P R E S E R V I N G   O U R   P A S T

WARWICKSHIRE: Jaques and Clewers

By Jeanett Hurst

The following is a description of Warwickshire where Zachariah and Sarah lived.

We drove from Wiltshire late Sunday morning, arriving at Atherstone by mid-afternoon. Atherstone was our headquarters for exploring northern Warwickshire, home of the Jaques. The town was established by monks in Norman times. It is a market center, located on the A5, an old Roman road. In the early period of the industrial revolution, Atherstone was an important center for felt hat making and the last factory shut down just a few years ago. The center of the town remains just as it was in the early nineteenth century. The fronts of the buildings on Long Street, the main thoroughfare, and in the market square date from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. They are mostly of red brick with sash windows in the upper stories and shops below. We stayed in the Old Red Lion Hotel, an historic coaching inn on Long Street where travelers stopped to rest before continuing on their journeys along the Walting Street (A5) from Manchester to London. We parked in what had once been the livery area in the back, passing converted stables to enter the inn. The accommodations were a little shabby but adequate and reasonably clean. The Old Red Lion serves more tradesmen than tourists. Just down the street from the Old Lion is the Three Tuns Hotel where Henry Tudor stayed prior to the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Our Zachariah Jaques Sr. and his family would have come to Atherstone on market days, now held on Tuesdays, to trade in the square in front of the Church of St Mary.

In Atherstone we met Celia Parton, a member of the Nuneaton and North Warwickshire Family History Society with whom I had corresponded via the Internet. Celia is something of an expert on the history of this part of the county having been born and raised in Baddesley Ensor in a family of coal miners. She gave us a tour of the villages surrounding Atherstone where our Jaques ancestors lived and died. We took the Coleshill Road southwest out of Atherstone, pausing to admire Merevale Hall, the principal seat of the Dugdale family. Right along the road was the Merevale church which served the estate. The Dugdales have been the principal landholders in the area since the seventeenth century and continue to be prominent today in northern Warwickshire. A mile or so outside of Atherstone we turned right off the Coleshill Road and arrived at Baxterly. It is not much of a town but once a large coal mine operated here. The spoil tips from the mine are now covered with grass and brush and a chain link fence surrounded the site. Celia is especially interested in a mining disaster which occurred here in 1882 killing three of her family members as well as Mr. William Stratford Dugdale, on whose estate the mine was located. Just down the road is Baddesley Ensor, another mining village where Zachariah Sr. and Mary Jaques lived, christened and raised their eight children. It is not clear when Zachariah Sr. arrived in Baddesley but he was certainly there by 1803 when his first child, James was christened in the parish church. Zachariah Sr. and Mary appear in Baddesley in the 1841 and 1851 census and he died there in January of 1859. Family oral history, recorded by Samuel Jackson Jr. while on his mission to England between 1906-1909, holds that Zachariah Sr. was in the service of the Dugdales at Blyth Hall, their secondary seat, and came with them to Baddesley Ensor. The Dugdales began mining coal in Baddesley at the end of the eighteenth century, operating several pits in and around the village. The first of these were three mines called collectively, The Old Church Pits. The last of The Old Church Pits was sunk in 1805 near the entrance of the old churchyard. Many others followed and continued to operate until 1988 when the last of the Baddesley collieries closed. Zachariah Sr.'s occupations are listed on various documents as "agricultural laborer," "coal miner" and "coal higgler" or deliveryman. At least three of his sons, John, Samuel and Zachariah Jr. were involved in the mining industry although all three left Baddesley to work elsewhere.

