George Bayliss – Your Majesty

The re-imagined story …

Swindon certainly pushed the boat out when King George V and Queen Mary came to town. The streets were all decorated and the people turned out in their thousands, cheering and waving their handkerchiefs as the royal car travelled down Regent Street.

The King’s first port of call on that April day in 1924 was to lay a wreath at the cenotaph, a gesture that gained him the respect of even the most anti royalist for the King was not that popular in some quarters so soon after the Great War. But not in our family – we were Royalists through and through – and after that visit in 1924 people used to call my Pops ‘Your Majesty.’

The Royal couple visited the Victoria Hospital and the Medical Fund building, but the highlight of the day for us was their tour of the Railway Works. I was working in the Carriage and Wagon Works, making luggage rack netting and we knew the Queen was going to be brought around. I don’t think I have ever been so nervous in all my life. She stood right behind me, watching me work. She smelt lovely, lilies of the valley. I didn’t dare look round, even when I heard her say ‘what nimble fingers you have young lady.’

But the star of our family show was my Pops, George Bayliss. Some 75 old railwaymen who had worked for the GWR for more than 50 years were introduced to the King and Queen that day and the King actually spoke to my Pops. It was all there, published in the Adver. He asked him how old he was – “I am 69, your Majesty, and I have had 58 years’ service,” to which the King replied “I hope to be as good a man as you are when I am your age.”

Afterwards a photograph was taken to commemorate the occasion. You can’t miss my Pops, sitting in the front row in his spotless white ducks, the white jacket and trousers worn by railwaymen in the old days. Pops took it all in his stride, but for me it was the proudest day of my life. The Queen admired my work and my Pops got to talk to the King. I wish I had a copy of that photograph.

The facts …

George was born in 1855 in Newark on Trent, Nottinghamshire the son of John Bayliss, a boiler maker and his wife Hannah. By 1881 he was living in Swindon and lodging at 17 Harding Street with Samuel Shallcroft and his wife and two daughters. He was 25 years old and working as an engine fitter.

George married Henrietta Kirby in 1882 and at the time of the census in 1891 they were living at 14 Charles Street, Rodbourne with their children William, Frederick, Walter, Lilian, Mabel and Edith. A seventh child, Beatrice May was born in 1893.

By 1901 the family had moved to 189 Rodbourne Lane, George’s home until his death in December 1926 aged 71 years old. George Bayliss was buried on December 11, 1926 in plot D760.

The home of George Bayliss in Rodbourne Road

The couple were non conformists and had children baptised on the Highworth Primitive Methodist Circuit and the Regent Primitive Methodist Circuit. George would no doubt have been happy to be buried in Radnor Street Cemetery where the burial ground was unconsecrated and the cemetery chapel non denominational.

Swindon Advertiser.

“He (Bayliss) is one of the old brigade and was conspicuous by the fact that he wore the old time white jacket and trousers. Though not worn nowadays, Mr Bayliss will not discard the old style and has a clean suit every week. His Majesty chatted with him for a few minutes and said to him “I hope to be as good a man as you are when I am your age.”

The photograph titled Swindon Works Veterans Inspected by Their Majesties the King and Queen on April 28^th 1924 is published courtesy of Local Studies, Swindon Central Library, although the general consensus is that this is probably not the original. Carefully examination has revealed a couple of super imposed images, presumably those of men unable to attend on the day.

W.H. Read – local architect

The re-imagined story …

They began dismantling the Baptist Tabernacle as if it were a child’s construction kit. The classically designed building dominated the top end of town but not everyone was a big fan. Some said it was too posh for Swindon and that it didn’t sit well among the other red brick buildings in the town centre.

Gran was a Sunday School teacher at the Tabernacle and insisted we grandchildren attend. My sister and I were reluctant bible students. I’d have rather been up the Rec playing football with my mates and my sister was terrified the building would fall down about our ears. Any number of pictures and paintings would fail to cheer up that dank schoolroom and my sister was forever watching out for falling lumps of masonry.

Baptist Tabernacle

Demolition of the Baptist Tabernacle published courtesy of Local Studies, Swindon Central Library.

And that’s what sounded the final death knell for the building. It wasn’t demolished by the Council as everyone has repeated for the last forty or more years, but by the Baptist church itself. The congregation was too small and the reduced income not enough to pay for the vast amount of repair work necessary.

Today it is difficult to imagine a magnificent, classically designed building with a colonnade of six Tuscan columns and a flight of stone steps the width of the building lording it over the shops in Regent Street.

