The Account Book
The images in this collection are scanned from an account book kept by the Coppock sisters of 'The Alders', a large house in The Crescent, Davenport, Stockport, from 1899 to February 1917, after which there are no more entries, although the book itself, made, according to the inside cover, by 'King, Account Book Manufacturer, Stockport' has many more pages, all empty.The book was found in Falmouth, Cornwall, in the collection of Jean Sylvia Potter, who was originally from East Anglia. With it was a piece of paper reading 'Fred Waite, Head Gardner [sic] at Sandringham House. A great uncle to our dad.' We know nothing more about its history after 1917.
The entries themselves are a facinating insight into life in Edwardian England. We have scanned each of the 50 pages individually, and given each its own webpage so that we can add notes as time goes by.
The links on each page allow any page to be selected as required. You can also download the whole book without the annotations) as a 12 MB PDF file.
Note that we have in many cases omitted the headings from the top of the pages, which are foolscap (8.5 x 13.5 inches) in size, for ease of scanning.
1902 Directory
Reading the entries, it becomes
clear that they do nor tell the full story: Census records tells us
that the household of the Misses Coppock includes a housemaid and a
cook, but there is hardly any mention of them and no sign of their
wages, which may have been paid directly from Henry Coppock's estate.
In 1901 the cook was Sarah Hayward, age 45, daughter of George Hayward, a market gardener in Heaton Norris, just north of Stockport, and housemaid was Ada Haddock, age 20, daughter of a railway porter from Crowton, Cheshire.
In 1911 the cook was Lavinia Mayer [spelled 'Meyer' by Bertha Coppock when completing the 1911 census] (34), daughter of a coal miner, Elisha Mayer, of Audley, Staffordshire, and the housemaid Lettice Johnson (22), daughter of a forgeman from Biddulph in Staffordshire.
Reading the account book, and knowing that the two servants, helped by coachman Mr Dishman and local tradesmen, did most if not all of the domestic chores, we are left trying to imagine how the four sisters passed their time if those far-off, yet in a way modern, Edwardian days.
Gardening, playing the piano, reading newspapers, and eating, along with entering horticultural competitions, and charity work can be deduced from the entries. Their horse-drawn carriages would no doubt have taken them to visit their friends and relatives.
Written by Charlie Hulme, November 2009.
info@
davenportstation.org.uk
Davenport Station Homepage
In 1901 the cook was Sarah Hayward, age 45, daughter of George Hayward, a market gardener in Heaton Norris, just north of Stockport, and housemaid was Ada Haddock, age 20, daughter of a railway porter from Crowton, Cheshire.
In 1911 the cook was Lavinia Mayer [spelled 'Meyer' by Bertha Coppock when completing the 1911 census] (34), daughter of a coal miner, Elisha Mayer, of Audley, Staffordshire, and the housemaid Lettice Johnson (22), daughter of a forgeman from Biddulph in Staffordshire.
Reading the account book, and knowing that the two servants, helped by coachman Mr Dishman and local tradesmen, did most if not all of the domestic chores, we are left trying to imagine how the four sisters passed their time if those far-off, yet in a way modern, Edwardian days.
Gardening, playing the piano, reading newspapers, and eating, along with entering horticultural competitions, and charity work can be deduced from the entries. Their horse-drawn carriages would no doubt have taken them to visit their friends and relatives.
Written by Charlie Hulme, November 2009.
info@
davenportstation.org.uk
Davenport Station Homepage
The Alders
The Crescent, sometimes called Davenport Crescent, was laid out by The Freeholders Company, a Manchester firm of property speculators, on part of the meadows and pasture of Mile End Farm, also known as Simpson's Farm, which at the time of the 1840s tithe maps had occupied most of the land bounded by Kennerley Road, Bramhall Lane, and the Stockport - Buxton turnpike (now the A6), and was part of the township of Bramhall until the 1901 boundary changes. The farm buildings lay alongside the Buxton road, close to what became entrance gateway to the Davenport Park private estate; in 1841 the tenant was Isaac Cheetham.The Freeholders Company purchased the part of the farm south of the railway line, along with Bramall Hall itself and much of its other land, in 1877 from the last of the Davenports of Bramall, John William Handley Davenport, who was leaving his ancestral home to move to an estate inherited through his mother's family in Rutland. The company envisaged it as an exclusive private estate, and offered plots of land for sale, but take-up of these plots was very slow; several were still unsold by the 1920s, and eventually the land came to be filled by a mixture of smaller houses and large mansions. A number of the large ones, including 'The Alders', have since been demolished to make way for more practical residences.
