A quick trip to Snig's End Chartist settlement

Fenced off, boarded up and long-since closed for business, the Prince of Wales pub in the Gloucestershire village of Corse is in a sorry state. Back in 1848, though, this building was the pride of the Chartist movement: a purpose-built schoolhouse intended to serve the new Chartist settlement of Snig’s End.

The schoolhouse turned pub at Snig’s End, now boarded up

Sadly, the dream did not last. The building never served its original purpose, although it did provide some sort of community hub for the newly arrived smallholders, and in 1849 it was the venue for a conference of delegates representing land company branches from across the country. But even then, the dream was turning sour, with arguments over what rent might be due, at the conditions the Chartist settlers had found when they moved in to their new homes, and at the financial management of the Land Company.

It was not for want of effort on the part of Feargus O’Connor. Snig’s End was to be the fourth of five Chartist land plan communities, and it was his personal energy that had made much of it happen. With a finger in every pie, from the financial arrangements, never satisfactorily disentangled by the subsequent parliamentary inquiry into the Land Company and associated Land Bank, to the purchase of the 268 acre estate, the design of the eighty or so cottages, and their construction, O’Connor was involved at every stage. He lived on site, and while delegating much of the construction work, took personal responsibility for the teams of horses required to move building materials from place to place. All while having oversight of his Northern Star newspaper, serving as MP for Nottingham, and rallying the Chartist movement - at least, those who still looked to him for leadership.

Many of the cottages at Snig’s End are still visible, as I discovered when paying a quick visit in May 2022. Driving from Gloucester along the A417, you come across the first of what are still clearly Chartist cottages on the left-hand side of the road somewhere between Corse and neighbouring Staunton. Others lie along the narrow lanes that head off to left and right, along School Crescent to one side of the main road, and Prince Crescent to the other. Walk up Prince Crescent, which is to the left of the former schoolhouse and the lane eventually runs out into what is still a working farm.

For the most part, the cottages have been modernised and extended - not surprisingly, as few people would now settle for three rooms and a back yard lined with buildings for small-scale agricultural use (see plan). There has, too, been an enormous amount of in-fill house-building all over the estate, which undoubtedly robs it of much of its charm. But the Chartist buildings are still generally easy to identify, even where porches and extensions have been unsympathetic to the original design. Among the best and nicest surviving examples is the house shown below, which is on Prince Crescent and even has a plaque explaining the Chartist Land Company to those who stop to look. 

Really nice example of a Chartist cottage at Snig’s End.

There is, too, a small exhibition in the nearby St Margaret’s Church, Corse - a short but necessarily slow drive all the way to the end of another very narrow lane. Watch out for tractors coming the other way. The villages seem understandably proud of their Chartist history, and it is mentioned on a number of signs in the area.

As to the former schoolhouse, Alice Mary Hadfield, who wrote a book, The Chartist Land Company, published in 1970, included a photograph of the building, commenting that it was probably only the fact that it had found a second life as a public house that had saved it from demolition years before. Half a century further on, I wonder what the future holds. The walls appear solid enough, though there are now holes in the roof as slates slip over time, and it is many years since drinks were served in either of its bars: public bar to the left, saloon to the right. If anyone knows of any plans for the schoolhouse turned pub, I’d love to know what they are. My hope is that no one is going to call time on the Prince of Wales.

More on the Chartist Land Plan.
Chartist land company officials in 1849 (with an Illustrated London News picture of Snig's End, 1850)

The former schoolhouse at the end of the 1960s, then a working pub

Want to live in a Chartist cottage? Here’s your chance

If you like the idea of living in a former Chartist cottage, then a very nice one has come up for sale at Lowbands in Gloucestershire (provided the £795,000 price tag doesn’t put you off).

Lowbands was one of five Chartist settlements created in the 1840s as part of the Land Plan championed by Feargus O’Connor. Houses and a smallholding of two, three or four acres were allocated by lottery to those who had taken out shares in the National Co-operative Land Company. 

The second of what would become five such settlements, Lowbands consisted of 170 acres and was bought in October 1846 for £8,100. In addition to its 15 two-acre plots, eight of three acres, and 23 of four acres, the site also included a ten-acre water meadow and a common. “Location Day”, when the first settlers moved in, was on 16 August 1847.

The much-extended cottage now up for sale apparently comes with three acres.

There are a couple of photos below showing the front of the cottage. From the estate agent’s description, it would appear that the original cottage was made up of the front three rooms shown on the plan (the sitting room and bedrooms two and three). The rest is later extension. This is entirely consistent with other plans and photos of Chartist cottages elsewhere.

Let me know if you move in - I’d like a nose around.

See more on the estate agent’s website.

