Newlings of Church Street

Threshing machine 1860 owned by Tom & Fred Newling

Early photos that David Deacon had collected showed the Newling family were early agricultural contractors- using a steam driven tractor to pull their threshing machine. This went round the neighbouring farms threshing their corn for them. Kelly’s Directories show that they were machinists from 1851 to 1916 and then farmers until 1929. Another photo showed the Newlings living at 37 Church Street and census information tell us they lived there at least from 1840 until 1920s.

More recently house deeds provided detail of the will of John Newling who died in 1829, and who is shown as owning the 35-39 Church St land on the 1799 Inclosure map.

37 Church Street with No 39 (thatched) attached.

After his death his widow and his two sons (Thomas & John) with their families created three separate households in adjoining cottages that now make up just 37 Church Street and the garden area that is now 35 Church Street. John’s family seems to have carried on the threshing machine business into the C20th while Thomas, a gardener, left provision in his will for his daughter Mary Anne, who was recorded blind in 1881, and also a pauper. The will ensured that during her life she would have the sole use and occupancy of one ground floor room of the Church St cottage and exclusive use of a bed and sufficient of his furniture to render the room comfortably habitable! She remained a spinster until her death in 1898 at the age of 81. Her younger sister (by 3 years) Rebecca lived with her, also a spinster and pauper, eventually dying, age 95, in 1913 at the Chesterton Union.

In the 1900s there were two independent Sarah Newlings and two Newling (Frederick & son Robert) families living in 37 Church St. By the 1940 will of their older brother Thomas, a retired farm machinist, they no longer lived or worked there and the double cottage, machinists shops, outbuildings, garden (part which had been site of a third cottage) were left to his daughter Kate Ethel Hopkins.