Wimbish Lives and Scenes
These are pictures that I have of Wimbish, a small village in Essex where my Paternal forebears, surname Barker, lived for a number of generations. I stopped my family history research rwenty years ago but have retained the information I gained and display some of it here.
I still retain an interest, however, so If anyone has any information about the scenes or people in the pictures, about Wimbish or the Barker families of the village, or has additional pictures they could share with me, or any other related comments they would like to make, I would be delighted to hear from them via the email link here.
Contact Author.
Before showing pictures of Wimbish let me start with three forebears of mine of whom I have pictures and who were Wimbish residents.
1 2 3
Mary or Mary Ann Barker nee Wright aged around 35. Mary-Ann was born between 1806 and 1811. Picture taken c1860. Her husband was James Barker, b.4.5.1806 d.18.9.1886 Mary-Ann's daughter, Ann Barker, aged about 16 - 18. Ann was born 1842. Picture taken c1860 John Barker son of Anne and born when she was 14. John was my maternal great grandfather. (But see also photo 37 re subsequent doubt of identification. Other photos of John Barker appear below)
AND HERE'S HOW THEY RELATE TO ME

Family Tree 1

Note 1 Anne Barker more properly Ann,
see certificates relating to her further down this page.

Note 2 I have a note that Mary Clayden's parents were William Clayden and Anne

Note 3 I have a note that Isaac Wright's parents were Isaac Wright and Elizabeth Cornhill

Memoriam card for James Barker
 
   
Mary-Ann, Ann and John would have known these scenes of Wimbish
4   5
The White Hart, still a public house today   Howlett End. In 1981 George Ingram, a distant relative of mine, identified the lady at the gate as Kate Buck of the Post Office, and the man in the cart as Mr Stone, the local baker.
These three pictures are details from picture 5 above
6 7 8
The couple by the gate The central two men with the horse and cart The postman.
9 10
Mill Road - you can see Vine Cottage behind the man on the left. This looks as though it was taken from roughly the same spot as the picture of Vine Cottage in 1930 (picture 27 below). When members of the Portway family lived there in the early 20th century these houses were known as Collier Row. They were also known as Westley Terrace (being next to Westley Farm), and Mill Road Cottages.
   
11 12
The Star Inn, now a private house Wimbish windmill
   
13   14
New House Farm   Threshing at New House Farm c1890
 
15
Frank Buck ran the local shop and Post Office, outside which . Arthur Gibbs, the man minding the pram, is standing. The baby in the pram is possibly Rosie Burrows (see picture 20)
   
16 17
Two more images of Wimbish shortly after 1900. On the left is a picture of the chapel, on the right houses with two people outside the right hand one.
(Both pictures new to this page Jan 2010)
   
18 19
Wimbish School left, and detail of the man in the cart right
(Both pictures new to this page Jan 2010)
   
20
A road in Wimbish (picture new to this page Jan 2010)
   
   
21 The family story is that John Barker (picture 3) was the result of a union between a 14-year old Ann Barker and someone named Saville at a house where she was in service. John was given his mother's surname while she met and married William Chapman. Here Ann and William are pictured together when they were around 16 years of age in 1858.  
     

Birth cert. of Ann Barker
Birth on Seventeenth June 1842 of Ann, girl, father James Barker, mother Mary Ann Barker formerly Wright,
occupation of father Labourer (although the L looks like an S), informant Mary Ann Barker of Wimbish, date of registration Twenty-third June 1842
Ann is her name on this cert. and on the birth cert of her son, John.
22 23 24
Ann Barker possibly aged 16-18 c1860 (this picture also appears at the top of the page) Ann Barker with children Sarah and James
by William Chapman. Picture date c1874		 Ann Barker with Fred, the last of her sons.
She was aged about 42 here dating the
picture to c1884
25 26 27
Ann and William c1900. Then then lived at Vine Cottage in Mill Road. The vine that once flourished on the south end can be clearly seen. Vine Cottage 1926. The bull nosed Morris belonged to George Ingram who took this photo. Vine Cottage, Mill Road, 1930 (George Ingram)
28 29 30
Vine Cottage, Mill Road, 1955 Vine Cottage, Mill Road, 1980 Church bell, Wimbish
Vine Cottage was originally two tenements, one at first occupied by Ann and William Chapman and later fully occupied by them. Before the water tower was erected in the 1940s water came from wells or the village pump. When the 1980 picture was taken the cottage was being re-thatched by a Pole, who said previous re-thatchings had been done one on top of each other for many years.  
Of course the Chapmans had children of their own but it was John Barker, Anne's first child, who was my forebear. Quite a character, he would have known a great many Wimbish people, including those referred to by his mother in a letter written just before she died on the 9th December 1904. She refers to a 'Boy Portway', probably the son of a Mrs Portway who was known by another relative of mine who visited Wimbish in the 1920s and earlier. She also refers to 'Bet' and 'Suddy', who were Mr and Mrs Marshall who farmed 'The Maypole', a place where William Chapman was working when aged 63 and feared being 'put off' because it was 'a very bad year for corn'. Lizzie Chapman was one of Anne and William's daughters. She went away in service but returned to look after her parents in their old age but died before her father in 1930. He died on the 18th January 1931. I have been to Wimbish only once, in 1980.

