KILSBY LEATHERLANDS

Leatherlands in Kilsby

Kilsby is a compact village which lies five miles south west of Rugby and two miles west of Crick.  There is a bridleway between Kilsby and Crick. Bridleways are ancient rural lanes. The Kilsby to Crick bridleway is probably 500 years old and was originally a sheep drover's route. It passes beneath the M1 and the West Coast Main Line railway, rising uphill from Kilsby, passing the ventilation shafts of the Kilsby railway tunnel and then descending towards Crick.                            

Kilsby’s early parish registers went missing several decades ago. The surviving parish registers begin in 1754. There are also Bishop’s Transcripts from 1706, but these may be incomplete. So there may be baptisms, marriages and burials of Leatherlands in Kilsby prior to 1706 which we have no knowledge of.

The first evidence of a Leatherland in Kilsby is the marriage of John Sabin weaver and Martha Leatherland in 1760 and the baptisms of their children during the 1760s and 1770s. Martha was the daughter of Robert and Mary Leatherland of Yelvertoft. Robert was a son of Christopher the sheep farmer of Yelvertoft.

The 1771 Militia List for Kilsby has William Letherland a servant in the village. In 1777 William Leatherland (possible the same man) married Ann Marcer / Mercer in Kilsby. Their two children were baptised there in 1778 and 1781.   That years Militia list includes William “Leatharlond” a labourer. All these Williams are probably another son of Robert & Mary Leatherland of Yelvertoft.

William and Ann Leatherland (nee Hall)

In 1783 another William Leatherland married Ann Hall in Kilsby and their children were baptised there. He is probably my direct ancestor. The parish register says he was a bachelor when he married so he is not the William who married in 1777.

This William was possibly the illegitimate son of William Leatherland and Eliza Clark born in Crick in 1764.  When he married Ann Hall he would have been nineteen which is several years younger than average age at marriage. It is possible that Ann was pregnant when she married – which may be one reason for the marriage - as their infant daughter was buried five months later The marriage register said that he was of that parish (as was Ann). William signed with a clear signature.

In 1788 a daughter Ann was baptised but under the surname Lealon. Around 1789 a Mary Leatherland was born who may be their daughter although there is no evidence of her baptism. In 1790 a son Samuel was baptised again under the surname Lealon. In February 1791 the Northampton Mercury newspaper reported the sale of the house of John Moore in Kilsby (by the sign of the White Hart). It named three occupiers one of whom was a Mr Leatherland, this was probably William.

William’s wife Ann died in 1801. Two years later William married Jane Daniels in Kilsby Independent (Congregational) Chapel.  William and Jane had nine children all baptised in the Kilsby Independent Chapel between 1804 and 1822. William was buried in Kilsby in 1830 aged sixty nine.

Kilsby Independent Chapel

Kilsby Independent Chapel was founded around 1663. The number of worshippers may well have exceeded those attending the Anglican parish church St Faith’s.  A chapel meeting house not built until 1738 but by 1750 its congregation was over a hundred so they built a gallery in the meeting house. By 1760 the original timber and plaster meeting house was too small and unsound as the congregation now numbered over two hundred. A new stone meeting house was built in Chapel Street in 1784. It later became a United Reformed Church but is now a private residence.  The baptism registers of Kilsby Independent Chapel began in 1795.

William and Jane’s Children

·        Mary born 1804, died 1825

·        Rebekah born 1805

·        John born 1807

·        Samuel born 1810

·        Jane born 1812 – died 1836

·        Hannah born 1814

·        Sarah born 1816

·        James born 1822 died same year

Rebekah Leatherland (1805- 1854)

In 1827 she was treated by Northampton General Hospital as an emergency admission. In 1831 she married Thomas Butler in Hillmorton, a suburb of Rugby. In 1841 they were living in Hillmorton. Thomas was a farm labourer. In 1851 she remained there, although her husband was not in the household. Rebekah died three years later.

John Leatherland (1807 – 1879)

John married Susanna Emery in Kilsby in 1833. She was fifteen years older than him. In 1851 they were in Kilsby, John was an agricultural labourer. Susanna died two years later. The following year he married Elizabeth Frisby in Kilsby. She died six years later. There is no evidence that he ever had children with his first or second wife. In 1861 he remained in Kilsby living alone, but there is evidence that he travelled to Australia in 1865 as he was the informant on the birth registration of his brother Robert’s daughter in Tasmania. By 1871 he was back in Kilsby where he died eight years later.

