We turn now to discuss the occupations other than agricultural labourer.  Apart from the labourers, the Aston Upthorpe Census lists a collection of other occupations.  A baker (seventy year old Elizabeth Curtis), a butcher (Stephen Child), a publican (Thomas Summersby), a brewer (Thomas Hale), a blacksmith (sixty year old Lydia Pope) and two shoemakers (William Huggins, John Clifford), two carpenters (Richard and Henry Finch) and a drover (John Blackall).  In addition to these traders we have a schoolmistress (Ann Hearmon), two surgeons (John Breach and John Workman), an independent lady (Mary Parsons), and a farmer (Henry Slade).

For Aston Tirrold, the Census lists the following occupations other than the agricultural labourers: three bakers (John Goddard, Arabella Herbert and Mary Munday, both women sixty and over), two grocers (Eliza Smith and Thomas Curtis), a publican (Francis Beckinsale), a brewer’s labourer (William Irons), a carpenter (William Keate), a carrier (William Patrick), two dealers (John Parsons and John Lane), a shopman (George Buckner) and a tailor (Samuel Arnould).

We now proceed to discuss these occupations and observe how, in many cases, a few families sought to control them.  Much as agricultural labouring families in effect controlled the unskilled labour market, so these few families managed to monopolise the trades and retail sectors.  The following review adopts the same pattern as before: an account of the reconstructed family in as far as the records allow together with their appearances in the Slade letters.  It will quickly become clear that, for this level of society, the mentions number far more than the handful dedicated to the agricultural labourers.  We may conclude, therefore, that these people meant far more as individuals to Charlotte Slade and her family than the more populous agricultural labourers, whom we must accept mostly constituted a faceless mass for the correspondents at the Slade level.

For most of the century, carpentry and building business lay within the FINCH family.

Of almost the fifty Finches that we know, all descend from John Finch (1743-1829) and Martha Harris (1745-1817).  Martha came from the Astons, but John came from Wallingford.  Two lines of descent come from this pair: their son Benjamin (listed as a yeoman in 1841) and their son Richard (listed as a carpenter in 1841).  We have evidence that the Finches worked in carpentry over four consecutive generations.  Richard Finch (1782-1847) comes first in this list, his great grandson Frederick (b 1866) comes at the end.  In between come his son Henry (b 1809 and still flourishing as a wheelwright in 1891), and his two grandsons, Frederick (b 1834) and Albert (b 1847).  The Finch family fully embraced carpentry, for we find Charles Dove Finch, cousin to Henry, visiting him in 1851.  Charles came from Newbury, but gives his job as journeyman carpenter.  The Census tells us that at this time Henry had one man working for him, so Charles may well have been that man.  The Directories list George Finch as a wheelwright in 1864, although he does not appear in the 1841 Census.

The Slade letters contain quite frequent mention of the Finches, mostly the brothers Henry and George, sons of Richard, the first carpenter.  Fred Slade and his father Henry would often drop by the wheelerwright’s shop, listening to the gossip. 

Fred teases George because the musicians from Meeting come over to listen to the music at the Church.  (This had undergone a revival recently under the auspices of Mr Noad and his sister).  It seems that they have come to copy the Church music.  George and two other Finches, David and Jonathan (not known in the records), all help with the music at Meeting.   George admires Miss Noad’s voice.  Fred also teases George because he had begun to pay his addresses to a schoolmistress in Cholsey.  Unfortunately, he had found a lady who was staunch Church, the Finches being fairly staunch Dissenters.  George takes instructions from Charlotte Workman to repair a fence and knows the Slades well enough to find himself the recipient of personal thoughts from Charlotte Slade.  For a while George found himself banned from undertaking work at the Fullers.  The servant girls refuse to get their work done and will not leave him alone.  The Fullers prefer his brother Henry, because, being married, he has gone off the market.  This does not stop George from scenting the future match between Mr Noad and Miss Fuller.

Charlotte Slade kept her eye on George Finch.  She suspects that he has begun sleeping over at his fiancée’s house in Cholsey.  She knows this because she catches him wearing his Sunday clothes one Saturday evening, twice.  He denies that he has married the girl, even though Charlotte has heard a report two weeks ago that Chapel bells had rung for him.  George finds this embarrassing and blushes when Charlotte catches him a second time.  Somewhat darkly, Charlotte also mentions a long tour taken with the lady to see her relations in Warwickshire. 

