Newport High Street in 1838 by Henry Ziegler

We have Caroline Davies of Davies, White & Perry to thank for preserving a wonderful watercolour of Newport High Street painted in 1838. It is fortunate that, not long after the painting was completed, a local person identified several of the characters and trades shown. The view is looking northwards towards the church.

 

The painting is by Henry Bryan Ziegler (1798–1874). He was a British artist, known as a landscape and portrait painter. He studied under John Varley, honed his skills at the Royal Academy schools, and eventually became a Royal Academician. He made a reputation as drawing master to members of the royal family; Queen Adelaide took him under her wing, and his views of Windsor castle are in The Royal Collections. Having relatives in Ludlow, he did several illustrations of Ludlow Castle and Shropshire towns.

Let us look at some of the details:

 

 

 

Here you can compare the west side of the street with Then and Now images. From the left :

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part of The Old Bell Inn – you can still see today the bell shapes on the dormer windows.

 Then No 27-31 All were demolished in 1845 to make way for a terrace of three properties Now Clarks and Nationwide.

Then a two bay property – Now Head Quarters.

Then a four bay property – Now Evenett & Bishop and Newport Pizza.

Then a two bay property – Now Happy Smiles and  The Glasshouse.

Beyond this, the old Crown Inn – now Davies, White and Perry. The red animal on a portico  or pole standing out further along, marks the Red Lion Inn, which eventually became Barclays Bank; even today it still has the large inn yard at the back.

 

Field group

Our Field Archaeology Group  are very active and routinely field-walk, metal detect and occasionally dig during Sumer months and as a result have a large collection of finds for research and display.
The group is well respected for its work and is often asked to help by regional and national groups.   Some recent finds are on display in the Deli 45 Coffee Shop and the Field group team are often at the Coffee nights to explain the finds and promote their work.

Wellington Road 14 August 2022

Opportunities to conduct any form of archaeological work within in Newport are rare.

Since the current Field Group was formed back on 2001, only five have arisen, including the one on Sunday (14 Aug 2022).

Number 11 Wellington Road is of particular interest, as it’s situated adjacent to what is believed to be the site of a medieval moat.  According to English Heritage, the moat once surrounded a fortified Manor House, although there is no physical evidence remaining of the building, at least above ground.  It was hoped that medieval pottery or other artefacts such as stonework from the period might be recovered and the dig itself concentrated in the rear garden of the property, in the area used by the Elkes family as their vegetable garden.

On Sunday 14th August the first test pit was excavated. Although the ground was very dry, it was thankfully easy to work.  The pit was approximately 1x1m square and went down to a depth of 75cm, at which point the natural ground level was reached, this appeared to be of compacted glacial sand and gravel.

The majority of the finds were pottery sherds from the late 17th/18th century.  These included typical local Staffordshire Slip wares, stoneware and Black ware, all of which are regularly recovered from the local area.

Also recovered were a number of fragments of clay pipe stems, which probably date from the late 18th/19th century.

Two fragments of iron ore slag were also recovered, these appear to be of comparable date to the pottery as they appear to be poorly fired and still retain iron ore.

 

Building material, brick and slate fragments are also found and these look to relate to the current building, particularly the green slate, which is almost certainly from North Wales. This material is most likely waste from the construction of number 11, which was subsequently buried in the rear of the property, once construction had been completed.

During the sieving of the soil a fragment of medieval pottery was recovered. The fragment appears to be from a storage vessel or bowl, although the sherd is not large enough to be able to accurately gauge the size of the vessel, it clearly dates from the late medieval period AD1300-1450. Similar fragments were found by the Society in the ground of the Trinity Church also located on Wellington Road, earlier in the year.

During the morning, Graeme Gunnell was able to conduct a small detecting survey, recovering small fragments of lead, again almost certainly lead offcuts related to the lead flashing around the roof and windows. Perhaps the most interesting metal find was a decorative piece of lead or pewter found in the flowerbed adjacent the vegetable garden. The decoration appears to resemble a ‘fleur de lis’ and looks to date from the late17th/early 18th century.

The group hope to return to the site again in a few weeks time.

 

If you are interested in joining this group please contact:

Field Officer:
Julian Meeson: 07902 741803
meeson569@btinternet.com

Newport Yards

NEWPORT YARDS

As preparation for writing a new history of Newport, one of our members, Dave Hodson, has fully researched the yards of Newport. Dave was interested in finding out more about his great grandparents who lived  in Cock Yard alley and Bellman’s yard and so the search started there.

            If we take Newport’s High Street from Lower Bar in the north to Upper Bar in the south, including St Mary’s Street, we can see strips of land, as laid out in medieval times, called burgage plots. They lay in long narrow stretches behind the properties.  Originally, these plots were both for  doing their trades and presumably growing food. At the back of the plots was always a back lane so that, usually, people could access their plot from the back and the front.  In Newport, these are Water lane and Beaumaris Road.

