THE YARWOOD STORY

Samuel Yarwood was born in about 1803 in Cheshire. He married Mary Dodd, who had been born in about 1811, sometime before 1833.

On the 1841 census for Crewood Hall [grainy photo right], in the township of Kingsley, Samuel, aged 35 and working as an agricultural labourer and Mary aged 30, are shown with their children, Thomas, aged 7, Harriet aged 5 and Elizabeth aged 2. This is the census in which adults ages were rounded down to the nearest multiple of 5, so the ages of Samuel and Mary are possibly inaccurate by a couple of years. Their son John Francis Yarwood was born that year.

Crewood Hall was a farm, halfway between Kingsley and Crowton and is probably where Francis Yarwood was born.

Samuel Yarwood died shortly before the 1851 Census wherein his wife Mary is described as 'Pauper (ag lab widow)', a sad state of affairs.

In 1861, John Francis Yarwood aged 20, ( born at Kingsley) married Alice Pownall, who had been born in 1838 at Bold in Lancashire on 11th. March 1838, the daughter of Thomas Pownall and Alice Peak.

Their son Elijah Yarwood was born that year in Weaverham, Cheshire, followed by his brother Thomas Yarwood in about 1863.

By 1865, Francis and Alice were living at Burtonwood, Lancashire, where their daughter Annie Yarwood was born.

In 1867, they were living at Earlestown in Lancashire, where their sons Samuel and Albert Yarwood were born. Albert's birth certificate for 13th. May 1868 states that his father John Francis Yarwood was working as a wagon maker. The home address was given as Legh Street, Newton Le Willows.

By 1871, John Francis and Alice were living at Wharton, where their daughter Harriet was born.

The 1871 census for Wharton in the parish of Over shows the family living at Wincham Lane. Francis was shown as being called Thomas Yarwood, so was his full name John Thomas Francis Yarwood? He was aged 29, working as a carpenter and said he was from Crewood, Kingsley. His wife Alice was 33. Elija (incorrectly spelt) was aged 9 and still at school, as was Thomas, aged 7. Annie was aged 6, Samuel was aged 4, Albert was aged 2 and Harriett was 11 months old.

Francis and Alice had 2 more children. Alfred Yarwood and Mary A. Yarwood, who were both born in Wharton in 1874 and 1880 respectively.

On the 1881 census for 28 School Road, in the parish of Over, Wharton, Cheshire, Francis Yarwood, aged 40, was working as a joiner. He said he was born at Kingsley. His wife Alice was aged 43, from Parr and not working. Their children were Elijah Yarwood, aged 20, working as a boiler maker, Thomas Yarwood, aged 18, working as a joiner, Annie, aged 16, working as a servant, Samuel, aged 14 and working as a painter, Albert, aged 12 and still at school, as were Harriet aged 12 and Alfred, aged 7. Their baby daughter Mary A. was 1 year old.

Between 1881 and 1884, Elijah Yarwood moved to Rochdale in Lancashire, where he met his wife Mary Ann Barlow. They were married in Rochdale in the June quarter of 1884, there is a record of this marriage on the FREE BMD site. Elijah would have been about 23. Their daughter Harriet Yarwood ( named after his younger sister) was born in Rochdale in about 1888.

His brother Thomas Yarwood also left home at about the same time. He married Eliza from Northwich in about 1885 and their son Edwin Yarwood was born in Northwich in about 1886, followed by a daughter Gertrude Yarwood in about 1891 and sons Thomas Yarwood in about 1893 and Joseph Yarwood in about 1896.

On June 10th. 1889, Albert Yarwood ,aged 21, married Mary Ann Moore, who was 18 at the church of St. John's, Over (left). The witnesses were John Hodkinson ( one of her mother's family) and Anna Louisa Moore (Mary Ann's older sister). At the time of the wedding, Albert was working as an engineer. The marriage certificate says Albert's father was John Francis Yarwood, a joiner.

It is thought that Albert and Mary Ann had 13 children altogether, not all accounted for.

