Peascod Street in Victorian times in Windsor History, Old Views and Genealogy Forum

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Peascod Street in Victorian times

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Hazel Austin	Peascod Street in Victorian times	Lead	[-]
Posts: 1247 (22-Apr-2010 09:48 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Tags : None Please go to post # 68 for Hunt's Directory Listings for 1846: http://theroyalwindsorforum.yuku.com/sreply/10556/t/Peascod-Street-in-Victorian-times.html Last Edited By: Hazel Austin 28-May-2010 04:15 PM. Edited 11 times.
lesleyelmes		#1	[-]
Posts: 180 (22-Apr-2010 12:39 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Very interesting Hazel! I had to mentally compare the kinds of shops and establishments back then to what we have in Peascod St. currently. I noted the complete absence of: bankers, insurance agents, mortgage brokers, and anything to do with electronics for obvious reasons. Isn't it strange to look back and see that people back then had no need for any of these things and yet today we couldn't live without them? Things were very basic then with a grocer, cheesemaker, candlemaker and a good bootmaker being on the top of the everyone's list. A few public houses thrown in for good measure as well as a shop dealing with horse wares and you had all you needed. There was a noted absence of clothes shops as we know them today. There were a few tailors, presumably for the gentlemen, and one or two dressmakers but when you look at Peascod St. today and other streets like it, every other shop sells some kind of clothing. Obviously priorities were vastly different then. There seemed to be more makers of straw hats than dresses - women did like their hats!! And did anyone notice that every food store seemed to specialize in something whether it be tea, cheese, butcher, baker, etc.? There were a few establishments listing groceries, sundries (now I wonder what they were??). Everyone had their own little niche in life and I'm sure there was fierce competition if someone encroached on another's domain and started selling something he shouldn't! Specialization is so rare nowadays when we can go to one giant store and buy practically anything from a box of matches to a digital TV or a pair of jeans to a set of tyres for our car. I always the remember the movie Moscow on the Hudson about a Russian assylum seeker who went to New York and the first time he went to a U.S. grocery store he fainted as he had never seen so many choices and it overwhelmed him. I can just imagine that if a person from that era were to magically time travel to the present time, he would feel the same way. It's almost unbelievable how much things have changed in a 150 years. I can't help but think that in some ways we were better off back then - after all you didn't have to worry about losing your job as it was going overseas or the fact that everything you buy is made in China. Everything was made locally by people you knew all your life. If your father was a bootmaker then chances were you would be a bootmaker. I'm sure there was a lot less stress back then even if they didn't have indoor or even outdoor loos!!!! Good job Hazel - you certainly made me think this morning and that's something as I've only just started on my first cup of coffee!
Hazel Austin	Lesley	#2	[-]
Posts: 1249 (22-Apr-2010 03:50 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	You haven't got any telepathic powers, I suppose? For not the first time you were obviously thinking what I thought as I typed the occupations out. Very basic stuff, wasn't it - butcher, baker and candle (stick) maker. These are things you know from history programmes and films and novels (not to mention the excellent BBC Drama Department adaptations!) but something a basic as a shop list brings it home somehow. Simples. No toys and sweets for the children, either - no wonder they valued what they got. Read in conjunction with the excellent list of occupations Jane found in Bier Street you gradually get into the idea of how genuinely different it must have been - not that that necessarily equates to "happy" of course, but more interestingly you can see how people's mindsets must have been different too. If you've never 'ad it, you don't miss it, I suppose? I must go back and read my own words again (!) imagining myself the mum of an ordinary family where Peascod Street was my basic shopping area. Lots I would have made do with, mended or made myself, and for very special things I might have ventured into the High Street or Thames Street shops, but basically Peascod Street and Oxford Street were it. I must also go and read your post again and cross off the similarities...