The word ‘yard’ could describe a variety of situations: a long narrow alley stretching from behind the line of the High Street, such as Cock Yard  and Red Lion/ Barclays Bank Yard, both of which ran right down to Beaumaris Road.  However, some the yards were little more than rear accommodation of an inn or shop. Often these became called a ‘Court’ and, until fairly recently, you could still see court numbers above alley ways.  The owners of the frontage properties would often be crafts people: butchers, bakers, saddlers, tailors etc.  Up until the 20^th century each town was pretty much self sufficient.  These are all documented in Newport trade directories of the period; of which Newport History Society has an almost complete set from 1791. These businesses built workshops, sheds, stables and small cottages down the strips of land, both to accommodate their business premises and staff, but also to supplement their income from the business. Nearly all the names of the yards have been taken down today, which is a pity because there are many interesting stories and families associated with them.  Yards such as Star Gardens, Watkin’s Yard, Adam’s Yard and Sherry’s Yard all have a story to tell.

Where did the names come from and who owned them?

We have identified around thirty yards and courts in the 19^th century.  Although looking at the overhead aerial view, we believe there must have been many more. If we look at maps of 1841and the 1910 (Lloyd George Finance Act), we are given the names of the owners and can see exactly where the yards were.

How many People lived in the yards, and how many houses where there?

            The peak year for occupancy was 1851, when around 544 people lived in yards.  In Bellman’s Yard, for example, 130 people lived in 22 cottages, but we can see that in more than one house, there were over twenty people. This was an exception though, since in Bellman’s Yard there was a ‘common lodging house’.

If we look at the total population figures for Newport, in 1851 out of a total population  of 2906, 544 lived in the yards, almost 20% of the population.

Who were these people?

Between 1841 to1851 the majority of the people living in the yards were local labourers and trades people.  After the potato famine in Ireland, there was a major change when an Influx of Irish agricultural labourers helped to increase the Yard inhabitants from 360 in 1841 to 544 in 1851; an increase of over 60%. It should be noted that, as well as there being fleers from the famine, there were always Irish agricultural labourers who had travelled into Newport for seasonal work anyway.

Although labourers dominated the occupations in the yards, other occupations varied from actors (presumably on tour) to a collector of bones.  The most common occupations of the yard people were labourers, shoe & bootmakers, bricklayers and many charwomen and laundresses, for whom a breakdown in marriage or becoming a widow resulted in wives and mothers suddenly having to find an income from somewhere.  The ladies were wives and mothers and often never had to earn an income, and it was hard to find a trade themselves.

The properties were chiefly cottages.  It appears that the majority of the houses were of the one up, one down, with communal outside  cold water taps, outside toilets and a washroom with laundry copper.

 

Here is a typical plan of such a cottage . This is a cottage which was at  Court 3; at the back of where Taste of Paradise is now located.

Here at Court No3, children slept on the landing . Some housing may have been two up two down, and some would have been disused workshops and outbuildings.

The Decline of the Yards

The occupancy of the yards fell from a peak in1851 of 544 people to 161 people in 1901 and some yards were still in use into the 1950s.  Why the decline?  Chiefly we think it resulted from legislation on housing conditions.  Sanitation could not, or would not, be met by the landlords.  So, as properties became empty and fell into decay, they were eventually demolished.  One example is a 1909 Newport Urban District Council report which said that: “The Inspector reports the premises in the Dun Cow Yard have been closed.” and there were  “Proceedings against Mr J Downes the owner of the premises in Bellman’s Yard”.  The year after, Alfred Massey, Newport’s Sanitary Inspector on Bellman’s Yard  said that a “house was in a group scheduled as unfit for human habitation, belonged to an old man named Downes. ..[The] tenant was George Norton. Two rooms, 1 up and down. Livlng there was husband and wife and 8 children”.  The court declared this to be ‘a nuisance’  and a  fine of 10s. a day to be imposed after 28 days. This was quite a severe fine for an owner in 1910. The fact is that this poor quality housing stock would never  benefit from a landlord’s extra investment.

The yards gradually deteriorated and were mostly demolished by the 1950s.   A few became garages, shops and storage  spaces.  Today one or two can still be seen if you walk slowly down the High Street and look at the alleys, if the gates happen to be open.

 

Victoria County History Shropshire

History of Newport

The New History of Newport, as part of the Victoria County History Shropshire, had its scoping study completed in April 2019 and is available here.  The Volumes that will comprise this history will also be known as the Newport Red Book.

 

This section of the website will keep you up-to-date with all developments and progress in this project which is now entering a new phase in which professional historians take up the story with the tireless support of all our volunteers.

NHS02533a Newport_Scoping_study_April2019 (1) NHS02533b Newport_Sc_St_Appendices_21032019

NHS02533b Newport_Sc_St_Appendices_21032019

As part of this study, work has already been completed in the form of small projects that will provide essential elements of this history.  One example is the Survey of Newport’s Burgage Plots.

NHS03982 Newport_Burgage_Survey 2019

Family History Group