LOWER CORVE STREET – THEN AND NOW
MEN WHO MADE THEIR MARK
Over the years, Mill Street and Broad Street have been praised by poets and politicians, but on Wednesday 13 September 2023, Ludlow Civic Society organised an Open Forum to celebrate Lower Corve Street, Ludlow’s industrial quarter. Based on the book, “The People and History of Lower Corve Street and St. Mary’s Lane, Ludlow”, by Jonathan and Rosemary Wood, the programme covered the following:
Men Who Made Their Mark
Tanning and glovemaking flourished in Ludlow, and educated and wealthy men created dynasties and built elite houses funded by their profits. But in 1815, the end of the Napoleonic wars resulted in a slump in glovemaking and chronic depression. Yet by the end of the C19, several men living and working in the industrial, northern quarter of lower Corve Street emerged to make their mark as successful entrepreneurs. And their descendants still live in the town.
Presentation written by Rosemary Wood and delivered by Wendy McCracken, Membership Secretary, Ludlow Civic Society and Emeritus Professor of Deaf Education, University of Manchester.
Reynolds of Ludlow and the Friends’ Meeting House in St. Mary’s Lane.
A Conversation between Garth Reynolds and Roy Thwaites.
Arthur Basil Reynolds was a talented cabinet maker and devout Quaker whose furniture was greatly influenced by Arts and Crafts principles. When Arthur died suddenly in 1960, his sons, Garth and Christopher, took over the business. Christopher left some years later to pursue other interests, but Garth remained until Reynolds of Ludlow closed in 1980. In 1969, Garth bought Oak Cottage in St. Mary’s Lane; the dilapidated barn his children played in and which Garth rebuilt would later become The Ludlow Society of (Quaker) Friends’ Meeting House.
A passionate collector of Reynolds’ furniture, Roy will invite Garth to share the memories of his father, the furniture, the people who created it, and life in St. Mary’s Lane.
Memories: Contributions from the floor
The Men and Boys Who Went to War.
Many families living in lower Corve Street and St. Mary’s Lane in the early 1900s had sons or husbands who fought in WWI.
An interactive session created and performed by Simon Bolton and Paul Sayers of Rooftop Theatre, featuring Skye Whitney and Paul Kemp.
Following is the script and power-point presentation of the first session,
MEN WHO MADE THEIR MARK
At the far end of Corve Street, the river runs behind houses built from the C15 onwards by wealthy and influential dyers, tanners and glovers.
MEN WHO MADE THEIR MARK
Over the years, Mill Street and Broad Street have been praised by poets and politicians, but on Wednesday 13 September 2023, Ludlow Civic Society organised an Open Forum to celebrate Lower Corve Street, Ludlow’s industrial quarter. Based on the book, “The People and History of Lower Corve Street and St. Mary’s Lane, Ludlow”, by Jonathan and Rosemary Wood, the programme covered the following:
Men Who Made Their Mark
Tanning and glovemaking flourished in Ludlow, and educated and wealthy men created dynasties and built elite houses funded by their profits. But in 1815, the end of the Napoleonic wars resulted in a slump in glovemaking and chronic depression. Yet by the end of the C19, several men living and working in the industrial, northern quarter of lower Corve Street emerged to make their mark as successful entrepreneurs. And their descendants still live in the town.
Presentation written by Rosemary Wood and delivered by Wendy McCracken, Membership Secretary, Ludlow Civic Society and Emeritus Professor of Deaf Education, University of Manchester.
Reynolds of Ludlow and the Friends’ Meeting House in St. Mary’s Lane.
A Conversation between Garth Reynolds and Roy Thwaites.
Arthur Basil Reynolds was a talented cabinet maker and devout Quaker whose furniture was greatly influenced by Arts and Crafts principles. When Arthur died suddenly in 1960, his sons, Garth and Christopher, took over the business. Christopher left some years later to pursue other interests, but Garth remained until Reynolds of Ludlow closed in 1980. In 1969, Garth bought Oak Cottage in St. Mary’s Lane; the dilapidated barn his children played in and which Garth rebuilt would later become The Ludlow Society of (Quaker) Friends’ Meeting House.
