YELVERTOFT LEATHERLANDS
Yelvertoft Village
Yelvertoft was the home of my Leatherland ancestors mainly during the first half of the eighteenth century. Yelvertoft is about a 20 minute drive from Rugby mostly along narrow country lanes. Although a small village it has a long wide high street approximately three quarters of a mile long. On my last visit there was one pub and a small post office / general store.
All Saints church is at the far end of the High Street on top of a small hill, slightly hidden from the road, being surrounded by trees and bushes. The church has a large well maintained and attractive graveyard. A notice inside the church says that some of the graveyard has deliberately been left overgrown as part of a policy of encouraging wildlife.
Yelvertoft is quiet and rural. The Grand Union Canal borders the village winding sleepily through the countryside a few minutes walk from the church. The canal turns a bend and passes under the High Street – the Yelvertoft tunnel – on its way to Crick.
The Reading Room dates from 1792 and used to be the village schoolhouse. There is a large sundial with the date above the door. It has a small tower on top which may have contained the school bell.
Many of the fields between Yelvertoft, Clay Coton and the neighbouring villages of Lilbourne and Stanford on Avon, contain ridge and furrow field pattern remains, which is evidence of the medieval farming system and the largest surviving area of ridge and furrow fields in Northamptonshire.
Leatherlands in Yelvertoft
My Leatherland ancestral line seems to have settled in Yelvertoft from 1686.
Christopher Leatherland (1654 - 1731)
The fifth child of Edward and Elizabeth, Christopher, married by licence when he was thirty two. He had ten children and seems to have lived in Yelvertoft for most of his adult life. Notes in the parish register show that he was a sheep farmer.
He was baptised as Christifor Leithorland in Clay Coton. On Easter Day 1686 Christopher Leatherland and Sarah Walton married at West Haddon.
Although the baptisms of their children in the parish register make no mention of Christopher's occupation, the Yelvertoft parish register lists tithe payments and sheep farmers in the village between 1706 and 1710, probably because of their liability to pay tithes. Christopher appears several times in these lists.
In 1705/06 Christ Leatherland owned "A yard land and 3 pt of 2 (x) 56" and 56 sheep, 6 odds, 5 fleece". In 1707 Christ Leatherl had 46 sheep. The 1709 Easter offerings listing five people one of whom is "Kit Leatherland. And a list of 1709/10 has Christ Leatherland 26 sheep and 4 new lambs.
Christopher Leatherland was buried in Yelvertoft in 1731. He was 77 years old.
Edward Leatherland
My probable direct ancestor Edward Leatherland was the sixth son of Christopher and Sarah Leatherland. He was baptised in 1700 in Yelvertoft. In February 1726 he married Esther/Hesther Watts in West Haddon, a village three miles east of elvertoft. A Marriage Licence described Edward as the servant man of Jeremiah Bullock, a schoolmaster. There are several Jeremiah Bullocks who appear in the Crick parish registers during the 18th century. Edward executed the marriage licence by making a mark rather than by signing his name. Jeremiah Bullock was his name bondsman.
Why marry by licence ? The usual way to marry was by the calling of banns, a public announcement of the intended marriage, three weeks before the wedding in order to give people the opportunity to object to the marriage. But marrying by licence was quicker and more discrete.
The document below is a copy of Edward's license held in the Northants Record Office. Marriage bonds were divided into two parts : an obligation, written in Latin until 1733, which noted the names and parishes of those bound (often including those of the bridegroom) and the amount of the penalty ; and a condition, outlining the terms under which a penalty would have to be paid (ie if the sworn statement proved to be false), which was always written in English.
Marriage Licence Bond of Edward Leatherland
We know quite a lot about Edward's wife Esther because her father, William Watts, left a will when he died in 1745. He was a carpenter who left his estate to Esther and husband Edward (described as a labourer in the will), to John Redgrave (carpenter), Martha (his daughter), John Ward (his son-in-law and a butcher), Elizabeth Sabin (a widowed daughter), and to Thomas Whitmell junior.
Edward and Esther had three boys baptised in Crick between 1732 and 1739. The first child was not baptised until they had been married for six years (which may indicate there were earlier children not yet traced). Edward was described as a labourer in the baptism entries. Their sons were :
- William baptised 1732 (who died aged 2)
- William baptised 1737
- Edward baptised 1739.
