Butcher John Seward was born in Dunsford, Devon in 1835. In 1861 he was living in London when he married Mary Jane Connett at St Dunstan’s Church in the West, Fleet Street.
The newly weds set up home in a fishy part of London with butcher John Connett, no doubt a relative of Mary Jane. They all lived in Fish Street Hill in the parish of St Margaret New Fish Street, which runs at the back of the Monument to the Great Fire of London.
In subsequent years they lived in Haggerston Road, Hackney and Paignton Road, Tottenham. Then, after more than 30 years living and working in London, John and Mary retired to Swindon and a property in Ashford Road that they named Devonshire House.
John died in 1903 and was buried on July 25 in grave plot E8606. He was later joined by his son-in-law John P. Jackson who died in 1905 and his wife Mary Jane Seward who died in 1906.
After my walk around St. Mark’s churchyard recently I began looking for family connections between there and Radnor Street Cemetery. And If you’ve ever pursued a line of family history research beyond the bounds of a possible resolution you’ll probably empathise with me!
The closure of the churchyard at St Mark’s in 1881 was not well received by Rev Ponsonby. (You can read his letter to his parishioners published in the parish newsletter here.) And how distressing it must have been for God fearing families to be buried separately.
Having come upon this stylish headstone to Richard Gwyther who had died aged 14 in 1875 I wondered what had happened to the rest of his family.
Now a name like Gwyther piqued my interest too. In the 1860s the GWR opened a Rolling Mill at the Swindon site, which saw a great many Welsh iron workers move here. Was the Gwyther family part of this first Welsh migration? Well actually no it wasn’t.
Research revealed that the boy’s father, also named Richard, was born on April 22, 1818 not in Wales but in Bristol. Richard was a boiler maker working in the iron and steel ship building industry. He married Caroline Cooper at the church of St Mary le Port in Bristol on May 14, 1843 and for more than 25 years the family continued to live in Bristol.
I eventually found the couple in Swindon on the 1871 census when they were living in Westcott Place, four years before the death of their son Richard.
Richard and Caroline remained living at 90 Westcott Place where Richard (senior) died in 1884. He was buried in grave plot A161 where another son James later joined him. Given the stylish headstone in St. Mark’s churchyard I was surprised to discover Richard and James buried in an unmarked public grave.
In 1891 Caroline, then aged 70, was living with her married daughter at an address in Wootton Bassett in an area at the back of the church near the Rope Walk. She died in 1897 and was buried in grave plot 285 in Royal Wootton Bassett Cemetery.
I did eventually find the Welsh connection – I knew there had to be one! Richard (senior) was the son of Stephen Gwyther, a clock and watchmaker, and his wife Sarah. This couple had married at St. Paul’s, Portland Square, Bristol in 1801, but Stephen was born in 1781 in Jeffreyston/Jeffreston, a village in Pembrokeshire close to Tenby, a popular TRIP destination for Swindonians in the 19th century – but don’t get me started on that line of research!
A family of Belgian immigrants have left their name to a beauty spot in Rodbourne Cheney, possibly one of Swindon’s best kept secrets.
Plaum family history facts can be gleaned from notes on the 1911 census made by George Jacques Plaum. At that time he was newly married and living with his wife Catherine and his younger brother Robert Maximilian (who he describes as ‘feeble minded since birth’) at 489 Ferndale Road. He also adds that his father was German and his mother English and that the family had been resident in England since 1888.
Matthias and Clara Plaum had lived in Antwerp, Belgium from at least 1882 to 1887 during which time their children Georgius, Ernestus, Joannes, Robert and Frederick were all born. As George states in 1911, they have been living in England since 1888, so it should be possible to find them on the 1891 census.
On August 25, 1893 Matthias was admitted to the Wiltshire County Lunatic Asylum in Devizes where he sadly died on October 13. Now it was up to Clara to support three sons, one of whom could not work due to a disability. In 1901 she was living at 21 Vilett Street where she worked as a dressmaker. George 19 is employed in the GWR. Younger brother Frederick 13 claims he is a Railway Fitter and Wheel Turner. It is more likely he was an apprentice or perhaps a labourer. Robert is 15 years old. Life was obviously very difficult for them. The Radnor Street Cemetery registers state that Clara died in 1908 at 29 Villett Street aged 48 years. She was buried on December 10 in a public grave with two other unrelated persons.
But by dint of hard work and an entrepreneurial talent, George Plaum and his family prospered.
He purchased the Rodbourne Bathing and Boating Pool in the 1920s with financial help from a Bristol business man. The lake, like the one in Queens Park, began life as a clay pit feeding Victorian Swindon’s rapacious brick making industry. Quarrying came to an end when diggers hit underground springs and forced the closure of the clay pit.
