What a surprise I had the other day. As my traveller card with 44 pounds stirling left on it is about to expire in June this year and the prospect of travelling overeas getting less probable by the day I decided to use the money to collect more English birth, marriage, and death certificates. My first order of UK certificates arrived and I was expecting the death date, address and cause of death but Ellen Armitstead's certificate from 1853 in Kendal provided an interesting extra. Unceremoniously it declared she died of old age at age 71 in Longpool Kendal. It listed that she was the widow of William Armitstead, cordwainer. I did not expect to find William's occupation or anything about him seeing he had been dead since 1815.
In 1841 Ellen was listed in Wildman St Kendal as a knitter. I was Googling Wildman St Kendal to see what I could find and here is what came up Cordwainer building for sale Well I can't be sure it was William's but it is in the same street where Ellen lived in 1841. I checked the census enumerator's collection path and it looks like she lived further up the street and not in the current 3A Wildman St that is for sale. Still it was interesting to see Wildman Street on Google Street view.
Now you may ask what was a cordwainer? According to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordwainer a cordwainer is a shoemaker who makes shoes with new leather as opposed to a cobbler who mends shoes or makes shoes from old leather. Cordwainer is an archaic term and is only used in the name of trade guilds or associations now.
I love shoes so perhaps William passed down his love of shoes to me.
