Final talk of the season

SUTTON Bonington Local

History Society’s final talk of the season was, as usual, proceeded by an admirably short AGM.

The society is financially solvent, but could do with more members.

This month’s talk was “Sutton Bonington and the 1911 Census”. Local history at its most local delivered by Rachel Blackshaw, a village resident , and based on work done by the Loughborough Library Local Studies Group, with additional information from the Corbett family of Sutton Bonington.

Apparently this was the first census where the householders were left a form with a unique schedule number, by the enumerator, for the householder to fill in on census day Sunday, April 2.

All previous censuses were a door to door canvas with the enumerator filling in his sheet as he went along, the information being nothing more than a list of names addresses, ages, occupations of the occupants and their place of birth.

The 1911 census had more details about the properties, number of rooms etc.

However the addresses were not very specific, houses were rarely numbered and in some cases the street names have changed since then.

It was not a straight forward task to identify who lived in which house.

The enumerator, who lived in the village, did not always follow a logical route in allocating the schedule numbered forms. It was only with the aid of a subsequent more geographically logical list of names, written down by a villager some years later, and a hand drawn map of houses produced in 1929 that it was possible to identify with some certainty who lived in which house.

We learnt that few of the people living in the village in 1911 still have descendants in the village today.

The range of occupations was very different, more tradesman fewer professional jobs.

There were two blacksmiths shops, several cobblers, a saddler, joiners, plumbers, grocers, bakers, market gardeners, servants and agricultural workers. Some occupations such as framework knitting no longer exist.

Quite a few people worked on the railways, this is not surprising given that there were two stations in the vicinity.

It is quite possible that these railway men were under some pressure as both the chairman of the Midland Railway, Sir Ernest Paget, and the general manager, Sir Guy Granet, lived in the village, Sir Ernest at the Hall and Sir Guy at the White House on Main Street.

This was a popular talk and there was much interest shown in the Census extracts, old maps and photographs.

It was the last talk of this season and the members are now looking forward to summer visits to the archives at Nottingham University, a guided tour of Market Bosworth, Lyddington Bede house and Stratford on Avon.

New members welcome, contact Val Street,tel. 01509 672728.