Brassington Halls 1½

With reference to my earlier post (BH1) and the marraige of Joseph Hall and Sarah Truman.
I have since discovered that the original Primitive Methodist Chapel was built in 1827, whilst the other Independant Chapel was built in 1855. What I missed, when visiting (in 2006) and taking these photos was St Bartholomews Church a much older structure and the more likely place of their marriage. But I'm leaving those photographs on to paint a bit of a picture of the place.

Where is Brassington

Brassington is in Derbyshire, between Matlock and Ashbourne. Check out Brassington on Google Maps, and look out for other places that also feature in my family history, such as Bradbourne, Kniveton, Hognaston and Atlow.

On this modern day map of Brassington, a lot of the roads from the nineteenth century remain. The terrain flows downhill roughly north down to south.

Joseph Hall, b.1804, and John Hall b.1840 lived on Kings Hill. Later related Halls I have found on census returns living on Maddock Lake (yes Lake!) and Dale End

Brassington Halls 2

Brassington Halls 1

On 22nd October 1825 my great great grandparents, Joseph Hall and Sarah Truman, were married in the tiny church at Hognaston, Derbyshire. Today, there are what were two churches - both now converted into private accommodation, and I'm not sure when they were built. I would think the Primitive Methodist Chapel would not have been around in 1825, and so I favour the other (the one with the St George's flag in the photo below) - which has probably been re-built and renovated several times over, although probably and hopefully on the same site..

Joseph Hall was born in Brassington on 22nd June 1804, whilst his wife Sarah Truman was born in Hognaston in 1807. Hognaston is only about five miles from Brassington, and I'm assuming that they lived in Brassington when married or soon after (their children were born in Brassington and they were certainly living at the family farm in 1841). Both Joseph and Sarah came from farming families, and appeared to own the farms rather than being just labourers. Joseph inherited his fathers farm (of 35 acres in 1851) which is on Kingshill in Brassington.

These two photos of Kingshill or Kings Hill were taken in 2006 and I suspect these buildings are over 100 years old, although probably not around in the first half of the nineteenth century when my family lived there. The right hand photo (looking down) is slightly further up the hill than the left hand photo (looking up), so the houses you can see are on the same side of the road. Behind these houses is farmland and there is a modern farmhouse at the top of the hill. This is not to say that the Hall's farm was a predecessor of this modern day farm. But I like to think that the farmland behind these houses might well have been the land farmed by my great great grandparents and their children almost two hundred years ago. But, if not that land, then somewhere quite nearby.

Book cover, should it ever get written

Frederick Hall, 1896 - 1917

These are the memorials to Frederick Hall, in the Church and Churchyard of the Parish Church of St James in Brassington, Derbyshire.

30733 Private Frederick Hall of 20th Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers was born in Brassington on 24th March 1896. He enlisted at Grainthorpe, Lincolnshire and was killed in action on 23rd October 1917 at the Battle of Passchendaele (also known as the Third Battle of Ypres).

He died aged 21 years old

He has no known grave; but is commemorated on Tyne Cot Memorial, Zonnebeke, West-Laanderen, Belgium. Panel 54-60 and 163A.

Frederick was my second cousin, once removed - or put another way, his great grandfather was my great great grandfather. So we are related and I feel a great empathy with this person who is part of a bigger and perhaps sadder tale that ought to have been written by Catherine Cookson.

Five Century Timeline

14 Generations over 5 Centuries

This is the longest line in my family tree tracing fourteen generations from a birth in 1515 in the Isle of Man, to my son born in 1989. Its not a pure male line as there is one woman in the line. Dates are year of birth ...


1515 Donald MacStephan born Ballaugh, Isle of Man
1556 Robert MacStephan born Ballaugh, Isle of Man
1601 Donald MacStephan born Ballaugh, Isle of Man
1645 John Stephan born Ballaugh, Isle of Man
1667 Ffinlow Stephan born Ballaugh, Isle of Man
1689 Thomas Stephen born Ballaugh, Isle of Man
1716 Thomas Stephen born Ballaugh, Isle of Man
1751 Thomas Stephen born Ballaugh, Isle of Man
1797 Christopher Stephen born Ballaugh, Isle of Man
1843 Ellen Margaret Stephen born Ballaugh, Isle of Man
1878 John Robert Spencer born Runcorn, Cheshire
1912 Robert Hall Spencer born Manchester, Lancashire
1952 David Kenneth Spencer born Manchester, Lancashire
1989 James Richard Hall Spencer born Manchester, Gtr Manchester


What is interesting and perhaps surprising about the above line is the age of the parent when the child was born - 36 - which strikes me as quite elderley for a consistent period of five hundred years. If you take out three consecutive births at the end of the 17th / beginning of the 18th century (ie. Fffinlow and the first two Thomas's) then that average rises to over 40. Whilst both my father and son are first born, I and the majority of this line are not; which goes some way to explaining. Someone has to be the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son. What intriugues me is that, in the same time period, a more productive first born could have created over twenty generations.

The Beginning (in the middle)

In 1872 (I think), John Hall who was born in Brassington in Derbyshire in 1840, married Ellen Margaret Stephen who was born in Ballaugh in the Isle of Man in 1843. They were married in Wigan! What brought them together and what had brought them to Wigan?
These two people are my great grandparents, and they are buried in Weaste Cemetry in Salford - one day I need to go and find their gravestone.
John was a SADDLER by trade or in some Census Returns, he is listed as HARNESS MAKER - probably one and the same thing.
Ellen was a HATTER. Her parents had worked as Hatters in the Isle of Man; a cottage industry that was failing and so they moved to England. Initially they went to Cockermouth in Cumbria in the late 1840s and appeared there in the 1851 census. By 1861 they were living and working in Stockport at a famous Hat Making Institution called CHRISTIES.