NATURE COLUMN: Bill Cawley

ONE of my experiences of childhood was to go picking bilberries on Wetley Moor.

On school holidays I would walk up to the Moor from the Abbey council estate with friends and spend the afternoon rooting for the berries.

Bilberries are black, globular, and flat-topped and can be consumed fresh, but are generally considered more palatable in jams.

This time of year is the best time to pick them although it is hard work as they are picked by hand.

Years later when I worked on a farm in Norway, the farmer’s family would pick a variety of bilberry – the ligonberry – on hillsides with a wooden box rake which made the task easier.

It would have certainly have assisted on Wetley Moor.

Picking the berries on Wetley Moor was not without danger. In the 1960s there were signs warning people of the dangers of workedout coal mines whose shafts littered the moor.

Little did I know that my ancestors would have been familiar with this landscape 200 years ago!

My mother’s family – the Sherwins – lived in the area in the early 19th century.

My great-great-great-greatgrandfather Thomas Sherwin (1817-1841) was a miner who worked locally.

He was part of an extended family that had lived in the Bucknall/ Werrington area for at least 150 years.

Thomas was a witness to the aftermath of a violent death that took place on the moor in June 1841 when an uncle by marriage William Hewitt was found dead with his brains dashed in a quarry near Luzlow.

Thomas discovered the body. Hewitt was a miser and although he lived a mendicant existence was not poor and had 16 gold sovereigns which were missing.

The chief suspect was William Simpson, described as being “of unprepossessing appearance and intemperate habits”.

He liked a pint did William and he was seen spending money freely after Hewitt’s death.

He was arrested in a pub drinking in Bucknall. Although Simpson did not offer a defence he was found not guilty of murder.

Unfortunately he bragged in a pub about the money that had come into his possession and he was overheard by a Bagnall policeman.

Simpson was re-arrested and tried again for manslaughter and larceny as he admitted taking Hewitt’s purse.

He was found guilty of theft and sentenced to be transported to Australia on the convict ship Waterloo.

In one final twist, the ship was wrecked off Cape Town in August 1842. Simpson was commended for helping to save the lives of many passengers, although 189 souls were lost.

Sadly, Thomas Sherwin was unaware of events as he was killed in a pit explosion in October 1841, leaving a widow and young children.

I wonder if it was one of pits on Wetley Moor I walked by 127 years later?