This is a study of the changes that occurred in the Lancashire township of Huncoat prior to the First World War.
Huncoat Hall
Geography
This township occupies 990 acres on the north-western slope of Great Hameldon Hill, nearly 600 feet above sea level, on the south side of the Calder Valley.
.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the land was almost entirely used for pasture, there being 802 acres in permanent grass; there was no arable land to speak of, but 22 acres were natural woodland and plantations.
Demography
Population
The population of Huncoat stayed relatively constant during the early decades of the 19th century, but there was a rise of 40% in the 1850s. The housing stock increased by a similar amount, so there were never really any issues with overcrowding.
.
Age distribution
The age distribution does not appear to have changed significantly with the influx of migrants in the 1850s:
(For 1861, a random sample was analysed, not the whole population)
.
The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure has compiled statistics for the Padiham registration sub-district (RSD), of which Huncoat was a part. Here are some of their findings for this RSD:
Total marital fertility rate
In 1851, a married woman gave birth to an average of eight children. In 1881, the figure was 7.35. By 1911, this had fallen to five children. This decline in fertility occurred throughout the country and has been described as 'one of the fundamental social transformations in our past1. The obvious explanation is that women were marrying later, but the data do not support this theory (see below). It seems that from around 1880 there was a conscious decision by many couples to limit the size of their family. Evidence from Germany2 suggests that it was achieved by the cessation of childbirth before the end of the woman's fertility, rather than by the deliberate lengthening of the intervals between births. There is a third option, however: some couples may have chosen (probably for financial reasons) not to have children at all. Let's look at some examples from Huncoat:
Sarah & James Livesey married in about 1879, when Sarah was about 20. They had six children, the last when Sarah was 39.
Grace & Thomas Metcalf married in 1882, when Grace was 19. They had 12 children, the last when Grace was 44.
Ellen & John James Bank married in about 1886, when Ellen was about 27. They had no children.
Nanny & Robert Suthers married in about 1886, when Nanny was about 24. They had no children.
Many Huncoat women married at Church Kirk:
.
Age at marriage
This was remarkably constant at 26 for both men and women. This had been the figure in the second half of the seventeenth century, but it had dropped to a mean of 23.4 by the beginning of the 19th century. This is believed to be one of the main reasons for the growth of England's population in the eighteenth century.
Illegitimacy ratio
The percentage of births that were illegitimate fell from more than 9% in 1851 to less than 4% in 1911.
Infant mortality rate
The percentage of children who died before their first birthday remained at around 16% from 1851 until the end of the century. It was lower in more rural districts and higher in more urban districts, reaching 20% in Burnley.
Early childhood mortality rate
The percentage of children who died between the ages of one and five was slightly lower at 12-13% (in Burnley it was 17%).
Sex ratio
In the middle of the 19th century, the Padiham RSD had roughly equal numbers of working-age men and women. By the end of the century, there were only eighty-eight working-age men for every hundred working-age women. The situation was very different in a rural RSD like Chipping, which had over 150 working-age men for each hundred working-age women in 1881.
Married women in employment
The percentage of married women in employment in the Padiham RSD rose from 25% in 1851 to a peak of 47.5% in 1881.
Female workers in the textile industry
Employment opportunities for women had been very limited before the 19th century. The mechanisation of the textile industry changed that. In 1901, over 80% of working women were employed in the textile industry.
.
The parish registers are an important source of demographic data.
The people of Huncoat went to Altham for baptisms and burials. The charts below show data extracted from the Altham registers (some smoothing of the baptismal data has been carried out by using 3-year moving averages).
The downward trajectory is perhaps due to the growing influence of the Baptists in the community.
.
The pattern of burials seems to suggests that the community suffered regular outbreaks of one or more life-threatening diseases.
Cause of death is given for most of the burials from 1817 onwards. For the period 1817-36, fourteen different causes were recorded, including: consumption(36), old age(19), convulsions(17), typhus fever(8), inflammation of the bowels(6), inflammation of the lungs(5), accident(4), dropsy(3), smallpox(2), worm fever(2), croup(2). The deaths in 1815 were in all age groups, suggesting that there was probably no single cause.
