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Early Years: 1659-1708

The original cottage and croft were copyhold, which means they were leased from Berkswell Manor, and so our earliest records are from the Manorial Court Rolls. In 1659, the roll records the death of Jeffery Bellitt and the admission to the property of his son, also Jeffrey. Jeffrey junior did not live in Berkswell and didn’t need the ‘cottage and lands’, so in 1660 he sold them to Alexander Casemore.¹ Alexander married in 1668,² and perhaps his wife didn’t like the cottage or had her own property as the following year, Alexander sold the cottage to a weaver called Thomas Clarke.

The Clarke family held on to the property for almost forty years. In 1676, Thomas and his wife Isabel added their daughter Hannah and her new husband John Eaves junior to the lease, perhaps as a wedding settlement, although it isn’t clear whether the two generations lived in the cottage together.³ Thomas died in 1699, and his probate inventory describes a house with a hall, parlour, weaver’s shop and dairy downstairs, and three ‘chambers’ upstairs.⁴ This is a good size for Berkswell at the time, where most cottages had just one or two upstairs rooms. We can’t conclusively identify Thomas’s house with the copyhold cottage, but the description seems to match the probate inventories of later residents.

At the 1708 Manorial Court, John & Hannah Eaves sold the property to William Heath, whose descendants would remain at the cottage for almost 150 years.

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The Heath-Matthews Family, 1708-1851

William Heath (I, II and III), 1708-1789

The Heaths were an established Berkswell family who were tailors by trade. The William Heath who purchased the cottage in 1708 was probably William (I) who died in 1716, leaving his estate to his son, William (II).⁵ William (I)’s probate inventory describes a six-room house like that of Thomas Clarke 17 years earlier, with a parler, hall and butry downstairs, each with a ‘chamber over‘.⁶ If this is the same property, it looks as if the Heaths no longer needed Thomas’s weaving workshop and perhaps converted it into the buttery.

William (II) had certainly taken on the cottage by 1725. On 31 March that year he married Mary Butler and added her to the lease on the same day (Court Roll).⁷ They had two surviving children, Mary (b. 1726) and William (III), but less than a month after baby William’s birth in February 1731, William (II) died. His probate inventory, taken on 12 March, describes a six-room house like his father’s, although the names of the rooms are different again: downstairs is a parlour, kitchen and dairey, each with an upstairs ‘chamber over‘. It looks as if the old hall has become a kitchen, which was a common upgrade at the time, while the former ‘butry’ is now called the dairy.⁸

In 1751, William (III) married Priscilla Watson, who had grown up at what is now the Brickmaker’s Arms.⁹ They had six daughters: Priscilla, Mary, Ann, Sarah, Elizabeth, and Martha before William died in January 1768.¹⁰ He died intestate, but Priscilla and the girls remained at the cottage. Priscilla’s will, written in February 1774, notes that according to the custom of the manor, their youngest daughter Martha was to inherit the copyhold cottage and land.¹¹ Priscilla died in 1780 and her daughter Mary and son in law William Matthews lived at the cottage until Mary’s death in 1782 (Land Tax).¹²

Martha had moved to Birmingham and had no need for the cottage, so at the Manorial Court for 1789 she sold the tenancy to her sister Ann and brother in law John Matthews, who had taken over the property from Mary’s widower William (Court Roll). They and their children held the cottage for another sixty years.

The Matthews family (1789-1851)

John and Ann Matthews married at Hampton in 1774 and had 13 children: 12 sons and one daughter. They were named as owners on the 1802 Enclosure Award, which shows the cottage with its croft to the rear and two pieces of newly enclosed land to the front. The enclosures extended the family’s property up to the boundary with Meeting House Lane (this is the area marked in yellow on the map above).

Land Tax records show John as owner-occupier of the cottage until 1815, when it seems that he let it to his 8th son Edward and his new wife Ann Smitten, who had just married at Solihull .¹³ John and Ann (senior) moved to Barston, where John died in 1822.¹⁴ Ann, as ‘Widow Matthews,’ was now the named owner of the cottage on Land Tax records (1825-1830) and the Tithe Apportionment (1839). At the time of the Tithe, the estate comprised a House, garden and orchard, a newly-enclosed croft of 1R 22P used for pasture, and the original croft of 1A 1R 26P that was mown and grazed.

Ann Matthews (senior) wrote her will in March 1850, when she split her ‘copyhold estate in Berkswell comprising a messuage … gardens, lands &c [totalling] 2A 18P … now in the occupation of my son Edward Matthews’ between Edward and his brother Daniel, instructing that it should be sold after her death.¹⁵ Ann died in Barston in September 1850 aged 94,¹⁶ and the brothers put the cottage up for sale the next month :

To be sold by Auction by DG Barnes on Monday 11^th November 1850 at the Bear Inn, Berkswell … all that desirable COPYHOLD MESSUAGE or TENEMENT, with Cow House, and necessary Outbuildings, Garden and Orchard, with TWO ACRES of Capital PASTURE LAND, situate at Knowle End [sic], in Berkeswell, now and for many years past in the occupation of Mr Edward Matthews. To view the premises, apply to the TENANT.¹⁷

Edward and Ann were still at the cottage when the census was taken in April 1851, but soon afterwards they moved to Four Ashes in the parish of Packwood, where Edward died in 1864 and Ann in 1871.¹⁸

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The New House

By September 1860, the old cottage was gone and a brand new house had been constructed at the front of the property, on the reclaimed land bordering what is now Kelsey Lane. Sales particulars in 1860 and 1863 describe a ‘newly-built messuage, with Cow-house and necessary outbuildings, together with a Garden and Orchard, and more than Two Acres of good land’.¹⁹ By 1861, the tenants were David and Sarah Chamberlain who ran a bakery, corn and flour dealership in Coventry. They divided their time between Coventry and Berkswell, but retained the Berkswell house for more than 30 years.