A passionate collector of Reynolds’ furniture, Roy will invite Garth to share the memories of his father, the furniture, the people who created it, and life in St. Mary’s Lane.
Memories: Contributions from the floor
The Men and Boys Who Went to War.
Many families living in lower Corve Street and St. Mary’s Lane in the early 1900s had sons or husbands who fought in WWI.
An interactive session created and performed by Simon Bolton and Paul Sayers of Rooftop Theatre, featuring Skye Whitney and Paul Kemp.
Following is the script and power-point presentation of the first session,
MEN WHO MADE THEIR MARK
At the far end of Corve Street, the river runs behind houses built from the C15 onwards by wealthy and influential dyers, tanners and glovers.
Winding from the old Corve bridge southwards the street can still look like a typical village lane leading towards a church.
No. 16 Mill Street was the stable.
This presentation is about some of the men who lived and worked in this not so prosperous industrial, northern quarter of lower Corve Street who emerged to make their mark as successful entrepreneurs and property owners, and whose descendants still live in the town.
In the mid-C17, Mill Street became a major centre for the carrying trade. Covered wagons pulled by four or perhaps six horses transported goods between Ludlow and London, and was run from Nos. 15 - 17 Mill Street.
The 1840 edition of Porter’s Directory listed two coal hauliers, Richard Bird and Daniel Dodd, both of Bridge End in lower Corve Street. They and other carriers used large wagons to fetch coal from Clee Hill, weighing it in Galdeford before its distribution. In 1851, Daniel Dodd was recorded in Samuel Bagshawe’s History, Gazetteer, and Directory of Shropshire as a carrier to Shrewsbury, and by 1859, was ‘a farmer of Ludlow in the County of Salop’, and the owner of The Unicorn Inn, its yard, stables, and Nos. 64 and 65 Corve Street.
Carrying was a profitable business.
In the mid-C17, Mill Street became a major centre for the carrying trade. Covered wagons pulled by four or perhaps six horses transported goods between Ludlow and London, and was run from Nos. 15 - 17 Mill Street.
The 1840 edition of Porter’s Directory listed two coal hauliers, Richard Bird and Daniel Dodd, both of Bridge End in lower Corve Street. They and other carriers used large wagons to fetch coal from Clee Hill, weighing it in Galdeford before its distribution. In 1851, Daniel Dodd was recorded in Samuel Bagshawe’s History, Gazetteer, and Directory of Shropshire as a carrier to Shrewsbury, and by 1859, was ‘a farmer of Ludlow in the County of Salop’, and the owner of The Unicorn Inn, its yard, stables, and Nos. 64 and 65 Corve Street.
Carrying was a profitable business.
Nos. 64 and 65 Corve Street and The Unicorn Inn.
A carrier’s wagon outside Nos. 46 – 50 Corve Street, then the main road into Ludlow from the north. Pencil drawing by Ellen Wilkinson, c.1900.
Transport needs increased, and in the late C19 and C20, several road haulage businesses were established in and around lower Corve Street. Their success was helped by the arrival of the Hereford and Shrewsbury Railway in 1852, and the proximity of the railway station. In 1885, the cattle and auction market moved from Smithfield to the site of what is now Tesco, and, in 1891, William and Charles Marston built Marston Mill, a five-storey, nine-bay milling warehouse, close to the railway station. For nearly a century it was a focal point for much of the trade in agricultural products in and out of Ludlow.
 This small area between Corve Street, Corve Bridge, and Bromfield Road was home to several haulage companies.
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Marston Mill.
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No. 72 Corve Street, The Tan House.
RICHARD AND WILLIAM BIRD
Rented or owned Nos. 72, 76, The Queen’s Arms Inn, 78, 79, and 80 Corve Street, plus property in Hayton’s Bent.
From 1840 onwards, Richard Bird was a coal dealer, then a haulier with a removals business. In 1851, he was living in No. 72 Corve Street with his wife, Mary, sons Richard and William, and Margaret, a servant who may have been his niece. Now described as ‘farmer and publican’, he leased the Queen’s Arms Inn, garden, yard and bark barn from William Child, storing ricks of bark here for the local tanneries which proliferated by the river.
