Part 2
Last week, I was discovering the line of ancestry of my grandfather, Clarence Carver (known by his middle name George), who was born in Lodsworth in Sussex. This was the heart of the Sussex countryside, one of a vertical line of parish villages, Lodsworth, Selham and Graffham that was home to the Aylings, the Rapsons and the Carvers. The Ayling family and the Rapson family produced George Carver. He was part of Lodswoth life until he moved away in his late teens to become a groom on a mansion estate near Oxted in Surrey where he met Ada Spillett and that was where my father was born in 1912.
Conversations with my father, Bill Carver, about his childhood and early family memories were very limited. They never extended to his fathers’ siblings who I grew up knowing nothing about.
Now, for the first time, after some limited research, I am discovering an extensive network of second cousins from my grandfather’s brother and sister, William James and Evelyn Daisy.
William, named after his father, was older than his brother by two years. In the Census return for 1901, William was 17 and described as a Labourer on the farm where the Carver family were living, Smith Brook Farm in Lodsworth. My grandfather was 15 and was working as a Newspaper Boy. This surprised me a little because it must have been a considerable newspaper round given how widespread the population in this parish probably was. This was the age of the newspaper and journals and there was probably an evening paper as well.
While George decided to leave his home village and spread his wings, William remained in this part of Sussex all his life. He went on to marry a girl from a village near Chichester and had a large family who were brought up in Lodsworth.
William married Rose Baigent in April 1904 in the parish of Lurgashall, a village close to Lodsworth.
Register entry for William and Rose, 1904 (GRO, copied from Ancestry.co.uk)
I have been using an Ordnance Survey map, one inch to the mile, published in 1970, and I can see all the villages of the Carver family life of this period in one small circle with only a few miles between each village where they lived, married and died. If Lodsworth is the centre then Selham and Graffham are to the south, Lurgashall to the northeast and Singleton to the south west. These were villages that sat amongst rolling hills and downs to the north of what is now the South Down national park.
Rose Baigent was the daughter of John Baigent, a Labourer. In the 1909 Electoral Register for Lurgashall I discover William, my great uncle, living in a house described in the register as ‘South of the water’. On my OS map there is quite a large mill pond to the south of the village. I went on to The National Library of Scotland to look at their map section online. I found a 25 inch to the mile map and found a corn mill and a large farm with a few buildings and possible houses.
William was on the Electoral Register alone because Rose would have to wait another ten years before she also could vote. Only men could vote at this point in time.
When they were married, William described himself as a Gardener, and seven years later, in the 1911 Census return, William was then a Cowman on Farm (his words), living in Bishops Cottages in Lurgashall.
William and Rose had four children in 1911
Dorothy Frances aged 6
Kitty aged aged 5
Nellie May aged 4
Albert aged 2
If we look at the 1921 Census return, I discover that William and Rose Carver’s family have grown. There was now:
Ivy Jean aged 9
Annie Edwina aged 2
Dorothy was not listed in 1921 because she was not living there on the day of the count. She may have been visiting somewhere. However, my guess is that at the age of 16 she might have been in service and living in where she was working. There is an interesting note in the column relating to education and attendance at school. Albert does not attend full time school due to ill health, but it does not say any more than that.
The family had returned to Lodsworth where William was working as a Farm Carter, on Heath End Farm in Gill Lane.
The only other record of the family that I can find is our old friend, the 1939 Register which was not a Census but a list of everyone living in England and Wales to ensure that the Government knew who was living in the country and available for war time employment and other resources.
William and Rose had moved to Hambledon, not a big distance from Lodsworth, but a bigger move than they had made before. William was now a Gardener for a private house and Rose was keeping house. Only one of their children was still with them, Ivy Jean who was then 27. Also living with them was William’s father, William senior, who was described as ‘incapacitated’. At the age of 83 this should not be surprising. William junior is also listed as a Special Constable.
William senior, my great grandfather, lived for another 5 years and died in 1944 in Hambledon.
So, a recap of my great uncle William’s family.
| William James Carver my great uncle | 1884 – 1944 |
| Rose Baigent my great aunt | 1883 – 1956 |
| Dorothy Frances | 1904 – 1984 |
| Kitty | 1906 – |
| Nellie | 1907 – 1985 |
| Albert | 1909 – 1984 |
| Ivy Jean | 1912 – 1983 |
| Annie | 1919 – 1999 |
I thought I would have a quick look to see where William and Rose’s children’s lives led them.