In February 1894, the property, now owned by the Chamberlain family, was put up for sale. The ‘recently repaired’ house was smaller than the original cottage; where the old house had three rooms on each floor, the new house comprised a ‘kitchen, back kitchen, with copper and sink, pantry, parlour and two chambers’.²⁰ It was bought by Lucy Sames, landlady of the White Lion in Hampton, for £315.²¹

The property does not appear on the 1901 census, perhaps because it was undergoing extensive rebuilding. The 1911 census records it with seven rooms and home to Frederick Hornsby, a retired commercial traveller, and his wife Sarah Ann. When it came up for sale again after Frederick’s death in 1914 it had been extended and modernised, and was now known as ‘Sunnydale’:

Vestibule and HALL ENTRANCE, DINING ROOM fitted with modern Grate and Oak Mantlepiece, DRAWING ROOM, large Kitchen, Scullery, and FOUR BED ROOMS, COACH-HOUSE, Outbuildings, and Paved Yard. There is a well-stocked GARDEN, LAWN, ORCHARD, and PADDOCK, the whole comprising about 2 ½ acres. There is a CONSERVATORY constructed at side of the Residence, and excellent supply of well water with modern pump. TELEPHONE WIRES are attached to the House.²²

This house still stands today at the corner of Kelsey Lane and Meeting House Lane and still has its croft to the rear, although there is no sign of the cottage that stood there for more than 200 years.

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Notes

1. There are few references to the Bellitt family in Berkswell. ‘Jefry Belit of Baullsaull’ was buried on 27 January 1658 and Margaret Bellett (Jeffrey’s widow?) on 3 December 1672. A Jeffery Bellett and his wife Elizabeth had a son, also Jeffrey, at Harborough Magna near Rugby in 1662; the rarity of the name makes it tempting to think this is Jeffrey junior, but we cannot be sure. ↩︎
2. Alexander CASEMORE and Mary BENNETT married at St John’s Berkswell on 1 November 1668. They had five children before Alexander’s early death in September 1682. ↩︎
3. John EAVES & Hannah CLARKE married at St John’s Berkswell on 6 May 1675. ↩︎
4. Probate Inventory of Thomas Clarke, late of Berkswell, weaver. 30 October 1699. Probate Lichfield 15 November 1699. ↩︎
5. Will of William Heath of Berskwell, taylor. 30 June 1716. Probate Coleshill, 26 September 1716. ↩︎
6. Probate inventory of William Heath of Berkswell. 20 July 1716. Probate Coleshill 26 September 1716. ↩︎
7. William Heath and Mary Butler married on 31 March at Little Packington. Both were described as ‘of Berkswell’. ↩︎
8. Probate inventory of William Heath, late of Barkeswell, taylor. 12 March 1730/31. Probate Coleshill 8 April 1731. ↩︎
9. William Heath and Priscilla Watson married at St John’s Berkswell on 8 October 1751. ↩︎
10. William Heath was buried at St John’s Berkswell on 26 January 1768. ↩︎
11. Will of Priscilla Heath, widow, of Berkswell. 12 February 1774. Probate Coleshill, 8 April 1780. ↩︎
12. Mary, wife of William Matthews, was buried at St John’s Berkswell on 6 May 1782. ↩︎
13. Edward Matthews of Barston and Ann Smitten married at St Alphege, Solihull on 2 March 1815. ↩︎
14. John Matthews of Barston, age 80, was buried at Barston on 9 December 1822. ↩︎
15. Will of Ann Matthews of Barston, widow. 11 March 1850. Probate Coventry, 4 October 1850. ↩︎
16. Ann Matthews of Barston, age 94, buried at Barston on 6 September 1850. ↩︎
17. ‘Copyhold Property, Berkeswell,’Coventry Standard, 25 Oct. 1850: 1. 19th-century advertisements for this property refer to it as being in ‘Knowle End,’ a name unrecorded elsewhere and which seems to be a misnomer for ‘Oldnall End.’ ↩︎
18. Edward Matthews of Packwood, age 76, buried at Solihull on 15 April 1864; Ann Mathews of Packwood, age 79, buried at Solihull on 24 January 1871. ↩︎
19. ‘Sale: Messuage and Land at Berkswell,’ Coventry Standard, 8 Sep. 1860: 1; Coventry Herald, 16 Oct. 1863: 1. ↩︎
20. ‘Freehold and Copyhold Property, Meeting House Lane.’ Coventry Herald, 23 Feb. 1894: 4. ↩︎
21. ‘Property Sales,’ Coventry Herald, 9 Mar. 1894: 5. ↩︎
22. ‘Freehold Country Residence,’ Coventry Standard, 17 Jul. 1914: 6. ↩︎

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