One of the major local builders before proper records were kept was Samuel Davies, who like others in his family trained as a bricklayer. He was born in Church Lawton parish about 1837, and was running a building firm in Alsager by about 1870. The one known location for his home is Lawton Road, where he lived near the centre of town with his wife Mary Ann and (ultimately) 5 children. His brothers, a wheelwright and a bricklayer, lived nearby, and he was clearly one of the local go-to men: among other things, he undertook larger than average projects such as extending the churchyard at Christ Church and building the Congregational Chapel (pictured). In the 1870s he probably built quite a lot of Alsager.
His disappearance from local life is accounted for by having been the co-respondent in a divorce case, reported by the press not locally but in cities such as Chester, Birmingham and Liverpool. What seems to have happened is that Davies bought a farmhouse, probably at or near Cresswellshawe, which he let about 1883 to George Sale (c 1840-1905), a coal merchant in the Potteries, and his wife Sarah Barker, one of the family who farmed from the Town House. Sarah and Samuel became friendly after Samuel started restoration work on the house. George’s coal business was in trouble, and Samuel stood surety when he made an arrangement with his creditors. George eventually discovered what else had been going on, and left. Sarah and Samuel disappeared, separately or together. In 1888, having discovered Sarah’s whereabouts and that she had continued her association with Samuel, bearing him at least one child, George divorced her. By this time she had lived or worked in a number of Lancashire towns.
George remained in Alsager and was ‘known by almost everyone in the village’, becoming the UDC’s first surveyor and taking administrative roles such as secretary to the Alsager and District Ploughing Association. Sarah (who underwent at least one change of name) and Samuel remain untraced. Samuel’s deserted wife Mary Ann is found in 1891, ostensibly running a ‘lodging house’ of 3 rooms (and no lodgers named by the census other than 4 of the Davies children) near the railway in Southport.
