William Couch [711] 1 was born before 1731 and died after 1737.
General Notes: The Angel of Death A Short Story by Mike Brown, Dartmoor Press
It is nearly two o'clock on 12th April 1832, and two shadowy figures dressed in long black coats are about to start work. No ordinary work this, and they are abroad at no ordinary time. It is not two in the afternoon, but two in the morning!
Knight & Hyde are the men in the long black coats, the "Resurrection Men" of Buckfastleigh. This is the hour at which they normally ply their evil trade, although they would not normally venture out on such a foul and stormy night. But they have an urgent "package" to deliver later that morning. As they emerge into the little square after their long climb up the Devil's Steps from the road, they become aware of just how violent the storm is on this windswept spot perched high above the village.
The wind howls through the trees as they approach the stile at the rear entrance to the churchyard and a flash of lightning lights up the church steeple towering over them. A split second later a huge clap of thunder rents the sky...
The storm will arise and trouble the skies
This night: and the more for the wonder,
The ghost from the tomb affrighted shall come,
Call'd out by the clap of the thunder.
Knight and Hyde have already selected their “victim”. Jane Angel, wife of Philip, had been buried the previous day. Nice and fresh. Despite the atrocious weather conditions, the storm will not worry them unduly, for they are used to creeping around in local graveyards at the dead of night. After all, theirs is hardly a business which can be conducted during the day!
Feverishly they begin digging. Although nothing is going to frighten or unnerve them, they are certainly not going to hang about on such a night.
"What be that?", asks Hyde of his companion. "Zumin' moovin' in the Cabell tomb! Ye know of the legend of the evil Squire, that 'e and his 'ell 'ounds are seen abroad 'pon sich nights as this?".
"Keep digging!", urges Knight above the howling wind, "I bin in this biz'niss far too long to worry 'bout zupee stishuns and ol' wyves tales!".
Hyde obeys his friend. He is not really worried about the noise, for they have often heard strange sounds in graveyards at night, and rustlings in the undergrowth and the bushes. It was more a casual query than anything else. The movement was probably that of a fox seeking shelter from the ferocity of the tempest.
"Zure 'tis mortal stormy", he shouts, and digs on without pausing to rest, whilst his older partner waits patiently. But the next time Hyde speaks it is with more urgency...
"My God! What be that?".
"Nowt!", retorts Knight sharply. "Get on wi' it! Zeems un be gettin' a trite nervey in yer ol' age! C'mon! Git oot o' theer and let me do't".
Knight jumps into the grave, and with his shovel begins to prise open the coffin lid, now totally exposed by Hyde's digging. Hyde, meanwhile, keeps watch above him as the storm heightens. For the first time in many years of working the Buckfastleigh graveyard, he is really nervous. Sweating and shivering as the incessant rain lashes his face. Strange sounds are carried on the howling wind. The waving bushes are transformed into monstrous apparitions as the full moon fleetingly shines down on them before being masked again by the scudding clouds. He sees unearthly creatures in the trees, their leafy boughs bent low, straining under the force of the gale. There are strange movements in the shadows. He thinks he sees Lucifer himself creeping out of the Sepulchre, the little penthouse erected over the Cabell tomb.
His imagination is running riot. What was that movement? The figure of a man? The Devil? And what's there? A dog? He feels an unnatural presence. Yet he can see nothing.
"Pull eesel' together, mun", he thinks to himself, and curses under his breath at his stupidity.
A great flash of lightning forks earthwards, lighting up the graveyard, and fleetingly Hyde espies a nightmarish vision which roots him to the spot. He wants to run, but his legs are numbed. He tries to call out to his friend, but his mouth just gapes, speechless. He is not just shivering, but trembling uncontrollably now, shaking violently from head to foot, a jibbering wreck. Teeth chattering, he stands there transfixed, eyes wide open, gripped with sheer terror. Just staring...
Staring at the tall spectral figure of Squire Richard Cabell standing infront of the entrance to the Sepulchre, looking straight at him with an evil glint in his eye, a sadistic grin on his face. He is flanked by two huge black dogs, rabid monsters spewed up from the bowels of the earth, lips curled menacingly, ears pricked, teeth bared, frothing at the mouth, spitting blood, straining for the command of their master, waiting to pounce on their prey.
At that very moment, Knight at last breaks open the coffin lid. The splintering of timber boards is muffled in the height of the tempest, as a loud crack of thunder bursts over the graveyard, making him jump. But he does not glance up at his friend, so does not see the petrified look of terror on Hyde's face, but instead looks down at the beautiful face and the long golden locks of Jane Angel peacefully at rest in her coffin.
"A reel Angel, this un, to be zure", thinks Knight, as he bends over her to lift her out, and then shudders as the beautiful Jane smiles sweetly at him. Now a big, broad grin across her face, beaming at him, baring her teeth, long curved pointed canines dripping with sticky saliva, bright red manic eyes staring out at him from deeply sunken sockets beneath a crop of matted black hair. Her delicate silken white hands stretching out lovingly towards him, welcoming him, clutching at him, pawing him, clawing him, razor sharp talons cutting his flesh. Growling, snapping, snarling, baying for his blood, as the hideous incubus from the tomb leaps out at him, tearing at his throat.
Meanwhile, the other creatures from beyond the grave are almost upon Hyde, who is in full flight now, having been woken from his trance-like state by the loud crack of thunder. Rushing down the Devil's Steps in fear for his life, he stumbles into the street, and as he does so he is almost mown down by a coach and four being urged on at breakneck speed, the horses hooves and wheels clattering noisily on the granite cobbles. A spectral being, half-man, half-demon, attired in mid seventeenth century robes and thigh-length leather boots, is standing on the front board,
mercilessly whipping his steeds into a frenzy as they rush headlong through the driving rain, the whole ghostly spectacle speeding on its way through the village.
The beasts are upon Hyde now, who for the first time in his life cries out to God for mercy. But too late! His jugular erupts in a long purple stream as his warm blood spatters the cold rain-soaked ground, and his pitiful screams are carried away on the wind.
Reverend Lowndes awakes with a start. What was that? Someone knocking on his front door? Surely not, at such an hour? No, not knocking. Someone hammering and pounding on his door, shrieking in blind panic. Putting on his gown, the Reverend hastens downstairs and opens the door, and is rather taken aback to find a rain-drenched, bedraggled and dishevelled figure staring at him with glazed eyes, with a look of of fear on his face. It is old William Wyndeatt, the well known village rogue, who bursts in, babbling hysterically about ghosts and phantoms, Devil-dogs, evil doings in the churchyard, wicked Squires, grave-robbers, and goodness knows what else. Spouting all sorts of incoherent nonsense and gibberish. The Reverend, normally a mild-mannered man of peace, slaps William in the face so hard that it knocks him giddy, almost senseless.
But it has done the trick. The sudden shock and pain has knocked some sense into him. Picking himself up from the floor, William stares disbelievingly for a moment at the man who has hit him so hard, then shakes himself and relates what he has seen after being so rudely awakened from his drink-induced sleep in the church porch.
The Reverend tries to offer William some solace and, although he can scarcely believe what he is hearing, and has oft known him to come up with some rather wild stories after a bout of heavy drinking, he can see that the man is in a state of severe shock. He has never seen him like this before, so perhaps something untoward really has happened. However, he decides that nothing can be done now, at such an hour, and he will investigate in the morning, in daylight, when the storm will have hopefully abated. So he puts William to sleep on his couch and retires again.
The day dawns bright and new, uncanningly still after the fury of the previous night. After a hearty breakfast, Reverend Lowndes walks up to inspect the graveyard, to see if he can account for William's strange tale. He does not know what, exactly, he expects to find, but in fact he notices nothing amiss as he passes by the Sepulchre, hastening to the new burial plot over which he conducted the previous day's service.
This is his primary concern, for he knows only too well the ghastly deeds which are sometimes carried out in his churchyard late at night, and too frequently he has found newly-buried corpses snatched, and their graves desecrated. But he finds the grave undisturbed, save for some fresh flowers lying atop the newly laid earth, and a few fallen branches scattered round about, having been blown down by the storm.
Mercifully, Jane Angel is still resting in peace.
"William must have had far too much to drink last evening", muses the Reverend to himself. "His drunken nightmares are getting much worse". And he thinks little more about it.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the Reverend, two bodies are being dragged from the River Dart just a little way downstream from the village. The bodies of two men in long black coats. They look clean and fresh. Cannot have been in the water for more than a few hours at most. The rescuers drag them to the bank and turn them over, then recoil in horror. Their throats have been ripped out, and their faces are unrecognisable, torn to shreds in a frenzied attack by some unknown wild animal.
And just as the Reverend is passing by the Sepulchre again, the wind picks up momentarily, and he thinks he hears a faint sigh emanating from within. A sigh of wearied contentment, as though of someone lying down after completing an arduous task to his satisfaction.
"Just the murmuring of the wind", thinks the Reverend, certainly not wishing to acknowledge any belief in the local superstitions surrounding the edifice. And yet, unconsciously, he makes the sign of the cross as he passes, and as he does so the wind dies away again.
Squire Richard Cabell is also resting in peace.
[Footnotes: Fact or folklore? A good chiller? A nightmare? Decide for yourself. The seventeenth century Squire, Richard Cabell of Brook Manor, who lies buried in the mausoleum known as the Sepulchre in the churchyard at Buckfastleigh, had an evil reputation, and has elsewhere been described as the Devil incarnate. Reverend Matthew Lowndes was the Minister at Buckfastleigh from 1825 to 1856. The verse quoted above is taken from a strange poem which was penned by Robert Herrick, the Vicar at neighbouring Dean Prior, some two centuries earlier. But the other principals are surely fictitious? Nothing is known of the ill-fated Knight and Hyde. And Jane Angel? Her headstone still stands in Buckfastleigh churchyard, barely twenty yards from the Cabell tomb. Seek it out for yourself next time you visit the place. You will probably find some fresh flowers on her grave].
Buck-tied-fast-in-the-leigh
The name Buckfast means “stronghold” — a place where deer and buck were held. “Leigh” is the open pasture which would have belonged to Buckfast. There has always been a strong link between the two settlements, although Buckfast probably existed before Buckfastleigh.
The name of Buckfastleigh is also of lexicographical interest since it contains half the letters of the alphabet. none of which are repeated.
William married Margaret [712] [MRIN: 237] in Buckfastleigh, Devon, England. Margaret was born before 1731 and died after 1737. They had three children: Peter, Susannah, and Margaret.
Peter Couch [625] 1 2 was born in 1731 in Buckfastleigh, Devon, England, was christened on 23 Nov 1731 in Buckfastleigh, Devon, England, died in Apr 1807 in Brixham, Devon, England at age 76, and was buried on 18 Apr 1807 in Brixham, Devon, England.