There is not much to Baddesley today and the village contains very few old buildings. The Maypole Inn sits across the street from a mound of earth that is the spoilbank of the Maypole Pit which opened in 1827. Nearby is the New Baddelsy Church, dedicated to St. Nicholas. This was our first stop. It is a fine stone church built on a plot of land donated by Mr. Dugdale, Lord of the Manor and completed in 1846, soon after his great house at Merevale. Except for the church records, however, very little was brought from the old church except the smaller of its two bells and a beaten silver chalice thought to date from the seventeenth century. The churchyard of the New Church was not utilized until the 1860s. The old church, the one that Zachariah Sr. and Mary would have known for most of their lives was situated some distance outside the village, one of the reasons for its undoing. It was a two-cell building in the Norman style with a red sandstone chevron-molded Norman doorway, now installed in the north of St. Mary's Atherstone. The church had a tower with one bell. The font was a triangular one of carved sandstone. By the 1840 this old church was no longer large enough for the growing community, it was beginning to get run down and the mining activities on the Low Commons had left the church isolated from the site where the village was growing. The rival Congregational church and the newly formed Wesleyan Methodists were more conveniently placed. A petition was made to the bishop for a new church and granted, although the old church was to be retained for the reading of the Burial Service and the churchyard continued to be used for burials into the early 1860s. However, as soon as the new church was completed, the old one was demolished and the parts sold off. The triangular font was purchased by Attleborough for their new church but later discarded and can still be seen in the churchyard there. The masonry was taken up to the village and used to build Church House. The New Church sports a Norman window arch from the Old on the ground in front of its tower.

We were keen to find the old churchyard, but it proved to be impossible. Before World War II, the old church was separated from the village by the Low Common, enjoyed by grazing cattle and picnicking villagers who especially enjoyed the old pit spoil heap known as the Bunny Bank. The grazing cattle kept the grass trimmed between the gravestones and the churchyard clear. When the Low Common was cultivated during the War, the churchyard became an impenetrable mass of hawthorn, silverbirch and ferns. Our map showed a public footpath leading from Hill Top to the old church but we could neither find the path nor see the churchyard for the shoulder high canola bean crop that was planted on the Low Common. Celia pointed out Bunny Bank and we saw several other clumps of trees and brush but could not find a way down to inspect them more closely.

We drove south back through Baxterly and on to Bently along the Coleshill Road. Bently is a hamlet and chapelry included in the parish of Shustoke even though it is separated from it by the parish of Over Whitacre. The village of Bently never amounted to much because the monastery at Merevale enclose it in the fifteenth century, simply driving the villagers out as it was more profitable to run sheep on the land than to have the villagers living there. The only sign of the old village today is the east and a little of the north and south walls of the chapel of the Holy Trinity standing in a field. It was already a "carcass" in the middle of the seventeenth century. A "modern" church was erected in 1837 along the Coleshill Road but its now gone too, only the churchyard remains, surrounded by a brick wall. Zachariah Sr.'s wife, Mary Maria Naylor Jaques died here in 1870. Ten years a widow, she may have been staying with her daughter, Amelia Barnes who lived in Bently and was buried there. Amelia's husband John was a publican and farmer and the family resided at the Horse & Jockey according to the 1881 British Census. We found it right across the Coleshill Road from the Bently churchyard. The establishment is still there, a no-frills kind of place. We inquired within and learned that the Oxford family had owned it between 1825 and 1991, so John may have just been an employee or leasee.

We drove on down the Coleshill road to St. Leonard, the church at Over Whitacre. It sits high on a hill and has a tall pointed spire. The church bears the date 1766 and the spire dates from 1850. Martha Walker Naylor, Mary Maria Naylor Jaques' mother is buried here and there is supposedly a headstone which reads "Martha, wife of John Naylor and daughter of John and Sarah Walker, she died 9th July 1787, age 43" but we couldn't find it in the tall grass. From Over Whitacre, it was just a short drive to Nether Whitacre where Mary Maria Naylor was christened. Her mother's people seem to have originated here. We found Walkers in the churchyard but none seemed to be "ours." We looked over the church of St. Giles with its sixteenth century tower. The chancel dates from the fourteenth century and the rest of the church dates from 1870 when it was restored. The village is scattered about the church and lacks a real center. Three-fourths of a mile northeast of the church is Whitacre Hall where Mary Maria Naylor was in the service of the Wheatley family. Celia and her husband had found it earlier in anticipation of our visit, but today it evaded us. We drove down a narrow lane bordered by high hedgerows but were unable to locate it.

