Private Allan Hiley

The last post of 2021 features Private Allan Hiley from Leeds who was killed in the First World War aged just 22.

Allan is shown in the 1911 Census living at 3 Cedar Road, Armley, Leeds with his father Charles (a tobacconist), mother Mary Esther, and two older sisters. He was aged 17 and working as a Shop Assistant.

Allan joined the Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding Regiment) 10th Battalion which was formed at Halifax in September 1914 and landed at Le Havre in late August 1915. The Battalion took control of the front line near Armentieres. Allan was killed in action on 1st October 1915 after only a month in France. He was buried at Brewery Orchard Cemetery, Bois-Grenier near Lille in northern France. 

Photo of Allan with a report of his death appeared in

The Yorkshire Evening Post on 7th October 1915

Newspaper image © The British Library Board. All rights reserved.

With thanks to The British Newspaper Archive

(www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk)

Allan's grave at the Brewery Orchard Cemetery
Included with the permission of C. and J. Cosgrove

Brewery Orchard Cemetery
Source: Commonwealth War Graves Commission

On this day...Jack Highley thanks his customers

The following entry appeared in the Todmorden Advertiser and Hebden Bridge Newsletter on this day in 1867.

Newspaper image © The British Library Board. All rights reserved. 

With thanks to The British Newspaper Archive 

(www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk)

John (Jack) Highley was born in Halifax in 1839. His parents were John and Mary (nee Eastwood). His father John was a Cordwainer or Shoe Maker.

John married Mary Dawson in 1860 and the following year was recorded in the census as living with Mary's family in Todmorden and working as a Boot, Shoe and Clog maker. In 1871 he was described as a Boot and Shoe Maker, employing 2 men.

By 1881 John and his family had moved away from Todmorden and they were living in a house called 'Highley Villa' in Blackpool. He must have been a man of many talents. From starting his working life as a Shoemaker, in 1881 he was a 'Tailor and Draper', in 1891 a 'Pork Butcher', and in 1901 a 'Pig Dealer'. 

Like John, his brother William also followed in his father's footsteps. In 1881 he was a 'Master Clogger' in Todmorden.

John and Mary had two boys and two girls. Their daughter Clara died at age 3 and is buried in the graveyard at Mankinholes on the moors above Walsden and Todmorden. Also buried here are John and Mary. 

Their other daughter Bertha married George Henry Hall in 1894 and Bertha and George's son Clifford was born in 1899 and brought up in St Anne’s. Clifford was a Lieutenant with the Royal Air Force 214th Squadron. He was killed when he crashed in mountains between Lyon and Marseilles, aged 20, on 9th July 1919, while flying a Handley Page bomber with two mechanics and an observer. Clifford was buried at Mazargues War Cemetery in Marseilles but is also named on the gravestone above.

In the 1939 England and Wales Register, Jack Highley is listed, working as a 'Boot Repairer & Clogger own a/c single handed'. Living with him at the time in Todmorden were his brother Clifford and sisters Cora and Mary. Jack was the grandson of William the Master Clogger mentioned above.

Jack Highley's Cloggers shop was a familiar fixture behind the Market in Todmorden until the early 80s. The picture below is from 1973 and, along with the description, is included with the kind permission of Daniel Birch.

Highlee of Highlee, the richest man in Sowerby

Instead of an 'On this day' feature this month we have an 'In this month' post.

In 1886 The Surtees Society published a work in its series of 'Yorkshire Diaries & Autobiographies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries'. It was called 'Some Memoirs concerning the Family of the Priestleys, written, at the request of a friend, by Jonathan Priestley.' It was written in 1696 in the 63rd year of his life.

Jonathan was one of the seven sons of Joseph Priestley and his wife Elizabeth. The family lived at Goodgreave in Soyland, a village near Sowerby and five miles south west of Halifax. Priestleys had lived in Soyland for many generations. Joseph was a yeoman clothier combining cloth-making with farming. The family took some of their cloth to sell at the cloth exchange in London.

