Kathy's Home Page
I was born in Dartford Hospital, raised in the Erith/Northend, now living in New Zealand. Researching my Family History from the other side of the world, I met in ‘Cyberspace’, some interesting fellow genies with Erith connections. I decided to retain the emails for personal interest, but then decided these stories should be told, and maybe they could help other researchers, especially those who have never seen Erith, and searched in cyberspace.
With family permission, I am now able to pass these stories on through the Erith Museum website. Hopefully some will be published later, along with my family history, so these are for-runners for the future.
I hope you will enjoy reading them, as much as I have enjoyed collecting them.
Kathleen M Lawson.
For more information on the Lawson Family name
Over the last few months, I have accumulated interesting data on many families who were once connected with ERITH and surrounding areas. Many had ‘strayed’ to ERITH from other parts of the UK, and many who could not settle, or find suitable employment locally, ‘strayed’ even further when they emigrated.
The majority it seems went to the United States, others to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and a few to South Africa.
In the mid 1800s, many families moved from the rural mid North to live around the Thames, where work was easier to find, and agricultural labourers, became general labourers in areas surrounding the main cities. Many others of course went into industry, and with so many factories in ERITH, we find this is the link with many of our ancestors. Brick making, one of the occupations for labourers moving to ERITH in the 1880s, though I was unaware while growing up in the 1950 and 60s, that all those stretches of waste land around North End, were once the quarries and brickworks employing so many. Mustn’t forget the orchards, and hints of a Nursery.
One month, (as I intend to add stories every month), I will cover a family who strayed to ERITH, from East Anglia or further North, so that the story of migration within the UK, and the reasons why, becomes clear.
Also from Wales and Scotland came many families including my own. It was my mum who was of Welsh decent, and her family settled in Belvedere, and later Arthur St, Northend, on the boundary of ERITH & CRAYFORD.
From all around the world, I am in contact with many researchers and genealogists , seeking their roots or connections with ERITH.
It is these researchers who have taught me a lot about the region I grew up in, because they knew what their ancestors occupations were and recorded on certificates, and gradually I developed a better idea of the town I saw change from a busy town with a community, to a ghost town during the sixties and seventies.
I am searching for suitable maps, that will help those who have never visited ERITH and the surrounding districts. Not maps as we think of maps today, but simple ones, that record houses, farms, brickworks etc, and I am very grateful for those still living locally, who have helped with this task. Special thanks to Bernie and his family, who send photos and info for my research.
I will name everyone who has helped in the project, later.
If any are related to the families we have included in these pages, please contact me, and I will put you in touch with the researchers also interested in your family. At present I am working with those researching the family of HANDS, DANIELS, POWELL,TROTMAN, ALLAN,MILES, POWER, WHEATLEY,PARSONS, THOMAS, MAYBURY, MARTIN , DAVIES and CASTLETON and their related families. I’ll add other names next month.
There has also been lots of short stories that I will include one month, rather than focusing on one family. I leave you with the poem of the River Thames, that made so many towns like ERITH, so important to many families locally.
THE RIVER’S TALE. Prehistoric Rudyard Kipling.
Twenty bridges from Tower to Kew….
(Twenty bridges or twenty- two)—
Wanted to know what the River knew,
For they were young, and the Thames was old
And this is the tale that the River told:-
"I walk my beat before London Town,
Five hours up and seven down.
Up I go till I end my run
At Tide-end-Town, which is Teddington.
Down I come with the mud in my hands
And plaster it over the Maplin Sands.
But I’d have you know that these waters of mine
Was once a branch of the River Rhine,
When hundreds of miles to the east I went
And England was joined by the Continent.
"I remember the bat-winged lizard -birds,
The age of Ice and the mammoth herds,
And the giant tigers that stalked them down
Through Regent’s Park into Camden Town.
And I remember like yesterday
The earliest Cockney who came my way,
When he pushed through the forest that lined the Strand,
With paint on his face and a club in his hand.
He was death to feather and fin and fur.
He trapped my beavers at Westminster.
He netted my salmon, he hunted my deer,
He killed my heron off Lambeth Pier.
His fought his neighbour with axes and swords,
Flint or bronze, at my upper fords,
While down at Greenwich, for slaves and tin,
The tall Phoenician ships stole in,
And North Sea war-boats, painted and gay,
Flashed like dragon-flies, ERITH way;
And Norseman and Negro and Gaul and Greek
Drank with the Britons in Barking Creek,
And life was gay, and the world was new,
And I was a mile from Kew!
But the Romans came with a heavy hand,
And bridged and roaded and ruled the land,
And the Roman left and the Danes blew in—and that’s where your history books begin.
The Thames is important to many people, for different reasons, but for those raised along its banks, I hope this poem has special meaning.