Their first born was Joseph 1890, followed by Arthur in 1892, then their first daughter, Annie Louise ( named after Mary Ann's sister, Annie Louisa Moore) in about 1894. All the children were born in Winsford, Cheshire.

The family then moved up north to Lancashire, following in the footsteps of Albert's older brother Elijah.

By 1897, Albert and Mary Ann were living on Piel Island (right), off the coast near Barrow in Furness. Albert was working as a Saltworks manager. Their son Fred Yarwood was born in a cottage, 8 Piel Island on 20th. October 1897 and baptised at St. Michael's, Church, Rampside (below), Barrow in Furness on 4th. November, 1897. Their daughter Ellen Yarwood ( known as Nellie) was also born on Piel Island and christened at Barrow in Furness on 7th March 1900.

On the 1901 census for Barrow in Furness, taken on 31st. March, Albert and his family are shown living at 13 St. Andrew's Street. Albert was 32, still working as a Saltworks manager. Mary Ann was 30 and said she was born in Northwich, Arthur was aged 9, Annie was aged 7, Fred was aged 3, Nellie was aged 1. Living with them was Israel Moore, a 27 year old boarder from Northwich, working as a blacksmith in the ship yard. This was of course, Mary Anne's brother.

The Cheshire Census showed eldest son Joseph staying in Wharton with his maternal grandparents, Joseph Moore and Elizabeth, described as their 11 year old grandson.

Albert's son Harold Yarwood was born at 13 St. Andrew's Street, Barrow in Furness and christened there on 28th. August 1901. It is believed that he died soon afterwards.

13 St. Andrew's Street is in the area known as Barrow Island, close to the Docks, and the house is still there today.

On the 1901 census for Wharton, Albert's father, Francis Yarwood was shown still living at 28 School Road. He was now aged 59 and working as a joiner and said he was born in Kingsley. Alice was now 63 and said she came from Parr in Lancashire. Mary A. was now aged 22 and was working at the school. Alfred was aged 29 and working as a joiner. Both children were still unmarried.

The 1901 census for Oldham shows Elijah Yarwood, born at Weaverham, now aged 41 and still working as a boiler maker, as he had been in 1881. His address was shown as 160 Edge Lane Road, Heyside, Oldham. His wife Mary Ann was now 45 and said she came from Rochdale as did their daughter Harriet, now aged 13.

Samuel Yarwood, who would have been 34 in 1901, has not yet been found on the 1901 census.

Mabel Yarwood's birth certificate says she was born at 13 St. Andrew's Street, Barrow in Furness on 17th. May 1903 and she was christened on 22nd. July 1903 at Barrow. At that time, her father Albert was working as a general labourer in Barrow, so the Saltworks on Piel Island had obviously closed down by then.

The 1901 census for Witton, Northwich shows Thomas Yarwood, now aged 38, living at 76 Warrington Road, with his wife Eliza, aged 42. She said she had been born in Northwich. Thomas, who had been working as a joiner when he was still single in 1881, was now working as a coal dealer and contractor on his own account. Their son Edwin was now 15 and working as a milk seller, Gertrude was aged 10, Thomas was aged 8 and Joseph was aged 5.

The family had visitors staying with them, William Simpson, an 18 year old stone mason, who was described as being deaf and dumb from childhood and Isaac Barton, an 80 year old retired general labourer. Both visitors were from Northwich. I wonder if they were Eliza's relations?

Sometime after 1903, Albert and his family moved to Thornton, near Blackpool. He went into business as an ironmonger at 89, Mill Terrace, Fleetwood Road, near the Windmill at Thornton, where the business was listed in the Trade Directory for 1924 and 1929. It appears that in fact the shop was run on a day to day business by Mary Ann, while Albert continued to go out to work at the nearby Alkali Works in Thornton. She used to go to meet Albert from the factory gates on pay day, to make sure he didn't spend too much of his wages on beer.

Other children were Elsie, Ada, Albert and Bessie, for whom dates of birth are not yet known. There may also be 2 more children, I was told that they had 13 children, but only have 11 names!

