d.28/12/1947
One of 7 born to bricklayer & wife. Labourer, married, one child (dec'd), became groom at Whitehill
Relatives
Research:
Charles Miller was born on the 1st of May 1868, almost certainly in No 1 Ellesmere Road, Berkhamsted. His father, John Miller a bricklayer had lived at the same address with his wife Sarah since at least April 1861 and had probably learned his trade whilst a servant to Thomas Dell, a farmer and brick maker in Woodcocks Hill (between Durrants Lane and Bell Lane) where John was residing in 1851.
The small end of terrace house in Ellesmere Road was already starting to fill up by 1868 when Charles became the 4th child born to his parents. He joined his sister Ellen (born about 1860), George (born 1862) and John (born 1867). In 1871 the family home was made even more cramped by the presence of Joseph Newell a ploughman who was recorded as boarding with the family.
By 1881 No 1 Ellesmere Road must have been a very crowded place indeed as the family had now increased by three, with Charles gaining two more sisters and another brother, namely Phoebe (born 1870), Harry (born 1872) and Elizabeth (born 1877). By this time Charles was at school and his sister Ellen and brothers George and John were now working outside of the home.
Charles had joined the members of the family working outside of the house by 1891, as he is recorded in that year as having been employed as general labourer and therefore contributing to the incomes being brought in by his father and brothers George and Harry. The House in Ellesmere Road was recorded in the 1891 census as having only 4 rooms in which the family and any lodgers lived. One might speculate that by going out to work, Charles may at least found some relief from the general hubbub of a dwelling that housed 6 people in a very small space.
By the end of March 1901, the house was a very much quieter place, as Charles’ father had died and Charles was now living in the house in Ellesmere Road with his 66-year-old mother and one George Austin, a porter in a sawmill. Charles’s occupation was now recorded as being a groom working in a non-domestic establishment or business. As such it is likely that he was responsible for the day-to-day care of horses and possibly cattle, including their physical well-being and of course the clearing out of stables and other places in which they were housed.
Charles married Lucy Drake (born 1871) in the parish church in Tring on the 30th November 1908. She was the daughter of David Drake, who had died prior to the marriage. Charles’s mother Sarah had died earlier in the year and was buried on 10th February in Northchurch and by April 1911 he was living with wife Lucy and a 56-year-old widower and farm labourer, Thomas Stokes, still in the house in Ellesmere Road. At this time, he is recorded again as being a groom, now working for a farmer. It is sad to note that the 1911 census also records that Charles and Lucy had lost a child. They had named her Ada and had been born in 1909, but died at birth, or shortly afterwards.
By 1920 Charles and Lucy had moved to 120 Charles Street, Berkhamsted, where they remained until 1926, when they are recorded on the electoral roll as residing in the stables at ‘Whitehill’, the home owned and occupied by Brigadier General Richard Mildmay Foot, the one-time commanding officer of the 4th East Anglian Brigade, RFA who was the principal behind the preservation of the nearby Berkhamsted Castle.
In 1927 they had both moved to 49 George Street and by September 1939 they had moved again, this time to 10 Beech Drive, Berkhamsted. It is not known whether Charles had remained in the employment of Richard Foot, who died in 1933, but at some time between 1911 and 1939 he had become ‘incapacitated’, but no details of how this occurred have to date been uncovered.
Charles died in the fourth quarter of 1946, just one year after his wife Lucy. Both are now buried in the upper area of Rectory Lane Cemetery, but no memorial stone now exists to mark the exact location.
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White Hill
Personalities of the Past
Memorial Symbolism
Military graves