The Blackwells of Chantry Road: the Family
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The Blackwells of Chantry Road: The Family Between 1876 and 1888 Althans Blackwell (c. 1850-1929) and his wife, Agnes (1847-1898), lived at 341 Moseley Road. Between 1888 and 1892 they lived at Monterey, 11 Park Hill. In 1892 they moved to ‘Brackley Dene’, 30 Chantry Road (Figs.1-3). These house moves illustrate the upward mobility typical of many living to Moseley in the nineteenth century. Moving house was a costly business. In 1892, Althans Blackwell paid £3 16s 0d to John Hudson & Son of Balsall Heath for removing furniture from Park Hill to Chantry Road. This involved three men for 14½ hours @ 4s per hour and a small van with three men for 7½ hours @ 2s 6d per hour.1 There were other costs to owning a house too. In 1879 Balsall Heath Local Board of Health charged Althans Blackwell £4 16s 0d for a District Rate and in 1879 he paid £5 0s 10d for Income Tax deductible from Rent and House Duty.2 Other costs included, for example, payment for a water supply, which was expensive – up to 3s per week, often for an intermittent supply.3 In 1893, Althans Blackwell paid £6 8s 0d per annum for water and a ‘Bath Supply’ at 10s per annum in water rent due on Lady Day at £3 9s 0d for two quarters.4 It was costly to establish and maintain an independent middle-class household. He received a document in 1892, signed by John Houghton, Inspector to the Rural Sanitary Authority that certified there was ‘within reasonable distance of the house an available supply of wholesome water … sufficient for consumption/use for domestic purposes’.5 Chantry Road was formed by W.Taylor esq., in 1893 and declared a public highway in the same year. The road was built up in the 1890s by the consortium of gentlemen, the Moseley Park and Pool Company, who purchased 14 acres of land around the lake in Moseley Hall Estate to save the land for posterity, to provide a park, and to prevent infilling with inferior housing (Fig.4). The leaseholders of the Moseley Park and Pool Company divided the land around the park into generous plots on which to build themselves large houses. Althans Blackwell was a member of the consortium and was able to build ‘Brackley Dene’, 30 Chantry Road, in 1892 on a plot that backed onto the park. The house, designed by Alfred Reading, a member of his wife’s family, covered almost 4,230 square metres.6 In 1896, the gross estimated rental was £150 and the rateable value £127.10.0.7 ‘Brackley Dene’ was the first house built in Chantry Road. 1 Moseley Society History Group, ‘The Collection’ (MSHGC), (C3/D2/A/F10/2-4), Reading-Blackwell Archive (RBA), Bills and Receipts, The All Services Club, Church Road, Moseley. John Hudson & Son, 72 Vincent Street, and 67 Mary Street, Balsall Heath. www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currencyconverter: £3 16s 10d in 1890 was c., £300 in 2017, 4s was c., £16 and 2s 6d was c., £10. 2 MSHGC, (C3/D2/A/F10/2-4), RBA, Bills & Receipts. £4 16s 0d in 1890 was c. £394 in 2017 and £5 0s 10d was c., £414. 3 3s in 1890 was c. £12 in 2017. 4 MSHGC, (C3/D2/A/F10/2-4), RBA, Bills & Receipts. £6 8s 0d and £3 9s 0d in 1890 were c. £525 and £283 in 2017. 5 MSHGC, (C3/D2/A/F10/1), RBA, Bills & Receipts. 6 The Library of Birmingham (LBA), Kings Norton Building Plan KNBP1414.The plan was entered in 1891. 7 LBA, BCK/MB/6/13/23, 1896, Sanitary Assessments. 1 Fig.1: Brackley Dene, front views, 2014 and 1898 and rear view, 1898.8 Brackley Dene Fig.4: Chantry Road, Moseley, 1900s.9 Both Althans and Agnes were born in Birmingham. In 1851 Althans, at the age of three, was living with his mother, Jane Blackwell (formerly Cave). No household head is listed on this census. Jane is identified as ‘wife to a Tailor / Draper’, which suggests that her husband was away from home on census day. They lived in Wellington Road, Edgbaston, with Althan’s sister Sophia, aged one. His mother was born in Brackley, Northamptonshire, which accounts for the name of his final home. Jane Blackwell and her husband, James, were married in 1841, but she died in 1855 in Wandsworth. In 1856 James married Harriet Tingle at Kettering. In 1851 Harriet Tingle, a British School teacher aged twenty-eight years, lived at home with her widowed mother and two sisters in Kettering. By 1861 when Althans was thirteen years old, his father James was a retired draper and the family, including Althan’s brother, Frederick, aged nine, and two sisters, Sophia and Elizabeth, aged eleven and three, lived at 359 Bristol Road. A boarder, Richard Righton, aged fifty, a Bank of England employee, lived with them. Agnes lived on Bristol Road in 1851. Aged three years, she and her one year old brother, Nathaniel Cracknell Reading, and her parents, Walter and Sarah Reading, lived with her maternal grandmother, Mary Griffin, a proprietor of houses, at 26 Bristol Road, Birmingham. Walter was a tool maker and coal dealer at the time. In 1861 8 MSHGC, RBA, (C3/D2/Artefacts A/1-10), Photograph Album. 