George may have told the truth, because the records contain no mention of any marriage or progeny for him.  In fact, he never appears in the Census at all.  The Directory mention of him as wheelwright refers to 1864.  Perhaps he went to Australia for a while, but returned.  Both George and Henry showed more than a passing interest in Henry Slade’s trip to Australia.  Each of them had thoughts of following him out there.  On one occasion George brings a framed map of Tasmania round to the Slades and hangs it in their parlour.  David and Jonathan Finch also showed an interest in Australia.  The latter makes a hatchet on which he inscribes Henry Slade’s name and brings it round for despatch.

We hear less about Henry.  He makes coffins for old Beckly and his sister, who die within days of each other.  One day, Fred and Ben Slade come over to see some new cottages in construction by the Finches, commissioned by the Valpy family.  Horseplay occurs and Fred twists his knee in a bad way.  They had to bring him home on a truck.  Two months after the accident he still has to use a stick.

The later diaries of Reverends Hooper and Leigh Hoskyns allow us to see progress made by the Finch firm.  Finch the carpenter completed the new schoolhouse on September 2, 1854.  A large job, it cost £120.  Perhaps on the strength of that, the firm also worked on the school at Upton.  In 1862, we find Mr Finch the builder receiving £62 as the first instalment payment.   In 1886, Leigh Hoskyns records This year the [church] tower was roughcast afresh at a cost of £25.  Mr Albert Finch had the contract.  Presumably Henry and his eldest son Frederick worked on the two schoolhouses in Tirrold and Upton.  In 1854, Albert would have been only 7 and still only 15 in 1862.  Albert proved enterprising: in 1895 we find him offering to business also as a blacksmith.

The Finches did not have a complete monopoly of the carpentry trade.  William KEATE (b 1786) appears in the 1841 Census as a carpenter, but he had been a carpenter at least since 1816.  The records show the birth of his son then with himself described as a carpenter. 

Keates go as far back as the current records.  We find record of John Keate getting married to Tomasine Maine in June 1618, and (probably) their son Valentine’s birth in September of the same year. The family probably hit its high spot during the eighteenth century, for it supplied at least two village clerks, including the great Zachary (1740-1810). 

After 1841, however, William appears listed as a labourer, apparently having given up carpentry.  The family maintains a tangential hold on the carpentry business, for we find that one of William’s granddaughters, Martha, subsequently marries James Haynes, born in Iffley, 1833.  The Census lists James as a carpenter and wheelwright. Between 1855 and 1866, they produce five children none of whom apparently die.  By 1871, however, they probably had left the village, because we find no further reference to them.  A second granddaughter, Kezia Keate, born 1842, married Gabriel Allen or Allum in 1867.  At the time of his marriage, Gabriel, from Crowmarsh, describes himself as a labourer.  A year later they baptise their first child, at which point Gabriel has become a carpenter.  Two years further again, Gabriel lists himself as a mason.  Keates do not appear in the letters.

Just over two years after the great dynastic marriage between Wellingham Fuller and Kezia Slade, a similar event occurred.  James Lane (b 1814) married Maria Finch (1816-1895).  This marriage marks the union between two other (potentially) powerful families in the village.  We have already seen the Finches and how they virtually controlled carpentry and building in the village.  The LANES provided a parallel example, for they took a strong hold on the local corn and baking business.

We know between thirty and forty people of this name.  With the exception of one family group - a well travelled bailiff and his family having visited a number of places before coming to the Astons - we can trace connections between most of these Lanes.

The Victorian Lanes all come from John and Hannah (Martin).  Married in 1767, John left his previous residence or birthplace, Moulsford, and came to live with Hannah.  Of their three children, only John (1775-1843), the youngest, seems to have survived and continued the line.  John and Hannah lived a long time, eventually dying within a few months of each other in 1822.  Each had passed eighty years.

From his second wife, Maria Deadman (1778-1815), John had three sons: John (b 1808), Joseph (1811-1876), and James (1814-1874).  Following their father’s entry into the corn business, these three boys and their offspring came to dominate this business sector.