I would have liked to have one last look around inside, for old times’ sake. I’d have liked to have stood in the pulpit, forbidden to us as children. Neither were we allowed to hang over the gallery to see who sat below us, we soon felt the warmth of Gran’s hand if we stood up in our seat.

Funnily enough my sister wouldn’t have stepped inside that building again if you paid her.

Baptist Tabernacle 2

The Baptist Tabernacle in its heyday – published courtesy of Local Studies, Swindon Central Library.

The facts …

William Henry Read was a popular and prolific local architect whose commissions included the Victoria Hospital, the Anderson’s Almshouses in Cricklade Street and the Baptist Tabernacle.

He was born at Croft House, Swindon in 1850 the son of surveyor William Read and his wife Louisa and educated at Henry C. Lavander’s Grammar School in New Park Street, Devizes. The family later moved to 31 Wood Street and William Henry married Susannah Elizabeth Chandler, the girl who lived next door, in 1876.

The couple lived at Moravia, 10 Bath Road where they raised their family of four sons, William, Kenneth and Norman, and a daughter Grace.

William died at his Bath Road home on Sunday November 3, 1901. The announcement in the local press noted that ‘although a prominent townsman [he] took small part in local government.’

mortuary

William designed the chapel, mortuary building and caretakers lodge at Radnor Street Cemetery in 1881 where he was buried twenty years later. He must have liked how it all turned out! Susannah died on March 21, 1903 and is buried with her husband.

chapel in the snow

The best bits of the Baptist Tabernacle building materials were sold off. The portico was bought by artist Stanley Frost, the columns, bases and façade wall went elsewhere. People had big plans, which sadly never came to fruition. Then in 2006 Swindon Borough Council bought back the remains at a cost of £360,000 but so far, their plans to incorporate them into a town centre regeneration project have failed to materialise and these remain in storage.

William Henry and Susannah Read

Radnor Street Cemetery Walk

We were delighted (and somewhat overwhelmed) to welcome more than 90 visitors to the cemetery for our first guided walk in two years.

The sun shone, although there was a chill in more exposed areas, and cardigans and coats were donned at various points, but no one seemed to mind.

One local family joined us across their garden fence in Kent Road with waves and smiles, proving that a cemetery walk can include humorous interludes as well as respectful remembrances.

Our thanks to everyone who joined us and our apologies to those we didn’t get around to speaking to (or got called away mid-conversation). It was wonderful to see you all.

We will be publishing a list of dates for more walks during the summer months.

Our thanks to Royston Cartwright, Swindon history friend, for his photographs, published below.

Mrs Annie Brooks – a remarkable family longevity

When Annie Brooks died in 1907 The Gloucester Citizen published some interesting facts and figures and it would appear that Annie came from a line of long lived ladies. Her mother died at the age of 98 and her grandmother at 105. Now of course, I wanted to know more about these women and it would have helped me enormously if someone had thought to insert a few names, but I was up for the challenge!

First I began to pin down Annie’s son George. George had been resident in Swindon since at least 1871 when he appears on the census returns as living at 20 Fleet Street with his first wife Elizabeth and their baby daughter Adelaide.

George was born in Bristol in 1846 the son of Joseph and Annie Brooks. In 1851 the Brooks family were living in Berkley Square, Bedminster and continued to live at various addresses in Bedminster through the 1850s, to the 90s when Joseph died. Annie moved to Swindon to live with George and his family and appears with them on the 1901 census returns. So now I needed to find Annie and Joseph’s marriage to discover her maiden name and possibly access her mother’s name.

Joseph and Annie were married in Bristol at the church of St. Philip and St. Jacob on September 4, 1842. Annie’s maiden name was Stock and when George gave her details to the enumerator at the time of the 1901 census he said his mother’s birthplace was Tidenham, Gloucester. It was here that I found her baptismal record on 29th December 1811. Her parents were Nicholas and Joan Stock so now I needed to find their marriage. This took place on April 4, 1795 at Kenn Juxta Yatton when Nicholas Stock married Joan Taylor.

Now you’d be surprised at just how many Joan [Joanna] Taylors there were living in Somerset/Gloucestershire in the second half of the 18th century (and we know this family moved about a bit) which rather put the kibosh on tracing the last lady in this trio of long lived lovelies. And I was beginning to wonder about the great ages too.