Read more about the Chartist land plan.

Talking Chartism: the video is here

I recently spent a very enjoyable hour and a half chatting about all things Chartism with professional genealogist Natalie at Genealogy Stories. You can watch the first hour of our conversation below.

This was a completely unscripted and unplanned talk (at least on my part), so please excuse the ums and ahhs, and any stories I launched into before getting sidetracked.

In part two, which you can access through Natalie's website, we talked a little about what happened to Chartism after 1848, and rather more about some interesting Chartists, including William Cuffay and Susanna Inge.

On the whole, I am really pleased with how it came out - although there are so many things I didn't get round to talking about, and of course if I'd prepared an answer to every question I might well have looked at alternative interpretations of some events. 

Natalie herself did a great job, and was very easy to talk to. Do check out Genealogy Stories where she has a growing collection of interviews along with some other great family history resources.

Big upgrade to the Chartist Ancestors Databank

The Chartist Ancestors Databank has had a major update. Thanks to the addition of a three big new data sets listing Chartist women, Londoners and France-based Chartists, the running total of names now exceeds 14,000.

You can find out more about the Chartist Ancestors Databank and download the full databank itself in Excel format here.

Brief lives of the Chartist Land Company subscribers

In his third blog post about a U3A project to extract information on Londoners and women from the Chartist Land Company share registers, Peter Cox looks in more detail at some of the individual subscribers found in the records.

Previous posts in this series
Transcribing the Chartist Land Company registers.
Analysing the Chartist Land Company registers.

With a wealth of online sources now available for the family historian, and plenty of experience, we embarked with some optimism on the attempt to track down individuals. They proved much more elusive than we expected, even limiting the search to the one in ten or so with less usual names.

Analysing the Chartist Land Company registers

In his second guest blog post, Peter Cox explores the occupations and locations of Chartist Land Company subscribers uncovered by a U3A project to transcribe the identities of Londoners and women found in the original documents held at the National Archives.

I have already explained what led to a group of seventy-somethings trekking to Kew on and off for three months. We were transcribing all the Londoners and women who subscribed to the Chartist Land Company, which meant painstakingly combing through three massive volumes containing thousands of lines of name, address and occupation.

Now we’ve completed the job, we’ve been able to analyse what we found.

Transcribing the Chartist Land Company registers

In the first of two guest blog posts, Peter Cox outlines how a U3A project is making a significant contribution to the study of Chartism by transcribing the identities of Londoners, women and French residents who subscribed to the Chartist Land Company.

A few years ago I became mildly peeved that the Suffragists were getting all the headlines – research, plays, and now a film. The Chartists, who made all the running two generations earlier and suffered for it, had been neglected in popular culture. Since retiring I’d written a three books on aspects of contemporary history, and was looking for another challenge, so I thought I’d try my hand at writing a Chartist play. I bought all the books on Chartism I could find and set about it.

Chartism Day 2017: from biscuits and salt pork for the troops to surrealist Chartist images and a lost letter

Some 20 years on from the first ever Chartism Day, each year’s event still brings word of archive discoveries, exciting new images and innovative ways of “doing history” that shed light on the people who made up the Chartist movement and how they thought and acted.

Chartism Day 2017 was no exception. Organised by Dr Katrina Navickas and colleagues from the University of Hertfordshire history department, this year’s conference visited Heronsgate – better known to those with an interest in Chartism as O’Connorville.

Charterville: a view of the Chartist land settlement

The Chartist settlement at Minster Lovell in Oxfordshire was the fourth of five model villages set up under the aegis of the National Land Company. Consisting of nearly 300 acres of land and renamed Charterville, its smallholdings were settled one by one during the summer of 1848.

Feargus O'Connor on land purchases and the Chartist land bank manager who thought better of it

Feargus O’Connor was a prolific writer. For many years he penned weekly addresses to the Chartist readers of the Northern Star each of which ran for thousands of words. In addition, he engaged in political polemic with opponents and rivals, and wrote copious advice on agricultural practices for those who shared his interest in small-scale farming.

Where did those alloted land under the Chartist land plan come from?

The Chartist land plan was a bold if doomed attempt to settle industrial workers on smallholdings bought with the shareholder contributions of thousands of ordinary Chartists.

Although the plan collapsed amid acrimony and accusations of illegality, it succeeded in allocating land and cottages to some 250 Chartists. The map below shows the location of the settlements and home towns of the settlers.

Was your ancestor a Manchester Chartist?

Manchester was a hotbed of the Chartist movement, so it comes as no surprise to discover that hundreds signed up to support the Chartist land plan.

