Council Cottages, Highmoor Cross

[jacqueline cox]

I know, and I'm grateful for that fact and the post code in particular, but part of the fun in Family History or any historical research is turning over a stone and finding a little gem - that I shared with you as a thanks!
Locating Council Cottages makes it easier to find out if there is anything special about them or one of them or their residents in 1901.

[rosie99]

That is very true     Family history can become mundane without these other bits that add interest to the stories.

I visited Greys Court at Rotherfield Greys back in the late 1970's, sadly I don't remember much about it or the village

[newburychap]

I'll look at Newspapers on FindMyPast but I live in M/cr area so it's not easy to get to County Archives. The link you showed me is interesting. (Re a will of 1934, single woman leaving £276 and a real live Lady - Dame Beatrice Boyle - wife of Sir Edward Boyle as her executor - a retired faithful retainer?
Google Maps show a small number of early Council Houses at that Post Code but I have studied devt. of Council Housing here and the first council cottages in Manchester were built c1904. I think it would have been extraordinary for a RDC to build Council Cottages in the real backwoods as early as 1901. Curiouser and curiouser ....

Rotherfield Greys is hardly the 'real backwoods' - most of the residents lived in an extention of the town of Henley-on-Thames. Council houses were built in Newbury (a similar sized town not far away) in the early 1900s - about the same time as Manchester.

Highmoor Cross is in the rural part of the parish - but not far from civilization.

[tonepad]

Council houses were first built in Highmoor Cross by Henley Rural District Council in 1920.

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol16/pp266-302

[newburychap]

The medal (Queen's South Africa Medal) was 'presented' to Mrs H S Cox, Council Cottages, Highmoor Cross on 13 Sept 1967. I'm not sure what 'presented' means - could be posted to her, could be that she attended a ceremony somewhere and the address is added identification for her.  It doesn't seem that likely that a ceremony happened in Highmoor Cross, but it's not impossible - one of those 'centenarian presented with son's medal' or 'wife receives husband's medal after 67 years' stories.

[jacqueline cox]

I'll have to go back to Kew again to check. It was a good few years ago when I went and before I had a mobile phone camera but I was definitely looking him up in the Boer War Soldiers' records. I have a photo of the "unusual" non standard inscription on his grave in Pretoria Military Cemetery with the other soldiers with standard inscriptions around. I have generally been a careful transcriber since I did my dissertation in 1964! I'll check my original transcription again (if I can find it....)

[newburychap]

The medal rolls are online these days:

[rosie99]

No wonder I wasn't getting anywhere I was looking 1901/1911 

[jacqueline cox]

Could you tell me where I can see this in full, please Newburychap? Is it on a subscription site or NA? I subscribe to Genealogist, Ancestry and FindMyPast. I have been out all day so have not had time to search ancient files. It becomes more mysterious if Mrs HS received it in 1967. Unless Henry had a secret wife and so far unknown son to marry a Miss H* S* Somebody, there were no wives of his only 2 brothers to marry with those initials- one was my gran and the other my great aunt called May, and there were 3 males produced in the next generation, my father, his brother and a May's son none of whom ever lived in Oxfordshire.