The Star Inn, Church Street, Barnsley demolished in the late 1870s

Last week I wasn't feeling too grand on Tuesday so I didn't go to Barnsley Archives to carry on transcribing the pub inventories from the 1840s that I've been working on for the past few weeks.  This morning I've woken with stomach pains at 5am so today is a bit dubious too - hopefully I'll be feeling a bit better by 9:30am, the time I usually go out for the bus into town.

Today should have been my ATOS appointment ... however they cancelled it last week, with less than a week's notice.  No real information in the letter, just a comment that the cancellation was due to unforeseen circumstances ... again.  This is now the second time they've cancelled my interview.  Not that I'm looking forward to it, you must understand ... my health varies so much from day to day and week to week that it's totally luck of the draw whether on a particular day I'm fine, not too bad, or stuck in bed.  As the ATOS 'medical professionals' seem particularly poor at understanding hidden and variable illnesses the chances of coming out labelled 'fit for work' seem quite high if I turn up on one of my good days.  The other factor is that in the last few months I've got much better at pacing myself - I can usually manage two to three hours in the Archives before the brain fog descends and I find myself typing nonsense into the transcriptions I'm doing. 

I did prove to myself these last two weekends (as I frequently have to as I would honestly much rather be fit and well and I keep trying to live normally) that doing too much (usually what anyone else would consider an ordinary day) just ends up with me taking a day in bed to recover.  So that was a day in bed after the Oral History event a the weekend before last (hence missing the Archives last week) and a day in bed yesterday after my first Open University tutorial in Leeds this weekend.  Ho, hum.

Being awake, and unable to get back to sleep because of the griping in my stomach I have decided to tell you about the Star Inn - this is the inventory that I'm actually in the middle of at the Archives so this can't be a full virtual walk through like I did for the Turf Tavern and the Coach and Horses a couple of weeks ago.  That might follow - so far I have six bedrooms and the Dining Room done ...  

Location of the Star Inn from the 1850s map (from Old Maps)

The Star Inn was on Church Street opposite the site of the war memorial in front of the town hall.  You will see it in this map snip (from the Old Maps website) to the top of the image just above Star Lane.  The whole of the block where the Star is was swept away in the late 1870s to connect Regent Street up to Church Street (which runs top to bottom in the map snip).  The Star Inn was much larger than the Turf Tavern which can also be seen on this snip, but not quite as big as the Royal Hotel lower down Church Street (still in existence, but now known as the White Bear). 

In Barnsley Streets Vol 1 there is a picture on page 22, a drawing only, looking from Regent Street up Star Lane towards the pub.  I suppose it has been drawn using the available evidence, the maps and surviving photographs of the rest of the street.  There are no other pictures that I have yet found of this pub.  The listing in Barnsley Streets traces the pub back to at least 1777 when it was occupied by Wm Leadman, presumably the father of the John Leadman whose name appears on the inventory I am transcribing which is dated 1841.


The inscription for John Leadman, late Inn Keeper from his gravestone in St Mary's Barnsley churchyard. 
The stone is lying down and partially covered by grass

John and his parents are buried in St Mary's churchyard.  This is the transcription of their gravestone that I found in Barnsley Archives.

C1 - 9/173
Here lieth Interred the Body of William Leadman of Barnsley
Who departed this life September 29th 1796 aged 28 years
Also John Parker Joiner who died July 14th 1799 aged 26 years
Matthew Parker Died November 10th 1801 aged 1 year and 10 months
Also Martha Parker Wife of John Parker died May 7th 1847 Aged 78 years
Also John Leadman late Innkeeper and only son of the above William
and Martha Leadman and afterwards Parker
who died March 14th 1851 aged 56 years
Also Ann the wife of the above John Leadman who died at South Shields
on the 27th day of June 1856 aged 73 years

 

Barnsley Streets also notes that the occupant in 1818 was Martha Parker - this must be William Leadman's wife who remarries after his death to John Parker.  John Leadman runs the pub from 1822 to 1845.

1841 census for the Star Inn on Church Street, Barnsley (from Ancestry)

The 1841 inventory was taken "for the benefit of Creditors", which is a bit worrying.  It was dated 15 February, so several months prior to the census, which in 1841 took place on 6 June.  John is listed as 45 years old and his wife Ann older at 50 years old.  This doesn't seem to tally with the ages given on the gravestone transcription, but we have to remember that ages were rounded down in the 1841 census and Ann might have been knocking off a few years so as not to appear a lot older than her husband.  They have four children, Sarah, Elizabeth, William and Charles listed and the baptisms at St Mary's, Barnsley (also on Ancestry and all of which give John's occupation as Butcher) suggest a fifth child - Jane. 

Leeds Times 21 Dec 1839 (from Find My Past Newspapers)

This is confirmed by the above cutting from the Leeds Times in 1839 announcing the marriage of Jane Leadman, second daughter of Mr John Leadman butcher and landlord of the Star Inn, Barnsley to Mr Robert Cook, a warehouseman.

 

The pages for Church Street are damaged in 1851 and I cannot find the family in the indices on Ancestry suggesting they might appear in the damaged section.  There is another family of Leadmans - Joseph and Jane Leadman - also having children baptised at St Mary's around the same time as John and Ann.  As Joseph is also a Butcher maybe he is John's brother?  This part of the family appears to move to Wakefield and Leeds after Joseph's death. 