General Notes: The family appear to have moved to Brixham around 1790
The Angel of Death A Short Story by Mike Brown, Dartmoor Press
It is nearly two o'clock on 12th April 1832, and two shadowy figures dressed in long black coats are about to start work. No ordinary work this, and they are abroad at no ordinary time. It is not two in the afternoon, but two in the morning!
Knight & Hyde are the men in the long black coats, the "Resurrection Men" of Buckfastleigh. This is the hour at which they normally ply their evil trade, although they would not normally venture out on such a foul and stormy night. But they have an urgent "package" to deliver later that morning. As they emerge into the little square after their long climb up the Devil's Steps from the road, they become aware of just how violent the storm is on this windswept spot perched high above the village.
The wind howls through the trees as they approach the stile at the rear entrance to the churchyard and a flash of lightning lights up the church steeple towering over them. A split second later a huge clap of thunder rents the sky...
The storm will arise and trouble the skies
This night: and the more for the wonder,
The ghost from the tomb affrighted shall come,
Call'd out by the clap of the thunder.
Knight and Hyde have already selected their "victim". Jane Angel, wife of Philip, had been buried the previous day. Nice and fresh. Despite the atrocious weather conditions, the storm will not worry them unduly, for they are used to creeping around in local graveyards at the dead of night. After all, theirs is hardly a business which can be conducted during the day!
Feverishly they begin digging. Although nothing is going to frighten or unnerve them, they are certainly not going to hang about on such a night.
"What be that?", asks Hyde of his companion. "Zumin' moovin' in the Cabell tomb! Ye know of the legend of the evil Squire, that 'e and his 'ell 'ounds are seen abroad 'pon sich nights as this?".
"Keep digging!", urges Knight above the howling wind, "I bin in this biz'niss far too long to worry 'bout zupee stishuns and ol' wyves tales!".
Hyde obeys his friend. He is not really worried about the noise, for they have often heard strange sounds in graveyards at night, and rustlings in the undergrowth and the bushes. It was more a casual query than anything else. The movement was probably that of a fox seeking shelter from the ferocity of the tempest.
"Zure 'tis mortal stormy", he shouts, and digs on without pausing to rest, whilst his older partner waits patiently. But the next time Hyde speaks it is with more urgency...
"My God! What be that?".
"Nowt!", retorts Knight sharply. "Get on wi' it! Zeems un be gettin' a trite nervey in yer ol' age! C'mon! Git oot o' theer and let me do't".
Knight jumps into the grave, and with his shovel begins to prise open the coffin lid, now totally exposed by Hyde's digging. Hyde, meanwhile, keeps watch above him as the storm heightens. For the first time in many years of working the Buckfastleigh graveyard, he is really nervous. Sweating and shivering as the incessant rain lashes his face. Strange sounds are carried on the howling wind. The waving bushes are transformed into monstrous apparitions as the full moon fleetingly shines down on them before being masked again by the scudding clouds. He sees unearthly creatures in the trees, their leafy boughs bent low, straining under the force of the gale. There are strange movements in the shadows. He thinks he sees Lucifer himself creeping out of the Sepulchre, the little penthouse erected over the Cabell tomb.
His imagination is running riot. What was that movement? The figure of a man? The Devil? And what's there? A dog? He feels an unnatural presence. Yet he can see nothing.
"Pull eesel' together, mun", he thinks to himself, and curses under his breath at his stupidity.
A great flash of lightning forks earthwards, lighting up the graveyard, and fleetingly Hyde espies a nightmarish vision which roots him to the spot. He wants to run, but his legs are numbed. He tries to call out to his friend, but his mouth just gapes, speechless. He is not just shivering, but trembling uncontrollably now, shaking violently from head to foot, a jibbering wreck. Teeth chattering, he stands there transfixed, eyes wide open, gripped with sheer terror. Just staring...
Staring at the tall spectral figure of Squire Richard Cabell standing infront of the entrance to the Sepulchre, looking straight at him with an evil glint in his eye, a sadistic grin on his face. He is flanked by two huge black dogs, rabid monsters spewed up from the bowels of the earth, lips curled menacingly, ears pricked, teeth bared, frothing at the mouth, spitting blood, straining for the command of their master, waiting to pounce on their prey.
At that very moment, Knight at last breaks open the coffin lid. The splintering of timber boards is muffled in the height of the tempest, as a loud crack of thunder bursts over the graveyard, making him jump. But he does not glance up at his friend, so does not see the petrified look of terror on Hyde's face, but instead looks down at the beautiful face and the long golden locks of Jane Angel peacefully at rest in her coffin.
"A reel Angel, this un, to be zure", thinks Knight, as he bends over her to lift her out, and then shudders as the beautiful Jane smiles sweetly at him. Now a big, broad grin across her face, beaming at him, baring her teeth, long curved pointed canines dripping with sticky saliva, bright red manic eyes staring out at him from deeply sunken sockets beneath a crop of matted black hair. Her delicate silken white hands stretching out lovingly towards him, welcoming him, clutching at him, pawing him, clawing him, razor sharp talons cutting his flesh. Growling, snapping, snarling, baying for his blood, as the hideous incubus from the tomb leaps out at him, tearing at his throat.
Meanwhile, the other creatures from beyond the grave are almost upon Hyde, who is in full flight now, having been woken from his trance-like state by the loud crack of thunder. Rushing down the Devil's Steps in fear for his life, he stumbles into the street, and as he does so he is almost mown down by a coach and four being urged on at breakneck speed, the horses hooves and wheels clattering noisily on the granite cobbles. A spectral being, half-man, half-demon, attired in mid seventeenth century robes and thigh-length leather boots, is standing on the front board,
mercilessly whipping his steeds into a frenzy as they rush headlong through the driving rain, the whole ghostly spectacle speeding on its way through the village.
The beasts are upon Hyde now, who for the first time in his life cries out to God for mercy. But too late! His jugular erupts in a long purple stream as his warm blood spatters the cold rain-soaked ground, and his pitiful screams are carried away on the wind.
Reverend Lowndes awakes with a start. What was that? Someone knocking on his front door? Surely not, at such an hour? No, not knocking. Someone hammering and pounding on his door, shrieking in blind panic. Putting on his gown, the Reverend hastens downstairs and opens the door, and is rather taken aback to find a rain-drenched, bedraggled and dishevelled figure staring at him with glazed eyes, with a look of of fear on his face. It is old William Wyndeatt, the well known village rogue, who bursts in, babbling hysterically about ghosts and phantoms, Devil-dogs, evil doings in the churchyard, wicked Squires, grave-robbers, and goodness knows what else. Spouting all sorts of incoherent nonsense and gibberish. The Reverend, normally a mild-mannered man of peace, slaps William in the face so hard that it knocks him giddy, almost senseless.
But it has done the trick. The sudden shock and pain has knocked some sense into him. Picking himself up from the floor, William stares disbelievingly for a moment at the man who has hit him so hard, then shakes himself and relates what he has seen after being so rudely awakened from his drink-induced sleep in the church porch.
The Reverend tries to offer William some solace and, although he can scarcely believe what he is hearing, and has oft known him to come up with some rather wild stories after a bout of heavy drinking, he can see that the man is in a state of severe shock. He has never seen him like this before, so perhaps something untoward really has happened. However, he decides that nothing can be done now, at such an hour, and he will investigate in the morning, in daylight, when the storm will have hopefully abated. So he puts William to sleep on his couch and retires again.
The day dawns bright and new, uncanningly still after the fury of the previous night. After a hearty breakfast, Reverend Lowndes walks up to inspect the graveyard, to see if he can account for William's strange tale. He does not know what, exactly, he expects to find, but in fact he notices nothing amiss as he passes by the Sepulchre, hastening to the new burial plot over which he conducted the previous day's service.
This is his primary concern, for he knows only too well the ghastly deeds which are sometimes carried out in his churchyard late at night, and too frequently he has found newly-buried corpses snatched, and their graves desecrated. But he finds the grave undisturbed, save for some fresh flowers lying atop the newly laid earth, and a few fallen branches scattered round about, having been blown down by the storm.
Mercifully, Jane Angel is still resting in peace.
"William must have had far too much to drink last evening", muses the Reverend to himself. "His drunken nightmares are getting much worse". And he thinks little more about it.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the Reverend, two bodies are being dragged from the River Dart just a little way downstream from the village. The bodies of two men in long black coats. They look clean and fresh. Cannot have been in the water for more than a few hours at most. The rescuers drag them to the bank and turn them over, then recoil in horror. Their throats have been ripped out, and their faces are unrecognisable, torn to shreds in a frenzied attack by some unknown wild animal.
And just as the Reverend is passing by the Sepulchre again, the wind picks up momentarily, and he thinks he hears a faint sigh emanating from within. A sigh of wearied contentment, as though of someone lying down after completing an arduous task to his satisfaction.
"Just the murmuring of the wind", thinks the Reverend, certainly not wishing to acknowledge any belief in the local superstitions surrounding the edifice. And yet, unconsciously, he makes the sign of the cross as he passes, and as he does so the wind dies away again.
Squire Richard Cabell is also resting in peace.
[Footnotes: Fact or folklore? A good chiller? A nightmare? Decide for yourself. The seventeenth century Squire, Richard Cabell of Brook Manor, who lies buried in the mausoleum known as the Sepulchre in the churchyard at Buckfastleigh, had an evil reputation, and has elsewhere been described as the Devil incarnate. Reverend Matthew Lowndes was the Minister at Buckfastleigh from 1825 to 1856. The verse quoted above is taken from a strange poem which was penned by Robert Herrick, the Vicar at neighbouring Dean Prior, some two centuries earlier. But the other principals are surely fictitious? Nothing is known of the ill-fated Knight and Hyde. And Jane Angel? Her headstone still stands in Buckfastleigh churchyard, barely twenty yards from the Cabell tomb. Seek it out for yourself next time you visit the place. You will probably find some fresh flowers on her grave].
Historic Mill Town
Buck-tied-fast-in-the-leigh
The name Buckfast means “stronghold” — a place where deer and buck were held. “Leigh” is the open pasture which would have belonged to Buckfast. There has always been a strong link between the two settlements, although Buckfast probably existed before Buckfastleigh.
The name of Buckfastleigh is also of lexicographical interest since it contains half the letters of the alphabet. none of which are repeated.
Monastic settlement
Buckfastleigh’s origins are obscure. It may have begun as a key settlement of the Cistercian Abbey of nearby Buckfast and remained within monastic ownership until the Dissolution in 1539. As a market town, it seems not to have been successful. By 1801. the market had long ceased to exist and an attempt to revive it that year was short-lived.
