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Early Years: Francis and Ann Eaden

The cottage was built in the late 18th century on a piece of land carved out of the waste. It sat at the north end of a string of older encroachments, divided by a large pond from the two cottages and a croft occupied by the Scrivenor and Corbett families (shaded yellow on the map below).

The cottage is first recorded on the Second Plan of the 1802 Berkswell Enclosure Award, which covered ‘cottages and encroachments made within twenty years,’ so we know it was built between 1782 and 1802. The Plan records it as a ‘cottage and garden at Balsall Common Slang,’ occupying a plot of 32 perches (no. 62 on the map, shaded red), and occupied by Francis Eaden. The Enclosure Award assigned ownership of all Berkswell’s irregularly-built cottages and encroachments to Berkswell Manor, turning the Eadens and their neighbours into manorial tenants.

At the time of the Enclosure Award, Francis Eaden and his wife Ann had been married for just four years.¹ While we can’t know whether the cottage was built specifically for the newly-married couple, it was certainly less than 20 years old when they moved in. Between 1799 and 1819, Francis and Ann had six children: Mary, Thomas, John, Ann, William, and Charles. Like most of his neighbours, Francis was an agricultural labourer, probably working for local farmers.

The family were still at the cottage in 1839, when the Berkswell Tithe Apportionment records Francis Haydon² as occupier of a cottage and garden occupying 30 perches, and owned by Sir John Eardley Wilmot, the Lord of Berkswell Manor. Two years later, the 1841 census shows that Francis, Ann, and their youngest son Charles had moved to Berkswell village.

Second Generation: William and Matilda Eaden

The cottage was unoccupied on census night 1841, but it didn’t stay empty for long. Four months later, Francis and Ann’s son William married Matilda Green at Berkswell,³ and the couple moved into Meeting House Lane . They had eight children before Matilda’s death in the summer of 1860.⁴ William, an agricultural labourer like his father, remained at the cottage for another forty years.

William Haydon (sic) is last recorded at his family’s cottage on the 1891 census, when he was a 74-year-old widower, living alone in two rooms and still working as an agricultural labourer. At some point in the next few years, he moved to Meriden Workhouse, where he died in 1900 at the age of 82.⁶ After more than 90 years, the Eaden family’s time at the cottage had come to an end.

The Thomas-Shirley family of ‘Rose Cottage’

After William Eaden left for Meriden, the cottage became the home of George and Fanny Thomas, who moved to Berkswell from Kenilworth with their four children: Minnie, Annie, Arthur, and Frank. The Thomas family renamed the cottage Rose Cottage, not to be confused with the similarly named property further along the lane.

The family’s time at the cottage did not begin happily; George, a bricklayer, died in March 1895 at the age of just 32.⁷ Fanny and the children remained at the cottage; Fanny worked as a charwoman and later as a Government letter carrier, as well as taking in lodgers. By the time of the 1911 census, the cottage had expanded to three rooms.

After Fanny remarried in 1916 and moved back to her native Ashow, her eldest daughter Minnie moved back in with her husband Daniel Shirley, a farm labourer, and their eight children, soon to be joined by six more. The 1921 census records them with ten children at home, including newborn baby Tom, Daniel’s brother William, and the local monthly nurse, Mrs Muddiman.

In 1946, the Shirleys’ landlord put the cottage up for sale. The newspaper advert described it as:

The Detached Well-built BUNGALOW known as “ROSE COTTAGE,” MEETINGHOUSE LANE, containing Front Living Room with oven grate, Scullery with sink, hard and soft water, Pantry, Two Bedrooms. Outside are Coal-house, Bucket Lavatory and Large Garden. Electric Light with two plugs … Let to Mr J [sic] Shirley on a weekly tenancy at an old-fashioned rent producing £10 8s per annum.⁸

The cottage’s end came in 1990, when Solihull council approved a planning application for a 4-bedroom detached house and garage to replace [the] existing dilapidated dwelling.⁹ The new house, no. 51 Meeting House Lane, came onto the market in September 1994, described as a ‘designer home that enjoys [a] prime location’.¹⁰

While there is no trace today of the Eadens’ cottage, no. 51 retains its unusual wedge-shaped plot. Today’s modern house, squeezed in and facing in a different direction from its neighbours, is the legacy of those unknown men with their scythes and pickaxes hacking a clearing in the waste more than 200 years ago.

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Notes

1. Marriage. St John’s Berkswell. 14 Oct. 1798. Francis EADEN and Ann BRADNOCK. ↩︎
2. The family’s surname has many variants, including Aden, Alden, Eaden, Eden, Eydon, Hadan, Haden, Haydn, Haydon, Heydon. ↩︎
3. Marriage. St John’s Berkswell. 18 Oct. 1841. William EADEN and Matilda GREEN. ↩︎
4. Burial. St John’s Berkswell. 30 Aug. 1860. Matilda HAYDN [sic] of Berkswell, age 37. ↩︎
5. Berkswell Estate. Sales Catalogue. August 1888. Warwickshire Archives CR 1709/552. ↩︎
6. Burial. St John’s Berkswell. 16 Jan. 1900. William HAYDEN of Meriden Union, age 82. ↩︎
7. GRO. Deaths Index. Q1 1895. Meriden RD. George THOMAS, age 32. ↩︎
8. ‘Lot 1.’ Coventry Standard, 12 Jan. 1946: 2. ↩︎
9. Solihull Planning Portal. no. PL/1990/00719/FULL. ↩︎
10. ‘Designer home…’, Solihull Times, 23 Sep. 1994: 35. ↩︎