The Cheeseman Family

It is often assumed that, until the Second World War, rural families seldom moved from the village in which they were born. The Cheeseman family, however, were much more typical: they moved where the work was.

John Cheeseman was born in Sutton Valance around 1810. By the mid 1830s, he was working around Leigh as a wagoner, probably for the Powder Mills. In 1835 he married a Leigh girl, Fanny Morgan in Tonbridge and by 1847 he is shown in the census as a powder maker. The family was given a company cottage – probably a big asset, not least as they were at the start of the process of having sixteen children.

However, in 1858/59, presumably after he had become a skilled gunpowder maker, John and the whole of his large family except the eldest son moved to Kendal in Cumbria where a new gunpowder mill, The Sedgwick Gunpowder Works, had just opened. We know that the owners of the Sedgwick Works had a recruiting drive but the sale of the Leigh Powder Mills from the old local family firm headed by William Burton to a much larger group headed by the Curtis brothers and the probable uncertainty may also have played a part in the Cheeseman family move. As often seems to have happened, the family followed the father into the gunpowder industry, sadly illustrated when in a major explosion at the Kendal works in 1883, one of John Cheeseman’s sons and one of his grandsons were killed.

It was Matthew Thomas Cheeseman who remained in Leigh. He was born in 1836 and was therefore a working man of over 20 when his parents moved. It was his descendants who continued to live in Leigh well into the 20 th century and Doris Dale remembers going to school with Madge Cheeseman in the 1920/30s, who cycled from the Powder Mills everyday.

Cyril Cheeseman and his wife lived at The Bungalow, Lower Green from the 1930s until after the War when they moved to 16 Lealands Avenue. Their son, Michael – a great cricketer for Leigh – eventually left the village – the last link with John Cheeseman – and now lives in Henley.