When he died on 15 March 1867, Richard Bird was able to leave Mary, ‘All goods, furniture, linen, farming stock, crops, monies and all other personal estate’ and divide his land, farms and property, in Ludlow and Lower Hayton in the parish of Stanton Lacy, between his children, Richard, Jane, William and Mary. Jane inherited two houses and land in Corve Street (occupied by Owen Rooke and William Preece) and a house, stable and yard near Corve Bridge occupied by John Farmer. After the death of her mother, Jane would receive ‘the house and garden now in the occupation of Catharine Pearce.’ Richard believed in equality; he appointed Mary and Jane his executrices, ensuring that ‘my dear wife Mary’ was well provided for with capital and property ‘for her own absolute use and benefit.’ He safeguarded his daughters’ future by stating that the properties left to them ‘shall be enjoyed by them respectively as separate property free from marital control.’ The codicil to his will was witnessed by William Eggington Thompson, Surgeon and Richard Williams of Corve Street, Gentleman. Both witnesses are ‘men of status.’ Yet Richard Bird couldn’t write, and, presumably, couldn’t read. His will and codicil were signed by Richard ‘making his mark, published and declared by him Richard Bird his X mark ….….’
Rented or owned Nos. 72, 76, The Queen’s Arms Inn, 78, 79, and 80 Corve Street, plus property in Hayton’s Bent.
From 1840 onwards, Richard Bird was a coal dealer, then a haulier with a removals business. In 1851, he was living in No. 72 Corve Street with his wife, Mary, sons Richard and William, and Margaret, a servant who may have been his niece. Now described as ‘farmer and publican’, he leased the Queen’s Arms Inn, garden, yard and bark barn from William Child, storing ricks of bark here for the local tanneries which proliferated by the river.
When he died on 15 March 1867, Richard Bird was able to leave Mary, ‘All goods, furniture, linen, farming stock, crops, monies and all other personal estate’ and divide his land, farms and property, in Ludlow and Lower Hayton in the parish of Stanton Lacy, between his children, Richard, Jane, William and Mary. Jane inherited two houses and land in Corve Street (occupied by Owen Rooke and William Preece) and a house, stable and yard near Corve Bridge occupied by John Farmer. After the death of her mother, Jane would receive ‘the house and garden now in the occupation of Catharine Pearce.’ Richard believed in equality; he appointed Mary and Jane his executrices, ensuring that ‘my dear wife Mary’ was well provided for with capital and property ‘for her own absolute use and benefit.’ He safeguarded his daughters’ future by stating that the properties left to them ‘shall be enjoyed by them respectively as separate property free from marital control.’ The codicil to his will was witnessed by William Eggington Thompson, Surgeon and Richard Williams of Corve Street, Gentleman. Both witnesses are ‘men of status.’ Yet Richard Bird couldn’t write, and, presumably, couldn’t read. His will and codicil were signed by Richard ‘making his mark, published and declared by him Richard Bird his X mark ….….’
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No. 77 Corve Street, now known as The Bridge Inn, was originally called “The Queen’s Arms” - left.
The building above, behind the Queen’s Arms was probably the bark barn
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In 1870, Mary Bird was landlady of The Queen’s Arm, and by 1879, son William was ‘Innkeeper/Landlord. But the previous year, William entered into a mortgage contract with Mr. Thomas Medlicott of Ludlow ‘of £1,600 for the Queens Arms Inn and all the land, gardens and premises bordered on the North and West side by the former turnpike road, on the southside by the lane leading from Corve Street to St. Mary’s Lane and on the East side by the lane leading from St. Mary’s Lane to the turnpike road.'
On 10 May, on behalf of Mr. Medlicott, Anderson and Davies, Solicitors, signed the Schedule of Title Deeds to secure £1,600 plus interest at £4 per annum. In addition to The Queen’s Arms, the mortgage contract included Nos. 79 and 80 Corve Street, several cottages and land totalling 9 acres, one rood and thirty-three perches.
