Goodfellow Places: Somerset and London, England

In the 1800s, the Goodfellow, Jeanes and Bridle families lived in Somerset County in south west England.  In the 1850s, Henry and Grace (Fitzpatrick) Goodfellow moved to London, where Grace had lived with her mother, Jane (Howe) Fitzpatrick and sisters in 1841.  Jane was born in Clerkenwell, London in 1791 (see Jane's places and the history of London and Clerkenwell below). Their son, George Goodfellow, migrated to Queensland Australia in 1873.

Somerset

The Jeanes and Goodfellow families were long-time residents of Wincanton in the east of Somerset County.  In 1847, Henry Goodfellow and Grace Fitzpatrick were married in Wincanton. Their first child, George was born in Glastonbury in 1848.

Somerset County - Glastonbury and Wincanton

Henry Goodfellow was born in Wincanton in 1825 and his parents John Goodfellow and Jane Jeanes were also born in Wincanton.  Jane's mother, Susanna Bridle was born in Evercreech in about 1778.

Somerset: Glastonbury, top left; Evercreech, top centre; Wincanton, on lower right.
Family Tree Maker aerial view with symbols added in PowerPoint

Somerset: Glastonbury, top left; Evercreech, top centre; Wincanton, on lower right.
Family Tree Maker road map with symbols added in PowerPoint

London and Clerkenwell

Cecil R. Humphery-Smith, The Phillimore Atlas and index of Parish Registers, 3rd ed. 1963.
Middlesex County, p.22. 

In London in the 1800s, the Fitzpatrick, Howe and Goodfellow families lived west of the City in the Parishes of Clerkenwell, Islington, St Pancras, St Marylebone, Paddington, Kensington, Hammersmith and Fulham.

When Jane Howe was born in Clerkenwell in 1791, the area was on the urban fringe of London, around the Foundling Hospital.  A 1574 map shows rural land north and west of Smithfield.  Plans for re-building after the Great Fire of 1666 still show Hatton Garden and Clerkenwell outside the urban area (White, p 17).  The fire destroyed 13,000 houses and 87 churches.  The illustrated London: the story of a great city (Jerry White, 2014) describes London as a “City of Suburbs”. It was only from 1750 that Westminster Bridge connected London to south of the Thames River and Lambeth.  By 1800, London had a population of one million, increasing to over six million by 1900.  In West London, Bedford Park Chiswick on Bath Road was one of the first garden suburbs in the late 19^th century.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, 1558-1603, East London developed as a trades area with poorer housing.  The hills to the north were of middling quality.  The west end had better quality houses.  Elegant squares were developed after the Great Fire from 1670 to the end of the 18^th century.  There were silk weavers, porcelain and potteries at Chelsea, jewellery, silk weavers at Spitalfields and ceramics in Lambeth.  Covent Garden was an early example of town planning. 

In Clerkenwell, streets for the middle classes north and south of Pentonville Road and elegant housing around the great squares – Brunswick, Mecklenburgh, Myddelton, Holford -  were established during the 1820s.  By the 1870s there was poorer housing with the many trades and businesses.  Notable were the craft metal and wood workers – jewellers and watchmakers - cabinet makers, inlaid furniture, drapers, artificial florists.  William Coombs Howe & Co were teachers of cutting.  (Alan Godfrey, Old Ordnance Survey Maps; Clerkenwell, Kings Cross & The Angel, 1871, Dunston, Gateshead, 1990.) 

Jane’s uncle was General Robert Gardiner, a British army soldier in the 3^rd Buffs, who served in the Peninsular and Napoleonic Wars.  In 1815 his troop helped restore order during the Corn Law Riots in London.  He was aide-decamp to monarchs George IV, William IV and Queen Victoria and was Governor of Gibraltar from 1848 to 1855 and Honorary Master Gunner, St James’ Park 1840-1864.  He married Caroline Mary McLeod, eldest daughter of Lieutenant-General John Macleod.  He died in Esher, Surrey on 26 June 1864.  (Wikipedia, 7 March 2024)

Sir Robert’s father was Captain John Gardiner of the 3^rd Buffs.  His brother was Lieutenant-General John Gardiner, Colonel-in-Chief of the 61^st Regiment of Foot.  Caroline’s parents were Lieutenant-General John Macleod and Lady Wilhelmina Kerr, daughter of William Kerr, 4^th Marquess of Lothian.  (Wikipedia 8 March 2024.) There may have been a military connection with John Fitzpatrick, who was also in the 3^rd Buffs (according to Shearman).  Jane Howe married John Fitzpatrick on 28 October 1820 at St Martin’s in the Fields. This old church is south west of Clerkenwell, closer to the Thames River and near Westminster.

