William Gascoyne – builder
April 8, 2013
William Gascoyne (1827 – 1902) – A Nineteenth Century Leamington Builder. A stonemason by training, William Gascoyne came to dominate the building industry in late 19th Century Royal Leamington Spa. He undertook a variety of projects, in public, commercial and domestic buildings, playing a prominent and important role in the local building industry, and contributing significantly to
A Wise Bequest: Henry Wise’s unplanned contribution to the development of Victorian cricket – the Wisden Legacy.
April 8, 2013
Henry Wise, Royal Gardener to Queen Anne and King George I, and garden designer to many of the great families of the time, was born in Oxfordshire in 1653. When he retired from London in 1709, he had become a very wealthy man. He settled in Warwick, buying himself a house and garden in the
The Wilkinsons: florists of Leamington
April 8, 2013
Alexander and May Wilkinson moved to Leamington from Birmingham in 1946, to open a garden and flower shop at No 9 Spencer Street. Birmingham, 1900-1946 May had always loved working with flowers, having started at the age of 12 helping in her auntie’s florist’s shop in Birmingham. It was hard work. Saturday meant starting at
Thomas William Bone
April 8, 2013
Thomas William Bone was born in Warwick on the 15th November 1850 and lived with his parents Thomas William Bromidge and Maria Bone and an elder brother Albert Robert, born in 1849, at 124 Parkes Street, Saltisford Warwick. Early Life His father had also been born in Saltisford Warwick in 1828 and was living in
The Bone family of 9 Spencer Street
April 8, 2013
1700s William and Sarah Bone lived in Saltisford Warwick in the late 1700’s. They were married around 1790 with their first child being born in 1793. Their fifth child Hannah was born on 21st April 1805. Sarah outlived William and died in Saltisford in 1848 aged 82 1805 Hannah Bone remained all her life in
Ron Ransford
April 5, 2013
Ron Ransford is a very well-known figure in Leamington. For many years, his family ran a building/demolition/recycling business in the town, and Ron has personally “seen off” a number of old Leamington landmarks during his working life.If you want to know where some significant artefact or piece of equipment from a long-vanished Leamington building, Ron
A Titanic Survivor: Florence Agnes Angle née Hughes
April 5, 2013
8th March 1876 – 20th August 1969 Florence Agnes Hughes started working life as an asylum nurse at Hatton Hospital, married William Angle, a Minton tile fixer from Staffordshire, at Warwick in the autumn of 1906, and emigrated with him to America, in search of a new life. They must have made a striking couple.
Ethel Harraden
April 5, 2013
Ethel Rosalie Harraden (Mrs Frank Glover) – 1857-1917. Ethel Rosalie Harraden was born in Islington, the older daughter of Samuel Harraden, a London and Calcutta Agent, and also a musician. She was reputed to have begun composing at the age of five, and later studied at the Royal Academy under Sir Sterndale Bonnett and Dr Dorell.
Robert William Collier
March 31, 2013
ONE OF OUR EARLY ARTICLES Robert William Collier set up his linen draper shop at number 21 Bath Street in late 1860. He was born in Cheltenham in about 1824, and was apprenticed to Robert Whitehouse, draper, of Lower Union Parade, Leamington where he appears on the 1841 census. He would have lived with other
George Matthews Bennett, Bonesetter
March 9, 2013
Bonesetter? What are, or were, bonesetters, you may ask. They were healers, joint manipulators, and setters of fractured bones, long before the advent of X-rays, Plaster of Paris, and now, MRI scans. Often unqualified other than by experience, their ‘trade’ generally ran in families, handed down from father to son or daughter. It used to
