41.13 and E8.5 – the Aspden family

These stones, one in the public area and one in the private, contain most of what was once one of Todmorden’s more well off families; mill owners, teachers, railwaymen, and housebuilders (and that’s just to start).

Once upon a time, 1787 to be exact, there was a building at the bottom of Ferney Lee Road that served as a chapel and home for the preacher. Now it’s known as Fern House, but then it was known as the Stansfield Inghamite Chapel. Inghamites were offshoots of the Moravian Church, which was an offshoot of Primitive Methodism, so they were the least conforming of the non-conformists. So that’s who we’re talking about when we talk about people who attended this chapel, and in August 1811 a newly married couple were in attendance there – Andrew and Rebecca (Taylor) Aspden, who had gotten formally married at St. Chad’s in Rochdale a few weeks beforehand. Rebecca was a native of Rochdale, 21 years younger than her new husband, and Andrew a native of Blackburn, but he had settled here at Harley House and started up a cotton manufacturing mill on Blind Lane that had proved a large success. Not to the same extent as the Fieldens were managing to do, but still something to be proud of. Andrew’s success and faith meant he did share a number of interests with John Fielden and family, and it’s no surprise to see him mentioned later as supporting various Radical reforms such as the anti-Corn Law movement.

Getting ahead of ourselves though…Andrew and Rebecca were blessed with not just a large number of children, but of children who survived their childhoods. Both family graves are surrounded by stones commemorating infants and young children but the youngest in any of these was 24 years old. For this couple, their wealth did save their children, or a combination of wealth, careful hygiene, good genes and good luck. Only two of their nine children aren’t buried here, and that’s just because they moved away.

Andrew’s ownership of Harley House and the mill attached and a number of other properties kept things ticking over, and things were going fairly well until 1841 when son Thomas died from typhus. The following year Andrew put everything up for auction: his house, his mill, his equipment. Were the two things related? Good question. The record remains silent. Perhaps it’s as simple as the question of age. Andrew was 76 in 1842, and it may be that with Thomas’s death his hopes of continuing the business within the family ended, so he took the opportunity to sell up and retire. How willingly or happily he entered his retirement is anyone’s guess. He and Rebecca and some of the children moved to Knott Hall in Charlestown, and it was there that he died in December 1851. The following year Emily, their youngest child, died aged 24 from phthsis, and two months later Rebecca died aged 66. Despite being so much younger than her husband she didn’t outlive him by even a full year. In a final twist, Andrew’s will went into probate and was only settled in 1864, twelve years later. How much was the estate worth at that point? Less than £20. But we think that’s misleading, for reasons we’ll explain shortly.

That’s the story of the grave in the public area, but what about the one in the private part of the graveyard, where Jane, Andrew Jr., Rebecca Jr., Mary and Anne are buried? Let’s cover their stories as best we can without this getting too confusing:

When we start looking at the family in the 1840s, you begin to notice something interesting; once the Aspdens sold up and moved to Knott Hall, the children begin to show up as the tenants of William Whiteley, the property’s owner. Not the father of the family, not the eldest son left there, but the younger Rebecca, and then Anne. We wonder if Andrew and Rebecca gave their money to their children ahead of time, long before their deaths. It might explain how their lives progressed from there despite the seemingly small estate which was left over.

As befit the daughters of someone with money, Mary – the eldest daughter – and her sisters received good educations in their youth. As also befit young ladies from good families who didn’t wish to marry but also weren’t inclined or allowed to be indolent, they used those educations to find respectable work: education. Mary became a governess. In 1851 she was lodging in Southport. It’s unclear if she was employed by one of the other lodgers, but since they were all being classed as “visitors” perhaps they were there on holiday and so the relationships everyone had to one another are a little obscured. Her whereabouts in 1861 are unknown but she remained close to her sister Eliza, who had gone to Dalton-in-Furness as – you guessed it – a governess and married and settled there, and also her brother Samuel who had gone to Birstall and done the same. By 1871 when she had returned to Todmorden she had two relatives in tow: her nephew Samuel Waterhouse Aspden and her niece Rebecca Jane Mowat (the latter of whom she essentially raised following Eliza’s death). Mary was now the “principal of a school” which we suspect was Cross Stone Church School, since she was also busy with Christ Church and rubbing elbows with some of the wealthier ladies involved in the Church of England locally. What would her parents have made of it?

