The Farringdon BAVAGES
All Saints Church
The Bavages - a family with close ties to Farringdon village
The Bavages are unusually closely connected with Farringdon as the "whole of his family were born and bred in the same cottage, and educated in the same school by the same teacher".
The head of the family, Antony Bavage, was laid to rest in 1913 in a public funeral reported in local and national press. (See Obituary)
An Aldershot photographer recorded the sombre procession for the newspapers as the cortege followed its route from The Drift, past the Rose and Crown, down Crow's Lane towards All Saints' Church.
The pallbearers wore agricultural smocks and his beloved cob followed the coffin.
An extract from that week's Alton Gazette noted
"He passed away from an illness which was caused by an accident in which his chest was crushed about two years ago. That the whole of his family were born and bred in the same cottage, and educated in the same school by the same teacher, is somewhat unique. They have gained the general respect of their acquaintances, both high and low, through a steady devotion to duty and a strict maintenance of self-respect. The funeral may well nigh be considered a public one. "
The funeral cortege started from the cottage at 2.45, the brown cob saddled and bridled, the deceased's faithful companion and friend in so many journeys and for so many years, followed next to her friend and master in this, his last sad journey; then came six sons and two daughters, with daughters-in-law, grandchildren, and relatives. Then followed Mr Edward B Kennedy, Deanyers, and Dr Briscoe, Messers Rainger, Pyke and Warner, the farm employees, and a considerable number of friends and acquaintances."
His son, Henry, started his working life as a groom for the Kennedy family at Deanyers.
Edward Kennedy was the grandfather of Sir Ludovic Kennedy, OBE, distinguished broadcaster, journalist and author.
As a young boy Ludovic would spend summer holidays at his grandparent's country home, just a matter of miles from his school in .
Years later in his autobiography On The Way to the Club Sir Ludovic recalled the smell of apples, flour, and cows as he stood in Hall Lane surveying the countryside.
Both his grandfather and father proved to be very good shots and often welcomed the Farringdon Rifle Club to Deanyers.
A photograph thought to date from 1912, shows Mr Kennedy and Mrs Kennedy sitting in the centre with her dog on her lap, and Mr and Mrs Stopford of Tylers. Henry Bavage knew his future bride from an early age.
Susan Bavage, born at The Drift, was his cousin and they went to school together.
They spent many years walking out together.
Henry and many other fit young men from Farringdon and Chawton signed up to work for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad company and went to Canada to make his fortune.
It was hard work and perhaps not as well paid as he thought. He came back to Farringdon and claimed his bride in 1913.
They rented a cottage at 4 Lilian Place in Lower Farringdon. It was one of three rows of cottages named after Lilian, Kathleen and Florrie - the builder's three daughters.
The couple had six children. Daniel, born a year later in 1914, Harry a year later in 1915, then a break for the First World War followed by the arrival of Mary in 1920, Hilda in 1921, Bill in 1922 and six years later along came Hilary Margaret - known to all in the village as Peggy.
It was a bit of a squash so the eldest son Daniel slept at his grandmother's house at night and came back to the family home in Lilian Place during the day.
Daniel lives with his family in Alton, Harry sadly passed away in 1998, Mary lives in Wrecclesham, Hilda made a home in Scotland with Jock her wartime sweetheart from searchlight camp, Bill returned to live in Farringdon recently and Peggy has lived most of her life here apart from a brief spell in London.
Henry Bavage served in France during the First World War in the Royal Army Service Corps, forerunner of the Royal Logistic Corps and returned home to his family.
After the war he also worked as a barman at the Royal Oak across the Gosport Road.
The Royal Oak was the focus of most village activities as it had a corrugated iron shed used to serve food to holiday makers heading for the south coast and a large field out the back for fetes.
It hosted the 1935 Silver Jubilee of King George 5th and Queen Mary, and in 1937 the coronation of King George 6th, and again for his daughter's coronation in 1953.
Charabancs full of East Enders stopped off at the pub on the way down to Fareham for the day.
A little worse for wear, the group would stop at the pub on the way back for a drink are pictured here dancing gramophone music.
The enterprising local Andrews, Bullen and Bavage children living opposite the pub would quickly gather a few pretty garden flowers and pad them out with bluebells and stinging nettles to sell for four pennies to the unsuspecting city folk.
Competition was fierce with youngsters undercutting their competitors. Money earned in this way was an important boost to the housekeeping.
Harry Bavage left the village school at 14 and a year later Miss Cook, the Sunday school teacher, arranged for Harry to leave home and work as a chef for a friend at Brede near Hastings in their guest house and café.