 

There is a clue to where the family of John Leadman go in the death place of Ann, his wife, in the transcription of their gravestone.  She dies in South Shields, Durham in 1858.  In the 1861 census I can see a Charles Leadman - the correct age to be John and Ann's youngest son, listed as a Brewer and living with his brother in law Lawrence Heap, a Victualler, in Gateshead.  The name of the wife - presumably one of the Leadman girls - is a bit hard to read, but she is born in Barnsley.  A search of FreeBMD brings up the marriage of Lawrence Heap and Sarah Ann Leadman in the Hexham Registration District in the September quarter of 1858.  She appears to be his second wife as there is a 10 year old daughter listed in 1861. It is interesting to see that at least some of the family stay in the pub trade.

1861 census snip for the Star Inn, Church Street, Barnsley (from Find My Past)

By 1861 the Star Inn is occupied by Charles Kilner - Barnsley Streets records another landlord, John Puley, inbetween the Leadmans and the Kilners, information which I presume Edward Tasker found in local trade directories.  Note that at this point the Star Inn is number 8 Church Street.

 

The Kilners keep the pub from 1854 up to its demise passing the role of landlord from Charles to his widow Sarah and on to their son James, shown as a Pork Butcher in the 1861 census snip.

1871 census for Church Street and the Star Inn (from Find My Past)

I've been using Find My Past to search for these census returns as that site allows you to search by address - something you can't yet do on most of the census years on Ancestry.

Note that in 1871 the Star Inn is not named, but identified by the landlord James Kilner, is at number 17 Church Street.  Some renumbering has gone on!  The property enumerated next on the census is number 21 (what happened to 19?) and is occupied by Dr Michael Sadler. 


British Architect 29 Dec 1876 (from ProQuest British Periodicals) 

Through my Open Uni registration I have access to an assortment of subscriptions to historic newspapers and periodicals - I found the item above from the British Architect magazine when I should have been looking for information on the outbreak of the First World War ... tsk, tsk!!

"Barnsley Council have under consideration several important street improvements.  One of these, the widening of Star Lane has been under consideration in committee during the week."  The article goes on to compare the relative merits of two plans for opening out Star Lane.  Although it only mentions the site of the Star Inn in connection with the second plan, there seems no doubt, looking at the map, that any plan to widen this street would involve its demolition.  The article mentions that "the old properties on both sides of the lane now belong to the Corporation" so a search in the newspapers for the sale of property might provide more information.  Barnsley Streets notes that James Kilner was the landlord of the Star Inn up to 1875 - so that narrows my search down to just a couple of years worth of Barnsley Chronicles.  I wonder if the actual demolition made the papers?


Site of the Star Inn in 1889 (from Old Maps)

In the 1881 census the street numbers jump from number 7 - the Royal Hotel, and number 9  - a house occupied by Samuel Thickett a factory operative, straight to number 21 - Dr Sadler's house  - suggesting there was a cleared space.  In 1871 a family had lived at number 9, but it was listed as the Post Office at that time.  As the building just above the Royal looks similar in both maps I suggest that Samuel Thickett was maybe acting as a caretaker? during the conversion of use of the building from Post Office to bank.  The Post Office has moved in this map, dated 1889, to a new building around the back of the old and with a frontage onto the newly widened Regent Street.

Comparing the 1850s map to the 1889 map the make up of the both the blocks of buildings on either side of the new widened Regent Street is quite different - I understand from Barnsley Streets that the large house remaining on the corner is Dr Sadler's house, as referred to in the article from the British Architect but even the shape of that doesn't quite match the building adjacent to the Star Inn on the older map.  Did Dr Sadler decide to have an extension built on the side of his house (maybe a fancy entrance porch) once the extra space was available?

Barnsley Streets Vol 4 has some pictures of the top of Regent Street including one on page 133 which tantalisingly shows the side of Dr Sadler's house pre its demolition in the 1920s to make way for the Barnsley Building Society now Raley's solictors. These pictures can also be seen on the Tasker Trust website by searching for Regent Street. There are some good pictures of the rebuilt Post Office on the opposite side of the street - that building is still there today opposite Merryweather's estate agents and recognisable by its double fancy porticos.

I have one further piece of interesting information concerning the longevity of the Star Inn.


Sheffield & Rotherham Independent 7 Jul 1876 (from Find My Past Newspapers)

The above newspaper snip was found when I was searching for the OH's 3x great grandfather Peter Duncan in the Find My Past newspaper collection (which is the same collection now available to search for free at Barnsley Archives under the British Newspaper Archive name).  A horse and trap had been left apparently unattended outside the Star Inn in March 1876, and as Harriet Duncan (the OH's 3x great grandmother, maiden name Newsom) and her friends passed the horse "suddenly set off and dragged Mrs Duncan down Star Lane and then ran over her".   Harriet would have been a matronly forty-seven years old at this point, mother to at least eight children, the last born in 1870.  I can't imagine the accident was at all a nice experience and it looks like she was laid up for quite some time, so I'm not surprised they took the owner of the horse and trap, Robert Whiteley, to court.  What the article doesn't say is where Mr Whiteley was during the incident ... had he popped into the Star Inn for a quick one?

This has turned out to be quite a long article about the Star - and I am going to continue to try to find out what happened to the rest of the Leadman family and more about John's father William and his mother Martha if I can. 

I've still got that stomach ache, so I'll try a hot bath next and see if that perks me up!  It doesn't feel as if I'm going to make the Archives today.  Ah well, I get another chance on Thursday when I'm booked onto the digitised Barnsley Chronicle for an hour.