In 1018. a Benedictine Abbey was founded at nearby Buckfast and endorsed by King Canute in the same year. In 1148. the Abbey became a Cistercian monastery and remained so until the Dissolution in 1539. The present impressive Abbey Church was consecrated in 1932. The new church and monastery were built by monks of a community of French Benedictines. Throughout England. the Cistercians were associated with sheep husbandry and the wool trade.
A Town of Woollen Mills
Surrounded by water and nestling on the edge of Dartmoor made Buckfastleigh an ideal location for wool production. Early settlers were attracted by the moor, which provided good pasture for the sheep.
The rivers Dart and Mardle and the Dean Burn, provided the abundance of water necessary for processing and dyeing the fleeces.
About five mills were in operation in the 16th century and two serge mills are recorded in 1850. together with 300 woolcombers. The peak of the Town’s industrial prosperity was reached in the late 19th century, when there were, at one time, five blanket, serge and combing mills, as well as corn and paper mills and a tannery. The same period saw a significant amount of building in the town, including modest worker’s cottages and public buildings.
Some of the original businesses still exist in the area and other mill buildings have been utilised for newer industries. The surviving section of the wooden millrace is still used to supply the tannery with water from the River Mardle and can be seen in Market Street.
‘..from blending to washing and weaving, spinning right through to the finished cloth. From the sheep’s back to the man’s back’ (Reminiscences from Townspeople)
19th Century Townscape
The town plan is very interesting. Historically, there were four discrete elements: the Abbey, set within its own precincts on the west bank of the River Dart, the isolated 13th century parish church and Higher and Lower Town. Although there are similarities between Higher and Lower Town. they do show different characteristics. The core of Higher Town presents an almost unaltered 19th century townscape. In Lower Town. the buildings along Fore Street are mainly outwardly late 18th - early 19th century in date and character.
As recently as the mid 19th century, Higher and Lower Town were separate settlements. Both are centred on a single thoroughfare (Market Street and Fore Street). with buildings along the street frontages. and long, narrow burgage plots extending back from them. Subsequent development of the Town. particularly down these plots, has given rise to narrow alleyways at right angles to the main streets leading to courts behind. They show a variety of styles, shapes and sizes, and roof heights vary. all adding great visual interest to the area.
‘Higher towners and lower towners. The boys used to be in gangs against each other.. .always having scraps.
The Ruined Holy Trinity Church
On the top of the hill stands the mined Parish Church. Built in the 13th Century (the spire being a later addition), it was destroyed by fire on the night of July 21st 1992. The tower and steeple remain, standing in splendid isolation, a prominent landmark for many miles around. The bells, originally from the Abbey. survived the fire and were re-hung so their sound can once again be heard across the valleys. From the lane which leads to the remains of Holy Trinity Church, there are magnificent views of Buckfast Abbey, Dartrnoor and the Dart Valley.
East of the church is the ruins of what might have been an ancient Chantry Chapel. The ruins of the original Chapel date back to 1640, but nothing is known of its history.
Sherlock Holmes connection
In the Churchyard, by the south door of the Church, is the mental-barred ‘penthouse’ tomb of the Cabells. once Lords of the Major of Buckfastleigh. Here lie Richard, his wife Susannah and their son, also Richard. In the caves which abound under the hill, there is a large stalagmite, which has formed directly under the tomb above. There was also a third Richard, a grandson. Which of these Richards was the one known as ‘Dirty Dick’, we are not sure.
Whoever he was, he earned the title because he was reputed to have ill treated local people and the reason for the penthouse was to quieten his spirit or. as local people put it. ~‘to keep him in” (in fact the Cabells were staunch Protestants and made life intolerable for the early non-conformists). Many legends . folk tales and stories of haunting have been added over the years, including the myth that he was so wicked that fiends and black dogs breathing fire raced across Dartmoor and howled around his tomb.
The Cabell family was the inspiration for the Sherlock Holmes novel ‘Hound of the Baskervilles’.
Church Steps
196 steps take you up to the Church ruins from Station Road. Look out for the ‘Wishing Steps’. The stones of two steps are laid in the opposite direction from the others. It is said that a secret wish, made while standing on these steps, will come true!
‘There’s a seat halfway up that could tell some stories!’
‘More than a gossip went on there when everyone was young and frisky.’
Stalactites, bones and bats
Beneath the Church runs an extensive system of caves. where the fossilised remains of sabre toothed tigers and woolly mammoths have been found, dating from the last interglacial period about 100,000 years ago. Fossils and photographs of the cave are on show at the William Pengelly Cave Studies Centre in Russets Lane (by appointment only). The caves are home to an important population of Horseshoe Bats has been declared a Site of Special
Peter married Agnes Baker [358] 2 [MRIN: 143], daughter of William Baker [659] and Agnes Witheridge [638], on 22 Apr 1746 in Stoke Fleming, Devon, England. Agnes was born in 1722,2 was christened on 4 Nov 1722 in Stoke Fleming, Devon, England, died in Nov 1780 in Brixham, Devon, England at age 58, and was buried on 28 Nov 1780 in Brixham, Devon, England. They had six children: Peter, Agnes, William, John, Thomas, and Ann.
Peter Couch [644] 1 was born in 1748, was christened on 29 Nov 1748 in Stoke Fleming, Devon, England, died in Jan 1826 in Brixham, Devon, England at age 78, and was buried on 1 Feb 1826 in Brixham, Devon, England.
Noted events in his life were:
• He was a SHIPWRIGHT.
Peter married Elizabeth Beer [708] [MRIN: 221] on 18 Jan 1778 in Brixham, Devon, England. Elizabeth was born before 1778, died in Nov 1809 in Brixham, Devon, England, and was buried on 23 Nov 1809 in Brixham, Devon, England. They had 11 children: Elizabeth, Agnes, Susanna, Charles, Peter, Thomas, Anne, Alice, Mary, Moses, and Priscilla.
Marriage Notes: This date is the same day that Captain James Cook discovered the Sandwich Islands
Elizabeth Couch [440] 1 was christened on 1 Mar 1778 in Brixham, Devon, England.
Agnes Couch [444] 1 was christened on 5 Dec 1779 in Brixham, Devon, England.
Susanna Couch [493] 1 was christened on 3 Sep 1781 in Brixham, Devon, England and died after 1806.
Susanna married Giles Palke [718] [MRIN: 241] on 16 Mar 1806 in Brixham, Devon, England. Giles died after 1806.
Charles Couch [494] 1 was christened on 22 Apr 1783 in Brixham, Devon, England.
Peter Couch [497] 1 was born on 26 Jul 1785 in Brixham, Devon, England, was christened on 16 Oct 1785 in Brixham, Devon, England, and died after 1828.
General Notes: Served in the Royal Navy from 1807 to 1815, and later went to Ireland where he stayed form 1823 to 1826. He then served in the Coast Guard from 1834 to 1847. A letter from Peter describes how he was pressed onto man-o-war from May 1807, just three months after he was married to Mary Boon. He served in the Royal Navy until 22 November 1815. Peter obviously carried some guilt about his time away from his love, for he later wrote a letter of confession to his children. Perhaps it was to salve his conscience for Peter played the organ in Church at new cross Pepys Rd SE 14.
Sometime between 1819 and 1828 Peter and Mary travelled to Donegal Island.
Peter married Mary Boon [716] [MRIN: 239] on 17 Feb 1807 in Brixham, Devon, England. Mary was born before 1807 and died after 1828.
Thomas Couch [498] 1 was christened on 18 Oct 1787 in Brixham, Devon, England and died after 1851.
General Notes: 1851 CENSUS LIVING DREW STREET, TOTNES, DEVON WITH HIS WIFE AND 2 SONS.
Noted events in his life were:
• He was a FARM LABOURER.
Thomas married Eleanor Hannaford [624] [MRIN: 160] on 3 Mar 1813 in Brixham, Devon, England. Eleanor was born on 12 Feb 1790 in Stoke Gabriel, Devon, England and died after 1851.
Anne Couch [600] 1 was christened on 7 Feb 1790 in Brixham, Devon, England.
Alice Couch [603] 1 was christened on 22 Jul 1792 in Brixham, Devon, England.
Mary Couch [604] 1 was christened on 30 Nov 1794 in Brixham, Devon, England.
Moses Couch [614] 1 3 was christened on 30 Jul 1797 in Brixham, Devon, England and died in 1882 in St Olaves, Norfolk, England at age 85.
General Notes: IN 1850 HE WAS SHIPWRIGHT.
1881 CENSUS SHOWS MOSES, A WIDOWER AGED 83 LIVING AT 19 OLD GRAVEL ALONG WITH HIS SON ENOS, AND HIS FAMILY, AND IS PENSIONER. 4
Noted events in his life were:
• He was a SHIPWRIGHT.
Moses married Joanna Tozer [626] [MRIN: 206] on 10 Dec 1824 in Townstal Or St Clement, Dartmouth, Devon, England. Joanna was born before 1824 and died in 1855 in Lewisham, England. They had six children: Priscilla, Enos, Alice, Abigail Elizabeth, Caroline Agness, and Abigail Jane.
Marriage Notes: WITNESSES AT WEDDING WERE JOHN TOZER AND ELIZABETH TOZER, RELATIONSHIP UNKNOWN.
Priscilla Couch [627] 1 was christened on 2 Apr 1826 in Brixham Wesleyan, Devon, England.
Enos Couch [628] 1 5 was born on 21 Oct 1827 in Dartmouth, Devon, England, was christened on 8 Feb 1828 in Brixham Wesleyan, Devon, England, and died on 16 Nov 1913 in 54 Loftus Road, Fulham, London, England 6 at age 86.
General Notes: IN 1850 LIVED AT 14 SAINT MARY PLACE, SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND.
IN 1853 LIVED AT 77 JUBILEE STREET, STEPNEY, LONDON, ENGLAND AND OCCUPATION DISSENTING MINISTER.
1881 CENSUS ENOS (53) MINISTER OF SEAMANS SOCIETY, LIVING 19 OLD GRAVEL LANE, (SEAMANS BETHEL) ST GEO IN EAST WITH HIS FAMILY OF 4 YOUNGEST CHILDREN. TRANSCRIBED MISTAKENLY AS 'ERIOS'.
ALSO IN HOUSEHOLD, THEIR DOMESTIC SERVANT, ANNE GREERS.
1901 census night he is a visitor in the home of his daughter Alice Ada and her husband William Bellamy Pye, 4 Frithville Gardens, Hammersmith, London, aged 73 (Congregational Minister).
His death at 54 Loftus Road, Fulham, (his daughter Alice and her husband William Pye's residence, where he was living) was caused "Found dead. Shock. Fracture of leg caused when he fell out of a window. Mis-adventure." Coronor's inquest was held 19 Nov 1913.
