Spondon Village

A Village Remembered

The Porters of Spondon

There is an old proverb that says " It's a wise man who knows his father!". Wisdom surely comes from many sources but I believe that an understanding of the historical character and performance of the ones who contributed a genetic inheritance to us can help us to deal with the various circumstances affecting our own life journeys. Many families have played a part in building the character of Spondon Village and for almost the last two centuries there have been Porters there and in the surrounding hamlets.

As far back as we can trace, our Porter ancestors were living in the Derwent valley of Derbyshire, and their names appear in the parish registers of the villages to the immediate north-east of Derby. These include Breadsall, Borrowash, Chaddesden, Ockbrook, Spondon, and Sawley. There were many John and Mary Porters listed so that it is difficult to be certain about some ancestral lines, some of which may have branched and rejoined later.

There are two or three possible lines of ancestry for our family. The earliest Porters are in the Breadsall registers and it is possible that being porters for Breadsall Priory as early as the sixteenth century provided the occupational surname. An easy walk would enable some descendants to move to adjacent villages. The parish church registers of All Saints, Ockbrook, show a Richard Porter, who married Mary Stephens, and they had a son Richard born in 1741. At this time they lived in Sawley or Wilne. He in turn married Mary Kidson and they had a son John born in 1777. This John could have been the one who married Mary Stevens from Stanley, a village near West Hallam, who was born in 1779.

The second candidate ancestor is John Porter a boatman, who married Mary Hancock of West Hallam on Sept. 26,1781. It is highly possible that it was their son, John, another boatman, who married Mary Stevens at Sawley in 1799. Mary died in Spondon on 6th March, 1860, aged 80. William Porter, also a boatman, was born of this marriage in December 1799 and was married to Hannah Brown of Spondon on August 5th, 1822. They had at least five sons and a daughter. The burial of a William Porter at age 35 is recorded in the Spondon register on February 10th, 1829.

My great-grandfather John Porter always claimed he was born in Ockbrook, about 1822 calculating from the census records, and he died in 1908. The Spondon Entry #333 shows John, son of William and Anne (probably a misspelling for Hannah) was baptized on October 29th, 1822. In 1845 John married Hannah Poxon (nee Dumelow), a widow. Their marriage was in Derby at St. Peter's Parish Church. Their first son, William, was born in 1846 and baptized in Spondon on March 1st. There are several Dumelow families recorded in the Aston/Shardlow area where the canals were routed, and ours was probably a Draycott family. Another son, John, was born in Borrowash on February 28th, 1848. It seems that Hannah (nee Dumelow) died soon after, leaving the two children to be cared for by their grandmother, Mary, according to the 1851 census. There are no records after 1851 of these children living with their father. William died in infancy and John's time and place of death is unknown.

The soil in the Derwent Valley is formed mostly from a red clay or marl which was suitable for bricks, and several brickyards existed in Spondon and the nearby villages. These needed a constant supply of labour and agricultural jobs were always limited, so it seems that John Sr. then became a itinerant bricklayer's labourer. Most of the homes around Derby were built from these red bricks. Slate for the roofs came from Wales, probably by barge. The Census of 1851 for Spondon, Borrowash area, shows John Porter, a widower, aged 26, a brickyard labourer, born in Spondon, living with John his son, aged 3, and Mary Porter his grandmother, who was aged 73.

On June 23rd, 1851, John married his second wife Sarah Brentnall who was then only 16 years old. Sarah came from Ilkeston, about four miles away. Her father George Brentnall was a chimney sweep, and my grandfather George Porter, his grandson, became apprenticed to the trade. There were Brentnalls who were farmers earlier in Spondon but no ancestry linkage has been attempted. The West Hallam register shows that a George Brentnall of Heanor married Eleanor Evans on November 19, 1812. His son George married Mary Ann Clark of Alfreton in 1833, and their daughter Sarah, my great-grandmother, was born in 1835.

