The Barton Family

The Barton family lived for only a short time in Little Eaton but they had a major effect on life in the village, operating quarries in the village, owning and leasing several houses and Thomas Henry Barton introducing the first buses to the village, becoming the founder of Barton transport, now Barton Trent.

Thomas Barton (1771-1837)

Thomas lived in Duffield most of his life and was buried at St Alkmunds, Duffield. He leased the Outwoods and Rigga Lane quarries with his brother-in-law William Smith. He also had a carrier business, was a farmer and owned several properties. He married three times.

In 1828 Thomas was advertising for “getters and scapplers” for a quarry in Little Eaton (see Family Tree). He had at least 3 children by his second wife, Elizabeth: two sons, Thomas and John, who were both stone masons; and a step-daughter, Hannah who married Gregory Moreton and had 6 children.

Thomas left a Will in 1837 in which he left:-“ Several freehold dwelling houses to my son John. To my daughter Hannah, wife of Gregory Moreton 5/6d weekly for life. To my son Thomas Barton my dwelling house and 6 copyhold dwelling houses (let to named renters) in Duffield”.

There were several items bequeathed to friends etc, then:-“ To Elizabeth, Sarah, Mary and Hannah, (his granddaughters, daughters of Thomas) sums of money. (Mary was to die 3 years later in 1840 at the age of 13). To Thomas and William” his grandsons, (sons of Thomas) sums of money. £5 per year to Mary,” (his third wife whom he married in 1832).

Also mentioned in the will are “6 dairy cows, 3 horses, cart foal, 120 strikes of potatoes, farming implements and 2 sides of bacon”. (Signed with his Mark). The first 4 children of John, also his grandchildren, are not mentioned, nor are Hannah’s children.

Thomas Barton 1800-1867 (son of above)

Thomas was listed as a stone worker or a stone mason. On his father’s death in 1837 he also succeeded to the carrier business, but by the Census 1841 he was a stone quarrier and stone cutter.

He was still a stone cutter in 1851 and in 1861 he was recorded as a quarry labourer aged 61 and a widower. He may have worked in his brother John’s Quarries.

He married Ellen Allsop (1796-1858) in 1820 and had seven children. The family lived in Back Street, Duffield from 1820 until Thomas’ wife died in 1858. Their three sons became stone cutters in local quarries. When his wife died, Thomas went to live with his daughter Hannah Bembridge and her 6 children in Fisher Lane in Duffield until his death in 1867. He was buried in St Alkmund’s next to his wife.

John Barton 1802-1861 (brother of above Thomas Barton.)

John Barton married Hannah Redgate in 1823 with whom he had 12 children. Three of their sonsdied in infancy and their daughter, Emma, died in 1858 aged 22.

In 1836 John was leasing a stone quarry on Eaton Bank (Rigga Lane?) from Lord Scarsdale. By 1839 this quarry was owned by Ann Stratham but operated by John in partnership with William Smith, his aunt Martha’s husband (see Family Tree) They also leased other quarries in the area together until at least 1857. By 1859 John is listed as leasing a number of quarries, including Rigga lane and Outwoods, on his own.

John and his family lived at Town Street, Duffield. The girls attended school in Ripley. In his Will of 1861, John left all his assets to his wife and his first son Henry Barton (1829-1883).

Henry Barton (1829-1883)

Henry was sent to Mackworth Academy in 1840. By 1850 he was working independently, not for his father who died in 1861. Henry operated several quarries in the area and was a stone merchant until his death in 1883. He rented a yard from the railway company to store stone and constructed a building with an arch large enough for the horses and carts to pass through.

In 1875 Henry put the Duffield Bank Quarry up for sale by auction but it appeared to remain in the family name for many years.

Henry married Mary Mellor in 1851 and had 13 children including his son Thomas Henry. Four of the children died, possibly from food poisoning while on a Sunday School outing. A baby died at birth in the same year. There is a raised bed in Duffield churchyard where the children are buried.

