John & Sarah Bowden from Stockport

[AlanBoyd]

Very confusing. All of those street names also appear in another area of Stockport.

https://maps.nls.uk/view/231283941#zoom=4.7&lat=5892&lon=10505&layers=BT

Note Park Mills and Park Bridge.  Mersey Street runs NS to the east and parallel with King Street.

There are early newspaper references to the Neptune Inn in Mersey Street, Park. In the 1861 census there is an entry for the Neptune Inn, Mersey Street, and the enumerators route is Princess Street, King Street, Mersey Street (including Arden Arms marked on the map at the south end of Mersey Street) Simister Street, Gass Yard (see opposite Arden Arms) and Millgate.

Annoyingly the Neptune Inn is not marked but even in the 1861 census there occupant is listed as a miller, not a publican, so perhaps by the date of the map, 1873, it was no longer recognised as a public house.

It seems that Mersey Street was renamed to Corporation Street.

[Ray T]

I’d go along with Alan Boyd on this. Park Mills and Park Bridge (which remains today) suggest that the area may have been referred to as “Park”. Although much has changed over the years; inter alia Wharf Street is now Great Portwood Street - reflecting the name of the area it ran through - what was Mersey Street now runs beneath the Asda car park. The Ardern Arms pub is still there although I was taken aback a couple of months ago when it appeared in a TV drama as somewhere in Dundee!

To cap it all, I was baptised and my late parents were married in Teviotdale (re-named Tiviot Dale) Chapel on the opposite bank of the river to Park Mills. I suspect that Peter Arrowsmith’s “History of Stockport” may have something to say about “Park” but that’ll have to wait ‘til I get home.

[Ray T]

Back home. First the bad news - I appear to have mislaid Peter Arrowsmiths book. The good news is that, more recently, he carried out an archaeological assessment on another site in the centre of Stockport which contains the following -

“In 1732 the first water-powered textile mill in the North-West was built in the Park in Stockport (an area now occupied by Sainsbury’s) for the production of silk yarn.”

So it appears that Alan Boyd is right. Sainsbury, as people may know, has since closed down and, like much of the rest of the town centre appears to be quietly rotting away!

[Chris Nilsen]

I found on an old map (1873) that shows an area known as 'Park Mills'.
It sits just below the junction of the Mersey, Goyt & Tame rivers.
It is boarded by streets named Warren, Mersey, Vernon, Park & Queen.
Warren street runs over the Park Bridge.
I have attached the map image I found.

I have also ruled out the earlier baptisms to John & Sarah as being from the same family.
They are almost certainly from the John Bowden who married Sarah Cheetham in 1790.
I think this is the Sarah, wife of John buried in 1818.

I think I'm back to square one.
I'm pretty sure I have the correct death record for John (1839), and the correct census entries for Sarah and the issue (1841-1861), but discovering something extra about them in Stockport, including their marriage and their baptisms seems to be missing.

Thanks everyone for your help.
Chris.

[Ray T]

Chris, just to be clear, the map you’ve found is the same one Alan Boyd linked to and the one I commented on.

As I’ve said, the Mersey formed the boundary between Cheshire and Lancashire and Stockport nowadays, if not then, straddles it. For a family living so close to the river, it would therefore be wise to extend your search into Lancashire/Manchester as it’s quite conceivable that marriages, baptisms etc. took place there.

I think you’ll find that the parish church for anything north of the river, back in the day, was actually Manchester Cathedral and, should you come across St Thomas’ Church, remember that there are two of them - one south of the river and one on the A6 a mile or so north.

[Chris Nilsen]

Thanks everyone,
I checked the Lancashire OPC index for a marriage but there was nothing there. But the site doesn’t say if all the marriages have indexed, just the number that have been. Maybe I should contact the OPC and ask if all marriages have been transcribed or if I need to search the registers myself.

I know that Mary Bowden, daughter of John & Sarah married in Ashton under Lyne in 1842, even though she (and her spouse) were both from Tintwistle. Not sure why they married in AuL and not Mottram which was their closest church.

[athel_cb]

I've hesitated to post this, as I have both John and Sarah Bowden in my records but they are very unlikely to be helpful for the Bowden family in Stockport. However, it's something that people interested in Bowden families should be aware of. The name is common, not only in Greater Manchester but also in Devon (especially South Devon) and neighbouring counties with very few occurrences between Somerset and Manchester. However, the equivalence of names is almost certainly coincidental and they arose independently in the two places. Apart from anything else the pronunciation is different: the first syllable rhymes with "low" in Greater Manchester and with "how" in Devon. (Although my own family is from Devon, we pronounce it ahistorically with "low", but that is only because my great-grandmother thought that the "how" pronunciation was "common").

We became aware of Bowdens in Greater Manchester when we lived in Hale between 1954 and 1965. My sister, then called Cornish-Bowden, worked for a while in a solicitor's office in Manchester for a Mr Bowden.

[LizzieW]

Of course Bowdon was in Cheshire when you lived nearby.  I lived in Hale from 1941 to 1954, then Hale Barns until 1960, then Bowdon.  Note this Bowdon is spelled with an o, not e as the penultimate letter.