Offcumden who made their home here, or at least near here.
Roger Bramley was born in 1784 in Downham, midway between Gisburn and Clitheroe and just north of Pendle Hill. A gothic beginning to a not-that-exciting story. His father Edmund was a farmer and Roger spent most of his life in agricultural labour and farming. In 1796 he took on an apprenticeship with Thomas Nightingale of Blackburn to become a saddler but once it was over Roger seems to have decided against it being his career. Which is fair enough; many young men became apprentices for the room and board as much as for the training. How many of you reading this have only ever had one job?
In December 1803 in Mitton (just southwest of Clitheroe), Roger married Rebecca Garlick. Rebecca hailed from even further away from Todmorden; she was born in 1783 in Orton, which is about midway between Kendal and Penrith. Tracing her way south is difficult – how did she get all the way down to Clitheroe? It’s interesting to see that on their banns both Roger and Rebecca were able to sign their names. We ought to call her Rebecka really, since that’s how she spelled it herself. Roger was in the same boat, with his name spelled “Rodger” repeatedly but his own writing giving it as Roger. Even this gravestone has it spelled both ways. But nevermind…
The couple had seven children that we know of, in a very handy 1-2-1-2-1 formation – two daughters after each son, with a son bookending the group. They were all settled at Sawley but the death of their eldest son Edmund in 1821, at the age of 16, seems to have changed that. Their final child, William, was born in Sawley in 1824, but by 1828 the Bramleys had come to Todmorden, and specifically to Gauxholme. According to Barbara Rudman’s Todmorden Old Pub Trail, Roger had taken on the running of a beerhouse at Kiln Spring, a now-vanished place between Gauxholme and Copperashouse that disappeared during the building of the railway. That’s why he appears on the assessment for taxation for contributing to the rebuilding of Todmorden churches in 1828…
…which is VERY interesting as this was the precursor to the building of Christ Church. Yes, that slightly cursed process where the Fieldens kicked off on the grounds that they were non-conformists and shouldn’t be taxed extra to rebuild a church they didn’t use (St. Mary’s), and where the schism between St. Mary’s devotees and Rev. Joseph Cowell’s supporters widened. You can read more about it here. In the end the money raised to rebuild St. Mary’s ended up going…well, we don’t know where it went, but Christ Church was built with post-Napoleonic War windfalls and St. Mary’s languished for a century and a half.
Come 1841 Roger and Rebecca were living separately – why, we do not know! We don’t know where Roger was, either. But Rebecca was living with son William, now a shoemaker, and granddaughter Sarah who was daughter Mary’s illegitimate child. The three lived at New Bridge, now the cricket club in Walsden, and Rebecca was a beerseller. The pub at New Bridge was (again, according to Barbara Rudman) part of a grouping of cottages and existed to serve railway workers who were building the Summit Tunnel and railway line between Todmorden and Littleborough. Rudman states that Roger ran this beerhouse as well, but perhaps Roger was the licenseholder in name only. The 1841 Census makes it clear that running this pub was Rebecca’s occupation and she was doing it on her own.
If she and Roger really were separated and later reconciled we don’t know the details. Maybe he was earning an additional wage elsewhere and it was all amicable. They certainly don’t seem to have been together any longer. Roger’s death in 1843 occurred in Littleborough at Higher Shore Farm, and an Ann Roberts was the informant. He died of heart disease.
Rebecca’s movements afterwards are hard to trace because she didn’t live to see another census. She died in 1850 and joined her husband again, after what looks like more than just the expected seven year separation. She had been living then at Bridge End, Walsden, where a number of her children were settled.
Now what about James here, and his wife? James was the middle son. Born in 1810 he had in common with William that he was also a shoemaker, or more specifically a clogger. In 1837 he married Agatha Stephenson, a few years younger than him, and the pair settled at Gauxholme. We get a clue in the 1841 Census as to the couple’s financial position; they have three children aged 3 and younger and a “female servant”, ten year old Esther Holden. Esther might not have had the best lodgings of any female servant in the town but that she was engaged at all means James had enough money to pay for her upkeep. And Agatha was probably extremely grateful for her help with the three infants!
James travelled for work and took his family with him. The couple moved around Blackburn, Stalybridge, and Bradford before returning to Todmorden for 1851.They settled at Shade Street with their now five children. It should have been six, but their son Edmund had died while they were in Blackburn. James was a clog and pattern maker now, and the children getting older had given Agatha a little breathing room and help around the house as well as additional income – the two eldest children, Mary and Alice aged 13 and 12, were already at work. By 1861 the family were living on Little Holme Street in Shade but by 1871 they had moved into the centre of town, to East Street. James was a leading member of the Todmorden Oddfellows where he made all sorts of professional connections.
Agatha died in 1876 and was buried here with her in laws, and also – we suspect – her and James’s son William, who was buried at Christ Church in 1851 at the age of eight weeks old. James went to live with their daughter Rebecca, who had in the meantime become Mrs. Christopher Wilson Procter. You can visit him, and maybe her, elsewhere in the yard. He continued clogging but ten years after Agatha entered this grave, he joined her.