Nottinghamshire Articles by Cliff Hughes-26027

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: Nottinghamshire, England, United Kingdom
Surname/tag: Chambers, Various

Articles originally written for the journal of the Notts Family History Society, following individual surnames associated with particular villages/towns mainly in the Victorian period.

The Chambers Families of Greasley and Nuthall

THE CHAMBERS FAMILIES OF GREASLEY AND NUTHALL Chambers is an old Nottinghamshire surname. It is one of the more common surnames listed in the Protestation Returns in 1640 and in the Hearth Tax lists of 1664 and 1674. In 1664 John Chambers and Edward Chambers, in Nuthall, were noted as being not chargeable for the tax. On the other hand Margrit (sic) Chambers was assessed for a payment of 12 shillings in the 1689 Subsidy assessment for Nuthall. By 1881 nearly 1000 Notts people were named Chambers, the highest proportion of the population in any county. The name overall is not uncommon, so it occurred in large numbers in several English cities, but outside the cities Greasley, with 164 Chambers recorded in the census, and Nuthall, with 104, were the settlements where the name was most prominent. However, it is not only the particular association of the name with these 2 locations which has caught my attention. Given the nature of Nuthall and Greasley parishes, with their mineral resources, the great majority of working Chambers people were coalminers. But there were also people who led rather unusual lives, and others who have risen to national prominence. One of them was a son of a Thomas Chambers who in 1841 was a grocer at Beggarlee in Greasley parish. A few years later he moved to become a farmer, with 120 acres at Beauvale Priory. Perhaps the grocery trade gave connections with farmers, who supplied goods to sell in the shop, and this led to the change in Thomas’s career. In 1848 a son, John Saxton Chambers, was born to Thomas and his wife Ann. At the time of the 1861 census John was still at home in Beauvale, but by 1871 he had moved to Stourbridge where he was managing a forge and living with his wife Annie, from Borrowash in Derbyshire, and daughters Edith (2) and Elizabeth (1), both born in Derby. John then disappears from the census records until 1891, but there are clues to his whereabouts in the interim period in later records. We do find him in 1891 but living in quite different circumstances. He was a hotel proprietor, running the Angel Hotel, on the corner of Angel Street and Bank Street, in Sheffield. This hotel is no longer in existence but it was a well-established and well-known inn at the time. Daughters Edith and Elizabeth (and many servants) were living with John and Ann. It is clear from later census data that there were several other children, but they were not living with their parents. By working backwards from the 1911 census it is possible to find those children. In 1891 they were living at another important hostelry, the Normanton Inn, which is still there on the A614 at the side of Clumber Park. Listed first in the census is son Horace (16). Then comes Rosamund (17) and Emily (15) - all of these were born at Wollaston (Stourbridge), and Emily’s age proves that John and Ann were still living at Stourbridge in1876. Another son, Joseph (14) was at a school in Boston, Lincs. Joseph had been born in Eastwood. There is then another daughter, Vera, aged 8 in 1891. She had been born at a place named Boucha (?) in Russia, which is amended, or refined, in a later census to be Perm. So John and Ann had clearly left Stourbridge in 1876/7 for Eastwood, and then journeyed to Russia sometime between 1877 and 1881 (when they are absent from the census). They were still in Russia in 1883 when Vera was born. In the late 19th century Perm, in the very distant Urals region of Russia, was being developed as an industrial centre. My theory is that John, with his expertise as a foundry manager, went to Russia to help set up a metalworking industry. He would have been one of several Britons who assisted in the early industrialisation of that country. Returning in the mid-late 1880s, he invested the money earned in Russia in 2 English inns and the education of at least one son. He must have been quite an entrepreneur, with an adventurous and perhaps restless spirit - presumably Ann was too! However in middle age he settled down in the Normanton Inn as farmer and innkeeper, living with, and visited by, his children in various combinations. This family was difficult but fascinating to research, and this research illustrates the type of problem genealogists can experience. The Ancestry UK interpretation of the occupants of the Normanton Inn in 1891 as the children of the next family above them in the census list seems difficult to sustain, given that they had different surnames, and the probable distance between the

Inn and the next dwelling. However my interpretation is consistent with the evidence of names, dates and birthplaces. At the time John Saxton Chambers was enjoying his latter years as farmer and innkeeper, another Chambers family was growing up at Haggs Farm in Greasley parish. According to my reading of census data, Edmund Chambers at 18 was a provision merchant’s assistant, boarding at a house in Nottingham. He married Sarah Ann OATES, from the city, and they started a family, living in Nottingham for a few years. However, the various birthplaces of their growing family suggest that they moved around extensively. In 1891 Edmund was a general labourer living in Eastwood, but by 1901 he was farming at Haggs Farm. Edmund and Sarah Ann had 7 children at home by then. The eldest daughter, Muriel was a pupil teacher. It is their second daughter, Jessie, who achieved a degree of fame as the friend and muse of D H Lawrence, who lived nearby in Eastwood. She was Lawrence’s first girlfriend, and the model for some of his main female characters. She encouraged his writing, discussed his work with him, and corrected it. Lawrence also loved the Chambers family as a whole, and Haggs Farm too. But he was seeking a larger world, and he effectively abandoned her. Soon afterwards, she married Jack WOOD, becoming a supporter of female suffrage and other causes, and writing ‘D.H.Lawrence: A Personal Record’ in 1935. Before her marriage Jessie Chambers was a school teacher, like her older sister. Teaching was perhaps the only outlet for an intelligent young woman from a respectable background who wished to have work which avoided the monotony and unpleasant conditions of factory work and gave some opportunity for wider intellectual horizons. Young men had better chances, and one of Jessie’s brothers made the most of these. Jonathan, better known as J D Chambers, became Professor of Economic History at the University of Nottingham. He was one of the first British economic historians. His research and publications drew on evidence, often from Notts, and sometimes using parish registers, about population and economic development in the Industrial Revolution and the period leading up to it. His many publications included 2 major works on Notts and the Vale of Trent in the 18th century. His last book ‘Population, Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial England’ was published in 1972, just a year after his death. In addition to his academic work, J D Chambers encouraged the University to promote interest in D H Lawrence, and to collect material relating to him. The stories of Jessie, Jonathan, and John Saxton Chambers show how exceptional people can come from apparently mundane backgrounds. Their antecedents were shopkeepers, pawnbrokers, farmers and blacksmiths in and around the mining settlements of Greasley and Nuthall parishes, and Eastwood. Victorian England provided opportunities for enterprising individuals to travel and better themselves. The educational resources offered by Nottingham city, and its wider social horizons, enabled others to capitalise on their own intellectual potential.