A large plot, bounded by The Crescent and the Stockport - Buxton railway, was sold in 1885 to James Chetham Kenyon, born in Stockport in 1836, a steel merchant, who had a house built which he named 'The Alders.' The house is marked in red on the map above, which dates from c.1910. The area lies on the border between two map sheets, which is why the railway line and streets do not quite line up.
By 1891 Kenyon was living there with his wife Emily (aged 45) and their six children, having moved from their previous home at 2 Adswood Crescent. He appears to have retired to Wales on leaving 'The Alders', as his death was registered in Conway in 1897; in 1901 his children, Harold (now aged 31), Bernard, Gerald, Hilda, Hubert and Emily, were to be found back in Stockport, sharing a house at 190 Wellington Road North in Heaton Norris.
The Coppock Family
For the story of the
family who kept the account book, we must go back in time to
1835, when the Borough of Stockport was created, with many others
around England, by the Municipal Boroughs Act. Appointed as Town Clerk
to the Borough Council, roughly equivalent to today's Chief Executive,
was Henry Coppock (Pictured left) a Stockport-born lawyer. Henry,
born in 1806, who
lived at Daw Bank House, served the town through troubled times
of strikes and Chartist riots, but, found the time to father Henry
William Coppock (1843 – 1844), Ann Bancroft Coppock (1845 – 1900),
Oliver (1846 – 1928), Matilda (1848 – 1931), Nora (1849 – 1851),
Russell (1851 – 1923), Sydney (1853 – 1908), Bertha (1854 –
1918), Henrietta (1856 – 1928), Theodore (1858 – 1890), Beatrice (1860
– 1934), Mabel (1863 – 1937).Henry Coppock died in 1870, and his wife, also called Ann Bancroft Coppock, died in 1899. It was no doubt the death of their mother that prompted unmarried sisters Bertha, Henrietta, Beatrice and Mabel to set up home in 'The Alders' which was probably standing empty by 1899. No doubt their elder brother Oliver, who had followed in his father's footsteps and become a solicitor, assisted them with the purchase. He lived with his family not far away in Heath Road, Cale Green.
Russell Coppock also became a
solicitor, and also lived in Davenport by 1901, at 'Moorside' in
Davenport Park. Theodore Coppock studied law and became a
barrister, being called to the Bar in 1884; he drowned in the Hardanger
Fjord in in Norway in August 1890 while on a fishing holiday with
friends. Sydney Coppock became a paper
manufacturer and left the Stockport area: he lived at Upton, near
Macclesfield.
All four sisters give their occupation on the census as 'living on private means' - their inheritance. The last entries in the account book are for February 1917. Directories for 1921 show that they had left 'The Alders' for a smaller house 'Beechfield', 14 Clifton Park Road, on the other side of the railway line.
Later occupants of 'The Alders', if any, will be the subject of further research, but we do know that in 1934, although the house is still shown on the Ordnance Survey map, there are no entries in the Electoral Register, suggesting that it may have stood empty for at least some of the time before it was demolished c.1951 to be replaced by the group of elegant semi-detached houses that stand on the site in 2009. The picture above shows The Crescent in 2009, looking from the corner of Egerton Road towards the site of 'The Alders.'
Overlaying the 1910 map (red lines) on a modern map reveals that the site of the house was somewhere to the left of the parked car in our picture above. The two large semi-detached houses on the left edge of the map are the only buildings from the old map still surviving in 2009.
A recent aerial view of the area shows that there is no trace of 'The Alders' ever having existed.
So far, we have been unable to find a picture of 'The Alders' - if you can help, have any information about the house or the Coppock family, or have any enquiries regarding the copyright, please do get in touch.
