Category: Cheesemongers and Dairies

  • A Will and a Codicil

    This week’s post is based on one piece of research that I am using that triangulates other stories from the National Archives. When my cousin Elsa died at the beginning of the Covid lockdowns, a funeral that I would not have missed under other circumstances, she also left some papers and photos that her brother…

  • Grace, before marriage.

    This week I am concentrating on The 1911 Census return for a house in Acton, London. In 1911, Grace Walker, my grandmother, before she married William Wilcox, had moved to London from Offord D’Arcy in Huntingdonshire, to lives with a cousin. The address is 39, Mill Hill Road, Acton. It is a large house, three…

  • The Cheesemongers of Bermondsey

    My Great Great Grandfather Samuel Walker could, I suppose be called a Bermondsey Boy. Born and brought up there, married in St. Mary’s Church, Rotherhithe. He was ticking some boxes there. He was not a Bermondsey Boy in the traditional sense. That sense would have its roots in the nostalgia of the 20th Century like…

  • A Question of Identity

    Is it illegal to change your name, without going through the legal route of deed poll ? Not according to the National Archives. As long as a person does not change their name for illegal or fraudulent reasons, it is not illegal to change, for example, a surname. “It is still perfectly legal for anyone…

  • Herbert Wilcox

    This is the story of Herbert and his family and my unknowing connection with his grandson. Herbert was the eldest son of my Great Grandfather John Thomas Wilcox, but not the first born. He was born in in 1874 and baptised on December 13th. That was 149 years ago. The Wilcox family were living in…

  • Uncle Sydney serves his country

    The following picture shows my Great Uncle Sydney in the garden of my Aunt Dorothy’s house in Palmers Green. He is standing behind my cousins. I have been trying to work out the year this was taken. I am the same age as one of my cousins and judging by looks I am suggesting that…

  • Grace, in her own write

    My Mother, Grace Carver (William Wilcox’s eldest daughter), often talked of the number of places and houses that she lived. I think she once told me that she lived in 26 different addresses. That would be with her parents and in married life. I can certainly make a claim to six of those addresses. This…

  • Great Aunt Ethel

    Ethel Maude Mary Wilcox was born in July 1873 – 150 years ago. She was the first born of John and Lena Wilcox, my Great Grandparents. Aunt Ethel was my Great Aunt. I never met her but my cousin Sue remembers that she occasionally visited and stayed in her parents house in Palmers Green. One…

  • Every Picture Tells A Story…………..

    Or does it ? Most pictures from the past will raise questions that can be very difficult to answer. For instance, if I was to explain that the picture above of my Great Grandfather and his six sons has no women in it, yet there were a further six siblings, five girls and another boy,…

  • I need to write about the Walkers

    I have been getting carried away as many family history researchers do when they see an interesting thread to follow. I had every intention of writing about the Walkers from Rotherhithe, the family of my maternal Grandmother. Since the publication of the 1921 Census return I have checked names against the records to see what…