By the 1920s the lake offered a number of leisure activities including swimming, boating and fishing. An additional income was derived from entrance and camping fees and refreshments. Grass, grazing and allotment fees brought in £5 7s 6d in 1925.
Today Plaum’s Pit is home to Plaum’s Pit Angling Club who can be contacted via their website.
Image of Drove Road taken c1926 and published courtesy ofLocal Studies, Swindon Central Library.
Emma Louisa Newberry died in 1964 aged 96 years. Emma was born in Guernsey in 1867. She had lived through almost a century of enormous social change including two world wars, the second of which saw the German occupation of her former island home.
Unfortunately, I can find out very little about her family background, not even her maiden name, but I will continue to research.
By 1893 she had married Ernest Walter Newberry, a gas fitter, quite probably in Guernsey where he was also born and raised. Emma’s Swindon story begins in 1894 when her daughter Gertrude May was baptised at St. Mark’s Church on May 27. Emma and Ernest, who was employed in the GWR Works, then lived at 28 George Street. In 1901 they were living at 54 Dean Street where their second daughter Clarice Louise was born. In 1939 Ernest and Emma were living at 86 Drove Road, their last home together.
Emma outlived not only her husband Ernest but both her two daughters as well. She died in the Isolation Hospital, Swindon on May 17, 1964.
Emma was buried on May 22, 1964 in grave plot B2669 which she shares with her husband Ernest who died in 1940, her daughter Clarice Hallard who died in 1958 and her son-in-law Herbert Hallard who died in 1948.
Her elder daughter Gertrude May died in 1954 but she is not buried here in Radnor Street Cemetery.
Today it is so easy to begin your family history research. With a couple of clicks of a laptop mouse you can enter a whole world of internet possibilities. Of course, there are pitfalls one of which is mis-transcriptions with websites such as Ancestry and Find My Past littered with them. I came across some examples such as Rasticand and Reastreamy when researching the surname Restieaux.
George Francis Restieaux was just sixteen years old (the newspaper report says 18) when he died in 1881. George was born in Neath, Glamorgan but Restieaux was definitely not a Welsh name. He was the son of coachbuilder/painter Edward Alban Restieaux and Susannah Matthews. Edward was employed in the GWR Works and in 1881 the family lived at 2 Bristol Street. Edward and Susannah had married in 1854 at St Pancras Church when they both lived in that London parish. By 1861 they were living in Neath, Glamorgan where George was born in 1865. His father Edward states that his own place of birth was Norwich in Norfolk and I wondered how the Restieaux family had ended up there.
With a few clicks of that laptop mouse I was able to find Edward’s parents Joseph Restieaux and Elizabeth Tidman who married in St John de Sepulchre, Norwich in 1804. Back one more generation and I arrived at the French connection; Andre Restieaux born in Bordeaux about 1740 who married Marguerite Magdalaine Mignot on January 6, 1766 at St Anne’s, Soho.
There is, however, only so far you can get with internet research and at some point you have to look at original documents. It would be interesting to discover what Andre’s occupation was and how he and Marguerite ended up in London, but that is a task for someone else out there. But beware of the pitfalls.
The first burial service in accordance with the rites of the Roman Catholic Church in the new cemetery was performed on Saturday last by the Rev Father Eikerling and the members of the St. Cecilia Society, of which deceased was a member. The body of deceased, George Restieaux, aged 18 years, having been removed from the house of his parents to the Roman Catholic Chapel in Regent Street, the service, which throughout was choral, commenced, lasting close upon an hour, when the body was removed to the hearse and conveyed to the cemetery, accompanied by the Rev Father Eikerling and his attendant acolytes, the relatives and friends and members of the choir and society. At the cemetery chapel the service was resumed by the singing of the Requiem aeternam of Cacciolini, at the close of which the officiating priest preached a brief sermon, in course of which he reviewed the life of deceased and his connection with the St. Cecilia Society. The procession having been reformed, the corpse was borne to the grave, the choir singing the “Miserere,” concluding with the Requiem aeternam. At the grave the singing, which was particularly effective, was brought to a close by the singing of the anthem “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”
The former Roman Catholic Chapel painted by local artist George Puckey in 1890
Despite a rather elaborate funeral service, young George was buried in Radnor Street Cemetery in a public grave, plot A353, where he lies alone.
His father Edward died 14 years later in 1895 and his mother Susannah in 1912. Both were buried in separate, public graves. Edward in B2434 and Susannah in B1609. George’s brother John Valentino Restieaux died in 1928 and was buried in grave plot C61, another public grave.
