The Life and Times of Sarah 'Granny' Vernon

Her exact age is uncertain as birth certificates weren’t required until 1837 but we do know she was born into a working-class Northwich family, one of the five surviving children of John and Helen Moreton. Different records describe her father as a labourer or salt worker – salt extraction then being the Northwich area’s most important industry.

An address which crops up regularly for the family is Lime Kiln Hill, Lane or Road, no longer shown on Northwich maps but once located off Leicester Street, close to one of the town’s biggest salt works and a brine storage tank.

A thrill of Sarah’s childhood was seeing Princess (later Queen) Victoria travel through the town in an open carriage. Young Victoria remembered the occasion, too, writing in her diary for 18 October 1832:

“1 minute to ½ past 11. We have just passed through Northwich. Where we were most civilly received. The little charity girls strewed the way with flowers, and flags hung from the windows.”

Less appealing to Sarah was the once popular pastime of watching blood-soaked fights between dogs and a bull. Big crowds would gather in Lock Street, Church Lane, and the Bull Ring for bull-baiting contests and while Sarah saw a few, she later reported: “I really never liked them”.

At aged about 10, she was sent to work as a domestic servant in Liverpool and remembered that any journeys there or home had to be made by stagecoach.

The first British census to record inhabitants by name, address and job took place in 1841. It records Sarah as living at home in Northwich with her parents and siblings: William, now working as a labourer; John, Robert and Anne. But she must have retained some links with Liverpool as it was there, on July 23rd 1847, that she got married to John Vernon.

John Vernon was a ‘flat man’ – an occupation also followed by his father and by at least one of his and Sarah’s sons and two or more of their grandchildren. He was employed by a Mr Worthington, the owner of two salt works, to carry goods, mostly salt, by flat-bottomed boat, along the Weaver Navigation to the docks on the River Mersey.

The newly-weds set up home back in Northwich and at the time of the 1851 census they were living in Mill Street, Witton, with Jane and William, the first of their eventual eight children.

Sarah often accompanied John on his river trips and the association with the waterways was not without peril if a family legend is true.

A grand-daughter, Edith Beddard (nee Vernon) was told Sarah once slipped while crossing Hunts Lock, off London Road, Northwich, on a rainy day and was saved from serious injury or worse due to her umbrella slowing her fall into the canal and keeping her afloat.

True or false, she was not put off waterways and in 1871 she is recorded as living with John aboard a vessel called “Fly” and working as his assistant. Four of their youngest children - Joseph, Henry, Frances and one-year-old John – are also on board, with Joseph and Henry classed as boating seamen – presumably helping with locks and tunnels or towing the boat when a horse was unavailable or reluctant

To earn extra money, Sarah stitched bags to hold the salt taken from the works owned by Mr Higgins at Anderton. She would continue this work in boat sheds along the Weaver while travelling with her husband and family.

Sarah was so good at needlework she was asked to demonstrate at a big exhibition in Liverpool – quite possibly the International Exhibition of Navigation, Commerce and Industry of 1886, which was visited by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and where attractions included a full-scale model of the Eddystone Lighthouse, an African village, depictions of India and camel, elephant, and Canadian dog sled rides.

Sarah also made sandbags in wartime and, after her move to the Red House (as Weaver Hall was once called), shrouds for fellow residents who had passed away.

John and Sarah continue to be described as waterway workers in the census returns of 1881 and 1891 even though they’d both have been well into their 60s/70s – i.e. beyond the age at which most older people in the UK today are paid the State Retirement Pension. But the ‘Old Age Pension’ was not introduced in Britain until 1908 and a nationwide sickness benefit scheme was still almost 40 years away.

As a result, the ageing couple probably faced hard times and became reliant on family help &/or township charity once they entered the situation described for them in the 1901 census: “No Occupation”.

Lack of money meant both had spells in workhouses, such as the Northwich Poor Law Union’s Red House/ Weaver Hall – opened in 1837 and operating for over a century as mid Cheshire’s main refuge for the impoverished elderly, sick, mentally disabled, lone mothers, homeless, jobless, illegitimate babies and unwanted children.

It was in the Red House in 1907 that John died, ending a marriage that had lasted 60 years.

Now a widow, Sarah lived with her granddaughter's family in Northwich town centre for a while, but Northwich was growing. Between 1821 and 1901, the population grew from around 1,400 to more than 17,500 and it was getting noisier and busier with it. This did not suit Granny, who remembered a time when she knew every local resident; when the town had just five shops and who had grown up in the times before the coming of the Manchester to Chester and Crewe to Liverpool railway lines or motor vehicles.

So, she chose to move into the Red House for peace, quiet and care in a room of her own.

By this time, her sons and daughters had made her a grandmother several times over but she was also called Granny by many others, including in the newspaper articles published on her 100th birthday and afterwards, and when she was mentioned on air by the newly-formed BBC’s first regional radio station, Radio 2ZY, based in Manchester.

Sarah Vernon died of heart failure on 17 December 1928, just a few months short of what would have been celebrated as her 106th birthday.

She had lived through the reigns of five monarchs (George IV, William IV, Victoria, Edward VII, and George VI); 21 Prime Ministers; revolutions in science, transport, medicine, technology, transport and social policy; the introduction of Income Tax, postage stamps, electric street lights, compulsory education for five to 13-year-olds; an Atlantic cable link to the USA, and votes for women.

Local dignitaries joined family mourners at her well-attended funeral at Witton Parish Church and she is buried in the church’s graveyard. The grave is marked with a stone much grander than someone of such humble origins might expect and includes a memorial to her husband.

Several of Granny’s direct descendants still live in the Northwich area including Claire Trinder, one of the chief researchers of this article.