London | Life in the English Cotswolds

I am a hills person. I love walking – or even better – cross-country skiing in the mountains. I can also admire the huge skies and vistas of flat country. However, it is with hills that I have always strongly identified with. So, when I’m asked “where was home for you?” it isn’t the county of Buckinghamshire, or even the village I was brought up in that I respond with, it is the hills and the Chiltern Hills in particular.

*A country lane in the Chiltern Hills winds its way through dense woodland*

As a child, I lived on the very edge of the village and not being schooled locally and with no children of my own age nearby anyway, I learnt to spend many hours on my own during the lengthy holidays. Although our house was close to the River Thames I found fishing of limited interest preferring always to be out walking or cycling. As I grew older I travelled further afield exploring the lanes, fields and woodlands, learning all the time about the ways of nature. Back in the fifties and early sixties people seemed to have more time to answer inquisitive children about these things or, perhaps, it was just that in those days people were more connected with the natural world so were able to answer their questions. Whatever the reason, I became more knowledgeable and enthusiastic about country ways than I ever did with schoolwork. A consequence of this is, when asked the question, “where are you from?” I respond without hesitation (and with a certain degree of pride), “I’m a Chilterns man.”

*A childhood spent exploring the fields and woodlands that surrounded home*

It was not until I reached the ripe old age of 49 that I moved away from the Chilterns to start a new life in the Cotswolds. Although as the crow flies, the Cotswolds are not many miles away (I can even see the distant Chilterns from the top of my lane) they are very different in character, the former being chalk and flint country, the latter limestone. But it wasn’t the exchange of deep, wooded valleys with few, if any, streams for a landscape of far-reaching views, fast-running brooks and drystone walls that I noticed most of all, it was the language. When I moved to this then unfashionable part of the Cotswolds twenty years ago it was still a forgotten corner of the world where, even if the local dialect had mostly died out, the twang of local accent hadn’t. It reminded me of, for it is related to, the south-western tongue spoken by many of my country cousins and also by my friends further west still. So, when I gave my usual response to the question, I was rather peeved to hear it acknowledged by the words, “so you come from London way, then.”

*A Chilterns cottage built using the local flint*

*Cotswold cottages look very different and are made with local limestone*

Now, I hasten to say, that there is nothing wrong about being referred to as a Londoner. It’s just that our capital city is as much a foreign land to me as it would be to an overseas visitor. Ok, so that might be a slight exaggeration, but somehow, I just don’t relate to city life despite my mother being born and raised in London’s West End. She had come to the Chilterns as an evacuee from WW2 through her war work and there met my father, a local boy – but that’s another story. Suffice to say, that I am a child of two halves – I have country family and I have city family much in the same way as I am a child of two cultures and two religions. Despite my relating to country ways and to complicate matters further, (although I should be used to it by now), it is to my mother’s culture and religion that I feel a closer affinity to. It still grates, ‘though, when I’m thought of as a townie.

*City girl sophistication* *meets country gent: my parents soon after marriage*

As I mentioned earlier, school life didn’t hold much appeal and so I persuaded my parents that I should leave aged sixteen. As soon as I could, I took myself off on my bicycle to holiday in Devon. Leaving Exeter with tent, camping gas stove and billy cans loosely tied to the crossbar I clanked and clattered my way along the lanes of Dartmoor. At the end of each day I would pitch my tent wherever I could and reflect with delight upon all the new experiences that had come my way. Getting hopelessly lost, I ended up at Westward Ho!, a small seaside town on on the north Devon coast. From there I travelled east finding the hills becoming ever steeper and the villages further and further apart. One day, I ended up on a remote farm on Exmoor where I decided I would spend two days to recuperate before heading for home. It didn’t happen.

*Remote hill farm, Brendon Barton where I intended to stay for only two days*

Looking back, I can’t imagine what my poor parents were thinking for there were no mobile phones or credit card statements for them to track my progress or whereabouts. I would telephone them occasionally or send a postcard always being deliberately vague as to where I was staying. In the meantime, I remained at the farm working – at first for food then, as I became more established and with the tent discarded, for a bedroom and beer money. By the time my parents turned up at the door several months later (after some shrewd detective work) I had settled into my new life and rapidly adopting the ways of the hard but exhilarating Exmoor life. Dragged back home to “get a proper job” I never completely left Exmoor behind. Every spare moment was spent on the farm and, as regular readers of my blog will know, I still spend as much time on Exmoor as possible. Being a National Park, the landscape and buildings of Exmoor haven’t changed very much over the 50+ years since I turned up on Lorna and Dick French’s doorstep although they have, as have most of the others I knew in those early days, since died. To my dismay, there is one other thing that hasn’t changed at all: when I respond proudly to the inevitable question with “I’m a Chilterns man”, their response remains the same: “So up-country then? London?” Over the years, the ‘boy from London’ has become ‘the man from London.’ And I’m sorry, Londoners, Mum and cousins – I don’t like the label!

