Why Jacob Stiff's House?

DOUBTS have been expressed about the name of Weaver's House in Dursley so I decided to look into the records to find out about the Stiffs, who, we know, built it.

I consulted the parish church records which are on microfiche at the County Records Office in Gloucester. They were written, of course, with a quill pen by churchwardens and vicars whose handwriting is sometimes very difficult to decipher and over the hundreds of years some of the books have been damaged so there are gaps.

The first Stiff who appears is Abraham, who has his own place in Dursley's history. When the church tower fell down in 1699 people could not afford to rebuild it so they wrote to the King to ask him to send out an appeal to all parishes for help.

One of the people who signed the letter to the King was Abraham Stiff, so he was a person of some importance, possibly a member of the Court Leet, which ran the affairs of the town.

Incidentally, there is no record of anyone having been killed by the falling towers. This misapprehension is perhaps the result of 100 years having elapsed before Samuel Rudder wrote his History and stories having been passed down orally had become embroidered on the way.

Abraham was married to Mary and they had five children. He died in 1717 and his will says he was a cardmaker.

At this time the whole town was engaged in the woollen industry, as it had been for several hundred years. Carding was a very important part of the preparation of the wool before spinning and cards were flat pieces of leather covered with curved hooks through which the wool was dragged.

Abraham was such a prosperous tradesman that he must have employed others to make the cards. His will (in the Records Office) shows that he left his eldest son, Jacob, ten shillings and his other children, Samuel, Isaac, Mary, Sarah and Jane £12 each and the rest of his goods and chattels to his wife. For a tradesman to have left so much money to his children shows how well off he was. But he did not leave any property so he did not own a house.

His eldest son, Jacob, only received ten shillings because, by this time, he was set up in business also as a cardmaker. This is the Jacob who built himself a large house in a narrow street near to the Market Place.

Jacob was born in 1679. I think he was married twice and that his first wife died after giving birth to two children, though I have not been able to verify this. We do know that between 1713 and 1725 he and his wife Elizabeth had six children.

I believe that he decided that his growing family needed a place to live and the new house reflects his status in the community. He proudly put his and his wife's initials and the date 1715 on a plaque on the front of the house.

The larger upper windows have led to it being called a weaver's house and it is very possible that members of the Stiff family did use those rooms for weaving. In those days almost every house had spinners and weavers working there.

Jacob died in 1735 and his will left his "message and tenement", ie his house, with outbuildings and garden ground to his wife with all his goods and chattels and personal estate in trust "to breed up, maintain, educate and place apprentice my sons Jacob, Richard, Edward and William and daughters Anne and Jane".

Jacob's son, another Jacob, followed in the family footsteps as an upright and prosperous citizen, becoming bailiff in 1740. He and his wife had daughters but no sons so, after his death in 1769, there were no cardmaker Stiffs in Dursley. There is a memorial tablet to them in pParish church. He left, in his will, "£30, the interest to be laid out at Christmas in bread for widows and poor people in Dursley".

Cardmaking after 1747 became mechanised so the hand workers in Dursley died out, though new machines took a long time to spread around the country and late in the 18th century there were still five cardmakers in Dursley but none was called Stiff.

Pictured: Architect David Barnes points out some of the buildings original features GJA403H03