The Priestley family suffered at the time of the Civil War between 1642 and 1644. The yeoman farmers and weavers rebelled against King Charles's policies and took up arms against them. Joseph joined the Parliamentarian cause and fled into Lancashire in August 1643 along with his son Samuel when the Royalists occupied Halifax. The Priestley's home and lands at Goodgreave were ransacked and plundered.

Joseph was captured on Blackstone Edge and imprisoned in Halifax but became ill with a fever and died. In November 1643, after the Royalists had fled following the Battle of Heptonstall, Samuel found a Royalist soldier lying in the River Hebden. He waded into the water and rescued the man but died from pneumonia shortly afterwards.

In his memoirs Jonathan referred to his father's dealings with 'Highlee of Highlee'.  

The property Highlee has been mentioned in previous posts. Enter 'High Lee' in the 'Search This Blog' box to read them.

The person called Highlee was James, the son of Michael - see the post of 11 September 2021. His son was also called James - 'young Highlee' in the excerpt above.

The Barkers of Inchfield

In the past this Blog has included posts on families with links to the Hileys - namely the Heaps of Cornholme, the Parsonses of Sabden and the Harrisons of Walsden. This post looks at the Barkers of Inchfield, Walsden.

John Travis

                                                                                                                                                                                    The Blog has already included excerpts from John Travis’s ‘Notes: (Historical and Biographical) mainly of Todmorden and District’, published in 1896.  Among his many other books on Todmorden and Walsden and their inhabitants was 'Walsden families in olden times', the front cover of which is shown below.

The book includes a chapter on the Barkers of Inchfield, reproduced below:

Thomas Barker of Inchfield married Betty Law in Todmorden in 1782. Their 7 children are listed by John Travis above. Their daughter Sally married John Harrison of 'Raked Barn', or Rake Head Barn, and their 9 children are also listed. Sally and John's daughter Betty married Charles Hiley in 1844. The post of 8th February 2021 told about the Harrisons of Walsden.

Thomas Barker died in 1821. The record of his death shows him living at Thornsgreese in Higher Inchfield at the time. John Travis says that Thomas was carried from Inchfield and buried at Cross Stone Church in Todmorden. Records of the cemetery show that there is a grave in the old yard at Cross Stone that was owned by Thomas Barker of Inchfield, but it is now overgrown and there is no record of a headstone. Betty died ten years later.

Thornsgreese in 2018

Another connection between the Barkers and the Hileys arose in 1875 when Mary Barker married Robert Highley in the United Methodist Free Church in Inchfield Bottom. Mary was a great granddaughter of Thomas and Betty Barker of Inchfield and Robert was a great grandson of John and Grace (nee Ogden) Highley. John and Grace's was the first Hiley marriage to take place in Todmorden after the move west from Warley.

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.

Samuel Hiley - soap agent for Lancashire

Samuel Hiley, a great grandfather, has appeared in a number of posts already. Type 'Samuel Hiley' into the Search This Blog box to read them.

The advert below appeared in The Todmorden & Hebden Bridge Historical Almanack for 1876. 

Samuel married Elizabeth Taylor in 1874, two years before this advert appeared. He was a Cotton Weaver living at 9 Alma Street in Walsden. At the time of the 1881 census he was living at 32 Hollins Mount with Elizabeth and children Frank, Annie and Agnes. By 1891 the family (now joined by Harold) were living at 54 Lord Street and Samuel was the Manager of the Walsden Co-operative Store. In 1891 they were living at 172 Hollins Mount.

All these addresses are within a stone's throw of each other. The road names Hollins Mount and the Hollins Terrace in the advert no longer exist. Hollins Mount was the old name for part of Hollins Road. Hollins Terrace may have been what is now called Wharf Street (connecting Hollins Road to Alma Street).

Hollins Mill was situated between Hollins Road, Rochdale Road and the Rochdale Canal. This may have been the mill where Samuel worked as a Cotton Weaver. His venture as agent for Rawson & Bartle's soap could have been a part-time job before he moved on to become the Co-op Store manager.

Samuel Hiley