John Lane, the husband of Maria Deadman, begins later on to work as a corn dealer.  His eldest surviving son, John, although beginning as a labourer, soon becomes a grocer.  Joseph moved on from labouring to farm bailiff.  James, the youngest, seems to have gone straight into the corn dealing business.

The Lanes had now got themselves established in all aspects of the corn trade.  James’s son, Thomas (1848-1911) worked through the Victorian age as a corn dealer.  Two cousins, Abner (b 1833) and William (b 1847) - John’s eldest and youngest - worked as Bakers.  Three others, Ruth Maria (b 1837), Elizabeth Ann (b 1845) and Seth (b 1843), ran the grocery store.  It seems that the grocery business had a strong attraction: Ruth Maria’s first occupational listing reads as draper.

In the 1841 Census, we find the Lanes, as if pounced to attack the business.  John Lane, the old man, now a corn dealer, together with his youngest son James, also in the business, live between Arabella Herbert, listed as a baker, and Thomas Curtis, still listed here as a grocer.  Later on he would refer to himself as parish clerk.  The eldest son John we find living elsewhere in the village, but next door to John Goddard, one of the other bakers listed at this time.  Finally, we observe Joseph Lane, still only an agricultural labourer at this time, living as a neighbour to Eliza Smith, grocer.

The Slade letters contain few references to the Lanes.  James Lane (husband of Maria Finch) and Joseph Lane, the sons of John Lane the dealer, aged 65 in 1841 both get a couple of mentions.  The letters probably mean this John Lane when they refer to ‘Old Lane’ who wanted the boys to form a sparrow club thereby protecting his cherries.  His son, James, buys all the Slades’ apples and cherries one year, paying well.  He had also bought the measuring chains that Fred Slade had previously acquired in order to establish the distance from the villages to Moulsford station.  Perhaps it was his brother Joseph, who received a new clarinet for playing in the church, paid for by public subscription.

Also, at this time we find the singular case of the four lady bakers and grocers.   Arabella Herbert, Eliza Smith, Elizabeth Curtis, and Mary Munday each list themselves as bakers or grocers. 

Eliza SMITH (1795-1861) gave up her grocery in favour of teaching, but seems to have gone on parish relief just before the end.  An outsider, from Watlington, she was widowed early on and probably had to support herself.  Elizabeth Curtis (b 1771), nee Patrick, was probably the mother of Thomas, the grocer and clerk.  Mary Munday  (1777-1848), only just widowed, her husband Hugh dying in the year of the Census, came from outside the county, as did probably Hugh.  The parish registers carry nobody of that name before him.  Charlotte Slade records Hugh Munday’s death with a tart comment about his boastfulness all coming to nothing in the end.  Later in 1841, Mrs Munday seems to have found her own deathbed, receiving visits from Mr Marris, the Dissenting minister.  These helped in some part, for she does not die until 1848.  She helped herself as well, since she demonstrated a great unwillingness to die, despite having lost use of her limbs.

Arabella HERBERT (1779-1847) may well have more to her than meets the eye.  The 1841 Census does not list marital status, but Arabella had probably lost her husband by this time.  He may have been William Herbert (1774-1837).  If so, then his mother, Anna had probably come from the Lane family, perhaps a sister of John, the founder, from Moulsford.  So Arabella’s involvement in baking and her living next door to John Lane might not be a coincidence at all.  If Arabella did marry William, then this will have happened after the death of his first wife, Susannah Yeates.  From Upton, the register records her as a minor.  So she was, only 18.

By 1851, Mary Munday, Arabella Herbert had definitely died, as had probably Elizabeth Curtis.  Eliza Smith had changed her occupation to teaching.

One of these ladies may well have worked as the pastry cook and confectioner mentioned by the Marris children around 1840.  This person made the first twelth cake the village had seen.  Another lady grocer may have featured in this picture.  The 1861 Census refers to Martha Cox as a retired grocer.  An unmarried lady, she appears first in the baptismal records for 1788.  The Cox family has a long village history.  Martha lived for another six years, dying in Hammersmith (1867).

Prior to that we know that the HARRIS family ran a grocery.  Between 1825 and 1833, George and Peggy Harris baptise five children.  Within a year George had died, only 33 (1801-1834).  Peggy, formerly Sadler, had married George in 1824, but she did not last long either, dying aged 40 (1800-1840).  We will hear more about this disaster elsewhere.

