POOLES, PONDS AND TANNERS and the licensing trade
All information provided by Adrian Taylor.
POOLES, PONDS AND TANNERS and the licensing trade.
My grandfather was Frederick Augustus Taylor, born at Campbell Road, Finsbury Park on 4 January 1882, the ninth child of Charles Cozens Taylor and Hannah Wood. Charles and Hannah had married on 8 October 1865 at St John the Baptist, Hoxton. As in all families, half-forgotten stories passed on. In later life Fred Taylor would smile as he referenced family names of “Pooles, Ponds and Tanners” amused by the watery connection between the first two. But who were these people and how did they connect to Fred?
It was always understood that former hurdle-maker Charles Cozens Taylor entered the licensing trade through connections made with his new extended family of in-laws. This account sets out the relationships between the families now connected to Charles through marriage.
Charles’ wife, Hannah, was the daughter of William Wood and Hannah Tanner. William and Hannah had migrated into London, marrying at St George, Hanover Square on 29 May 1836, from the Essex villages of Messing and Stow Maries respectively. Several of Hannah Tanner’s siblings (she was the eighth of ten) were licensed victuallers, two of her brothers running pubs in Provost Street, Hoxton. They were the
Swan and the
Moneyers Arms, both providing employment for other family members too.
Hannah’s farming father William Tanner had married Mary Pond at Stow Maries on 16 May 1796. Both of them had been born at nearby Woodham Ferrers. Mary Pond, the eldest of nine, was born on 22 January 1776 to Samuel Pond, seedsman, and Mary Cole. Mary Pond’s siblings had a variety of occupations ranging from farming to bakery and, in brother Isaac – the licensing trade, running the
Anchor pub in Canewdon between 1828 and 1848. Canewdon is just across the River Crouch from Woodham Ferrers. Isaac would live to his ninety fifth year dying in Greenwich in 1882.
Isaac’s fourth child Susannah Pond married her first cousin John Pond, from nearby Purleigh, son of Samuel Pond, (Mary Pond’s next sibling down.) Their marriage was at St Anne’s, Limehouse on 28 October 1857 and John was a licensed victualler.
In 1856 he was licensee of
The Green Dragon in Blackfriars before his brother Samuel took over the pub. Samuel would then move to the
Bromley Arms, St Pancras by 1871.
In 1861 John Pond is listed at
The Hole in the Wall, 1 Gloucester Street. By 1865 he is at The Beehive, Southwark, which is taken over by Isaac Pond “the elder” (his father in law from
The Anchor, Canewdon.)
In 1871 John Pond is at the
Green Man, 280 Old Kent Road. The following year finds him at
The Baptist’s Head, Clerkenwell.
Isaac’s fifth child, Sarah Ann Pond married Hannah Tanner’s youngest brother Jonathan at Stepney on 2 August 1853. It was Jonathan, born in 1817 in Purleigh, who ran the
Moneyers Arms in Provost Street, taking over the
Swan after his brother William Tanner died in 1876. Jonathan was eventually bankrupted and died on 30 December 1882 while in Brookwood Lunatic Asylum, Friern Barnet.
Back to Mary Pond’s siblings, Sarah Pond married William Peake on 6 February 1818 at Purleigh, outliving him by 23 years eventually dying at Squires Almshouses, Walthamstow, buried in the churchyard next door on 8 November 1893.
Mary Pond’s baker brother James, married to Joanna Middleditch, had two of his children marrying Poole siblings.
First, William Pond married Lucy Poole on 12 April 1839 at the Bethel Chapel, Woodham Ferrers. William and Lucy had three daughters, Lucy, Kate and Elizabeth Joanna. Only Lucy married, to Henry Carter (a baker who had the misfortune to drown in a brook in Mitcham Road, Croydon years later in January 1895). William Pond followed his father’s trade and, in 1851, William is shown as a baker living at The Clapper Beer House (later The Eagle), Woodham Ferrers with wife Lucy and baby daughter. He is baker and beerhouse keeper there in 1861. In 1871 he is a farmer at Brooks Farm, Woodham Ferrers but, by 1874, was running The Fly and Bullock, later Butchers Arms, at Cold Norton, a village next to Stow Maries. After many years William retired, dying in Croydon in 1904.
The pub stayed in the family passing on to his brother Edward’s son, Edward Thomas Pond who died in 1922. Although Edward (senior) was primarily a baker, by 1866 he was selling beer from one of a pair of cottages that would be known as The Prince of Wales in Stow Maries.
Edward (senior’s) brother Samuel Nathaniel Pond, wheelwright, was living there with wife and son in 1891 just after Edward (senior) had died in 1889.
The second marriage between Pond and Poole was that of James’ daughter Mary Ann Gilbert Pond to William Poole, brother of Lucy, on 11 October 1855 in Chelmsford. In 1861 William was farming at Danbury. Then in 1871 he is farming alongside his brother-in-law William Pond at Brooks Farm, Woodham Ferrers. By 1881 William Poole was publican of The Saracen’s Head, Danbury.
William and Mary Ann Gilbert were also long-lived, dying at Danbury in 1908 and 1916 respectively. Their only child Kate Poole never married, dying in Fleet, Hampshire in 1925. Another son of James Pond and Joanna Middleditch was another Isaac who in turn had a son Samuel born in 1851 who was a cellarman for wine and spirits.
As well as the two Tanner brothers running their pubs in Provost Street, their sister Sally married John Grout of Loughton in Walthamstow on 27 December 1833.
He was a grocer, draper and beer seller, and they ran The Gardeners Arms in Loughton from 1848 onwards.
Their daughter Sally Jane Grout married Jonathan Keys, licensed victualler, at St John’s, Loughton on 25 November 1863. In 1861 Jonathan was at The King of Prussia, Shoreditch. By 1864 he was at the Goat and Boots, Camden. He also may have worked at or ran The Royal William at 434 Essex Road, Islington.
Another of the Tanner siblings was Mary who had married a Henry Willis on 28 September 1828 at St Pancras. He must have died young as she is widowed in the censuses living with one or other of her brothers in Provost Street dying there on 9 March 1879.
A further Tanner sibling, Catherine Gardiner, married Richard William How at Walthamstow on 1 May 1831. Their two sons, James and William, were both plasterers and beerhouse keepers.
After Richard How died in 1835, Catherine married his brother Thomas. Catherine died on 10 March 1882. She and her husbands are all buried in St Mary’s churchyard, Walthamstow.
The youngest sons of Hannah Tanner and William Wood were George and William.
George Wood married Charlotte Jane Allibone at St Pancras Old Church on 28 May 1867. He was a licensed victualler and, in 1875, was running The
Block Tavern at 133 Shepherdess Walk, Islington. At 2 Shepherdess Walk was the famous Eagle Tavern as in ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ “…Up and down the City Road, in and out the Eagle.”
This close proximity may have given rise to the family rumour that we had a connection with that pub too. In 1882 George took over The
Moneyers Arms in Provost Street before returning to The Block Tavern in 1884.
George’s brother, William Wood, married Emma Rosina Broad on 28 March 1871 at St Mary, Lambeth. He too was a licensed victualler. His son, William Francis Wood married Alice Maud Mazengarb; both are buried in Walthamstow Cemetery. William and Emma’s second son George Augustus Wood (who married Jessie Halfpenny) struck out in a new direction as a trombonist in a theatre orchestra!