Ropeworks, bandstands and the ties that bind
A question overheard on a wet autumn day in the TIC led to a family reunion and the discovery of a musical tradition, as Geoff Andrews recounts.
A sodden stormy Saturday 23rd October wasn’t good for trade in the Tourist Information Centre.
Gill Bowden had only volunteered for the day because she was organising Christmas card sales with a stall at one end of the building and wanted to organise the display for the first day they were on sale.
With the centre bereft of customers, by about 3pm she had abandoned the card stall and was chatting to the other volunteer on the information desk.
The door opened and two very wet people blew in. Their question: “Did the TIC know anything about the history of the ropewalk?”
The volunteer on the desk apologised but said that the houses were already there when she moved to the town.
“No, not the houses, the ropewalk that existed before – because my great-grandfather owned it.”
Gill, never a one to allow an error of fact to escape easily, interjected that there must be some mistake because her great-grandfather, George Hobbs, had owned it, and her grandfather had been employed there.
Both were right and everyone’s jaw predictably dropped because this stranger, visiting for the day from Yorkshire, turned out to be a distant cousin.
Their great-grandfather and great-grandmother had been the last operators of the ropewalk in Newtown, in the last quarter of the 19th century. George Hobbs’ wife Ruth is listed in a census as a twine maker and both sons – Joseph and George – had jobs there. Probably the advent of machine-made ropes and string robbed the enterprise of its market and both sons found other employment. Joseph went to work at Spencer Moulton and George became a blacksmith, possibly at the rubber factory, which later took him away from the town – and eventually led to the separation of the two branches of the family.
Pictured from left, George Hobbs Sr wearing his Foresters’ sash; Ruth Hobbs, née Hayter; George Jr – photograph taken after he left Bradford
But before that, the brothers had both been recruited into the Bradford Silver Band, whose members at that time sported smart uniforms – embellished with liberal frogging – and peaked caps. In those late 19th century days the band was an integral part of any event for miles around. Both boys appear to have been cornet players initially, but subsequently Joseph played tuba.
Band of brothers: Joseph Hobbs, far left, and George Hobbs Jr in the elaborately braided and frogged uniforms of the Bradford Silver Band
The band seems to have been heavily subsidised by the Moulton family, who probably provided both the instruments and the uniforms. The Wiltshire Times ran a story about flooding in the town at about this time, which made reference to the water having damaged the band’s instruments and equipment stored in the rubber factory.
Joseph continued in the band until at least the 1930s, by which time, judging from a group photo, they appear to have lost the uniforms. By then, George had long moved away, first to the West Midlands and eventually to East Yorkshire.
The interest in the band reflected a taste for music- making in the family that later led to George senior and Joseph building a pipe organ from scratch in the family home at 19 Coppice Hill. George died at 76, at his home near the ropeyard at 54 Newtown, in 1906. Ruth predeceased him by some years: she had died of bronchitis on New Year’s eve 1891 at 14 Newtown.
The Hobbs’ family home at 19 Coppice Hill
Both father and son had taught themselves to play the home-built pipe organ and it was used for family singalongs. It was dismantled and sold to the Trowbridge Freemasons in about 1950 and may still be in existence.
The two wings of the family had lost touch with each other over distance and generations, and the strangeness of that coincidence reuniting them was compounded by several factors:
Gill wasn’t meant to be in the TIC that day;
if the weather had been kinder she would have had customers and probably wouldn’t have heard the question;
and Katy Duggan only went to the TIC as a last resort in her quest for information, and only really to get a recommendation of somewhere to eat, because she had drawn a blank at Bradford on Avon Museum.
After the initial shock of the discovery the newly discovered relations swapped lots of information there and then, and subsequently developed an email relationship in which they exchanged further historic background and crucially photographs, some of which are reproduced here, and are destined eventually to augment the museum’s archive of local people and industry.
