Hi,
My family are really interested in finding out about our family's longstanding association with Bamburgh Castle and the Blacksmiths shop at Bamburgh. We know where it is, it's now a holiday home (my husband was actually hired to help renovate it) - I'm just wondering where we can find documents regarding the blacksmiths shop.
We think the first direct ancestor to have the Blacksmiths shop was David Knox, born October 1844 in Wooler/Flodden. We don't know why he moved from Wooler to Bamburgh or indeed anything about his parents, apart from that I think they were called James Knox and Margaret. In 1881 census he is listed as the blacksmith and living in Village main street. According to the censuses by the time he died in 1891 aged 47, he was a small grocer (is that a shopkeeper?) so we presume he passed the blacksmiths shop onto his son.
I would have thought that the shop would have passed onto James Knox, aged 21 in 1891 who was working there as a Blacksmiths assistant but in the 1901 census he has moved to Newcastle and has become a bricklayer. The blacksmiths shop seems then to have passed onto John Tait Knox (born 1877 Bamburgh) who was the apprentice in 1891. In 1911, he is listed as the Blacksmith. He died in 1945.
Now obviously after this, we don't have census's to rely on, but we do know that the eldest son David Knox (1898), even though he's listed as John Tait Knox's child the speculation always was that he was another mans child and he was treated differently, according to the next generation who I've interviewed. What I do know is he didn't take over the Blacksmiths shop but instead was a bit of a drifter after he got discharged from the army after the war and was only intermittantly in touch with the family.
The Blacksmiths shop actually passed onto the eldest daughter Elizabeth Knox, which I found very interesting....nobody is sure when she actually took it over, it could have been long before John Tait Knox died. There is a photo of her floating around somewhere in full blacksmiths gear. She never married and apparently ran the blacksmiths shop by herself, taking on apprentices.
At some point she retired from being a blacksmith but continued living at the same family home on village main street Bamburgh until her death.
As a matter of interest, we are actually descended from the youngest son, Selby who was born in 1917.
The family are really interested in anything to do with the blacksmiths shop. We would love to know first of all whether the family owned the blacksmiths shop or whether it was leased by the castle to them. We would like to know when our family became associated with the blacksmiths shop, was it the first David Knox (born 1844) or was there a Knox as a blacksmith there before him?
I've looked at the churchyard in Bamburgh and there are a lot of Knox's with quite similar names in the preceding generations in the churchyard, but I've not managed to get back any further.
Also whether the Blacksmiths shop was sold when Lizzie retired or whether it was always the property of the castle. We do know it was in an abandoned condition for about 20 years before it was redeveloped.
Also, I'm really interested in finding out anything about Lizzie/Elizabeth Knox as she's the first female ancestor I've come across who did something I'd consider slightly out of the ordinary (a lot of the females seemed to go into service as housemaids).
Any advice on where we'd find interesting extras (beyond birth/death/marriage certificates) on the history of Blacksmiths in Bamburgh would be really helpful. Even if it's just recommending websites/books. This is the first time I've tried tracing the history of a building and I don't have a clue!