Thanks to the hard work of Dr Katrina Navickas, Chartist Ancestors can now name 644 men and women who subscribed a few hard-earned shillings towards shares in the Chartist Land Company, hoping that they might be allocated a cottage and smallholding to farm.

Take a Chartist holiday in Worcestershire in 2013

Ever wondered what it was like for those Chartists who won the right to rent a small cottage and farm a smallholding on the estates acquired by the Chartist Land Company?

Here is your chance to find out. The National Trust has restored one of the cottages on the Dodford estate in Worcestershire and is letting it out to holidaymakers. There are two bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen. But other than that, it is pretty much a back-to-basics experience.

There is a shower room and toilet, but these are in an outbuilding. And if it gets chilly, the heating comes from a portable oil heater. There is, of course, no television. The National Trust describes the experience as “camping within walls”.

But there is lots to enjoy in the enclosed garden, vegetable plots and orchard – even a beehive. Not to mention the surrounding countryside.

Stays are from £180 for two nights up to £330 for seven.

You can read more about it here – and even make a booking.

Read more about Chartism and the land plan

Visit a Chartist cottage

A Chartist cottage at Dodford in Worcestershire, largely unaltered since it was built and now lovingly restored by the National Trust, is now open to visitors on the first Sunday of the month until 2 December 2012.

The cottage originally formed part of the colony established by the Chartist movement as part of a plan to settle industrial workers on smallholdings which would entitle them to the vote.

There is more about the cottage on the local Bromsgrove Advertiser website.

Here's what the paper says about arranging a visit:

Entry to Rosedene is by pre-booked guided tour only. Admission costs £5 for adults, £2.50 for children, £12.50 for families and is free for National Trust members.

To book a place on a guided tour, please contact: 01527 821214.

Find out more about the Chartist Land Plan on Chartist Ancestors.

A house on the Chartist estate for £2.5 million

The Chartist land settlement at Heronsgate has come a long way since the 1840s. Then it was a refuge for industrial workers seeking a cottage of their own and two or three acres to farm. Now it is one of the most sought-after of areas for London commuters.

I came across this house for sale advert today. Although I cannot be sure that this house is itself one of the Chartist cottages, it is on the Chartist estate, known as O'Connorville, on Nottingham Road. If it is an original, it has certainly been extensively altered to give it five bedrooms, four receptions and four bathrooms!

The house also boasts an acre of grounds, its own heated swimming pool – and is on the market for a cool £2.5 million.

Here is the property description in case it disappears from the Property Finder website once sold:

“The property occupies a private and tucked away location within the heart of the Heronsgate area. In all about one acre (1.158) being approached over a long gravel driveway flanked by well maintained lawns with mature trees and established borders. The gardens and grounds are a delightful feature of the property and enclose the property on all sides. The driveway opens to a large gravelled area providing extensive parking. Here there is a useful barn and open sided vehicle store. To the rear of the property there is a wide terraced patio which opens to a further extensive patio area with sunken heated swimming pool. The pool is approximately 32ft in length by 16ft wide with a depth of 8ft at the deepest point. The pool is heated and close by is a kitchenette and changing room/shower room.”

You can read more about the Chartist Land Plan and the Chartist Land Company, including the names of thousands of land company subscribers, on Chartist Ancestors.

Strawberry fields for Chartists

Great Dodford was the fifth and final land colony to be settled by Chartist members of the National Land Company.

But it was also the settlement with the longest record of success. Despite a difficult start, descendants of the original tenants were still making a good living as late as the first world war, growing the strawberries used to make Robertson's jams for soldiers at the front.

I was delighted to see that a groundbreaking study of the long post-Chartist afterlife of the Great Dodford land colony is freely available  on the British Agricultural History Society website, along with dozens of other articles published by the Agricultural History Review between 1953 and 2003.

Great Dodford and the Later History of the Chartist Land Scheme (PDF format, 1Mb), by Peter Searby was published in 1968, at a time when interest in the land scheme was growing. Alice Mary Hadfield published her book on the Chartist Land Company two years later.

But what is particularly interesting about Searby's study is the use of detailed reports by researchers who visited Great Dodford at the end of the 19^th century to show how it had developed from poverty to relative prosperity in the post-Chartist period.

In addition to the strawberry crop, smallholders grew gillyflowers between the rows for sale at local markets. They also supplemented their earnings with early peas, beans, shallots and even garlic – which was sold to Lea and Perrins as an ingredient in Worcester sauce.

So successful were the smallholders that they influenced the new allotment movement.

Unfortunately, this proved to be the beginning of the end. Allotment holders at nearby Catshill enjoyed an earlier crop, undercutting the price of the Great Dodford growers, and a decline in the domestic nail-making industry removed the smallholders' casual workforce of pickers.

