Albion Place

After the Balls  Adeline takes us to meet …

…. the Barkers

who are living “further on in Albion Place with two four-roomed cottages. In the first lived Mr. and Mrs. Barker. Mrs. Barker had a Dame’s School“.

The Barker parents were lace manufacturer Thomas and Mary (nee Mills), who was the daughter of William and Lucy Ann Paradise (nee Sargeant or Sargent). Mary was thus the sister of Lucy, the wife of Ilkeston gardener William Sanders of Moors Bridge Lane (later Derby Road)

Thomas and Mary Barker were long-term residents of Albion Place and both died there, Thomas on September 4th 1870, and Mary on September 28th 1864.

They had at least six children. Let’s examine them in turn.

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 1.     The oldest child was Lucy Sargent Barker, born April 29th, 1819 in Worcester. In 1848 she married Belper plumber George Riley and with him, lived for some years in Birmingham. When George died, Lucy remarried to widower John Watson, another resident of Belper, on March 31st 1875 and they continued to live in Belper. However when John died there in 1889, Lucy returned to St. Mary Street in Ilkeston, where she lived with her youmgest brother George, at Malin House, and where she died on March 11th 1895.

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 2.      Born on October 6th 1821, the oldest son was Samuel Sargent Barker, who is the only child identified by Adeline. She writes that “In the second cottage lived their son Sam, his wife, two sons and one daughter”. 

Samuel’s wife since October 14th 1844 was Hannah Crooks, daughter of Park Road framework knitter John and Sarah (nee Taylor). And the couple had at least five children, three sons and two daughters.

Adeline identifies the eldest son of Samuel senior and Hannah as “Sam, who became a Professor of Music, and lived at Sheffield”. In fact this son, Samuel James Barker, was their second son, who left Ilkeston and may have moved to Sheffield but not for long … he came to settle in Bath, Somerset, by 1881, as a ‘Professor of Music’. In 1903 he married Edith Henrietta Nott, from a military family, she living at 7 Walcot Parade in Bath. And at that house Samuel James died on September 27th 1912, aged 63, from cardiac arrest, brought on by a case of ‘double pneumonia.

Their oldest son was Thomas, born in 1845, who left Albion Place in the 1860’s to settle in Nottingham, and there worked as a lace warehouseman, married Elizabeth Alice James in 1874, helped to raise a family, and died in 1904. (He is missing from Adeline’s story)

Adeline does remember their youngest son “George who took over Mr. Thomas Small’s drapery business in Bath Street”.

George Henry took over the Small drapery business at (then) 11 Bath Street in 1884 when still a bachelor. In 1890 he married Sarah Jane Belfield Clay who had divorced her first husband two years earlier. (We shall meet Jenny again at the Mundy Arms, near the end of our journey. The Clay family were long-term occupants of that Inn.)

Adeline names “Mary, the daughter, who died in girlhood”. There was a daughter Mary Ann but she married lace designer and draughtsman Alan Shepherd on August 8th 1878 and continued to live in Albion Place – for many years at number 24.
Daughter Jane or Sarah Jane was perhaps the child who died ‘in girlhood’. She died in Albion Place in 1867, aged 14.

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3.       The third child of Thomas and Mary was Thomas Barker, born March 10th 1824, but died in February 1833.

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 4.            Jane Elizabeth Barker was born on August 22nd 1826, and married Belper nailmaker John Mellor on July 31st 1848. He moved on from his original trade to become a much respected clothier, draper and maker of musical instruments in his home town. In early life he was also the parish constable for the district and held the post for over 25 years. In politics he was a stauch Radical and strong supporter of Liberal politician William Gladstone.
Several of their children achieved musical success: eldest son Thomas Barker Mellor was an organist at Bakewell Parish Church and a teacher of music; second son Albert held the joint position of organist at Windsor Parish Church and the Queen’s private chapel at St. George’s, as well as being assistant music master at Eton College.

Jane Elizabeth died at her home, The Butts in Belper, on June 13th 1896, aged 69.

