For a good many years the Group has taken responsibility for decorating one of the windows in St. Michael’s Church in Spencers Wood at Christmas.This year the theme is Christmas Carols which brought to mind the book, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens…
Many of you will be familiar with this Christmas ghost story which tells how after being haunted by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet-to-Come, Scrooge is persuaded to live a better life and to be more generous to the poor, starting with his own employee Bob Cratchit.When Dickens was 12 years old his own father was thrown into debtor’s
prison and Dickens himself was forced to leave school to work in a boot-blacking factory. After this, Dickens took a lifelong interest in the plight of the Poor, campaigning for Children’s Rights, Education and social reform.
In this he was joined by another literary figure, local author Mary Russell Mitford from Three Mile Cross. Both of them were involved with the founding of the imposing Reading Literary, Scientific and Mechanical Institution in London Road, later known as Great Expectations – and now recently renamed, Hotel 1843 Reading. When the Institution was opened, by a formal dinner attended by Mary Russell Mitford, in October 1843, Dickens was too busy to attend: “A Christmas Carol” was published just two months later in December 1843.
Our Christmas window depicts the deep inequality in Victorian society with a generously decorated Christmas tree on one side and on the other a simple “twig-tree” decorated with dried fruit slices. In the middle is a copy of “A Christmas Carol” and more information about Charles Dickens and Mary Russell Mitford.
Right: Patricia, Jackie, Edward and Lesley who created this year’s window
We recently received another enquiry in our mail box, spwood.local history@googlemail.com . It came from someone who had recently moved into the Village and wanted to know more about the history of her new home, May’s Cottages in Beech Hill Road.
The four cottages – two semis – can be found on the left-hand side of Beech Hill Road, more-or-less opposite Clements Close. From the style they were built in the early years of the last century.
We pooled our knowledge at a meeting of the Group – the surname MAY is quite common in Berkshire but to the best of our knowledge hadn’t previously come up in any of the memories we’d collected from older residents of the Village. We also had no information about the houses but one of us recalled that the field at the junction of Yew Tree Lane and Beech Hill Road is marked as May’s Fields on old Ordnance Survey maps. The only other possible connection that we could come up with was Mays Farm in Ryeish Green.
A couple of us set to work and discovered that families by the name of MAY go back to c.1650 in Shinfield. At various times in the C19th and C20th people by this name were living in Spencers Wood and the surrounding district however, most of them were born outside the district and it has not yet been possible to establish whether/how they were related. The three people of greatest interest were
William Henry MAY, born Newbury, 1831 and died Spencers Wood, 1919
George Henry MAY, b. Hungerford, 1859 and d. Arborfield, 1914 and
John MAY, for whom we found a record dating to 1861-62
William Henry MAY was a saddler and for the majority of his life (c.1861-c.1910) lived (and worked) at 10, Gun Street, Reading. He was married twice, to Maria from 1856-1893 and to Fanny in 1901 who survived him. He had retired by 1911, living first in Mortimer West End but by 1918 was living in Oak Tree Lane, Spencers Wood, moving to Wyvenhoe, also in Spencers Wood near St. Michael’s, in 1919.
George Henry MAY is more interesting – both in the sense that he seems to have lived a more eventful life and in relation to his links to May’s Cottages. His early life is uncertain as his place of birth is given variously as Hungerford, Burghfield and Oxenwood but by 1881 he was living in Reading and working as a labourer in a tin factory [presumably Huntley, Boorne, and Stevens who made the tins for Huntley and Palmers]. In 1885 he married Alice Corbett at St.Mary Butts. Whether this prompted a change of direction is uncertain but by 1887 he’s recorded as being a grocer in Tilehurst and in 1891, as living in Katesgrove. By 1901 he’d changed career again and was recorded as a publican at the Sun Inn in
Swallowfield. In the 1911 census he is temporarily unemployed and living in Spencers Wood but two years later he is living at the Shoulder of Mutton in Binfield and when he died in 1914 is recorded as living at Duck’s Nest Farm, Arborfield.
The most interesting information about him is revealed in the Electoral Registers. In 1911 he is recorded as living at 2, May’s Cottages, Spencers Wood, Swallowfield – at this time Basingstoke Road south of the junction with Hyde End Road was in Swallowfield Parish. This was presumably where he was living at the time of the 1911 census. The Electoral Register also reveals that he owned 4 freehold cottages as well as other land. Not all this property was in Spencers Wood as the “qualifying property” is recorded as being at School Green – before the introduction of universal suffrage [for men] in 1919 the right to vote depended on what property you held. Later Electoral Registers show him in Farley Hill (1914).
