1700s Spittal Street People

It is very difficult to find home or business addresses for anyone in the 1700s so all references are precious! Look too at my post on 1700s Chapel Street people here as the two roads are a continuation of one another and our Marlow ancestors made no effort to properly distinguish between them. They sometimes used "Chapel Street" or "Chapel End" to refer to the entirety of Spittal Street and Chapel Street and vice versa.

John Carter  - tenant of a cottage 1721-31. A man of this name was sentenced to death for highway robbery in 1730 but a public appeal lead to a reprieve. More on this here.

Anne Garnett - widow tenant of house 1700. This came with a plot of land and barn but she may not have had access to them as the barn at least previously had been separately occupied from the house.

John Gibbons - tenant of a cottage 1721. Gone by 1731.

William Gunnell - owner and occupier of cottage 1710. He also owned the cottage next door occupied by Peter Silver. Wife Mary. I don't seem to have recorded his baptism when I looked at the original parish records but Find My Past has a Bishops Transcript record of a "William Gonnell" baptised 1674 to a William and Elizabeth which MAY be the baptism of this William  him https://www.findmypast.co.uk/transcript?id=GBPRS%2FBUCKINGHAMSHIRE%2FBAP%2F000823538. A William Gu(n)nell senior died at Marlow in 1727 and a William junior in 1760. Probable marriage of William of Chapel Street is to Mary Wye 1705 Great Marlow .

Robert Malday - tenant of a house 1761.

John Phillips - tenant of a property 1721.

J Phillips - could be same as above. Paid £4 a year rent in 1731 for his cottage in Spittal Street. Next door to the property John Phillips above was in earlier. A John Phillips lived in a "Chapel Street" property owned by Abel Bird in his 1733 will. This may be the same property due to the perpetual confusion between Spittal Street and Chapel Street in the past. A John Phillips was an innholder in Marlow 1742 but Phillips was a common last name so the two Johns may not be the same man or even closely related.

1710 Peter Silver, gauger. A tenant of a cottage 1710. Next door neighbour of the Gunnells. Probably died this year.

William Weedon tenant of a property 1717. 

Compiled by Charlotte Day. 

To find posts about the 1700s residents of other Marlow streets, a recreated 1700-99 trade directory and other 1700s Marlow material see this index.

Edwardian residents of Spittal Street, household by household Part One and Part Two

All mentions of any person on this blog can be found on the Person Index pages on the left hand menu.

Compiled by Charlotte Day. ©Marlow Ancestors. 

Will of Christopher Dominick Esquire 1762

 Christopher Dominick Esquire of Great Marlow.

Proved 1762. Written 1760.

Says he has good health in his body and a sound and perfect mind, memory and understanding [this sort of information was put in as a matter of routine to prevent anyone challenging a will by alleging the writer was sick and delirious or of wandering mind when they wrote it].

Commends soul to God and asks for a decent burial at the discretion of the will's executors.

Niece Frances Dominick youngest daughter of brother Thomas Dominick the copy hold or customary messuage or tenement standing near Durham Green, Chiswick currently lived in by the Right Honourable Lady Am...ale and all the barns, stables, yards, orchards, gardens, backsides, ways, waters, commons, pastures, profits, commodities etc that go with it. Subject to the custom of the manor of the prebend of Chiswick. Also all the furniture and household implements in that messuage, plus the furniture and implements removed from that house when he leased it to the Lady.

Also to Frances all his pieces and parcels of plate and linen in the house Christopher dwells in.

To Frances and also other niece Sarah Dominick who is also daughter of his brother Thomas his messages and their appurtenances in the parishes of St Clement Danes and St Mary Le Strand [in London]. These are in the occupations of Thomas (Vigues?) Esquire, Joseph Davies a tailor, John Boon a milliner, Elizabeth Nicholls (unreadable occupation possible something maker), William Wilkes innholder, Mathew Hamsey a joiner, Richard P...ley a tailor, Thomas Gardner brazier and William Sellwood or their under tenants or assignees. The nieces will hold these properties jointly as tenants in common. They to pay out of their rental income for these £20 a year to Christopher's brother Thomas to be paid in quarterly installments. If any payment is 20 days late or more Thomas or his assignees may enter into the properties and take what he needs to make up the worth of the money owed plus any costs incurred in the legal process [this was a normal will clause and does not imply mistrust of the nieces].

Brother Thomas gets all wearing apparel too. Executors to deliver this to him within one month.

To all the servants who may be living with him when he dies one year's wages on top of any due to them anyway. To be paid within one month.

All rest of goods, chattels, debts owing, ready money, any stocks in any company or in public funds, bonds, any other personal property (after any debts, the funeral costs and the legacies paid out) to go to the nieces Frances and Sarah are paid who are also made the executors of the will.

Witnessed by James Digweed, Giles Hancock and William Deeley.

This P.C.C will was transcribed and then summarized by me Charlotte Day from the original held at the National Archives Kew.

Note= in the 1760s in Marlow there was a lace dealer called Giles Hancock and a grocer called James Digweed who may be these will witnesses. I suspect William Deeley may have been a lawyer.

Christopher Dominick was the executor of his father Andrew's will which will appear on the blog in the future. Andrew won a grant of a coat of arms for the family in 1720. He was apparently the first of the family to live in Marlow after having married Joan / Jane Langley of the town.

All mentions of any person on this blog can be tracked down on the A-Z Person Index. There is a Will Transcription Index for more posts like this.

©Marlow Ancestors. You are very welcome to use my transcription summary for family or local history purposes with credit to this blog.

Edwardian Cambridge Place Marlow

A now completely vanished Great Marlow address. The Place was formed of just 4 houses off Cambridge Road Marlow (next to where Eton Place is today). It was accessible on foot from both Cambridge Road and Queen's Road.

