James Hill, Engineer (1886 - 1963) and his family


  More notes on my family history, by Charlie Hulme

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James and Edith Hill and their new house, 'Merlewood' c. 1927.


From the Hill family bible:

James Hill, born 10th November, 1885.

Edith Barratt, born 21st April, 1879.

Married 7th May, 1906 at Brunswick Wesleyan Chapel, Portwood, by C.W. Martin, Minister.

Children:

Alice Hill, born Friday 30th November 1906 11.50 a.m.

Agnes Hill, born Sunday 30th June 1912 5.20 a.m.

Ethel Hill, born Wednesday 22nd September   1915 3.15 a.m.

Marriages:

Ethel Hill to William Morris at Taxal Church on June 6th, 1936 by the Rector.



Agnes Hill to Charles Hulme at Whaley Bridge Methodist Church on September 25th, 1948 by Rev. R.E. Parker, Superintendent Minister. (Above, James and Agnes on the day)



Alice Hill to John Barton, at Whaley Bridge Methodist Church on January 8th, 1948 by Rev. R.E. Parker, Superintendent Minister.

James Hill to Winifred Smith, born June 7, 1907. Married October 9 1948 at the Methodist Church, Buxworth by the Rev. R.E. Parker, Superintendent Minister.

Deaths:

George Hill born March 25th 1860, Died January 1917.

Alice Hill [née Boothby] Born June 5th 1859, Died Sept 1928.



Edith Hill [née Barratt], died 27 April 1948. The grave at Fernilee Methodist Chapel;  her husband James Hill was later interred in tha same plot.


 My Grandfather, James Hill, who died in the 1960s, was a son of George Hill (see my article about his life and times) and was the only one of my four grandparents that lived long enough for me to meet them in the flesh. I remember him well, although he died in the 1960s, and I have a broad factual idea of his biography, a collection of pictures - thanks to my mother who was a keen photographer -  and genealogical research by my only first cousin on the Hill side of the family, James Edward Morris, two years older than me, who was tragically killed on the road in 1992 while cycling. This article is a tribute to his memory, and that of my mother who died 2002 aged 90. I'll tell of their lives, too.



Family day out, c.1928. James Hill, Ethel Hill, Edith Hill (sitting in sidecar), Margaret Hill, Annie Hill. BSA motorbike?

I only have fragmentary records and memories of James Hill's working life and everyday doings, but I do know he was a skilled and intelligent man of the who made his way in life by profiting from the latest technology of the early 20th Century. He was a strict follower of Methodist doctrine banning strong drink and gambling, although his attitudes toward the women in his life were very much of his time. And like many Derbyshire and Cheshire people, including myself, he was not afraid to express his thoughts.  Skilled at the craft of the mechanical engineer, he told me one thing I'll always remember when I said I wanted to be an engineer: 'Anyone can take an engine apart. It takes an engineer to put it back together.'

Born in 1885 in Kettleshulme in Cheshire, just over the Derbyshire border, the ancestral family home, but when the coal mines in the area became worked out and closed down, his father George Hill moved the family to Stockport to find work at the Bredbury Colliery which was still busy. They found a home at 9 Portwood Hall Place, and by 1901 James was also working at the mine as a 'Colliery Labourer'.



However it seems that James had higher ideas. My mother's memories had him leaving the pit and set himself up in the cycle-repair business for a while. The 1911 census return - written, I believe, by James in his careful engineer's script found on other documents - lists him as 'iron turner' for a 'motor engineer'. By this time George, (I believe) following an accident, was no longer a miner and had found work with Stockport Corporation as a lamplighter: walking round the town each evening turning on the gas-fired street lights, and turning them off again in the morning.

James had married Edith Barratt in 1906; the date of  birth of their first daughter Alice suggests that even Methodists were not averse to pre-marital activity. Room was found in the 'two-up two-down' Portwood Place house for his wife and child as well as his younger brother William who was still unmarried.

An Iron Turner doesn't sound impressive, but it is what we would today call a lathe operator: a skilled role especially in the days before automation. The Motor Engineer at which he learned his trade was, I believe, Henry Hollingdrake & Son, a long-established Stockport firm of ironfounders who had begun to build and sell motor cars. Not long after the 1911 record was taken, and before my mother was born on 30 June 1912, James moved his family to their own rented home. They moved between various houses in the Portwood area; my mother remembered Hall Street and Borron Street, and the 1918 Electoral Register has them at 1 Mersey Street.  George Hill died at 1 Mersey Street in January 1917, and his widow Alice lived with James and his family for the rest of her life.

By 1918 James's elder brother William, who had also become an engineer,  had married and moved with his wife Margaret to a terraced house at 18 Denton Street where they remained for the rest of their lives. We visited them often; I remember the little dark house with its bakelite radio and the pleasant aroma from the timber yard opposite.   None of the houses mentioned in these paragraphs still exist, having been bulldozed in the slum clearances of the 1960s; of nearby Brunswick Methodist Chapel where George Hill was buried, all that remains are the relics of the graveyard, marooned in a motorway junction.