John MAY
There are a number of people named John May living in the wider Reading area and it is not easy to be certain which is referred to, however there is clear evidence that one such had interests in Shinfield parish during 1860’s. In 1862 William Merry of Highlands House purchased 6 plots of land that allowed him to connect a drive from his house to the Basingstoke Road. He purchased the plots from Lannoy Hunter of Beech Hill House, John Thorpe a farmer and John May. This would imply that John May was a landowner, owning land in Spencers Wood at this time although he need not have been resident. This is supported by the 1861-62 Electoral Register for Shinfield which lists John May of Coburg Villa, London Road, Reading as occupying “freehold land and buildings” in the parish, although the exact location is not specified.
At this time we cannot confidently state that May’s Cottages were named after any of the three above. However since the properties were built in the Edwardian period and George Henry MAY himself occupied no2. in 1911 on the balance of probabilities he would seem to be the most likely. George Henry’s widow, Alice was still living at School Green at the outbreak of War so it is possible that the cottages still remained in her possession at that time.
Mays Hill is named on OS maps on both the first edition OS map of 1871 and the revised edition of 1900 and it is possible that the land belonged to John May who we know held land in the Village round-about that time.
Later occupants of May’s Cottages
In 1939 at the outbreak of World War II, the England and Wales Register shows John Barber and family at 1 Mays Cottages. At no 2 lived Elizabeth Charlton who was still there in 1953 when she died aged 83. The occupants of No 3 are not known but an Elizabeth Cox was at no 4.
When future generations come to look back on the Coronation weekend there’ll be lots of footage of national events but here is a record of how the Bank Holiday was celebrated in Spencers Wood…
The Local History Group joined other village organisations – along with Morris Dancers and a fairground organ – at the celebration organised jointly by the Village Hall Committee and St. Michael’s Church. Just as well that we were under cover as it rained pretty much the whole time but this didn’t put off the many families that joined in the celebrations and visited our display in St. Michael’s Church, sharing their recollections of their schooldays and local pubs amongst many other memories.
The Group is currently working towards producing a new book, this time about the history of our local pubs. It’s hard to believe but in the past there were as many as 12 pubs and beer houses in Spencers Wood, Three Mile Cross and Great Lee!
If you have family photos or family stories about our local pubs we’d be very interested to hear from you.
Over the Bank Holiday Weekend some of our members took part in the Swallowfield Show. It was a busy weekend – it was estimated that more than 900 people visited the Art Exhibition and Local History tent over the two days.
We really enjoyed the opportunity to meet so many people and to share old memories and new information – as well as selling some of our publications. But if you didn’t get to the Show or didn’t manage to visit us and see our displays about Spencers Wood in former days don’t worry! There’s another chance to catch up with us at the Spencers Wood Carnival – held on the Rec. (behind the Farriers Arms) on Saturday, 17th September.
Two long established members of our Group are leaving the Village. Margaret Bampton was one of our founding members back in 1995 and has been a mainstay of the Group and one of the principal contributors to our books and the website over the years. Mary Wheway joined the Group a little later, in 2004. She was formerly a teacher at Ridgeway Primary for 30 years and in her retirement she proved to be just the person needed to lead the editing and publication of all three of our most recent books.
Their departure has resulted in our having to find new homes for the many photographs and other items that have been stored in their respective homes. Amongst these was a collection of photographs taken by Chris Bukin, then aged 8, for a competition organised by Lambs Lane School in 1972, two of which are reproduced here. The full collection can be found in the Resources section of the website.
Margaret and Mary will both be much missed and we wish them all the best for the future.
Sometimes you find unexpected links between projects. In this case, while researching the history of the Royal Oak as part of our project studying the history of the pubs in Shinfield Parish – on which we are working with Shinfield Local History Society – one of our members established that in 1906 the pub was supplied by Dymore Brown’s Royal Albert Brewery in Reading. We had previously encountered the Dymore Brown family as part of our research into the history of Three Mile Cross Methodist Chapel, a project we completed ten years ago.
The Family were committed and enthusiastic Methodists giving generously to a number of local churches including the chapel in Three Mile Cross and Mrs Janet Dymore Brown, wife of the ownwr, laid the foundation stone of the Chapel. The Group’s book, subtitled The Little Village Chapel in the Meadow is still available, price £4.00.
If you know the identity of this group of men, gathered outside the former Red Lion pub or can can help us with our current project on the pubs of Shinfield – photos or stories of those who worked or frequented any of our pubs, many now lost, please get in touch.
