Where can I find out about Abergavenny

[Fisherman]

Hi Keith,

Tudor Street still exists.
Have a look at this, it shows a picture of present day Tudor Street and fades to a past view.

http://www.abergavenny.net/fadefromthepast/tudor.htm


Chris

[Keith Sherwood]

Wow! Chris,
What a shame all those houses on the right have gone now.  Perhaps one housed the HART family for a while.  And what is the name of the pub, where the building does still exist, is it The Forresters Arms, but it doesn't look as though there are enough letters on the sign ...?
KEITH

[Fisherman]

Hi Keith,

It is the Foresters Arms. Only one R

Had to use a magnifying glass  to read it. 

The town wreckers planners certainly opened  up the view from the pub.

Chris

[Koromo]

Hi Keith

I also have connections with Abergavenny including Tudor Street. The following is from a book of photographs I bought recently:

Vanished Abergavenny
From the collections of Abergavenny Museum
Compiled by Frank Olding © 1994

"Tudor Street (Stryd Porth Tudur) ... the oldest buildings in the street were built before 1550.  Until the middle of the 19th century, Tudor Street was the wealthiest suburb of the town, the area where wealthy merchants and respectable town burgesses built large, comfortable residences for themselves and their families. However, as the 19th century wore on, the social make-up of the street changed. The grand houses were sub-divided into tenements and small cottages were built in the gardens and coachyards to the rear. By the 1890s, the street was being described as "a populous working-class district." Demolitions commenced in 1957 [under the Abergavenny Borough Council's 'slum clearance' schemes] and buildings which were thought to contain "nothing of historical or architectural interest" proved to be much older than their facades suggested. Early 17th century wall paintings almost unique in Wales were found beneath layers of wallpaper and paint. A great deal was destroyed before it could even be recorded for posterity."

So sad!

What number Tudor Street are you interested in? Mine was at No 22, Cymreigyddion Hall where the eisteddfod were held in the 1840s, long demolished and now a carpark.

THE website for Monmouthshire resources is Mike John's:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~monfamilies/monfh.htm

I looked for Joseph Hart's burial in the parish record transcripts, but he's not at St Mary's Abergavenny — perhaps he was non-conformist.

Cheers
Koromo


PS. The Forester's Arms was on the corner of Pant Lane and Tudor Street, and it didn't survive. Below is the same street corner on Google Earth with Tudor Street the west-east road and Pant Lane running northwards — where the cars are parked is where the pub was. I think they are all modern buildings on the north side of Tudor St.

[Keith Sherwood]

Koromo,
Thanks so much for all that information about Tudor Street - I found it really very interesting...
The HART family only seem to appear there in the 1851 Census, and unfortunately there are no numbers.  Would your family have been there at that time, and what was their family name - I could have a little walk down the street and discover how many doors they lived apart!
keith

[Koromo]

Hi Keith

Yes my Lewis lot were there on the 1851 census, but probably at the other end of Tudor Street. No 22 was at the eastern end (it is a building that goes from the south side of Tudor St and touches Byefield Lane) which is 13 census pages away from Joseph Hart who may even be near the Forester's Arms.

However, in 1841, Joseph is just one page away from the parental Lewis home in Frogmore St.

Below is from an 1834 map of Tudor St with Pant Lane to the west.


K.

[Keith Sherwood]

Koromo,
You've saved me the trouble of a long walk! (With my fingers, actually, in the amazing world of the Internet and Yellow Pages).  I see your John Lewis on the map - my Mum swears by the products they sell nowadays (used to be Robert Sayles, I think)
Joking apart, this is bringing the whole thing to life for me, and I'm still wondering how someone who was a "Clerk Coal Wharf" became a "Proprietor of Houses and Land".  Perhaps it's not as grand as it sounds, and Joseph was down the not so ritzy part of Tudor Street, but not far to stagger to the Foresters Arms after a hard day at his desk...
keith

[Keith Sherwood]

...and can I pick your brains about this little puzzle, as you seem to have a great deal of local knowledge from this time...
I've already asked this on a thread that is going strong in The Common Room, but can you think of any reason - topical, local, or whatever - that a young woman born with the forenames Mary Ann in Abergavenny, and still sporting only those ones at the age of 15/16 in 1841, should by the time of her marriage in London in 1846, have added the forename Vernon in front of those two forenames?
Would there have been any kind of Welsh-origin reason?
I'm pretty certain, with all my recent correspondence with Australia - many new confirming pieces of evidence - that Mary Ann HART and Vernon Mary Ann HART are one and the same person.
keith

[Koromo]

Proprietor of houses probably isn't all that grand. Two unmarried Lewis sisters of mine were so labelled in all the censuses because their father (John Lewis on the map) left them some cottages in his will, and I guess they lived off the rents.

Their brother Edward started his working life as a tinman/brazier/ironmonger — he was the one who bought the Hall in Tudor Street. His children's birth certs and his death cert variously describe him as an ironmonger or former tinman or landed proprietor or gentleman. Take your pick!

I can't offer any explanation for the addition of Vernon to Mary Ann's name, in the same way as I don't know why one of Edward's children began life as Susannah Gwynne Lewis, married a French inventor and added a christian name, so she ended up as Georgina Susannah Gwynne de Lorière Fontaine de Livet. She might have thought Georgina sounded more exotic to go with her new French surname. I have no idea where it came from, certainly not from her family.

To top it all off, one of Susannah's daughters named Blanche emigrated to America where she was known as Countess Blanche de Lorière. Now, that really is climbing the social ladder! I bet she didn't let on that her grandfather was but a tinman from Abergavenny!

These ancestors left many a puzzle! 

Koromo