Brixham Heritage Database
This page contains the text from White's Devonshire Directory entry for Brixham 1850 from our collection of trade and street directories. The text reveals much about the development of the harbour, shipbuilding and the fishing industry at the time. With assistance from South West Museums Council, we are gradually indexing our collection and building an integrated database of our maritime resources. Our members' library contains a number of published descriptions of our town and copies of most of the large number of historical works relating to Brixham. Many of the names and places referred to have been indexed on our database. For details of our search service, click here. <research.htm>
BRIXHAM
A flourishing market town, sea-port, and extensive fishing station, is delightfully situated on the southern projecting point of Torbay, and is in two parts, called Upper and Lower Brixham; the former of which extends in a long straggling street, more than 1 1/2 mile south of Lower Brixham, or Brixham Quay, and most of it, (with the parish church,) is in a picturesque valley, opening to the Quay, and bounded on the east, by the lofty sea cliffs, and Berryhead, - the most eastern point of the bay.
Brixham Parish contains 5595A. 2R. 21 P. of land, and increased its population from 3671 in 1801, to 5684 in 1841, but it has now about 7000 inhabitants. It is within the jurisdiction of the port of Dartmouth, and is distant 4 miles N.E. of Dartmouth, 10 miles E. by S. of Totnes, 30 miles S. by E. of Exeter, 202 miles W.S.W. of London, and 9 miles S. by E. of Torquay, on the opposite side of the bay, by road, or 5 by water.
The manor of Brixham belonged at an early period to the Novants, from whom it passed successively to the Valletort, Pomeroy, Corbet, Bonville, and Grey families. The manor is now divided into a great number of shares. One quarter of it is held by the Duke of Cleveland, and the Dowager Countess of Sandwich, as representatives of the Bolton family. The rest belongs to the representatives of the late Sir J. Seale, Sir. J.B.Y. Buller, W. Gillard, Esq., the Quay Lords, and a number of smaller proprietors. One quarter of the manor, which had belonged to P. Gilbert, was purchased many years ago by twelve fishermen of the Quay, and, though their shares have since been much subdivided, all the proprietors are styled the Quay Lords. The principal owners of land in the parish are J.F. Luttrell, Esq., Sir J.B.Y. Buller, G.H. Cutler, Esq., H.P. Pierrepoint, Esq., Wm. Gillard, Esq., and J. Clarke, Esq.; and here are many smaller freeholders. The parish includes the small hamlets of Woodhuish and Boohay; five small commons; many scattered farm-houses, and several handsome seats. Upton Lodge, at the north end of Brixham, is the seat of G.H. Cutler, Esq.; and Nethway House is occasionally visited by its owner, J.F. Luttrell, Esq., of Dunster Castle. Leywell House, the residence of Henry B. Pierrepoint, Esq., had its name from an ebbing and flowing spring, which was destroyed some years ago, when the high road was altered. LUPTON HOUSE, about a mile west of the church, is the pleasant seat of Sir J.B.Y. Buller, Bart. It is a large and handsome mansion, with well wooded grounds, and was rebuilt by Charles Hayne, Esq., who was sheriff in 1772. About 1788, Mr. Hayne sold it to the late Sir Fras. Buller, one of the justices of the King's Bench, who was created a baronet in 1789.
IRON ORE has been discovered in the parish within the last ten years; and two mines are now working with considerable success, one at Upton, on G.H. Cutler's estate, and the other on Furzham Common. The latter is worked by R.W. Wolston, Esq , and is his property; and the former is worked by Mr. Edward Prior. The ore of the Upton mine is nearly equal in richness and colour to the Lancashire ore, yielding from 55 to 60 per cent. of metal. That of the Furzham mine yields about 45 per cent. of very superior metal, and is of a bright yellow colour. Great quantities of the ore are shipped from the Quay to be smelted in Wales, &c. The lode lies nearly north and south, and is about 35 feet broad. It is worked by open cutting, and the depth already attained is about 40 feet. The ore crops out within a few feet of the surface, and is surrounded by limestone, &c. Fine yellow ochre is got with the iron ore, and is manufactured here into an excellent pigment.
Brixham is said to have the largest fishery in England. More than 270 sail of vessels, comprising 20,000 tons of shipping, and employing about 1000 seamen, belong to the port, and a large number of them are engaged in the fishing trade. They comprise six brigs of about 170 tons, 140 schooners of from 60 to 180 tons, and 130 fishing smacks of from 30 to 50 tons; and here are also about 80 open boats, carrying two men each, employed in hook fishing. The average weekly amount received here for fish is about £600, and sometimes as much as 350 tons weight is brought to the Quay in a week, but the average weekly quantity is about 150 tons. The Quay is a most interesting sight in the evening after a large catch, when heaps of fish, comprising turbot, soles, whiting, plaice, mullet, mackerel, gurnet, flounders, herrings, &c., are piled up, and a sort of Dutch auction takes place; after which, all the prime lots are sent to Exeter, Bath, Bristol, London, and other markets. Many vessels are employed here in the coasting, and the Spanish and Mediterranean trades. The harbour being well protected by the bold high promontory of Berry-head, is a great place of refuge for shipping in stormy weather; and during westerly winds, great numbers of vessels may be seen riding at anchor here and in other parts of Torbay. The old pier was built under the powers of the Haven and Market Improvement Act, passed in 1799. It was finished in 1804; but enclosing an haven not sufficiently large for the increased size of the vessels and trade of the port, a plan was formed, about ten years ago, for the construction of a new pier and breakwater, sufficient to shelter a great number of large class merchantmen and frigates of war. This important work was commenced in 1843, by the Commissioners of the above-named act, who are also proprietors of the Market House, near the beach, and derive an income of about £900 per annum. from the harbour and market estate.
The markets, held every Tuesday and Saturday, are well supplied with provisions; and here is a pleasure fair on Whit-Tuesday. Gas Works were constructed about eight years ago, by a company of proprietors, in £5 shares. A large Steam Corn Mill has just been erected, about half-a-mile from the Quay, at the cost of about £6000, raised by a numerous company, in £10 shares. The old workhouse has been converted into a Court House, parish vestry, &c.; and petty sessions are held here every alternate Monday, for part of Paignton Division. The office of the Custom-house Officers is on the beach; and there is a Coast Guard Station near Queen's Quay, and another on the Man Sands Cliff, two miles from the town.
Torbay, of which Brixham is the principal port, is a beautiful lake-like expanse of water, having a semicircular coast line of about twelve miles, though only four miles across from its two eastern promontories. William Prince of Orange, afterwards King Wm. III., landed here Nov. 5th, 1688, to effect the ever memorable Revolution, as noticed at page 58. The identical stone on which he first set foot on landing, lay neglected till 1823, when it was placed as the landing stone of the late Duke of Clarence, afterwards Wm. IV., visited Brixham as Lord High Admiral in that year. This interesting stone was then sawn in two halves, one of which was placed in a neat obelisk in the fish market, with an inscription upon it, recording the memorable event of 1688. This obelisk has since been removed, and re-erected on the pier, near the spot where the Prince of Orange landed. The other half of the stone now forms a tablet at the pier end, inscribed in commemoration of the visit of the Duke of Clarence, July 21st, 1823, at which time, an address from the inhabitants was enclosed with a bit of the above stone, in a box of heart of oak 800 years old, and presented to the Royal Duke.
During the late wars, Torbay was the general rendezvous of the Channel Fleet, affording at all times a safe and easy accessible roadstead for all descriptions of vessels; and having here a complete watering wharf, supplied from a large reservoir. constructed by Government in 1801. The fortifications on the bold promontory of Berry-head, and the barracks which then existed here, are dismantled, and the Military Hospital is now a private residence. In 1815, the Bellerophon (Captain Maitland,) anchored in the roadstead here, after receiving on board the fallen Emperor Napoleon, and remained several days before sailing for St. Helena.
CHURCHES, &c. - The Parish Church (Virgin Mary,) at Upper Brixham, is a large and ancient structure, in the perpendicular, with a lofty embattled tower, containing six bells and a clock. It has a richly carved font of the 14th century, two galleries, and a large organ. It is in contemplation to enlarge the churchyard, by the addition of 1 1/4 acre. The vicarage, valued in K.B. at £25. 15s., and in 1831 at £494, with the curacy of Churston-Ferrers annexed to it, is in the Patronage of the Lord Chancellor, and incumbency of the Rev. Robt. Holdsworth, M.A., who has held the living since 1809. The Vicarage House is a neat residence; and the tithes were commuted in 1840, the vicarial for £463, and the rectorial for £538. 10s. Miss Knollis is impropriator of the latter. The Church Lands, &c., have been vested in trust since the reign of Elizabeth, for the repairs, &c., of the church. and comprise about 15A., and ten houses and cottages, worth upwards of £60, but let for only about £10 a year, in consideration of the fines paid when the leases were granted. The District Church at Lower Brixham was built by subscription, as a chapel of ease, about 1820. It is a plain cemented building, with galleries, an organ, and a turret, containing a bell and a clock. It has lately been constituted a perpetual curacy, valued at £107, in the patronage of the Vicar, and incumbency of the Rev. J.R. Hogg, B.A. Here is a Baptist Chapel, built in 1801, at the cost of about £1200; a Wesleyan Chapel, built in 1816, at the cost of £2000; and an Independent Chapel, erected in 1813, at the expense of about £1000. The Assembly Rooms, in Bolton street, were built in 1837, and are occasionally occupied as a theatre. The town has several Friendly Societies and other provident institutions; and a Freemasons' Lodge, built in 1801, at the cost of £450. Sunday Schools and Religious Institutions are supported by the congregations of the churches and chapels;; and near the beach is a large building, erected in 1848, by Messrs. Green and Vittery, and used as an auction mart, a sailors' school, &c.