On May 24, 1841 the widowed Joan Stock (Annie’s mother) married William Rawling at Kenn. Widowed for a second time, Joan Rawling formerly Stock nee Taylor was living with Annie and Joseph Brooks in Bedminster at the time of the 1851 census when she was 85 years old. She died six years later, which would have made her 91 so not quite the legendary 98, but an impressive age nonetheless, don’t you think? And as to her mother, well I’ve had to give up on that lady for the time being, but I’d like to think she did make it to her 105th birthday!

Remarkable Family Longevity

There were laid to rest in Swindon Cemetery this week the mortal remains of the late Mrs Anne Brooks, mother of Mr George Brooks, a Great Western Railway official, of Park-lane, Swindon, who passed away at her son’s residence at the ripe age of 96 years. It is interesting to recall the fact that the deceased old lady’s mother died at the advanced age of 98 years, that that lady’s mother, Mrs. Brooks’s grandmother, lived to be 105 years old, so that the united ages of mother, daughter, and granddaughter totalled 298 years.

The Citizen, Friday April 5, 1907.

Burial Registers

Brooks, Annie 97 years 22 Park Lane burial 30^th March 1907 grave plot E8522

The insurance policy

George Adams

The re-imagined story …

I still associate the Antiques Roadshow theme tune with childhood bath nights. My brother always says for him it signalled the end of the weekend and school on Monday morning; he hated school.

Our mum was a big fan of the programme but who would have thought we might have anything valuable in our council house home.

“My aunt Ethel gave this to me in case I ever had an emergency,” mum told me as she slipped the Artdeco brooch into my hand. “She found it in the lining of an evening bag she bought from the pawnbrokers in Wellington Street just before the war. She told me the stones were blue diamonds and that it was really valuable. She said old Mr Adams couldn’t have possibly known it was there, so what he didn’t know, he couldn’t grieve over. She kept it as insurance for the time she would eventually leave uncle Fred.” As it turned out she never had to leave uncle Fred as he died first.

Well if there was ever an emergency we were in the middle of one now.

After nearly thirty years of marriage mum had walked out on dad. My brother and I didn’t understand exactly why; neither of them would discuss it. Dad was still living in the council house where we had grown up, but mum had moved out. First she stayed with a friend, then she spent a few nights in a bed and breakfast. I was dreading I was probably the next stop, but now she had a plan.

She was moving to the Shetland islands. No, she’d never been there but she loved the detective programme and hero Jimmy Perez and she said it felt right – she didn’t feel the cold and she never minded the rain! My brother thought she was having a breakdown.

When the Antiques Roadshow announced they were coming to Swindon, mum asked me to take the brooch along and get it valued; she couldn’t afford to take any time off work. With hindsight it would have been easier to take it to a local jewellers, but none of us were thinking that clearly at the time.

So after a sleepless night with a teething baby, I dragged myself and the said child along to the Steam Museum where the Roadshow had set up camp. If I had had any idea how long I would have to queue up I probably would have refused to go. The novelty of seeing Fiona Bruce and the familiar faces of the experts soon paled as the baby set off wailing again just as I made it out of the holding bay and into the inner sanctum where the experts sat at their tables.

The brooch turned out to be a piece of paste jewellery; hand cut glass on a coloured foil base. A very pretty piece, but basically worthless.

Mum went back to dad shortly after that and no one ever spoke about the whole episode again.

The facts …

This elaborate headstone marks the last resting place of George Adams and is also a memorial to his wife Lucina. Lucina Adams died in 1877 and was buried in the churchyard at St Mark’s. By the time George died six years later the churchyard at St Mark’s was closed and he was buried in Radnor Street Cemetery.

George and Lucina moved to Swindon in the 1840s and George worked as a fitter in the GWR Works. George continued to work in the railway factory into the 1870s when he was then in his fifties, but sometime before 1881 he obviously had a change of occupation.

In the census of that year widowed George was living at 12 Wellington Street where he describes himself as a Master Pawnbroker.

When he died in 1883 he left an estate valued at £4,429 13s 3d to his two sons Frederick Washington Adams of 10 Gloucester Terrace and Charles Ambrose Adams of 12 Wellington Street.

Charles continued to live in his father’s house and described himself as a pawnbroker/jeweller. By 1901 he had moved upmarket to Melrose House on The Sands, just up the road from his brother Frederick. Charles died in 1957 aged 98.

Emma Lavinia Watson – formerly of Eynsham

Now my Radnor Street Cemetery colleague Noel and I thought it was quite a coincidence when we realised we both had connections with the village of Eynsham in Oxfordshire, but imagine my surprise when I discovered the story of Mrs Watson, born and married (twice) in Eynsham but buried in Radnor Street Cemetery.

