Slender Threads

A Saddleworth Shaw

R.O. Shaw

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English

Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd
20 November 2025

History: specific events & topics; Social groups; Local interest, family history & nostalgia

From an ancient charter in the reign of King John, a slender thread leads through many generations, until it reaches modern men who worked for the Manchester Ship Canal Company and the Lancashire Cotton Corporation. As the book traces this unlikely journey, it captures history through the lives of an ordinary family.

For almost eight centuries, they lived in a corner of the north-west of England, on the borders of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cheshire, in Saddleworth, Ashton and Stalybridge. Shaw had not always been their surname (they changed it in the 14th century) and, as communities recovered from the Black Death, so Shaws ramified here. A great many families would share the surname and, wittingly or not, a common medieval ancestor.

Slender Threads follows one branch of these Shaws. On the wrong side of primogeniture, their fortunes declined in medieval times from a manorial lord to a tenant farmer, and they would aspire less to shape history than to survive it. But history would mould their lives, through civil wars and world wars, political protest and pandemics, revolution in industry and in religion; and through wool, cotton, coal and the opportunities afforded by education.

We meet their relatives and neighbours with names redolent of the north-west, such as Hulme, Hewitt and Hawkyard, Eastwood, Smethurst and Winterbottom, as well as other Shaws.

Slender Threads brings to life individuals and communities from across this span of time. We catch glimpses of their lives in manorial records, court disputes, fragmented church registers and the last wills and testaments that set their modest affairs in order. We sense the ambition and international awareness that sprang from the industrial revolution, and the extraordinary transformation of small settlements into bustling centres of economic activity. We witness how, in a world before antibiotics, the brightest promise and the best laid plans were so often snuffed out, as 'death crept from house to house'.

By: R.O. Shaw
Imprint: Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 21mm
Weight: 591g
ISBN: 9781836152620
ISBN 10: 1836152620
Pages: 294
Publication Date: 20 November 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Illustrations v Maps vii Genealogical Tables ix Preface xix I: WHAT'S IN A NAME? (1200-1545) 1 1. Surnames 2 2. Staley Manor 9 3. The Manor del Schagh 20 4. Ramification 28 II: SADDLEWORTH (1545-1815) 41 5. Tenants at Will 42 6. Even Such is Time 49 7. The Old Order Changeth 57 III: BOARSHURST (1590-1770) 69 8. William and Katrine 70 9. Five Children 81 10. The Gyles Shawe Inheritance 94 11. Lower House 104 12. The Last Husbandman 115 13. The Last Shaw of Lower House 123 IV: SHAWHOUSES (1719-1798) 133 14. William and the Hawkyards 134 15. Shawhouses Divided 141 16. Golburnclough 146 V: QUICK MERE (1764-1881) 153 17. Thornlee 154 THORNLEE 163 18. A Providential Life 170 V1: ASHTON-UNDER-LYNE (1860-1982) 187 19. 'A Conscientious and High-Principled Man' 187 20. Things Fall Apart 207 21. A Modern Life 217 Bibliography 232 Notes 239 Index 264

R.O.SHAW was born in Ashton-under-Lyne and is descended from the Shaws of Saddleworth and Ashton. He has a first class honours degree from the University of Sussex and a PhD from University College London for his thesis on Marcel Proust. He has written English Language textbooks, published in India by Orient Longman, and held senior public service roles in the UK. Slender Threads is the product of a decade of research.