Irthlingborough

In a steward's book, 1848 to 1854, the following receipts are noted:

Payments, beginning April, 1848, and continued to December, 1855, and yearly summaries 1856 to 1864. The payments include, inter alia, the following items:

Mat-making was much resorted to in the early and middle parts of the last century. Thomas Parker "the mat maker" was the common designation of Mr. Owen Parker's grandfather. There was no street lighting in the early years of the last century; old folk going to chapel carried round horn lanterns and candles. In bad weather women wore clogs or pattens.

The following amusing incident connected with Isaac Dawson, related by Mrs. John Spencer, is worth recording. Old Isaac Dawson always wore a top hat on Sundays; his hair brushed down his forehead and cut across straight. On a certain Sunday, after dinner, Mrs. Spencer's brother, Thomas Nichols (died 1890), when a child of four or five years, quietly left the room and returned with his hair cut straight, and, walking up to him, said, "I be Dawson."

On one occasion when preaching in Irthlingborough Chapel on Jonah, he said, "The lot fell on Jonah and they walloped him over."

Mr. Fredk. Maddock says: "Isaac Dawson would walk from Dean to London for hay harvest in June. He would come back from London on Saturday for the Sunday work and return on Monday morning, walking both ways, besides the walking entailed by his Sunday appointments. Of course, he was in the vigour of life. There was very little riding to appointments in those days."

The Rev. John Archer says: "I have walked out nine miles on a Saturday afternoon from Hawkhurst to Wadhurst, the guest of a farmer, and preached the Sunday. I have walked out to Breed from Hawkhurst (eleven miles) of a Sunday morning, given tickets to 50 members and preached twice in the same place and remained overnight and took country appointments. From Breed to Wadhurst, the other extreme, would be 20 miles, and in the height of the season, June, July, certain brethren have walked there for afternoon and night services and walked back. It was in the same circuit. I knew an agricultural labourer, a local preacher, who seriously injured himself by excessive walking to preaching; he was laid aside and supported till his death by the brethren. I have known local preachers reach their home on a Sunday night quite exhausted. I have known cases where, leaning on a gate on the way home, they have gone to sleep."