Thomas Curtis, the great parish clerk, son of Elizabeth Curtis, mentioned above, much respected by Leigh Hoskyns, will have kept his grocery at about this time.  Mentions of this disappear quite quickly since he almost always refers to himself as parish clerk.

The Lanes did not yet have it completely their own way, for we know that John GODDARD ran a bakery during the period of the 1841 and 1851 Census.  The Goddards provide an excellent example of peripatetic trade’s people.  They come to the village, set up business, stay a while and then leave for elsewhere.  The Goddards both came from Hampshire.  Their first two children were born in that county.  Five of their next six children were born in The Astons, although the parish register has no record whatsoever.  By 1861, they have left.  Perhaps it was Mr Goddard who introduced the twelth cake as a recipe he had encountered in postings before coming to the village.

The parish register does, however, reveal that one John Painter worked as a baker during the mid 1840s, but he has taken his family and left by 1851. We know even less about Edward Sheppard.  One of the commercial directories lists him as a shopkeeper and baker in 1854.  He had not featured in the 1851 Census and never appears in any local records.

The Chequers and The Boot provided liquid refreshment for people in Tirrold and Upthorpe respectively.  We find Francis BECKINSALE tending The Chequers and Thomas SUMMERSBY doing the same for The Boot.

Francis came from afar, outside the county, one of the rare ones.  He had married Martha Parsons in 1815, a union from which came Isaac some four years later.  This man probably appears in the letters as ‘Beckley’.  Whenever he receives mention it goes with his interest in Henry Slade’s well being in Australia.  If I were to meet him every day, he would enquire if I had heard from you, she says.  He also corresponds with the young Slade himself, rushing home to make sure he gets it finished by noon to make the post sent by Charlotte.  He featured strongly enough in the Slades’ outlook for his death to receive more than a mention when it happened in 1845.  Francis had a sister, Ann, in London, married to John Hoare, of the City of London.  Hearing of her illness, he took the train, choosing the cheapest option (penny a mile).  The constant stopping of the train to take on passengers, many of them poor, caused him to take cold, it being the middle of winter.  This affected his lungs and he quickly died after returning to the village.  Nevertheless, he died content, singing hymns and reciting scripture as he went.  Just before he died, he summoned Henry Finch and asked him to make two coffins, for he thought his sister would soon join him.  She surely did and the double burial happened.  The memorial stone shows that they died on the same day, January 10th, 1845.  The records show only his burial, though, happening six days later.  Even in his final moments, Francis still thought about Henry Slade.  Mrs Humfrey Fuller visited him and he recounted a dream about Henry Slade, even describing what type of clothing he wore.

The Beckinsales and the Finches enjoyed more than a business relationship.  Five years before Francis died, we catch a glimpse of his son Isaac who had briefly returned to the village.  He goes down to the Finch wheelwright shop to catch up with the gossip, no doubt impressing them with his knowledge of the outside world, for he ‘cuts such a dandy figure’ as Charlotte says.   Isaac must have gone on his travels again for he does not appear in the 1841 Census.  He married Henrietta (b 1819) from Thatcham.  They gave birth to their first two children in South Moreton (1851, 1853).  The third came during a stay at Oxford.  But they returned to the Astons, because their fourth child, Louisa, was born there.  He did not keep the pub, however, for Isaac worked in The Astons as a baker, later becoming a dairyman.

After Beckley died, William IRONS probably took over management of The Chequers.  The Kelly directory of 1847 so notes.  He combined his publican duties with that of postmaster.  A family connection may well exist between William Irons and the Beckinsales.  This connection seems to tie into the heart of the top levels of village society.

We first hear of William Irons in 1840.  He called to see the Slades with some books, coming from Wycombe.  He knew that a letter had come in from Australia and wanted to hear the news.  Apparently he had a wide network, for Charlotte knows that he will retell the news at Brightwell, Moreton and so on.  Old Irons, as the Slades call him, even though he was born in 1800, next appears in the subsequent letter.  He works at the brewery in the village.  Thomas Hale had recently taken this on from the Langfords, injecting vigour and new management.  He has renamed it, seeing more marketing potential in the name Tiger than Sudden Death.  Sensitive to appearances, he has instructed Irons to fatten himself, because for a brewery to employ thin people is nothing less than a disgrace.  Presumably William Irons managed his way through this, for we see him still employed as the brewer’s assistant in the Census of 1841.  Shortly after, on September 22nd 1841, Old Irons takes possession of a house owned by the Slades.  Mr Doe had surrendered it to Irons, turning over the lease for £105.  With this, William Irons is become a Thorpe gentleman.  The tone of Charlotte Slade’s observation jars somewhat, but can best find explanation if we look further into the background of William Irons. 