Harry only returned to the village in 1930 to attend his father's funeral in 1930.
Sadly Peggy has only a few memories of her father, who died at the age of 45 from pneumonia when she was only two-and-a-half years old.
She recalled: "He used to ride his bicycle to the Avenue Nurseries in Weston Common every day. He came home one day wet through and could not dry out. Within a week he was dead."Her mother Susan faced a difficult time raising six children on her own. She remained a widow for 45 years.
She was a founding member of the Women's Institute and was a member until the time of her death in 1955.
The WI offered women of the village a chance to meet with friends and socialise.
Children were left to play outside and forbidden to peer inside while the serious business was going on inside. Peggy thinks her first official outing was to the August meeting.
The meetings were held at Farringdon House, Kitcombe Lane the home of the President Mrs Boyce.
Henry Bavage's mother Harriet lived nearby in Kathleen Place. The well for fifteen cottages was in her back garden and she enjoyed chatting to neighbours as they came to collect their daily supply.
Life in 4 Lilian Place was very different from today. There was no piped water, electricity or gas. There was a row of communal toilets or dunnikins at the end of the gardens.
Fancy mail order catalogues sent home by aunts working in service in London and newspapers were cut up for toilet paper. Oil lamps provided light and rag rugs gave a little warmth to the lino flooring. The kitchen floor was brick.
The cooking range took up one side of the kitchen and a large copper boiler in the shed was used to heat water for washday and bath night.
Bill Bavage, who lives in 12 Eastview Gardens with his sister Peggy, recalls Saturday night was bath night. All six children used the same water in a tin bath in front of the range.
Lilian Place flooded regularly and was very damp. A local newspaper report in 1936 highlighted the irony of housewives wading through floodwater to queue up for water from the well in Kathleen Place.
Families laid sandbags at their back doors to keep the muddy water out and used the window as a door. When grandmother died in 1932 the family moved into her slightly larger house in Kathleen Place.
Rent was 4- 11s 3/4 a week.
Gas, water and electricity all arrived at the same time in 1934. There was one tap for Lilian, Kathleen and Florrie Place.
The larger houses in Upper Farringdon had water storage tanks at the top of the house filled by hand pumps. The family swapped oil lamps for gaslights - one open flame in the front room and one in the back. The gas meter took pennies and later on shillings.
"I remember the gas also the water being laid on about the same time in 1934. Until then we relied on a well which supplied 15 cottages. On Sunday nights white clothes were put into soak ready for Monday wash day when the copper was lit in the shed, buckets and saucepans filled with water."
Harry Bavage remembered as a ten-year-old pupil when the school moved in 1925 from the Old School House in Hall Lane to the new school Massey's Folly.
Peggy said: "We remember when they refurbished the village hall and the many fetes, socials and dances. On one occasion Richard Aylward gave each child at the school one shilling to spend at a fete at Deanyers, the home of Ludovic Kennedy's grandparents and where my father worked as a groom and coachman. All my school days were spent at this school with the same headmistress, Mrs Compton."
Mrs Kennedy was a school governor and would visit the school regularly. On one occasion she asked for the best boy and best girl in the school to come forward, and presented a red barber shop pole patterned pencil to the two children brought back from a trip to Europe.
There was plenty going on the village for people without transport to get to nearby Alton. Ladies and gentlemen's cricket teams, the Men's Club at the village hall, the WI, cubs, scouts, guides, and PT instruction were all available.
Families attended All Saints' Church often twice a day and children went to Sunday school and went on special outings.
Holidays were out of the question for most working families, and the highlight of the year would be an excursion to Southsea on the train.
It seemed like a long walk to East Tisted for the little ones before the halt was built at Farringdon.
The constant flooding of the terraced houses in Lower Farringdon put the family at the top of the list for one of the brand new council houses built in Crow's Lane.
Named Council Cottages, they were later renamed Eastview Gardens. The family moved in on Race Day 24 March 1939.
The race drew entries from soldiers based at the nearby garrisons of Aldershot and Bordon.
The new house was heaven compared to Lilian Place. The three-bedroomed house even had an inside loo - no more candle lit trips down the bottom of the garden.
The first six houses were built with gas, and the next six with gas and electricity. A year after they paid for electricity to be installed in 1955 so "mum could have a television" the council laid on supplies to the remaining houses.
We tend to think shopping on the Internet is a great modern convenience, but in the early 1930's a representative from the International Store or the Co-op in Alton would cycle round the village taking orders, which were later delivered.