The CHARITIES of Brixham are as follows: - Richard Kelly, in 1633, left a house and about 45A. of land, charged with the yearly payment of £6. 6s. 8d., for the poor of nine parishes, of which 10s. belongs to the poor of this parish; and also with the annual sum of £15 for the maintenance of a free school, at Brixham, for the poor children of Brixham, Churston-Ferrers and Kingswear. He directed the residue of the clear yearly income to be paid to the curate of St. Saviour's, Dartmouth, for preaching a sermon weekly. The property is now let for about £50 a year. A legacy of £40, left to the poor of Brixham, by Samuel Shardon, was expended in erecting a gallery in the church, but £2 a year, paid out of the pew rents, is distributed among, the poor parishioners, together with £2. 19s. 4d., derived from the benefactions of Richard Kelly, John Peter, John Lockram, Elizabeth Serle, and Arthur Luscombe. An annuity of 10s., left by John Croote, out of Blackhouse tenement, in 1640 is distributed among ten poor people. Several small charities formerly belonging to the parish are lost. In 1801, a Freemasons' Lodge was built on the site of a small ancient almshouse, subject to a yearly ground rent of 10s., which is carried to the pool rates. ROBERT LANG, in 1685, left one-half of his estate to be vested in trust for the relief of the poor parishioners of Brixham. In satisfaction of this bequest £1,500 was obtained, persuant to a decree in Chancery, in 1690. This money was vested in the purchase of freehold farm of 88A. and a leasehold farm of 60A., in Dartmoor Forest, now let at rents amounting to about £70 per annum. Adjoining the charity estate is 66A. 3R. 6P. of land, which was enclosed from the forest in 1808, by the tenant of the last named farm, under a lease of 99 years, granted by the Duchy of Cornwall, at the yearly rent of 11s. 2d. The trustees of this charity can claim the benefit of this lease, by paying the enclosure expenses incurred by the tenant. The clear income derived from the charity estate is distributed among all the poor of the parish. The FREE SCHOOL, now conducted on the national system, in two large rooms, built by subscription, about 1820, is attended by about 130 boys and 110 girls, part of whom pay 1d. each per week, but it is entirely free to all the poor children of Brixham and Churston-Ferrers, that are sent to it by the trustees of Kelly's and Kellond's Charities, the former of which is already noticed, and from it the master derives £15 per annum. In 1712, John Kellond left £2000 for charitable uses in Devonshire. Of this legacy £490 was laid out in the purchase of a farm of about 45 acres, at Ashburton, which was vested in trust for the support of a schoolmaster at Brixham, in consideration of his teaching reading writing, arithmetic and navigation to all the poor children sent to him by the trustees. This farm is now let for £42 per annum, and the master has also the dividends of about £800 three per cent. stock, derived from the sales of timber, formerly growing on the land. 4
Noted events in his life were:
• He was a MINISTER OF RELIGION. 7
Enos married Catherine Mary Jones [633] 5 [MRIN: 212], daughter of Benjamin Jones [634] and Catherine [639], on 14 Aug 1850 in Register Office, Southampton, England.5 Catherine was born on 15 Mar 1827 in Hoxton, London, Middlesex, England, was christened on 13 Jan 1828 in St Peter's, Walworth, Surrey, England, and died on 7 Feb 1914 in 54 Loftus Road, Fulham, London, England 6 at age 86. Another name for Catherine was Catharine. They had six children: Thomas Rose, Alice Ada, Alfred, Emily R, Caroline, and George John.
Marriage Notes: Witnesses were Benjamin Jones and Sarah Matilda Rose. 5
Thomas Rose Couch [653] 1 8 was born on 9 Apr 1853 in 77 Jubilee Street, Stepney, Middlesex, England 8 and died on 10 Jul 1921 in Bank House, 210 Commercial Road, London, England 9 at age 68.
General Notes: BORN AT 77 JUBILEE STREET, STEPNEY, LONDON.
MARINER'S FRIENDS SOCIETY, 19 OLD GRAVEL LANE, WAPPING, LONDON
LIVED AT 19 OLD GRAVEL LANE IN 1877 AND 1884.
1881 CENSUS LIVING AT 114 LOCKSLEY STREET, LIMEHOUSE, LONDON AGE 27, INDEPENDENT MINISTER SEAMENS CHURCH, WITH WIFE AND DAUGHTERS, IDA AND UNA AND 16 YEAR OLD GENERAL SERVANT ELIZH. CHISHOLM.
GARY COUCH HAS A BIBLE WITH THE INSCRIPTION "14 MAY 1901 - PRESENTED TO - REVd T.R. COUCH - BY THE MEMBERS & FRIENDS - OF - THE MARINERS' FRIENDS -
SOCIETY - ON IT'S 53rd ANNIVERSARY- AS A TOKEN OF THEIR ESTEEM"
In 1901 Census living at 293 Bendett ? Road, St Pauls, Limehouse Stepney, London, aged 48 Independant Minister with Clara aged 45, Ida aged 28 Teacher L.S.B. School, and Herbert aged 17 Clerk. Also Ethel Mc ? aged 20 is their Domestic Servant.
In 1911 he was "Clerk in Holy Order".
His will was proved 21st September 1921 worth £434-4-6 and James Rewcastle Woods of 36 Lime Street in the City of London, Shipbroker was the Sole Executor.
St. George's-in-the-East
From: "The Copartnership Herald", Vol. II, no. 24 (February 1933)
Some acquaintance with the early history of this neighbourhood, which is not particularly attractive in these days to the chance visitor, will, it is hoped, at least remove the impression which may exist in his mind that its past is interesting only on account of part of the notorious thoroughfare, Ratcliff Highway, now St. George’s Street, which passes through it. The unsavoury reputation arose in the middle of the nineteenth century, when foreign sailors from every country, Greeks, Malays, Lascars, Dutch, Scandinavians, Portuguese, Spanish and French could be met everywhere, and many taverns, dancing saloons and so-called boarding-houses harboured the lowest types of humanity of almost every nation. Of the tales that have been told of the life of those times, some are undoubtedly true and some are exaggerated, if not altogether fictitious, but by their repetition they have been multiplied many times. Thus, the name of Ratcliff Highway became a byword not only for poverty and misery, but for the coarse, the brutal, and the vicious. It is not surprising, when the state of the Metropolis at that time is considered, that the respectable inhabitants, the business men and the workpeople accepted the social conditions as being incidental and commonplace occurrences. But there was another phase of life to be found there. The Rev. Harry Jones, who had been rector of St. George’s since 1873, writing an introduction to a small volume published in 1880, said that he could "but heartily hope that this little book will join yet closer together with the tie of honest home and municipal interests those of whose life and surroundings it speaks, and will tend to deepen an impression that the East of London is not a region so barren of righteous influences and healthy life as some have occasionally fancied it to be."
Speaking of misrepresentations, the compiler of An East-end Chronicle says: "But we East-enders owe many a grudge to the journalists and novelists and conversationalists who have written and talked about us without really knowing us. However, things are mending... and in years to come, when many illusions have been dispelled, those who know us now only by hearsay, or as the result of some hasty visit, will admit that we are not many of us thieves or most of us heathens, but after all, men and women very like the men and women elsewhere, good, bad and indifferent, a few of us heroes and a few of us villains, and nearly all of us toilers and moilers, doing our work and taking our play, trying to do our duty, and hoping to get our reward."
On 14 May 1729, in the second year of the reign of George II, the Royal Assent was given to "An Act for making the Hamlet of Wapping Stepney in the Parish of St. Dunstan Stebonheath, a Distinct Parish, and for providing a Maintenance for the Minister of the New Church there."
The church was dedicated to St. George as a delicate compliment to the King, and the new parish thereby became designated that of St. George, Middlesex. To distinguish it from other places of the same name in the Metropolis, it was soon called St. George’s-in-the-East. The boundaries of the contiguous parishes of Whitechapel, Wapping, and Shadwell and the hamlets of Ratcliff and Mile End Old Town having been already established, the area consisting of about 224 acres surrounded by those districts was included in St. George’s parish.
The hamlet, properly speaking, of Wapping Stepney was originally close to the river, and after the formation of the parishes of Wapping and Shadwell it became possessed of a frontage to the Thames of some fifty-three feet, represented to-day by Foundry Wharf, which forms part of the Commercial Gas Company’s Works at Wapping. This frontage was occasioned by the outflow there of an ancient watercourse, the responsibility for which, with the upkeep of its banks, either of the two neighbouring parishes were wary to avoid. On the other hand, the manor of Stepney was perhaps desirous to preserve in its keeping the means of draining the marsh that lay inland almost as far as the Highway.
At the time of its formation, the parish was largely unbuilt upon, especially on the north, where fields lay stretched away to the winding White Horse Lane, which nearly a century later formed approximately the line of Commercial Road. This explains the apparently irregular boundary on this side, where it borders that of the hamlet of Mile End Old Town. It crosses the Commercial Road, includes the George Tavern, and then abruptly recrosses, and, after passing through the church of SS. Mary and Michael, continues south of the Road until it comes into contact, in Harding Street, with the hamlet of Ratcliff.
The conduct of parochial affairs was by the Act of Parliament entrusted to a Vestry consisting of such parishioners as paid two shillings a month or upwards to the poor, and it may be found interesting, perhaps amusing, to refer to a few of the duties which were first performed. Mr. Crowcher and Mr. Tatlocks having been elected churchwardens, a committee was formed to allot the seats in the church. Accommodation was assigned to 144 heads of families, eleven of these being captains of merchant vessels, and subsequently a further 151 families were seated. For the office of Parish Clerk the number of applicants was reduced to three: a schoolmaster, a barber and periwig maker, and a tobacco-cutter. After the question had been put whether it was the pleasure of the Vestry that the successful candidate should be obliged to abandon his normal occupation, room for the factotum was made by the decision that the barber and periwig maker, one Sam Bright, should be Parish Clerk and nothing else.
To Mr. Sam Bright we are indebted for the information relative to the parish contained in a book published soon after his entry into office. In furnishing particulars relative to the parish he mentions, among others:
"Remarkable Places and Things are half of Wellclose-square, and one moiety of the Danish Church therein: Princes Square and therein the Swedes Church, an Anabaptist Meeting the Corner of Penitent Street in Virginia Street and another in Meeting-house-yard, in Broad Street near Old Gravel Lane."
This does not appear to be very exciting, but it affords a glimpse of there being a number of Danish and Swedish, people who had settled in the neighbourhood. These were principally engaged in the timber trade, but another thriving business was that of the importation of hemp and tar - the crude distillation of pine-wood - shipped from ports of Northern Europe for the manufacture of rope. This industry became the principal one in St. George’s in the second half of the eighteenth century, but rope walks were common throughout all the riverside districts.
Ten years before the parish came into being, Mr. Henry Raine,brewer, built at his expense in the old hamlet a charity school for fifty boys and fifty girls, and gave forty guineas a year towards the support of it. The children were clothed and the boys were taught to read, write and cast accounts; the girls were taught to read, sew and mark. From 1719 to 1736 Mr. Raine, who had personally superintended the school, by his will made in the latter year, endowed it. In the same year he erected another school, called the Asylum - a name which did not then have unpleasant associations. In this building provision was made for forty girls, "chosing out of the most deserving of those brought up in the old school, and who have continued therein two years." They were to be maintained, clothed and educated. After four years’ training, the girls were to go into domestic service, and at the age of twenty-two were to be entitled, subject to certain qualifications, to become candidates for the marriage portion of £100, for which six of them might draw lots on every 1st May and 28th December, The unsuccessful candidates, if they continued unmarried, might draw again from time to time, till they obtained a prize.