William came from the union between William Irons and Ann Parsons.  The union had not been blessed by the church so William Irons, the younger, was illegitimate.  His mother never married, it seems, for she, by that name, together with her younger brother, Joseph Parsons, reside with her son, William in 1841.  She was then 66.  William the younger (i.e. Old Irons) subsequently married one Elizabeth Woodley and produced a clutch of children.  In accordance with similar behaviour noticed in the village, illegitimates find like company.  We do not know whether Elizabeth was herself illegitimate, but she had almost certainly one child, if not three, out of wedlock before her marriage to William in 1827.  The records give the child’s name as Emma, baptised 1826.  1841 Census records, however, show an Andrew Woodley as a servant in the Fuller household, then 18 and hence born in 1823.  Over in Upthorpe, the Slades employ Matilda Woodley also as servant.  Matilda gives her age as 17, hence born 1824.

We need to return to William Irons, the Elder.  A year after the birth of his son by Ann Parsons, William marries a widow, her name Mary Langford.  Her first husband was probably James Langford, noted as dying in 1799, aged only 33.  Clearly, then, Mary was a young widow.  Although the records do not allow us to make a direct connection, it would seem that James Langford probably had a brother, William.  William married Kitty Gale, and they become the Mr and Mrs Langford who feature throughout the Slade letters.  They own the brewery that they will turn over to Thomas Hale in 1840.  So, here is the second connection with William Irons the Younger.  He works at the brewery and malthouse as brewer’s labourer in 1841.  We know that other connections exist between the Langfords and Irons.  The Langfords have a horse, borrowed by the Slades, but which they cannot manage.  Mr Langford thought the horse would have behaved if Irons had gone along because the horse would do anything for Irons.

A third connection relates to Wycombe.  When we first meet him, he has come from Wycombe bringing books.  We can establish that the father of Kitty Gale (i.e. Mrs Langford) married into the Butler family, a family that again features regularly in the letters.  Part of this family lived in Wycombe, but maintained a connection with The Astons.  We know, for example, that ‘Aunt Fanny’ dies suddenly in the winter of 1842, while sweeping the snow in the yard.  This was Frances Butler, Kitty Gale-Langford’s aunt.

The Old Irons who becomes the gentleman at last may have been William the Elder, but more likely this phrase relates to his son, William the Younger, brewer’s labourer and husband of Elizabeth Woodley.  Most likely, the subsequent connection of his father into the upper levels of village society through his marriage to the Langford widow somehow cast a shield over William.  He occupied a limbo between what Charlotte calls ‘respectable people’ and everyone else.  From somewhere he found the £105 to take over the lease on the Slade house.  Presumably the Slades could have refused this, as they refused to allow tenants into Henry Slade junior’s cottage, in the hope that he would return.  They chose to accept.  Notice also the presence of the two Woodley children as servants in two of the prime households in the Astons: Slades and Fullers.  So, perhaps we have here evidence of how the upper levels of society would protect an illegitimate if the child might belong to their network, however loosely.

