PONTESBURY BURIAL EXTRACTS

GREAT HANWOOD SHROPSHIRE

Great Hanwood described in 1868 is

“a parish in the hundred of Ford, county Salop, 4 miles S.W. of Shrewsbury. It is a station on the Shrewsbury and Welshpool section of the London and North-Western railway. The parish is situated near the Rhe, a branch of the river Severn, within the liberty of the borough of Shrewsbury. The parish is of small extent, and chiefly arable. Here is a large flourmill. The living is a rectory* in the diocese of Hereford, value £221. The church is a small brick edifice, built at the beginning of the 18th century."

[Description(s) from The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868)
Transcribed by Colin Hinson ©2003]

Great Hanwood is listed in the Domesday book, it is listed as being one of the holdings of Roger Corbett/ Fitzcorbett born to a Normandy family. Roger, his father and his brother were at the battle of Hastings. Roger and his brother were assigned 38 lordships in Shropshire between them. Some of the other areas in their holding were Pontesbury, Worthen, Wentnor and Westbury.

A place called Hanwood in Australia was named after Great Hanwood in Shropshire in honour of the local Irrigation officer Leslie Wade who father William Burton Wade was born in Great Hanwood Shropshire. William’s father Charles Gregory Wade was rector of Hanwood Church 1810-1835.

(Information courtesy of my relative Arthur Jones who grew up just outside Great Hanwood and lives there today)

Arthur Jones also informs me of a spitfire crash which occurred in the village on 29^th June 1943. Arthur’s mother saw two of the aircraft performing what appeared to be practice manoeuvres. Arthur’s mother was 8 months pregnant with him at the time. The pilot of one of the planes aircraft no x4941 lost control and the spitfire clipped the chimney of her bungalow containing herself and her mother and crashed into a hay field approx 30 metres away. The aeroplane exploded on impact and showered the surrounding area with exploding machine gun bullets. The pilot died. Arthur’s grandfather was one of the people on the scene later on who helped to remove his body.

Arthur’s grandfather was awarded ten shillings by the RAF to repair the crater created. The cracked chimney remained until the family left the bungalow in 1969 when the property was demolished and rebuilt. The bungalow Arthur believes was originally a temporary hospital in the First World War. It was constructed of galvanised sheet iron and the interior was tongue and groove boarding. The building was simply known as “the Bungalow” in pound Lane great Hanwood. The pilot killed was training to become an aircraft pilot and his name was Pilot Officer Gordon Edward Anthony Grey age 19.

Several Members of my family are buried in St Thomas church Great Hanwood.

St Thomas Church Great Hanwood

Weir Cottages.

My Family lived in numbers 5, 7 and 17. My grandfather lived at number 2 for a short while after he married. Nowadays number 1-5 are the original buildings whereas the rest have been rebuilt in virtually the same position but the house fronts are set back a few meters.

Number 5                                              Number 17                                     Number 7

Numbers 3 and 4                    The row of cottages

The road is now called Weir road it is just off the A488 road which runs straight through the village. Apparently after speaking to one of the residents on my last visit up from the actual weir was a factory opposite number 24 and the workers lived in these cottages. The row was also known as Factory row.

There was uproar in the village in 1975 as plans were put forward to demolish the cottages. My relative Arthur Jones lived in the area at the time and sent me the following report from The Shropshire Star 5^th February 1975.

“Nineteen old cottages have split the Shropshire Village of Hanwood right down the middle.

            Arguments about whether they should be demolished have bred mistrust and suspicion, sparked off council rows and an angry public meeting and led to two petitions. And there is more to come.

            The controversy is now extending well beyond the village near Shrewsbury.”

“These particular houses 6-24 weir cottages (the other numbers are privately owned) were built around 1860’s for workers in local industry. The Hanwood brickworks and coal mine were then both going strong.

            They were bought by the old atcham council in 1961 for just under £100 a piece. The council then modernised them by adding a bathroom and indoor lavatory for £13,800 altogether.

            At that time they were said to have an expected lifespan of between 20 and 30 years, although this does not seem to be a unanimous opinion and longer periods were mentioned.

            All went well until the Atcham council ran into difficulties over letting them to Hanwood people and there were rows with the parish council about some of the people brought in to fill the vacancies.

Around 1971 the Atcham council decided not to re-let them as they became vacant, a policy which former officers claim was going along quite happily until the new council was asked to confirm the policy and the politicians took over.

            The new council backed up by a petition calling as it thought for the cottages not to be re-let and by an environmental health department opinion that they were unfit and unsound, decided the cottages should be left vacant as they became so, with a view to eventually being demolished and the land used for redevelopment.

            The petition it has since become apparent, really meant something rather different. It actually called on the council not to re-let unless it changed certain attitudes- which councillors were not officially told of because it said the wording was slanderous.”

“The weir cottages tenants say they are perfectly happy and comfortable where they are. Other people who know the houses say that although small they are warm and dry, although this point is disputed by the council officers.”

Anyway to cut a long story short 6-24 were demolished and replaced with the cottages in the photographs.

A recent article in the Shropshire discusses the “postman’s Nightmare” that weir road has become, the houses jump from 19-24. This was because the houses that were rebuilt took up a larger plot, with number 24 being one of the original cottages. The older cottages were smaller and therefore more of them fit into the same space.

On my 1851 census cd the following families live in Factory Row and associated factory buildings…

Dyas, Gough, Tisdale (?),Evans, Morgan, Jones (not my branch), Davies, Glover, Cooper( not my branch), Andrews, Cotton.

In 1881   (courtesy of http://www.familysearch.org website)

Number 1 weir cottages : Breeze

2                                                  : Jones

3                                                  : Simmonds

4                                                  : Richards

5                                                  : Evans (my family)

6                                                  : Gough (my family by marriage)

7                                                  : Davies (my jones family later moved here)

8                                                  : Smith

9                                                  : Davies

10                                              : Johnson

11                                              : Rowson

12                                              : Mansel

13                                              : Belingham

14                                              : Jones

15                                              : Higginson

16                                              : Dyas

17                                              : Jones (My Family)

18                                              : Perry

19                                              : James

20                                              : Jones

21                                              : Littlehales

22                                              : Palmer

Hanwood was a very industrialised village with colliery, brickworks and a mill.

Hanwood Mill

This was at the eastern end of weir road, it was know as the bleachfield as it was a mil where cotton was bleached.

Great Hanwood mine and brickworks.

The Shrewsbury coalfield consisted of many mines by 1921 great Hanwood was the only one left and it continue until 1947. It was started in the 1870’s as a small business it eventually became the biggest colliery in the coalfield region. At the peak of its working life it employed around 300 local people, just before it closed it was producing around 800 tons of coal a week. Hanwood had a great advantage that the shafts were free from gas so using naked flamed underground was an option.  It was later owned by the Hanwood and Moat Hall collieries (salop) Ltd, it was associated with the Hanwood brickworks. The grade of coal produced was extremely high quality, being in high demand and regard especially in Wales. Hanwood and Cruckmeole shafts were joined and worked as one site. The mine ran alongside the Shrewsbury to welshpool railway and therefore it was easy to transport the coal.

Hanwood Colliery [Reproduced with kind permission of Shropshire Newspapers]

Staff…

Mr Nicholas Fielden : Managing director

Mr W Mansell : under manager

Mr W Clarke : engineer

The brickworks adjoined the cruckmeole colliery. It included a huge Staffordshire kiln which held around 180,000 bricks.

(Information obtained from the website http://www.ap.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/bmd/shrewscf.htm

which are transcriptions on articles on the coalfield from the SCMC Journals and elsewhere.)

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