Manor Cottage has a history going back some 350 years, although the current building may be somewhat younger. The cottage sits at the junction of Sunnyside Lane with Station Road (formerly Dockers Lane). Once a copyhold property of Berkswell Manor, the smallholding, which included two fields (1013 and 1014 on the tithe map below) as well as the cottage and garden (1015), can be traced back to the ownership of the Goodall family in 1686.
Early Years: 1686-1798
The earliest mention of the property comes from the Court Roll of 1686, when Matthew Goodall surrendered a cottage occupied by Margaret Byfield, widow, to Jeremiah Goodale of Berkswell. Six years later, the Court Roll shows that Jeremiah surrendered the cottage and its two closes, where he himself was living, to William Watson, who lived down the hill at today’s Brickmaker’s Arms.
The Watsons owned the cottage for almost a century. William Watson left the cottage and closes to his youngest son Henry, who in turn left them to his nephew, also Henry. When the younger Henry died in 1766, he left ‘my coppiehold tenement and two closes to the same belonging, with the garden and appurtenances which were formerly purchased of [blank] Goodall‘ to his son John.1 John Watson let the property out, first to Thomas Docker who lived next door, and then to a grazer from Balsall called Job Findon (Land Tax). At some point John passed the property to his younger brother Joseph Watson, who lived in Cubbington and had no interest in a Berkswell cottage, so sold it to the tenant Job Findon in 1789. Findon sold it on again the next year (Court Roll); in 1794 he bought a freehold cottage in Meeting House Lane, where he lived for thirty years.
The new owner in 1790 was ‘Ann Banwell, spinster,’ who lived in Kenilworth. Ann married on Christmas day 1790 and became Mrs Bury or Berrey, which is the name she held on the 1795 Land Tax, when her tenant was William Clifton.2 By 1798, Ann had sold the property to the Wood family, who became the cottage’s first owner-occupiers.
Enclosure and Beyond: the 19th century
James and Mary Wood moved to Berkswell from the neighbouring parish of Stoneleigh, probably when they bought Manor Cottage. James, a labourer, is recorded as the owner of the cottage and two crofts on the 1802 Enclosure Map. A year earlier, in September 1801, he had made his will, leaving ‘my copyhold tenement and two closes with the garden and appurtenances situate in Oldnall End and in my own occupation’ to his wife Mary.3
Unfortunately for the Woods, the two fields were perhaps not quite enough to live on, and in April 1814 the Court Rolls record that they took out a mortgage of £140 from ‘Sarah Kelsey of Allesley, spinster’ (she was from the Berkswell family for whom Kelsey Lane is named). James died a few months later in October 1814, and although Mary remained at the cottage until 1820, she was unable to repay the mortgage and so in 1816, ownership passed to the mortgagee, Sarah Kelsey. Sarah died in 1819 aged just 29 and the cottage passed to her family; first her father and then her brother, both called John. ‘John Kelsey‘ (which may be either or both of them) is listed as both owner and occupier in 1825 and 1830, and although the family did not live there long, the cottage would remain in the Kelseys’ ownership until 1882.
By the time of the Tithe Apportionment of 1839, John Kelsey still owned the cottage and closes, named as Little Meadow (1 acre) and Meadow Croft (2 acres). The tenants were Thomas and Catherine Marlow, who had married in 1822. From 1839 until at least 1881, the Kelseys rented Manor Cottage and its fields to the Marlow family. Berkswell native Thomas Marlow was a butcher and agricultural labourer, while his Birmingham-born wife Catherine (nee Price) worked locally as a sick nurse. Thomas died in 1863 and their son George in 1878, but Catherine was still at Manor Cottage in 1881. She died at the Meriden Workhouse in 1890 at the age of 94, having outlived Thomas and all of her children.
In April 1882, the Kelsey family sold the cottage and closes off as part of a Chancery case. The newspaper advertisement describes the property as:
Lot 7, Berkswell – 2 closes of copyhold Old Pasture land, with two cottages thereon, in Docker’s Lane (3A 1R 1P), bounded by lands of Thomas WALKER, within 180 yards of Berkswell Station … excellent site for the erection of villas. The land is high and commands good views.4
The two cottages are a bit of a mystery, as the 1880 OS map shows only one building on the site – perhaps the original cottage had been divided in two? The two closes are the same ones first mentioned in the court roll almost 200 years earlier, and they would indeed be given over to ‘the erection of villas,’ including Alspath, Hill Close, Willow Cottage, Hesper and Hillside.
Oldnall End One Place Study 