John Bradshaw was born in Sawley in 1830. He was the younger son of John Bradshaw (1791-1832) and Catherine Stenson (1791-1858); both from long-established Sawley families.
The father died when John (junior) was only 2. By 1841 the family were living in Church Street, where Catherine was a lacemaker. But by 1851 John and his mother were running a bakery in Hathern.
After his mother died in 1858 John carried on as a baker. Later that year he married Harriett Needham and they moved to Syston, where their daughter Mary was born in 1871.
In 1876 they bought some land off Nottingham Road in Sawley and gradually built houses on the land, starting with Woodbine Cottage (now called Salisbury House, 6 Bradshaw Street). Nottingham Road was then an unmade track, with a hedge between the road and a drainage ditch. According to John’s deeds, his boundary was the hedge, so around 1900, when he was having two more houses built (possibly now 198 and 200 Tamworth Road) he filled the ditch in and replaced the hedge with a fence. In 1909 the County Council knocked the fence down and moved it back 4ft, claiming the ditch had originally been part of the highway. There was a series of court cases, which John eventually won.
By 1881 John had already retired from baking to Woodbine Cottage. In 1887 there was a vestry meeting at the National School about the poor state of the path from Old to New Sawley. Mr J Daft was elected as the new road surveyor with John Bradshaw as one of the overseers.
In 1894 their daughter Mary married Samuel Clegg at the Baptist Chapel. Samuel designed and had built ‘Rye Hill Close’ 116 Nottingham Road (now 194 Nottingham Road) – just around the corner from the Bradshaws, probably on part of their plot. The Bradshaws moved next door to Mary and Samuel Clegg at 114 Nottingham Road (192 Tamworth Road). Woodbine Cottage seems to have been renamed Salisbury House and was let out for £19 a year before being sold in 1914. For a while it was rented to a teacher, Frederick Attenborough, who later married their granddaughter, Mary Clegg.
Harriett Bradshaw died in 1909. John survived until 1918.