On 10 May, on behalf of Mr. Medlicott, Anderson and Davies, Solicitors, signed the Schedule of Title Deeds to secure £1,600 plus interest at £4 per annum. In addition to The Queen’s Arms, the mortgage contract included Nos. 79 and 80 Corve Street, several cottages and land totalling 9 acres, one rood and thirty-three perches.
The Botfield and Leighton arms at the top of the West Window in St. Laurence's church.
(Click to make image bigger)
The Botfield Family of Ironmasters
Subsequent owners of land and property in Brand Lane, Broad Street, Castle Street, Clee Hill, the Linney, Lower Corve Street and St. Mary’s Lane.
• Thomas (I) 1738 - 1801
• Thomas (II) 1762 - 1843
• William 1766 - 1850
• Beriah (I) 1768 - 1813
• Beriah (II) 1807 - 1863
In 1783, Thomas Botfield (I), a Dawley man, established ironworks and mines in the Clee Hills, specifically Cornbrook furnace and Cleobury Dale forge and rolling mill. In 1790, he built the Old Park Ironworks in Madeley, which combined mining, furnaces, casting and rolling; it was fuelled by coal and iron ore from the collieries on land leased from Hawkins Browne. Botfield built houses for his workers at Old Park, as well as the village of Dark Lane for the colliers. On his death in 1801, the business was inherited by his three sons, Thomas, William and Beriah. Neither Thomas nor Beriah was associated directly with the works or mines, but William Botfield oversaw the day-to-day operation of the family’s Old Park and Stirchley Ironworks. In 1806, the former was the largest ironworks in Shropshire and the second largest in Great Britain, with an annual profit of £15,000, whilst the latter, in Telford, opened in 1828 and consisted of two blast furnaces, a forge, and a mill: it later expanded to produce bricks in 1838.
The crowning glory of the Old Park Works was a rolling mill engine with cast iron beam. Purchased from Boulton & Watt and installed in 1801 at a cost of £1,475, it was William Botfield’s pride and joy. In a letter of 1802, William Wilkinson, a guest at Old Park, remarked that Botfield was so pleased with it ‘he keeps a woman at 8/- per week to wash the engine house every day more than once and to keep the ironwork well black’d and everything clean which is a difficult task in a place where there is so much dust as in a forge & rolling mill’.20 At Old Park in 1832, most skilled workmen were provided with accommodation of a standard suitable to their status, the rent being deducted from their wages. When John Sims handed in his two-months’ notice in 1808, he was given equal notice to quit his house or pay 2s. per week rent. Sims probably lived at Forge Row, a row of 50 houses built piecemeal from the 1790s for workmen at Old Park. The houses varied in their standard of accommodation, reflecting the hierarchy among workmen. The largest had four bedrooms, making them among the best of workmen’s houses of the period. Company houses were a characteristic of coalfield industrialisation, especially where the iron industry developed. Iron merchants and carriers attended quarterly meetings at Birmingham; these were a firm fixture of the trade when Thomas Botfield built the Old Park Ironworks in 1790. Quarter days were Lady Day, Midsummer, Michaelmas and generally two weeks after Christmas. Ironmasters like Botfield used the opportunity to request payments and as the principal forum for receiving orders: ‘our method of doing business is we generally take at quarter day orders for nearly the whole make of our iron, to be delivered in the course of the quarter which we do as regular to each house as we can’. This allowed an ironworks to organise its production over a three-month period, which was clearly desirable for a complex operation. It also informed ironmasters what grades and types of iron were in demand, and presented choices to them of either producing a variety of special products, or risking production on regular types of bar in the hope that the price would remain profitable. Old Park routinely turned down orders once its productive capacity had been reached. Quarter days were also partly a social occasion. They ensured that an ironmaster had a fairly good idea of what his competitors within the region were doing. In 1799 and 1800, William Botfield attended meetings of Shropshire ironmasters at Shifnal and at the Tontine Inn in Ironbridge. Shropshire ironmasters sometimes set prices and wages which differed from the Black Country. They also had other shared interests. They were a regional group with a national reputation in the industry, and locally they formed a lobby on social issues in relation to landowners and magistrates. Members of the Botfield family were prosperous and married well. William’s father-in-law was John Bishton (d. 1807) the leading shareholder in the Lilleshall Company, controlling Snedshill, Wrockwardine Wood and Donnington Wood Ironworks; William and Thomas (II) also owned land and property in Ludlow. When Beriah Botfield (I) died in 1813, his son, also Beriah, aged 6, of Norton Hall, Northamptonshire, inherited his share.