Mr. Raine left most of his property to his two nephews, exhorting them to purchase £4,000 Stock to make a permanent provision for these marriage portions. "I doubt not," he says, "but my nephews will cheerfully purchase the stock if they had seen, as I have, six poor innocent maidens come trembling to draw the prize, and for the fortunate maid that got it burst into tears with excess of joy." It has been pointed out that one’s feelings and sympathies may be quite as deeply stirred by the sight of the five "poor innocent maidens" who are unfortunate enough to draw blanks. To which remark may be added the observation that instances of envy, hatred and malice are more likely to arise from gifts bestowed by capricious fortune than from those that are the reward of merit.
By an Act of Parliament in 1780 the trustees of the endowments were incorporated by the name of "The Governors and Trustees of the Raine’s Charities." Forty years previously the Court of Chancery decreed that the money for the provision of marriage portions should be set apart, but in course of years it came to be disregarded and no particular fund was kept for this purpose. The management of this branch of the Charity does not appear to have been successful. Marriage portions continued to be given, but the number applying for them was not large, and instead of six candidates at each half-yearly drawing of the lots, only on one occasion in the twenty-three years prior to 1875 had there been more than three candidates and frequently, if not generally, only one. All the endowments of the benevolent founder are now applied to the fine school built in Arbour Square which bears the name of the Henry Raine Foundation.
Mr. Raine lived, and carried on business in premises afterwards known as the Star Brewery, which were acquired nearly a century ago by the East London Gas Company and afterwards transferred to the Ratcliff Company. They were the nucleus of the Wapping Gas Works.
Our friend the Parish Clerk computed the number of houses in the newly formed parish "as upwards of 2,000," but probably his pride of place led him to err, for twenty-three years later, in 1756, there appear to have been only 1,946 houses, but in a few years the marshland south of Pennington Street was wholly built over.
A contemporary writer, referring to the houses that were here erected, said, "Those and others are almost without exception mere hovels, when compared to the habitations within the city of London," but he admitted that "exceedingly useful, opulent and worthy members of society are scattered through the streets and lanes" of the parish.
In 1800 the work of constructing the London Dock was begun. In Wapping eleven acres of land were taken and 120 houses pulled down, and in St. George’s the whole, or part of twenty-four streets, thirty-three courts, yards, alleys and lanes were demolished. Most of these houses were of a mean and wretched description, and the loss of them was a distinct gain to the neighbourhood.
North of the Highway the development of the land for building purposes more than made good the number of houses demolished. Huge sugar refineries arose of which the parish ultimately contained more than any other in the Tower Hamlets until the collapse of the industry in 1880.
About the year 1820 St. George’s-in-the-East was at the height of its prosperity, and wealthy merchants and traders resided in the parish. On Sunday mornings a line of carriages was drawn up outside the church gates waiting to take the owners home. Wellclose Square was the most fashionable quarter, and there the Danish Ambassador resided. The annual church rate would yield over £700, and funds were so plentiful that the Vestry could spend £4,400 improving and extending the churchyard and beautifying the church and repairing the organ. The times were changing. The prospect of work at the London Docks caused a large influx of unskilled labour, and the intermittent employment of the dock labourer and the low rate of pay - 5d. per hour - brought poverty. The population grew dense and misery spread with the outbreaks of cholera in 1849, 1855, and in 1866. On the latter occasion this parish suffered more than any other part of the East of London.
In the meantime, the prosperous merchants and tradesmen, who had formerly been compelled through the lack of travelling facilities to reside on or near their business premises, had with the coining of railways moved into the suburbs and attended daily, and the houses that they once occupied were let out in tenements.
Over the parish in our days hangs an atmosphere of depression that things should be as they are, which is broken only for some rare moments, such as when the mean streets have a certain wistfulness in the softening grey haze of a late autumnal afternoon. Then the lofty tower of St. George’s Church, which has seen two centuries of life’s vicissitudes, hushes red in the kindly glow of the sun in the west, telling worker and the workless of the departure of another day.
by Sydney Maddocks 7 10 11
Noted events in his life were:
• He was a MINISTER OF RELIGION. 12
Thomas married Clara Frances Elizabeth Geldard [654] 5 [MRIN: 223], daughter of George Geldard [615] and Jane Whiting [616], on 21 Mar 1877 in Parish Church Of St Mary, St George In The East, Middlesex, England.5 Clara was born in 1856 in Islington, Middlesex, England and died before 1927 in England. They had four children: Ida Ethel Maud, Una Marion Pierce, Stanley, and Pierce Herbert Frank.
Marriage Notes: Witnesses at wedding were Enos Couch, Alice Couch and George Geldard
Noted events in her life were:
Ida Ethel Maud Couch [660] 1 4 was born in 1877 in Shadwell, Middlesex, England 4 and died in England.
General Notes: In 1901 Census was aged 28 and Teacher at L.S.B. School living with parents and Herbert at 293 Bendett Road, Limehouse, London.
Was sole beneficiary of her father's estate. 4
Ida married Moffat Crooks [637] [MRIN: 215].13 Moffat was born in England and died in England. They had one daughter: Living.
Living
Living
Una Marion Pierce Couch [495] 1 14 was born on 5 Oct 1879 in Shadwell, Middlesex, England and died in 1979 in England at age 100. Another name for Una was Marion Pearce Couch.
General Notes: Residing at 36 Lime Street, London in September 1921.
Una married James Rewcastle Woods [496] [MRIN: 163], son of James Jabez Woods [500] and Thomasiena Bainbridge [501], in 1900. James was born on 26 Dec 1868 in 2 Queen St, Hartlepool, England 15 16 and died in 1937 15 at age 69. They had five children: Una Rewcastle, James Edward Rewcastle, Living, Living, and Living.
Noted events in his life were:
Una Rewcastle Woods [527] 14 was born in 1901.
James Edward Rewcastle Woods [529] 14 was born in 1903.
Living
Living married Richard Nelson Ludlow [146] [MRIN: 54], son of David Ludlow [24] and Isabella Hall [138]. Richard was born on 12 Apr 1904 in Dublin and died on 28 Aug 1999 in Bournemouth, Dorset, England at age 95. They had three children: Living, Living, and Living.
Noted events in his life were:
• He was a Methodist Minister.
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Michael David Rewcastle Woods [732] was born on 14 Mar 1960 and died in 1971 at age 11.
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Angela Marie Rewcastle Woods [533] 14 was born in 1939 and died in 1999 at age 60.
Angela married Trevor Randall [539] [MRIN: 178]. Trevor was born in 1939 and died in 2000 at age 61. They had one daughter: Living.
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living married Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Stanley Couch [677] .1
General Notes: Was disowned by his father
Stanley married Lillian (?) [641] [MRIN: 218].
Pierce Herbert Frank Couch [678] 1 8 was born on 5 Feb 1884 in 19 Old Gravel Lane, Saint Paul, St George In The East, London, England,8 died on 13 Aug 1970 in Christchurch Public Hospital, Christchurch, New Zealand 17 at age 86, and was buried on 14 Aug 1970 in Ashes Interred Linwood Crem, Christchurch, New Zealand.17 Another name for Pierce was Bert.
General Notes: IN 1901 CENSUS HE WAS AGED 17, A CLERK, LIVING WITH PARENTS AND IDA AT 293 BENDETT ROAD, LIMEHOUSE, LONDON.
BERT WAS A FREEMASON FROM ABOUT 9TH MAY 1908 TILL ABOUT 18TH JUNE 1920 IN THE KING SOLOMON CHAPTER No 2629, LONDON.
1903 - 30TH SEP 1907 EMPLOYED BY HENRY GREY JUNR. AS A LIGHTERMAN'S APPRENTICE, FOR FOUR AND A HALF YEARS.
JOINED THE LONDON FIRE BRIGADE ON 14TH OCTOBER, 1907 AND LEFT AS SUB OFFICER 28TH FEBRUARY 1920 AFTER 12 YEARS 134 DAYS SERVICE, WHEN EMIGRATING TO NEW ZEALAND.
23 OCTOBER 1911 RENEWED LIGHTERMAN AND WATERMAN'S LICENCES TILL 31ST DECEMBER, 1913. RESIDING AT 210 COMMERCIAL ROAD, EAST LONDON, ENGLAND.
IN 1913 LIVED AT FIRE STATION, SOUTH PARADE, CHELSEA
IN 1915 BERT LIVED AT "THE STATION" PERRY VALE, FOREST HILL, LONDON, ENGLAND.
HE AND HIS FAMILY ARRIVED IN NEW ZEALAND ABOARD THE 'H.M.S. CORINTHIC' IN 1920. THEY IMMIGRATED WITH THE CLARK FAMILY WHO PRESUMABLY WANTED TO IMPROVE ON THEIR LIFESTYLE IN THE EAST- END OF LONDON.
19 APR 1920 - 14 APR 1945 EMPLOYED AS GENERAL STAFF AND NIGHT WATCHMAN FOR J. BALLANTYNE & CO., COLOMBO CASHEL STREET CORNER, CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND, (BEFORE 1947 FIRE).
DURING THE 1950'S HE WAS "DUTY FIREMAN" AT THEATRES IN CHRISTCHURCH, (BEFORE THE DAYS OF SMOKE ALARMS AND SPRINKLER SYSTEMS).
LIVED AT 72 MONTREAL ST, CHCH, NEW ZEALAND AND AT 27 HARGOOD STREET, WOOLSTON, CHRISTCHURCH.
AFTER MAY'S DEATH HE LIVED WITH BILL AND MIRIAM AND WITH ERIC AND CIS UNTIL RESIDING IN RETIREMENT HOME C. 1969.
St. George's-in-the-East
From: "The Copartnership Herald", Vol. II, no. 24 (February 1933)
Some acquaintance with the early history of this neighbourhood, which is not particularly attractive in these days to the chance visitor, will, it is hoped, at least remove the impression which may exist in his mind that its past is interesting only on account of part of the notorious thoroughfare, Ratcliff Highway, now St. George’s Street, which passes through it. The unsavoury reputation arose in the middle of the nineteenth century, when foreign sailors from every country, Greeks, Malays, Lascars, Dutch, Scandinavians, Portuguese, Spanish and French could be met everywhere, and many taverns, dancing saloons and so-called boarding-houses harboured the lowest types of humanity of almost every nation. Of the tales that have been told of the life of those times, some are undoubtedly true and some are exaggerated, if not altogether fictitious, but by their repetition they have been multiplied many times. Thus, the name of Ratcliff Highway became a byword not only for poverty and misery, but for the coarse, the brutal, and the vicious. It is not surprising, when the state of the Metropolis at that time is considered, that the respectable inhabitants, the business men and the workpeople accepted the social conditions as being incidental and commonplace occurrences. But there was another phase of life to be found there. The Rev. Harry Jones, who had been rector of St. George’s since 1873, writing an introduction to a small volume published in 1880, said that he could "but heartily hope that this little book will join yet closer together with the tie of honest home and municipal interests those of whose life and surroundings it speaks, and will tend to deepen an impression that the East of London is not a region so barren of righteous influences and healthy life as some have occasionally fancied it to be."