Albert's son, Arthur Yarwood (b 1892) lived with his wife Alice at 85 Mill Road, Thornton, where he was in the haulage business.

Annie Louisa Yarwood ( b 1894) married Tom Hodgson and had a daughter Mabel Hodgson (named after her auntie Mabel)

Nellie Yarwood ( Ellen, b 1900) married Tom Rowe and had a daughter Marjorie Rowe, who died as a child, She and her husband Tom Rowe moved to Chadderton, near Oldham after the death of their little girl from diphtheria.

Joseph Yarwood married Josie Cryer and had a daughter Brenda Cryer. There is a photograph of Joseph with sister Nellie in which he is shown wearing military uniform, it's quite possible he served in World War I, he would have been 24 in 1914. He was reputed to have been a womaniser.

Ada Yarwood became a nursemaid for a family, travelling to South Africa with them . She married Tom Hopps and had children Leslie Hopps and James Hopps, who are now married with children of their own.

Elizabeth Yarwood ( known as Bessie) married Albert Thomas and had a daughter called Margaret. At some time they lived in West Drive, Carleton . Bessie suffered from epileptic fits when she was younger. Her daughter Margaret died quite early in life.

In August 1914, at the start of World War 1, Fred Yarwood joined the Army, possibly with the Kings Own (Lancaster) Regiment. He was 3 months short of his 18th. birthday and lied about his age to get in. He reached the rank of sergeant and was at some point stationed in India.

On 22nd. December, 1922, Fred married Esther Wall, at Thornton Parish Church and they moved into Thornton Villas, opposite the Windmill at Thornton. He was 26 and Esther was 29. At that time Fred was working as a joiner's labourer, according to the marriage certificate.

Albert's daughter, Mabel Yarwood (below) worked as an assistant in a baker's shop. Sometime in 1922, she met Cyril Desmonde.

On 6th. May, 1923, Mabel Yarwood's daughter Phyllis Mabel Desmonde was born at 214 Whitegate Drive, Blackpool. It is not known whose house this was. The father was Cyril Desmonde, a general labourer of 108 Buchanan Street, Blackpool according to her birth certificate. It is not known whether or not they were married, but Cyril registered her birth and he said that the mother was Mabel Desmonde, formerly Yarwood, which sounds as though they were married, but a search for a marriage certificate at Blackpool Register Office proved fruitless. Mabel would have been 2 weeks short of her 20th. birthday at the time of Phyllis' birth.

That birth certificate was later stamped 'Adopted', but there is no indication of when or where this happened. Enquiries made with the relevant department at Southport have proved fruitless, a certificate of adoption could not be obtained without the full names of the adoptive parents. All we know about them is that their surname was probably Parker.

Mabel apparently had another child, a boy named Francis (named after her grandfather Francis Yarwood the joiner) who died young, but it is not yet known who was Francis's father. Phyllis remembered the day of her little brother's funeral, apparently she carried his coffin in the church, but she could not remember any more than that.

Phyllis always said that Cyril Desmonde, her natural father, was an American from Springfield, Massachusetts.

Fred Yarwood ( b 1897) and Esther had 4 children, Violet Yarwood, born December 1923, Mildred Yarwood, born April 1925, who died as a baby, Harold Yarwood, born May 1926 and Bernard Yarwood, born 11th. May 1929. Baby Mildred Yarwood is probably buried in Thornton Parish churchyard.

The photo shows Fred (wearing cap), Esther (in hat, left) and young Violet (centre) about to depart on a Charabanc trip from Carleton in 1928.

Fred worked as a handyman and chauffeur to a businessman living in Bispham Road, Carleton. He had a semi detached bungalow called Dene Royd, where he lived with wife Esther, and children Violet and Harold . Fred's son Bernard Yarwood was born on May 11th. 1929 at Thornton.

In 1930, Elsie Yarwood had been a witness at a friend's wedding at the Wignall Memorial Church at Thornton and had signed her name as E. Yarwood, so she must still have been single then. The other witness was A. Yarwood, who could be Arthur, Annie or Ada.

