Thomas Whittington burial 1863 residence query (General)

by jimashton , Saturday, May 01, 2010, 12:58 (5398 days ago) @ lesleyr

Lesley

As you may now have established, Strip and At It was in fact a Coal Mine, it was adjacent to and became part of Trafalgar Mine owned by the Brain Family. Below is an extract from a description of Trafalgar Mine, including the acquisition of the adjacent Strip & At It :

Trafalgar Mine
The Trafalgar gale was granted in August 1842 to Corneleus Brain of Mitcheldean and was to remain in the possession of the Brain family until 1919. It would appear that work did not commence at Trafalgar until around 1860 although it must be said that details of the early history of the concern are few and far between.
Since at least 1847 Corneleus and Francis Brain had been lessees of the Rose-in-Hand gale and in 1867 they obtained a Crown licence to work the barrier between that gale and the Trafalgar gale. This meant that the two gales effectively became one for the purpose of working the coal which would undoubtedly have been raised via the shafts at Trafalgar. No record of a shaft or level on Rose-in-Hand has been found, coal from here previous to 1867 having been brought to the surface through Royal Forester gale which later formed part of Speech House Hill Colliery.
It is also possible that at around this time the Brains acquired the New Strip-and-at-it Colliery which lay adjacent to Trafalgar. Strip-and-at-it was a concern which had already been worked for a considerable period. The 1841 Awards of Coal and Iron Mines stated that a John Harris had been working Strip-and-at-it since April 1832 although his application for the gale had been rejected. The gale had, however, been surrendered to the Crown in 1864 and was then acquired by the Brains. Strip-and-at-it had been connected to the Churchway branch of the Severn & Wye tramroad in 1842 and, with the commencement of operations at Trafalgar in 1860, permission was gained for a connection to the Strip-and-at-it spur, the new line including a short tunnel.

I have Thomas Whittington in my Family Tree, including the location of his death. He is not related to me but I have relations that married his descendants - son Joseph Whittington 1831 married Lydia Mason, also the grandchildren of his daughter Harriett Whittington, Clarence Oliver Whittington 21 Jan 1876 married Selina Marfell a widow 37 years older than him, and his brother Clarry Alfred Whittington 1877 (yes the names did cause research problems) who married Harriett Ellen Brain.

Jim Ashton