Emma Lavinia Goodwin was born on July 30, 1844, the daughter of Charles Goodwin landlord at the Royal Albert and brewer at the Crown Brewery, Eynsham and his wife Harriett. Emma was the couple’s fifth child and at the time of the 1851 census the family lived in Newland Street, a long street lined with stone built properties large and small, that ran from Mill Street and out of Eynsham to Cassington.

Emma married Harry Gibbons (farmer and butcher) by licence on June 4, 1861, shortly before her 17th birthday. Marriage by licence usually indicates a desire to marry quickly and unobtrusively and it looks likely that young Emma was already pregnant. Harry was the son of James Gibbons, farmer, grocer and another brewer with premises in the High Street. Was this a union of two brewing dynasties?

At the time of the 1871 census Emma was living at Acre End Street, Eynsham where today stone cottages rub shoulders with brick built ones crowding close to the narrow road leading to St. Leonard’s Church. By 1871 Emma was just 27 years old with five children, Harriet 9, Maria 8 (staying with her aunt and uncle on census night) Frederick 6, Sarah 4 and 3 year old Jane. She was already widowed, her husband Harry having died in 1867 aged 30. But Emma didn’t rush into a second marriage, which is quite unusual for the time. A young woman with five children to support often remarried within 12 months but perhaps Emma’s extended family helped to support her financially.

Maria Gomm nee Gibbons (Emma’s daughter) and her husband Thomas

Emma eventually married in the December quarter of 1873. Her second husband was carpenter and joiner George Watson. They continued to lived in Acre End Street where the Watson children soon began arriving! At the time of the 1881 census living with Emma and George were Jane Gibbons 13, Emma’s youngest child from her first marriage, and Augustus Watson 7, Lavinia Watson 4 and three year old Mary Watson.

Then, towards the end of the 1880s the family moved to Swindon where George most likely took up a job in the GWR Works. When the census was taken in 1891 they were living at 50 Clifton Street with their five Watson children, two of whom, William and Charles, had been born in Swindon.

When George completed the census returns in 1911 he made a bit of a mess of the form with numerous crossings out and alterations. The family were now living at 29 Tennyson Street and he records that he and Emma have been married 38 years and had 7 children all living. He lists Jane R. Gibbons, his stepdaughter, as being present on census night but then crosses out her name and adds ‘Croydon, Surrey’ so presumably this is where she was living in 1911. Staying with the couple on census night were their married daughter Lavinia Deans and her five year old daughter Ruth.

William Watson, Emma’s son – founder of Watson’s Typewriters Ltd., Glasgow.

Emma made Swindon her home for about 30 years and the funeral report indicates she contributed to community life at St. Mark’s Church.

Emma died aged 70 at her home in Tennyson Street on June 26, 1915 and was buried in plot E8626F on July 2. She shares the plot with her youngest son Charles Watson who died the following year aged 27. George Watson, Emma’s second husband, died in 1916 and was burried on December 6 in the neighbouring plot E8626E.

Death of Mrs G. Watson

The remains of the late Mrs G. Watson, of 29 Tennyson street, whose death occurred on the 26^th ult., were laid to rest in Swindon Cemetery on Friday, July 2. Deceased, who was 70 years of age, was a daughter of the late Mr C.A. Goodwin, a brewer, of Eynsham. During her residence in Swindon she took a great interest in the life of St. Mark’s Church, and she will be greatly missed by a large circle of friends. The first portion of the service was held in St. Mark’s Church, Canon A.G.G. Ross officiating. The rites at the cemetery were performed by the Rev E.A.W. Topley (All Saints’’) and the choir were augmented by that of All Saints’ Church, deceased’s eldest son bearing the cross. The inscription on the breast-plate was: “Emma Lavinia Watson, died June 26^th, 1915, aged 70 years.” The chief mourners were Mr. G. Watson (husband), Messrs A., E., W. and C. Watson (sons), Mrs. T. Gomm, Miss J. Gibbons, Mrs W. Robinson and Mrs E. Davies (daughters) Mrs and Mrs L. Deanes (son in law and daughter), and Mr E. Watson (grandson). A large number of friends were also present. There were numerous floral tributes.

The Oxfordshire Weekly News, Wednesday, July 28, 1915.

The tall chimneys to the left (High Street 25 Jan 1886) belong to Gibbons brewery –

I recommend a visit Eynsham online.