Charles Roger Buckridge was baptised on 10 April 1802 in Inkpen, Berkshire – a village in West Berkshire, centred 3.5 miles southeast of Hungerford
He was the eldest known child of Charles (Roger) and Elizabeth (née Wall(i/a)s) Buckridge who married in Inkpen St Michael’s Church on 29 May 1799
Charles had four younger siblings – Hannah Elizabeth (1809), William Emmanuel (1813), Jane (1815) and Elizabeth (1817). It is possible that there were other children born of Charles and Elizabeth between 1799 and 1809 but no others have been located to date. Charles and Elizabeth lived at Great Common in the village of Inkpen and Charles worked as a potter.
Elizabeth was widowed in 1841 – although the census does not record this detail – as her husband, Charles, was buried in 1837 in Inkpen aged 69
Hannah Eliza and Charles were still living with their mother, along with James Buckridge (potter), who was Charles’ younger brother. The Inkpen Buckridge male potters are referred to in archived fire insurance policies of the eighteenth century but no reference is made to Charles or James.
The 1851 census for Great Common records Elizabeth aged 76 as a ‘pauper/potters W‘ (potter’s widow) with Charles, her son, a potter’s labourer
Charles lost his brother, William Emmanuel, in 1837 (aged 24), his sister, Elizabeth, in 1840 (aged 22) and Hannah Elizabeth, in 1842 (aged 33). Only he and his sister, Jane, lived past 1842 and only Jane married (in 1840), moving away from Inkpen, leaving Charles on his own in the village after his mother’s death in 1853.
He worked as a potter’s labourer or agricultural labourer his whole life and even in 1881, aged 80, he was recorded in the census as an agricultural labourer. Charles died in 1883 and was buried in Newbury at Newtown Road Cemetery on 21 February 1883.
