WRITER
Bletchingley
Reigate
These charming nineteenth or early twentieth century photographs were taken by the famous Francis Frith of Reigate for the brewers, White, Tomkins and Courage, and I would guess they were on a calendar. Reigate was the nearest large town to Bletchingley where the Colgates had lived since the middle of the nineteenth century; these places would have been very familiar to them!
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The end of my Colgate story
I have yet to publish the last chapter of the Colgates in Bletchingley, but on a recent visit there I found Henry and Charlotte Colgate, the first of the family to live in the pretty little village. Henry came from Kent where his family had lived for generations over hundreds of years. Charlotte came from Horley and was a Jeal before she married […]
MoreSearching for Emma…
I get these bees in my bonnet. Horace Colgate, né Alfred Dodd, born in London… who was his father, who exactly was his mother? I knew her name was Emma Pither Dodd and that she married Thomas Colgate. Her birth place in the census was stated as Ascot in Berkshire but I just seemed to stumble blindly around the […]
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Trying to see the past
Horace Colgate died nearly a hundred years ago at the tragically young age of eighteen… his death was not unusual at that time; millions of young men were giving their lives on the battlefields of World War 1. Horace came from the quiet Surrey village of Bletchingley where he had lived with his mother, step-father and four younger brothers and sisters. […]
MoreThe Dagnalls of Reigate
What a happy day it must have been in the spring of 1878, when twenty-five year old Catherine Colgate married William Thomas Dagnall! They were married in the parish of Godstone in Surrey, but they have been married in the church of St Mary the Virgin in Bletchingley, where Catherine’s family lived. William was a […]
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Lois Elsden 