10 - The Houghton Family
There were 10 occupants at household ten. John and Mary Houghton with their 8 children.
The family had moved to Romiley around 1862 from their home and business in Salford, where John was a grocer and flour dealer. This was the same year that Romiley train station opened, which allowed much easier and cheaper travel between the large cities and surrounding towns and villages.
John, the son of a coal dealer, and Mary, the daughter of a merchant, had grown up in the smoke and pollution of Manchester. The move to Romiley would have been a huge change for them, used to being surrounded by buildings and thousands of neighbours.
The 1871 census tells us that John was no longer running his own business, but working as a felt hat blocker. His daughters Mary and Alice also worked at the hat factory as hat trimmers and binders.
Three years later in 1874 John left the hatworks for the far superior position of bookkeeper at Chadkirk Printworks, looking after the wages of over 100 staff and dealing with payments for the company. He would remain in the position until 1884 when he became unwell and died a week later. He was a very popular colleague, fondly remembered as a man of industry, integrity and sobriety.
John was also active in the community, working as parishioner's sideman at St. Chad's church and joining the Bredbury and Romiley local board.
John and Mary's eldest son George Pilkington Houghton worked as a grocer's assistant as a young man then followed his father into the printworks as a Calico Printer. Chadkirk Printworks was owned and managed by the Syddall family who also lived nearby at Orange Tree House and Chadkirk House. George married Eliza Cadman and they had children. The family moved a number of times but finally settled in New Mills, a centre of calico printing.
Mary Houghton, who had worked as a felt hat binder in 1871, married a butcher named James Hollinworth. They had two daughters, Mary and Edith, but after the birth of Edith Mary became unwell and died. Her sister Alice came to look after the children and a year later Edith also passed away. Just a month later Alice married her sister's widowed husband James. Mary died shortly afterwards but by then Alice and James had begun a family of their own.
It was illegal to marry your deceased sister's husband at this time but it didn't deter many people. Alice and James married in Oldham, perhaps to avoid attention.
You can find out more about the Houghton family in the book "Residents of Romiley Road" which will be coming soon.