Landowners and gentry shopped at Channon and Harris. The village shop at the crossroads of Hall Lane and Gosport Road carried a wide range of essentials if you ran out of goods between the weekly order, but at a price.
Mrs Phelps the schoolteacher owned the shop and was helped by her son Arthur. Later Ethel Bavage ran the post office. Reeds the butcher was next door.
At one time a hairdresser cut hair in the post office.
Sadly the village shop closed in 1996.
Milk from Hall Farm or Benny Chiverton was delivered door to door. .
Peggy worked as a nanny for the Rogers family spending wartime in the relative safety of Gills House in Upper Farringdon. She shared duties with the Aylward and Charrington family nannies.
She went on to work as a home help and was proud to receive a silver medal from Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of 40 years service to Hampshire County Council.
Her brothers and sisters all joined up. Harry Bavage spent the war in the cook house and overseas in the Burma campaign.
His sister Hilda started a romance with a Scottish soldier stationed at search light camp up on the hill behind Stank Lane. Hilda married her sweetheart and left to live in Scotland.
Evacuees from Portsmouth, Southampton and London stayed in the village and a bomb fell on Aylward's Mill showering grain everywhere, which fed the hens for weeks.
Harry Bavage returned to 12 Eastview Gardens after the war and had a great love of Farringdon and was there to help set up fetes, the flower shows and bazaars and for many years he looked after the graves in the churchyard where so many of his relatives and friends were buried.
He became a bricklayer in Civvie Street and worked with a friend on the Leconfield Estate in Petworth. His old van transported Mary Shaw's choirboys and others on outings to football games. With Bill Pink he helped to run a Thrift Club at the Rose and Crown.
The next great celebration to bring the whole village together was the Coronation in on 2 June 1953.
The day began with Holy Communion at the church followed by a special service by the Reverend C G E Burgess.
A tree was planted to mark the grand occasion donated by Mrs McLeod of Farringdon Place. Everyone crammed into the village hall straining to catch a glimpse of Jock McCrossan's black and white television set.
Peggy remembered: "It was only a little tiny thing but everyone crammed in to try and have a look. It was an overcast day and I remember my nephews getting a bit fidgety so I took them home to have dinner."
Children dressed in patriotic costume paraded for the fancy dress competition on the field behind the Royal Oak, enjoyed children's sports and then tucked into a free tea.
Colonel R L Shaw proposed a royal toast at the village hall and the daylong celebration ended with a dramatic firework display.
The hall came back to life in 1995 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day. Villagers danced the night away to swinging wartime tunes dressed in Forties fashions. The menu offered rabbit, bully beef and black market goods.
The BAVRIDGE Family
1 Introduction
This document summarises the results of my research into the history of my paternal grandmother's family, the Bavridges. Unfortunately, this research has been far less fruitful than that into some other branches of my family, and there are many mysteries in need of illumination; the resulting document is thus far shorter than others I have produced! My primary source for research has been the Bavridge family bible, the bare details contained in which have been fleshed out with information from censuses and other sources. Recently I have been able to supplement this with information from parish records. There is obviously still much work to do...
2 Origins
The surname has certainly evolved from Bavidge through Bavage. The Penguin Dictionary of Surnames doesn't mention Bavidge or Bavridge, which isn't a good start. It seems likely that the original form of the name was the same as that of related surnames such as Baveridge and Beveridge, the latter of which does have an entry suggesting it is a nickname coming from the Old French word for someone giving or receiving liquor to clinch a bargain. Interesting, but not much help!
My earliest reference is to the baptism of Moses Bavidge, son of Richard and Elizabeth Bavidge, in 1775, and that seems a good place to start.
3 Richard Bavidge
Three men (Richard, George and William) with the surname of Bavidge lived in the village of Chilcomb, just outside Winchester, between about 1775 and 1785. I've no idea where they came from, what they did, or why they left, but while there they left their marks in the parish register. I'm guessing they were brothers. Richard had two children baptised there, Moses in 1775 and Molly in 1782.
4 Moses Bavage (1775 - 1863)
Moses was baptised at Chilcomb on 26 Feb 1775, and lived his life as a labourer. He probably travelled around the area in his early life, and was noted as "of Micheldever" on his marriage to Mary Withers on 17 May 1803. This took place in Farringdon in Hampshire, just south of Alton, and it was there that the family lived for the rest of their (long) lives.
Mary was the daughter of John and Mary Withers of Farringdon, and I have tentatively traced her family back to her great-grandfather Edward Withers who was born about 1682. The family probably lived north of Farringdon, near Chawton.