Hazel Austin	Peascod Place, St. George's Place and Sun Passage	#3	[-]
Posts: 1327 (12-May-2010 09:24 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Sorry this is a (slow) work in progress and I have still to post 1854, 1900 and any years we can find in between. However, a 1910 photo came up on the Photographers thread posted by Derek that showed two addresses in Peascod Street that presumably were there long before - on the end of the buildings at each side of the entrance to Sun Passage, so in case they should be relevant, I'm including them here. The Noakes Brewery sign is on the Bull next door. This is the photo. As I posted on the Photographers thread, the only possible reason for the name St. George's Place would be a connection with a public house/beer seller named the St.George which is listed in directories in the 1870's and 1880's at number 36 - a few doors along down the street from the Bull. At that time (1881 electoral roll) the only person listed in Peascod Place was Albert Patch (lovely name, I can just see him sitting on his doorstep puffing on his claypipe!) at number 3. In St. George's Place there are three listings on the roll but no numbers: William Henry Brooks, William Finch and Stephen Pettit. The last one must be the tailor who at one time occupied the corner shop marked St. George's Place in the photo. Although there don't seem to have been any shops in Sun Passage itself, there are residents listed there on the 1881 roll and they are described as "Sun Passage" so presumably wherever Peascod Place and St. George's Place were, they didn't extend into Sun Passage itself. (I suppose the old public house called the Sun (still there) a few yards up Peascod Street from this passage gave it its name?) No numbers except 5 are given. The residents were: James Boddy, John Burgess, James Davis, Richard Downes (number 5 listed), Henry Goldswain, Frederick Marshall (listed as "houses"), Charles Pheby, Thomas Vaughan, and George Windsor (also listed as 74 Victoria Cottages). Last Edited By: Hazel Austin 12-May-2010 09:46 AM. Edited 2 times.
Pat Larkin		#4	[-]
Posts: 1988 (12-May-2010 11:21 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	George Windsor? Any relation to the folk who live on the hill I wonder? Good work Hazel, your determination to see this project through is obvious and we'll all benefit from your research and hard work, thankyou.
Hazel Austin		#5	[-]
Posts: 1329 (12-May-2010 12:45 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Good show - I tend to follow whatever takes my interest willy nilly so it's good if someone else is interested too. Your encouragement is much appreciated, Pat! Yes, I wondered when I saw Mr. Windsor. I thought the Royal Family chose the name to mask their own "unpatriotic" surname - I certainly can't remember reading of anyone else called Windsor locally, but there may well be... Not everyone is interested in Peascod Street from so long ago, but surely some of those shopkeepers over a century ago must have been someone's relative or neighbour back then - they can't all have moved out of the town when they closed their shops so somewhere there must be someone in Windsor today linked to them. Besides, when I think back to the Peascod Street and the shops I knew, it's fascinating to think what was there before and has disappeared. And to find clues - like in Derek's great photo outside the Bull. Certainly my gran and grandad would have known or at least have visited with their mums some of these shops that were there at the very end of Victoria's reign, so it's not really all that long ago...
Hazel Austin	The Windsors in Windsor	#6	[-]
Posts: 1330 (12-May-2010 01:09 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Well, don't speak too soon. On the 1881 electoral roll was a George Windsor living at 35 Bexley Street..... Familiar?
Pat Larkin		#7	[-]
Posts: 1991 (12-May-2010 02:38 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	It may be that George Windsor's line goes back quite a way Hazel. Certainly and probably back to when Windsor first became 'Windsor' s.t.s. I don't know any Windsors apart from the royal folk in the detached building at the top of the street. Wasn't it so that years ago, if you hadn't a 'real' surname, you could or might be named after the town where you were born? Is that a fact, or have I been deceiving myself of my historical, (or hysterical), knowledge? I shouldn't like to have the surname 'Slough' or 'Newton-le-Willows' for instance! Thamesweb wrote that the jewellers where we, Tony and I, bought my wedding ring, at the bottom of Peascod Street, had in fact been run by the same family for 100 years. Was it 'Wilcox' or something similar? He put a photo on the forum too, because I remember the neat and tidy look of the shop front. Now I'm not sure of the name, but he'll definitely know.
Hazel Austin	Place names as surnames	#8	[-]
Posts: 1331 (12-May-2010 03:34 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	In an effort to avert a libel suit (or is it slander?) from the Mayor of Newton-le-Willows, I'm posting a photo of the aforementioned place to indicate that it might not be such a very bad idea to be called Mrs. NLW. However, everybody knows Slough since Mr. Betjeman's poem - and I don't think we need to worry about the Mayor there... I didn't know, although it's logical when you point it out, that surnames could be place names because that's where you came from - perhaps an "of" got dropped over time? I shall have a lookup and see what I can find about the surname "Windsor" then. I think the jewellers was Wilkinsons? EDIT: The trouble with this forum is that your ignorance becomes so public. There seems to be a lot more about the derivation of surnames that I had imagined. According to one website: there are currently 8158 people called Windsor, and it is the 1224th most common surname. Not (as Michael Caine might say) a lot of people know that. The same website shows the spread of the surname as being Berkshire, Middlesex, Sussex and the Highlands of Scotland. Presumably elsewhere there are other spellings - because although we may think Windsor unique in its charm, there were various places so called - and various spellings of them; Windsor, Winsor, Winser, Winzor, Winzer and Winzar, all Anglo-Saxon. Devon apparently had a Winsor, as did Hants, and as well as the Berkshire Windsor there was one in Dorset. All seem to have derived their name from their waterside location (not always a river) as with our Windsor, "windels" being a windlass and "ora" a bank. But of course some of us knew this already.. From what I read these place-surnames were taken by a landowner or lord of the manor, but also by inhabitants who moved elsewhere to find work and so were then known for conveniece by the name of their birthplace. Surnames must have been a higgledy-piggledy business, erratic and constantly evolving until the firm hand of government decided to tax everyone - and for that, they had to know who you were. Some things never change... Censuses might help us trace the Windsors of our Windsor back a century or two, but it seems unlikely that we could with certainty find out the town's earlier Windsors - did they in fact come from a different Windsor? Now there's a thought... Last Edited By: Hazel Austin 12-May-2010 04:40 PM. Edited 4 times.
