The Great Great Aunts of Alderley

John Salthouse, a shoemaker, and his wife Lucy (Walters) lived at Soss Moss, Nether Alderly, they had eleven children. In this wedding photograph of 1910 Sophia, the first born, is sitting next to Lucy, the tenth child. Sophia had married Francis Worth in 1865 and this was the wedding of their daughter, Sarah Ellen Worth, to William Henry Adshead in the spring of 1910. The wedding took place in the village Church of St Mary and the wedding party was photographed on the swathe of green just outside Park Lodge, Alderley.

Sophia Salthouse was widowed by this time but still working as a laundress, mainly on her own account. No doubt she obtained much of her work from the Hall (the Stanley family), but the Parish records also show that she was employed regularly to launder the choir's surplices.

Sarah Ellen Adshead, to give her married name, probably had a life that was quite different from that of her mother. Just one year after her marriage the couple were living in a red brick terraced house in the nearby town of Stockport and her husband was employed as a foreman hatter - Stockport being famous for the manufacture of hats.

If you drive past Park Lodge today, on the road to Monks Heath, the road passes at the back of the Lodge whereas, in the days of Lord Stanley of Alderley, all vehicular traffic to Lord Stanley's residence would have stopped at the front of the Lodge for the gate to be opened. This postcard is a reasonable representation of how the road from Nether Alderley to Monks Heath would have looked when Sarah Ellen Worth married William Henry Adshead.

Hilary Belton 2010