Samuel Leatherland (1810 – 1894)

Samuel was probably brought up in Kilsby. In 1835 he married Elizabeth Crofts in Churchover, Warwickshire. (This may be the first Leatherland link to Churchover). Their first child, William, was baptised in Churchover one month after they married so Elizabeth was probably eight months pregnant at marriage. Most  later children were baptised / born in Kilsby.

Although early records say that Samuel was a labourer, he later worked as a brickmaker. Sometime between 1839 and 1841 Samuel moved to Balcombe, Sussex, where he probably made bricks for the Ouse valley railway viaduct on London to Brighton railway line. We know this because daughter Mary was born there and because the 1841 census shows the family living in Balcombe Downs. There were several brickmakers/layers and clay labourers on the same census page. By early 1842 he was probably in Churchover as daughter Mary baptised there. By late 1843 he was back in Kilsby as his son Robert was born there. 

The 1851 census entry for Samuel Leatherland is odd. He was a lodger in Kilsby working for a farmer of 100 acres who employed three men. His wife and four children were residing in a separate household in Kilsby. They were still married, but eight years later Elizabeth died of TB., although he was not the informant on the death certificate so perhaps they were estranged ?

The 1861 census shows Samuel as a widowed farm labourer in Kilsby living with a son and two daughters.

In 1867 Samuel remarried Sarah Whiteman in Kilsby. She was twenty five years younger than him.  She was a spinster and a housekeeper, but she had two children. Samuel was with Sarah, two sons and two step children in 1871. By 1891 Samuel (now 81) was a retired farm labourer. Sarah was 54. There was a lodger Ann Bird (who continued to live with Sarah as lodger after Samuel's death and for the next twenty years. Samuel died aged 84 three years later.

Hannah Leatherland (1814 – 1878)

Hannah had an interesting life.  In 1839 she had an illegitimate daughter Fanny born in Rugby Union Workhouse. In 1841 the Coventry Standard newspaper reported that Hannah received goods stolen by her brother from a house in Rugby. In that year’s census she was living with her mother and daughter in Kilsby. Two years later she married John Walden in Kilsby, but John died of TB in 1848.

The 1851 census shows Hannah working as a laundress and living with her brother John, and her children. Three years later Hannah married again to William Swingler. By 1871 they had moved to Rugby. Hannah died in 1878, her death certificate said that William was a boysman. A Boysman was a school staff member, he may have worked at Rugby school.  

Sarah Leatherland (1815  - after 1871)

In 1841 Sarah was working as a servant for a victualler in Rugby. Ten years later she was a house servant in the Rugby suburb of Dunchurch. In 1885 she married Thomas Butler a widower in Coventry. Thomas later worked as a shepherd but died in 1870. Sarah was now living in Leamington Spa. I have not traced her after this, but she had a son who became a policeman.

Robert Leatherland (1819 – 1877)

Robert was a criminal who ended up being transported to Tasmania. His crime was breaking into a house and stealing clothing and linen.  In 1841 he was sentenced to transportation for ten years.

In the 1841 census he was incarcerated on a convict ship moored on the Thames. Most prisoners were sent initially to convict hulks in London before being assigned to a convict ship and leaving England. Robert sailed to Van Diemen's Land (the original name for Tasmania) a few months later. It is estimated that some 75,000 convicts were shipped there up until 1853 when transportation ended Tasmanian convict records include a physical description of Robert  : Height 5'5". Age 20. Large head. Brown hair. Oval visage. Scar on left wrist. In 1849 he was pardoned by the Tasmanian authorities, but he chose to remain in Tasmania probably because the year before he married Sarah Cook (another former convict from England).

In 1864 he was granted an Oyster Fishery Licence. The birth records of a daughter the following year shows that he was a fisherman. In 1875 he was charged with having refused and neglected to send his three children to school. Robert died two years later, he was 69 and a gardener. Sarah remarried but was engaged in various crimes. They had eleven children although several died at a young age

Children of Samuel and Elizabeth Leatherland

Samuel who married Elizabeth Crofts in Churchover in 1835 had many children, many of whom lived in Kilsby :

William Leatherland (1835 – 1910)

William was the eldest child. By 1851 he had left home to work as a farm servant in Ashby St Ledger for Lovell Cowley, a farmer of 386 acres who employed fourteen workers. The Cowleys were major local landowners and farmers especially in Kilsby. 