What was life like for the ordinary people who lived and died in Swindon at the end of the 19th century? So many were incomers, attracted to the town by the many opportunities presented by the Great Western Railway Works and the affiliated jobs that grew up around it, including the food and vibrant retail industries. Some families put down roots and stayed, others moved on. The Jeanes family did both.
Widowed Mary Jeanes appears to have arrived sometime in the 1870s with her daughter Ellen 21 and her 15 year old son (Frederick) John. The family were originally from North Petherton, Somerset and arrived in Swindon via Bridgewater.
By 1881 they were living at 46 Regent Street where Mary’s son worked as a Master Baker. Frederick married and settled down in Swindon. His sister Ellen married Frederick Barnstaple/Barnstable and left. By 1891 they were farming at Llantarnam, Monthmouthshire.
Mary Jeanes died in February 1887 aged 65 and was buried in grave plot A1038. When Ellen and Frederick’s 15 year old daughter Florence Nelly died in 1888 they chose to have her buried with her grandmother Mary in Radnor Street Cemetery.
You can spend a whole lot of time on research when a particular fact piques your interest. This most recently happened to me when I was researching Sarah Judd who died at her home, 27 Havelock Street in 1883. For the past 140 years she has been resting in this sunny spot in Radnor Street Cemetery but before that she had lived in a great many other places.
Sarah was born in 1821 in Palling, Norfolk, the daughter of James and Rosetta Hicks. She married Frederick Judd in Chatham, Kent on January 17, 1850 and at the time of the 1851 census Sarah, Frederick and their baby son James were living with Sarah’s parents in Gillingham, Kent.
During the next 10 years the family moved about – a lot – their six children born at various addresses in Kent and Hampshire. By 1861 Frederick was employed as a Police Constable and they were living at No 19, Archbishop Place, a leafy suburb at the top of Brixton Hill, Lambeth. In 1862 their daughter Elizabeth was baptised at St Matthew’s Church, Brixton and in 1866 a second daughter Harriet was also baptised there.
The Tate Library, Brixton, Lambeth.
I grew up in Brixton in the 1950s and 60s and I know exactly where St Matthew’s Church is; it’s just a stones throw away from the Tate Public Library where I spent a lot of my childhood. Elizabeth was born some 30 years before the library was built in 1890 and 100 years before I used to borrow books there. One of my favourites was the stories about a little girl called Milly Molly Mandy who had the kind of life I wished I had. I used to carefully colour in the pictures before I returned the books.
Milly Molly Mandy and a picture in need of my careful colouring skills
The Judd family had arrived in Swindon by 1881. Frederick had long since left the police force and was working as a house painter. Still living with Frederick and Sarah were James 30 (born in Kent) Sarah 21 (born in Hampshire) and Elizabeth 18 and Harriet 15 (both born in Brixton).
Basking in the sunshine, the leaning headstone has a large ants nest obscuring the last inscription, probably the name of Sarah’s husband Frederick who died in 1907 at his home, 53 Crombey Street.
And buried in this plot in 1944 was their daughter Elizabeth, the little girl born in Brixton more than 161 years ago. I shall call round and say hello next time I’m passing.
This is the last resting place of Jane Martinelli who died in 1893 aged 65. From the brief details on the gravestone I wondered if Jane and Thomas might be Italian. I discovered that Jane was born in Worcester, the daughter of Benjamin Oseman and his wife. Jane married Thomas Martinelli, a coach builder, at St. James the Less, Ashted, Warwick on September 22, 1857.
Thomas, it transpires, was descended from an Italian family famous for making barometers and thermometers and was the grandson of Louis/Lewis Martinelli born in Como, Italy c1761-1771. Louis/Lewis made wheel barometers and thermometers and was also a carver, gilder and print seller working at 82 Leather Lane, London from 1803-1811 (an address associated with several branches of the Martinelli family).* Sadly, Louis/Lewis died in Lambeth Workhouse in 1845 aged c 84, and described as a pauper.
A Lewis/Louis Martinelli Japanned Mercury Wheel Barometer – sold by Bonhams Skinner 2020
Jane and Thomas don’t appear to have had any children. Tracking them through the Victorian census returns revealed they lived in Manchester and Birmingham before arriving in Swindon. In the 1891 census Jane and Thomas are living at 13 John Street, Swindon. Thomas worked as a Railway Coach Builder and gave his place of birth as St. Pancras, London.
The year after Jane’s death Thomas married again. He died in 1905 aged 74 when his last address is given as 15 Vilett Street. He was buried with Jane in grave plot E7158 on April 8. There is plenty of space on the gravestone for an additional inscription, but obviously no one got around to it.
Radnor Street Cemetery 