Coleorton International!
Coleorton Heritage Group run a website with information about our events and activities and also a growing number of articles about the history of Coleorton village and parish, its families, businesses and homes. So we receive quite a few enquiries each month from people researching their family history or asking about places they remember.
During the last few months we’ve had many enquiries from overseas, from families of intrepid adventurers seeking to build a new and more prosperous life for their families. Skilled Coleorton miners and railway engineers were in great demand in developing countries.
We had a very nice email from the great great granddaughter of William Briggs who was headmaster of Viscount Beaumont School between 1868 and 1900. He was also the church organist and a respected member of the community with commemorative windows in both St Mary’s Church and St John’s chapel. William and his wife Emma had a large family in Coleorton. Their son Francis married and spent a few years in South Africa raising a family and after his wife died Francis emigrated to Western Australia with his children. Two of Francis’s sons were killed fighting in WW1 (see article on website) and his youngest daughter Alice Lilian married and had a family in Australia. Alice was the grandmother of our correspondent.
George Robinson who grew up in a cottage on Workhouse Lane (now Moor Lane) now lives with family in New Zealand and sent us a poem which starts:
A simple house, a red brick box
Beneath a heavy thatch
With one room up and one room down
And bits attached to match
Grandparents Richards lived there Five daughters, Fred and Jim And a large white pig named Abram Whose future was more slim
... and continued with more memories of childhood in Coleorton.
News of Coleorton families were often reported in local and foreign press. The Anaconda Standard (“More Butte news than any other paper”) on 18 November 1927 reported the death age 101 in Butte, Montana, USA, of William Berkin described as a “Pioneer”. After spending a few years as an engineer on a troopship carrying British soldiers and supplies to the Crimean war William emigrated to USA in 1862 leaving his wife and three young children at their Coleorton home until they could join him a few years later. He made his way, and fame and fortune, in various enterprises, including cattle-driving and mining.
Ist July 1955 a local paper reported on the 50th wedding anniversary of Florence and William Elliott who had emigrated to Cape Breton, Canada, soon after their wedding. William Elliott was a miner and continued in that trade in Canada until he was 70. His wife Florence nee Smith was a Coleorton miner’s daughter.
The twin daughters of the 12th and last baronet Francesca and Georgina Beaumont moved to Australia, and still return to visit their father’s grave at St Mary’s. Francesca visited Coleorton a few years ago and graciously presented the Coleorton Heritage Group with some commemorative items from the Beaumont family – two silver spades used when three local schools were built and the silver spade that Lady Renee Beaumont used to "turn the first sod" when New Lount Pit was sunk in 1924.
However far away families still see our little village as home. Great to hear their Coleorton memories.
Sandra Dillon
Member of Coleorton Heritage Group
February 2025