With the inadequate schooling available, it appears from parish registers that few of these early Porter ancestors could read or write. All the entries in the church registers of births, marriages, and burials were written for them by the clergyman, who would be one of the small number of educated persons to be found in these small villages along the Derwent in the early nineteenth century. Registered marriage entries are usually stated in the form "X", John Doe, his mark; and, "X", Jane Doe, her mark"

From the national census records and a birth certificate we know that John and Sarah Porter were in Rotherham, Yorkshire in 1854 where their first son Dennis was born. Large railway junction workshops and brick factory buildings were being erected there. They later moved to Kilburne where George Henry, their second son, was born on December 3rd., 1860. This is confirmed by the 1861 Census. Sarah's elder sister Elizabeth, nee Brentnall, had married John Pearson of Stapleford, also a chimney sweep, and she was shown as visiting with the Porter family at the time of the census. There were other Porters with similar Christian names, living nearby in Kilburne, namely John and William, but it is not known if the families were related.

By 1871 John and Sarah had moved to Hall Dyke, Spondon, and had three daughters living with them, Elizabeth age 8, Clara age 2, and Alice, age 1. In this census John was still described as a brickyard labourer. His first son to Sarah, Dennis was age 17 by then, also a labourer and was living in lodgings on Nottingham Road, Spondon. His elder brother George, aged 10, was not mentioned, as he was then living with his uncle John Pearson who was teaching him the trade of chimney sweeping. The Stapleford census entry wrongly gives his age as thirteen, showing that the vaunted Child Labour laws of the last century were not as effective as we would like to believe.

There is another John Porter in the 1871 Spondon census, shown living on Chapel Street, who may have been the son of John's first marriage to Hannah Dumelow. In the Census of 1881, John and Sarah were still living in Hall Dyke. John was working at brickmaking, but Sarah was now a general shopkeeper, helped by daughter 'Lizzie' age 17 who was described as a hawker. Her sister Clara, age 12, was shown as a scholar, as were her brothers James, age 8, William, age 6, and Joseph, age 3.

Some time earlier George had returned to live with his parents, and his life steadily changed as he showed a great proficiency at cricket and became a professional player. While playing for Ventnor on the Isle of Wight he met his future wife. In the Census he was now aged 20 and married to Elizabeth Anne Mayne, 26, listed as a dressmaker, born in West Cowes, and they were living in Chapel Street, Spondon. Their first child, George Frederick, was born later the same year. Granddad was still working winters as a chimney sweep, and had also been playing professional cricket each summer for nearly three years. Also in the 1881 census, Granddad's elder brother Dennis was 26 years old, now married to Mary Ann Hodgkinson, and living on Stanley Highway (previously called Kirk Leys Lane, and now called Dale Road) with his daughter Ethel, aged 1. Dennis acquired a greengrocery business and moved to Traffic Street, Derby for a while, but eventually returned to Spondon and purchased the Hall Dyke cottages adjacent to the Union Inn, and known as Union Row.

Great-grandmother Sarah was the businesswoman of the family. Eventually she was able to purchase another shop at 18 Nottingham Road, and some acreage for pasture between Nottingham Road and Cambridge Street, Spondon. Her son William succeeded to the business when she died in 1903. It seems that her husband John took very little part in the business and later was employed at Leach Neal & Co., Paint Manufacturers, at Litchfield Lane, Spondon, firstly as a labourer and eventually as a night watchman. He died on the 26th June, 1908, within three weeks of the death of his more-famous son George, the cricketer, and his passing was not so well noticed or remembered. My father, who was eighteen when his granddad John died, remembered him only as an old man fond of his drink, and apart from saying he was very stooped over in his walk, did not say very much else about him. That was typical for Dad, who always tried to be kindly in his remembrances of people.

Lilian and John 1965

George and Elizabeth left six children in Spondon. Three sons, George, Jack and Walter resided there all their lives; their sisters married Nottingham men and moved there. Many Porter grandchildren were raised in Spondon, and some of these Porters and their descendants still remain there.

---The Village of Spondon in Derbyshire ---Saint Werburgh's Church ---Wars and Tumults ---The Derwent and the Canals ---The Farmers ---Victorian Spondon ---The Willowcroft ---The Schools ---The Inns and Public Houses ---Spondon Voices ---A Spondon Family ---A Child's Christmas in Spondon, 1935 ---Epilogue ---Images of Spondon ---