In the year 1809 Joseph Woodcock was born at Rough Hills, a hamlet just outside Dodleston in south Cheshire. There is still the remains of a large farm at Rough Hills and I suspect that his mother was in service there.



At eight years of age the young joseph left his parents home in Dodleston and went into service, "to drive the horses to plough" as he puts it in his autobiography. He went to live with Mr William Jones of Two Mile House Gate farm.

Other names he mentioned working for include, Mr John Lutgrave of Eccleston, Mr Richard Williams of the Green Walls Dodleston and Mr William Sant.This work was interrupted periodically because as he earned a little money he spent it paying an old lady to educate him.



When he was 18 and working for Thomas Prince, a young woman came to work at the farm to learn how to make cheese. This was Gwynne Jones, a few years his senior, having been born in 1802 at Dinas Mawddwy in Merionethshire. They were soon married and for some years lived at different places as they changed their jobs.

Their first son, Joseph, was born whilst Gwynne was in service at Grafton Hall near Malpas.



At this time the area around Chester and the Wirral was very wet and mainly salt marsh. For some years Joseph worked at draining the area to make it more productive, he was working for Mr James Boydell, later to become famous for a mobile steam engine.



James Boydell had other interests in a mine and steel works in Oak Farm, Kingswinford, Staffordshire, and persuaded Joseph to go and work for him there, so, eventually, he loaded his worldly belongings, his wife and his three children on to a canal barge and made the two day journey to start a new life in the Black Country. It was the twentieth of December 1837.



I have many more names of people and places around the Lache Eyes if anyone else is researching the area. I am particularly interested to learn about the parents. Woodcocks continued to live in Dodleston afterwards as there is a childs grave in the churchyard there.



If anyone has any info please contact me, regards, Tony.