thamesweb		#9	[-]
Posts: 3478 (12-May-2010 04:29 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Another reason for the selection of a surname could be the Anglicisation of a difficult foreign name when families came to live in the UK as refugees, etc.
Pat Larkin		#10	[-]
Posts: 1993 (12-May-2010 06:27 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	During WWI, two of my Gran's sister married brothers. These brothers had a 'Fitz' in front of their surname. When the war began they dropped said 'Fitz' and just used the latter part of their surname. I don't know if they re-installed the 'Fitz' after the war.This action changed the family's surname completely and left it sounding more 'English'... Bad spelling on the part of the monk or scribe who registered workers or new people to the town, was also a reason for names being spelt in different ways. Elliott, for instance has so many variations. I read on one site online that there are 72 ways of spelling my surname. Now, call me a sceptic, but I've tried and could find a mere handful. I then gave up trying. Perhaps some registrars were just plain bad 'spellers' or were dyslexic, deaf, foreign or too impatient to wait for the person to explain how to spell their name, or name-place, correctly. Just had a thought, but if a person was wanted in a town and he 'hurried' away to another town to live, might he use a completely different name, so changing his identity. This again messes up registers and old records. He might keep this new name and not being aware that some four hundred years later, people like us may try to build our family trees, his actions are causing us so many problems and a lot of head-scratching. Last Edited By: Pat Larkin 12-May-2010 06:33 PM. Edited 2 times.
Brian Stinton	Prefix FITZ	#11	[-]
Posts: 43 (13-May-2010 09:53 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Your relations probably thought they were taking the "safer" option of removing the prefix "Fitz" from their names since it sounds German. In fact "Fitz" is a derivation of the French word Fils meaning Son...therefore Son of Patrick as in Fitzpatrick.
Pat Larkin		#12	[-]
Posts: 1996 (13-May-2010 10:13 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Thanks, Brian. The surname they were, well, left with I suppose, was 'Costa'....sounds foreign even minus the 'Fitz'......Not sure if the brothers were German, they may have been though. I have a photo of them showing their very dark features. This may have been another reason to drop the 'Fitz'. Two very handsome young men all the same. They were clock and watch sellers and menders. They weren't pedlars though, they had shops in Surrey. I wonder if the shops are still there.
Hazel Austin	Fitz and Fils	#13	[-]
Posts: 1332 (13-May-2010 11:24 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	You don't half learn a lot on here! I bet the other two RWWS forums aren't half so educational. I have to admit I didn't actually know beforehand what Newton-le-Willows looked like, Pat, I thought you had invented it... Brian - you got any more photos up your sleeve? That charabanc one was most productive. Incidentally, this being the know-all forum, what was the prefix for "daughter of" - or didn't they count then, as they weren't destined to inherit? Last Edited By: Hazel Austin 13-May-2010 11:29 AM. Edited 1 times.
Pat Larkin		#14	[-]
Posts: 1998 (13-May-2010 11:48 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Van is Dutch I believe. Von, German. Hazel, do you remember a 'film star', (blonde, busty and run-of-the-mill), who was called 'Mamie van Doren', or somesuch name? I think the von.van/fitz etc. is the same for both male and female. I have googled it and found that apart from 'a' or 'ab', as in Thomas a Beckett and Rhyss ab Aberystwyth, apologies to any of our Welsh viewers, we don't have many prefixes to our surnames in England. Leblanc, the white, is obviously French, Le Brun, (a road in Eastbourne), is most-likely named after a French personality of the Victorian era?? Mac, Mc, is Scottish/Irish. Anyway, we are completely off le thread and should be dans Peascod Rue, (or Rue de la Peascod), and pendant le temps Victorian.....yellow cards are coming our way I think!
