It goes without saying that the family of Bradwell is the most ancient on the soil. They took their name from the place itself, and they are as numerous as ever to day, while the sons and daughters of the old place are to be found in every quarter of the globe. It is impossible in this twentieth century to locate the ancient home or homes of the family, but in all probability they formerly were seated at a mansion or large hall just at the entrance to the town of Brough, where a large block of buildings now used as farm buildings, still occupy the site. And the road here is to this day known as “Hall Gate”, and the fields about as “Hall Gate Fields”, and the large plot of table land immediately adjoining the buildings is called “Beggar Pleck”, or Place, a spot where the wayfaring poor waited for charity at the gates of the Hall. Rowland Eyre was assessed for “Nether Hall” in 1709. Nether Side is the name of the road leading from the old Hall. There have been many distinguished sons and daughters of the old families, concerning whom a volume might be written, but brief notices of some, in alphabetical order, must suffice, in addition to the references throughout this work.

DISTINGUISHED SONS AND DAUGHTERS
As Clergymen and Ministers.

Bradwell has contributed to the ranks of the Clergy and Ministers of various denominations. The following may be mentioned:

The Rev. Thomas Middleton, clergyman, was witness to a deed in 1766.

REV. JOSEPH HIBBS.

REV. GEO. BIRLEY.

JOSEPH HIBBS.

The Rev. Joseph Hibbs, who was born here on February 8th, 1801, joined the Primitive Methodists when they first commenced services in a barn in 1821. When he was only 22 years of age he was employed as a hired local preacher in his native circuit, entered the ministry in 1829, and in 1867 was superannuated after an active ministry of 38 years. The greater part of his ministerial life was spent in South Wales, and he was often spoken of as “The Bishop of South Wales”. For 14 years he was a supernumerary minister, and died in December, 1881, at the age of eighty.

JOHN HALLAM.

Rev. John Hallam, Primitive Methodist minister. From a lead miner he entered the ministry, being one of the pioneer preachers, and associated with the famous Hugh Bourne. He was engaged a great deal at the Connexional Book Room in London, and was called upon to preach in all parts of the country in the early days of the movement. He was a victim to overwork and came to his native place to die at the early age of 44. His death took place on September 18th, 1845. and he was buried inside the walls of the chapel, which was then in course of erection, underneath where the pulpit was to be placed.

GEORGE BIRLEY.

The Rev. George Birley. He entered the Wesleyan Ministry in 1812, became one of the best known ministers in the Connexion, and died about 1870.

JACOB MORTON.

JOHN MORTON.

RALPH BENJAMIN SOMERSET.

JACOB MORTON.

Rev. Jacob Morton, a well known Wesleyan Minister, and was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. He was distinguished by Christian sympathy and sincerity, possessed of a vigorous mind, familiar with a wide range of theological and general study, and was an earnest and successful preacher. He entered the ministry in 1840. and died at Exeter in 1873.

JOHN MORTON.

Rev. John Morton, another brother, entered the Primitive Methodist ministry, and had a distinguished career. He was an author of several popular works. He died at West Bromwich in 1862.

RALPH BENJAMIN SOMERSET.

The eldest son of Benjamin Somerset. He was born in 1834. He became Fellow of

Trinity College, Cambridge, took his B.A. Degree in 1857, was wrangler, and 2nd Class Classical Tripos, took his M.A. degree in 1860, became Dean of his College, and first censor of non collegiate students in that University from 1869 to 1881. He died in 1891.

On the north wall of the Chancel there is a splendid tablet to the memory of this gentleman, surmounted with a bust, in bas-relief, of the deceased. In deep black letters there is the inscription:- “In memory of the Reverend Ralph Benjamin Somerset, M.A., son of Benjamin and Fanny Somerset, of this place; Fellow and Dean of Trinity College Cambridge; First Censor of Non-Collegiate students in that University; honoured and beloved. The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance. Born February 20, 1834; died March 23, 1891”.

REV. GEORGE MIDDLETON.

REV. JOSEPH MIDDLETON.

ROBERT MIDDLETON.

GEORGE MIDDLETON.