Neither James nor William was called into the army during World War I thanks to their essential work in the engineering factories, and towards the end of the war James took the offer of partnership in a motor engineering business in Chapel-en-le-Frith, and the firm became known as Scholes, Hill and Scholes. The Scholes family ran the 'Hanging Gate' inn in the hamlet of Cockyard on the road between Whaley Bridge and Chapel-en-le-Frith. Fred Scholes, son of the landlord, had been discharged from the Army in November as 'no longer physically fit' and it was with him that James joined in business. They worked from a building adjacent to the Inn, possibly called 'Cockyard Garage.' Any information about this would be welcome. James moved his family - mother Alice, wife Edith and daughters Alice, Agnes and Ethel (b.1915) to a small cottage adjacent to the 'Rose and Crown' inn in the hamlet of Tunstead Milton on the main road between Cockyard and Whaley Bridge.

The business must have done well enough, as in 1927 James had accumulated enough capital to pay builders G. & F. Mellor of Chapel-en-le Frith to build a detached house on a plot on Chapel Road at the southern extremity of the village of Whaley Bridge. The house was given the name 'Merlewood' (pronounced M-early-wood). Why this name was chosen, I have no idea. There, James installed a generator (with Agnes in charge of refilling the petrol tank) to provide electric light, and a crystal radio, with an aerial strung along the garden, on which the girls would take turns to listen to BBC broadcasts. James's mother Alice lived just long enough to be photographed at the doorway; she died in 1928.

In the following years, Scholes, Hill and Scholes ran into money trouble, and James could also be found driving a taxi. He would also take the family on excursions using his motorcycle and sidecar, and later the family car, nickamed 'Daisy.'  My mother wanted to learn to drive, but her father would have none of it, nor would she continue her education.

After the death of his wife in 1948, he immediately married Winifred Smith, a friend of his daughter Alice. This met with considerable disapproval, especially amongst the family who would have inherited the house. He sold Merlewood, and bought a caravan, apparently with the intention of travelling around the country.  However, what really happened was that James and Winifred settled and ended their married life in the caravan on a site in the village of Burgh Castle, in Norfolk. We visited them there once,  travelling in Willam Morris's Riley car, and stayed in a wooden cabin on the caravan site. I recall the place as rather bleak.

James died in Norfolk in 1963, and Winfred returned to live in Chinley, near Whaley Bridge; she died there in 1978.

Three Daughters

Ethel, the youngest of the three daughters of James and Edith, was the first to leave home. In 1936, she married William Morris (1911-1979), with his brother Eric the 'sons' in the firm of F. Morris & Sons, operators of the nearby Shallcross Foundry, specialists in cast iron street furniture and similar items. (The firm still trades under the family name in the 21st century.) She found herself joining a relatively wealthy family.

His eldest daughter Alice found work in domestic service in a large house in Reservoir Road, employment which terminated abruptly when her mother, a confirmed Methodist, found her cleaning sliver on a Sunday. Middle sister Agnes also had a brief taste of service, looking after a child for a shopkeeper iin Chapel-en-leFrith, with she hated. By the 1930s, both Alice and Agnes were working at the Mevril Springs bleachworks, where my mother Agnes worked upstairs, wrapping parcels of bleached cotton fabric which had been compressed into tight blocks. It was there she met my father, Charles Hulme, who worked as a labourer in the chemical-ridden conditions of the factory floor loading cloth into the tanks for bleaching.



Septemer 25, 1948, Whaley Bridge Methodist Church, : (l. to r.) James Vernon, Mrs Vernon? , unknown, Marion Hulme, Beatrice Hulme, Charles Hulme, Agnes Hulme, Ethel Morris with son James, James Hill, Ivy Hulme, Alice Hill, William Morris, H. Green?.

METHODIST WEDDING.- The wedding took place at Whaley Bridge Methodist Church, on Saturday, of Miss Agnes Hill, second daughter of Mr. and late Mrs. James Hill, of Merlewood, Chapel-road, only son of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Hulme, of 5, Reservoir-road, Whaley Bridge. Rev. R.E. Barker conducted the service, during which the hymns "The voice that breathed o'er Eden" and "O perfect love" were sung, Mr baker being at the organ.

The bride looked charming in a dress of saxe-blue crepe de chine, with sequin trimmings, navy hat, shoes and gloves, and a shower bouquet of red carnations and white heather. Her only bridesmaid, Miss Ivy Hulme (niece of the bridegroom), wore a dress of ice-blue satin, with sequin trimmings, head-dress, gloves and shoes to match, and a posy of white chrysanthemums and blue scabious. Mr. James Vernon was the best man, the groomsmen being Mr W. Morris (brother-in-law of the bride) and Mr. H. Green (cousin of the bridegroom). As the bride left the church she received silver horse-shoes from Master James E. Morris (her nephew) and Miss Audrey Green (cousin of the bridegroom) of Patricroft.

A reception was held in the schoolroom, where thirty guests were entertained. The bride's gift to the bridegroom was a travelling case, and the bridgegroom's gift to the bride was a silver wristlet watch. The bridgegroom's gift to the bridesmaid was a silver locket and chain. Among the presents received by Mr. and Mrs. Hulme were cutlery from the bride's colleagues, and silver cake-basket, fruit-bowl and silver servers from the bridegroom's colleagues.

Mr. and Mrs. Hulme went to Blackpool for the honeymoon, the bride travelling in a navy blue costume hat and shoes.

Page compiled by Charlie Hulme, December 2012. Update May 2024. All comments and corrections welcomed: info@nwrail.org.uk

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