This is the first post – there’ll be another to follow – about the Elisha family in our series about people commemorated in local road names. For those that haven’t come across Elisha Close before, it’s off Beech Hill Road on your right as you leave Spencers Wood…
The Elisha family were builders, farmers and farm workers who have lived in Shinfield parish since at least 1602, when a William Elisha married Elizabeth Pither in St. Mary’s church, Shinfield on 10th October. This post looks at two generations of the family, both named John Elisha, and the wife of the second John Elisha, Dorothy Davis, who lived at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The first John Elisha and his brother, James were both successful builders and bricklayers, each owning their own brickworks, and were followed into the business by their sons. John Elisha’s life spanned pretty much the entire eighteenth century, from his birth in 1707 to his death in 1787. In his will, made in the last months of his life, he describes himself as a Bricklayer, living in Swallowfield. From as early as 1768 we can see from the Poll Book that although he lived in Swallowfield, he owned property in Shinfield and thus had the right to vote – then restricted to property owners. At this time Ballots were not secret and how people voted was recorded and published in poll books. In this case, like most voters, John Elisha voted for the sitting MPs, Thomas Craven and Arthur Vansittart. The third contestant, John Stone of Goldwell, was considered a weak candididate nevertheless Vansittart is said to have spent £5,000, about £440,000 today, on securing his re-election.
We can see from his will that when he died in 1787 John Elisha had continued to live in Swallowfield but by then had property in Shinfield, Three Mile Cross and Farley Hill, including owning the Blacksmith’s shop in Shinfield. His estate was divided between his son, John Elisha and his daughter, Elizabeth and her husband William Collins. From his father’s will we know that John Elisha the younger was living in Three Mile Cross at this time. In his own will, made a decade later in 1796, he too describes himself as a bricklayer however, apart from a reference to “stock in trade” which might or might not relate to the building trade, his will is focused almost entirely on farming.
John the younger left everthing to his wife Dorothy for the rest of her life, providing she did not re-marry, with detailed instructions on how the farm was to be managed which give an insight into farming at the end of the eighteenth century. His son Richard, who had been working alongside his father, was to act as baliff and run the farm for his mother, buying and selling “and out of the profitts thereof keep up a sufficient stock of cattle and implements to manure, plough, sow and gather in the corn and grain growing thereon and to inbarn, house, rick, thresh out and carry the same to market and also to act and do everything to the best of his knowledge in [a] reasonable way to preserve and keep the Farm in an husbandlike state and manner”.
From the records of the Land Tax for 1798 we can see that Dorothy owned freehold property and land, including houses in Millworth Lane, Shinfield and Whitley Wood and held even more land as a tenant farmer, possibly including Hartley [Court] Farm. This was a profitable time to be a farmer, with increased yields due to the Agricultural Revolution and high prices as a result of shortages due to the Napoleonic wars. From John Elisha’s will we can see that the Elishas were mixed farmers raising horses and cattle and growing corn and hay. The corn and surplus cattle were sold while the straw from the corn and the hay were used for feed and bedding for the remaining cattle and horses.
When Dorothy died in 1806 it appears that the farm was sold up. Richard and his youngest brother, George appear to have moved to Shoreditch in London where they followed their father and grandfather as bricklayers. Their brother Thomas also became a bricklayer and is recorded in the 1841 census living in Earley with his son George, also a bricklayer. Only their oldest brother, another John Elisha, continued farming in Spencers Wood – more about him in a future blog.
Our most recent blog – one in a series about the families commemorated in recent road names – concerned the Pither Family and one branch in particular, a family of women farmers during the nineteenth century. Although this branch of the family died out I concluded the post by stating that other branches of the family continued to live locally and included an image of an old advert for Pithers the Butchers in Wokingham. The advert included the information that they had other shops in Spencers Wood and Swallowfield. This set one of our members on a trail linked to members of her own family…
The photo to the right is of Pither’s butchers shop on Basingstoke Road in Spencers Wood. Older residents of the village may remember this as Sheerman’s Butchers – now Healthy Buildings International. Dating from 1908, the photo shows our member’s great grandfather standing outside the shop. Not a member of the Pither family himself, he was however employed by them. Our member obtained it from her uncle who inherited it from her great aunt.
If your family has connections with Spencers Wood, Three Mile Cross or Ryeish Green or you have old photos of any of the three villages we’d love to hear from you. Contact details are on the Home Page.
This week’s Blog is about the Pither family recalled in the road name Pither Close, off Fulbrook Avenue in Spencers Wood. The family was widespread throughout the district, first appearing in documents from the fifteenth century. In our book, More from Our Village of Spencers Wood, there’s an account of Thomas Pither who was the tenant farmer of Highlands when it was sold in 1797.
Whether Thomas Pither was related to Ann, the widow of James Pither who died in 1837, is not certain but it seems possible that he was Ann’s father-in-law. It is however possible to piece together the story of this family of women farmers from their wills and the census records. In the 1841 census Ann, a widow aged 70, is recorded as being a farmer in Shinfield (probably in Spencers Wood), living with her children, Thomas (47), Lydia (35), Hannah (28) and Maria (25). Her oldest daughter, Jane or Jenny, Pither, aged 40 at the time, is also recorded as being a farmer in Shinfield, living with her sister Sarah (30) and two nieces, Margaret Deane, aged 9 and Sarah Deane, aged 7 as well as William Holder, an Agricultural Labourer, aged 25, and two farm boys, Benjamin Long (16) and Richard House (15).