The end came as Austin expanded its Longbridge car factory, offering the men of Great Dodford a minimum of 25 shillings a week in place of the 16 shillings they could earn as agricultural labourers.

Read more about
* the Chartist Land Plan and those allocated land
* the Chartist Land Company and its subscribers
* the Chartist cottages at Great Dodford

There is also a pub walk which takes you past Rosedene, one of the last surviving Chartist cottages at Great Dodford.

Picture: Midsummar and strawberries by Powi

Recognition for a Chartist pub

It is strange to think that what must have been a very basic spit-and-sawdust beerhouse when it opened to serve settlers on the Chartist land colony at O’Connorville back in the 1840s is now considered one of Britain’s best public houses.

The wonderfully named Land of Liberty, Peace and Plenty at Heronsgate in Hertfordshire did not win Camra’s pub of the year competition at the weekend, but managed to finish in the top four.

The judges commended it on its "Fine selection of well kept ales. Relaxing, utterly pleasant pub. Friendly staff. Perfect really."

All a far cry, it would seem, from its early days. Then, the names of 30 Chartists who had subscribed to the Chartist Land Company were selected by ballot and each was provided with two, three or four acres and a cottage.

The colony itself was dry – the teetotal and temperance movement was well represented within Chartism – so it seems likely that the Land of Liberty, Peace and Plenty was opened by someone with a good eye for a business opportunity rather than as an officially sanctioned place of recreation.

For many of the smallholders life on the land proved even harsher than the factory work which many had abandoned.

There were, however, also reports of idyllic new lives in the country for some, and when the land company foundered financially few of the smallholders were keen to leave their plots and return to the towns and cities of industrial Britain.

Find out more about the thousands who subscribed to the Chartist land plan, and the hundreds who were allotted land.

Chartist cottage photographs

I see that the Chartist historian Stephen Roberts (co-author, among other things, of Images of Chartism, has added some pictures of the Chartist cottages at Great Dodford in Worcestershire to his website.

The cottages were built in the 1840s to house workers who won the right to farm smallholdings on the Chartist land colony there. The cottages are now owned by the National Trust and have, since the pictures were taken, been lovingly restored.

The National Trust runs guided tours of one cottage from April to September.

Chartist land company list up to 5,000 names

The list of Chartist Land Company subscribers in Ashton under Lyne, Audenshaw and Duckinfield has leapt up from 168 to 1,120.

How has this been achieved? Well, fortunately someone familiar with Dr Jamie Bronstein’s database remembered the Ashton list being rather longer than it appeared on Chartist Ancestors. So, I went back to the original spreadsheet and found that I had lost a huge chunk of names while converting it to a more recent version of Excel.

Up until today’s revision, the published list included all those subscribers registered at 1 May 1847, but none of those who had signed up when the register was updated on 17 July the same year.

The addition means that, in total, some 5,075 subscribers to the Chartist Land Company from 11 Lancashire towns now appear on Chartist Ancestors.

The picture below shows Heronsgate, the first of six Chartist land colonies, which was renamed O'Connorville after the Chartist leader Feargus O'Connor.

Chartist land plan: 3,900 names

The names of some 3,900 Chartist sympathisers from Lancashire have now been added to Chartist Ancestors. This completes a project that has taken several weeks.

The names are those of subscribers to the Chartist Land Company from the 11 towns of Ashton under Lyne, Bacup, Bolton, Bury, Colne, Oldham, Preston, Rochdale, Salford, Staleybridge and Wigan. Almost all names also have an occupation and home address, which should make it easier for family historians to claim their Chartist Ancestor.

I am immensely grateful to Professor Jamie Bronstein of New Mexico State University, who transcribed the names from the original, 19^th century shareholders’ register during the course of her PhD research in the early 1990s, for allowing me to use the lists.

The register include a total of some 70,000 names in all, and was drawn up as part of the land company’s attempt to register under joint stock company laws which would have given it a proper legal basis for its work and protected its funds and investors.

The attempt failed, and ultimately the company was wound up by a special Act of Parliament – but not before it had settled some hundreds of Chartists on smallholdings.

You can read more about the Chartist land plan on Chartist Ancestors. In addition to the lists of Lancashire subscribers, the site includes the names of all those allocated land as part of the scheme, and the names of local officials of the land company.

Chartist land company - An overview and introduction
Lists of names by town
Ashton-under-Lyne - 168 names
Bacup - 500 names
Bolton - 781 names
Bury - 639 names
Colne - 254 names
Oldham - 219 names
Preston - 215 names
Rochdale - 285 names
Salford - 350 names
Stalybridge - 643 names
Wigan - 69 names

Chartist land plan - Read about the land plan and see the names of those allocated land.

Land Company officials, 1849