Jesse Portway and wife. Jesse was born in 1863 in Radwinter to Charles
and Mary Portway. They had a family of children, Joseph b1861, Jesse 1863,
Cecilia 1870, Winfred 1877, and William (age not given). His father Charles
was a bricklayer.

31
     
An Email from Jacquline Harrup corrected an error in identification I made in the caption (now corrected) to picture 15 above. Her mother, who was born and bred in Wimbish, identified the baby in the pram as Rosie Burrows. They also sent the pictures below.
32   33
The girl on the left is Jacqueline's mother, Bessie Franklin; the baby in the pram is Rosie Burrows, and the girl on the right is Rosie's sister Christine. Jacqueline's mother was born in 1920 so the picture would have been taken around 1930.   The water cart visiting the village during a drought c1933. The people are (from left to right)  Joe Moule, Mrs.Cornell (with bucket), her daughter Mary Cornell, my maternal grandmother Fanny Franklin (nee Portway), Alice Portway (in black), Mrs.Rosie Smithers, Eileen Taylor (with woolly hat), William Raven (bending down), Mrs.Eliza Moule (carrying bucket), and three children - one of whom was Maurice Taylor, son of Ben Taylor, and another was probably Ron Smith.
     
Jacqueline's mother also said that Kate Buck (in pictures 5 and 6) was the sister of Frank Buck (referred to in picture 15). Frank also had a brother Herbert who married late in life, and another brother who's name her mother can't remember (a rare lapse of memory!). Photo no.5 was taken before her mother's time (she was born in 1920), and she had never heard of Mr.Stone the baker. She seems to think the man wearing a white apron could be Ben Buck, father of Frank, and the man on the right could be postman Sid Coe.
Grateful thanks to Jacqueline Harrup and her mother for the above pictures and information.
   
34 35
All Saints Church, Wimbish 2010 (courtedy of the Wimbish Church website) Wimbish Church from a postcard (new to this page Jan 2010)
   
More about the Barkers    
36 37 38
Identified by a great uncle of mine as a young John Barker c1877. Said to be John Barker. On the reverse of the photo is the date 1910. If correct this would make John 53 years old, so perhaps it is actually of his half brother James aged 37. Picture taken at Saffron Walden. (Compare with pictures of John in the 1890s below) A known picture of James Barker dated 1908
 
26b
John Barker Birth Cirtificate
 
26c
Marriage cert of John Barker and Rosa Ann Marshal on which John's first name is given as Harry, which is a mystery as everywhere else he appears as John. His eldest son was called Harry, however. Also his father's name is given as John Barker (dead), which compounds the mystery as on his birth cert above no father is given and his grandfather was James, we have to go back to his great grandfather to find a John.
 
39 40
John Barker stands with his hand on the shoulder of his mother,
Ann Barker. Back centre is John's half brother, James (seen as a
baby in photo 23). Centre left is John's wife, Rosa Ann Marshall.
The rest of the people are John and Rosa's children. Back left is
Harry James, Middle centre is Lily Florence (my grandmother).
Ernest William and Albert John are front left and right respectivley.
Photo taken 22nd May 1897 in Epping Forest.		 Another family photo from close to the time of the one on the left. The back row is the same except that John and James have changed positions. The front row is also the same. Middle centre is Rosa Ann Marshall with Lily Florence on her left and Ann Elizabeth (an picture of her older in photo 45 below), John and Rosa's eldest daughter, on her right. John had gone to live and work in London; he and Rosa were married in 1876.
   
Life gives rise to some profound comparisons. I knew my grandmother, Lily Florence Barker, not as a seemingly innocent, even niaive girl as seen in photos 27 and 28 above, but as a lady as old as her mother in photo 28 and as an even older ladty as Ann Barker is in photo 27. She was ravaged by the trials of life, and by the enforced absence of her husband daring WW1, and as a result became a woman who my father, her son, was upset by the image of a domineering and eccentric woman that she became. I remember many things about her but perhaps tha most vivid is her London accent, broad to the point of caricature, if that's possible with language. 'Yes' was always 'Yerse', setting her apart from people around her where she lived in Meadvale, Surreey, twenty miles south of the capital.
   
