Benjamin Budgen (1810-1891) and Eliza Botting (1812-1860).
My 3rd great-grandparents.
Benjamin, my 3rd great-grandfather, was born in the village of Worth, Sussex, on 20 September 1810 and baptised on 21 October at St Nicholas’ Church. His parents were William Budgen and Sarah Rice.
Benjamin grew up in the village and married Eliza Botting at St Nicholas’s on 13 October 1831 – the witnesses were Peter Botting and Amelia Brooker. The 1851 census listed Eliza as hailing from Balcombe in Sussex but I’ve not been able to find her baptism in any of the records. Other Bottings (or Bottens and Bottins) were baptised in Balcombe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to a number of different couples – John and Sarah, James and Charlotte, Henry and Elizabeth, Potter and Sarah, and William and Mary – so maybe a crucial record has disappeared or the local vicar made an error in recording her christening.
In 1851 Benjamin was working as an agricultural labourer and living with his family in Balcombe Lane, Worth, but by 1861 he was a widower for Eliza died in 1860 and was buried in Worth on 24 May. At the time of the census he was living with his children and working as a gamekeeper at Standing Hall Farm in Worth. According to a history of Sussex, the farm lay one mile south-east of the church and was a venerable building with parts dating back to the early 17th century. Benjamin’s father had been employed there too, at least as far back as the 1841 census.
He’s missing from the 1871 census but in 1881 Benjamin was living in Balcombe, Sussex, as an agricultural labourer, in a property called Scannons, with another servant (see below) and a housekeeper. The book ‘Balcombe, The Story Of A Sussex Village’ by Leslie Fairweather says that Scannons was a farm that stood on grounds that are now home to a property called Forest Ridge. In the 16th and 17th centuries, it belonged to a family handily called Balcombe, some of whom followed the early pilgrim fathers to America after the voyage of the Mayflower in 1620.
By 1891, Benjamin had moved back to Worth and was living as a lodger with Benjamin and Harriet Streeter at Whitely Hill. He died the same year and was buried on 31 December 1891 at Worth.
Benjamin and Eliza’s children included:
- Harriet Budgen (1832-1898), my 2nd great-grand aunt. Baptised on 20 November 1832 in St Nicholas’ Church, Worth, Sussex, Harriet married widower and bricklayer Edward Sumner at St Mary’s in Balcombe on 4 November 1865. He’d been born in 1816 and was baptised in Slaugham in Sussex on 24 November that year to labourer Isaac Sumner and his wife Elizabeth. His first wife was the widow Mary Weller, who he married in 1845. They had a son Isaac but she died in 1857 and was buried in Crawley, Sussex. Harriet doesn’t appear to have had any surviving children from her marriage but her young nephew Edward Budgen lived with them for some years in Worth – in 1871 he was aged just two when they were at Tollgate House in the village and he was with them 10 years later at what is now known as Gate House. By then Harriet was working as a dressmaker. Edward died in 1896 and was buried in Worth on 12 September. Harriet died in 1898 and was buried on 17 September. A note on the record says she was from East Grinstead Union – the workhouse – but that may just refer to the fact that she was being cared for in their hospital.
- Thomas Budgen (1838-1910). A Worth boy who later moved to Reigate in Surrey, he’s my 2nd great-grandfather.
- Benjamin Budgen (1842-1920), my 2nd great-grand uncle. Born in 1842 in Worth, Sussex, there are two different baptism dates for Benjamin – one is 26 December 1842 and the other 5 March 1843. Both have the parents as Eliza and Benjamin, with Benjamin Snr noted as a labourer. I suspect the December date is his birthday but there’s no actual proof. He appears with his family in two subsequent census records; as a child in 1851 and in 1861 when he was working as a gamekeeper alongside his father at Standing Hall Farm, Worth. By 1881 he crops up, listed as a general labourer, living with wife Ann at 92 Winstanley Road, Battersea, south London. Although the record says he was born in Worthing, I think this is an error as no-one by the name was born there around the time of his birth. The census suggests that Ann was born in around 1852 in Whitton, Middlesex, and she may be the Mary Ann Middleton who married Benjamin in 1879. An 1898 electoral roll showed Benjamin living at 20 Lombard Dwellings, Lombard Road, Battersea. The 1901 census placed him in Twickenham with an Alice King as his housekeeper. By the 1911 census, Alice was listed as his wife and the couple were at 57 Alma Road, Wandsworth. She came from Croydon, Surrey, and was born in around 1859. The couple supposedly married in around 1897 according to census records but I’ve found no record to prove it. Benjamin’s death was registered in Wandsworth in 1920. The following year’s census showed Alice living in the borough with her children and mother. I’ve yet to find a death record. Benjamin’s children with Alice were both said to have been born in Twickenham, Middlesex, but there is a curious lack of evidence:
- Stanley Budgen (1900-????). In the 1921 census, he was listed as a private in the 23rd London Regiment, an auxillary force.
