Ancestral villages

This morning my cousin Kevin picked me up early in the morning to escape the London area before the rush hour traffic was too heavy.  We drove a couple hours to West Berkshire to visit the towns and villages which our ancestors knew.  The weather was warm and sunny, a perfect day for our trip into the bucolic countryside.

Our first stop was the largest of the four towns we visited... Hungerford, with a population of around 6,000 people.  It is crossed by the Kennet and Avon Canal. 

None of our ancestors actually lived in Hungerford, but it was the location of the regional poor house, the Hungerford Union.   My great grandmother, and our great-great-great grandfather had the misfortune of spending some time in the Hungerford Union.  Today, all that remains of the poor house is the chapel.

My ancestors probably traveled this street as they were taken to the poor house.

The nearby town of Lambourn, population 4000, is noted as a center for horse stables and horse racing.  The small town is dominated by its church, St. Michael and All Angels.  There is mention of the church in records from the tenth century, but the oldest parts of the present church date back to Norman times in the late twelfth century.  The rest of the structure dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth century.  Most of the stain glass windows are from the Victorian era.  For such a small town, Lambourn has a remarkably beautiful church.

Although our ancestors did not live in Lambourn, many of the family members were baptized in this church.

One and a half miles down the road from Lambourn is the tiny village of Eastbury.  This was where Kevin's great grandfather and my great grandmother (brother and sister) were born.  Kevin believes that this little row house was their home.

  
Today it has a pretty garden, a satellite dish and new windows.  But imagine that in the 1800s there were at one point eleven people living in this house... our great-great-great grandparents, our great-great grandparents and their seven children.  

Running through the village is the Lambourn River which is hardly more than a creek.  However the river is prone to overflowing its banks, and in the heavy rains that  plagued much of England this past winter, there was flooding.

There are still many houses with thatched roofs.

This house was in the process of having its roof re-thatched by a company that advertises itself as "Master Thatchers".

Eastbury did not even have its own church until the late 1800s, hence the reason why my great grandmother, Kevin's great grandfather, and their siblings were baptized in Lambourn.
However, our great-great grandfather is buried here in an unmarked grave.  Poor families such as our ancestors could not afford a gravestone.

We stopped for lunch in Eastbury's pub, The Plough.  I had eaten there when I visited the village in 2009.  The same waitress was working there, and she remembered me.  On my previous visit I had told her about my genealogy research.  Her family has lived in the area for generations.  Her ancestors and mine were apparently good friends, because her great-great grandfather's name appears as a witness on the marriage document of my great grandparents.  It's a small world, but not entirely unexpected given the small populations of these villages.

From Eastbury it is only one mile to the village of East Garston, the home of more of my ancestors.  Portions of East Garston's church date back to Norman times.  In was here that my great grandparents, John and Fannie Paintin were married.  (Fannie would have been Kevin's great-great aunt.)

 

Our ancestors were agricultural laborers.  A few generations earlier they would have probably been called peasants... and maybe generations before that, serfs.  As I said, they could not have afforded gravestones.  However, John Paintin's father, William, served as the parish clerk.  So the church provided a marker for him and his wife Miriam.  The weathered inscription is difficult to read, but still legible.  Here I am by the grave of my great-great grandparents.

My ancestral villages today seem quite idyllic.  But I have to wonder what they would have looked like 150 years ago, when the roads were probably of dirt, and sanitation was probably poor.  

***My apologies if all of this genealogy stuff is confusing.  Believe me, at times it makes my head spin, trying to keep track of all my ancestors!***