TONBRIDGE-REIGATE – RAILWAY 200 BLUE PLAQUES

TONBRIDGE-REIGATE – RAILWAY 200 BLUE PLAQUES
by Danny Coope
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1
JOHN TOWES
1872-1970
ENGINE TIMEKEEPER
John Charles Towes, was the son of Martha and William Towes, a railway fireman and later engine driver.
John was one of seven children born to them at 15 Garlands Road not far from Redhill Junction as it was
called in 1871. In 1891, nine people living at No 15. John’s brothers William and Frederick worked as a
stoker and engine shed labourer. John was 19 and was a railway engine timekeeper – arrivals and departure
times, hours worked, rest periods fulfilled, and generally making sure an engine crew were available to
work. A complicated task at a busy junction.
It’s hard to believe but local times across the country varied slightly from one end to the other. Train arrivals
couldn’t always be predicted accurately, accidents were being caused and passengers might not make their
expected connections. It wasn’t until the countrywide telegraph network made it possible for Greenwich to
transmit a time signal ‘London Time’ for stationmasters to set their station clocks by. This began in 1847 but
it wasn’t until August 1880 that an Act was passed that unified Great Britain’s standard time as GMT.
John’s wife Adelaide Entecott was a timber dealer’s daughter from Deptford who found herself in a poor
school in Sutton before getting work as a parlour maid in Godstone in 1891. They were married in 1896.
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2
ISABEL TARRANT
1905-1986
PLATFORM GIRL
Born in Reigate in 1905, Isabel was one of six children of Amelia née White, a cane chair re-seater and
Sampson Tarrant, a glass and china riveter – repairing and strengthening damaged items using metal staples.
Around 1921 Isabel was working at Redhill railway station as a platform girl. Not unlike a cinema usherette,
this involved selling refreshments to passengers waiting for trains. The refreshment rooms would’ve been
run by catering firm Spiers and Pond, who had 200 branches at their peak – as well as 12 hotels including
Brighton’s Grand Hotel and the Gaiety and Criterion Theatre restaurants in London. Spiers and Pond started
in Australia in 1851, funding the England cricket team visit and play matches in Australia in 1861 (losing all
but one match apparently). When they arrived in Britain in the 1860s, taking over station refreshment rooms,
rather than paying rent they shared the profits with the railway companies. Their food was good quality at a
fair price and so a great success.
Isabel married stonemason William Green in 1926 and she would’ve given up her job. They moved to 56
Colesmead Road, Redhill overlooking the playing field and had two children, William Jnr. and Robert.
During WWII William worked as an ARP gravedigger when called upon. Isabella lived until 1986.
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3
FREDERICK HILL
b 1898
STEAM ENGINE FIREMAN
Frederick’s family was dominated by the railways in Redhill. Frederick Albert Hill was born in 1898, to
Agnes née Nye and Albert Hill, a shunter.
By 1921 Frederick was a railway engine fireman. Overseen by the driver this was an often strenuous job of
cleaning the firebox, starting and maintaining the fire, shovelling in coal and ensuring ample water supplies.
He’d be expected to anticipate any approaching inclines as the engine would require extra steam power.
At the same time Frederick’s father Albert was now a railway goods guard for South Eastern, his brother
Nelson was a carriage examiner (inspecting train wheels, couplings, brakes etc for faults), brother Rowland
a parcels clerk and little brother Albert was a book stall boy for WH Smith & Son. So it’s likely that at least
one of these young men would’ve known Isabel Tarrant!
In 1924 Frederick had married Jessie Clara Risbridger and they had a son Frederick Jnr. in 1927. By 1939
now aged 41, Frederick was still working as a locomotive fireman. The family were living at 1 Victoria
Road, Redhill, just 150m from the tracks.
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4
SIR MYLES FENTON
1830-1918
OFFICE BOY & GENERAL MANAGER
Born in the Lake District town of Kendal in 1830. His mother Elizabeth was a postmistress.
Myles began his career, aged 15, on the Kendal and Windermere railway in 1845, criss-crossing the
country for various Railway Companies in various capacities. In 1863 he became General Manager of the
Metropolitan and in 1880 the Great Eastern Railway. His CV lists many high powered roles on boards and
trusts. He was knighted by Queen Victoria and made a Justice of the Peace, and Lieut. Col. of the Engineer
and Railway Volunteer Staff Corps.
It wasn’t until the age of 53 that he married. In 1883 the widow Charlotte Jane Collins became his wife and
they moved to a country estate in South Nutfield, Surrey. He announced in the press that Nutfield’s new
station would be opened for traffic on 1 January 1884. They eventually moved back into town, to Redstone
Hall, overlooking an engine shed at Redhill junction.
