Tracing Your Rural Ancestors by Jonathan Brown

Author:Jonathan Brown [Brown, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: ISBN 9781844686667
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2012-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

The village of Kilburn, north Yorkshire, where once there were four shoemakers. The main village industry now is the workshop of Thompson’s ‘Mouseman’ furniture. (The author)

Shoemakers

At the beginning of the twentieth century Mr Goodricke, a resident of the north Yorkshire village of Kilburn, died. He had been a cobbler, as his grandson told the registrar when he went to register the death. The registrar paused, raised his eyebrows, and turned to his clerk: ‘Put boot and shoe repairer’, he said. Shoemaker or cobbler, he was one of the prominent village tradesmen. Outdoor work and unmetalled roads were enough to keep him busy – and his fellows, for there was often more than one shoemaker in the village. Kilburn is a small village, but in the 1890s there were three others besides Mr Goodricke in business as shoemakers. By this time mechanization in the shoe trade was having its effect – new sales were more often of ready-made boots, leaving the village cobbler with the repair work. In the end this was to be the undoing of him, and it was rare to find a shoe-mender in the mid-twentieth century village.

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