We next drove to St. Cuthbert, the parish church of Shustoke which served Blyth Hall, secondary seat of the Dugdale family. The tomb of Sir William Dugdale (d. 1685) is inside. St. Cuthbert standing high on a hill and visible from all around is built of red sandstone and dates mostly from c1320-50. From here we drove on to Blyth Hall which stands at the west end of the parish near Coleshill. Sir William Dugdale purchased the estate in 1625. We could just see the façade through the trees from where we pulled off along the Coleshill Road. Zachariah Sr. worked at Blyth Hall for the Dugdales before going with them to Baddesley Ensor as mentioned above. An elderly Sir William Dugdale still lives in the house along with much of the original furniture and a number of 17th century portraits. This Sir William's son lives at Merevale Hall with his American wife and children.

Celia had to get home to fix tea for her husband, so we drove back to Atherstone and said our good-byes and planned to meet the following afternoon when we returned from Coventry. We next hooked up with Peter Lee, Chairman of the Nuneaton and North Warwickshire Family History Society who met us at the Old Red Lion. He is an architect from Nuneaton who is an expert in local history and the families of northern Warwickshire. He drove us to The Rose Inn, an old country pub where we had an excellent dinner. It sits beside a pond on the Baxterly Green along with the forge, the village hall (now a storeroom) and an old sandstone turreted lodge. It was still light after dinner so we drove back to Nether Whitacare to see if we could locate the Hall. Peter thought he knew were it was and he did. We passed the church, turned right into Dog Lane and passed the Dog Inn, quite a good pub he assured us, despite its name. We entered the narrow, "hedged up" country lane, passed the entrance to a water treatment plant and soon came to a gated gravel drive. There to the right of the gate, nailed to a huge tree was a sign in gothic script that read: Whitacre Hall. Another sign on the gate warned us to "Keep Out," no doubt due to the threat of foot and mouth. All we could do was strain to see the roof and chimneys of the Hall through the trees but at least we had found it!

On Monday we rose early and drove to Nuneaton to catch a train to Coventry. All we had heard about the city convinced us that we really did not want to drive in. Much damaged by bombing in WWII, it has been built back in a haphazard and unattractive way, according to some. We made our connections, found the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum just in time for our 10:30 appointment with Huw Jones, Keeper of Industry. We spent an hour or so with Huw, a very young man, who took us into the back and showed us various sample books containing silk ribbons woven in Coventry between about 1810 and 1860, when Sarah Clewer Jaques and her family were working in nearby Foleshill. Small cuttings of silk ribbon were glued to pages upon which had been written dates and notes as to how the particular styles and colors sold each season. It was apparent that this industry was very much driven by the whims of fashion. Colors and styles changed monthly, from page to page. The natural dye colors were dazzling, the designs intricate and varied. I gained a new appreciation for the care, skill and hard work necessary to produce such delicate textiles. After our visit with Huw, we walked through the rest of the museum and saw an old style hand ribbon loom (the kind Sarah's father Josiah probably used) as well as a steam powered jacquard loom.

