Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

George Brooks

1845 –25/04/1916

Born in Wiggington, labourer who became a railway porter before becoming caretaker of Town Hall.

Relatives

Ann Brooks (789) — wife

• Melanie Hilton

Plot 789 George Brooks (1845-1916)

George was born in Wigginton in 1845, the  youngest of the five children of Thomas Brooks, an agricultural labourer, and Elizabeth his wife.

In the1851 census, the family were living on Wiggington Common. His brothers David and Moses, aged 15 and 12, were agricultural labourers like their father, and his sisters Maria and Ellen, aged 17 and 10, were straw plaiters.

Ten years later George was still living at home “On the Common”.  His mother was a straw plaiter, as was his sister Ellen, now married and living there with her husband, William Highley. William, George and Thomas were all employed as agricultural labourers.

George obviously decided that labouring in the fields was not for him and at some point between April 1861 and the census of April 1871 took himself off to London and became a railway porter.

In the 1871 census he was a boarder in the household of Robert Macnee, a railway porter from Scotland. He and his family of wife, two sons and a daughter also had four young male lodgers, including George. They lived at 37, Clarendon Square in a house shared with another family of husband, wife and three lodgers. The Square lay due north of St Pancras “new” church and just east of the railway tracks out of Euston.

The centre of the Square was occupied by The Polygon, a striking 15-sided building of 32 houses built around a garden. Mary Shelley was born at no. 29 to Mary Wollstonecraft and Charles Dickens and his family lodged for a short while at no.17 which featured in Bleak House. By the 1820s the area was becoming increasingly run-down and became even more congested when the building of St Pancras station cleared some of the surrounding slums. The Polygon was demolished in 1890 and the whole area cleared in the 1920s and 30s.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somers_Town,_London#/media/File:Polygon.jpg  has an illustration of the Square as George would have known it.

George married Ann Strange 23 October 1871 in St Mary’s, Northchurch. He was a “railway servant” and still living in St Pancras.

Their only child, John Thomas, was registered in Berkhamsted in 1872.  It is not known what George’s employment was when he moved to Berkhamsted but by April 1881 he was the “hall keeper”, resident with his family in the Town Hall, which had been completed in 1860. From the 1911 census we known that they occupied four rooms within the Hall.

George must have proved  very satisfactory in the role as he retained it until at least 1912 when he appears there in the electoral registers.

Ann died 15 April 1915 and is buried here. George survived her for only just over a year, dying 25 April 1916 aged 70.

Ann Brooks (789)

1842 –15/04/1915

Wife of George Brooks

Relatives

George Brooks — husband

• Melanie Hilton

Plot 789 Ann Brooks (née Strange) (1842-1915)

Ann was born in Northchurch in 1842 to John Strange and Martha (née Tarbox). She had an older brother, William.

In the 1851 census John was employed as a rail labourer but by 1861 he was a gardener’s labourer and by 1871 was describing himself simply as “gardener”. That year family were living in Orchard End, Northchurch and Ann, aged 28, was working as a dressmaker. Also in the household was little Emma Strange, born 1867, the daughter of William Strange.

Ann married George Brooks, a railway porter on 23 October 1871 in St Mary’s, Northchurch

They were to have one child, John Thomas, born in 1873.

From the 1881 census onwards George was employed as “hall keeper” at Berkhamsted Town Hall and the family had four rooms within the building.

Ann died 15 April 1915. George survived her for just over a year and was buried with her here