Most of the parish's population lives in the village of Ellistown in the western part of the parish.
Perhaps for this reason, he moved to Ellistown in Coalville, where he was elected agent for the Leicestershire Miners' Association (LMA), replacing Levi Lovett, and he was soon elected onto the executive committee of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB), where he was a supporter of A. J. Cook.