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5.                 Mary Barker, born March 30th 1833,  married Ilkeston joiner David England on April 21st 1851. They too eventually settled in Belper where David had the license of the Rose and Crown Inn in King Street. When he died at the end of 1874 the license was transferred to Mary.

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6.                 Thomas 2 was born on December 7th 1835, and died on March 2nd 1838.

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7.      Youngest child George, born in 1841 and died on December 22nd 1895 at Malin House in St. Mary Street. We have encountered him already and will do so again.

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… and the Pritchetts.

Adeline recalls that “there were two or three old cottages facing East, with gable up to the road, also three more cottages near Jack Lee’s Yard. Mrs Pritchit and family lived in the end one”.

There were several Pritchett families who made their home in Albion Place. I believe that they all were brothers — the sons of Sandiacre labourer John and Judith (nee Wheatley – one of the Dale Abbey Wheatleys).

These brothers were …..
Ironstone miner Thomas, wife Emma (nee Grose or Gorse), and children.
Labourer John and Eliza (nee Grundy), and their children.
Ironstone miner James and Mary (nee Large) and their family.

Thomas Pritchett married Emma Grose or Gorse on November 27th, 1843. At first, they lived at Little Hallam before moving to Truman’s Row, a part of what was later Albion Place.
Their first child, Kezia, was born at Little Hallam on August 8th, 1844, but died at Albion Place on June 18th, 1862.
We caught a glimpse earlier of son Thomas, born in 1851, also in Little Hallam, after his marriage to Mary Flinders on August 15th, 1869 … when he then went to live in Flinders Row, off Chapel Street.

Albion Place as it was, looking down from the Bath Street end towards Burr Lane in the distance.

….. and a slightly wider view of the same houses from a similar vantage point

And here are the two cottages which protrude into Albion Place

I suspect that Adeline would have been surprised to discover several members of the ‘Pritchett clan’ still residing in Albion Place as the Victorian age came to a close. Let’s take a walk along the street in 1901 and see if we can identify some of them. The map below, drawn up about 1960, will help us with the house numbers. You can see the row of seven houses (numbers 8 to 14) set back from the building line and these can be seen in the photos above.

At number 3 we would find Sarah Ann Lee (nee Pritchett), great granddaughter of John and Judith, granddaughter of James and Mary, and illegitimate daughter of Martha Ann Pritchett. She was born on December 19th 1876 in Albion Place and married West Hallam miner Frederick Lee on December 8th 1894.
At number 5 was Sarah Ann Lee’s aunt and sister of Martha Ann Pritchett, Elizabeth ‘Lizzie’ Hunt (nee Pritchett) who married Awsworth coalminer John Hunt in 1885. She hade spent all her life so far at this house.
At number 10 was another of Martha Ann’s sisters, Sarah Ann Straw (nee Pritchett), who married coalminer George Straw in 1879. She was to die at this Albion Place home in 1940, aged 82.
At number 13 was Mary Hannah Iliffe (nee Pritchett). She was the daughter of James and Mary, and the sister of Sarah Ann, Martha Ann and Elizabeth — and she had married miner Joseph Henry Iliffe on May 26th 1890. They had their illegitimate son, James Iliffe Pritchett, born on March 16th 1890, with them. Also in the house was Mary Hannah’s eldest brother Joseph Pritchett.
At number 14 was Martha Ann Wolverson (nee Pritchett), mother of Sarah Ann at number 3. She had married iron works labourer William Wolverson of Tipton on January 4th, 1880.

However it is a non-resident Pritchett who provides us with the link to our next page; she was Julia Pritchett, the daughter of Thomas and Emma, born in Little Hallam, on August 19th, 1853. On January 21st, 1873 she married miner James Smith Henshaw. As his name suggests, her husband was the ‘product’ of a Henshaw (Elijah) and a Smith (Alice) who had married on February 10th, 1846. James and Julia Henshaw lived all their married life at Ilkeston — including at Chapel Street, North Street, Pimlico and Club Row, and had at least 10 children. However their son William was one who left the town. After his marriage in 1907 and a couple of children, he and his family left the town to live in Askern near Doncaster. This is where the excellent research of Rick Henshaw adds to and continues the story on the next page.