Large land uses were the Middlesex House of Correction and House of Detention, builders’ yard and cartridge manufacture between Farringdon Road and Gray’s Inn Road.  North of Old Street were engineering works, foundries, dye works, drug mills and gasometers.

John Fitzpatrick died in 1838 at Hatton Garden, between Gray’s Inn and Farringdon Roads.  This is now between the British Museum, Museum of London and Covent Garden.  In 1898, the housing was middle class, well-to-do and fairly comfortable.  Nearby were St Bartholomew Hospital and the Smithfield markets: fruit and vegetable, poultry and meat. 

After John’s death in 1838, Jane lived with her daughters Mary, Grace and Jane at 5B Brunswick Place, St Mary Islington Parish in 1841.  The Brunswick Place south of The Regent’s Park in Marylebone has elegant townhouses.  But there is another Brunswick Place near the southern boundary of St Mary Parish, near Old Street, just east of Clerkenwell. Here, in 1898 there was a Board School; this might have been established after the Education Act of 1870.  The houses were fairly comfortable, but there were poor streets nearby in St Mark Old Street and St Clement City Road parishes.  The new Poor Law Act of 1834 had led to the establishment of workhouses.  Around the corner were the Haberdashers’ Alms Houses, St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics and the London Living-In Hospital.

In the 18^th century road tolls were introduced at turnpikes at Marylebone and Finchley Roads.  During the 19^th century, with London expansion from 1813, there were many changes taking place during the time the Fitzpatrick, Howe and Goodfellow families were living in London.  Sedan chairs and Hackney chairs had been replaced by coaches and hansom cabs.  The Thames River flooded before the embankments were built.  The river froze during the winter of 1813-14.  Cheapside was the main shopping area before new shopping streets such as Regent Street from the 1820s.  From 1829 there were omnibuses drawn by two or three horses.  King George IV opened Buckingham Palace in the 1830s; Parliament House was destroyed by fire in 1834. Then there was the Victorian age, when the Queen reigned from 1837 to 1901.  The Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace was held between May and October 1851.  It was not until 1854 that Dr John Snow proved the polluted public water pump in Broad Street Soho was the source of infections.  The cholera epidemic of 1832 had killed 5275 and in 1848-49 there were 14,789 deaths.  Big Ben clock dates from 1860. There were still shoe-cleaning boys in 1851 and chimney sweeps in 1861.

In 1851, Jane Fitzpatrick was a visitor in the house of Richard Woolcock, south of the Thames River at Hardinge Terrace, St Mary Parish, Newington. The church is on Kennington Road, lined with middle class, well-to-to houses.  Hardinge Terrace appears in faint letters on Penton Place in Booth’s 1898 London Poverty Map: fairly comfortable, with good ordinary earnings.  Jane may have known Richard Woolcock from Finsbury.  By 1861, Jane was at Bark Place, Paddington, in the parish of St Matthew Bayswater, north of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.  She was a widowed pensioner, a lodger in the household of Peter and Elizabeth Jervis.  This well-to-do small street must have been densely populated, as the houses behind are fairly comfortable, yet there are upper-middle and upper class wealthy homes along Bayswater Road and Kensington Palace.  Bark Place still has substantial terrace houses with many chimneys.

The underground railway from Paddington through Kensington opened in 1863.  The first department stores opened in Oxford Street in 1864. There were immigrants from Europe: Italians in Holborn and Clerkenwell. Smallpox in 1871 caused 8,000 deaths. 

By 1871, Jane was living at 48 Judd Street, St Pancras Parish.  This is near Regent Square, north of the Foundling Hospital.  Regency era terrace houses in Judd Street were built between 1808 and 1816.  Thanet Street workmen’s cottages between 1812 and 1822.  The 1871 map shows individual houses, set back from the street.  Judd Street had comfortable housing quality in 1898, but there were poor areas in the back streets and This area was redeveloped into large blocks of flats.  Nearby are Regents Square and St George’s Gardens and in 2024 the University College London Language and Speech Science Library.

Jane moved east of London by 1881 to Back Street, 3 Stamford House, Brentwood.  I cannot find this address in this hamlet.  She was living with her daughter Mary and her husband Thomas Howe.  Mary, age 60 (born about 1821) in Hampshire, was a teacher of music.  Thomas age 70 (born about 1811) was a professor of languages.  Jane died in 1889 in Billericay, Essex.  This is a town east of Brentwood.  She was 95 years old, indicating she was born in 1794.  Her previous Census ages in 1841 and 1851 estimated her birth in 1791.  Mary and Thomas were the beneficiaries of her will. Mary and Thomas were married on 30 August 1841 at St Mary Islington.  Jane Fitzpatrick was the spouse’s mother.