Elsie married Theodore Clarke, known as Theo, in about 1931. The friend at whose wedding she had been a witness the previous year had kept a little card, the kind that was often sent with a piece of wedding cake on which were the words " With Mr. and Mrs. Theo Clarke's compliments". The address on the card was Mill Terrace, Thornton Le Fylde January 7th. 1931. This was of course the address of the ironmonger's shop on Fleetwood Road.

Theo was a travelling salesman for a while, until he managed to set up shop selling ladies' fashions in the Alderley Edge area. He had a reputation as a ladies' man, but he and Elsie had no children. Theo was also extremely mean with his money, so much so that Elsie told Phyllis that Theo would wait until the next door neighbour had finished with the previous day's newspaper, then Elsie would collect it from her and iron it so that Theo could read it a day late!

Albert Yarwood died at Thornton in 1933 at the age of 65 and is buried in plot number 598 in Thornton Parish churchyard. He had gone deaf before he died and his grandchildren were all frightened of him because he shouted all the time. After his death, his widow Mary Ann sold the shop and moved to a new house in Carleton, where she died 4 years later, in March 1937.

I wonder if Mabel and Cyril moved to Oldham, where we now know that Mabel had cousins living in the area, the children of her uncle Elijah?

Mabel Yarwood ( or Desmonde?) died sometime in the 1930's ( where and when we do not know).

After her mother's death, Phyllis lived at Thornton with her grandfather Albert Yarwood and also she spent some time living with her Auntie Bessie at Carleton. In later life, Phyllis always called her grandfather Billy Yarwood the Ironmonger, which led to the initial difficulties in tracing her background after her death. Billy must have been her pet name for him.

Phyllis also remembered Cyril and a girlfriend taking her with them to Liverpool for a while, after which they returned to Oldham. She remembered that she had a bicycle at the time and Cyril would not let her take it on the train with them, so she cycled back to Oldham from Liverpool on her own. The girlfriend then decided that she did not want Phyllis living with them.

By at the latest 1937, at the age of 14, Phyllis (left) was living in Oldham where she met her future husband, Ernest Melton. She told her children that her father, Cyril Desmonde had run away with the daughter of Albert Pierrepoint, the ex public hangman, who ran a pub in Oldham called the 'Help the Poor Struggler'.

This must mean that Cyril was in Oldham during the 1940's. Albert Pierrepoint used the money he had earned as public hangman, after the War Crimes Tribunal to buy the pub in Oldham, so Cyril must have met his daughter after the end of the war.

A visiting card found in Ernest's belongings after his death showed that Phyllis was calling herself Miss Phyllis Desmonde up to the age of 18 in 1941, when she was living at 35 Windsor Road with Ernest's parents. She had been employed to take care of Ernest's mother who was terminally ill.

Between 1941 and 1943, Phyllis changed her name from Phyllis Desmonde to Phyllis Parker and after Mrs. Melton's death in June 1943, she moved to 322 Manchester Street, Oldham.

In September 1943, Phyllis (right), aged 20, married Ernest Melton by special license at St. Thomas's Church in Oldham. On the marriage certificate, Phyllis did not identify her father, even though at the time she was under 21 and would have needed permission from a parent or guardian to get married. The witnesses were Norman and Ida Leah Wrigley.

At that time, Ernest was still a soldier, the 2nd World War was still on, so Phyllis took on war work, she worked as a 'clippie' on the Oldham to Saddleworth bus route until Ernest was demobbed in 1946, when she gave up work and started a family. Phyllis' son Stephen William Melton was born in January 1947 in Oldham, while the family was still living at 322 Manchester Street, followed by her daughter Elizabeth Melton in July 1953.

In the Cleveleys Trade Directory for 1952, Arthur Yarwood was still in business as a haulage contractor at 85 Fleetwood Road.

Bernard Yarwood left school aged of 14 in 1943 initially working for his Auntie Elsie in the market garden trade. He then began an apprenticeship as a joiner with Boden and Chadderton at Fleetwood, then Greenhalgh's on West Drive, Thornton and finally Vickers in Blackpool. One of his jobs was making pre fabricated houses for the post war housing crisis.

