These premises (as all one building not the two you see today) was the site of
the Gibbons family shop. John (baptised 1783) was running things 1820 till at least 1851. He started off as a tallow chandler before turning the business into primarily a grocery shop with a sideline in soap boiling. He also sold spirits. The premises were said to have been in the family (though it is not certain in what business capacity) by the early 1800s.
In 1833 the premises consisted of a shop, dwelling house, a candle house for making the candles that were the tallow chandler's stock in trade, 2 large storerooms, more storerooms with lofts, a granary, a barn, a piggery, a chaise house, a stable and gardens. The estimated annual value of the property was £35.
Candles were usually made in separate workshops apart from the chandler's main premises as candle making was a smelly and potentially hazardous process. John wouldn't have needed any reminder of this. A pot of tallow boiled over on his furnace and set the workshop on fire in 1825. Fortunately the fire was put out before it spread further.
John married Catherine Howard at Marlow in 1821.
On the 1851 census the couple were joined in their household by their children and a young female servant. John said on the census that he employed 3 men. Two of them were probably his sons and Catherine is likely to have served customers at least sometimes herself.
The next year John needed further help in the shop and advertised for an "active, clever and respectable man who can write a fair hand" to make himself useful in the business. In 1859 he was again in need and advertised for a man aged about 30, steady of nature, preferably married. Perhaps his previous assistant had spent too long wooing the lady customers!
John passed away in 1861, Catherine in 1858. Their sons Francis and William took over the shop. Not with great success apparently as they were an insolvent partnership in 1864. Francis seems to have died not long afterwards. William was still in business as a grocer, wine and spirit merchant and pig dealer in Marlow the next year. He obviously intended to stay put as he placed an ad in the Reading Mercury for a man to serve behind the counter and make himself generally useful in the shop but by 1871 he had moved away to Cookham Dean with his wife Emma and family. He ran a grocery shop there too. By 1881 the couple had relocated to Marylebone Middlesex and William worked as a railway porter.
After the Gibbons family left the West Street premises were used by a succession of bakers. More on them in the future when time allows.
I have identified historic occupancy of buildings in West Street by cross referencing wills, photographs, censuses (which often do not visit properties in order so can be unreliable), property records advertising, court cases etc.
Researched, photographed and written by Charlotte Day.
Some Sources:
1833 Parochial Assessment. Original handwritten notebooks held in my family and transcribed by me.
Pigots Directory 1831 and 1844. Copies from the University Of Leicester Archives.
1841, 1851, 1861,71 censuses of Great Marlow transcribed by me from microfilm.
1871 Cookham Dean, 1881 and 1891 Marylebone censuses transcribed from microfilm by Jane Pullinger.
Oxford University and City Journal 14th February 1825. Copy held at the British Library Archives and accessed by me via the BNA March 2021.
South Bucks Free Press and Wycombe and Maidenhead Journal 28th October 1865, as above.
Reading Mercury 14th August 1852, 17th September 1859, 8th April 1865. As above.
©Marlow Ancestors. You are very welcome to reuse this research or image for family or local history purposes with credit to this blog and a link here so that my sources remain credited for the information they provided. Thanks.
Photo taken November 2020.
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