Thomas Botfield, 1762 - 1843.
Born in Dawley and educated at the endowed school of Cleobury Mortimer, Thomas (II) invented a method of smelting and making iron using the principle of “gas flame or heated air in the blast of furnaces”. Botfield’s 1828 patent seems to have anticipated most of the elements of the blast furnace as it was used in the 1830s and 1840s. Seated at Hopton Court in Hopton Wafers, whose manor he purchased in 1812, Thomas married in 1800 and funded the rebuilding of Hopton’s parish church in 1825. He was one of the original members of the Geological Society, and early Fellow of the Society of Arts. He was also a Fellow of the Horticultural Society, a member of the Royal Institution, and the Royal Geographical and Agricultural Societies. A frequent attendant at the meetings of the British Association, in his visits to the metropolis he rarely missed a meeting of any society to which he belonged. He was a JP and Deputy Lieutenant of Shropshire. In 1842, he was appointed treasurer of the Salop Infirmary in Shrewsbury.
One of the ‘foreign’ investors who possessed several properties in Ludlow, in 1822, he owned and was paying £80 tax on High Hall in Castle Street, which he rented to his relative, Sir Edward Thomason, a manufacturer and inventor, who lived here from 1837 until the mid-1840s, employing six servants. As Thomas was ‘a foreigner’, so his relative was ‘an immigrant’, contributing much to the community. Edward Thomason was the son of a Birmingham buckle maker who had been knighted by William IV; he retired to Ludlow, where he rented High Hall, became a Municipal Charity trustee, a committee member of the company erecting the new Assembly Rooms, and prime mover of the Mechanics’ Institute; ultimately, ill health meant he moved to Bath. Thomas Botfield also owned or leased houses, stables, premises, gardens and a malthouse in Broad Street, Brand Lane, Old Street, and the Linney, together with land and property in St. Mary’s Lane and No. 3 Castle Street, where ironmonger Joshua Cooper was a tenant. I
In 1831, Henry Harding, maltster, was a tenant in No. 101 Corve Street. On 29 September 1841, he attended an auction sale at The Angel Hotel, where Thomas Botfield was selling ‘Messuages, Stables, Orchards and Gardens, in thirteen Lots or Parcels, in printed particulars of sale’. A document dated 4 November 1841 states ‘Henry Harding was the highest bidder of £220’ for these properties, which were on the site of the present-day St. Mary’s House and Nos. 13 – 15 St. Mary’s Lane. Deeds and wills in the possession of the current owners of St. Mary’s House tell us that ‘THOMAS BOTFIELD, late of Hopton Court, SALOP ESQ. did leave all his property, Farms etc. in Ludlow, to his brother WILLIAM BOTFIELD and to his wife LUCY, of Rectory Hill, in SALOP and BERIAH BOTFIELD’ (the son of his brother, Beriah.) Seven years later, when William died without children, his nephew, Beriah, inherited his assets.
Beriah Botfield (II) 1807-63.
Beriah Botfield, antiquarian, bibliophile and MP for Ludlow, was born in 1807 in Earl’s Ditton, Shropshire. His father, Beriah senior, died in 1813, and his widow, Charlotte Withering, youngest daughter of Dr. William Withering, a physician and member of Birmingham’s mid-C18 circle, died when Beriah was an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford. Charlotte’s tomb in Norton church, Northamptonshire, sculpted by William Behnes in 1825, depicts Beriah, aged 18 and life-sized, grieving over a sarcophagus which bears his mother’s name.
