Hi everyone (heh, I can hardly keep up with all these so very helpful responses!),
…so there’s mileage in the idea that Nether Alderley – or at least the junction at Welsh Row -is known locally as Broken Cross. That really does give me food for thought. Many thanks.
Even so (ever one to hedge my bets!), I guess there’s still a possibility that the great-aunt was right. Maybe her forebears – from the blacksmithing Henshaw/Henshall family - did at some point run the smithy at Broken Cross just outside Macclesfield, but they certainly weren’t there at the time of the early censuses (and that’s the period she’d have been harking back to). One possible scenario is that they had the smithy just before 1841 or in between 1841-1851, but were elsewhere at the time of both censuses.
Which brings me to the question, does anyone know when the Broken Cross smithy nr Macclesfield was founded? From what the great-aunt implied, it could have been early in the 19th century, but that’s as far as I can get.
As for the NA smithy, I think the Isaac and Ellen Henshaw in Kathb’s message are the children of Henry Henshall, smith (1786-1818), and the grandchildren of John Henshall, the NA blacksmith (1737-1814) that Su mentions. In turn, John I think was the son of Henry Henshall, yet another NA blacksmith (d.1783). From old Henry’s will (courtesy of the wonderful Cheshire RO), it would seem that he had an ‘old’ and a ‘new’ smithy in NA, both being in ‘Street Lane Ends’, which John and another son Daniel inherited. As the great aunt would have been related – though somewhat distantly – to those Henshalls, you can see why I’m curious about NA perhaps being called Broken Cross.
I hope I’ll be able to return all your kindnesses sometime, but many thanks for reading and responding to my missives in the meantime.
Birtle
