Beards Of Essex

All too often family history is reduced to names and dates hanging off branches of a tree; no photo, and no sense of the person or the life they led. This is particularly true the further back you go and the humbler the ancestor, and even piecing the tree itself together involves hunting for scraps in registers and manuscripts.

Its refreshing then to find sites like The History of Witham, Essex by Janet Gyford which is packed with images of the town and its people, and transcripts of conversations with residents gone by. And here we find some Beards: George Wilson Beard, his wife Winifred (nee Newby, daughter of a manager at Hursts seed company who lived at Feering Lodge) and their children Ena (born 1915) and Arthur (born c.1907). Better than that, we have pictures and first-hand account from Ena McPherson, nee Beard.

According to Ena, George Wilson Beard was from Bishops Stortford originally. He initially had a shop in Saffron Walden, and then in 1905 moved to Witham where he opened an ironmongers at 88 Newland Street. Ena said the George was “deaf, from a deaf family”, to the extent that he didn’t serve in his own shop – that was left to Winifred, whilst George attended to the books and suppliers (Ena goes on to say that George could hear when young, but thought that there was a degeneration of a bone which ran in the family. Georges sister Lizzie was also deaf). Ena says that George was “quite particular about [the name] Wilson”.

Although Ena describes the shop as an ironmongers, they had horses in a stable for deliveries which suggests a wider range of wares (paraffin and oil were mentioned), and she says that they used to rent out crockery and glass for parties. George would go to London frequently, including trips to Chancery Lane to get crockery mended, which Ena sometimes joined. She also remembers going to flower shows – pushing Ena through the turnstiles quickly so he didn’t have to pay for her. She says that George “had twenty years in his garden in Avenue Road, when he retired” in a house which George appears to have had built. The family appear to have been church-going Congregationalists. The shop was badly damaged by fire at the neighbouring Constitutional Club in 1910, but the business recovered and was in operation for around thirty years (including two years during which the family moved to Clacton and the shop was run by a manager, though this appears to have been temporary). Early on the family had a “clover leaf Citroen” car and was one of the first in Witham to have a motorcycle with a side-car. There is mention of the purchase of “a place out in country at Hatfield Peverel”, but George and Winifrid appear to have ended their days in Witham.

Ena says that she was born in the shop, which they lived above (it was quite substantial, with 10 rooms and a live-in maid to look after the children whilst Winifred worked; it also had a balcony that George used to sit on and count the passing cars). She went to a small private school in Lockram Villas on Collingwood Road in Witham, and then to Braintree High School (which she thinks cost three guineas per term). She trained as a hairdresser on Bond Street, London and worked in Braintree for a period. She married around the age of 20 and went to live on a fruit farm in Woodham Walter, but “then the land girls came, and one of them took [her husband] away” and so after 15 years (around 1950) she and her son went back to live in Witham, initially in a flat and then at Avenue Road to look after her parents.

Ena says that her brother Arthur was 8 years older than her and went to work at builders merchants (possibly Parvins) in Kelvedon. George had wanted him to take on the shop, but Arthur didn’t want the responsibility. In an interview Vera Howell remembers Arthur and friends ferrying her and others on motorbikes up to a lake in Braxted Park to go ice skating. He never married, appears to have stayed in the family home on Avenue Road, and died aged 58.

Its possible to cement some of these details. According to FreeBMD:

• Birth – Mar 1909 – BEARD, Arthur James – Braintree 4a 861
• Birth – Jun 1915 – BEARD, Ena M – Braintree 4a 1612
• Marriage – Jun 1905 – BEARD, George Wilson – Braintree 4a 1341
• Marriage – Jun 1935 – BEARD, Ena – Braintree 4a 2439
• Death – Dec 1955 – BEARD, Winifred M – 74 years – Braintree 4a 341
• Death – Dec 1956 – BEARD George W – 82 years – Braintree 4a 339
• Death – Dec 1965 – BEARD Arthur G¹ – 58 years – Braintree 4a 402

The 1911 census also shows George “Willeon” Beard aged 36 with wife Winifred Maud aged 29 and son Arthur George aged 3.

A George Beard born in Bishops Stortford appears in Newport in 1901 (aged 26) and in Bishops Stortford in 1881 (aged 6). If this is Goerge Wilson Beard then he is connected to the Beards of Berden, whose family goes back to around 1620.

1. Presumably an error, but could be verified by ordering the certificate ↩︎