.
History
See Roy Chetham’s website: http://www.roychetham.co.uk/huncoathistory1.html
The Village Stocks are inscribed with the date 1722. Their use however is documented as early as 1532. It would appear they could punish two miscreants at one sitting!
Economy - farming
For most of its existence Huncoat was a farming community and the inhabitants would have been largely self-sufficient, relying on the produce of their farms for food and clothing and using local materials for building and fuel. At the start of the 19th century, there were something like thirteen farms in Huncoat. Some of the villagers also farmed a bit of land. They were all very small (only Huncoat Hall exceeded 50 acres) and many men had a second occupation:
Broad Meadows – James Ashworth – farmer of 24 acres & coal miner
Brown Birch (Birks) – James Ashworth – farmer of 30 acres & stonemason
Brown Moor(s) – Edward Bentley – farmer of 11 acres & shoemaker
Higher Warm Leaf – Tempest Slinger – farmer of 12 acres & plasterer
Top of Rake (Rake Head) – John Moorhouse – farmer of 6 acres & stone quarryman
In the second half of the 19th century, arable farming gradually gave way to dairy farming to supply dairy products to the growing town of Accrington. As arable farming decreased, so did the demand for agricultural labourers, so the farmers’ sons often had to get jobs as coal miners or stone quarrymen. Many farmers’ daughters were working as powerloom weavers as early as 1851.
It is probably safe to assume that all the farmers were tenant farmers and therefore didn’t have as much invested in a particular property as a yeoman farmer might have done.
Economy - industry
In 1782, Richard Fort of Stone Hey, in partnership with a Mr Taylor and a Mr Bury, founded the Broad Oak calico print works in Accrington and this employed a significant number of Huncoat folk. Accrington became the centre for the industry in north-east Lancashire. Almost all of the early print works were built in rural localities. This was made necessary by their need for outdoor 'bleach crofts' and large supplies of pure water. Baxenden print works abstracted 500 million gallons of pure water from the River Hyndburn each year and returned 499 million gallons of untreated sewage. By the 1840s, the industry had already reached its maximum geographical extent in Lancashire and there were clear indications of contraction, especially in areas distant from coal supplies.
1826 was the year of the 'Loom Riots'. A large group of handloom weavers gathered on Whinney Hill to protest about new machinery putting them out of work. The hungry mob marched to Accrington to smash up the machinery that was depriving them of the means of earning a living. 'Huncoat Jack' was one of the leaders who incited violence through speeches during these ‘Loom Riots’.
Some Huncoat residents found work at the Altham vitriol works which opened in 1829.
The railway arrived in 1848 and the 1850s saw the building of two cotton mills. Huncoat Cotton Mill (later called Perseverance Mill and sometimes Highbrake Mill) was built by John S. Grimshaw. It was located on the east side of the railway line to the south of the level crossing. The four storey spinning mill housed 20,000 spindles and the weaving shed 200 looms. It was quickly followed by Hillock Vale Cotton Weaving Mill (initially called North Rake Mill), employing 59 males and 69 females.
Millworkers’ cottages were built (Yorkshire Street, Prospect Terrace and Highbrake Terrace for Perseverance Mill and Vale Court, South Street and Parker Street for the Hillock Vale mill) and were quickly occupied, causing a sudden increase in the population of the township. This led to the rapid demise of handloom weaving:
The average age of weavers in 1851 was 50 for handloom weavers and 19 for powerloom weavers.
The repeal of the Brick Tax in 1850 paved the way for the brick-making industry to develop, but only one brickmaker was recorded in the 1861 Census. Over the next twenty years, a stone quarry opened between the railway line and the canal and created employment for a significant number of stone quarrymen. Mechanisation in the cotton industry reduced the number of weavers but provided many jobs elsewhere (twisters, engine drivers, overlookers, labourers). Mining and farming became less dominant.
In the following tables we look at the changing occupational structure in more detail:
Occupations for men (% of total)
Occupations for women & girls(% of total)
Mechanisation in the cotton industry provided a range of different options for women. From the 1861 Census:
Church & Chapel
The Wesleyan Methodists built a chapel in 1844 and rebuilt it in 1869 with an institute attached.
