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Guidance on Posting on the Weavers Cottages Noticeboard

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Guidance on Posting on the Weavers Cottages Noticeboard

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Posted by the WBPT Moderator

You can post on this noticeboard by:

Dragging and dropping documents, pictures or video from your computer to the board.

Directly typing text after clicking on the board.

Uploading documents, pictures or videos from your computer after clicking on the board.

Your posts can even include links to other websites.

When you post you don't have to sign in or leave your name but you are welcome to tell us who you are if you wish.

If you need more help click on the ? symbol in the dock at the side of the board.

Your post won't appear straight away but as long as it's appropriate we'll make it visible within 3 days (often less).

Try it out - if you're not happy with your post just delete it by clicking on the bin symbol at the top.

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A learning resource of artwork, poems, stories and songs inspired by the Weavers’ Cottages Conservation Project

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Notes on the manufacture of bombazine by T S Lea dated October 1843 (Courtesy of  Museum of Carpet Archive Collection) See photos of the samples posted separately

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Bombazine Print found by our research volunteer

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Bombazine Print found by our research volunteer

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Many thanks for you hard work

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Bombazine  Samples as described by  T S Lea dated October 1843 (Courtesy of  Museum of Carpet Archive Collection)

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Bombazine  Samples as described by  T S Lea dated October 1843 (Courtesy of  Museum of Carpet Archive Collection)

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Memories of living at Number 21 by Beryl Mullard (Clee)

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Memories of living at Number 21 by Beryl Mullard (Clee)

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Beryl Clee was married to Ray and lived at number 21 Horsefair between 1953 and 1958. They moved when they exchanged the house with a couple who needed a downstairs bedroom. After Ray died some years later Beryl remarried someone who lived in a nearby street but whom she had never met until after the passing of both of their first spouses.

Beryl’s Daughter was conceived in the house and born at the Croft in 1958. They moved when their daughter was 3 months old by exchanging the house for a 3 bedroom house with a couple who needed to use one of the downstairs rooms at number 21 as a bedroom.

All three cottages and the fish and chip shop, which was a lean-to building at the end of the cottages in those days, were owned by Mr Firth, the Landlord. When Beryl and Ray moved in, the rent was 10 shillings per week and rose to ten and six while they were there. It was collected every Friday by a ‘little man who collected everybody’s rent’.

The front door opened straight into the living room which they made very comfortable. Beryl remembers, when they moved in, the room behind the front room had an ‘A’ shaped ceiling right up into the roof space.  Ray and Beryl's brother in law put in a flat false ceiling here.*

There was no bath in the house (they went to Beryl’s mum's for a bath) and, when they needed hot water, it had to be heated in a copper boiler in the kitchen heated by a coal fire.

The toilet was in outbuildings in the back yard.

Beryl remembers that there was a grille in the floor through which mice were able to enter until they blocked up the holes in the grille. She thought that there was cellar that ran under all three houses with access from the Weavers Cottage only.**

She also remembers how their cat used to be able to open the latch to the living room form the stairs to open the door which often caught her husband by surprise.

Beryl’s husband used to make parsnip and mulberry wine. One evening they heard a ‘bang’, ‘bang’, ‘bang’ as the corks in the wine had blown out!

The area round the house was a ‘proper little shopping centre’ and they ‘didn’t need to go into town for anything’.

Beryl and her current husband recalled the various establishments which were in the Horsefair in those days: a coal yard, a green grocers, a tripe shop, a pork shop, 2 butchers, the Co-op, ‘Fosbrooks’ clothes shop, a (clothes) cleaners, a picture house (opposite the house), Reddings the cycle shop, which also charged the accumulators for radios, and two pubs: the Vine (opposite the house) and the Harp. Further down there was also a shoemakers and the Peacock pub (which was notorious for being rough).

There was also a roadhouse ‘up the road’ where lorry drivers would stay overnight. They would often park their lorries in Horsefair including outside their house. One morning, Beryl was leaving for work and to her surprise saw that the curtains were blowing around through the ‘open’ window of her front room. She wondered why her husband would have opened the window before he left for work earlier until she noticed that the driver of the lorry parked by the house had slipped on the icy ground and broke the window as he fell.

*  This room is no longer there – replaced with a modern extension as part of the Project.

** There is no evidence that a cellar did actually run under all three cottages, although there was a gap under the wooden floorboards in number 21. The other two houses had concrete floors when the Trust took over the buildings.

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Description of bombazine samples by T S Lea dated October 1843 (Courtesy of  Museum of Carpet Archive Collection) See photos of the samples posted separately

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Redware
Cheap and robust, this red-bodied, dark-glazed earthenware was a household staple in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was made in a wide variety of forms including mugs, jars, and chamberpots.

This example is from a large bowl called a 'pancheon', a type which continued to be made right through the 19th century. This example is likely to be late 18th or 19th century.

'Shell-edge' whiteware (refined earthenware): this mass-produced tableware was produced by Staffordshire potters between about 1780 and 1860. This example, with symmetrical scalloped edges and a simple blue underglaze painted rim, dates from around 1800-30.

'Mocha' Ware
This is a type of engine-turned dipped earthenware. These startlingly modern-looking mugs and bowls were invented by Wedgewood in the late 1760s. The 'tree' decoration was made by touching a brush loaded with liquid tobacco-juice ('mocha') solution onto the still-wet slip of the bowl or cup - a technique perfected in about 1790. This piece is from a hemispherical bowl, a pattern most common before about 1820.

These three pieces were probably in domestic use in the cottages around 1800-1820

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Whilst carefully removing render on the front walls facing the street the specialist contractors, Croft Building and Conservation, were surprised to find a sign painted onto the bricks beneath bearing the name
"A Wakefield High Class Confectioner“.  This suggests that 21 Horsefair was once a sweet shop and the sign would appear to date from sometime after 1911, though no other information about this has yet been found.

The Trust would like to make a feature of the hand-painted sign in re-telling the story of the cottages and is interested to hear from anyone has knowledge about the shop owners and the business they ran. Information about who occupied either of the three cottages numbers 20, 21 and 22 Horsefair before, during and after the time of A. Wakefield would be very useful.

Anyone with information should contact the Trust by email at: weaverscottages@wbpt.org.uk

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Artist's Impression of Restored Buildings

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Artist's Impression of Restored Buildings

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Watercolour impression  of the completed Weavers’ Cottages scheme, by Robert Tolley, one of the trustees of The Worcestershire Building Preservation Trust