Former teacher’s ‘homework’ on history of farm
Each new discovery created another question.
Elizabeth Bowen has been studying the history of her home, Hallas Hall Farm.
A RETIRED teacher who decided to research the history of her Grade II-listed family home during lockdown has discovered fascinating stories of its colourful past.
Elizabeth Bowen has lived at Hallas Hall Farm, in Cullingworth, near Keighley, for 25 years. The property is part of a 17th century farmhouse surrounded by barns that have been converted into cottages.
After retiring and with time on her hands during lockdown, Elizabeth – inspired by an Ancestry.com subscription and the BBC series A House
Through Time – set to work to trace the lives of the farm’s past inhabitants following a chance sighting in the local churchyard.
“I was on a walk with a friend when I spotted a grave for three sisters named Jackson, whom the gravestone said had lived at Hallas Hall Farm. That was the first real connection I found and I then decided to look at the census records for 1871, 1881 and 1891 to find about more about this family.”
She discovered that the farm had probably been occupied by the Jacksons for longer than any other family who had lived there.
Samuel Jackson, the father of seven children, was a miner when he first arrived at Hallas Hall, as were his sons. Yet he was clearly ambitious and upwardly mobile, and Elizabeth discovered that he worked his way up to become a steward of the mine before turning to farming. He lived to at least the age of 79 despite his impoverished beginnings.
“The Jacksons had loads of children, and many of them worked in the mills and mines. I became fascinated by children working in mines, and I ended up going off on all sorts of tangents along the way. Every new discovery created another question. It’s still very much a work in progress.”
The next intriguing revelation was when she spotted that one of the ‘families’ was an unusual household – a 52-year-old widow living with 14 girls between the ages of 12 and 17. The girls were all from Hull or Liverpool. It turned out that the woman had been running a sort of hostel for girls working in a local mill.
“I started out with just one family and it all stemmed from there really – the Jacksons really reflect what life was like at the time.
“They had so many children – every 18 months to two years there was another baby, another mouth to feed. It must have been so hard.”