*Dick & Lorna French who welcomed me into their lives and in the process changed mine*

A photograph came winging through the ether to me via email recently of a rather severe looking lady, taken in her later years. As is often the case when meeting an older person for the first time it is all too easy to forget that they had a past; that they were young once and, perhaps, hold a huge store of memories and tales. Sometimes, the stories they tell surprise you and seem more in keeping with today rather than decades before. It was (as it turned out) the same with this lady – Sophia Bradby.

Sophia Langston nee Bradby

I had never seen a photograph of Sophia before although I knew of her existence for she was my great-great grandmother. The only tale I knew was that she came ‘from a good family’, the friend of a great poet and the giver of a ‘middle’ name for succeeding generations. Numerous boys, although for some reason, neither my father or myself (for which I’ve always felt rather cheated), sported the name Bradby immediately before the surname. Now that this unexpected image had landed in my inbox I began to dig a bit deeper.

Sophia was born on Christmas Day 1828 in Theale, Berkshire, the third daughter of William Bradby and Mary Shepherd. William had been born in Derbyshire, his parents of Yorkshire origin. Why or when he came south is unknown but in 1814 he married Mary in Reading. We also know that by then he had changed his surname from Bradley to Bradby. The reason behind the name change is unclear for he remained on friendly terms with other members of the Bradley family. In their day, the Bradleys were well-known nationally and, later, internationally. Perhaps the name change was to give his own, immediate family a degree of anonymity. Whether the family were upset and/or disappointed by his decision is unrecorded but perhaps this is the first sign of a rebellious streak that would continue to run through the family to this day.

The date on this old image is wrong for he was baptised on 3rd September 1823

In 1849 it was Sophia’s turn to rebel. On the 29^th May she eloped to London to marry Charles Samuel Langston, a union disapproved of by her family. These days, the journey would take no longer than an hour but in the mid-1800s it would have been quite an undertaking. Her travel may have been by coach and horses although the new Great Western Railway line had opened in the early 1840s so she might have travelled by train. Whichever mode of travel she chose she would have been all too aware that her path crossed both an area that had been notorious for highwaymen and footpads and, in more recent times, the scene of a landslide that had derailed a train, killing ten passengers. Whether Sophia ever met her parents again is unknown.

1849 Langston Charles Samuel L18, Bradby Sophia B14

The marriage of Charles Samuel Langston to Sophia Bradby 1849, St Anne’s, Limehouse, London

St_Anne,_Limehouse, London - copyright Amanda Slater

St Anne’s, Limehouse, London (photo Wikipedia/Amanda Slater)

It turned out that Charles, too, had rebelled, leaving his parents’ home in Cranfield, Bedfordshire because of religious differences. Quite what these might have been is unrecorded. We know from old records that Charles had been baptised into the Church of England and he also married Sophia within the Church of England so there seems to be no conflict there. Whatever the reason, in 1843 he became an Excise Officer and his application papers are held by the National Archive in Kew, London. At a later date, this side of the family must have been reconciled for Charles’ father died when visiting Sophia in 1865.

The childhood home of Charles Samuel Langston

Sadly, Charles and Sophia’s marriage turned out to be fairly short-lived for Charles died aged 40 from cancer of the throat. Their 14 years of marriage produced eight known children, my great-grandfather William Bradby Langston was just twelve months old at the time of his father’s death and poor Sophia was some months pregnant with another daughter, Agnes. The photo below shows Sophia – wearing a crinoline – with one of her children, probably Christiana and taken in 1865. By 1871 she had established a drapery business with her eldest son, Ernest in Reading. By 1891 she had been successful enough to retire to the south coast where she died in 1916; the business that she had founded also prospered and became the largest department store in Reading before it finally closed its doors 120 years later.

LANGSTON (BRADBY) Sophia B14, probably Christiana abt 1865

Sophia with (probably) Christiana, 1865

Many thanks to Jo Liddement who, like me, is a great-great grandchild of Sophia. Not only did she send me the two photographs of Sophia which set me on the journey to find out more about the life of our remarkable ancestor, she also became a newly-discovered cousin.