Victoria Terrace Cusop History

Victoria Terrace, Cusop History

Many thanks to Jim for the following research information.

Victoria Terrace, Cusop

This short document pulls together the historic sources I have found about the Terrace. This history touches on the houses nearby. The county archive in Rotherwas and Hay local library, have been very helpful.

If you can point to or show me more sources to add then please contact Cusop History Group.

I will share this history with fellow members of the excellent local history group (http://cusophistory.wixsite.com). I am hoping they may have advice and guidance I can follow to produce an updated and expanded version. Perhaps over time working in relays, members of the group can weave together house and other local histories in to a comprehensive parish remembrance.

Rural Cusop in early 1890s

Where now the lower reach of Cusop Dingle and along the Hardwicke Road is pretty built up, back in 1890 these were open fields (see 1888 map extract attached). A traveller leaving Hay in 1890 along the Hardwicke Road would have past the Old Toll House and seen ahead on both sides of the road open fields, pasture and orchards. Travelling east they might have spotted the chimneys of the substantial Llydyadyway Farm where Charles Lilwall lived with his family and servants farming 640 acres including the land to the south of the Hardwicke Road.

The same traveller turning up Cusop Dingle would have passed fields on both sides apart from two semi-detached cottages called Snails Hill. We know from the 1891 population census that Cusop was sparsely populated with few houses. The population total was 294 living in 62 scattered households.

A 1904 map (extract attached) shows Victoria Terrace and The Crescent built on what had been pasture land described in the auction notice as Lot 10 the field called Cusop Peeney. The Terrace is architecturally interesting in that numbers 9 and 10 are smaller and less well finished. I have been told that this was a fairly common trick by building gangs back in the day. Commissioned to build a terrace of 8 houses but with plenty of land, they built more. Apparently the site manager over ordered a bit counting on the distant developer not to notice. What they could not smuggle through over ordering, the site manager and foreman paid for. The work gang gave extra hours for free. Managers and men then split the sale proceeds as their bonus for doing the job.

Two locals have told me that Victoria Terrace is nicknamed The Klondike. I imagine that must be named after The Klondike Gold Rush in Canada which was 1896 to 1899 overlapping when the Terrace was built. It would be lovely to think the coincidence was more than the date and that we are sitting on a seam of gold.

Going back to the auction of Llydyadyway Estate land by Lot, houses built on the land beside Victoria Terrace and The Crescent include York House (Lot 3) and Thirty Acres Lots 12 and 13 built around the same time because they appear on the 1904 map. Indeed the 1904 map looks much more like the present day map of this area of Cusop than the 1888 map of 16 years before.

Buy to Let

The new houses were not bought by middle class people to live in themselves. Cusop had a number of well off middle class families living in large villas up the Dingle, but the new houses were not for them. We can see from the property tax records 1910 that the owners of the new houses were not the same names as the tenants. There were buy to let speculators in the 1890s.

One other curiosity that ownership records flag up. An advert in the Hereford Times of 24th June 1899 announced sale by auction of newly built numbers 7 and 8 Victoria Terrace. I happen to know from our deeds that the Mrs Morris we bought from who had lived at number 8 from 1973 till 2001, for many years had also owned and rented out number 7. She had bought numbers 7 and 8 at the same time back in 1973. Now what are the chances that in 1899 numbers 7 and 8 were sold in the same auction and in 1973 by complete chance they ended up with the same owner? I think it is far more likely that back in 1899 one buy to let landlord bought them both and that ever since as they changed hands they remained a job lot right up to Mrs Morris selling number 7 independently during the 1990s.

Population boom

Comparing the total population of Cusop in the 1901 national population census to 10 years before, we see it boomed almost 50% to 430 men, women and children. The 55 people living in Victoria Terrace contributed almost half of that increase. I wonder which was chicken and which was egg; did property speculators know there were families crowded in to houses nearby and desperate to move in were new homes to be built or did the population get drawn in by the offer of new reasonably priced homes to live in and then looked for jobs?

House building boom

In April 1896 the Llydyadyway Estate offered by public auction at The Crown Hotel, Hay the sale of 16 lots adding up to 122 acres of pasture land (see sales map). The auctioneers begged to call attention to this exceptional opportunity of purchasing building lots or accommodation land in the neighbourhood. The whole of the land being situated so close to the town of Hay will always command good rental.

Who lived in Victoria Terrace

The 1901 national census tells us about the families living in Victoria Terrace -

No1 John Havard a mason aged 32, his wife Ruth and their 5 young children;
No 2 Alfred Ewd Cooke also a mason and aged 35, his wife Mary Ann, their 3 young children and a boarder George Henry Margulis a 19 year old shop assistant;
No3 Jane Watkins a housekeeper aged 49, her 11 year old son and a boarder 47 year old Samuel D Goodfellow a block maker;
No 4 William Morgan a timber feller aged 33, his wife Isabel and their 6 young children;
No 5 William Gwilliam a woodcutters labourer aged 49, his wife Lilian a housekeeper, son Frederick aged 14 a grocers porter and daughter Annie aged 7;
No 6 John Williamas a mason aged 40, his wife Elizabeth and 2 of their 7 children reported for truancy in May;
No 7 William Williams a saddler aged 47, his wife Elizabeth, his 20 year old son Alfred a groom and 3 younger children, Arthur aged 9 reported for truancy;
No 8 Edwin Turner a timber feller aged 42, his wife Mary Ann and their 6 children;
No 9 was vacant; and
No 10 James Havard a 65 year old stone quarry labourer and his son William aged 30, a mason.

The Crescent

At around the same time Victoria Terrace was built so was The Crescent and down on Cusop Dingle Brick Cottage and Hazelbrae. The 1901 national census return tells us that living at -

1 The Cresecent was a family of 3 headed by Dorothy Watkins living on her own means;
1 Grove Cottage John Fay a timber loader at the Midland Railway yard (which stood where Hay and Brecon Farmers and the Co op are now);
2 Grove Cottage George Jenkins a timber feller; and
Hazelbrae Elizabeth Davies and Henry Jones.

The fascination of history

With a bit of advice and encouragement from the history group to point me in the right direction, a bit of time looking at sources on line and in the excellent county archive in Rotherwas, I now know a bit about when my house was built and who lived here before me. It was surprisingly easy as well as rewarding to find out. I look around me now with added attention. But beware it is a curse as well as a blessing. I want to know more; I want to know who lived in my house between 1911 and 1973 but I have to find additional sources; I want to know when tenants started to be replaced by owner occupiers; when extensions started to be added; when…ooh?!

If you can add anything to this short history or could point me to other sources it might be worth my while checking out, I would be most grateful.

Jim

December 2017