Christmas in Southam Workhouse
Cardall's Corner - Dec 2019 - Linda Doyle
The workhouse was the last place anyone wanted to be, whatever time of year, but especially so at Christmas. Whilst the poorest people could survive during ...
Southam’s 19th Century Dairy Industry
Cardall's Corner - April 2019 - by Linda Doyle
You don’t have to be a farmer to know that the better bred the cow, the better the profit. Enclosure allowed for the segregation of small herds, enabling farmers to undertake breeding selection. At the turn of the 19th century, landowners and farmers were beginning to take advantage of Southam’s central position on the drover’s …
Joseph Arch
Cardall's Corner - February 2019 - Pam McConnell
In February 1872 a meeting of farm labourers was held at Wellesbourne, Warwickshire. The meeting had been called to address the problems of the rural working poor. About 30 people were expected, but over 2,000 turned up, and this meeting led to the foundation of the National Agricultural Labourers Union …
A New Home in Southam
Cardall's Corner - October 2018 - by Pam McConnell
Whilst pondering the impact of the new housing estates that are springing up all around Southam I am reminded of my own family’s move to Southam in October 1960. I was six years old and we moved from an isolated tied farm cottage on the Fosse near Harbury, to a new …
Farming, Cement, Wine & Hats
Cardall's Corner - July 2018 - By Linda Doyle
William Griffin (1791 -1861) was one of a large family of Griffins who lived near Southam and was a tenant farmer of mixed arable land and pasture at Stockton Fields. His family had been farmers in Fenny Compton before 1660 and had moved via Farnborough and Avon Dassett to Stockton in the early 19th century and there they stayed ...
Southam’s Workhouse
Cardall's Corner - June 2018 - By Linda Doyle
Today, Southam’s Primary School stands where once stood Southam’s solemn and imposing Victorian workhouse (see photograph from 1910). It was a domineering place built in 1837 on Welsh Road West, then called Workhouse Road. The enclosure of land at Southam in 1761 brought to a head the need to provide for the poor …
Southam’s Rectory
Cardall's Corner - May 2018 - By Linda Doyle
Over the years Southam town centre has had many changes, but one of the more dramatic was when the old Southam Rectory (see picture) was pulled down in the 1960s to make way for a new library, police station and magistrate’s court. ...
Henry Lilley Smith
Cardall's Corner - April 2018 - By Pam McConnell
The 13th April this year marks the 200th anniversary of a meeting held at the Craven Arms Inn that established Southam’s Eye and Ear Infirmary in Warwick Road. In the days before the NHS, all medical treatment had to be paid for, and this Infirmary in Southam was the first of its ...
The Hunting Season
CARDALLS CORNER - February 2018 - by Linda Doyle
The Great War changed the British way of life by starting to narrow the class divisions between the rich and poor. Previously, a year was not only divided into four weather seasons, but by social and lifestyle ‘seasons’ as well. One such season was the fox hunting season during the autumn and winter months. [...]
The Merestone
CARDALLS CORNER - November 2017 - by Helen Morris and Len Gale
In the year 998 Aethelred (the Unready) gave some land which included Southam to Leofwine, the father of Earl Leofric of Coventry whose wife was the famous Lady Godiva. The description of the land still exists written in Old English in a Charter. The boundaries of Southam were carefully marked and remembered through the custom [...]