Edward Leatherland (senior) died in 1763 and was buried in Crick. Esther died in 1786.
Robert Leatherland (1706 - 1751)
Robert was another son of Christopher & Sarah Leatherland. Baptised in Yelvertoft in 1705 he probably married Mary Kendall in Brockhall in 1729 (although his surname was written as Letherell in the parish register. (I assume that Letherell is a variation of Leatherland and that the marriage is for the son of Christopher because (a) I can't find other Letherells anywhere (b) Robert was of Yelvertoft (c) we know Robert Leatherland married a Mary (d) the first son of Rob. & Mary Leatherland was baptised 1730). Brockhall is ten miles south of Yelvertoft.
A title deed held by Northants Record Office records the purchase of a property for twelve pounds in Yelvertoft by Robert and Mary in 1730. The property had been bought by parish officers in 1717 and was occupied by Widow Garrett.
Robert and Mary had eight children all baptised Yelvertoft between 1730 and 1745, although four died in infancy / childhood. Robert died in 1751.
Another property deed held by the Northants Record Office Yelvertoft was made in 1758 between Mary Leatherland of Yelvertoft (widow of Robert), their son John Leatherland a weaver of Finedon and six men all of Yelvertoft. Mary and John`s property in Yelvertoft was sold to them for eight pounds. I think the vendors were parish officials as the deed is catalogued under poor law records. Mary was probably buried in Welford in 1764.
Robert and Mary Leatherland's Children
Robert and Mary had four sons and four daughters, all baptised in Yelvertoft, although one daughter died in infancy, another died aged three, and two sons died aged eight and ten (within days of each other).
Their son John Leatherland (1730 - 1799) became a weaver / woolcomber and settled in Finedon. Their daughter Martha (1734 - 1778) married John Sabin who became a weaver in Kilsby. They both died within months of each of other in 1778. John made a will leaving money in trust to his children. William Leatherland of KIlsby was one of the executors and trustees of the will.
Their daughter Sarah Leatherland married Samuel Powell in Crick where they lived.
Their son William Leatherland probably married Ann Mercer in Kilsby in 1777.
I have traced some of the descendants of these children into the nineteenth century.
Although my direct line had moved to Warwickshire by the early nineteenth century, there were a handful of Leatherland families still in Yelvertoft at this time.
John Laurence : Gardening Pioneer of Yelvertoft
“I do not know a more pleasing or healthful occupation than Agriculture and Gardening, occupations so compatible with the life of a Rural Clergyman.”
John Laurence was Rector of Yelvertoft from 1703 to 1721. He was born in the 1660s in Stamford, the eldest son of a clergyman, and studied at Clare Hall, Cambridge.
Laurence was a very keen gardener during his time at Yelvertoft. He wrote a book “The Clergy-Man's Recreation: Shewing the Pleasure and Profit of the Art of Gardening” published in 1714. This book immediately became very popular and by 1717 it had entered its fifth edition. In 1718 he wrote another book “The Fruit-Garden Kalendar”.
Laurence's books were the first important books on gardening to be published in the eighteenth century. They became so popular that copies were even bought by American colonists. After leaving Yelvertoft in 1720 Laurence became Canon of Salisbury and later Rector of Bishopwearmouth, County Durham.
Susan Campbell's “A History of Kitchen Gardening" explains that Laurence's first act on moving to the rectory at Yelvertoft was to pull down part of the mud wall that enclosed a miserable weed-infested garden, and build a brick wall, nine feet high, for fruit. The following appreciation of Laurence's work appeared in the Journal of Horticulture ::
"To the close of the seventeenth century from the earliest period of Christianity its clergy were the chief promoters of the arts and sciences, and the authors and preservers of their literature. Gardening is not an exception to that rule. Gardeners in those times were totally illiterate, and to the clergy then living we are indebted for the only publications that imparted instruction in horticulture to their contemporaries, and that have preserved to us a record of their practice of the art. Of these clerical horticulturists the first of superior attainments known to us is the Rev. John Laurence, and anyone even now taking his ' Clergyman's Recreation ' and ' Gentleman's Recreation ' for his guides would not be led into faulty practice."