Nat Gould

Mary Gould 1721-1780

Mary Gould was born at Pilsbury Grange in Hartington parish in Derbyshire, the daughter of William Gould 1677-1772 and his wife Anne Morewood 1679-1749.

She was baptised at Hartington on 21 March 1721, and she died on 8 November 1780.

She was married on 14 June 1759 at Thorpe to William Wardle of Boosley Grange, a house situated between Longnor and Elkstone in Staffordshire.

He was born at Atlow on 7 January 1715 (modern reckoning), son of William Wardle of Atlow and Elizabeth his wife. He became the Steward to Sir Henry Harpur of Calke Abbey. He died on 26 June 1770 and was buried at Hartington, where there is a monument inside the church commemorating him and his wife.

William Wardle was the last of the male line of the Wardle family of Boosley Grange which had been established there for generations. He had a brother John Wardle who was born on 9 June 1718 and baptised at Alstonefield, but he seems to have died young and childless. He also had a sister, Elizabeth Wardle who was born on 6 October 1720 and died on 11 May 1763. (She married a Mr Pilsbury of Blackfriars in London. They had a son William Pilsbury, born on 28 January 1754, who married on 26 July 1763 but was killed by a waggon about a fortnight later and died childless.)

William Wardle had an interest in the Harpur-Crewe coalmines on Goldsitch Moss near Quarnford. His father had leased the mines in 1677, and in his will he asked Sir John Harpur to renew the lease in favour of his son, because of “the vast charge” he had incurred in improving tenements and in draining the mines. The request was evidently granted, as early in the eighteenth century William Wardle had to repair a road damaged by sledges laden with coal from mines at Knotbury. After his death the lease was taken up by others, but the mines declined and by the nineteenth century were opened only on local demand. The last mine closed in 1932.

William Wardle was a well educated man, and evidently interested in local history. In the William Salt Library at Stafford is a 1745 copy of The History of Staffordshire by Erdeswick inscribed “W. Wardle of Boosley, Staffordshire, His Book”.

The only child of William Wardle and Mary his wife was Anne Wardle 1760-1816. She was born at Boosley on 16 May 1760. On 28 July 1783 she was married at Earl Sterndale to her first cousin Joseph Gould 1757-1821, who was born in Bakewell in 1757 and died at Ardwick in Manchester on 20 January 1821. Anne Wardle died at Ardwick on 9 September 1816.

Her husband was the son of Joseph Gould 1685-1760 of Pilsbury Lower House, son of William Gould 1655-1725 of Pilsbury and his wife Mary Hollis 1654-1713.