Facebook post #050 (Jan 2021)
Almighty God, by whose mercy I am permitted to behold the beginning of another year, bless me with thy help and favour. Mitigate, if it shall seem best unto thee, the diseases of my body, and calm the disorders of my mind. Dispel my terrors, and grant that the time which thou shalt yet allow me, may not pass unprofitably away. Let not pleasure seduce me, idleness lull me, or misery depress me.
Samuel Johnson
Happy New Year those who are following… I thought I’d be done by now but there are still a few gaps on Mum’s side, including that metal-bashing story I left hanging last month. But first… I was the first Wheaver born out of the Birmingham orbit since its industrialisation. Lichfield, Staffordshire, is a whole 8 miles due north of Sutton (centre of the universe) and 30 miles due east of Dawley, home of the Lamberts and Captain Webb.
It wasn’t known at the time that our Barnes ancestors (after whom some of us are still being named) were rooted in the Stafford area. They had been prosperous but this was a period of agricultural depression. Our Charles may have eloped into Peaky Blinder country: the 180-acre family farm was inherited by his younger brother. He kept his dignity (a farmer’s bailiff and a gentleman) but sold the farm (pic). Another brother was jailed for forging a receipt, took over the Goat pub in Liverpool, and went bankrupt. Another worked up to being a miller in his own right but ended up administering poor relief. A sister married a conductor on the Grand Junction Railway who became a tea dealer, and then died of pulmonary consumption at age 36. Charles’ sister, Mary, married a farmer whose farm size halved between 1871 and 1881 and disappeared by 1891.
Mary’s daughter was widowed young and became a barmaid at the Smithfield Hotel, Lichfield (built for the railway in 1848 – pic). She married the owner and took over the hotel when she was widowed again. The hotel was built over by Tesco in 2007.
Her son, Samuel Heath (pic), was a grocer’s traveller who became Sheriff of Lichfield and married the daughter of the Lichfield Brewing Company. The brewer gave the land which allowed the workhouse to expand into Victoria Cottage Hospital (pic), and later the maternity ward. I just missed being born in that ward, it having moved a stone’s throw away five years earlier. The new hospital (pic) was also knocked down in 2007.
Lichfield was also birthplace to the great lexicographer (and composer of New Year’s prayers), Sam Johnson (pic).
Three of my photos – see ‘pages’ for other credits.