I continued my mission, while in London, to visit places specific to my ancestors and that involved a considerable amount of working around, 19 klms in full. My first port of call was the orphanage with my ancestress Eleanor Caroline Barton had grown up in, close to where I was staying in Whitechapel, at 66 Great Prescott Street. Nothing is as it was. Modernity has crushed all that was for my peoples homes. Just a grand building with no antiquity. The man at reception knew nothing of the history of this place. I carried on retracing the steps of my ancestors. I was excited to at last approach the church of St Sepulchre, family church to my Bartons, when they had lived in Cock Lane just beyond. Quite a lovely church, associated with blessing those being taken from the jail to their execution, the bell which rung for them still to be seen in a glass case. A grand organ. The fine baptismal font with its faces of cherubims where our Barton babes were baptised. Cock Lane was again ultra modern and lost to its past, although one building retained the name of an old inn 'The Saracens Head' and at the other end of Cock Lane was reference to another old pub 'The Fortune of War', a golden statue of a naked boy high up there on a plinth, he being a symbol of gluttony (it was gluttony which was thought to be the cause of the Fire of London). This last mentioned pub had been a hang out for former body snatchers. As I had researched, body snatching was quite a thing locally in days gone by. The pub had a special room in which the dead bodies were laid upon benches around the walls, bearing the names of those who had stolen them from whichever graveyard, awaiting surgeons to come and buy whichsoever they wanted. Cock Lane was not only famed for its ghost called 'Scratching Fanny', but was another locale associated with prostitiutes. One prostitute, named Clarice, born in 1732, was early on educated in the finer arts of the profession (a courtesan one may say then) and was the areas most famous 'harlot'. She died of the pox at the age of 43. Just a little further along was the old Smithfield live animal market (now of dead animals only). This used to be the place of execution. Even wives would be sold here till as much as the early 1800's. Further beyond still was Cowcross Street, where also my people had lived. Cocks and cows, all connected since very old times to livestock sales. More of my families lanes I now walked, again all modernised and lost to their past - the former Field Lane where had lived my Bartons and Bunneys. Only their family church of St Andrew had kept its historical roots. I had another church to visit, that one overlooking Trafalgar Square, St Martin in the Fields, which by the time I got there was closed. This was where my Hannah Bunney married her sailor Philip Barton in 1814.
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While staying in London, I visited the area where had lived my Harbridge ancestors, at St John's Court, just off Half Moon Alley. I had already seen on the map that this place no longer existed, but still I wanted to experience being where once had been their home. On arriving at Half Moon Passage I did indeed locate the original place, although it was not named and was just a dead end way between high ugly modern buildings, a place of bins and extractor fans, with not any clue of its olde worlde past. The dead end, once a throughway, was now blocked off by big buildings, Standon House and the Abokado restaurant beside it. Opposite was the now named Little Somerset Street, the same shape as when it had been the original Harrow Alley and Cimber Yard. Yes I had for sure found my ancestral place. Here had lived William Harbridge and Elizabeth née Minsham (Elizabeth being the furest back I had got on my matriarchal line). Their daughter, Sarah, was 13 when she married 21 year old Robert Bunney, a cooper by profession, the newly wed couple also living with Sarahs parents at St Johns Court. I next walked to the family church close by, that of St Botolph Without Aldgate, which I'd walked past a little earlier and had recognised, yes, this was one of our churches. The church was closed, but on the steps sat a bunch of people listening to a man talking. I assumed they were a study group; it was later, reflecting on his words, that I realised this was a guided Jack the Ripper walk. That which I heard: This church had been a hang out for prostitutes, in that they would continually encircle it, strolling round and round, until clients, who were in the know, would approach them. To be able to even do such a trying profession they would drink cheap gin. That was all I heard. I walked around a little garden area to the side of the church, where maybe tramps slept, and as I observed, youngsters were skateboarding in an adjacent park. William Harbridges family, before living at St Johns Court, lived at Cradle Court, just off Aldersgate Street, where was yet another St Botolph Church (there were four St Botolph churches in London). At the Aldersgate St Botolph Church, William Harbridge was baptised in 1738, his parents being William (senior) and Mary Harbridge. When William (the younger) was 23 he married at this same church to Elizabeth Minsham. Cradle Court, I couldn't locate this time round, but did read a reference to it being in these times occupied by warehouses. Nor did I get to visit that specific St Botolph Without Aldersgate church (they were all called 'Without' due to being just outside the town walls). Elizabeth Minsham was 22 when she married William Harbridge in 1763 and it was a quick wedding, by a paid for allegation rather than banns, because Elizabeth was already four months pregnant and beginning to show. It was then at St Johns Court that this family lived and raised various children, in total six girls and one boy, the address of St Johns Court being mentioned in all their baptisms and the church being St Botolph Without Aldgate. Sarah was their second daughter; the others were Elizabeth, Joseph, Mary Jane, Christian and her twin sister Jane. There is another record showing residence at St Johns Court in regard to Sarahs husband, Robert Bunney, who voted using this address during the Westminster elections in 1874. In politics Robert supported Charles Fox who was a radical whig anti-slavery campaigner, advocating individual liberty and religious tolerance. It was on another day that I returned to St Botolph Without Aldgate church; it now being open.
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AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Categories
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