Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

11 Boyhood census for 1881, ‘framework knitter’ in that for 1891 and ‘frame smith’ in the lines of his daughter’s second marriage in 1917. Emma was, like her husband, a ‘stockinger’ and ‘framework knitter’ in the two censuses. They were thus clearly involved in the village’s framework knitting industry. The couple’s first son Ezra, born on 11 August 1868, married Fanny (known also as Frances) Preston. He was described as ‘stocking framework knitter’ on his eldest child’s birth certificate in 1888, as ‘accounts clerk’ in the 1891 census and, still at Ratby, ‘insurance agent’ in that of 1901, at about which time he opened his own furniture shop at 11/13 Loseby Lane in Leicester. His wife was the daughter of William and Karan Preston, described in the 1881 census as respectively ‘stockinger’ and ‘seamer of hose’. Husband and wife, then, again came from similar backgrounds. In 1881 Ezra was living with his parents in a cottage on Dirty Lane, Ratby, 24 but by 1891 he and his wife resided in one of an assemblage of 18th and mid-19th century cottages on Berry’s Lane that included those of his parents, the Jayes, the related Siddons and the cricketing Shipmans (see map). Grace Briggs, a daughter of Ezra’s brother John Stinson Astill, lived in one of these cottages early the next century, which she thus described: The house had two rooms upstairs and two downstairs…They were all big rooms. In the living room there was a piano, sofa and glass cabinet. The other room had an organ. My Dad played the organ. There was a little pantry built out from the room. Upstairs there were two big bedrooms with double beds in each of them. Then, in Mum’s room, she’d always got the cot for the baby. Each bedroom had two sets of drawers and what you’d call wash stands. I slept in a double room with my sister. There was also a cellar. It came level into Berry’s Lane. From the living room there were steps to go down. You had to fetch coal from there. 25 Ezra clearly had both ambition and business acumen, for he eventually ‘owned several [residential rental] properties in Ratby, in Sills Yard and also in the nearby Pump Square. At least two of [his brother-in-law] Tom Jayes’ relatives started their married lives in properties belonging to the Astills.’ 26 Ownership of some of these remained in the family for a long time as Colin Lissaman, Jayes’ grandson, remembers his grandmother collecting the rents for Reg, one of Ezra’s sons, to pick up after driving out to Ratby from Leicester. Astill, as a surname, may come from Astle in Cheshire or directly from the origin of that place name, the Old English words for east hill, in both instances denoting residence or origin. Alternatively it may be a variant of the Old Norse Askell, a contracted form of Asketill which is commonly 24 It was renamed Chapel Lane after the construction of the new Methodist Chapel in 1911. Three cottages still survive there, albeit now enjoined. House- numbers were not introduced in Ratby until the 1920s. 25 Quotation supplied by Doug Harwood. 26 Private letter from Colin Lissaman, who kindly provided the information in this paragraph and adds that his cousin, another grandson of Tom Jayes, ‘knew of three cottages owned by the [Astill] family with access through Pump Square … The area … consisted of the five cottages of the square and several others, all now demolished. Sills Yard consisted of eight cottages, one of which was an Astill property and the home at one time of a great niece of Jayes.’