.
The Baptists built one in 1817–18 (alongside the White Lion), and rebuilt it in 1871.
.
Anglicans had to trek to Church Kirk or Altham until St. Augustine's mission church was built in 1886.
.
Pubs
The White Lion, built by Lawrence Rawcliffe c.1780 and presided over by Thomas Wilkinson for many years, was the social and commercial centre of village life. Clubs met there, auctions took place and news and gossip was passed on. There was also another pub in the village - the Black Bull, which reputedly dates from the 17th century.
.
Forming an open square behind the Black Bull was a group of 18th century cottages known as Cornmarket. The name suggests that local farmers met here to buy and sell produce and animals.
.
The Highbrake Hotel was built in 1874. It later became known as the Railway Hotel.
.
The Griffin’s Head (initially known as the Cross Gates) was built on the turnpike, close to Huncoat Hall, in 1838 to cater for traffic on the turnpike.
.
The Whitaker Arms (later the Cemetery Hotel) probably dates from the same period.
.
Schools
Highbrake Hall, built by Richard Fort in 1790, became an elite boarding school in 1815. It was run by the Rev William Wood, vicar of Altham. The vicar was still living there in 1841, but the school was no longer.
A Methodist Sunday school was founded in 1835. It met in an old cotton warehouse situated between the White Lion and Bank Terrace. It was replaced by a purpose-built Sunday school in Burnley Lane, completed in 1844. This was sold when the new church was built in 1869.
In the 1840s, a day school was started at Broad Meadows farm by William Herd, a former Baptist pastor.
A day school commenced in the Methodist Institute in 1871.
John Smith (1830-1923), in his “Recollections”, recalls a daily trek into Accrington to attend the National School attached to St James’s Church.
Farms
Tenants of the various farms from 1841 to 1891:
The Whitakers of Simonstone put their Huncoat estates up for sale in 1844:
.
Travel
Huncoat village is built at the crossroads of two ancient tracks. Both date from at least early medieval times. The King’s Highway comes over the moors from Rossendale and continues through Altham to Clitheroe. Going south from the Griffin's Head, the track still looks much as it did in medieval times.
The King's Highway
.
The development of the modern road system began with the Manchester to Whalley road in the 1780s. A Blackburn to Burnley Turnpike, through Accrington and Huncoat, was authorized by an Act of Parliament in 1827. Construction began in 1834 and it opened in 1838. It passed through the centre of the township, with a branch north towards Altham.
The Accrington and Burnley line of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company opened on 18th September 1848. It passed to the west of the village, but there was a station at Huncoat, initially located to the north of the village but later relocated beside the cotton mill.
Before the railway was built, James Allen of Spout House Farm ran local stagecoaches.
The Leeds and Liverpool Canal passes through the north end of the township. Construction of the canal started in 1770 and it reached Huncoat in 1801, but it was not completed until 1816. The most important cargo was always coal, with over a million tons per year being delivered to Liverpool in the 1860s.
Migration
Examination of the 1851 Census reveals that only 30% of householders were born in Huncoat. Altham accounted for another 24%. In total, thirty-six different places of birth were recorded. Eight of the 111 householders had been born in Yorkshire.
A large number of immigrants arrived to work in the cotton mills established in the 1850s. Many of them came from the Settle and Ribblesdale area. Before this time, migrants tended to be single men – either labourers or craftsmen.
Perseverance Mill closed down in 1895, compelling many families to leave the area in search of work.
Families and Notable People
Whitaker’s Arms was named for Charles Whitaker of Simonstone Hall, who at one time owned the bulk of Huncoat township. Whitakers have lived in Huncoat since before 1600 (Altham PRs).
Charles Whitaker eventually sold the estate to John Hargreaves of Broad Oak House in Accrington. John Hargreaves employed a number of Huncoat folk at his calico printing works. The Hargreaves family was living in Huncoat in the early 1600s (Altham PRs).
