Thames View Estate, Barking.

Image via WikipediaAfter the floods of 1953 when Creekmouth, where most of my family were born and brought up, was badly damaged the local council decided to build a new estate called Thames View which was situated about a quarter of a mile from it.Most of the residents of Creekmouth moved there when the old cottages in the village were demolished in about 1956.The photograph shows the factory which was next to the the village in Creekmouth. It was originally Lawes Chemicals which built the cottages in Creekmouth for its workers.

My parents Mary and Jack moved to the new estate with my fathers parents in 1956 and that is where I spent the first forty three years of my life.My dad was called Jack even though his real name was Edward. To this day I don`t  understand why.

Thames View was like living on an island really. It had just two exists off of it and was surrounded on two sides by an industrial estate and on one side was the extremely busy A13 and on the other side was waste land and a dump.The estate had about two thousand properties. Houses, a few high rise flat`s and some maisonettes and low level flats.

It was a council estate so there was poverty and all of the problems that go with that but to me it was home and I never really took much notice of that. I felt at home there and safe.In many ways it was like living in a village as everyone tended to know one another and there was a community spirit. People cared and   and were there if anyone needed help.

Most of my relatives lived on the estate which looking back was nice as you grew up with those you cared about.My dads family was a large one so you often encountered relatives on your daily life around the estate.

We lived with my dad`s mum until I was eleven when she died. That wasn`t easy as she could be difficult as she frankly drank for England and would often come home drunk.Mind you she was a character and although very small she was large in personality.

I have recently discovered that she lost two young children, one in quite tragic circumstances so with hindsight I can understand why she often resorted to drink.Not so much drowning her sorrows in drink but drowning sad memories I should imagine.

I left Creekmouth when my mum died in 2004 and have regretted it ever since. I miss the people there and the feeling of  being safe that I had when I was there.It has a reputation as a hard, crime ridden place but I always thought that the vast majority of people there were decent, hard working and had the right values and I think that it doesn`t deserve the reputation it has. I miss it to this day and where ever life takes me I will always think of it as home.

Fanny Amelia Sedge.

Fanny Amelia Sedge in middle.

Fanny Amelia Sedge was born in Gillingham in Kent in 1870 to James Miller who was born himself in the town in 1837 and a Caroline Miller who was born in Lambeth, London in 1846. Fanny had one brother Henry James who was four years older than her, disabled and born in Lambeth, birthplace of their mother.
Fanny was my great, grandmother.As my parents were cousins she was my mum`s mothers mum and also my dad`s.Fanny`s father James was a master on the Thames Sailing barges which ferried goods up and down the Thames and along the east coast in the eighteen and nineteen hundred`s.Fanny spent most of her childhood living on a Thames sailing barge with her father and the rest of her family.
I have information that they spent some time on the All Hallows barge which was destroyed by a straw fire off Harwich on a trip to London on the 27th, May 1889.They also spent sometime on the Stoke barge which was built by William H Lake at Northfleet, Kent in 1859 and completed in the famous Medway race in 1874.
Fanny went onto to marry a grave digger called Charles George Sedge in Bobbing in Kent in 1886. Charles was in fact known as Sage then until the family moved to Barking in Essex when the family name suddenly became Sedge. I think this was probably down to the fact that they  had a Kent accent and people probably wrote the name has it sounded.
For some reason that I have not been able to find out the family came to live in Barking during the early nineteen hundred`s and quickly settled at Creekmouth in the town which was a collection of cottages built by Lawes Chemicals which Charles Sedge worked at until he died.
Charles and Fanny had seventeen children in total together fourteen of whom survived to adulthood.Fanny outlived Charles by about thirty years and died at the age of ninety in 1953. The photograph of the little old lady in the photograph is of her not long before she died.I never meet her as she died before I was born but from what I have heard she was a fantastic character and someone who my mum adored.She must have been really strong despite her small statute as she lived through two world wars, much poverty, had seventeen children and still lived till ninety. Sadly they do not make women like that anymore..

James Stone.

James Stone was my great grandfather. He was the first of my family on the Stone side to live in Barking. I never meet him as he died in 1949 nine years before I was born but from what I have learned about him I think he must have been quite a character and I would have loved to have meet him.
He was born on the fourteenth of November eighteen hundred and sixty one in Saxlingham Nethergate in Norfolk in eastern England.He had three brothers and one sister and came from a poor family. His father was a farm worker.He moved down to Barking on the edge of the eastern side of London between eighteen seventy one and eighteen eighty one as he is first shown living in a the house of a  someone he worked with at the local gas works with his future wife Emily Hisee and their two sons Charles and James.Emma`s mother was a member of the Revell family and although I haven`t been able to prove it yet I have some evidence that James came down to Barking with a member of her family.
Emma and James got married and went onto have six other children, Henry, my grandfather, George. Mary Ann and Emily who were twins, William and Ernest.William died at the age of eight and is buried in Rippleside cemetery in Barking.Emma survived until 1896 when she died I suspect having another child but I haven`t been able to prove that yet.
James seems to have moved on from Emma`s death pretty quickly as on the 1901 census he has a Catherine Long living with him as a "lodger" with her daughter Nellie.I now know that Catherine Long was his lover and Nellie his daughter. Nellie was actually registered as Nellie Stone.Nellie was born in eighteen ninety nine but William, James`s son from his marriage with Emily, is buried with a Frederick Long who died at the age of seven months in eighteen ninety eight so I suspect that they had another child before Nellie.Catherine is a bit of a mystery as I have three surnames for her Long, Stone and Mead.I have no evidence that she married James so she may have just used his name for decency purposes as in those days it was frowned on living with someone out of wedlock and it may have been that she had been married before but I haven`t been able to find any evidence for that so far.
Soon after Nellie was born Catherine seems to have disappeared from James life and I have little evidence of what happened to her.I know that he carried on working at the local gas works until he retired and died still living in Barking.He is buried with a Elizabeth Mary Stone who died at the age of forty three in October nineteen forty three and another Elizabeth Mary Stone who died aged seventy nine just after he did in August nineteen forty nine.So it seems likely although I haven`t been able to prove it yet that he married again and had another daughter.
From family stories about James it seems that the man was a one for the ladies as they say and I would love to find out just how many wives and children he actually had both lawful and otherwise as I suspect I still haven`t uncovered them all.There was a rift between him and his children and I suspect that was because he had a roving eye so to speak.When my grandfather was asked when his father died where he thought he should be buried he said that as far as he cared he could be buried on the local rubbish tip so there seems there was no love lost there!
When you look into your family`s past and find things about various members you never meet you tend to build up a picture in your mind of what they were like. Although James was I suspect not one of natures good guys I think he was a character and must have had something about him to attract the ladies attention like he did. I would have loved to have meet him and seen for myself exactly what that was.

My Family.

Image via WikipediaMy mum and dad were in born in a place called Creekmouth in Barking which is in Essex just beside the River Thames.The photograph is the barrier on the Creekmouth which protects the area from flooding.My parents were born in cottages that were once nearby. They were first cousins as my mum`s mother and my dad`s mother were sisters.
My dads family The Stones were originally from Saxlingham Nethergate in Norfolk. The Sedges who were my two grandmothers family came from the Borden area in Kent.My mum`s Fathers family the Hussey`s originally came from the Honiton area in Devon.
Although the three families were from wildly different parts of the country from the late eighteen hundreds most lived in and around the Barking area.
In this blog I will be writing about the my family, its roots and its history.I have been researching the families history for about six years and I will tell you about those things I have found out and the mysteries that I have found and still not resolved.