- William Edwin Budgen (1902-1978) married Eleanor Hall in 1925 and worked as a bricklayer. He lived in the Wandsworth area for many years but died in Sussex and had his ashes scattered at Littlehampton Cemetery.
- Sarah Budgen (1848-????), my 2nd great-grand aunt. Baptised on 6 February 1848 in Worth, Sussex, Sarah grew up with her family around Standing Hall Farm. In the 1871 census she was at a house in Leigh, Worcestershire, working as a cook for the Cazalet family. The head of the house, George Henry Cazalet, was a retired army officer who had previously lived at Paddockhurst in Worth and raised several of his children there. It’s entirely reasonable to suppose that Sarah worked in Sussex as a servant for the family, which included Cazalet’s Indian-born nephews and nieces, before moving with them to Worcestershire. By 1881 Sarah was back in Surrey as a domestic servant and cook at the Station Road South Side surgery in Reigate, run by GP Fred Hallowes. However, I’ve been unable to pin her down after this.
- Eliza Budgen (1852-1885), my 2nd great-grand aunt. Baptised on 3 August 1852 in Worth, Sussex, Eliza married Edward Hollamby at St Peter’s in Preston, Sussex, on 9 February 1896. He was a widower, a farmer and much older, born in 1817 in Speldhurst, Kent, to parents Edward and Sophia. The 1881 census recorded them at 65 Lewes Road, Brighton, with Edward listed as an unemployed farmer. Eliza died just a few years later, the event registered in Uckfield, Sussex, in 1885. Edward died in 1897 at the workhouse infirmary in Brighton and was buried on 25 August in the village of Streat, Sussex.
- George Budgen (1856-1929), my 2nd great-grand uncle. George was baptised on 7 December 1856 in Worth, Sussex. He was working as a farm servant and living at West Hill in Ardingly, Sussex, at the time of the 1871 census. He went on to serve in the Royal Engineers, although the main records for his time with them were likely destroyed during bombing in 1940. What survives are several documents that show that Corporal Budgen faced a court martial at Aldershot in Surrey on 16 July 1878 for desertion and losing his kit. The sentence refers to ’84’, which could be days that he was locked up or a financial penalty on being found guilty. George was then listed in the Police Gazette as a deserter from Aldershot from 15 December 1879, ‘off furlough to London’. Said to be a ‘carman’ by trade (another term for a goods carrier), he was described as 5ft 5ins tall with brown hair and blue eyes. What happened to him as a result is unknown but he went on to marry Ann Constance Davey on 1 May 1887 at St Mary’s Church in Newington, Surrey, then described as a labourer on the record. She came from East Harling, Norfolk, and was born to shepherd John Davey and his wife Mary Ann in 1861. It’s likely that she met George through his father Benjamin – the 1881 census showed her working as a servant at Scannons in Balcombe when Benjamin was living there. George and Ann lived and worked in the Newington area and were recorded as living at 50 Chatteris Square and 29 Standard Square, Newington, with George variously listed as a general or builder’s labourer. The couple had at least five children, with some of the baptism records describing George as a scaffolder. Ann died in 1926 and was buried in Southwark on 22 September, George in 1929.
- Harriet Budgen (1888-????) was born in Suffolk, perhaps so that her mother could be with her parents. She married William Henry Alexander in Newington, Surrey, in 1923.
- George Budgen (1890-1893).
- Mary Constance Budgen (1892-1969) was born in Newington and went to Harper Street School locally along with her sisters. She married Arthur Taylor in 1922 and had a family with him. He worked for a time as a packer in a stationery firm.
- Lily Rose Budgen (1894-1974) was born in Newington and worked for many years as a maid. She died a spinster in Surrey.
- Kate Budgen (1895-1972). Kate was born in Newington and, with sister Mary, was admitted to hospital locally on 9 December 1898. Both weren’t discharged until February the following year. She married journeyman baker Newman Edward Appleton in 1931. Kate died in 1972, Newman in 1988.
- Edward Budgen (1895-1898).
Sources: BMD, hospital, military and census records from Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk and Sussex Family History Group. British History Online. ‘Balcombe, The Story Of A Sussex Village’ by Leslie Fairweather ASIN: B0063E0KN4.