Speaking of misrepresentations, the compiler of An East-end Chronicle says: "But we East-enders owe many a grudge to the journalists and novelists and conversationalists who have written and talked about us without really knowing us. However, things are mending... and in years to come, when many illusions have been dispelled, those who know us now only by hearsay, or as the result of some hasty visit, will admit that we are not many of us thieves or most of us heathens, but after all, men and women very like the men and women elsewhere, good, bad and indifferent, a few of us heroes and a few of us villains, and nearly all of us toilers and moilers, doing our work and taking our play, trying to do our duty, and hoping to get our reward."
On 14 May 1729, in the second year of the reign of George II, the Royal Assent was given to "An Act for making the Hamlet of Wapping Stepney in the Parish of St. Dunstan Stebonheath, a Distinct Parish, and for providing a Maintenance for the Minister of the New Church there."
The church was dedicated to St. George as a delicate compliment to the King, and the new parish thereby became designated that of St. George, Middlesex. To distinguish it from other places of the same name in the Metropolis, it was soon called St. George’s-in-the-East. The boundaries of the contiguous parishes of Whitechapel, Wapping, and Shadwell and the hamlets of Ratcliff and Mile End Old Town having been already established, the area consisting of about 224 acres surrounded by those districts was included in St. George’s parish.
The hamlet, properly speaking, of Wapping Stepney was originally close to the river, and after the formation of the parishes of Wapping and Shadwell it became possessed of a frontage to the Thames of some fifty-three feet, represented to-day by Foundry Wharf, which forms part of the Commercial Gas Company’s Works at Wapping. This frontage was occasioned by the outflow there of an ancient watercourse, the responsibility for which, with the upkeep of its banks, either of the two neighbouring parishes were wary to avoid. On the other hand, the manor of Stepney was perhaps desirous to preserve in its keeping the means of draining the marsh that lay inland almost as far as the Highway.
At the time of its formation, the parish was largely unbuilt upon, especially on the north, where fields lay stretched away to the winding White Horse Lane, which nearly a century later formed approximately the line of Commercial Road. This explains the apparently irregular boundary on this side, where it borders that of the hamlet of Mile End Old Town. It crosses the Commercial Road, includes the George Tavern, and then abruptly recrosses, and, after passing through the church of SS. Mary and Michael, continues south of the Road until it comes into contact, in Harding Street, with the hamlet of Ratcliff.
The conduct of parochial affairs was by the Act of Parliament entrusted to a Vestry consisting of such parishioners as paid two shillings a month or upwards to the poor, and it may be found interesting, perhaps amusing, to refer to a few of the duties which were first performed. Mr. Crowcher and Mr. Tatlocks having been elected churchwardens, a committee was formed to allot the seats in the church. Accommodation was assigned to 144 heads of families, eleven of these being captains of merchant vessels, and subsequently a further 151 families were seated. For the office of Parish Clerk the number of applicants was reduced to three: a schoolmaster, a barber and periwig maker, and a tobacco-cutter. After the question had been put whether it was the pleasure of the Vestry that the successful candidate should be obliged to abandon his normal occupation, room for the factotum was made by the decision that the barber and periwig maker, one Sam Bright, should be Parish Clerk and nothing else.
To Mr. Sam Bright we are indebted for the information relative to the parish contained in a book published soon after his entry into office. In furnishing particulars relative to the parish he mentions, among others:
"Remarkable Places and Things are half of Wellclose-square, and one moiety of the Danish Church therein: Princes Square and therein the Swedes Church, an Anabaptist Meeting the Corner of Penitent Street in Virginia Street and another in Meeting-house-yard, in Broad Street near Old Gravel Lane."
This does not appear to be very exciting, but it affords a glimpse of there being a number of Danish and Swedish, people who had settled in the neighbourhood. These were principally engaged in the timber trade, but another thriving business was that of the importation of hemp and tar - the crude distillation of pine-wood - shipped from ports of Northern Europe for the manufacture of rope. This industry became the principal one in St. George’s in the second half of the eighteenth century, but rope walks were common throughout all the riverside districts.
Ten years before the parish came into being, Mr. Henry Raine,brewer, built at his expense in the old hamlet a charity school for fifty boys and fifty girls, and gave forty guineas a year towards the support of it. The children were clothed and the boys were taught to read, write and cast accounts; the girls were taught to read, sew and mark. From 1719 to 1736 Mr. Raine, who had personally superintended the school, by his will made in the latter year, endowed it. In the same year he erected another school, called the Asylum - a name which did not then have unpleasant associations. In this building provision was made for forty girls, "chosing out of the most deserving of those brought up in the old school, and who have continued therein two years." They were to be maintained, clothed and educated. After four years’ training, the girls were to go into domestic service, and at the age of twenty-two were to be entitled, subject to certain qualifications, to become candidates for the marriage portion of £100, for which six of them might draw lots on every 1st May and 28th December, The unsuccessful candidates, if they continued unmarried, might draw again from time to time, till they obtained a prize.
Mr. Raine left most of his property to his two nephews, exhorting them to purchase £4,000 Stock to make a permanent provision for these marriage portions. "I doubt not," he says, "but my nephews will cheerfully purchase the stock if they had seen, as I have, six poor innocent maidens come trembling to draw the prize, and for the fortunate maid that got it burst into tears with excess of joy." It has been pointed out that one’s feelings and sympathies may be quite as deeply stirred by the sight of the five "poor innocent maidens" who are unfortunate enough to draw blanks. To which remark may be added the observation that instances of envy, hatred and malice are more likely to arise from gifts bestowed by capricious fortune than from those that are the reward of merit.
By an Act of Parliament in 1780 the trustees of the endowments were incorporated by the name of "The Governors and Trustees of the Raine’s Charities." Forty years previously the Court of Chancery decreed that the money for the provision of marriage portions should be set apart, but in course of years it came to be disregarded and no particular fund was kept for this purpose. The management of this branch of the Charity does not appear to have been successful. Marriage portions continued to be given, but the number applying for them was not large, and instead of six candidates at each half-yearly drawing of the lots, only on one occasion in the twenty-three years prior to 1875 had there been more than three candidates and frequently, if not generally, only one. All the endowments of the benevolent founder are now applied to the fine school built in Arbour Square which bears the name of the Henry Raine Foundation.
Mr. Raine lived, and carried on business in premises afterwards known as the Star Brewery, which were acquired nearly a century ago by the East London Gas Company and afterwards transferred to the Ratcliff Company. They were the nucleus of the Wapping Gas Works.
Our friend the Parish Clerk computed the number of houses in the newly formed parish "as upwards of 2,000," but probably his pride of place led him to err, for twenty-three years later, in 1756, there appear to have been only 1,946 houses, but in a few years the marshland south of Pennington Street was wholly built over.
A contemporary writer, referring to the houses that were here erected, said, "Those and others are almost without exception mere hovels, when compared to the habitations within the city of London," but he admitted that "exceedingly useful, opulent and worthy members of society are scattered through the streets and lanes" of the parish.
In 1800 the work of constructing the London Dock was begun. In Wapping eleven acres of land were taken and 120 houses pulled down, and in St. George’s the whole, or part of twenty-four streets, thirty-three courts, yards, alleys and lanes were demolished. Most of these houses were of a mean and wretched description, and the loss of them was a distinct gain to the neighbourhood.
North of the Highway the development of the land for building purposes more than made good the number of houses demolished. Huge sugar refineries arose of which the parish ultimately contained more than any other in the Tower Hamlets until the collapse of the industry in 1880.
About the year 1820 St. George’s-in-the-East was at the height of its prosperity, and wealthy merchants and traders resided in the parish. On Sunday mornings a line of carriages was drawn up outside the church gates waiting to take the owners home. Wellclose Square was the most fashionable quarter, and there the Danish Ambassador resided. The annual church rate would yield over £700, and funds were so plentiful that the Vestry could spend £4,400 improving and extending the churchyard and beautifying the church and repairing the organ. The times were changing. The prospect of work at the London Docks caused a large influx of unskilled labour, and the intermittent employment of the dock labourer and the low rate of pay - 5d. per hour - brought poverty. The population grew dense and misery spread with the outbreaks of cholera in 1849, 1855, and in 1866. On the latter occasion this parish suffered more than any other part of the East of London.
In the meantime, the prosperous merchants and tradesmen, who had formerly been compelled through the lack of travelling facilities to reside on or near their business premises, had with the coining of railways moved into the suburbs and attended daily, and the houses that they once occupied were let out in tenements.
Over the parish in our days hangs an atmosphere of depression that things should be as they are, which is broken only for some rare moments, such as when the mean streets have a certain wistfulness in the softening grey haze of a late autumnal afternoon. Then the lofty tower of St. George’s Church, which has seen two centuries of life’s vicissitudes, hushes red in the kindly glow of the sun in the west, telling worker and the workless of the departure of another day.
by Sydney Maddocks 4 5 12 13
Noted events in his life were:
• He was a FIREMAN/NIGHTWATCHMAN. 4 10 12
• He emigrated in 1920 at H.M.S. Corinthic. 13
Pierce married Lilian May Clark [679] 8 [MRIN: 229] on 29 Apr 1911 in St. Bartholomew's Church, Eastham, Essex, England.5 Lilian was born on 13 Jun 1883 in 188 Rhodes Well Road, Limehouse, Stepney, Middlesex, England,8 died on 26 Oct 1959 in 55 Diamond Avenue, Christchurch, New Zealand 17 at age 76, and was buried in Ashes Interred Linwood Crem, Christchurch, New Zealand.17 Another name for Lilian was May. They had two children: William Herbert James and Eric Thomas.
Marriage Notes: Witnesses Thos. R. Couch and Alice Clark. 5 18
Noted events in her life were:
• She was a SEAMSTRESS. 4
• She emigrated in 1920 at H.M.S. Corinthic. 13
William Herbert James Couch [685] 1 8 was born on 20 Sep 1913 in Fire Station, South Parade, Chelsea, London, England,8 died on 17 May 1997 in Christchurch Public Hospital, Christchurch, New Zealand 17 at age 83, and was buried on 21 May 1997 in Ashes Interred Linwood Crem, Christchurch, New Zealand.17 Another name for William was Bill.
General Notes: BORN AT THE FIRE STATION, SOUTH PARADE, CHELSEA
Noted events in his life were:
• He was a HOSIERY MACHINIST. 13
• He emigrated in 1920 at H.M.S. Corinthic. 13
William married Miriam Reid Grey [687] [MRIN: 230]. Miriam was born on 31 May 1914 in Christchurch, New Zealand, died on 9 Jun 1991 in Christchurch, New Zealand at age 77, and was buried in Christchurch, New Zealand. They had three children: Living, Living, and Living.
