"We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine
We were melted in the furnace and the pit -
We were cast and wrought and hammered to design,
We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit.
But remember, please, the Law by which we live
We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive.
If you make a slip in handling us you die."
Rudyard Kipling
It was the coming of the railway in 1847, and the opening of the mine that completely altered the village of Gedling, turning it from a pleasant rural village overlooking the Trent to the suburb of Nottingham that it is today.
Between 1830 and 1855 the railway superseded the coach as a means of travel. In their experimental stage the railways were uncomfortable and none too safe. Passengers were reckless in boarding the train when it was going at full speed or jumping off to pick up a hat or any other article and sitting on the tops of carriages. An important personage who missed his train would chase it in a "special" hired for the purpose. So perhaps it is not surprising to read of an engine colliding with the tail carriages of another, and breaking the legs of two or more passengers. Carriages were apt to break loose and get left behind. It was possible to ride in one's own coach or carriage hoisted on to a lorry attached to the train.
There was a train disaster at Grantham Station on September 19th 1906, and one of the victims Miss Jessie Brigg was buried in All Hallows Churchyard, Gedling, on September 22nd.
Nonetheless, the foundations of the great railway system (destroyed in our day) was well laid by 1843.
The sinking for coal began in March 1900 in the "Bell Field" in Gedling which had been used for the casting of the bells for Gedling Church. The result was the large Coal Board estate with its uninspired building on the Arnold Hill itself and the turning of the lanes boarded by hawthorn hedges into streets in the village of Gedling; Waverley Road had once been a hop garden.
Before this however Industry was coming to Gedling. The stocking frame had been invented in Calverton by Parson Lee who sent a pair of stockings to Queen Elizabeth I, probably hoping that she would grant him a Patent. She was not enthusiastic. But Stocking Knitting took a hold in Carlton, and as a result the population increased to such an extent, that the old Parish of Gedling was divided, and Carlton became a separate parish. In the middle of the nineteenth century there were 12 stocking frames at work in Gedling, but only one in 1844, although there were 426 in Carlton.
It seems that the hosiery trade never made much way in Gedling, in spite of the efforts of the Rector. About 1880 he made a definite push to encourage it, and in his Parish Magazine says that "if the trade were to revive and be brisk by a great and permanent demand for iron ... we stand some chance of seeing coal raised in this parish, and iron-works established among us". He was right in his first prophecy; the present inhabitants of Gedling must be relieved that the second did not come true also.
In fact throughout the nineteenth, and indeed well into the twentieth century, Gedling did not change greatly. The population varied only slightly; 458 inhabitants in 1832; 526 in 1894; the lowest number being 379 in 1877. Records made about the time of the Poor Law of 1834, seem to show that Gedling was prosperous, as it always has been. A "poor house" was put up in 1787 for Gedling, Carlton, Stoke and Burton but it was pulled down in 1839. The returns of the short lived Hearth Tax (to provide means to "pay off" Cromwell's Model Army at the Restoration in 1662) a levy of 2 shillings on every hearth or stove paid by all above a certain income states that 40 "hearths" were chargeable in Gedling, as against 26 not chargeable.
"The poor" are sometimes mentioned in the Gedling records. After the Service in Church commemorating the jubilee on the 25th October 1809, the "poor inhabitants" ate a dinner provided by the Rector and William Elliot-Elliot.
The occupations of Gedling people recorded in the Nottinghamshire White's Directories, shew a mostly rural population, a great majority of farmers, two of whom were women, shoemakers (in 1853 there were three), tailor, dressmaker, carriers, game-keeper, gardeners, a builder, and blacksmiths, two of whom again were women, Mary Skellington in 1853 and Mrs Ann Skellington in 1869, and huntsman in charge of kennels in Lambley Lane.
But Gedling was changing. Houses were very different; handmade brick or Gedling stone - some can be seen in the Main Street, still recognisable if altered: Dovecote farm at the church gates still has its dovecote and has 1729 inscribed on a beam; a house plastered and whitewashed still stands in Arnold Lane; one at the top of Jessop's Lane, spoilt by unimaginative restoration, but the old farmhouse of William Harvey in the valley to the north of the church watered by the Ousedyke with its great barn still remains as it was when built about 1700; unaltered except for a new interior staircase; also the Manor Farm on Arnold Lane.
The church was restored in 1872, and in 1702 the gracious Queen Anne Vicarage took the place of the medieval "house" in the churchyard. The Rectors of Gedling were throughout this century men of substance and added greatly to the Vicarage - added indeed to such an extent that in the succeeding century it became quite uninhabitable. It took nearly a ton of coal per day to heat it and the services of one man to stoke the boiler. It was therefore pulled down and the new Rectory built adjoining, including all that could be used of the original building, panelled doorways and Adam fireplace.
There must have been a great day for Gedling on November 4th 1875 after the marriage of the Rector, Hon. Canon Orlando Forester to the grand-daughter of the Duke of Somerset. He and his wife gave "a substantial tea" to church workers of the Parish, and members of the Mothers' Meeting, nearly 300 in all. On their return home to Gedling, 200 school children met them at the station; triumphal arches had been erected on the road, and "Welcome Home" emblazoned over the Rectory Gate.
The great event in the history of Gedling in the nineteenth century was the building of the All Hallows' School in 1814. The site for the school opposite the Rectory (where the Memorial Hall now stands) was given by Earl Manvers, the descendant in the female line of the Stanhopes. One could almost say that the founding of schools was to the upper class of this century what the foundation of monasteries had been to the baronage of an earlier age. But the ideas behind the education of children were altering. In the Middle Ages the sons of the nobility, at the age of about 7 years, were sent to the household of some other baron to learn all that a page should know, to handle weapons, to ride, to hunt, to carve and wait at table. But by the sixteenth century noblemen were sending there sons to school: new grammar schools were founded: William of Wykeham had led the way with Winchester a century or so earlier; Henry VI founded Eton. In 1551 Repton arrived; 1567 Rugby; 1584 Uppingham; Harrow 1590. Dame Agnes Mellors founded Nottingham High School in 1513; the Sheffield Cutlers founded their school in Edward VI's day.
The basic conception was that education should be free to everyone; all schools founded at this time were designed to educate the children of their particular locality, either at a nominal fee, or for no cost at all. Shrewsbury School was free; only a nominal entrance of 4 pence for a burgess of the town, but 6 shillings and 8 pence for a knight's son, and 10 shillings for a lord's. There were 40 "free scholars" at Harrow, but they must dwell in the neighbourhood; 100 "free places" at Merchant Taylors; 50 for 2 shillings and sixpence a quarter, and 100 at 5 shillings a quarter.
So Gedling finally had its school. We know the names of some of the teachers: Mary Harrison from 1844 to 1869; in 1853 she was joined by Richard Horsley, and in 1869 there is mention of another lady, Miss Emily Horsley. It has been suggested that a building of two stories, consisting of two rooms with an outside staircase, (now pulled down) that sued to stand in the garden of Orchard House, had been used as a "private school", under the guidance of the Misses Ada and Mary Selby. In these schools, Gedling children were taught the three R's, reading, writing and arithmetic; but it seems that Gedling did not show that enthusiasm for learning that was expected of it. The curate of All Hallows in the late 1870's speaks bitterly of the apathy that he had encountered, and the unwillingness of Gedling people to send their children to school.
Written by: F.M. Swann
Transcribed by: Allen Copsey