William Stratford was born on 24 March 1787 on Spring Street in Sheffield, the son of Thomas Berry Stratford, a scissor maker, and his wife Susannah (née Kelsey). At thirteen he began an apprenticeship with Smith, Knowles, Creswick and Co., plate workers based on Arundel Street. He first trained as a silver candlestick hand before becoming a spinner, a specialist in shaping metal on a lathe—a technique central to the production of both plated and solid silver wares. By 1833 he appeared in local trade directories as a silver plater working in Bramall Lane, long recognised as a hub for workshops producing domestic and ceremonial silver plate.
In 1812 William married Mary Grey at Rotherham Minster. She was the daughter of William Grey, a pen and pocket knife maker of Lambert Street, Sheffield. The couple made their home in the Spring Street and Bramall Lane area and raised eight children between 1816 and 1832. Mary died on 22 October 1834, aged forty‑one.
After a productive working life, William retired at the age of seventy‑one to Kelgate House in Mosborough. Although no direct connection to Mosborough is known, his move echoed a common pattern among successful craftsmen who, having prospered in Sheffield’s industrial districts, later sought the quieter surroundings of its semi‑rural outskirts. He died at Mosborough and was buried at St Peter and St Paul churchyard, Eckington, on 23rd April 1859 (memorial image attached).
According to Robert E. Leader’s Reminiscences of Old Sheffield: Its Streets and Its People (1875), William also possessed an unusually distinguished lineage. Leader recorded him as the nineteenth in descent from John Stratford, who served in the Parliament of Edward III in 1320. Through a later marriage within the family—specifically that of John Stratford, who died in 1533—he was also linked to the line of William de Traci, one of the four knights implicated in the murder of Thomas à Becket. This ancestry connected William not only to the Dukes of Normandy but also to the early Saxon kings of England, as de Traci himself was descended from Ethelred the Unready and Queen Emma, daughter of the third Duke of Normandy.
The Mosborough One-Place Study 