Brailsford

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Notes from 'John Alcock and his Family' - a book by Stanley Alcock

This Information has been contributed by Isabel Job - her Great Grandmother was an Alcock.

• Ann ALCOCK (1780-1860) gave to Brailsford the Methodist Chapel on which the words:-
  "Given by Ann Alcock (1815)"

• John ALCOCK (1794-1853) married Elizabeth FITCHETT of the Mountfitchetts at Brailsford on 27th April 1815. John came to Brailsford from Fanny Bentley with most of his family. He was a farmer and well-to-do, his father having been a cattle farmer and butcher. In his father's day butchers had no shops. Nothing was known of winter feed for cattle. Mass slaughter, except for breeding cattle, took place in the Autumn. The meat was salted and stored in barrels which were taken to the towns and cities by water. There were no roads. Short distances were covered by horses with a barrel slung either side.

  John's early life was one of vice of all kinds. His children were thrown on to the world, without education, to forage for themselves. One day, he signed the pledge, casts his cockspurs into the pit[1] and fitted himself for a new life. He kept his word and his two youngest children (Charles and Walter) were educated and well brought up. Thus started in life they have been succeeded by educated descendants, but the others have had to win their way back into the world.

  Charles as a token of esteem, had these words placed on his father's gravestone in Brailsford Churchyard:-

  "A brand plucked from the fire"

Note:

[1]	"The Pit" is the cockpit, where the cockfighting took place. Alcock's pit was so well known and notorious that it is marked on all of the old maps of the district.

Source: Alcock, Stanley - John Alcock and his Family. Printed by Derry & Sons Limited, Nottingham 1948.

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