Huncoat Hall was the largest farm in the township and was owned by the Birtwistles for almost 500 years. They also lived at the Old Hall. The Birtwistles were living in Huncoat in the early 1600s (Altham PRs). Huncoat Hall was eventually acquired by the Towneley family who were living in Huncoat before 1600 (Altham PRs).
Henry Sudall farmed at Huncoat Hall for over 20 years. Thomas Haworth, who took over from Henry Sudall, also farmed there for over 20 years. The Haworth family had lived in Huncoat as early as the 1650s (Church PRs).
Stone Hey was probably built by the Fort family. The initials of Richard and Ellen Fort, together with the date 1738, are carved on a beam in one of the outbuildings. Their son, Richard, started the Broad Oak calico printing works in Accrington and also built Highbrake House in Huncoat. The Altham parish registers show Richard & Alice Fort living in Huncoat in 1783.
Highbrake House was home to William Wood, minister, in 1841. A corn miller called Robinson Greenwood lived there in 1861. He employed three servants.
Brown Moor was the home of the Bentley family, shoemakers and farmers, who had lived in Huncoat since at least the 1650s (Church PRs).
James Ashworth, farmed at Broad Meadows for over 30 years. The family had lived in Huncoat since at least the 1730s (Church PRs).
James Pollard, Altham parish clerk for 35 years, farmed at Stone Hey for over 20 years, and was followed by his son John. John built the adjacent terrace of houses that are dated 1859.
Robert Lingard was a joiner and cabinet maker who became locally famous for producing some fine items of furniture. He erected the gallery in the old Baptist chapel and constructed a corner pew for his large family of two sons and eight daughters. They lived at Hill House, which was part of the Greenwood estate. The Greenwoods had lived in Huncoat in the early 1600s (Altham PRs).
Huncoat in the newspapers
1763
"To be sold at the house of Christopher Bridge, innkeeper, in Padiham … all that capital messuage or mansion house commonly called Huncoat Hall, together with two barns, nine acres of meadow, 38 acres of arable or pasture, two acres of woodland and a large inclosure of 30 acres lately inclosed by a good stone wall.
Also all that messuage or dwelling house called the Old Hall, one barn, four acres of meadow and ten acres of arable or pasture.
Also a messuage known by the name of the White Riding, a barn, two acres of meadow, seven of pasture and one of woodland.
Mr Daniel Barrowclough, the owner, will show the premises." (Manchester Mercury, 24 May 1763)
1783
"To be sold at auction, at the house of Mr Lawrence Rawcliffe in Huncoat … A valuable copyhold estate , commonly called or known by the names of Huncoat Hall and the White Riding, consisting of a mansion-house, five messuages, three new-built barns and other outbuildings and several closes or parcels of arable, meadow and pasture land, containing by estimation 87 acres or thereabouts, all lying within a ring fence and now in the possession of Daniel Haigh, Thomas Wade and others.
Also an elegant new-built dwelling house called the Old Hall in Huncoat with a barn stable and other outbuildings thereunto belonging and 14 acres of arable, meadow, and pasture land … now in the possession of John Whittaker or his under-tenants." (Manchester Mercury, 17 June 1783)
"To be sold to the highest bidder, at the house of Thomas Kenyon, the sign of the Black Dog, in Haslingden … all that copyhold messuage and tenement called Brown-Moor with … nine acres of land, now in the occupation of Nicholas Marsh as tenant thereof." (Manchester Mercury, 30 September 1783)
Notes
1. Barry Reay, Microhistories: demography, society and culture in rural England, 1800-1930, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p.39
2. Reay, p.41
Sources consulted
Census returns
Parish registers
O. S. maps
Huncoat Remembered: the recollections of John Smith (1830-1923)
John Goddard, Huncoat Uncoated, 2004
Birtwhistle, L. Alan, Thirty-one Generations of the Birtwhistle Family, 2006.
Wallwork, K.L. The Calico Printing Industry of Lancastria in the 1840s. Trans. Inst. Brit. Geographers, 1968, No.45, 143-156.
A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 6. W.Farrer & J.Brownhill (eds.), 1911, pp.409-411
https://www.populationspast.org
http://www.roychetham.co.uk/huncoathistory1.html