Wallace Street

In the year 1711, John Wallis, a yeoman of Barton in Fabis, married Mary Harkinson. Mary brought as her marriage portion “one half part of three cottages situated in Gotham, with appurtenances”.

John Wallis died in 1770. Mary died in 1722, their son Francis married Sarah Stevenson in 1746 and they had two sons John and Francis and a daughter Mary, who married William Redfern of Gotham.

With the Enclosure Act 1806, both the Wallis and the Redfern families were allotted plots in Gotham including the Weldon Fields, the Moor Pasture and Jacket Lees Close.

John Wallis’ inherited land in Gotham passed to his brother Francis that on his death passed to his nephew Thomas Redfern. Thomas died in 1848 leaving his estates in Gotham to his four sons.

Building of houses began on Wallis Street in the late 1870s on land belonging to the Wallis family. By the 1891 census, we find 24 houses on Wallis Street, many of the householders, were employed at the gypsum works, mainly as miners, in addition there was a works’ engine driver, a carter, and a ‘plaster’ boiler, with four framework knitters, a medical practitioner and a corn miller. Interestingly Albert Chadborn, a bricklayer, father to William Chadborn was also living on Wallis Street.

The exact date when Wallis Street changed its name to Wallace Street is uncertain. However it is understood that this took place in the period 1901 to 1911.