Hazel Austin		#15	[-]
Posts: 1334 (13-May-2010 12:26 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I'm writing this in some invisible ink for computers that I bought from a swarthy street pedlar in Peascod Street. He said thamesweb would never be able to read it so I plan to use it for all my off-thread posts from now on. I'm just hoping that for £20 it'll work! Yes, I remember M v D, older-style than Jayne Mansfield and not as pretty as Marilyn. But then I'm not a man.
Pat Larkin		#16	[-]
Posts: 2001 (13-May-2010 02:04 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Hazel, your name has 'come up', but I can't read anything....... ha ha ha.. invisible ink my cartridge case!! (how much did you pay?). And in anycase, (never begin a sentence with 'and'), wouldn't there have been Dutch, German or other countries' pedlars wheeling and dealing in Peascod Street many years ago? How would these foreign pedlars and organ-grinders have communicated with the natives of Windsor back then? I think perhaps the ordinary folk of Windsor wouldn't have objected too much when they saw one of the pedlars walking towards them, but how did the very rich and famous or royals cope?? I suppose they told their driver to 'take another route to avoid the noise, smells and pedlars'. Would the police have had the authority or power to move these street merchants along? Times were most-likely so hard that anyone who wanted to earn a living was allowed to do just that.....Life then was probably much, much harder but more colourful too. Peascod Street probably rang out with the noise of horses' hooves, street sellers, cart wheels on cobble-stones, the Horseguards from the barracks walking/riding their steeds up to the castle, which back then they did, and could.... I don't get the same atmosphere now from this old street. It seems more subdued and quiet to me when I visit. Something is missing and I think the fact that tourists fill the street moreso than locals, might be the reason. I don't know. I only visit twice or three times a year now, so I might be remembering too much of how it was in my day. At least the two-way traffic has gone. That was a killer if ever I lived and breathed, which sometimes I couldn't. The exhaust from buses, brown and red, was so bad and in the Summer when shop doors were left open, the exhaust fumes permeated the shops and there seemed to be no escaping them. We thank goodness for Peascod Street still being there and that's a fact. It does form a very large part of most Windsorians' memories, that, the castle and the River as well. The Home Park, Windsor Great Park and the Brocas still look more-or-less as they did on the old post-card views to us, so while they're still around, it's still home to us. Last Edited By: Pat Larkin 13-May-2010 02:08 PM. Edited 2 times.
thamesweb		#17	[-]
Posts: 3484 (13-May-2010 02:19 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	In Russian a name ending 'aya' indicates 'daughter of' (Vishnevskaya) while 'ich' or 'itch' indicates son of (Rostropovich). In Polish it is similar.
lesleyelmes		#18	[-]
Posts: 205 (13-May-2010 06:23 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Hazel, the french word for daughter is close to the one for son only spelled differently - fille as opposed to fils. Daughters didn't count back then - all we were good for was being a wife and mother and we didn't own anything. Once we married everything we owned was given to our husbands. Boy am I ever glad I wasn't born back then - I don't believe they would have liked me very much. And chances are good that I would never have married. I burnt my bra a long time ago as my husband is fond of reminding me; however I started wearing it again as things started heading south towards my knees!!!!!!!
Hazel Austin	Windsor immigrants	#19	[-]
Posts: 1338 (14-May-2010 10:45 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	All fascinating stuff... There are certainly foreign names of shopholders in Windsor's street directories - a German cabinet-maker/upholsterer who "did" for Queen Victoria in the High Street, for example. And as you say, foreign immigrants such as the Dutch or Italians may well have ended up being itinerant pedlars if they didn't have the funds for a permanent shop or workshop. The Romanies too, although they seem to have been in a different classification to other pedlars. I really must collect the stuff together about pedlars around the town, not just Peascod Street and begin another thread dedicated to them. Though it would also be interesting to look at immigrant shop-sellers or businesses in Windsor as a whole. But not all before lunch, I fear...
Pat Larkin		#20	[-]
Posts: 2006 (14-May-2010 10:57 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I know old Woolies has gone forever, but does anyone know the opening date of this memorable store? To our generation it was always 'there' s.t.s. I'm keen to walk up, or down, Peascod Street very soon now, and will take a breather outside our old and very missed store. Are there any photos anywhere of the opening ceremony? Who opened the store and what was the reception and reaction like, because, as we all know, Woolworth's was an American company. Surely local, smaller shop owners were worried about losing trade, as happens today when a big supermarket chain opens yet another 'bigger and better branch'....I know my parents used Woolworth all the time, but my Granny Elliott died before I was old enough to sit and talk to her, so I didn't get that older generation's outlook on the store. I'm sure S.S. might have the time, during collecting other info and bunches of nuts for her Winter store, to find the opening date for us - please.