Samuel Henry Cox

Samuel Henry Cox was my paternal grandfather. He was born at 5 Alliance Street, Accrington in Lancashire on 26th April 1983.  He was the eldest child of William and Hannah Cox.  William was originally from Spetisbury in Dorset and the son of a shepherd, Thomas Cox.  Together with his brother and some other young men from the village, William traveled to Lancashire looking for work in the cotton mills as the agricultural work in Dorset was becoming harder to find and paid very little.  There he met and married Hannah Ingham on 11th November 1882.  They had four children, three daughters followed Samuel. they were Beatrice, Florence and Rhoda.

The is a recent photograph of Alliance Street where Samuel was born.











By 1901 the family had moved to Blackpool where William was a house painter and Samuel was working as a cart driver.  In 1911 they were living in Cheadle Heath, Stockport and William was now a yarn dyer and Samuel a coal dealer.

Later Samuel moved to Romiley and was a lodger in my great grandmother Ann Selina Mycock's household and he was working in a cotton mill.  He married my grandmother Sarah Ann Cheetham, nee Mycock on 1st November 1919 in Stockport.  This was Samuel's first marriage at the age of 36.  My father William was born the following year and his sister Nora two years later.

Samuel was a quiet man and liked nothing more then going sitting in the pub at the end of the road, with a half pint and playing dominoes.  He always had his dog Squip with him.  I think he used to go to get out of the way of my grandmother.  I don't think they got on very well in later years and I believe that after Nora was born they slept in separate rooms, so maybe they never got on.  Grandma always slept in the front room downstairs.  Granddad played the piano and also taught my father to play.

Above is the Stock Dove public house where granddad used to spend his time. It is at the end of the road where my grandparents lived.

To the right is an old picture of it.  The walls were stripped of their paint in recent years but I remember them being a pale yellow or cream colour.  As with lots of pubs at that time there used to be a bowling green behind it but when I was a child it was just a patch of derelict land. There is now a small block of flats there.


Samuel died on 18th February 1959 at the age of 75. He had a bad chest for many years which may have been caused by working in the cotton mill.

 The photo above shows me sitting on the wall with my granddad, his dog Squip and my cousin Valerie. I think this was taken in the summer of 1947. It is opposite the house we moved into when we left my grandparents house.

To the right I am sitting on granddad's lap in the back garden of our house in Cherry Tree Close, Romiley. Also in this picture is my father William.