Beriah’s inheritance from his uncle, Thomas II, included six ‘status’ properties in Ludlow. They may have been intended to boost his political ambitions for the by-election of 1840 saw Beriah, the Conservative candidate, easily defeat his Liberal opponent, George G. de H. Larpent; he also won his seat in the General Election of 1841, serving from 1840 – 46. The Conservatives, whose power base was largely rural, were committed to the Corn Laws, while their opponents embraced repeal and free trade. Botfield supported repeal, and, significantly, was rejected by the voters in 1847, when a new protectionist Tory candidate, Henry Bailey Clive, was elected. He served again from 1857 – 63, during which time Botfield, an antiquary of some reputation, offered his patronage to excavation of the remains of the Augustinian Friary on the site of the newly proposed cattle market at Smithfield in Lower Galdeford. The results were presented to the Society of Antiquaries, together with a reconstruction drawing made by Ludlow architect, Herbert Evans. Fully supported by the mayor, (George Cocking, 1860 – 1861, a chemist who lived in the Bull Ring) the venture represented a new spirit of civic pride.
On 21 October 1858, Beriah married Isabella Leighton in Alberbury, Shropshire. She was the daughter of Sir Baldwin Leighton, the seventh Baronet, who was also a Conservative party politician. They had no children. The stone tracery of the great West Window in St. Laurence’s, the parish church of Ludlow, dates from the remodelling of the church in the second quarter of the C15, but its original stained glass was destroyed in 1719. Beriah and Isabella commissioned Thomas Willement, the ‘Father of Victorian Stained Glass’ who had ‘reinvented’ the art of traditional stained glass-making, to create the present window with its depictions of owners of Ludlow Castle. The glass was installed under the supervision of Gilbert Scott during the 1859- 60 restoration, and contains the coat of arms of Ludlow and that of the Botfields and Leightons.
Although he came from a family of ironmasters and had been a partner in the company since 1828, Beriah had no direct experience of the iron trade. In 1856 he failed in his negotiation to renew the lease of Old Park, when the landlord, Robert Cheney, took over the works and established the Old Park Company, owning Old Park furnaces and forge, and Stirchley furnaces. Capitalised at £100,000, over three quarters of the shares were taken by the Cheney and Capel Cure families. The Botfield family’s other concerns, including Stirchley forge, were on freehold land, and these now became the focus of family interest. Beriah Botfield died on 7 August 1863, at his home at Grosvenor Square, London, aged 56. His affairs were managed in trust for Isabella by her brother, Stanley Leighton MP, and Henry Grenfell MP, the member for Stoke, and the business traded under the name Leighton & Grenfell. By 1872 neither the forge nor the furnaces were profitable and the forge was working at a reduced capacity. In 1873, Isabella, who had subsequently married Alfred Seymour MP, instructed the trustees to sell. That year, the estate was purchased for £25,000 by the Haybridge Iron Company. It has been suggested that Beriah Botfield was guilty of poor judgement when, in 1856, he lost the lease of the Old Park Estate. In 1790, Thomas Botfield, and his three sons in 1801, had looked to the iron trade for their best prospect of advancement: Beriah Botfield probably had higher and broader expectations. He was a land owner, scholar and MP, demonstrating the considerable social advancement made possible largely through a successful family business. To continue with a strategy devised for the late C18 may have been judged too risky. His father, Beriah senior, had lived at Norton Hall, Northamptonshire, and his son became High Sheriff of Northamptonshire, MP for Ludlow, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and President of the British Archaeological Association. He was made a knight of the Order of Albert the Brave of Saxony for presenting a collection of British minerals to the royal collection at Dresden and a knight of the Order of Leopold (Belgium) after presenting a taxidermy collection of British birds to Brussels Natural History Museum. He served as a Cornet in the South Shropshire Yeomanry Cavalry in 1845, and was treasurer of the Salop Infirmary in Shrewsbury in 1859. In his will he left a considerable bequest to the Institution of Civil Engineers, and his collections of early printed and colour-plate books and paintings, mainly Dutch landscapes, to the Marquess of Bath, with whose family he claimed tenuous links.
Copyright: Rosemary and Jonathan Wood, “The People and History of Lower Corve Street and St. Mary’s Lane, Ludlow.
Beriah and Isabella Botfield.
Beriah Botfield inherited No. 69 Corve Street (York House) from his uncle.
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Photographs by Camille Silvy,
1861. © National Portrait Gallery, London, Courtesy of the Trustees.
No. 69 Corve Street in 2022.
The photograph on the left was taken in 1945.
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