Ashby St Ledger Manor House was owned by the Catesby family. It became famous during the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 when Robert Catesby and his fellow conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, gathered in the Manor’s gatehouse to plot the assassination of King James I and his courtiers by blowing up Parliament.

In 1859 William married Elizabeth Jane Smart in Shearsby, Leicestershire. They initially lived in Braunston, which lies at the junction of the Grand Union and Oxford Canals on the Northants / Warwickshire border, five miles south of Kilsby. The 1861 census shows William working as a carter.

By 1871 William and Elizabeth were residing in Kilsby with their five children.  In 1881 William was a farm labourer. Kelly’s Directory of 1890 listed William  as a thatcher. The following year’s census said that he was a gardener.  

In 1910 the Lloyd George Land Survey showed William as the former occupier and tenant of a cottage in Kilsby which had one downstairs room and two bedrooms. A map shows that the cottage was on what is now Middle Street, with a large garden. His wife died in early 1910. 

In the 1911 census William was living with two unmarried daughters in Kilsby in a five room property. That year’s census required you to state how many children you had. William stated that he had had sixteen children of whom six were living but ten had died. (I have only found fifteen). William died shorty after the census of “senile decay” in Rugby Poor Law Union Workhouse.

William and Elizabeth's Children 

His first child Joseph William Leatherland (1859 - 1896) was a bricklayers apprentice in  Birmingham in 1881. Two years later he emigrated to Queensland, Australia. He appears in various Australian newspaper notices, including in lists of unclaimed letters. At some point he moved to South Africa. Sadly he died of typhoid in Johannesburg in 1896. He never married so his father was granted probate of his estate. I discovered a series of letters from 1910 in the Northants Record Office between Joseph's father, his sister Louisa and brother Samuel to solicitors in Long Buckby, Northants. The solicitors had discovered that Joseph owned some land in Sydney.

In 1861 an unnamed boy and girl (presumably twins) were born on New Years Day but both died the same day. 

Ellen Elizabeth Leatherland (1861 - 1943) was the first surviving daughter. In 1881 she was a domestic servant, living with her parents. At the age of twenty eight she married George Clarke, a gardener. In 1891 they were in Handsworth. Ellen had nine children but five had died by 1911. In 1901 she was an inmate in Newport Pagnell Union Workhouse, Buckinghamshire with three of her children. By 1911 she was in Rugby, still apparently married, although George has not been located since 1891. Perhaps they were living apart. By 1921 she remained in Rugby but now as a widow. She died there in 1943. 

In 1863 / 1864 two sons were born but died in infancy. 

Clara Jane Leatherland (1865 - 1933) was a cook working for a pharmacist in Rugby in 1891 when she married Joseph Lucas Hobley, a railway fireman. By 1911 he was a train driver with the  London & North Western Railway. By 1921 he lived in Rugby.  Clara died in 1933, but her widower Joseph Hobley later married her sister Frances Ann. 

The next child John Leatherland (1867 - 1950) became a police officer. In 1889 he married Ellen Facer. They lived in the Northants villages of West Haddon and later Long Buckby and Paulerspury.   Ellen died in 1917, a year later he married Sara Davis in Selly Oak. By 1921 he had left the police force and was a gate keeper, for English Electric Co Ltd in Coventry. He died in Oldbury in 1950. 

In 1868 William and Elizabeth had twins again who they named Adam and Eve. Both died in infancy as did the next child a son. In 1871 Frances Ann Leatherland (1871 - 1943) was born. She was a cook and lived with her parents, but by 1901 she resided in Leamington Spa. The 1911 census shows that she had returned home to live with her elderly father. She was back in Leamington by 1921 living with her sister Lousia (both were unmarried). In 1934 she married her widowed brother in law Joseph Hobley. They lived in Rugby in 1939. She died there four years later. 

Her sister Louisa Leatherland (1873 - 1935) never married. She worked as a domestic servant (in Reigate Surrey in 1901). Along with Clara, she had returned home to care for her father by 1911. Later she lived in Leamington where she ran a sweet shop. She died there in 1935. 

The next child was Samuel Leatherland (1874 - 1948). In 1901 he was a railway wagon greaser in Rugby. Ten years later he had moved to Willesden in North London where he worked as an LNWR railway labourer. He married Emily Pfaff. 1921 saw them in Harlesden where he was employed in the LNWR wagon repair shop at Willesden Junction. He died in Shenley Mental Hospital. 

The last child, a son, was born in 1876 but died in infancy.

