Daughter-in-law of Henry Wicks. Jessie campaigned for a topiary tree in memory of Henry the railway
guard killed by a goods train derailment near Chilworth in 1892.
Henry was born in Reading in 1839. By the time of his marriage in 1862 he was a railway guard. His bride was Emma Withers and they had three children Henry, Martha and Joseph, living at 26 Cumberland Road in Reading.
On Monday 29 February 1892 a SER express goods train, carrying bricks, biscuits, corn, drainpipes etc,
suffered an uncoupling as it descended the slope towards Chilworth. 35 of its 51 wagons derailed and many tumbled over the embankment. According to the Berkshire Chronicle, the guard’s van “was smashed to atoms” killing Henry the guard on that train. The same paper reported that Henry “had been in the service of SER Company for upwards of thirty years… It wasn’t his turn to be on duty that night, he had voluntarily taken the place of another guard, who had gone to see his parents.”
His widow Emma stayed in the same house for some years before moving in with daughter Martha’s family and lived to the age of 88. Son Joseph, a gas and water engineer, married Jessie Williams in 1895 and moved to High Wycombe, they had a son Hubert.
It was Jessie who was instrumental in having the yew tree planted by the railway line, at the site of Henry’s death, as a memorial to her father-in-law. Clipped into the shape of a pheasant atop an armchair it’s known as ‘Jessie’s Seat’ or affectionately by some as ‘the Chilworth Chicken.’
