1. A Boroughbridge Boyhood in the 1850s: Introducing John Stubbs

Saturday January 1st 1853
Stayed at home in the morning & helped to clip the pony & had a ride in the evening on the pony

John Richard Stubbs was fourteen years old when he made his first entry in his new diary.  He lived beside the River Ure in Boroughbridge, opposite the Crown, once a famous posting house.  His home was called the Bridge Foot, where his family had lived, kept their warehouse and run their business since his grandfather’s day – wine merchants, grocers and tea dealers since 1790. 

Monday January 3rd 1853
Rode the pony to Knaresboro to the Sessions dined at the Royal Oak & rode back at night & went to Uncle Hirst’s to supper

John’s eldest brother Joseph, now aged nearly twenty-four, would take over the firm.  He had learned his trade from his father and in London and was back at home working in the business.  Eighteen-year-old Thomas was away, apprenticed to a Master Vintner.  John was destined for the law.

Ledgers of the Stubbs business in Boroughbridge, 1790-1830

The Stubbs family business has already appeared in this blog in the account of the Five Guinea Note from the Boroughbridge Bank.

Ledgers of the Stubbs business for the years between 1790 and 1830 are held at the North Yorkshire County Record Office [NYCRO ZGB].  What follows are the notes I made for NYCRO in 2008, when the ledgers returned from conservation:-

These ledgers relate to the business established by Thomas Stubbs (1761-1838) at the house and premises known as the Bridge Foot, Boroughbridge. 

Thomas Stubbs was the grandfather of Bishop William Stubbs of Oxford, the eminent historian.   Stubbs “recommended the following up of local and personal history as leading to a connexion with the greater streams and lines of social and political history that is full of direct interest, which a man can have all to himself” [1].  He used his own family history as an example:

“... My grandfather’s house stood on the ground on which Earl Thomas of Lancaster was taken prisoner by Edward II, on the very site of the battle of Boroughbridge; he, too, was churchwarden of the chapel in which the earl was captured....” [2]

The Bridge Foot was a house the Bishop knew well.

Thomas Stubbs  was born in Ripley, the son of Thomas Stubbs (born in Hampsthwaite, 1735-1805) and Elizabeth Walls of Milby (1743-99) [3].  His father had chosen to leave Nidderdale, where the family had lived and farmed for many generations, to become a grocer in Ripley. 

In his turn, Thomas junior left Ripley for the thriving town of Boroughbridge, where he set himself up as a grocer, tea dealer and wine and spirit merchant living and working at the Bridge Foot.