155 years ago, the residents of a working-class Victorian high street were asked to share their details. Their names, ages and occupations were carefully recorded, analysed, then stored safely away...waiting for the day when curiosity would bring them back into the light.
'I wonder who used to live on this street?' transformed from an idle imagining to a year of intense research, delving into the details of lives long forgotten. Family feuds and tragic deaths uncovered alongside raucous parties of dancing and drinking.
A philanthropic entrepreneur, faded into obscurity, is returned to full technicolour, his contributions finally acknowledged and celebrated. The daughter of a landlord forced to char to make ends meet, having suffered through domestic violence and loss, is finally given her due. Stories are added to the names of those who were quietly squirreled away to the local Mental Hospital, never to be seen again.
After over a century in the dark, meet the residents of Romiley Road.
Book Blurb
A seemingly unremarkable village in Victorian Cheshire becomes a place of forbidden love, joy, desperation and crime when seen through a microscopic lens. The 387 residents of Romiley Road, previously just names on a census, are brought back to life.
From the philanthropic hat manufacturer to the widowed mother forced to char, the raucous drinkers at the Romiley Arms to the abstinent Wesleyan Methodists. From those who died from mental illness caused by mercury poisoning to those who lost their children at The Somme. Coal miners, hatters, teachers, cotton factory workers, calico bleachers, shopkeepers and entrepreneurs all lived cheek by jowl on Romiley Road.
The real stories of the residents are rediscovered through meticulous research, revealing which families prospered, which left never to return, and which have been erased with the passage of time.