We have not yet touched on the relationship between William Irons and Francis Beckinsale and how the former took over The Chequers probably from the latter.  The linkage relates to the Parsons family.  We have established that Ann Parsons was the mother of William.  The records also tell us that Martha Beckinsale, the wife of Francis, had been born Martha Parsons.  Unfortunately, the records do not permit a solid reconstruction of the extensive Parsons family (nine households in three or four main groupings during the 1841 Census).  Close relations of Martha married into the Didcock and Dearlove families, most of whom worked as agricultural labourers.  Perhaps most interestingly of all, however, is the fact that yet another Parsons female features in this web.  One Mary Parsons, spinster, married William Butler, bachelor, in 1758.  We have to take care here, since a Mary Butler, wife of William, died in 1780, aged 75.  Also recorded on the stone are the names of her son George and her daughter Jane.  The ages given there tie in with parish records for birth dates of 1765 and 1766 respectively.  If true this would mean that Mary Parsons had produced these children aged 60 and upwards.  More sensibly, the stone, now gone was probably misread for her age at death, sadly much younger than 75.  Mary Parsons-Butler was probably one of the three Mary Parsons born in the 1730s.  This would make her in her late twenties at marriage, and therefore more likely to have produced the six children attributed to her.  It was the daughter of this Parsons female who married John Gale and produced the Kitty who became Mrs Langford, wife of the brewery owner.  So, presumably this Parsons belonged to appropriate levels of society for the Butlers.  We cannot, unfortunately, link Mary Parsons, Ann Parsons, and Martha Parsons directly with each other.

So much of the commercial trade in the Astons during this period belonged to specific family groups and networks.  It may well be that the same applied for a while to The Chequers and to the Tiger brewery, linked doubly through the Langford and Parsons families and rotating around William Irons, who persisted in becoming a Thorpe gentleman in the end.

Thomas Hale, it seems, in common with Irons, was a horseman.  We find him exercising the Slades’ black horse and getting the horse used to the trains, a new and frightening experience for the horses.  Later on he helps Fred Slade break in his new and expensive horse.  Thomas liked to play the bugle.  He had a tendency to practise the instrument up near Blewburton Hill.  On one occasion, his practising disturbed Mrs Fuller.

The SUMMERSBY family does not get a sympathetic hearing in the Slade letters.  Both Thomas, the publican, and his wife Mary, came from outside the village.  They presided over a family depicted as rough and unruly by the Slades.  We find stories of pitched battles between Summersby boys and others, where the constable has to make the peace.  The daughter Sarah, aged eleven, goes around with boys older than her.  We know from the records that one of the other Summersby daughters produced two, if not three illegitimate children.  Some care, perhaps, should be taken here.  Whenever the letters mention a Summersby, they almost always mention a Breach as well.  The Breach family gets quite rough handling in the letters.  No smoke without fire perhaps applies, but members of the Breach family provided the village with doctors.  At this time, somewhat surprisingly, as the contemporary account of village notes, the villages were blessed with two surgeons.  The other surgeon was none other than Mr Workman, son-in-law to Charlotte Slade.  As we shall see, some commercial rivalry existed between the two doctors, so Charlotte Slade may have taken every opportunity to snipe.  Perhaps the Summersby family got caught in the crossfire.  We do know that an elder Summersby male, John, occupied one of the Slade cottages.

We know a fair amount about the people who served the villages as blacksmith during this period and later.  In fact, the term blacksmith continues on in the records until 1947.  We also read about people who work as shoemakers.  This can be misleading, since the term applies both to apparent smiths and to proven cobblers. The name shoemaker may have been an early term for blacksmith, since usage of this predates the latter.

For example, we learn of John CLIFFORD (b 1782) and his son, also John (b 1818), both of whom carry the description of shoemaker.  Nothing in the family history can yet tell us whether they worked at a last or a forge.  John the Elder married Eleanor Stimson (1780-1838), a good local family, in 1814, John the Younger being the apparently only result of this union.  John the Younger also worked as a shoemaker for a while.  The Slade letters carry a few mentions of John Clifford.  Probably, the writer refers to both Johns without making a distinction between the two.  Some knowledge of the background can tease the two apart.  For example, the John Clifford who hangs out with his friends at the wheelwright shop will probably be the son, keen to meet his contemporaries, particularly the Finch boys.  Elsewhere we find a Clifford recovering from lung inflammation and blisters, perhaps an indication of smithy work.  Certainly the father comes to Henry Slade for help against local thieves and vandals.  Someone has stolen his pales and he needs assistance to keep watch.  The people they suspect meet at Summersby’s, almost certainly The Boot, and more than once the Cliffords have gone there to turn them out, only for them to return and cause trouble.  We also hear how John Clifford remodels his garden, sinking a gravel pit especially for the purpose of gravelling the path from the gate to his shop.  Fred Slade helps him every evening.  One summer, John Clifford bought up apples from a number of people and turned apple merchant.  John certainly made and sent goods to Henry Slade in Australia, because his bill stood amongst the trail left by Henry when he vacated Australia for India.  The Slade parents paid it at the time.  The final mention of a John Clifford relates to the newly formed boys’ school.  John Clifford is mentioned as the teacher.  This will probably be the son (now in his early twenties).  The 1851 Census lists him as a schoolteacher. In 1854, the Directories list him as a land surveyor.  By 1861 he has become Returning Office of Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths and ten years after that he has disappeared from the Census.  A good, if rare, example of social mobility.

