church street, ore village

[whiffler]

1956 OS map shows northern run of buildings in Church Street as 136-154, central group 76-100, western end 2-48

Serpentine Rd was renamed and split 1900-ish to become Percy and Greville

[Derek Jempson]

This may be of interest to some of those who have posted on this thread. The image shows a list of those residents of Church Street and Greville Road who contributed to the expenses of my wife's grandfather's funeral in 1951. Edward Edwards lived in Greville Road and was much liked and respected in the area.

[Richard Pollard]

That is quite remarkable as my grandmother who lived in Church Street for many years is listed on the donation sheet you show. Never knew this before, their name was Blackman, and two Blackman families lived in two house in Church Street within a couple of doors of each other.
Thanks for inserting that.
Love to have a copy?

[Derek Jempson]

Richard. Glad that the list is of interest. If you click on the image to see the larger image, you can right-click (or whatever it is that you do on a tablet) on the image to download a copy (save as). If you would like a printed copy, please Private Message me with your address.

[DF_ELY]

I'm new here. I live in Canada, but I'm researching ancestry on my mother's side of the family.

I joined because my grandmother, Annie Gasson was born in Church St, Ore. The census from 1871 shows my great-grandfather Michael Gasson living with his family on Church St and again in the 1881 and 1891 census after he married and had children. My grandmother's older sister Eliza married a man by the name of Albert Tollet, who also lived on Church St with his family. He was killed in a fight in a pub after an argument with a neighbour who hit him on the head with an axe (1910).

I've looked at an old map from 1938 that shows the houses on the street. The area that is now known as Speckled Wood is marked as 'Allotment Gardens'. I'd be interested to see any old pictures of the street. It just looks like a badly maintained laneway to the rear of the Greville Rd houses.

[musicmaestro]

I've got a couple of images of the street on my wiki here: https://historymap.info/Church_Street_(Ore). This 'lost' road would appear to have not been extensively photographed, so images are hard to come by.

[DF_ELY]

Thanks for your reply, musicmaestro. I know very little about my grandmother's time in England. It's only through Ancestry that I've been able to string some of the stories together and to understand what made her the way that she was.

Annie was a stern woman who never wanted children. My mother was an only child who was born after 10 years of marriage. My grandfather died in 1941 after my parents had been married for 2 years. My grandmother lived with us for the next 25 years. My sister was born in 1948 and I was born in 1954. My grandmother said very little about her childhood, except that she was born in Ore (Hastings).

Her mother was Louisa Apps. Louisa was born in the Union Workhouse, Ore, in 1852 to Serena Apps (born in Guestling). No father is mentioned on the birth certificate. Serena married Henry Pankhurst the following year, and Louisa came to have 7 half-siblings and was known as Pankhurst as well as Apps.

In 1870, Louisa married Peter Reen. By 1872, she had had 2 sons. Both of her sons and her husband died by the end of 1872. I haven't been able to discover why.

She married my great-grandfather, Michael Gasson, on Dec 25, 1875, and had 8 children. The first 2 died shortly after birth, as did the last child. Of the 5 surviving children, my grandmother was the 3rd. Louisa died in 1896 when my grandmother was 11. My grandfather remarried 7 months later. He married the widow of his wife's half-brother, George Pankhurst, who had 2 children of her own. It didn't work out very well. His new wife treated his children like Cinderella.

When the family moved to London prior to the 1901 census, my grandmother chose to stay in Hastings and ended up working as a servant for a family at 52 Tackleway.

Although my great-grandfather was born in Folkestone, Kent, his family moved to Ore when he was in his early teens. They lived at 99 Church St. After he married Louisa, they lived at 27 Church St. In the 1891 census, they were living at 32 Church St. When Louisa died in 1896, they were living at 25 Church St.

Why they moved around so much, I've got no idea, but they always seemed to stick with living on Church St. I got the impression from my research that Church St was where the poorer people lived. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I always got the impression that my grandmother grew up in a very poor family and that it was a struggle to survive.

My grandmother married in 1908 and moved to Toronto, Canada, in 1910. Her 2 sisters and one of her brothers came to Toronto also. During WWI, when my grandfather was stationed in England, my grandmother stayed with family around Hastings so that she could be closer to her husband. This is how my mother came to be. I don't know who else in my grandmother's family stayed in England or if they are still in the Hastings area. I'd love to know.