Stormy nights at Crow Hill's wuthering heights cottage

Tonight's stormy tale from Watnall Hall comes from November 1839 when the wild weather was much like today's Storm Claudia or a scene from Wuthering Heights. Like all these tales it leads down rabbit holes to surprising places, transatlantic slave trading and infant school pioneers...

Artist's impression of the old Crow Hill farm
cottage perched up the hill above Watnall.
Reminds us how remote Watnall was back in 1839...

It's a letter from the former school teacher at Bogend infant school Miss Frances Rolleston. She's remembering the previous winter storms when she lived up the hill at the Watnall estate's old Crow Hill Farm cottage, exposed to the winter gales blowing in directly off the Derbyshire hills. The storms and remoteness seem to affect her mood, recalling her old father and distant relatives. Her sickly cousin, Christopher the former squire at Watnall Hall, lived with her in the rather primitive and isolated place where even getting a broken window fixed took an age...

Frances Rolleston,
the only image of her that exists.

"Last winter at Crow Hill the hurricanes we were subject to blew in four great panes in the drawing-room windows, and I think we were near a week before we could get a glazier. I thought myself in Australia with our contrivances to keep out the wind, and had to live mostly in my bedroom; here such a disaster would be repaired in a quarter of an hour. My home at sweet Crow Hill is now I fear like Barkway, "dream when one awaketh". I fear every post to hear of the death of my dear cousin, so long its master, with whom I had such a happy home. He has been hopelessly ill for four months. When I left him he had recovered from some very severe attacks, and seemed likely to remain better, but they returned. You remember my dear father; though not really so old, I think he looked so, and was every year more like him, and so like in his ways! I often of an evening used to ask myself which it was I looked upon. There is something very soothing in family ties, I deeply feel the breaking of this. His sister occasionally drives over here, and my relatives near Hull make me feel I am not deserted here." Blood is thicker than water" you know, and many as are my friends, still the loss of a dear relative must be felt. "

Miss Frances Rolleston (1781-1864) was a scholarly Victorian poet, writer, philanthropist and general do-er of good Christian deeds. She helped run the Bogend school in Watnall. In later life she was also a fervent anti-slavery campaigner. There is a drinking fountain in her memory in Keswick where she lived her final years. Her cousin was Lancelot Rolleston of Watnall Hall and her merchant father a slave trader in London. 

Read more about her and her father at the Tales From Watnall Hall website

Frances Rolleston's drinking fountain memorial in Keswick.

Notes and sources

Gazetteer and Directory of Nottinghamshire, 1832 - Page 570 - Watnall residents and businesses shows Watnall Hall occupied by Lancelot Rolleston and Watnall Cottage occupied by his elder brother Christopher (possibly ilegitimate) and John Attenborough at Bogend Schoolhouse.

https://leicester.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16445coll4/id/136715

How remote?

Transpiration options - walking, horse, horse-drawn carriage - dirt roads

The Nottingham to Alfreton turnpike ran thru Watnall since 1759 so stage coaches would have been an option but expensive and it was a toll road - 6 miles to Nottingham, 10 miles to Alfreton

No railway until 1875, no bikes until c.1900, no tram until 1914, dirt roads no tarmac until 1930s. 

Population:  1832 Greasley Parish 4,583; 2021 Census: 11,241; 

For Nuthall and Watnall 2022: 7,403 2016: 3,130  Kimberley 6,000

Nottingham 1841 population 53,000; 2021 Census: 323,600