Edwardian Residents (using the popular definition of the era as stretching from 1901 to 1914)

No 1: By 1907 the Adams family headed by Jemima and John Adams neither of whom originated in Marlow- he was from Middlesex and she from Sussex. They arrived in Marlow in 1892 (in 1891 they were in Taplow). At first the family did not live in Cambridge Place but in West Street. John was a domestic coachman, whilst also being the official licensee of the Saddlers Arms pub. As was common at the time a husband would take legal responsibility for a pub business but his wife actually ran the pub on a day to day basis while he followed another trade. A word of warning- There was another Marlow man with the name John Adams, a confectioner, fancy bazaar keeper and toy seller in West Street. If you are interested in this other John Adams and have come to this post by mistake don't worry- there is a full biography of John the shopkeeper on our blog here. The John of our post today gave up the Saddlers in 1903 and by 1907 his family were living in Cambridge Place. John died just after the Edwardian era in 1918, Jemima in 1941. She had moved to Flowerdene Oak Tree Road Marlow (after 1921 but before 1939) to live with her married daughter Edith and Edith's carpenter husband Edward Heatley.  There were various other children born to Jemima and John. Elizabeth (a domestic cook), like Edith lived at home in Cambridge Place or at least part of the Edwardian era. Daughter Annie had come third in the girls' running races held at Remnantz West Street as part of 1897 Jubilee celebrations. Son Charles may have worked as a waiter at the Compleat Angler hotel in the late 1890s.

No 2: Stroud family from 1902 headed by Annie and George. Later, towards the end of the era W Mitchell. George Stroud was a bricklayer. He was formerly the landlord of the Traveller's Rest pub in Dean Street (though Annie was the one behind the bar most of the time because George was working as a bricklayer. Annie took in lodgers too). The couple had had a tough time on those premises. You can read more about that here.

George while working as a bricklayer at a house in Chapel Street for Mr Wellicome in 1908 overheard the juiciest piece of gossip in the town at the time - that the wife of his work colleague John Harvey had been seen walking arm entwined with another man. This piece of gossip was being relentlessly spread by the landlord of the Chair Makers Arms in Dean Street and led to him being sued for slander by Mrs Harvey. George was one of the witnesses in the resulting 1909 court case, as was his cousin Robert Stroud another bricklayer. More on the case here.

No 3: A property with a lot of turnover= John and Harriet Janes in 1907 (gone by 1911), then Florence and Litton Smith, then at the very end of the era Emily Mead and her children.

The Janes family had previously lived in Chapel Street Marlow. John was the caretaker of the Literary Institute (now the Library) in Institute Road. He played for the Institute cricket team and for Marlow Football Club (having been poached from their big rival Maidenhead in 1896!), was an occasional rower for the Rowing Club and acted as the the escape foreman of the Marlow Fire Brigade. A busy man! The couple seem to have left Marlow about 1909 / 1910?

Litton Smith was a bricklayer who had moved from the village of Bisham across the Thames. He and Florence were a young couple with a baby daughter Flora. After his time in Cambridge Place Litton worked at the town gasworks in Cambridge Road.

Emily Mead was a young widow who worked as one of the chamber maids of the Crown Hotel. She had previously lived with her husband Arthur and various children in nearby York Road (where Emily gets a passing mention as a witness in a court case when one neighbour was said to have poisoned another's pet cat!) and then as a widow in Potlands / Portlands off West Street. Her daughter Grace in 1909 won a prize for her cooking as a Bucks Educational Committee cookery class pupil. She looked after the family while her mother was at work in the hotel. Arthur Mead had managed the grocery shop of Mathew Clifton in Marlow High Street and probably also for James Gray who took over that business in 1901. In 1904 Arthur became fatally ill despite efforts to treat him at St Thomas's Hospital in London. Collections were made locally for the support of his wife and children as they had been left without any income since the start of his illness.

No 4: Elizabeth and William Stacey, a couple who had had 19 children! Moved to this address by 1907 having previously been at Dukes Place, Oxford Road and Eton Place. William was at this point blind and unable to work any more as a bricklayer. Elizabeth was one of Marlow's midwives and thus would have touched the lives of many Marlow households. She would not have been medically qualified but with nineteen births behind her she was certainly experienced! Elizabeth and William's adult children Herbert, Harry and Ada all lived at home at some point during the Edwardian era. To read about a case when much earlier in his life William had been in trouble for fighting in nearby Eton Place see this post.

More posts on specific Marlow streets in various eras from the 1700s onwards are indexed here.

See the A-Z Person Index for all mentions of any individual on this blog. Thousands of people are mentioned.

Researched and written by Charlotte Day.

Some sources:

Marlow Directory and Almanack by Marlow Printing Company 1907 and 1915 editions.

England and Wales census Great Marlow / Marlow Urban National Archives, 1891-1911.

"England and Wales, Death Registration Index 1837-2007", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVCH-SFWC : 2 November 2021), Jemima A Adams, 1941.

Graves of John and Jemima Adams Marlow Cemetery.

1897 Jubilee celebration notes, privately held.

"England and Wales, Marriage Registration Index, 1837-2005," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVZG-S68N : 8 October 2014), Edith Adams and null, 1923; from "England & Wales Marriages, 1837-2005," database, findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : 2012); citing 1923, quarter 2, vol. 3A, p. 1920, Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England, General Register Office, Southport, England. 

Kelly's Directory of Buckinghamshire etc 1939.

South Bucks Standard Jan 22nd 1909 and 29th January 1904. The first from the British Library Archives and accessed via the BNA.