The name HUGGINS also appears in the letters relating to bills unpaid by Henry Slade in Australia.  We find this name featuring throughout the period, although the family seems to have mostly come from Blewbury.  Present in the village as a shoemaker, we have William Huggins, according to the 1841 Census.  Aged forty-two, he will equate with the son of Robert and Susanna found in the Blewbury records.  Although the records give Robert as a labourer, we can establish that Francis, the son of Robert’s half brother, William, was a blacksmith and William himself worked as a wheelwright.  The son of Francis Huggins was John Huggins, the man who features strongly in the life of the Astons throughout the mid-Victorian period.  John ran the blacksmith business and by 1871 had grown it to the size where he needed three men.  Almost certainly, this John Huggins will be the cousin of William, shoemaker in 1841.  The letters make mention of Samuel Huggins several times, mostly for the £50 worth of shoes that he made and sent to Henry Slade at Swan River.  This bill remained unpaid to his parents who seem to have given Huggins his money.  The records in Blewbury show that Samuel would probably have been a brother to the Francis Huggins already mentioned.  So, all of this strongly suggests that William Huggins shown in the Census as a shoemaker worked as a blacksmith and we have another example of how a family passed its business on through the generations.

If John Huggins was to play such a role in the village life later, then we find an early example in William Huggins.  He may well have been the Pease Huggins, the constable, mentioned in the letters as running after the dreadful thief Jack Collins.  He had managed to get hold of Collins only for him to escape as they started on the way to Wallingford.  Huggins ran after the escaping Jack but found his progress hindered by the rest of the Collins family, giving him fine abuse.

Apart from his £50 bill, we find a couple of mentions for Samuel Huggins.  He found himself caught in a train accident at Wootten Basset, described in loving detail by Fred Slade.  Sam was on the luggage train, probably returning from Bristol from where he had started to source his goods, presumably now that the line had just opened.  Expecting to get home for nine at night, he did not get back until four in the morning because his train remained blocked behind one that had left the rails.  Sam will have been anxious since he would not want to distress his new wife.  Some eighteen months before that, he had married ‘at last’.  Apparently not wanting everyone to know, he had come in the back way, over the garden hedge.  Fred Slade had gone round there and discovered written on the back door in large letters “Old Birds catched with its chaff at last”.  It was, as Charlotte says, a sly wedding.  Samuel would have been in his mid forties by then.

Finally, we address the blacksmith so-called, one Lydia POPE, a sixty year old widow.  The Popes account for a substantial number of entries in the records, accounting for 6% of the baptisms registered until 1918.  A huge sprawling family, it had married into many different families in the villages.  Lydia may have been a Blackman, baptised in 1777.  In the Census, Lydia claims only sixty years, but we know that the Census entries did not always equate with other records, particularly for females.  Lydia had probably lived as a widow for some time, since her husband, Jonathan Pope, had perhaps died, aged only twenty-five in 1813.  Although the records mention only one child for Lydia and Jonathan Pope, David, recorded as living with her here, it seems they had at least one other son, Jonathan, also recorded here.  Jonathan will die next year, young, but still at an older age than his father reached.  We also find Sophia Pope in the same household.  She lives on until 1867.  Her relationship to David Pope, who shares his bachelor life with her, changes according to the records.  At one point she claims to be his cousin, but in the next Census she appears as his sister.  Calculations of her birth date vary according to which record consulted, but all of them fall within the period before the death of Lydia’s husband, Jonathan.  She remains a mystery.  One possible clue: if Lydia was a Blackman, then her younger brother married a Sophia Harris. Perhaps she named Sophia after her sister-in-law. David played both the clarinet and flute.  He used to play it at the Meeting-House, accompanying his sister Sophie, who had a beautiful soprano voice.  David may have been the David Pope who courted Charlotte Workman’s servant Mary, unsuccessfully.  Perhaps scarred by this experience he lived on as a bachelor.