Rev. George Middleton, one of the most distinguished of Bradwell lads, as a boy worked in the lead mines, but when a young man he became a local preacher among the Primitive Methodists, entered the itinerancy and became a regular minister. He became one of the most famous men in the denomination, gave up circuit work and was appointed Governor of Bourne College, Birmingham, which post he held down to his death in 1908, at the age of 77.

ADAM MORTON.

Rev. Adam Morton (living), a well known Primitive Methodist minister, a popular preacher, well known throughout the Connexion. Son of the late Thomas Morton, lead miner.

ROBERT MIDDLETON.

Rev. Robert Middleton was a nephew of the Revs. George and Joseph Middleton.

He was for half a century a Primitive Methodist minister, but when a young man was a lead miner. He died in 1901, and lies in the Primitive Methodist burial ground.

EDWARD TOWNSON CHURTON. (living)

From being curate at Bradwell when preaching service was held in the old schoolroom, before the church was built, had a distinguished career in the church. In the year 1896 the Right Rev. Edward Townson Churton became Bishop of Nassau. He is a prolific writer on ecclesiastical subjects, and the author of a number of works, including “First Island Missionary of the Bahamas”, “The Missionary's Foundation of Christian Doctrine”, “ Retreat Addresses”, “The Sanctuary of Missions”, “Foreign Missions”, and “The Use of Penitence”. He married a daughter of the Rev. C.J. Daniel, Vicar of Hope, and the lady died when on the voyage out to Nassau.

JOHN C. BOCKING.

Rev. John Child Bocking (living). Vicar of Gnosall, Staffordshire, to which living he was preferred in 1906. He was educated at St. Peter's College, Cambridge, took his B.A. degree in 1889, and was ordained deacon the following year. He is a surrogate of Lichfield diocese, and formerly held curacies at Tipton and Fenton.

POETS AND MINSTRELS.

JOHN E. BRADWELL.

John Edwy Bradwell. The son of a miner, and himself a miner in his early days. He has long been a prominent personage in the friendly society world, and is editor of the magazine of the Sheffield Equalised Independent Druids. He is the writer of a number of poems of considerable merit, including “A Coronation Ode”, which was dedicated to King Edward and Queen Alexandra. A copy of the Ode was sent to Queen Alexandra, which she graciously accepted, and sent a letter of thanks to the author.

ADAM HILL COOPER.
A Witty Rhymster of Half a Century Ago.
Interesting Local Ditties.

One who was famous as a poet in the middle of the last century was Adam Hill Cooper, who was a son of Samuel Cooper. This gentleman had five sons, all of whom bore scriptural names - Adam, Job, Benjamin, Elias, and Jabez. Adam was a born rhymster. He was manager of Mr. Ashton's white lead works, at Brough, and died in 1879. His ditties would fill a volume, but they were never issued to the world in that form. They were, mainly, humorous rhymes on local men and things, just a few of which will be interesting to the present generation. But he produced pieces other than humorous. One of his first productions about 1860, was dedicated to his infant son, who, however, died young. Here it is:

About the same time Mr. Cooper's pen produced the following on

MAN.

THE LATE ADAM HILL COOPER.

But those of greatest local interest were his humorous ditties. These were legion, and in them he hit off local characters admirably, regardless of offence either to friend or foe. Here is his poetical description showing how the people of the Peak celebrated the wedding of the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VII.), in 1863:-

THE FREE RANGERS.

One Sunday night in 1868 three young men from Bamford visited the Rose and Crown Inn, a public house - now cottages - at the top of Smithy Hill, Bradwell. After patronising the landlord, Anthony Middleton, they left at closing time, groped by the wall in the dark, until, reaching the corner of the building at the top of the Gutter, the first of the trio, John Robinson, for many years the mechanic at Bamford Mills, fell over a low wall into a heap of manure below. The incident was admirably hit off by Cooper in these lines:-

On a late Sunday night.

A JOURNEY TO EYAM AND BACK.

“THE GOOSE FROM CALLOW”,

told its own tale. It was about half a century ago. The goose was procured from Callow Farm, near Hathersage, and cooked at the Green Dragon Inn, at that time kept by Michael and Ann Hall. The license has long since lapsed. Here is the lively ditty:-

In the sixties the Bradwell Moss Rake Mining Company was formed on the co- operative principle, to drive a level and open out the mines, but after some years of unprofitable working the project was abandoned. But here is

“AN ODE”,
written by Cooper in encouragement:

Cooper was no respecter of persons. He had a dig at everybody he thought deserved it. Here is one:-

TO HIS INDIGENT COBBLER.