He retired in 1906 aged 76, and died in 1918, aged 87. Redstone Hall was demolished in the 1930s and
became Fenton Road.
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5
MOSES W. STANBROOK
b 1817
INSPECTOR OF WORKS DURING MARKBEECH NAVVY RIOTS
Born in Coleshill near Swindon in 1817, to Sarah and Stephen Stanbrook, a mason. Moses joined the
Coldstream Guards at 18 but was invalided four years later with ‘diseased lungs’. He returned to Coleshill
and began working as a stone mason like his father. Twenty years on he’s widowed and working again as a
mason in London. In his late 40s he lands the role of Inspector of Works at the railway building project at
Tunbridge.
In 1866 railway building contractors Messrs. Waring Brothers, running short of men on its Surrey and
Sussex line at Cowden, began to bring in 500 extra navvies from France, Luxemburg and Belgium. There
was growing disquiet that this foreign workforce were undercutting the English, potentially replacing them
entirely – a fact publicly denied by the contractors. Conflicting evidence in the newspaper Court reports state
on August 5 there was an altercation at a beershop, where the animosity drove a couple of Frenchmen to
start a fight, windows were broken with bats, and two Englishmen were concussed. This prompted a group to
ransack a farm housing French navvies, their wives and children. Fighting continued through Saturday night,
all day Sunday and into Monday morning when, brandishing bludgeons the English herded the French to
Edenbridge station where police were waiting. A further nighttime riot occurred where “the nightwatchman
aroused The Inspector of Works Mr. Stanbrook” who discovered 40 or 50 men heading to the shanties from
Markbeech. Stanbrook offered them “3 gallons of beer if you will go away quietly and not interfere with the
foreigners” but to no avail. Collaring one of the men he was struck on the neck. Two French navvies were
charged with unlawfully assembling and making “a great noise, riot, and tumultuous disturbance, to the
terror of Her Majesty’s subjects”. Passing sentence of a month’s imprisonment on the English perpetrators,
the Judge cautioned that: “any attempt to prevent aliens from honestly gaining their livelihood in this free
country would be severely punished”. He concluded there was insufficient evidence to sustain a charge of
rioting against the French men accused. But he complimented Mr Stanbrook “on the courage and sagacity he
displayed in attempting to stop the riot.”
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6
ERNEST MARTIN
1905 – 1972
LENGTHMAN
Born in Lewisham in 1905, Ernest Arthur George Martin’s father Arthur was from Chiddingstone, and was
a platelayer and permanentway ganger on the Godstone Length for SE&C Railway. His mother Annie née
Boakes was the daughter of a gunpowder factory carter in Leigh. They lived at 21 Lagham Road, Godstone
(1921, 1939) overlooking the railway line beside Godstone station. As a teenager, Ernest worked as a
labourer at the local Terra Cotta brickworks before becoming a lengthman for South Eastern railways.
As a lengthman, or trackwalker, Ernest would regularly inspect his designated length of railway track,
to deal with minor problems and report more serious ones. He’d look out for any perishing of joints or
loosening ‘keys’ he would tap back in, or signs of subsidence and clearing litter, weeds and obstructions. In
the worst cases he’d get trains stopped until the problem was solved. Occasionally a lengthman would be
injured or killed by passing trains.
To give you some idea of the distances a lengthman might walk: a retiring lengthman in Scotland in 1950
calculated that he’d walked 36,305 miles of track in a 17 year career!
Ernest died in Horsham, in 1972, he was 67.
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7
EMMA HARRIS
1855-1933
MILK TRAIN DAIRY FARMER
The Roser family dairy farm was in Dry Hill, Tonbridge. It was run by Thomas and his third wife Hester.
Daughter Emma was born in 1855, one of four surviving children. When Thomas died in the 1870s Hester,
now in her 60s, took on the farm herself – which in the 1880s totalled 70 acres, employing two men and
three boys. They were living at 15 Shipbourne Road, Tonbridge (beside the George & Dragon pub). A
solicitor’s clerk called Ernest Harris – the son of a grocer on Tonbridge High Street – was lodging just a few
doors away from the Rosers at No 4, and he and Emma were married. When Hester died in 1885, the farm’s
value was to be divided equally between the children, so Emma and Ernest bought it themselves (which was
contested in court!) By 1901 they had six children, who seem to have been given the middle name Roser.
The sons became bank clerks and the youngest, daughter Ruby assisted her mother on the farm. In the 1920s
milk from Emma’s dairy herds over in Ashurst were being transported on morning trains to Tonbridge, 17
gallons (136 pints) of it daily, and distributed by motor van. According to one source 282 million gallons of
milk was moved by rail in 1923, and this was gradually shifting to road.
