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On 4 October 1887 William Charles Vale sold a parcel of land to
Mrs. Mary Orme for £120. William, a needle manufacturer, had bought the land, together
with a freehold cottage, in Swan Street, Studley, at an auction at the Marlborough Inn on
Box ing Day, 1885. He had paid £115 for lot 6, 844 sq.yards in area, which had previously
belonged to William Whittington, to whom it had been conveyed in April 1858 by James Smith
and John Talus. In his will of 1879 Whittington appointed as executors William Allwood, an
Alcester confectioner and Frederick Cooper, an Essex surgeon. Allwood declined to act and
he was replaced by George Dolphin, an Alcester photographer. Whittington died in 1883,
leaving his widow to enjoy his estate until her own death one year later.
Then sandwiched between land owned by Mary, widow of Richard Orme, once landlord of the Swan Inn, and Charles Richard Rough, a furniture dealer, the land now has for its neighbours the Swan inn on the north-west and the infants’ school on the south-east. Mr.Hough, whose land being ‘the more valuable portion of the land .. at such sale by auction’ retained the deeds relating to the whole sale of land at Studley, though he acknowl edged Mr. Vale’s right to their production. This ‘more valuable’ portion, together with Whittington’s piece, comprised 2268 square yards, containing eight messuages. Described in 1819 as 1 rood & 35 perches, the area is located on ‘Studley Common’, surprising since it is so close to Priory Square. In 1819 John Cooke, a Studley yeoman, victualler and maltster (of the Swan Inn) bought the ‘piece of waste ground’ for £76 from a commissioner appointed under the Inclosure Act of 1817. The conveyance describes the parcel of land as having only one cottage, in the occupation of Mary Purcil.
In his will of 1867 Richard One describes himself as a needle manufacturer. He died in 1874, leaving his estate to his wife, Mary. Three months earlier he had pur chased the land upon which stood the Swan Inn and seven cottages from Edward J.Cooke, a whloesale hosier of Hull and son of John Cooke and Francis Hollies, a farmer of Gorcott Hall. Mary Orme, since 1896 the wife of the Revd.John Standbridge, sold two of these cottages in Station Road to John Hill (occupied by John Hill and Francis Hollies).
John Cooke’s will of 1852 gave to Charlotte, his wife, all his property but on her death or remarriage was to descend to his daughter, Mary, who became the wife of Richard Orme, one moiety of the remaining half part of the land conveyed in 1836. What this was is uncertain but in 1843 an Ipsley corndealer, John Corfield, called in his mortgage and sold the land and eight dwellings (in occupations of John Cooke, William Salmons, Edward Provost, Mr.Packer, John Beard, Christopher Tyler, William Cooke, Mary Cooke and others).. In 1831 this same plot was described as 2268 square yards and eight messuages. In 1823 the same area contained only four dwellings, more particularly, three built and one under construction, occupied by Anne and Mary Chatt erly and John Cooke,
The Swan Street mentioned in 1885 had become Station Road by 1899 and is now called High Street. The when and the why escape us still. John Cooke and wife Charlotte lie in Studley churchyard in company with three of their sons, William, John and Edmund. And Mary Pursill. Is she the Mary Purcil of the ‘only one cottage’ of 1819? What of Mary Orme or Mary Standbridge? Her first husband lies to the right of her parents’ grave, her second to their left.Of her resting place (d.1922) there is no sign. Such details both interest and frustrate, for each piece of information poses a further question. Of such stuff is local history made.
© Alcester & District Local History Society