Cooper's butcher shared the same fate as his cobbler, for here is his

SHANK STEAKS.

Cooper was at a loss to know how a total abstainer could be such an inveterate smoker, and after a wordy warfare with some of these, this is how he lectured and exposed them in rhyme:-

TO AN ABSTAINER FROM DRINK, BUT AN INVETERATE SMOKER.

The following is the last piece composed by this local celebrity, on the occasion of the occasion of the renovation of the Primitive Methodist Chapel, in 1878:-

THE BRADWELL CONVERT.

* William Longden, familiarly known as Billy Longden, was the chapel keeper.

* The Rev. William Smith, Primitive Methodist minister.

SAMUEL COOPER.

He was father of the above, and like his son, he aspired to poetic fame. Such a hatred had he of smoking, and so pained was he to see the habit growing among both young and old that he composed and published a poem, his object being to induce the habitual smoker to throw away his pipe, and “to prevent the initiated from learning a habit which will make unlawful demands upon his purse, injure his health, and give him much vexation”. As the author himself frankly admitted, “in point of poetical beauty there is nothing to admire, and therefore poetry in the verses which follow, must not be sought for”. but if his end was accomplished he should “reap more heartfelt satisfaction than if my brow were to be wreathed with poetical laurels gathered from the top of Parnassus' mountain”. It is a remarkable piece of composition, put together when its author was nearly seventy years old: He died in 1872; aged 73, and is buried in the Primitive Cemetery.

REV. GEORGE BIRD.

The Rev. George Bird, the Vicar of Bradwell, has from a youth been a lover or verse, and gifted with the spirit of poetry. His masterpiece is, perhaps, “Ronald's Farewell”, issued to the world in 1892.

HORACE E. MIDDLETON.

Horace E. Middleton, a distinguished and talented musician, appointed in 1908 Musical Director of the Kings' Theatre, Hammersmith, London.

THOMAS FANSHAW MIDDLETON.
First Bishop of Calcutta, a Middleton of Bradwell.

Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, the first Bishop of Calcutta, was the only son of the Rev. Thomas Middleton, one of the oldest of the family of Bradwell Middletons, who was born in a cottage in Nether Side, now used as a lock-up shop, and still the property of the Middleton family. Thomas Middleton became rector of Kedleston, near Derby, and he was allied by marriage with the family of Fanshaw of Brough. It was whilst he was rector of Kedleston that his son Thomas Fanshawe Middleton was born on January 26th, 1769. He entered Christ's Hospital on 21st April, 1779, and he became a “Grecian”. Among his schoolfellows were S.T. Coleridge and Charles Lamb, who describes him as “a scholar and a gentleman in his teens”, whose manner at school was “firm, but mild and un-assuming”. Middleton was always grateful to Christ's Hospital, and shortly before his death gave a donation of £400, and was elected a governor of the institution. Entering Pembroke College, Cambridge, he graduated B.A., January,

THOMAS FANSHAW MIDDLETON.

First Bishop of Calcutta, a Middleton
of Bradwell.

1792, as fourth in the list of senior optimes. He became M.A. in 1795, and D.D. 1808. In March, 1792, he was ordained deacon by Dr. Pretyman, Bishop of Lincoln, and became curate of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, where he edited, and in great part wrote, a weekly periodical called “The Country Spectator”. This periodical - an echo of Addison and Steele - attracted the attention of Dr. John Pretyman, archdeacon of Lincoln, and brother of Bishop Pretyman, and he made Middleton tutor to his sons, first at Lincoln, then at Norwich. In 1795 Middleton was presented by Dr. Pretyman to the rectory of Tansor, Northamptonshire, and in 1802 to the consolidated rectory of Little and Castle Bytham, Lincolnshire. At this time he began his well-known work on the Greek article, being incited by a controversy of this subject in which Granville Sharp, Wordsworth, Master of Trinity, and Calvin Winstanley engaged. The volume appeared in 1808 as “The Doctrine of the Greek Article applied to the Criticism and the Illustration of the New Testament”. It was praised in the “Quarterly Review” as a learned and useful work, and went through five editions. In 1809 Middleton obtained a Prebendal stall at Lincoln, and in 1811 exchanged Tansor and Bytham for the vicarage of St. Pancras, London, and the rectory of Pultenham, Hertfordshire. In 1812 he became archdeacon of Huntingdon. On his removal to London in 1811 he undertook the editorship of the “British Critic”, and took an active part in the proceedings of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. He endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to raise funds for a new church in St. Pancras' parish.

