2xgreat grandmother Elizabeth Sarah Windebank was born in Upton-cum-Chalvey in Buckinghamshire in October 1849, daughter of David Windebank, a Smith & Farrier, and his wife, formerly Elizabeth Topper.
At the time of the 1851 census, the family is in Dorney Village, Buckinghamshire, and comprises David Windebank (spelt Windybank), Blacksmith, aged 24 (b1827, ‘Bazeltone, Berkshire’), his wife Elizabeth (25, b1826, in Knightsbridge) and their children David (3) and [Elizabeth] Sarah (15months). This would suggest that David Windebank married Elizabeth Topper around 1847-8, possibly in Berkshire or Buckinghamshire, or even London.
A search of FreeBMD easily found their marriage entry for the July-September quarter of 1847 in the district of Reading. The resulting certificate from the GRO shows that they married at the Baptist Meeting House in Reading, Berkshire on 31st August 1847. Both are under 21 (‘minor’), single, of 43 Hosier Street, Reading:
David Windebank is a Smith, son of Jeremiah Windebank, a Labourer. Elizabeth Topper is a servant, daughter of Charles Topper. Her father’s occupation is indistinct, and could be waterman or watchman. The Witnesses are Charles Smallbone and Charlotte Topper. All parties sign the register.
The baptists have a long history in Reading (380 years+); the meeting house where David Windebank and Elizabeth Topper married is likely to be the one opened in 1834, in King’s Road, but the previous meeting house had been in Hosier Street, where they are living at no.43 at the time of marriage. John Jenkyn Brown was the officiating minister between 1847-1855, and it is he who signs the register together with the Registrar, Frederick West. From the 1850s, 43 Hosier Street was the site of the Queens Arms pub; perhaps it was already an inn and lodging house in 1847, and David Windebank and Elizabeth Topper were lodging there before their marriage or, as Elizabeth was a servant, the pub may have been her place of work?
The couple move home several times after their marriage, presumably in search of work. They are in Upton-cum-Chalvey, Buckinghamshire, by the time their daughter Elizabeth Sarah Windebank is born in 1849 and their daughter Susan was baptised in Dorney, Bucks, in June 1851 (so probably born a couple of months after the 1851 census). The next two children were born in Reading, Berkshire: Caroline (1853) and Charles James (1854). By the time their sixth child, Charlotte Sarah, was born in 1858, they have moved to Turnham Green in Middlesex; a year later, their son William is born in Acton and their eighth child Thomas will be born in May 1861 in Lambeth, not long after the 1861 census.
David Windebank is consistently described as a Blacksmith, Smith & Farrier or just Farrier on the censuses and his children’s baptisms. The couple had ten children in all (as far as I can tell) over a twenty year period between 1848 and 1868. The three youngest were all baptised at St John the Evangelist, Lambeth, on 9th April 1871, a week after the 1871 census, where they are shown as living at 2 Pear Tree Street, Lambeth. Charles Booth’s survey of 1898, some twenty years later, described Pear Tree Street as a “cul-de-sac, quiet, 14 2-storey houses … rents 7/6 to 9/-“. It is just off Waterloo Road, a short walk from the Thames and Waterloo station.
David Windebank and Elizabeth Topper stay in London for the rest of their lives. They appear in the 1881 and 1891 censuses (Ancestry), first at 2 Hooks Road, Camberwell and then at 4 Blue Anchor Lane, Bermondsey. Their daughters Susan (who married City Missionary John Davis) and Elizabeth Sarah (who married John Hill) are living in the same street in 1891. David Windebank is described as Farrier, Smith or Shoeing Smith on his children’s marriage records through the 1880s and 1890s.
According to the London Transport Museum, “by the 1890s, London had over 2,000 horse buses and 25,000 horses, with stables and a small army of grooms, blacksmiths and saddlers. But in 1899 the LGOC started its first trials with motorised buses, powered first by steam and later petrol. Change happened slowly, but the process had begun”. London was clearly a good source of work for a shoeing smith / farrier like David Windebank. As those times began to change, at the turn of the century, the couple were in their 70s and, by the 1901 census, the couple, are living alone at 298 Lynton Road, Bermondsey. With no occupation given, it is likely that David Windebank had finally given up working.
For the sources mentioned in bold, see blogpost: MyRoots: Lesly's family history: Sources and resources: A quick view
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