- Dorothy left Lodsworth when she married Richard Colgate. Richard was a chauffeur in Bletchingly, a small village to the East of Redhill, only 3 or 4 miles from where I lived during the 1960’s with my parents. Dorothy lived in a house called Chez Nous in Barfields, Bletchingly for all her married life. The 1939 Register shows only one other person living in the house (Irene Brodie born in 1908) but there were four other people whose names have been redacted. This is because that at the time that the Register was released to the public, those people might still have been alive. This tells me that Dorothy and Richard may well have had four children. The Electoral Register also shows that there were other Colgate family members living in houses either side of Dorothy. What puzzles me is that my father never mentioned that he had a cousin called Dorothy living up the hill not far from us. Dorothy died in May 1984.
- Kitty also left Lodsworth, to marry a farmer. Kitty married Norman Haines in April 1929 in Lodsworth. Norman was described as a Farmer, as was his father. He was living in Lodsworth at the time of the marriage, but he and Kitty moved into their own farm in Headley, near Liphook in Hampshire. I cannot yet find evidence of how big a family they had but in the 1939 Register there is one redacted line under Kitty and Norman’s names.
- Nellie May, at the age of 19 married Edwin Chandler, a Shepherd aged 27. They were married in Bepton, a village southwest of Midhurst. So, not too far from Lodsworth. Nellie was living there at the time, and I can only presume she was in service. Nellie and Edwin were married in February 1927. Edwin did not remain a shepherd. In the 1939 Register Nellie and Edwin had moved to Weybridge and were living in a cottage in Old Avenue, St George’s Hill, Weybridge. If you search this address, you will discover that it is now one of the wealthiest districts in the UK and the sort of property that Nellie might have been living in has been replaced with houses that are valued at over 2 million pounds. Edwin was described as a Private Gardner and so I am uncertain if he and Nellie were living in a tied cottage. I think that Nellie had a child because there is a redacted entry beneath her name, and living with her is her younger sister, Annie Edwina who was described as a Drapers Shop Assistant. The Only other document I can find is Nellie’s Probate entry. Or perhaps the Probate entry of a Nellie May Chandler because it needs to be verified. She died in December 1985 and left less than £40,000 in her will. She had been living in Wandsworth in Daphne Street, a maisonette.
- Albert was also married in Bepton in 1930. He married Edith Hards. I have little information about their backgrounds when they married, only the entry for their Banns which were read out in church over a three-week period. Albert and Edith also moved to Weybridge where they were living in Thames Street. According to the 1939 Register, Albert and Edith also had a child (again this entry was redacted). Albert was working as a Metal Machinist. He died in December 1984 and was living in Walton on Thames at the time.
- In the 1939 Register, Ivy Carver was the only child of William and Rose who was living with them in Hambledon. She was 27 years old. So, this is how the 1939 Register worked, Ivy was a single woman with no dependants. She was enlisted into the Land Army, and she worked with Pigs and Forestry in the Land of Nod, Headley, in Hampshire. She did this for two years between 1941 and 1943 by which time she had married a man called Prescott and her Land Army card states that she had retired. He was James Prescott. There is a photo of a metal headstone in Ontario, Canada that I found on Find a Grave.com that tells me that James Prescott died in 1979, and Ivy Jean died in 1983. Ivy had married James in 1943, and my guess is that he might have been in the Canadian army and Ivy met him locally where he was stationed, embarking after the war to live in Canada.
Ivy Carver, Women’s Land Army, 1941 (copied from Ancestry.co.uk)
- This brings me to the last of William and Rose’s children, Annie Edwina. Annie was living with her sister Nellie in Weybridge in 1939 working as a shop assistant. She married Albert Moorey in January 1942, and she died in Surrey in 1999. I have found little other detail about her life.
Personally, I find this all amazing. Until I spent the past few days researching William and Rose Carver’s family, I had no idea that I had a great uncle with all these second cousins. I knew nothing about him and heard nothing about him. My father never discussed this side of the family with me and my brothers and sisters, if, that is, he knew much about them in the first place. My grandfather had moved away from Lodsworth in the beginning of the 20th Century to live in Oxted. He lived there and close by in Limpsfield for the rest of his life. This branch of the Carver family seem to be close knit especially when Dorothy, Nellie, Albert and Annie all living and working in the Weybridge are of Surrey, near the Thames.
Next week I might surprise myself even more when I research the lives of Evelyn Carver’s family.