Mary died in 1874 and a year late he married Lucy Smart (nee Middleton) in Nottingham. She died in 1879 aged 46. There were no children.

Later that year he married Elizabeth Jane White, with whom he had another son also called Henry, and a daughter, Elizabeth Jane (b1882).

The family lived in Church Street, Duffield, until about 1881. They moved to Town Street, Duffield after Henry had married for the second time. He died in 1883, leaving everything to Elizabeth Jane.

Thomas Henry Barton(1866-1946)

Thomas Henry Barton was born in Duffield in 1866. In the census of 1881 he is shown as a scholar, living with his family. He was enrolled in a boarding school in Derby but ran away. He then became a day pupil in William Gilbert Endowed School in Duffield.

At the age of 14, he was helping his father out in his quarry at Rigga Lane.

Shortly after that he became interested in engineering and became an apprentice to Richard Hornsby and son, a steam engine manufacturer in Grantham. He moved on from there to join a boat builder in Manchester and became involved in constructing new boilers for steam powered ships. He joinedvoyages to Russia and China.

About 1884, Thomas Henry joined Manlove Allcott of Nottingham who built at least 100 engines of various sizes for destinations across the UK.

His father died in 1883 so Thomas was also involved in continuing to supervise the Little Eaton quarries, together with his step-mother Elizabeth.

Thomas married Mary Kate Elson in 1887 and moved to Nottinghamshire. He became friends with Jesse Boot the chemist and invented a new pill making machine which became the basis for the expansion of Boot’s expanding business. The 1891 census records him as living with his wife and first three children in Radford, Nottinghamshire.

About 1890, Thomas re-joined Hornsby’s of Grantham who were by then making oil engines. In 1902, he introduced improvements to their compression engine. He was in touch with the German team and probably contributed tothe ideas which produced the Diesel engine.

By 1895, his health had deteriorated due to inhalation fumes and he tried living near the sea; first to Weston Super Mare (where he ran a charabanc to run people to the Cheddar Gorge); and then to Mabelthorpe in Lincolnshire, where he bought a 11 seat 9hp Benz wagonette which he used to ferry people around locally. He also ran a chicken farm.

In c1896, Thomas and his family came to Little Eaton to run his quarries. He also used the wagonette for public trips. The family lived at 4 Park View, off the Alfreton Road. Four more children were born in Little Eaton between 1894 and 1909, with one son Carl (b1901) born in Mablethorpe where the family retained property for holidays and perhaps longer stays.

Their son, Arthur, died aged 8 in Little Eaton. Thomas owned 4 houses on Park View. They lived in the last of them which has a stone extension. The other houses were let to, amongst others, the Hastie family (late of Park Farm) and Henry Thums (later owner of Park Farm).

While living in Little Eaton Thomas bought a 20 seat Durham Churchill bus to ferry his workers between sites.

This bus was sold in 1908 and a new 28 seat Durham-Churchill was bought to run a regular service for the public between Nottingham and Long Eaton.

Thomas’s wife Mary Kate died in 1920 and he married again (to Clarice Underwood) in 1923. A son, Abel, was born in 1925 an another son, Eric, was born in 1926.

By 1911, Thomas and his family lived in Beeston Nottinghamshire where his business continued to thrive and expand, with his sons acting as bus drivers and his daughters as conductors – one of them, Kate, was reported in the press as the first female bus driver in the country. The company also built buses, including a model which, due to shortage of petrol during the war, ran on gas carried in a balloon on its roof.

Further developments followed with his son including, during the second world war, a small coke burning gas generator mounted on a trailer behind a bus. Other developments included the production of longer buses and new suspension systems.

Thomas died in 1946 but his children and grandchildren carried on his interests in buses and property development. In 1989, Barton Transport merged with Trent Buses to form Barton-Trent.

By Ruth and Philip Hunter

We are very grateful to John Barton and to Peter Tulloch for their help in preparing this article.