An unorthodox address
An interesting entry in the 1911 census gives the address as ‘Travelling gipsy – sleep-shed at Bottom House Farm’. The details of the names of the people in this entry are hard to make out as the page is badly water damaged on the left side, but the end page shows his name is Sam Smith. The other travellers names are all but impossible to read, but they are aged between 50 and 1 year old and all but the youngest are female. They all have a marital status of single, but the second entry appears to be the mother of the other travellers who are all children.
The main page shows that Sam was 53 at the time of the census, and a tinker and grinder, which were both commonly held trades for itinerant workers, as stated on the Wikipedia entry for tinker and the entry for grinder on old occupations. Both occupations involved metal work, tinkers working as tinsmiths and grinders carried grinding wheels and sharpened knives.
Sam’s travels may have taken him far and wide, but he was born in Beaconsfield, so at the time of the census he was just over 5 miles away from his place of birth. Given this, and that 5 of his 6 fellow travellers were born in Princes Risborough, it seems they stayed within the same area, perhaps where they knew where work would be available.
There are two Bottom House Farms located between Amersham and Chalfont St. Giles: Upper Bottom House Farm and Lower Bottom House Farm and the previous census entries give no indication of which one this is. Perhaps the sleep-shed was between them, although it’s not a term I’ve encountered before, my assumption is that it’s a place for seasonal agricultural workers to sleep, required for accommodating the additional workers that would have been needed during harvest season. During April, when the census was taken, there would have been fewer workers around, so perhaps it was a convenient and well known stopping place.
It may be that this is the only entry where Sam and his companions are within the area of my study at the time of the census, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for him, in case he reappears.