Moses and Mary had at least eight children: Henry (bap. 29 Dec 1805), Mary (4 Jun 1809), Caroline (13 Oct 1811), Moses (6 Feb 1814), Thomas (28 Oct 1816), Daniel (12 Sep 1819), Anthony (28 Jul 1822) and Amelia (11 Jul 1824). They were still living in Farringdon with Daniel and his family at the time of the 1851 census, and lived long lives. Moses was buried on 6 May 1863 at the grand old age of 89, and Mary a year later at the age of 81.
4 Anthony Bavridge (1822 - 1898)
Anthony Bavridge was born in 1822, the fifth and youngest son of Moses and Mary Bavage. He almost certainly grew up in Farringdon before moving to London in the 1840s, where he earned his living as a carman, presumably engaged in transporting goods or people across the city. On 8th April 1849, he married Eliza Cains at the parish church of St. Mary's in Lambeth, Surrey. Eliza was born on 10th December 1820 in East Barnet, Hertfordshire, the second of six children of George and Ann Cains. George was a labourer, and probably moved his family to Lambeth sometime in the 1830s. The marriage was witnessed by Eliza's eldest brother, Charles, and her youngest sister, Jane.
At the time of the marriage, both Anthony and Eliza gave their address as 2 Broad Street, though this street does not appear on today's A-Z. By the following year, however, they had moved to 34 George Street (another location which no longer exists), where their first daughter, Mary Ann, was born on 22nd August 1850, and where they were still living at the time of the census the following year. At that time the house at 34 George Street was shared with another (larger) family, and it is likely that Anthony and Eliza and their baby daughter merely occupied one room. The householder was Henry Beveridge, a horse keeper who came from Northington in Hampshire, a village just north of Alresford. His wife, Emma, came from East Barnet, and they had three young children together with two boarders, one of whom (William Howard) was a carman from Farringdon like Anthony.
My speculation is that Eliza and Emma had been friends in East Barnet, and that the Bavridges took a room in Henry and Emma's house after they married. Whether there is any link between the Bavridge and Beveridge names I couldn't say, but it is surely no coincidence that a horse keeper and a carman would be living together, and I would guess that young William Howard came up from the country to assist Anthony (and maybe Henry) in their work.
The next few years saw regular additions to the family: Sarah was born on 15th March 1852, Eliza on 7th June 1854, Caroline on 5th May 1856, Anthony William on 7th July 1858, and finally George Frederick on 7th June 1861. All were born in Lambeth, though I haven't found them in the 1861 census, but at some point between then and 1871 the family moved out to Croydon.
The 1871 census finds a complete change in circumstances for the Bavridge family, who are living at the Canterbury Arms at 52 Sumner Road, Croydon, where Anthony is a licensed victualler. Mary Ann is not listed (perhaps in service - she died the following year on 8th November 1872 at the age of 22, though I know no other details), but all the other children are still at home. Anthony continued to keep the Canterbury Arms for some years, there is an entry for him (Anthony Baveridge) in Ward's Directory of 1874, but by 1880 he has disappeared from the lists.
The 1870s saw Anthony and Eliza's family beginning to spread their wings. As noted above, Mary Ann had already left home in 1871. Sarah was the next to go, marrying Thomas Matthias, an undertaker from Clapham Junction, on 17th February 1876. Caroline married Frederick Arthur Nash on 25th March 1878, and on 1st July 1880 presented her parents with their first grand-child, Caroline Frances Nash, known as Carrie.
Disaster struck at the end of 1880. Caroline never recovered from giving birth to Carrie, and died on 27th December. Worse still, her husband, Frederick, died on 18th March the following year, leaving the nine-month old Carrie an orphan. I would assume that Carrie was looked after by her grandparents for the next couple of years. At a time of great upheaval for the family, their eldest son Anthony William married Sarah Morris just a month after Frederick's death, on 18th April 1881.
What little I know of the familiy's fortunes in the 1880s comes from an entry in the Norwood News of Saturday 5th May 1888:
THORNTON HEATH
Suicide in Zion-road - On Thursday night the coroner's officer (Sergeant Brown, 1 WR), was informed that a fishmonger named Arthur William Baveridge, residing at 1, Woodside-cottages, Zion-road, New Thornton Heath, had committed suicide by hanging himself in his own stable, at the rear of his premises, at 3.30pm on Wednesday. The deceased was formerly a beerhouse-keeper at Tadworth, and son of Mr Baveridge, late proprietor of the Canterbury Arms, Thornton Heath. He had been somewhat strange in his manner for some time, and in consequence of depression of trade it is said that he had often threatened to hang himself.