Ernest died in 1924. Emma in 1933.
LINKS
History of Milk Freight Operations
https://web.archive.org/web/20130101222919/http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/gansg/7-fops/fo-milk.htm
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8
FANNY CHEESEMAN
1818-1893
EXPLOSIVE POWDER MAKER
It’s rumoured that Guy Fawkes’s explosives came from an unauthorised maker in Battle. It wasn’t until
the late 1600s that official powdermaking licenses were issued, the first to what is now Powdermill Lane,
near Battle, with Tunbridge (as it was spelt then) following in 1813, in conjunction with Humphrey Davy
and the Children family. Ingredients were a moistened mixture of saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur. This
was then ground or ‘milled’ between large round, flat stones rather like a flour mill, powered by water,
then compressed under heavy weights before processing into fine grained powder. Inevitably accidental
explosions occurred on site, killing workers, so it was a dangerous place to work. The powder was put
into barrels and transported by road and river barges. Rail transport would, however in 1847 for example,
the GWR concerned over safety ordered that special ‘machines’ be used for transporting ‘gunpowder and
combustible materials’ by rail.
Fanny was born in Tonbridge in 1818 to Jane Morgan, a japaner (imitation black laquerwork) and Henry, a
carpenter and millwright at the local powder mill. Fanny married Lancashire-born John Cheeseman in 1835
and by 1851 they were living next door to Fanny’s mum and dad. Fanny, John and the three eldest of their
eight children (aged 11, 12 and 13!) worked as powder makers for Burton’s gunpowder company. Their
advertisements read: “confidentally recommended to all sportsmen as unrivalled, possessing great strength,
cleanness, and promptness of ignition, and requires but a trial to prove its superiority.” These explosives
were also very useful for railway building, for blasting chunks of rock and earth to form cuttings and
tunnels.
After the death of Mr Burton, the Company and mill was sold. By 1861 the Cheeseman family had upped
sticks to Kendal in the Lake District, where Fanny’s husband was foreman of the gunpowder works in
Helsington, until the 1890s. They had made new lives in Kendal, both dying there towards the end of 1893.
Fanny was 75, John was 83.
LINKS
Gunpowdermaking in the Battle area
https://historymap.info/Gunpowder_Mills#How_gunpowder_was_manufactured.5B1.5D
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9
HORACE HORSCROFT
1844-1928
LUGGAGE LABELLER
Horace was born at 5 Rock Cottages in Tonbridge in 1844. His father being a carman, a deliveryman. By the
age of 17 Horace had worked briefly as a butcher but had taken to portering. On New Year’s Day in 1865 he
married Constance Munn Burr. They move to Hastings quite soon afterwards and have at least six children,
including twins William and Ann. They’ve settle into 114 Stonefield Road, Hastings and in 1891 and 1901
Horace is describing himself as a railway luggage labeller. In 1910 however it ‘leaked out’ that Horace was
being forced to retire, pensioned off. The local Observer newspaper described him as “one of the best known
employees at Hastings Station” and a “faithful railway servant, labelling luggage for 45 years”. He was 67
by now but “has never had any illness” and “judging by his present appearance he looks good for another
twenty years.” A few months later, in the station waiting room, Horace was being presented with a marble
clock engraved with ‘From a few old friends’. He lost his wife Constance in 1918. He lived until 1928, to
84, almost the 20 years he’d been ‘good for.’
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10
HENRY WEST
1829-1880s
RAILWAY CARRIER & MESSENGER
Henry West, son of Henry West, was born in Speldhurst west of Tonbridge in 1829 and as a boy, certainly of
12 and into his 20s Henry was labouring on nearby Rusthall Farm. By 1861 Henry had found less strenuous
employment as the railway messenger and was living at Station Cottage at Chiddingstone Causeway by
Penshurst station with Harriet and their four children. Like an ad hoc postman he would’ve charged a small
fee per item, be it a note or package, usually within distance limits of the station. Perhaps to alert someone
that a parcel, or even a visitor, had arrived at the station.
In the 1870s-80s the family had moved to The Square in Penshurst and had taken in lodgers, a saddler and
two bricklayers. It was on the 1881 census that Henry, now 52, was described as having an infirmity, in his
case ‘deaf’. We’ll never know if this was recent or lifelong, caused by an accident or infection. It’s possible
that being a messenger was a safer occupation to someone with hearing impairment, as opposed to working
on railway lines or powdermills for example where danger calls needed to be heard.
Henry died in 1880s and his widow Harriet, now in her 60s, continued Henry’s messenger and carrier
services. She eventually moved to Beckenham to live with her widowed daughter Emily, where she died in
1908.
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