Ann Hayhurst was my great-great-great-grandmother. Born 8 January 1841 at No. 8 Le Grand Place, Lambeth, of James and Ann (formerly Tungate) Hayhurst, Ann was their first child.
Interestingly, they didn’t marry until 4 October 1846 but that’s another saga! The 1841 census records both James and Ann as Hayhurst, living with her parents, Robert and Elizabeth Tungate, at 8 Le Grand Place, Waterloo Road, with many of her siblings and their newborn daughter, Ann aged just 4 months. James’ occupation is stated as ‘bookbinder’.
Kingshead Court in 1851 shows a vast increase in numbers in the Hayhurst family – six children of James and Ann: James 9, Ann 10, Stephen 5, Alfred 4, Eliza 2 and Robert 8 months. James must have been working very long hours as a book edge gilder to earn enough to support his family. A further three children were born in the next decade and the Hayhurst family moved to 10 Dean Street, Holborn – a property which was subsequently the residence of many of the Hayhurst family throughout the nineteenth century. Dean Street is a street in Soho, central London, running between Oxford Street to the north and Shaftesbury Avenue to the south and Wikipedia provides some interesting snippets of history about the road from Mozart recitals at No. 21, to the acting career of Charles Dickens!
Ann Hayhurst married James Robert Leonard Fielder on 25 December 1864 at Lambeth St Mary and Ann’s brother, Alfred Hayhurst, married Elizabeth Sarah Fielder, James’ sister, on 12 February 1871 at Holborn St Andrew. James Hayhurst (junior) married Clara Martha Hepworth on 16 September 1866 and Richard Claridge married Jessie Hayhurst on 19 September 1876 in St Sepulchre, providing historians with an interesting residency at 10 Dean Street in 1881 (RG11/375/24/42):
You’d think the property was something of a mansion. Well, it is a four-storey building, now the home of Pizza Express!
Numerous members of the Hayhurst family went into the book binding trade – as did Ann Hayhurst’s children through her marriage with James Robert Leonard Fielder – though I wonder which book binder they worked for. Anyone know of a good place to search for such information? I’d love to know more about the working lives of the Hayhurst family and why so many of them lived at 10 Dean Street for much of the latter part of the nineteenth century….
