BURGHAMS of WESLEY Road Cinderford (Photo Gallery)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Tuesday, July 30, 2013, 13:37 (4140 days ago) @ tonyburgham

Hi Tony,
thanks so much for confirming your family's history, so by my reading it seems entirely possible the shop in the photograph is indeed Arthur's ?.

If so then his emmigration explains his apparent disappearance off my radar. I hope the trip was considered a worthwhile move, they certainly appeared to have travelled in some style on the world-famous and much-loved RMS Mauretania. As an engineer with a love of all things nautical I find this most interesting, especially as this was one of the first to be built around the new Parsons steam turbines which gave unprecedented speed and reliability.
A great(I hope) family adventure story to pass down thro' the family, yet tempered no doubt by their feelings when her sister ship Lusitania was lost a few years later...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Mauretania_(1906)
http://www.tyneandweararchives.org.uk/mauretania/story-design.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UnMdHF2_10

If only to satisfy my curiosity, please can you clarify what happened to Henry, was he in the UK for the 1911 Census or did he travel as well ?.

Thanks again, Jeff.

PS You mentioned your GG Grandad lived in Wesley Road. I know it well as I lived nearby in Parragate as a child, mum's still there. Do you by any chance know which house in Wesley Road it was ?. As you probably know its only a short road but there are a couple of very nice substantial old townhouses on it, their long gardens backed onto my best-friend's orchard so we occasionally had to retrieve footballs from them). In later years I found it somewhat ironic that a road presumably named ? after John Wesley was now the address for the Miner's Welfare Hall & Social Club which in my time was one of the best-value hence most popular pubs in town. They wern't choosy who they served in those days ;-), but it was understandably the local Labour Party HQ so why not. Plus of course Mr Wilson was a great one for promoting science & industry so he can't be all bad despite my parents' views.
http://www.forest-of-dean.net/gallery/cinderford_2/pages/page_60.html

The houses I mentioned above are immediate left of the Hall on this picture taken from the entrance to the carpark behind the High Street. Behind & below the Hall is my friend's house just above the site of the old Bilson School.
http://www.forest-and-wye-today.co.uk/featuresdetail.cfm?id=5002

Off now to try and find some history about Wesley Road...

which shows the Miner's Hall was built abt 1929, and quite probably on land previously occupied by houses, just like the carpark opposite it. There were Wesley Chapels in Cinderford long before that as well as the Wesley Church higher up the town built around 1850, so long before the Hall became a "pub".

"The course of Wesleyan Methodism in the Forest owed much to Aaron Goold, a colliery agent and later a colliery owner. Goold, with whose assistance the Littledean Hill and Whitecroft chapels were built, was particularly influential in Cinderford, where a mission room for use by Baptists, Independents, and Methodists was opened with his help in 1829. In 1841, when they had a meeting house at Cinderford bridge, the Wesleyans built a chapel at the Cinderford ironworks, and in 1850 their circuit plan for Ledbury and the Forest also included Wesley, a large chapel in Belle Vue Road built by Goold in a 14th-century style. Opened in 1850, Wesley replaced the Littledean Hill chapel, but with Goold's active espousal of the reform movement within the Wesleyan Methodist Church those loyal to the Wesleyan Conference reopened the older chapel and late in 1850 moved to a cottage in the Mousell Lane area. Goold appointed Wesleyan Reformers to supply the pulpit at Wesley and in 1851 his minister claimed congregations of up to 500." etc

From: 'Forest of Dean: Protestant nonconformity', A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 5: Bledisloe Hundred, St. Briavels Hundred, The Forest of Dean (1996), pp. 396-404.
URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=23273&strquery=cinderford
Date accessed: 30 July 2013.