MEMORIES AND STORIES
In this section we will include the memories of some Icomb residents who have lived in the village for many years.
Sarah Bennett and Ros Watson will collect and collate these memories.
Click HERE for a list of Icomb marriages 1563 to 1812.
We will also include here, stories of Icomb past which do not fit in elsewhere on the website. For example Rachel Horne has written:
“ During the course of my research into our house, The Lawn, I learnt of Icomb’s link to the “Notorious Ascott Martyrs” of 1873 when two magistrates sentenced sixteen women from Ascott under Wychwood to hard labour for picketing in support of a strike by their husbands. The sentence led to riots, questions being asked in the House of Commons, a pardon from Queen Victoria and far-reaching labour reform laws.
The story begins with Robert Hambidge, who was born at The Lawn in 1827 and grew up in Icomb. The Hambidges were a well-known Icomb family. Robert's grandfather, Thomas Hambidge, a yeoman, first settled at The Lawn in 1780. After Thomas and his wife, Mary's death, the house passed to their son William, a wealthy landowner. He and his wife Elizabeth, (nee Cambray who was linked to Icomb Place I believe) had seven children and their youngest was Robert.
(Some of you may recall hearing of the Hambidge family before. A few years ago, I wrote about John Hambidge who shot and killed his father, George "in cold blood" in his house by the church in 1852. He received the measly sentence of just 14 days.)
After marriage, Robert moved to Ascott under Wychwood where he bought the area's largest farm - 400 acre Crown Farm, which employed ten men and four boys. In April 1873, the National Agricultural Workers Union asked Hambidge to increase the wages of his labourers to 14 shillings a week. Hambidge said only those that were efficient would be paid more, the aged and infirm would not. All the neighbouring landowners sided with Hambidge. The labourers, however, did not. They walked off the farm and “left him in the middle of a backward barley sowing with twelve agricultural horses, four working bullocks, a flock of 500 sheep at turnips, milking cows, bullocks and young stock, and only two yearly servants, a shepherd and a youth to man the establishment,” according to indiganant fellow landowners writing in The Times.
Faced with potential financial ruin, Hambridge hired two non-union workers from Ramsden to help with the farming. The strikers, obviously, earned nothing, and were surviving on handouts from neighbours. The threat of eviction loomed. Then on the morning of May 12, the women of Ascott decided to step in. After Hambidge left early to attend the horse fair at Stow, the striker's wives, sisters, mothers and daughters waited in the turnpike road for the two labourers coming to Ascott. When the two appeared, they tried to persuade them to stop working and join the union. Angry words and jostling broke out but it ended peacefully with the women offering to buy the men ale at the local tavern. The men refused, however, and the protest, was eventually broken up by the village policeman.
Then Hambidge returned home. He demanded immediate action, ordering the police to arrest the women on charges of disturbing the peace. A total of seventeen women were sent to Chipping Norton Petty Sessions for judgement. Sitting that day were two local magistrates, Rev. T. Harris and Rev. W.E. Carr, both wealthy landowners. According to the Labourers' Union Chronicle. "Parson Carter's living is worth £439 per annum, besides perquisites. He has eight servants and a butler who lives next door. He has only 808 souls to ‘cure’. He has also a farm which he lets out at a rent, as well as being an employer of labour, direct."
The women were undefended and the sentences they received were harsh. The ringleaders were sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour, seven of them for 10 days, and nine of the women for 7 days. Two of the women were still nursing babies and others were prominent members of the Sunday school.
News of the sentences spread. By that evening a crowd of 1,000 had gathered around the Police Court, some trying to unsuccessfully rescue the women while others broke street lamps and windows. Extra police were called in and after the crowd finally dispersed at 1am the women were put on four open horse-drays and taken to Oxford Prison. According to The Times, it was a very cold night and the women had no warm clothing, but they did their best to protect their babies with umbrellas.
The next day a protest meeting was held at Chipping Norton. Three thousand attended and a collection, 80 pounds, for the women was taken. Soon questions were being asked in Parliament by the MP for Oxford, Joseph Arch about the women's treatment. This in turn prompted the Lord Chancellor, Lord Selborne, to ask the Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, the Duke of Marlborough (uncle of future Prime Minister Winston Churchill), to investigate the conduct of the two magistrates involved in passing sentence. Marlborough, however, supported their actions and, supported by a testimonial signed by 298 landowners and others from 29 parishes, expressed satisfaction with the decision despite its obvious harshness.
The public, however, was outraged and Queen Victoria stepped in with a pardon. (However the warrant did not reach the prison until after the women had finished their sentences). The Queen also gave each of the women a red-flannel petticoat and 5 shillings. Not to be outdone, the Workers Union gave each one enough blue silk material to make one dress, plus £5. As for Hambidge, he eventually agreed to raise his workers' wages to 14 shillings a week.
The women returned in triumph to the village and were hailed as the “Ascott Martyrs.” A party with a marquee was held, a brass temperance band played and union leaders gave speeches. Or at least they tried. Soon after they began, Hambidge and his wife appeared, and under the protection of the local police constable, tried to disrupt proceedings by shouting.
Although largely forgotten today, the episode of the Ascott Martyrs is an important one I believe as it brought Arch and the Agricultural Workers Union to the political forefront. In 1884 Arch was instrumental in getting the right to vote granted to farm workers, the final section of British (male) society to achieve suffrage. One of the main causes of the poor lives of the farm workers in small rural villages such as Ascott-under-Wychwood (and presumably Icomb) was there were too many working men available. That meant employers, such as Hambidge, could keep wages low. Here is a report by the union into some of the Ascott dwellings in 1873: "Imagine a narrow place, like a coal cellar, down which you go two or three steps, no flooring except broken stones, no ceiling, no grate, rough walls, a bare ladder leading to the one narrow bedroom about 6ft. wide, containing two bedsteads for a man, his wife, and three young children, the whole place as wretchedly bad and miserable as imagination can conceive, and only divided by a rough wooden partition not reaching to the roof, but over which you may look into the bedroom of the next adjoining house."
There were other far-reaching reverberations. Later in 1873, New Zealand introduced free immigration and four of the families directly linked to the Ascott Martyrs opted to emigrate. Their descendants still live their today. They were joined by a further 500 people from neighbouring villages, mostly poor labourers, searching for a better life. It is rather poignant reading their letters home, remarking how their children are "growing fat" with all the extra food they are able to eat.
As for Ascott, it remembers those days 140 years ago. On the green in the village is an octagonal wooden seat encircling the trunk of a chestnut tree. On a placard it states "This seat was erected to celebrate the centenary of the Ascott Martyrs, the 16 women who were sent to prison in 1873 for the part they played in the founding of the Agricultural Workers Union when they were sent 'over the hills to glory'".