Note that the reporter, in that time-honoured tradition of journalists, managed to get the unfortunate chap's name wrong.
This event must have been even more traumatic for the family, and the next few years were to see the end of this chapter of the family history, with the passing of one generation and the baton being passed to the next. Eliza Bavridge died unmarried on 26th June 1891. Sarah Bavridge died on 24th December 1893; unfortunately the family bible does not make clear whether this was Sarah the wife of Thomas Matthias, or Sarah the wife of Anthony Bavridge junior.
By 1894, Anthony and Eliza were living at 40 Addington Road in Croydon, where Eliza died of bronchitis and “natural decay” on 16th January at the age of 73. Anthony himself passed away on 5th April 1898, dying of an abdominal carcinoma, and leaving his youngest son, George, to take the family into the new century.
4 George Frederick Bavridge (1861 - 1903)
George was born in Lambeth on 7th June 1861, and moved to Croydon with his parents in his early years, growing up seeing his father run the Canterbury Arms in Sumner Road. Nothing else is known of his formative years.
On 13th October 1891, he married Kate Amelia Talmage in East Hanney, Berkshire. Whilst at first sight this might be thought to be an odd liaison, bearing in mind the distance between Hanney and Croydon, it should be pointed out that Hanney is less than ten miles from Farringdon in Oxfordshire, which may well be the Bavridges' family home (see above).
Kate Amelia was the eldest daughter (fourth child of nine) of William and Sarah Talmage, and was born on 8th March 1870 in East Hanney. William's family had been dealers in East Berkshire for many years, originating in the Hungerford area as horsedealers. William himself had been a general dealer before opening a shop in Hanney in the mid 1870s.
George set himself up as a beer reseller (I suspect that today's equivalent would be to run an off-licence), at the Shakespeare at 1 Grove Terrace, 121 Handcroft Road, Croydon. The business was run by Kate, leaving George to pursue a career as an engineer. Their family eventually numbered five daughters. First was Florence Eliza, born on 24th July 1892. George's mother died in 1894, and around this time the young couple also took responsibility for raising George's niece, the orphaned Carrie. Next to arrive was Mary Ann May (born 14th May 1895), followed by Kate Amelia (born 20th October 1896, but died just after her first birthday on 11th November 1897), and finally Marjorie Emily (born 5th August 1898).
George and Kate saw in the new century, but their life together was cut short when George died on 2nd May 1903 at the age of 41. One relative remembers being told that he had been fond of a drop of brandy (at 4/- a bottle!), and that this had been a contributory factor in his death.
Kate Amelia remarried in 1908, to William (Fred) Holland, a journalist, but he died in 1916 (also alcohol-related!) and she then brought up the family on her own, continuing to run the off-licence until 1930, when she sold the business to Mann, Crossman and Paulin. She died of “obliterative endarteritis” on 26th October 1938 at the age of sixty-eight. The Bavridge name had died with her youngest daughter's marriage in 1922.
5 The Daughters
I know little of what happened to Carrie, but believe she married a man called Herbert, and had two daughters. The rest of the family seem to have lost contact.
Florence married Sidney George Holdsworth in 1918 or 1919 and lived at 16 Queenswood Avenue, Thornton Heath. They had two children. Both have families and grand-children of their own. Florence died on 12th January 1943.
Mary Ann May married Leslie Nicholson King on 20th June 1917, and had two children: Peter (born c.1918) and John (born c.1920). She died soon after (in 1921 or 1922) and Leslie, a coal, corn and seed merchant, and later a bookmaker, brought up the children on his own (his housekeeper became his common-law wife). Between 1963 and 1965 he owned a racehorse called Flying Bee, though it doesn’t seem to have been very successful. Peter died around 1955 and John around 1965, and as far as I am aware, neither were married. Leslie died in about 1970.
Marjorie Emily married Hedley Charles Brock at St Peter's Church in Croydon on 11th February 1922, and also had two children: Norman Hedley (born 28th February 1923), and Phyllis Mary (born 28th July 1925 and died unmarried on 19th January 1957). Hedley had a variety of jobs including making tennis racquets, but the family's main work was in the retail trade, running shops in Sunbury and Weybridge, particularly tobacconists. Hedley died on 28th February 1981, and Marjorie on 17th March 1987, after retiring to Sussex.
Version 1.3 – updated 3rd October 2003
© 2003 Robert H Brock