We might more properly account for the village doctors in the next section devoted to The Top Level.  The contemporary Directories, however, often listed doctors in the trade section, so we will adopt that practice here.

According to the contemporary account of the villages written by the Marris children, few villages possessed the privilege of having two doctors.  So famous was their skill that people came to them from the other villages around.  The two surgeons are Dr John Woodroff Workman and Dr John Breach.   We know that Dr Workman had a wide practice, because we hear of him using a gig on his long rounds, taking a companion with him for company.

We may perhaps think of the BREACH family as the incumbents.  Thomas Breach, the first Breach we know, had died in 1832.  He would be the first of three members of this family to serve as a doctor.  In addition to Thomas (1781-1832), came his son, John (1813-1882), followed by his son, John Frederick (1851-1897).  We may observe that two of the Breach doctors did not themselves live long.  When Thomas Breach died, his son John was only 19, doubtless too young to inherit the practice.  The death of Thomas seems to have hit the family hard.  The absence of a father seems to have encouraged one of the younger boys, William, to follow a difficult pattern.  Almost every mention he receives shows him in a dark light.  He causes trouble at Christmas, can often be found drunk in the streets, is wanted for poaching, and indulges in fights.  He is present when one of his associates, the thief George Keep, tries to hang himself in a Cholsey pub.  His brother Joseph specialised in robbing people, including his own family, his exploits involving the constable on two or three occasions.  Young Charles was a wild boy at school and could be seen out at night with young Sally Summersby. The widowed Martha thought about taking the family away from the village and her misery could be openly seen.  John, the eldest son, was perhaps absent, training as a doctor.  By 1840, he has returned to attend patients, but he may have returned to find himself facing strong competition from Dr Workman.  When we see him attending Mrs Parsons, we know that she had sent for Dr Workman first. 

Perhaps Dr WORKMAN, never afraid to move, spotted an opportunity and came to the villages.  He may have come to the village, probably from Reading, as early as 1836, the year in which he married Charlotte Slade.  We see Dr Workman busy at his medicine.  He attends the death of Edward Humfrey and rescues Mrs Fuller from her attempted suicide.  John Fuller receives a bleeding in his care.  They called Dr Workman in after Jesse Prior beat his wife almost to death.  We also know that he sat as one of the resident surgeons at the Wallingford Union.  The Guardians’ Minute Books show us that he received £30 per quarter for his services.  John Workman had a restlessness and competitive urge that constantly drove him.  His wife could not see the need for him to have more than one horse.  He wins prizes at the Wallingford Flower Show, but suspects the judges of cheating him out of more.  Doubtless he will have resented the sciatica attack that caused him to seek professional assistance (and sharing of fees) with small pox vaccinations.  He dreams of following his brother-in-law, Henry Slade, to Australia.  Then, suddenly, in October 1841, we hear that Dr Workman has sold his practice to John Breach, who after giving the matter much thought paid him £350 in return.

We should probably read the story of the two doctors with some care.  The main source consists either of Charlotte Slade or Charlotte Workman, the mother-in-law and wife of John Workman.  We should also remember that the Workmans had produced the first grandchild for Charlotte and Henry.  By all accounts, they found the child entrancing.  If John Workman had to leave the village and look for a more prosperous practice, one not shared, then Charlotte would lose her daughter and grandson as well.  It is perhaps with this in mind that she observes how John Breach had become poorly during the summer of 1840.  She had heard talk that the Breach family might leave the village.  Nevertheless, the Workmans did leave, and after their departure, John Breach seems to have gone from strength to strength.  By the summer of 1844, he had reached the stage where he might ask for the hand of Martha Fuller.  The Fuller parents did not fall at the first professional who approached their daughters.  They had already argued strongly against a liaison with the George Noad, the curate, but perhaps that had more to do with his not being a Dissenter.  Nevertheless, the marriage between the Breach and Fuller families takes place the following year, producing a number of children.

The Slade letters, therefore, allow us to see many details about the lives and businesses of the families occupying The Middle Level.  Clearly, the social gap between them and the farming families remained relatively small.  Close examination of the Parish Records also suggests that the families at this level seemed to have made distinct efforts to control their part of the economy over the generations.