Here we Are(Jimmy Buffet) - Tracking Down The Grimes Family of Kingswood,Gloucestershire - 21st August 2016

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It is Sunday and what better to do than have a lie in.

We plan to take the short drive to Kingswood just below the Cotswold escarpment to check out some of the places one side of my mother’s family, came from. Mum’s father was born in New Zealand to immigrants who arrived in Wellington; NZ in the latter part of the 1800’s.Why they came to New Zealand is not clear but as far as I can find out my Great Grandfather was the only one of a large family to emigrate.

Through various websites we have been able to follow their movements at 10 year intervals of English census’ in the village of Kingswood which back in the 1800’s had a sizeable mill like many of the villages surrounding Wotton-under-Edge, the principal town in the area.

The showers of yesterday have gone and although it is not brilliantly fine at least it is dry which will make walking around the village a more pleasant experience.

Kingswood is like an outer suburb of Wotton-under-Edge with some farmland between the two locations.

The village is small enough to walk around to find what we needed to and with a bit of help from some locals in a car park we found our way to the row of houses that the Grimes family lived in over a period of 30 years.

Samuel, my great, great grandfather was employed at one of the mills and in fact all his family at some times in their lives had some sort of job in a mill.

We called into the church that Samuel and Olive may have been married in although we will need to do some work on their histories to verify this. The church was built in 1723 and although there had been some interior alterations that were obvious to what it would have looked like originally the flagstones that made up the floor were uneven and looked to be original.

Both Samuel and Olive are reportedly buried in the surrounding graveyard but they either did not have headstones on their grave site or those headstones have disappeared. A local resident we had made contact with last year had found where their graves were and had given us a hand drawn map of the spaces inside a gate and alongside the path through the graveyard. Within the graveyard there were many missing headstones but in general the whole area around the church was well maintained.

Our walk down Golden Lane where Olive lived on her own at the age of 84 when the 1881 census was taken was out of date order with the other street where the family lived for over 30 years. However Golden Lane was next door to the church and lead to The Walk where according to the census the family lived in at least 2 of the 10 houses that made up the row of two story terrace houses.

The houses had all had some sort of alteration over time but from their general construction it wasn’t too hard to imagine what the row of houses looked like in the mid 1800’s.

At one time there had been as many as eight pubs in the village but today there was just one left open There had been a pub next door to where Olive lived in Golden Lane but all the older buildings had been replaced by newer houses of mid to late 20^th century which would have changed the look of the lane significantly.

An abbey had been built in Kingswood in 1149 and remained until Henry VIII (there goes that King again) had a disagreement with the Catholic Church in 1538 and much of the abbey was destroyed. Today just the gatehouse to the abbey remains in quite good condition. The local researcher who had traced the Grimes grave sites, also mentioned that there were houses alongside the gatehouse that were used by mill workers but I have no evidence that any of the Grimes that I am related to lived in one of them.

We drove home via a farm shop which is run by a person named Grimes and I had thought I could call in and introduce myself but they were too busy to have time to spend to talk to someone arriving out of nowhere. I will follow up by email with them once we get home just in case there is a relationship there.

We carried on towards home via North Nibley, the small village where Samuel was born. With no records of an address for where he was born or lived we just drove through the village to get a feeling for the place which was similar to Kingswood and about the same distance from Wotton-under-Edge.

We had only been out a couple of hours and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and reading.

We thought that there would have to be a pub somewhere nearby serving up a Sunday roast and it would just be a matter of finding one that served the roast all day rather than just at lunchtime as some of the pubs do on a Sunday.

After a couple of false starts we found a pub that was nearby, as it turned out, and we enjoyed a delicious roast pork dinner with all the roast trimmings including a good sized Yorkshire pudding with a rich brown gravy. This will likely be our last pub meal out on the BBA V3 and we thoroughly enjoyed it along with a couple of pints of English local brewed beer.

Tomorrow we are meeting up with Wendy who worked with Gretchen for a while in the rest home in Matua before she took up a contract with Oxford Aunts to work in England. Wendy hopefully will have a hike planned for us as she has been here nearly a year and has had some experience hiking around the Cotswolds paths and trails.

PS:enjoy one of Jimmy Buffet's lesser known songs about a family reunion which would be the ultimate when tracing your ancestors!On Youtube as usual.

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Comments

[Christopher Martin Grimes]

Samuel Grimes of Kingswood
Interesting to read your story of your trip to Kingswood looking into the family of Samuel Grimes. I did the same trip last year although I didn't see as much as you did. Samuel was my 2nd cousin. I have a fairly extensive tree of the Grimes family back to about 1620. My 2nd Great Grandfather George Grimes was from Wotton under Edge, born 1820. Just a short note to say I enjoyed reading the story. Chris

[Whiskers]

The Grimes Family
Interesting to hear of your family connection.I would be interested to hear more.