The Gower Family
Richard Gower, his wife Catherine and his children arrived in Cleobury Mortimer in 1670 and succeeded the Soleys at Reaside. They had come from Aston Botterell, where Richard had married Catherine Haynes, but the family was also closely connected with the Childe family of Kinlet Hall. This branch of the family came from Wick, Worcester.
Richard and Catherine brought with them their children Elizabeth 16, Catherine 12, John (Jack) 6 and Richard 3. They had had a large house in Aston Botterell, paying for 6 hearths in 1662, but Reaside was even bigger with 7 hearths in 1672. It must have been one of the largest properties in Cleobury parish.
Richard started paying his tithes in 1670, paying £1 13 shillings and 4 pence of the whole £4. Presumably Thomas Soley had paid the rest for his part of the year. By 1671 he was well settled in with his family as well as two maids, Mary and Anne. He had 18 cows. His Easter tithe was 2 shillings and eightpence. ‘Goodman Gower’ duly paid his main tithe of £4. Tragedy then struck. His youngest son, Richard, died in July 171, after barely a year in the family’s new location.
Richard now turned his attention to the schooling of his son Jack, who by now was about 8. From August 26 1672 he sent him into the town to the Vicar’s establishment; by the following Easter, his father had paid the Vicar’s account with 9 shillings worth of geese and turkeys. His ‘family’ had increased with the birth of another son, Samuel, in May 1672; a ‘kinswoman’ was also staying with him, and he had taken on one man, Morgan Meredith. All this meant his Easter dues were 3 shillings and sevenpence. Eleven people were living at Reaside.
By 1674, his daughter Elizabeth was well over 16, and subject to dues, and he had taken on another man, William Davies. His two maids were Mary and Jane, and he had 20 cows. He had paid for his son’s schooling until the previous August. The Vicar bought some wool from him.
As for his land, he was still paying £4 for the Reaside, but he also now had part of the Rough Hills (Rowhills in the 1846 tithe map), which was 7 shillings a year in total but he paid 4. He also had to pay the Vicar a strike of corn and another of wheat.
Elizabeth, now 21, married John Pritchard, and in 1676 their first child, Elizabeth was born. Rachel was born in December 1677, but, sadly, both the baby and her mother died. Two of Richard and Catherine’s children had died young in Aston Botterell, and so now only two boys and one girl survived. Richard paid the funeral fee of one shilling.
In 1675 Richard’s two men servants were still Morgan Meredith and William Davies. His maid Jane had been replaced by Elizabeth. In January 1676, Richard had another blow; his wife Catherine died, at the age of about 40. As a result, perhaps, he increased his men servants to three, with the arrival of Francis Jones. Jack was still at school, and the the Vicar had been paid up to the previous August. His land tithe was sent to the Vicar via Mary Child, perhaps the Mary who had been his maid since he arrived.
By 1678, he was back to two male servants, William Davies remaining, but Meredith and Jones were replaced by Cook. He still had 20 cows, and Jack, now about 14 was still at school. His daughter Catherine (Kate) was well over 16 and Easter dues were paid for her. Richard still had part of the Rough Hills, for which he paid 4 shillings a year, but the debt for this had built up over three years to 12 shillings.
In 1679, he only had one male servant, the faithful William Davies, but three maids, 18 cows and a horse, but no colt. He still owed 6 shillings and half tithes for the Rough Hills. Later he paid £3 ten shiillings in cash and another ten shillings by ‘cider redstreak’. Jack’s schooling had perhaps come to an end the previous Christmas, as he was approaching the age of 16, and the Vicar had been paid up to that time.
In 1680, his daughter Kate was still at home, presumably managing the house. There were three maids, Mary Child, who perhaps had been there from 1670, Foxall and Uncles. This was, it seems, Joan Uncle, the daughter of John and Joan Uncle who farmed nearby, and whom Jack was to marry in 1690. She was in 1680 about 20. Richard still employed two men, Richard Youngjohns who apparently worked at Thomas Pennell’s at Bransley, and William Davies, working with John Wellins, another local farmer. This year Richard was still 6 shillings in arrears for the Rough Hills. He had also to pay for his daughter Kate’s marriage to Thomas Wyer. They came to live at Reaside, and his elder son Jack remained at home.
Mary Child and Joan Uncles continued as his maids in 1681; he still had a herd of 20 cows. He owed two years for William Davies and one year for another man Christian Welshman Will: Thomas Webley. In 1682, he was still not up to date with his payments for Rough Hills, and there were some new faces at Reaside in 1683. A maid named Chetwin had replaced Joan Uncles; his maid was Mary Wyer (a relation of his son in law?), and his servant man was Richard Mowsell. He also paid one shilling and sixpence for William Davies over the last three years.
In 1684 his servant man was John Thomas and maids Child and Idins. He reamained in arrears 6 shillings and one strike of wheat and one of corn. Richard paid his £4 land tithe to William Hayley for the Vicar’s use. It was much the same story the next year, but the Vicar remarks ‘pig & goose & eggs he is to pay in kind.’ By 1687 another maid had been taken on named Bird in addition to Mary Child and Iddins. Rough Hills, 4 shillings still, is referred to this year as Rowhills, its name on the 1846 tithe map. Via William Hayley again he paid on December 21 1687 his £4 land tithe, but not his 4 shillings; later his 4 shillings was paid in kind by a turkey for 2 shillings and sixpence and the Vicar ‘allowed the old man’ (he was probably well over 60) the remaining one shilling and sixpence. So he was all-square at last.
In 1689, the year before Jack married Joan Uncles, he paid the Rough Hills tithe on May 1st. A Joyce Burges ‘at Wheelers de Mawley’ is mentioned whom he did not pay for. There is still no mention of his son Samuel, born in 1672, who by now should have been paying Easter dues. In the last year of the tithe record, and the last year of Richard’s life, Mary Wyer and Dukes were the two maids, his cows numbered 16, and his ‘composition’ tithes remained at £4 and 4 shillings. It was his son John who paid the £4 in November and later, as well as a boar worth 15 shillings. His father Richard had been buried early in October. John, now about 27, was perhaps free to marry and his bride was Joan Uncles, the daughter of John and Joan Uncles who lived near the Gowers. They were married in April 1691, and the newly married couple went to live at Rough Hills (alias Row Hills), abandoning, it would seem, the living at Reaside. It is possible that a new house was built there, as there is no evidence in the record of anyone living at Rough Hills earlier. Theirs was to be a comparatively short marriage, however, as John died in 1699, but over the nine years, three children were born: Catherine in February 1692, Mary in December 1693, and John in January 1696. Only John survived early childhood, and Joan was left a widow in the autumn of 1699. She did not have to wait long before she remarried. She was now approaching 40, but so too was a bachelor named John Newall, a pipemaker by trade, who perhaps saw a good opportunity in a widow with one child from a family that would have been regarded in Cleobury as relatively prosperous. He had a connection with the Gower family. His mother’s sister Margery had married John Pritchard, whose son, John the younger, a cousin of John Newall’s, had married Catherine Gower, John Gower’s sister. John Newall and Joan were married just over a year after John Gower’s death, in November 1700. They did have one child, William, in 1702, but he died at the age of 9, John Newall carried on his pipemaking on the site of Rough Hills until his death in 1719, at the age of 58. He was a poor man, and his goods at his death were worth a mere £6. His widow Joan, left on her own, did not remarry, but probably remained in the house at Rough Hills until her death in 1728. She must have been nearly 70 then, an advanced age for those days, but she was described at death as ‘paupera’ – a poor woman. The house at Rough Hills probably was then abandoned and fell into decay.