41  
Ernest William Barker (seen in both above pictures at front right) in military uniform, possibly during WW1 (Picture courtesy Alison Cook)  
   
28b
Birth cert of Lily Barker
   
42 43
An earlier picture, c1880, of Rosa Ann Marshall and her son Harry James John Barker with his grandsons (two of Lily Florence's children)
Charles (left) and Albert c1913. Lily was living at Meadvale, Surrey, with her husband, Charles Moore, but could not afford to keep two of her sons who went to live in London with her elder sister, Ann Elizabeth (Annie - see photo 45 below)
   
44 45
This picture has written on the back 'Grandfather JOHN Barker at Barking HOME OF HIS SISTER MARY-ANNE'. The words in capitals have been added to the original caption. Ann Elizabeth Barker (see photo 40), who was generally known as Annie, and her son Jimmy.
   
46  
Lily Florence Moore (nee Barker) in Redhill, Surrey, with her grandson Ian in the 1940s. (see her as a girl in photos 39 and 40)  
   
A direct line of 8 generations from John Barker and Ruth Watson in pictures
     
No Picture
available		   James Barker, son of John Barker and Ruth Watson. bp.4.5.1806 d.19.9.1886 - Siblings were James b.1802 d1804, Mary bp mar1808, George bp 31.7.1814, Sarah 1815/16,Jacob bp18.2.181, Peter bp 20.5.1823
     
  Ann Barker, daughter of James Barker b.17.6.1842 d.9.12.1904.
     
  John Barker, Illegitimate son of Anne Barker, b..8.10.1857 m.Rosa Ann Marshall 1876. Children were Ann Elizabeth, Harry James, Lily Florence, Ernest William and Albert John
     
  Lily Florence Barker, daughter of John Barker and Rosa Ann Marshall. b.27.6.1884 m.Charles William Moore d.1971 (she is seen much older in photo 46 above)
     
  John Alfred Moore, son of Charles William Moore and Lily Florence Griffith. b.21.1.1906 Married Winifred Maud Griffith 1936 d October 2000.
     
  Alan John Moore, son of John Alfred Moore and Winifred Griffith. b.19.12.38 Owner of this website. Pictured in 1958 (looks a lot different now). Married Muriel Margaret Brown 7.9.1963. Children Steven Alan and Andrew John.
     
  Steven Alan Moore, son of Alan Moore and Muriel brown. b.12.7.1964 Married Gill Parish
     
  Jack Steven Moore, son of Steven Moore and Gill Parish.
     
     
If anyone else has any information about the scenes or people depicted on this page, or about Wimbish or the Barker families of the village, or has additional pictures they could share with me, or has any other related comments they would like to make, I would be delighted to hear from them via the email link here. Alan Moore
Contact Author.
     
Email received May 2008 - My Great Grandfather was Jesse Barker born in 1852 in Wimbish and his  father was George Barker born in 1815  in Wimbish and died in 1855 in  Hackney, Jesse had a number of siblings also born in Wimbish - George 1837 (died later that year), Mary 1838, Harriet 1844, Sarah 1847,  John 1855, George 1859. I have not managed to trace the family further back.
Regards, John Barker
     
Email received March 2009 - I believe my gt gt gt grandfather was George Barker who married Hannah Taylor, they had a daughter Harriet (b1844) who married Charles Stracey and had a daughter Emily (b1867) who married Alexander Strudwicke and had a daughter Rosamond who was my grandmother.  As I am researching our family history, I would love to hear from anyone who is related to this family.  I think I have already been in touch with John Barker who is cited on your pages.
Sarah Davidson
     
Email received March 2009 - I have been looking at your website at the Wimbish connections. Very interesting and the photographs are fascinating. I am also descended from John Barker and Ruth Watson. One of their children was  Mary who married Thomas Coburn. They had several children, one of whom was Louisa Mary who married George Bramston, They had Flora Louise who was my Grandmother. She married John Giles Austin. Her sister married Frederick Austin, his brother. Flora Louise was obviously very intelligent and also very beautiful.She did however have a tragic end, dying in 1912 aged only 41. Her mother also chose a difficult path. She did not live with her husband for thirty years before her death in 1916. I have tried to find out where she was and who she was with from the census but she does appear in the 1891, 1901 or 1911 census. Louisa Mary also started a school for ladies in Upton Park in about 1878. I attach a photograph of Flora Louise. You may be interested. Best wishes Angela Austin.

Flora Louise Bramston
     
Email received August 2009 - I wanted to let you know how interesting your website is. The photos you have found are wonderful.   My grandfather was Ernest William Barker (parents John Barker and Rosa Ann Marshall).   I often go and visit his grave (although he died before I was born so never knew him) and have searched around the cemetery (in Streatham, London) for other Barkers as I wonder where John, Rosa and the rest of the family were buried? It is a very large cemetery so I could well have missed their stones.   Kind Regards, Alison Cook (nee Barker)