9 https://digimap.edina.ac.uk, ‘Digimap’, ‘Historic’, ‘Historic Roam’. This map has been constructed using the 1900s historic map by Janet Berry. Accessed 2015. 2 Agnes, aged fourteen, was living with her parents, Walter and Sarah Reading, both aged forty-four years in the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter at 47 Augusta Street. Walter by then was a watch-guard maker employing four men, one boy, eleven women and five girls. Agnes’s brother Nathaniel Cracknel Reading was eleven at the time. In 1871 Agnes, aged twenty-three years, was living with her mother, a widow, and Nathaniel, her brother, at 186 Warstone Lane, the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham, the site of the family jewellery business. Fig.5: Althans Blackwell.10 Fig.6: Agnes Blackwell.11 Althans Blackwell married Agnes Elizabeth Reading in 1876 (Figs.5-6) when they were twenty-six and twenty-nine. Agnes was slightly older than Althans, unusual in Moseley as younger wives were typical. Their wedding took place on 9 August at Kings Heath Baptist Chapel led by Rev. R. Gray. They honeymooned in Scotland: a copy of The Birmingham Daily Post of Saturday 12 August, 1876, which contained a notice of their wedding, was posted to Althans Blackwell at Scotts Lodge Hotel, Keswick.12 Agnes was a partner with her brother, Nathaniel Cracknell Reading, in the family Jewellery and Chain-making business, a silversmithing and jewellery factory, at 186/7 Warstone Lane in the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham.13 On his marriage, Althans took over Agnes’ half of the business. Althans had been an accountant clerk there. Many Moseley marriages were forged locally or through religious, family, business or social connections. Althans Blackwell was forty-two years old and Agnes forty-five on moving into ‘Brackley Dene’ in 1892. Sadly, Agnes died six years later on 26 June 1898 in Ballagio, Italy, and was buried there (Fig.7). The hotel manager in Bellagio corresponded with Althans Blackwell about the gravestone in January 1899 assuring him that the railings and stone were ‘ready to be put up’ and that the grave would be 10 MSHGC, (C3/D2/Artefacts A/1-10), RBA, Photograph Album. 11 MSHGC, (C3/D2/Artefacts A/1-10), RBA, Photograph Album. 12 MSHGC, (C3/D2/A/7/BRB 3), RBA, Newspaper Cutting. 13 MSHGC, (C3/D2/A/F10/2-4), RBA, Letters. 3 finished by the end of February (Fig.8). He stated that fresh flowers were always on the grave. Alice left £2,626.13.5 to her husband. Death was an ever-present part of life in the nineteenth century. Althans Blackwell took out life insurance in 1896 from Railway Passengers Assurance Company, London, through their local agents, James C. Percy & Deakin of Birmingham for £3 12s 0d.14 Special mourning clothes were essential. Men wore black crêpe arm bands. Women wore black crêpe with no lace or decoration and mourning jewellery, lockets containing the hair of the deceased and brooches and other items of Whitby jet, as advertised by James Cargory of Birmingham.15 On 12 October 1893, Agnes Blackwell bought a ‘Black Plush Mantle’ and a ‘trimmed felt bonnet’ costing £5 15s 6d and £1 9s 3d respectively, totalling £7 4s 9d, from Birmingham General Mourning Warehouse.16 A bill shows that, in 1893, Mr Blackwell paid 2s to The Birmingham General Cemetery for cleaning graves.17 Fig.7: Agnes Blackwell’s Grave, Bellagio, Italy.18 14 Railway Passengers Assurance Company, 64 Cornhill, London and James C. Percy & Deakin, 32 Paradise Street, Birmingham. Assurance Number 1667. 15 MSHGC, (C3/D2/A/F10/2-4), RBA, Bills & Receipts. James Cargory of 41 Bull Street, Birmingham. 16 MSHGC, (C3/D2/A/F10/2-4), RBA, Bills & Receipts. Birmingham General Mourning Warehouse, 42 New Street, Mourning Drapers and Undertakers. £5.25s.6d and £1 9s 3d in 1890 were c., £474 and £120 in 2017. 17 MSHGC, (C3/D2/A/F10/2-4), RBA, Receipts & Bills. 18 MSHGC, (C3/D2/Artefacts A/1-10), RBA, Photograph Album. 4 Fig.8: Letter from the Grande Bretagna Hotel, Bellagio, Italy.19 In 1901 Althans Blackwell was one of the sixty household heads in Chantry Road. Most were men (80 per cent), but this left a surprising proportion of women household heads. Chantry Road was prosperous which meant widows and daughters had sufficient financial means to maintain the household after the death of a husband or parent.