From the museum we haled a cab and went north along Foleshill Road to Foleshill, once a village, now a suburb of Coventry where Sarah and her family lived. It is about four miles from the city center, on the industrial side of Coventry and a very blue-collar neighborhood. Our cab driver was not sure where the parish church of St. Laurence was. We went first to what I think was Little Heath Chapel, right off Foleshill Road, a little non-conformist church were Sarah's older sister Ann and her husband Steven Rollason and some of their children are buried. Nearby, on Old Church Road, we finally found St. Laurence, the parish church where the Clewers were christened, married and buried. Sarah and Zachariah were married here in 1841 and the first three of their four children were christened here. By the time Hannah Maria came along in 1850, the Jaques had probably joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Zachariah's older brother Samuel and his wife, Sarah's sister Mary, are buried here but with the meter running, we did not take the time to locate their graves. Parts of the church date from the fifteenth century although it was mostly rebuilt after the village became a Coventry suburb in the nineteenth century. St. Laurence is surrounded by a churchyard, which was mowed but not exactly well kept, with an asphalt parking lot in front. Behind it is a large open area, no doubt still owned by the church, which reminded us that St. Laurence was once situated in a village rather than a crowded suburb. Across the field we could see the back of the houses along Windmill Lane and that was our next stop. Somewhere along Windmill Land which runs into an area called Hall Green Sarah lived with her parents before she was married and with Zachariah Jaques afterwards according to the 1841, 1851 and 1861 British Census. The street is lined with modest row houses, none of which seemed to be more than 100 years old. At the end of the street we also saw the Crown Inn, although it may not have been the original building, where the British Census found Samuel and Mary Jaques in 1881. Samuel was listed as a "publican and farmer." Just north of Foleshill in an area called Longford, was the New Inn, home of Francis and Hannah Jaques Sephton according to the 1881 and 1891 British Census. Hannah was great grandmother Hannah Maria's double cousin and it may have been she with whom the Jackson boys stayed and visited while on their missions to England in the first decades of the 1900s. We didn't feel that we had time to find it. We saved it for our next visit along with Alderman's Green, a coal miners' neighborhood near the Wycken Pit, due east of Foleshill and home of Zachariah's older brother John. Zachariah Jr. was also living in Alderman's Green at the time of his marriage. These areas are all very close to one another. Before leaving we continued up Foleshill Road to Hurst Lane where we found a row of traditional weaver's cottages or "top shops." It was a long three-story brick building with large windows on the top which had been bricked in. This may be the sort of place that the Clewers and Jaques lived in.

Our driver was a pleasant fellow and got us to the station just in time to catch the 2:00 train back to Nuneaton. With several hours of daylight left we met up with Celia again at the Old Red Lion. We drove out to Nether Whitacre Hall and took some pictures. After saying good bye to Celia again we decided to check out a few more places relative to Jaques family history. It was a beautiful evening and we drove north to Austrey to St. Nicholas Church where Zachariah Jaques Sr. and all his siblings, the children of James and Elizabeth Jaques, were christened. The parish was inclosed in 1796 so the village is small. The church is beautiful, located off the main road and set above the lane. It is mostly of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century and is deemed to be a good example of the best architecture of this period, graceful and well proportioned . From 1322 until the Dissolution it belonged to Polesworth Abbey. The grounds are well kept and very peaceful. From Austrey we drove a couple of miles to the village of Appleby Magna just into Leicestershire where James and Elizabeth Jaques were married in June of 1772. The church of St. Michaels and All Angels sits on the main road of the village on a hill but not at all protected by trees or landscaping as St. Nicholas was. It dates back to the early fourteenth century although its likely that there was a church on the site from Saxon times. We made our way back towards Atherstone in the bright evening light, stopping at Ratcliffe where Joseph Jaques, one of Zachariah Jr.'s older brothers was living when he died. It's just a little bend in the country road just a few of miles from Atherstone. The tiny church looked a little forlorn.

Tuesday morning we rose early and drove to Fillongly where Zachariah Jaques Sr. and Mary Maria Naylor were married in 1801. The church of St. Mary and All Saints dates from Norman times with bits and pieces restored between c. 1300 and the fifteenth century. From here we drove to Cheshire to meet our cousin Sharon Hintze to explore another branch of the family.

From what we know of our Jaques ancestors, they were relatively mobile. The distances were not great, but the moves seem to have occurred nearly every generation. A chronological Jaques itinerary reveals a southward movement through Warwickshire and finally on to America. After their marriage in Appleby Magna, Leicestershire in 1722, James and Elizabeth Jaques settled in Austrey where they christened their eight children between 1773 and 1793. The third of these, Zachariah Sr. ended up in Shustoke working for the Dugdales. He married Maria Maria Naylor in 1801 in Fillongly and they settled in Baddelsey Ensor where Zachairah probably worked in the mines. Here they christened all nine of their children between 1803 and 1825. The seventh of these was Zachariah Jr. who, like several of his older brothers, was also involved in mining. He ended up outside Coventry, probably working at the Wycken Pit and married a girl from nearby Foleshill, Sarah Clewer in 1841. They spent a brief ten years together in Foleshill before Zachariah left for America where he died. Sarah and her four children left England in 1862 never to return.