Despite William having such a large family, there are no descendants who now bear the Leatherland surname. The reasons include infant mortality, an adult son Joseph who emigrated but died prematurely, and the fact that four of the children who survived him were daughters. Despite the Leatherland surname having died out in later generations, many years ago my late uncle John Leatherland had some contact with a couple of William’s grandchildren, some of whom emigrated to Australia like their uncle Joseph. One descendant sent us a photo of what was claimed to be the Leatherland family warming pan.

Kilsby Village History

Kilsby is a compact village about 15 - 20 minutes drive south east of Rugby along Kilsby Lane.  It lies to the east of the Northampton to Rugby railway line and the M1. 

Kilsby history has been well documented by the late Gren Hatton in his excellent comprehensive village history "Kilsby The Story of a Village" and  "At That Particular Time" which contains recollections and anecdotes from elderly residents of Kilsby.  My brief description of the village history relies heavily on these works.

                                 

                                                   

Kilsby has Roman origins. Traces of Roman settlements have been found during archeological excavations together with fragments of Roman pottery. The Roman road, Watling Street, runs close to the village. The Kilsby stretch of Watling Street is still a public right of way marking the border between Kilsby and Crick.

Kilsby was probably founded as a village around 900 AD. The name probably has Saxon and Danish origins. There are still traces of medieval Kilsby in ridge and furrow field patterns, windmill mounds, and the parish church, St Faiths, which was built in the fourteenth century.

Kilsby has two particular historical claims to fame : the first fighting in the English Civil War began there in 1642, and the Kilsby railway tunnel built in the 1830s which formed a key section of the world's first inter-city railway, the London to Birmingham line, which at that time was the longest tunnel in the world. 

                        

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Kilsby's economy was dominated by the cloth weaving industry.  Weaving was carried out on hand looms in cottages.  Gren Hatton estimated that there were fifty to seventy handlooms at work in the village, along with support workers such as woolcombers (who washed, cleaned and combed the wool to prepare it for spinning), spinners, and carpenters (who built and repaired the handlooms). 

A number of families prospered and some became merchants of such standing that they were able to issue their own trading tokens. A history of the 1720s stated that Kilsby comprised seventy two houses, nine of which were set aside for the poor. A later history records 148 houses in 1801, with 703 inhabitants. 

Kilsby's prosperity declined in the later 18th and 19th century.  Gren Hatton explains that its textile industry was destroyed by :

• The Industrial Revolution which created machines and factories that were much more efficient than cottage hand-looms and undercut their prices.
• The enclosure of Kilsby's open fields in 1778 which impoverished many villagers (but made some farmers richer).
• The Napoleonic Wars between England and France from 1799 to 1815 which meant that many workers had to serve in the army and led to economic depression because of the need to pay for the wars.

                              

The 1847 Post Office Directory said that Kilsby had a population of 655 in 1841 and n acreage of 2,227.  It lists three local gentry, plus ten farmers (five of whom were from the Cowley family). There were three butchers, two millers, three bakers, two blacksmiths, two shopkeepers, one carrier (who also ran the Devon Ox pub), two farmers who were also cattle dealers, one cattle dealer, two farmers and graziers from the Cowley family, two farmers and graziers from the Lee family, and one plumber and glazier. Mrs Jeziah Essen who ran the Post Office was also a butcher. There were two pub owners, two surgeons, two carpenters, a railway contractor, a road surveyor, a saddler, two beer retailers, a tailor, a bricklayer, four shoemakers, a wheelwright, and a baker.

Kelly's Directory of 1890 gives a vivid description of Kilsby village at that time as well as listing "private residents" (local gentry / landowners) and commercial traders. Its soil was strong loam", with the subsoil being clay and gravel. The chief crops were "wheat, barley and oats". The main landowners were the Cowley family and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. The National School had an average attendance of 120 pupils. Kilsby railway station's stationmaster was Jabez Shrives.

One of the main purposes of Kelly's Directory was to give useful information about communications between towns and villages. The Kilsby entry tells us that letters could be posted up to 8.30 pm and that there was a daily delivery of post at 7 am. The Directory also lists the village carrier, Thomas Haynes, who provided carrier services to Daventry and Rugby twice a week and to Lutterworth as an occasional Thursday service. William Leatherland is included in the list of commercial traders as a thatcher.

                                     

           

Hunt's House, Kilsby. Parts of the building date from the 15th century although most of the stonework is 17th century.