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Woodborough’s Heritage

Woodborough, a Sherwood Forest Village, recorded in Domesday

Bish Family History by Dorothy Thomas

My three times great grandfather, John Bish (1771-1842), married Elizabeth Donnelly on February 21st 1792. Would she have been related to the Donnelly family that built the small factory on Dark Lane?

In White’s Directory 1832 John Bish was listed as a carrier, he went to Nottingham on Wednesdays and Saturdays and to Tuxford on Mondays. They had five children.

My two times great grandfather John Bish (1804-1880) married Mary Clay on April 26th 1830. They also had five children, the second one, William (born 1833), caught my attention as I am afraid to say I did not know what a framework knitter was. He had quite a sad life. He got married in 1860 when he was 29 to a 39-year-old woman, Charlotte Marshall, who already had a son. They had one child, Mary, born in 1861. William died of typhoid fever in 1868 aged 36. Charlotte married for the third time in 1875 to Henry Clayton, a shopkeeper. What happened to Mary, I still have to discover.

William and Charlotte Bish lived on Pinchpenny Row (now known as Church Walk) so I was delighted to find a picture of these cottages. Hannah, the third child, married George Hurt. Jarvis the first child married Eliza Ashwell in Mansfield and died in 1894 in the Union Workhouse, also at Mansfield. Elizabeth the fifth child married Arthur Blagg in 1866.

John Bish senior, after the death of Mary Clay in 1854, married Ann Richardson who was 26 years old, half his age. They had a daughter Martha, born March 5th 1865. Ann died of scarlatina five days later aged 29. When Martha was 30 years old she married Edward Murfin on April 15th 1895 at St Swithun’s Church. The Reverend Walter Buckland conducted the service.

My great-grandfather John, fourth child of John and Mary, married Ann Hind. They had eight children, Sarah, who did not live long; Elizabeth born April 3rd 1871, died a year later of pertussis; Herbert, the first child, was my great uncle. He was originally a framework knitter and also a bag hosier mentioned in Kelly’s Directories. His name is on the list and again in 1912. He was also a market gardener and he, with Aunty Emma, had a stall in the Nottingham Central Market. He died aged 86.

I was also taken as a small child to the house called The Homestead and can remember as a teenager once camping in Woodborough and seeing a huge five barred gate with The Homestead in big letters across the top. On a visit in 2014 I found The Homestead still exists.

John Alfred Bish, the second child, married Sarah Ann Weston, who was married at Derby Register Office, when he was 27. (They had one son, John Francis Bish) and worked on the railway. He died aged 67 in 1929. Sarah died aged 85 in 1851.

John Francis Bish married in 1908 to Florence May Blackham. A son, John William Bish was born in 1911, Lucy Hind, the fourth child, was married to Henry Michael Chambers, and they had one girl, Florence Monica, in 1901 and lived in Ilkeston, Derbyshire. In 1911, Lucy is staying with her sister Ann Mary in Woodborough, Henry was a boarder and working as a railway drayman and Florence Monica after much searching, I found her living with her cousin, John Francis. Florence was 27 when she married Richard Douglas Waine at the South Shore Parish Church, Lancaster.

Ann Mary, the fifth child, who stayed at home until 1901, when she got married to John George Dring at St Swithun’s, the vicar who conducted the service was the Rev. Samuel Bond. When John Bish died in 1914 he left money to his son Herbert and Ann Mary’s husband J.G. Dring.

Ann Eliza Bish, the last living child was married to Charles Poole at St Swithun’s on June 25th 1908. The 1911 census reveals that they had a daughter, Clarissa May, born 1910, the family at that time were living at Cinderhill, Nottingham.

Jarvis Bish, the third child, was my grandfather, and he married Eliza Hallam on May 15th 1893. They had two children, Grace Winifred Harriman Bish and my father George Reginald Wilfred Bish. Grace married Parker Musson, they had no children, G.R. Wilfred married Kate Stevens on September 12th 1925. He was 29 and they had three children, Audrey, Roland and Dorothy.

Here I must say that as far as I knew I had no grandparents, so I was very surprised to find Eliza had died in May 1957 and Jarvis (Gervase) in May 1942. He lived in Derby, whatever happened to cause this separation I would dearly like to discover. I have a daughter, three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, Audrey has four living children, seven great-grandchildren, I am the last of the old family.

Acknowledgment:

• Dorothy Thomas

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