She may, though, also have been involved in another venture involving her sisters, and that is the Misses Aspden school at Holebottom. As you can see from the preceding news article and paragraph, the Aspden girls were interested in education; interested enough to fundraise for the building of the National School next door to Christ Church even though they were raised as staunch Inghamites. After Andrew and Rebecca died their daughter Rebecca took over the tenancy at Knott Hall for a time, but came back to Todmorden with her siblings in the mid-1850s. Sister Jane in 1851 was a governess for a family in Scotland. On her return to Todmorden, the siblings took up residence at Stansfield Cottage in Holebottom and opened their school.

The question of which Miss Aspden was in Paris is another one we can’t answer for sure, but it’s tempting to think it was Mary, simply because she doesn’t appear on the 1861 Census anywhere in the British Isles. It won’t have been Anne. Anne also stayed at Knott Hall at first, but then became a schoolteacher in Stainland before travelling with another family (a plate glass manufacturer from the Isle of Man) as a governess between London and Bishop Wearmouth. Anne’s story is harder to figure out as she moved around so much, which makes her rather mysterious – moreso than she probably was, to be fair! Anne was simply doing as her other sisters had done.

The Aspden sisters back at Stansfield Cottage also supplemented their income by taking in lodgers. The Rev. Lindsay Taplin, much beloved of the Unitarian Chapel and later Church, was living with them in 1861 and 1871 along with whichever young Unitarian was currently his curate. They also had servants. There was also their brother Andrew Jr.. Poor Andrew, we’re going on about his intelligent, independent sisters, but he hasn’t had much of a mention. This Andrew couldn’t have cared less for manufacturing, another reason his father probably sold up after Thomas’s death. This Andrew, instead, was in love with the railway. He started working as a labourer on the railway after the sale of the business and continued onward. 1851: railway labourer. 1861: railway clerk. 1871: railway porter (unemployed). It turns out that Andrew wasn’t the best with money, and for unknown reasons, the years between 1867 and 1871 were particularly bad for him. More than once during this time he ended up serving ten days imprisonment in lieu of paying for various goods such as shoes. Whatever his problems were, his sisters were clearly not about to help him out beyond providing him a roof over his head. In the late 1860s the properties at Aspden Terrace and Back Aspden Terrace in Meadowbottom were built, and a second Aspden-run school was open, this time a boarding school at The Royd (which later moved to Brocklyn House on Byrom Street), and maybe it’s not a coincidence that Andrew stops having money problems after this point – maybe the only thing stopping the sisters before was caution, and afterwards they felt more free to help him out in his difficulties.

And so 1871 came and went, and more deaths visited the Aspdens. Jane went first, in 1875. Andrew was next, in March 1880, and Rebecca in April 1880. When 1881 rolled around there were precious few Aspden siblings left to support one another – just Mary and Anne. Anne had returned from her travels and taken up work in Todmorden, and Mary had retired from her teaching work. The Stansfield Cottage and Wellington Road addresses had also been forsaken in return for a smaller but still nice house on Ridge Bank, then overlooking Ridgefoot House and the mill and now overlooking Aldi. Live in servants and lodgers had also been forsaken. Age meant their lives contracted in somewhat, but they were still interested in education. And they still owned the properties on Aspden and Back Aspden Terrace and had income coming in from the rents there, as well as properties at Jumps in Lydgate. They even had the money – well, Mary did at least – to endow a stained glass window at St. James Church in Mytholm, “To the Glory of God, a thank-offering, in memory of Andrew and Rebecca Aspden and their children, by their daughter Mary, 1878”. What would those Inghamites think of this as well?

Mary died in 1890 and left her estate to Anne with the clause in her will “should she remain unmarried”, which raises a few questions about why she would include that qualification in there. Mary’s estate was worth about £2500 so would keep Anne very comfortably. The sisters clearly had valued their independence, with only one of the seven marrying, and perhaps this was more of an ideological choice than a practical one on their part. From the looks of things, Mary’s intentions were clear: as long as one sibling remained alive, the money belonging to those siblings would stay with them. Once they died, the next generation could have what was left.

In the event, Mary’s estate wasn’t settled until after Anne died in 1900. Anne lived another ten years, moving to a house on Stansfield Road and “living on her own means”, and staying involved with Christ Church until right before the end of her life when she moved to Cleckheaton to be nearer her nieces Emily and Rebecca Jane. Upon her death the two estates were settled at long last – Mary’s £2500 and Anne’s £500 – and the money dispersed.

That was a very long and complicated story, and a good reason why we don’t tend to write up more than one grave at a time, but these siblings were never going to be easy jobs! Any descendants of the family with additional information or who have spotted a howler are welcome to get in touch with more info.