This is the tale of two Cleggs – siblings Mary and William – and their spouses, James Fielden and Rachel Marshall.
Mary was the oldest daughter and William was the youngest son of John and Hannah (Shackleton) Clegg, both hand loom weavers from Todmorden. The pair had married at Heptonstall by banns in September 1828 and Mary was welcomed along into the world in December 1828. Phew! Others followed and there ended up being twelve years between her and William, who was born right at the end of 1840. Both appear with their parents at Newton Green on the 1841 Census. By 1851 the Cleggs had finally moved to power loom weaving and it was all hands on deck in terms of the family working. Only mother Hannah and little Hannah, William’s younger sister, were at home. Mary was also a weaver and William was working as a doffer.
By 1861 Mary’s younger sisters had all married and the household consisted of John, Hannah, Mary, William and Hannah. By 1871 only Mary and William would be left of that group of five. Little Hannah died in 1861, mother Hannah in 1863, and John in 1868. All three are buried in the private area of Christ Church, near the church itself.
First we’ll talk about Mary’s life. Mary married James Fielden in 1866 at the Independent Chapel in Eastwood (long gone, although its graveyard remains). Who was James? A good question, as there are several around at the time and pinning this one down without the marriage certificate is difficult. He may very well be one of the sons of James Fielden and Mary Hollas, in which case you know his back story; but he could be a different James, as there were quite a few of them knocking about! We know more about him after he married Mary than before even though that still isn’t much. He was a labourer; he and Mary lived at Patmos; they had no children; he died in 1873.
Living at Knotts Grove may have meant he was at a lodging house and therefore was working on the railway or at one of the mills at Lydgate, and why they then moved to Patmos is unknown. In 1871 the pair had a young lodger, nineteen-year-old Mary Shackleton, whose origin story is unknown. After James’s probably very untimely death in 1873 the two Marys decided to stick together, and they moved to Shade where Mary found work at a confectioner’s and the younger Mary continued to work as a cotton mill hand.
Mary died in 1888 and was buried here with James. Younger Mary married in 1891 – was their friendship so strong that, like a daughter, she waited for her obligations to end before she moved on? Was there something more happening? Was Mary actually Mary’s daughter? We know that the last scenario isn’t the case, at least, but there had been Shackletons living next door to the Cleggs for some time at Newton Green and Mary might have been an unwanted or unable-to-be-cared-for granddaughter who the childless Fieldens took in. That one will remain a mystery.
Back to William now: William and the Cleggs were still at Newton Grove, but in the meantime a young lady named Rachel Marshall was living at Newgate Bottom, near Lydgate, and working as a power loom weaver. Her whole family were weavers and most likely worked at one of the mills that lined the Lancashire side of the Calder in Lydgate at that time. Was the Lydgate connection with James Fielden bring the two together? They were married in December 1861 at St. John the Baptist in Halifax.
Was it a happy marriage? They certainly stayed together for their whole lives. It seemed odd though that at first glance an entire decade seems to have elapsed before their first child was born. It turns out that they lost three of their eight children, and possibly those losses all occurred between 1861 and 1871. On the 1871 Census there’s only William and Rachel and their not-yet-one year old son William Henry Marshall. And at this point they aren’t even in Todmorden anymore; they’d moved to Rastrick! By the time their next child Jonas was born they had come down towards Hebden Bridge, and they were still there in 1881 at Garden Street (you may know it as a carpark). Rachel worked as a weaver despite having five children at this point, so money was clearly an issue, and travelling to where the work was a requirement.
The nature of the work was also open to negotiation. In 1891 all the children bar Theodore were fustian tailors; in 1901 only Theodore and Marshall were left, the family had moved to Barnsley, and Marshall had become a wood turner! Rachel at least was back to staying at home, a move which hopefully was economically sustainable. Eventually though all the children (all the children who survived) were grown and William and Rachel moved back to Todmorden to end their lives as old age pensioners. Not our wording, but the wording on the 1911 Census.
The houses at Top O’Th’ Hill Road are fine ones now, big 4-5-6 bedroom mansions, but back then William and Rachel’s house had two rooms in it – and that includes the kitchen.
Rachel died in 1913 and this family grave was the nearest, easiest and cheapest place to bury her. William left Todmorden and went off to see out his years with his daughter Grace, now Grace Crowther of Fleetwood. When he died in 1922 someone, probably Grace, made sure he joined her here and that his name appeared on the stone.
