his tripe in a little place, I would say in our back yard . It was a good 50 or 60 yards away from our back door, but he would boil up the tripe and then he’d take it to his tripe shop to sell. I never had a great fondness for tripe but of course there was a lot of waste and that was put on a little midden and that attracted the mice, and often enough I would take a mouse trap across there, catch a mouse and feed it to our cat.

The Peg Factory

There was a little shuttle peg factory across there as well. That was a noisy business but the metal was hotted up just like in a blacksmith’s smithy, for shoeing the horses. I won’t try to describe that process but it was interesting to watch, and it was pretty noisy – bang bang bang all the time as the hammer came down to shape the metal to make the shuttle peg for the weaving, for the cotton industry.

Views of Littleborough c 1930

William Hiley Bathurst

This Blog is mainly concerned with people who bear the Hiley (or Highley) surname, or who are related to a Hiley (or Highley). But there have been several instances over the years where Hiley has been used as a forename. One of these was William Hiley Bathurst, 1796-1877, an Anglican clergyman and writer of hymns.

William Hiley Bathurst

There were some notable people amongst William's ancestry. He was the son of Charles Bathurst and Charlotte Addington and the grandson of Anthony Addington, a Royal Physician, and Mary Hiley - from where his second forename came. Charlotte's brother Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth, was the U.K. Prime Minister from 1801 to 1804. Mary Hiley was the great great granddaughter of William Hiley, Rector of Poole at the start of the 1600s, and Eleanor Haviland, a member of a prominent family with a history going back to Norman times.

Type 'Prime Minister' in the 'Search This Blog' box to learn more about Anthony, Mary and Henry.

Type 'Rector of Poole' in the 'Search This Blog' box to learn more about William and Eleanor.

William was born near Bristol and educated at Winchester and Oxford. He was ordained a priest in 1820 and served as rector of Barwick-in-Elmet in Yorkshire until 1852, leaving the ministry due to being unable to re­con­cile his doc­trin­al views with the Book of Com­mon Prayer. For some time he was M.P. for Bristol. He retired into private life occupying himself with literary pursuits, firstly in Derbyshire and later in Lydney in Gloucestershire.

He wrote a number of works and volumes of poems, and was one of the early Church of England hymn writers and compilers, producing many hymns and versions of psalms.

One of W H Bathurst's most popular hymns

W H Bathurst Christmas Card