The Harrisons of Under Whitle 1581 -1814

 

Hannah Harrison of Whitle, 1772- 1791

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Her Story

                                                                                                   

 

The grave stone of Hannah Harrison of Whitle, in Sheen church yard, who died in 1791

aged only nineteen, was the starting point of my interest in looking in more detail

about her family, as I too live at Whitle.

 

Hannah was the daughter of Abraham and Martha Harrison who had three other children, Abraham, the eldest, born in 1768, a sister Martha, born in 1776, and Ann the youngest of the family, born in 1781. So Hannah was the eldest of the three girls with one older brother.

 

Although Hannah's headstone says 'of Whitle', it doesn't name the farm itself, so where did she live? Whitle is an an area stretching from the north eastern boundary of Sheen parish, bounded by the Dove to the east and to the west by the road from Sheen to Longnor. Its southern boundary is known as Marty lane, an old packhorse route running west/ east and crossing the Dove at Pilsbury hamlet. Around this period there were at least six other farms on Whitle - Broadmeadow Hall, the most southerly and Old Fields the most northerly.

 

We have been able to narrow down the search for the Harrison's farm from seven down to two as Sir John Harpur Crewe owned two farms called 'Whitle Banke' and the tenants in 1771 were William Horobin and Abraham Harrison, the latter being Hannah's father. However it is difficult to pinpoint which of the two properties the Harrison's lived in as the rent rolls do not separate the two properties by name. However by the early 1700's one of the farms became known as Under Whitle and for clarity we will call the other Whitle Bank.

 

By this time the two farmhouses were built of stone, replacing earlier houses of timber and wattle and daub. Whitle Bank, which has been part of the recent excavations, we assumed had been built by John Harrison, around 1680, Hannah's great, great grandfather, in a style that seems to suggest some element of aspiration and maybe recognition of the family's status. It was a two or three storey house with a stone flagged roof and mullioned windows. Excavations also revealed a carefully worked part of stone fireplace lintol with an ash pit to the front. There were two ground floor rooms with steps leading down from the kitchen to a cellar. There may have been further rooms, but if so, they still remain buried. The Sheen Heath tax of 1660 lists a John Harrison as having a house with 3 hearths . If this is the same house then it must have been built earlier than 1680, with further hearths. Or did this refer to the house that is now called Under Whitle, which still has three hearths?

 

William Harrison, the other tenant, was described as having a house with one hearth, so maybe he was still living in a timber framed house with a central hearth.

 

The Harrison's farm, which in the mid 1600's was around 30 acres in extent had risen to around 50 acres by the end of the 1700's. This may be partly accounted for by the enclosures of the valley sides and some of the commons and may also account for the steep rise in rent from £10 per annum in 1772, the year that Hannah was born, to £27 per annum in 1791, the year that she died.

 

The rental for the farm was paid half yearly at Michaelmas and Lady day. The family would have been relatively self- sufficient in basic food stuffs, raising calves for meat and milk and producing butter and cheese with surplus produce to sell at the local market of Longnor. Evidence for the production of cheese is to be found from the cheese press and associated drain stones still on the site and also the fragments of butter pots (used to store butter), found during the excavations. They would have kept a pig or two for bacon, ham and pork and chickens for eggs as well as meat. Oats were grown as animal feed, particularly for horses, and for their own use to make the staple food around here of oatcakes. Although we have no contemporary evidence for this, it is likely that oats would have been taken to Longnor mill to be ground as it too was owned by Sir John Harpur, the fee paid thus increasing his revenue. (earlier leases of Whitle Banke required tenants to take their corn to be ground at Longnor mill).

 

The Harrison's land was spread out over parts of Whitle with separate strips of meadow and of arable in the open fields. From wills and inventories of their neighbours 'The Horobins', we know that oxen were used to plough land and it is likely that neighbours pooled together their oxen to make up larger teams when the heavier land demanded it. They also had rights to grazing on Sheen Moor and to cut peat for their fires, which was fortunate as there was a shortage of wood in Sheen and tenants were forbidden to cut down any trees for firewood.

 

By 1721 there was a school house in Sheen village built by subscription and with the help of the Ward family who had given £50 to be laid out in land, the rentals of which provided for 50 shillings per annum for the teaching of 6 poor children. What we don't know is whether or not Hannah attended school, or in fact if girls were allowed to do so. Unfortunately we have no evidence if she could either read or write. None of Abraham and Martha's children married before Hannah died and so it is likely that they were all living at home and working on the farm.

 

Family life must have been drastically altered after Hannah death, when she was only nineteen, their grief perhaps compounded when Abraham's seniors' spinster sister Ellen died in 1793. However, the following year, the family were able to celebrate as Abraham, their eldest son, married Sarah Belfit of Sheen on December 3rd. We don't know if following his marriage he left home to farm another holding, but it seems unlikely that Whitle Bancke could have supported another family. 1800 must have been a special year for the Harrisons as both the remaining sisters, Ann and Martha married their husbands on the same day, 29th December, in Sheen church- a double wedding. Ann married William Slack and Martha married John Bradbury. The family had cause to celebrate such a special occasion. The following year both Ann and Martha gave birth to sons on the same day, each daughter calling their son Abraham, after their father and then in 1802, Abraham their eldest brother and his wife Sarah had a son whom they also called Abraham. The tradition through the generations of the Harrison family seemed to be to call the first born son Abraham. The continued use of the names of their parents for their children does perhaps give some indication of the value, sentiment and regard the children must have had for their parents and for the desire for the continuation of the family's lineage.

 

Sadly, Martha, Hannah mother, is recorded as dying at Under Whitle in 1810, aged only 64. Did she move there from Whitle Banke or does this contribute to the evidence that might make us think that the Harrison family farm lived at Under Whitle not at Whitle Bank? The Bishop's Trancripts for Sheen parish have a note that indicates that in 1741 a John Harrison is paying half of the tithes of a tenement called Under Whiteall and in 1773 Abraham Harrison, Hannah's father is described as the tenant of Under Whitle and paying half of the tithes to the parish church. This seems to provide additional evidence of the Harrison's connection to Under Whitle.

 

However, more research needs to be done to confirm which of the farms the Harrison's made their home. The Harrison family lived at either Under Whitle or Whittle Banke from 1580 when John Harrison, Hannah's eight times grandfather came from Hurdlow in the parish of Hartington and took the tenancy for 100 years from John Harpur of Swarkestone for the sum of £40. It seems the sale by Sir John Harpur Crewe of the two farms that were known as Whitle Bank in 1820 also ended the lengthy tenancy of the Harrison family.

 

Presumably the remaining members of the family left the farm and Abraham senior went to live in Longnor where he died in 1823. Over two hundred years is an inordinately long time for one family to stay as tenants on the same holding and it says something of their tenacity and confirms how strongly rooted they must have felt to this land.Today, as I walk across the same fields and possibly live in the same house as the Harrison's, I am constantly reminded of these peoples' lives and in whose footsteps I tread.

 

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