The Act of 1813, which renewed the charter of the East India Company, erected their territories into one vast diocese with a bishop (of Calcutta) and three arch-deacons. The number of Anglican clergy in India was very small. The bishopric, the salary of which was £5,000, was offered to Middleton. He was consecrated at Lambeth Palace on May 8th, 1814, and reached Calcutta on November 28th, 1814. Difficulties had been prophesied with the natives on religious grounds, but the Bishop's arrival and subsequent visitations created no alarm or disturbance. He found the Bible Society established at Calcutta, but declined an invitation to join it. He had a difficulty with the Presbyterian ministers, who were maintained by the court of directors of the East India Company. In 1815 he organised the Free School and the Orphan School at Calcutta, and in May of the same year formed a diocesan committee of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, a society which, when he left England, had placed £1,000 at his disposal in furtherance of its views. On December 18th, 1815, he left Calcutta to make his primary visitation, attended by a party of about 450 people. The whole journey was one of about 5,000 miles. He had an interview with the Nabob of the Carnatic at Madras, traversed Southern India, visited Bombay, Goa, Ceylon, and the Syrian Christians at Cochin. During this visitation, which ended in 1816, the Bishop made no heathen converts. His view, frequently expressed, was that the “fabric of idolatry” in India would never be shaken merely by the preaching of missionaries. He trusted rather to the general diffusion of knowledge and the arts to pave the way for Christianity. The first duty of the Anglican Church was to bring the European inhabitants under its influence, and to set up a high standard of moral and religious life. About September, 1820, the Bishop's house was struck by lightning while the family were at dinner, but no one was injured.

On December 15th, 1820, Middleton laid the foundation stone of Bishop's Mission College, on a site within three miles of Calcutta. The establishment of this college was the Bishop's favourite scheme. The institution was to consist of a principal and professors, and of students who were afterwards to be provided for as missionaries and schoolmasters in India. In 1821 he again visited Cochin to ascertain the condition of the Syrian Church there, and in December held his third visitation at Calcutta. He died on July 8th, 1822, of a fever, in the 54th year of his age and the ninth of his episcopate. He was buried in Calcutta Cathedral.

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, to which he left £500 and five hundred volumes from his library, joined the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, in subscribing for a monument to him in the nave of St. Paul's Cathedral. This memorial - a marble group, by J.G. Lough - represents Bishop Middleton blessing two Indian children kneeling before him. In accordance with Middleton's will, all his writings in manuscript were destroyed, including a memoir on the Syrian Church. While in India he collected Syrian manuscripts and learnt Hindustani, but gave up the study of Greek. His “Sermons and Charges” were published with a memoir, in 1824, by Archdeacon Bonney. Middleton was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Vice-President of the Asiatic Society.

Middleton's life was written in 1831 by his friend the Rev. C.W. Le Bas, and it contains a portrait of the Bishop in his robes. He was a man of handsome and vigorous appearance, his voice was clear and sonorous, and his preaching impressive. In Kay's “Christianity in India” he is called “a cold and stately formalist”, who had “an over-weening sense of the dignity of the episcopal office”, though she admits that the Bishop was not actuated by personal vanity, and that the externals of religion had been too much neglected in India before his arrival. Other, friends of Middleton found him stiff and proud in his manner, though, as

Charles Lamb expressed it, the newly and imperfectly defined position of the first Anglican Bishop of India, perhaps, justified his high carriage. As an organiser he was cautious, able, and active, and his successor. Bishop Heber, was not a little indebted to him.

Middleton married, in 1797, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of John Maddison, of Alvingham, Lincolnshire. His wife survived him, but there were no children of the marriage.