Ann Pither died in 1846. What became of Thomas Pither is uncertain but in the 1851 census the farm is being run by Lydia, now recorded as aged 50, farming 50 acres, employing four labourers and living with her sisters Sarah and Hannah and their older niece, Margaret Deane. By 1861 the farm, now reduced to 38 acres and employing two men and a boy, is being run by Sarah, who is living with her sister Hannah, Margaret Deane and also a ploughboy, George Monger, aged 13, presumably the “boy”
mentioned above. (During the nineteenth century it was still common for younger farm workers to “live in”, only moving out when they married and set up a home of their own, often still “tied” to the farm where they worked). Meanwhile Jenny Pither continued to occupy the other farm, described as being 87 acres and employing three men and two boys. We know the names of two of the men, William Holder, now farm bailiff, and Caleb Cox, a carter, as well as George Fulker, aged 14, a carter’s boy and also Jenny’s other niece, Sarah.
Whether the two farms were actually run independently of each other is open to question. In his will, James Pither left his whole estate to his widow, Ann and in her will Ann left her estate to all four daughters as tenants in common. This could mean that the daughters held different size shares in the farms and that Jenny did hold the largest share. What we do know from the wills is
Left: Wilders Grove Farmhouse, Ryeish Lane as it is today
that although the family owned the freehold of some of the land, some of the land was held as copyhold, a form of protected tenancy, and other land was rented.
By 1871 there has been some consolidation and the farm, which we now discover from the census was Wilders Grove Farm in Ryeish Lane, is described as being 50 acres and employing two men and a boy, and as being run by Jenny. Living with her are her two sisters, Hannah and Sarah, nieces Margaret and Sarah, as well as William Holder, the farm steward, and a boy, James Miles, aged 15. Over the next ten years all three sisters died, Sarah in 1871, Jenny in 1877 and Hannah in 1878. The 1881 census records their two cousins, Margaret and Sarah Deane as living together in retirement in Ryeish Green with a boarder, retired farm bailiff, William Holder. Sarah died in 1885 and Margaret in 1889. This marked the end of this line of the Pither family (although there were others living in Shinfield parish and in nearby villages). William Holder outlived them all. In the 1901 census he is recorded as living with his niece, Mary Holder in Hyde End Road. He died in 1907 living to the ripe old age of 93.
Right: Although this branch of the Pither family died out as the poster reproduced here other branches of the family continued to live in nthe district.
This is the second in our occasional posts exploring the stories behind local road names. Last week we introduced you to the Earl of Fingal and his estate map and Appleby family, commemorated in Fingal Crescent and Appleby Walk. This week we’re focusing on just one road name, Floyer Grove, off Beke Avenue behind the Health Centre in Shinfield.
Left: The former Floyer’s Barn on Hyde End Road, all that remains of Floyers Farm – now undergoing further redevelopment
Peter Floyer and his family lived and farmed in Spencers Wood in the early part of the eighteenth century. On Fingal’s Estate Map of 1756, Floyers Land is marked as an area on Hyde End Road between the Basingstoke Road and Grovelands Road. All that remains now is the barn, an unremarkable building that’s easily missed, which until recently was known as Floyers Barn. Colonel Peter Floyer had served under the Duke of Marlborough in the French wars, known as the War of the Spanish Succession 1701-1714, and on his retirement had settled in Shinfield. Father and son, also named Peter, were original trustees of the Infant School on School Green, established in 1707. On the north wall of St. Mary’s Parish Church there is a tablet to Mary Floyer, his wife, dated 1726.
In an extract from the farms of Shinfield, Floyers Farm is described as being 45 acres 3 rods 28 perches (approximately 18.3 hectares) in size. In 1765 the “Annual Register” records “In the garden of Peter Floyer of Shinfield there are some rasberry trees in perfect leaf and so well stocked with ripe fruit that they have been gathering from them every day this month past. They are likewise in the same garden very fine full-blown jassmines, pinks, honeysuckles and a very fine carnation near blowing.”
Less is known about the later history of the farm. In 1862 it was a small, unnamed farm between Ryeish Green and Spencers Wood owned by Rev. George Hulme. In 1871 we know the farm was occupied by Mr John Thorpe and on 13 May 1879 it was sold in auction by Charles Simmons on behalf of Rev. Bernard Richard Body, a member of the Body family which lived in Shinfield for many years and owned several properties in the area.
