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John Doidge, 1823 - 1892

Let me introduce you to my Great-Great Grandfather, John Doidge, shown here with his wife, Mary Ann Rickard.

John came from a small village in south Devon, a few miles from the Cornish border, a few miles from Dartmoor, a few miles from Plymouth. It's unlikly John visited these places before leaving the county, as he was the oldest of the nine surviving children of William Doidge and Mary Coombe, and they all lived in a cottage on a farm called Foghanger. William was an agricultural labourer, a hard and poorly paid job; his surviving sons had to work outside the farm and they all found jobs labouring in the nearby mines. These were small, poorly organised mines, working seams of coal and tin and copper which were not profitable and soon exhausted. Safety measures were unheard of: one of John's brothers was "blinded by an excess of powder" in a copper mine, and John's sister Mary lost her husband in a mine collapse.

In April 1847 John married Mary Ann Rickard, and the couple moved into a cottage in Rushford. It's all very pretty nowadays, and the cottages are very desirable, but - reliant on a labourer's wage and with seven children of their own - the cottage would have been dark, cold, probably damp, and crowded. There would not have been room for privacy, there would not have been much furniture, and as for washing and toilet facilities ....

In 1881 John, in his late fifties, was still finding work as a labourer, but the mines in Devon and Cornwall were closing. At the same time a new, exciting mine venture was opening in Millom, Cumberland, and Mine Agents were recruiting men to move north and work the rich seam of haematite - iron ore - which was being explored at the far end of Morecambe Bay. It's around 250 miles from west Devon to the southern tip of Cumberland, and although the newly opened Furness Railway Line and the main lines from Crewe to Bristol were operating, rail travel was expensive and slow. Despite this, hundreds of Cornish and Devonshire miners moved to Millom, perhaps sailing round the coast from Bristol, perhaps using a combination of pony and trap and post coach - probably walking long distances carrying only what they could, and sleeping in the open air. We can't imagine doing this nowadays, but John and his family were faced with the workhouse or with starvation.

At some time between 1881 and 1891, John and Mary Ann, together with daughter Elizabeth and sons John , Richard and James made the journey to Millom. Son Henry, a tailor, moved to Richmond on Thames, and son Edwin to Woburn in Bedfordshire - but that's another story.

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No. 45 up for sale in 1978/9. The top two windows are the front bedroom - at one time my mother and her four sisters shared this room, and when i came along it was Mum and I plus three sisters, the eldest (Pat) having married in 1950.

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Barlow Moor Road in the 1960s. Our house was third from the end, you can just see the garden wall and gate.

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Starting point

Where to start on a family history? I've met family history enthusiasts who have tracked back into the early Middle Ages, with varying degrees of authenticity, but I'm not going to do this. I'm working with my cousin Malcolm to create something which we can pass on to our relatives, and we've decided to start with the story of John Doidge, 1823-1892, who left Devon with his wife and some of his children to start out in the Klondike of the north, Millom in Cumbria.

At some point along the way their youngest son, Edwin, came to Manchester via Woburn Abbey and moved into 45 Barlow Moor Road, which became the centrepoint of my family for eighty years.

I was raised there, and although it's over 40 years since I left Manchester, I'm still very much (I believe) a Manc, and still very attached to my remaining aunts and uncle, and to my cousins - absolutely all of whom have left Manchester!

Read on for more ....