| Administrative History | These records derive from the work of three men, all of whom were called John Cox. The first of these was a John Cox who was born c1836 and died in 1933. John Cox did not know his place of birth and variously gave it as Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. The 1861 census shows an unmarried blacksmith named John Cox, born in approximately 1836 and living in Barrow on Trent, who had been born in Thurlby, Lincolnshire. By 1871, Cox and his wife Sarah were living in Newton Solney. They had moved to Twyford by the time of the 1881 census, and he is recorded as the only blacksmith in Twyford in Kelly's Directories from 1881 to 1906. The 1911 census records that John Cox was living in retirement at Field View in Smalley, and that he Sarah had had 11 children, one of whom had died. Census records in combination with the General Register Office indexes show that the child who died was Alice Eliza Cox (1871-1872). John Cox died on 16 January 1933, and his will, proved in London, left an estate valued at £775 to his son Herbert and to Charles Meakin, a farmer.
The 1911 census finds his son John Edric Cox (1877-1917) living in Twyford and described as a farmer, although he is described as a farmer and blacksmith in the 1912 Kelly's Directory. A change in handwriting in the series of day books suggests that the business was handed over from John Cox senior to John Edric Cox towards the end of 1906.
John Edric Cox's brother Herbert Cox, also a blacksmith, appears on the 1901 census at Derby Road in Smalley. Herbert's son John William Cox (1892-1974) is named as the only blacksmith in Twyford in Kelly's Directories from 1925 to 1941, suggesting that the same business was handed over from father, to son to great-nephew. The address is shown on the 1939 register as Smithy Farm, Twyford. |
| Custodial History | These records were donated to Derbyshire Record Office by the parish of Twyford in October 2016. |