National Service was with the 4th. Hussars, Tank Regiment , training at Catterick, Yorkshire then posted to Colchester. His final posting was at Winterbourne Gunner, near Salisbury.

Bernard married Nora Canning from Fleetwood on 21st. August 1955 (left). At the time he was working at ICI Hillhouse at Thornton, as was Nora.

Their son Stephen Yarwood was born on 6th. September 1957, followed by their daughter Sheila Yarwood in 1959.

In about 1959, Violet Yarwood and her husband Joe Brown (right, with eldest daughter Olwen) moved to Dumfries in Scotland.

Elsie Clarke, nee Yarwood died somewhere in Cheshire in the 1960's or 1970's.

Stephen William Melton married Susan Radcliffe in October 1969 in Oldham. At that time he was serving in the Royal Navy as a marine engineer, but 2 years later he joined the police force. Their children were Keith Warren Melton, born in 1971 and Heather Jane Melton, born in 1974.

Theo Clarke, husband of Elsie Yarwood, died in the mid 1980's, in the Alderley Edge area of Cheshire. He had been living in an Abbeyfield sheltered housing complex after Elsie's death. In his last years he had been a frequent visitor to Ernest and Phyllis in Oldham, also an occasional one to Phyllis' son Stephen and his family in Gloucestershire, where he again demonstrated his meanness. He ate his meals with the family, but refused to buy the children an ice cream on an outing, even in the heatwave of 1977. On a particularly hot day he bought himself a cornet and sat in the car eating it, with Stephen's two young children sitting hot and gasping in the back seat! He carried his reputation for dallying with the female sex with him right up to his death. He used to boast to Ernest and Phyllis that even while he was living in the Abbeyfield flat, at about the age of 75 to 80, he had a couple of lady friends and each morning he would visit their bedrooms to help them to put on their stockings! (I suppose it made a change from persuading the younger ones to take them off!) He was a horrible little man and was so outrageous in his sexual boastings that once, Ernest threw him out of the house!

When he died, he left most of his money in his Will to Phyllis, as he had no other family.

Bernard Yarwood wanted to keep fit and he enjoyed fell walking. He conquered all Wainwright's peaks in the Lake District and completed his first marathon in Abingdon in 1986 after taking early retirement at the age of 53 in 1983. He went on to do the London Marathon several times and finally the New York Marathon in 1992. His health finally began to fail and he died in hospital in Blackpool on 4th. April 1998, at the age of 69.

[The photograph shows Bernard at the cottage on Piel Island, Barrow in Furness where his father had been born over 90 years earlier.]

Phyllis Mabel Melton, Bernard's cousin, died of pancreatic cancer in Oldham in January 1998, aged 74 and was cremated at Hollinwood in Oldham.

Stephen Yarwood lived in Thornton Cleveleys as a child, then went to college in Oxford, where he gained a BSc in Biology and Psychology at Oxford Polytechnic.

He married Jean Hadden in 1983 and moved to Bedford where their 3 children, Anne, Alice and Ian (left), were all born. They now live in Sharnbrook, Bedfordshire and Stephen works as a BT Whizz kid! Like his father, he is a keen walker and completed the 3 Peaks challenge in June 2000.

Stephen's daughters, Anne and Alice are already interested in local amateur theatre, stagecraft and production, having appeared in musical production, including Oliver. Anne also sings with her church choir.

Stephen Melton, Mabel Yarwood's grandson, retired from the police force in July 2001. He, like Bernard and Stephen Yarwood, was from his early teens, very keen on fell walking in the Lake District. He is also an amateur singer, having first sung with his church choir in Oldham, then joining local musical groups who stage annual shows for charity ( including Oliver!) and has acted as producer/ director for a few years.

Keith Melton is now manager with Iceland, with 2 children of his own and Heather Melton is so keen on the Lake District and fell walking, that she actually worked for 2 years for the Youth Hostel Association in Ambleside!