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Eric Thomas Couch [686] 1 8 was born on 2 Feb 1921 in Sydenham. Christchurch, New Zealand,8 was christened on 1 May 1921 in St Saviours, Sydenham, Christchurch, New Zealand, died on 5 May 1989 in Christchurch Public Hospital, Christchurch, New Zealand 6 at age 68, and was buried on 9 May 1989 in Ashes Interred Linwood Crem, Christchurch, New Zealand.6
General Notes: WORLD WAR II - SERVED IN MIDDLE EAST AND ITALY WITH THE 27TH MACHINE GUN
BATTALION OF NEW ZEALAND. SIGNALS DIVISION. RANK OF CAPTAIN. MENTIONED
IN DISPATCHES.
AS A CHILD ERIC LIVED IN MONTREAL ST, CHRISTCHURCH AND THEN
IN HARGOOD STREET, WOOLSTON (ACROSS THE ROAD FROM HIS FUTURE WIFE).
Occupation at time of marriage mechanician and then he was technician with Post and Telegraph Department, at Redcliffs Exchange, in charge at Riccarton Exchange and then retiring 30 June 1977 after 40 years service with P & T from Transmission Centre, Christchurch Telephone Exchange, Hereford Street, Christchurch.
On death certificate occupation retired technician, Ex-serviceman.
HE SPENT HIS LIFE AFTER MARRIAGE AT 29 HOWARD ST, SPREYDON, CHRISTCHURCH, NZ. UNTIL HIS SUDDEN DEATH AT CHRISTCHURCH PUBLIC HOSPITAL FOLLOWING SURGERY FOR AORTIC ANEURYSM
KEEN INTEREST IN CARS AND MOTORCYCLES FROM EARLY AGE. JOINED TERRITORIAL ARMY AS DISPATCH RIDER PRIOR TO W.W.II AND THEN RENEWED INTEREST IN MOTORCYCLING IN LATER LIFE AND RODE B.M.W. IN AUSTRALIA IN 1988 AND BROUGHT IT HOME WITH HIM. ALSO HAD A.J.S MOTORCYCLE AND WAS A MEMBER OF POST VINTAGE CLUB UNTIL HIS DEATH.
KEEN YACHTSMAN 19 20
Noted events in his life were:
• He was a TELEGRAPH TECHNICIAN in Chrischurch, New Zealand. 20
Eric married Cecilia Ethel Jordan [688] 8 [MRIN: 231] on 1 Mar 1947 in St Paul's Church, Christchurch, New Zealand.5 Cecilia was born on 7 Sep 1923 in Ferry Road, Woolston, Christchurch, New Zealand,8 was christened on 25 May 1924 in St John The Evangelist, Woolston, Christchurch, New Zealand,21 died on 14 Dec 1987 in 29 Howard Street, Christchurch, New Zealand 6 at age 64, and was buried on 17 Dec 1987 in Ashes Interred Bromley Cemetery, Christchurch, New Zealand.6 Another name for Cecilia was Cis. They had two children: Living and Living.
Noted events in her life were:
• She was a FACTORY WORKER (EDMONDS) in Chrischurch, New Zealand. 11
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Alice Ada Couch [601] 1 8 was born on 5 Aug 1859 in Watney Street, St George In East, Middlesex, England 8 and died on 8 Apr 1943 at age 83.
General Notes: On birth certificate she is born at Watney Street, St George, Middlesex, England
May have been witness at marriage of Thomas Rose Couch and Clara Frances Elizabeth Geldard 4
Alice married William Bellamy Pye [602] 4 [MRIN: 165] on 29 Jul 1877 in Parish Church, St Anne, Limehouse, London, England.4 William was born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England and died after 1901.
Alfred Couch [680] 1 was born in 1861 in St George In East, Middlesex, England and died after 1881.
General Notes: In 1881 Census is aged19, book binder, living with parents at 19 Old Gravel Lane, London.
Emily R Couch [681] 1 was born in 1863 in St George In East, Middlesex, England and died after 1881.
General Notes: In 1881 Census she is living with Parents at 19 Old Gravel Lane, London and aged 18.
Caroline Couch [652] 1 was born in 1865 in St George In East, Middlesex, England and died after 1890.
General Notes: In 1881 Census is aged 16 and living with her family at 19 Old Gravel Lane, London.
Caroline married John Joseph Lishman [642] [MRIN: 219] (Mar) 1890 in Westham, Sussex, England. John was born before 1890 and died after 1901.
George John Couch [682] 1 was born in 1870 in St George In East, Middlesex, England and died after 1881.
General Notes: In 1881 Census aged 11 and a scholar, living at 19 Old Gravel Lane, London, with his family.
Alice Couch [629] 1 was christened on 30 Jan 1830 in Brixham Wesleyan, Devon, England.
Abigail Elizabeth Couch [630] 1 was christened on 27 Apr 1832 in Plymouth Wesleyan, Devon, England.
Caroline Agness Couch [631] 1 was christened on 7 May 1834 in Plymouth Wesleyan, Devon, England and died after 1858.
General Notes: Married Henry Tomkins or Francis Charles Minns
Caroline married Unknown [599] [MRIN: 162] (Dec) 1858 in Dartford, Kent, England.
Marriage Notes: Marriage to Henry Tomdins or Francis Charles Minns
Abigail Jane Couch [632] 1 was christened on 25 Dec 1836 in Plymouth Wesleyan, Devon, England.
Moses next married Unknown [499] [MRIN: 161] in 1869 in Dartford, Kent, England. Unknown was born before 1869 and died before 1881.
Priscilla Couch [622] 1 was christened on 30 Mar 1800 in Brixham, Devon, England.
Agnes Couch [667] 1 was christened on 2 Jul 1751 in Stoke Fleming, Devon, England and died after 1773.
Agnes married Samuel Hawkins [636] 2 [MRIN: 214], son of William Hawkins [9462] and Elizabeth Sivil [9463], on 30 Nov 1773 in Brixham, Devon, England.2 Samuel was born about 1746, was christened on 21 Oct 1746 in Brixham, Devon, England,2 and died after 1773. Another name for Samuel was Samuel Hockings. They had five children: Agnes, Ann, William, Samuel, and Elizabeth.
Agnes Hawkins [9464] 2 was born in 1774.2
Ann Hawkins [9465] 2 was born in 1779.2
William Hawkins [9466] 2 was born in 1780.2
Samuel Hawkins [9467] 2 was born in 1782.2
Elizabeth Hawkins [9468] 2 was born in 1784 in Brixham, Devon, England.2
Elizabeth married John Peters [9469] 2 [MRIN: 1371] on 14 May 1809 in Brixham, Devon, England.2 They had six children: Elizabeth, Mary, John, Maria, Edward, and Emma.
Noted events in his life were:
• He was a Cooper. 2
Elizabeth Peters [9470] 2 was born in 1811.2
Mary Peters [9471] 2 was born in 1814.2
John Peters [9472] 2 was born in 1817 2 and was christened on 16 Mar 1817 in Brixham, Devon, England.2
Noted events in his life were:
• He was a cooper, fishmongerand lathmaker. 2
John married Elizabeth Pomeroy [9476] 2 [MRIN: 1372] on 11 Oct 1840 in Lower Brixham, Devon, England.2 They had ten children: Living, Living, Living, Living, Living, Living, Living, Edwina Lucy Atherton Pomeroy, Living, and Living.
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Edwina Lucy Atherton Pomeroy Peters [9484] 2 was christened on 6 Nov 1854 in Beach Lowestoft.2
Edwina married George Marner Lloyd [9487] 2 [MRIN: 1373] on 15 Dec 1878 in Torquay, Devon, England.2 They had seven children: Fanny, George William, Owen Marner, Gwen, Evelyn, Rhys, and Gladys.
Noted events in his life were:
• He was a port gauger. 2
Fanny Lloyd [9488] 2 was born in 1880.2
George William Lloyd [9489] 2 was born in 1882 2 and was christened on 1 Aug 1882.2
Noted events in his life were:
• He was a surgeon. 2
Living
Living
Living
Living
Living
Owen Marner Lloyd [9490] 2 was born in 1884.2
Gwen Lloyd [9491] 2 was born in 1886.2
Evelyn Lloyd [9492] 2 was born in 1888.2
Rhys Lloyd [9493] 2 was born in 1889.2
Gladys Lloyd [9494] 2 was born in 1891.2
Living
Living
Maria Peters [9473] 2 was born in 1819.2
Edward Peters [9474] 2 was born in 1821.2
Emma Peters [9475] 2 was born in 1823.2
William Couch [697] 1 was christened on 31 Oct 1756 in Brixham, Devon, England and died after 1805.
William married Mary Cole [709] [MRIN: 233] on 10 Feb 1781 in Stoke Fleming, Devon, England. Mary was born about 1761 and died after 1805.
John Couch [703] 1 was christened on 30 Jan 1765 in Brixham, Devon, England.
Thomas Couch [635] 1 was christened on 23 May 1768 in Brixham, Devon, England.
Ann Couch [707] 1 was christened on 12 Aug 1770 in Brixham, Devon, England and died after 1793.
Ann married John Snelling [715] [MRIN: 238] on 19 Nov 1793 in Brixham, Devon, England. John died after 1793.
Susannah Couch [713] 1 was born in 1734 in Buckfastleigh, Devon, England, was christened on 5 Nov 1734 in Buckfastleigh, Devon, England, and died after 1758.
Susannah married Henry Gidley [717] [MRIN: 240] on 28 Nov 1758 in Buckfastleigh, Devon, England. Henry died after 1758.
Margaret Couch [714] 1 was born in 1737 in Buckfastleigh, Devon, England, was christened on 20 Sep 1737 in Buckfastleigh, Devon, England, and died on 10 Oct 1737 in Buckfastleigh, Devon, England.
1. Pauline Mountford, Couch family database.
2. Linsay Lloyd.(2005), 4 Oct 2005.
3. Son's marriage certificate.
4. Census records.
5. Marriage certificate.
6. Death certificate.
7. Marriage Certificate and Census details.
8. Birth certificate.
9. Last Will and Testament.
10. Testimonials, etc..
11. Photos, family knowledge.
12. Service Certificates, etc.
13. Family knowledge.
14. John and Meryl Woods, Woods Family Genealogy Study and Supplement.
15. Una Shaw, Notes made by Anthony Ludlow on conversation with Una Shaw (26th September 1991).
16. Family Bible owned by G. Derek Sheppard (in 1991).
17. Newspaper Death Notice.
18. Photos.
19. Miliatary Records.
20. Family report, photos.
21. Baptism Card.