Photo of Newlyn Beach, Cornwall

Elizabeth Kelynack later Gill – the Bugle Inn’s Cornish Innkeeper

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Paul Parish Church

Ending up the widowed innkeeper 300 miles from her Cornish home town was probably not a path Elizabeth Kelynack had expected as a young girl growing up in the last decade of the 18th century.  She was born in the parish of Paul, probably in the fishing village of Newlyn, and was baptised at Paul Church on 20 July 1790, she was the third of seven known children of fisherman Charles Kelynack and his wife Elizabeth Richards. Elizabeth is my 6x Great-Aunt [AKA 5th great grand aunt].

However, Hampshire man Richard Gill sailed into town with the Merchant Navy; a man 2 years older than herself, they married on 20 July 1810.

Perhaps he was away from Elizabeth a lot at sea as I’ve found no records of any children until daughter Sally was baptised in 1825, 15 years after their marriage.  Daughter Mary Ann was born c 1826 in Hampshire, and Julia Ann was baptised on 16 September 1832 in Hamble.  Fourth daughter Emma was born c 1834 in Hamble and fifth and final known child, their son Charles, was born in spring 1839. In 1836 Richard Gill of Hamble has been reported in Merchant Navy records [accessed via Find My Past] as being Master of the Palmyria of Southampton.

Hamble-le-Rice [Hamble for short] is an old village in Hampshire between Southampton and Poole on the south coast of England. The earliest recording of its river [as Homelea] was in 720 AD[i]. Although the village wasn’t recorded in the Doomsday Book, a priory was established there in 1109[ii][iii].

In June 1841 the family was living in Hamble near the Victory Inn and sharing their home with baker Henry Bath, his wife Jane and baby Sarah.  Sadly I can’t find any records about Elizabeth and Richard’s son Charles after the June 1841 census.

Three years later Elizabeth was widowed, in February 1844, and Richard’s burial took place in Hamble on 6 February 1844.  He was aged 54.

Later that year their second daughter Mary Ann married Thomas Price on 24 September 1844. He was working in 1851 as a Beer House Keeper in Portsea [Portsmouth].

Oldest daughter Sally married courier James Corin (also Cornish-born and living in Hampshire) on 14 February 1848 and had three children, Julia (c1852 later a draper’s assistant, later Smart), James (c May 1859, later a surveyor in Wandsworth) and Sarah Margaret (c 1862 later Rowse) in Southampton, Hampshire.

Whether or not it was coincidence that her son-in-law Thomas Price was a Beer House Keeper, by March 1851 Elizabeth herself was working as a victualler at the Bugle Inn in Hamble.  Emma, her 21-year-old dressmaker youngest daughter, was living at home and they had lodgers, two oyster merchants named George Williamson and William Ost(?).  Her oldest daughter Sally and Sally’s husband James Corin were visiting.  A servant named Charles Hurst who worked as a waterman completed the household that day.

Julia Ann, Elizabeth and Richard’s third daughter, married her first husband, William Alfred Ayling in spring 1850 in Portsea Island and they lived in Hamble-le-Rice until his death in early 1858.  He had been working as a fishmonger and together they’d had four children, Ellen, Margaret, daughter J..?… and James Richard.  Julia Ann remarried in 1861, her husband was Yorkshire-born stone-mason William A Marsden, and they moved away to Lambeth, Surrey, before April 1871 after their son William had been born in Hamble c1862.

Elizabeth’s youngest daughter, dressmaker Emma, married her first husband, mariner John Vant, in summer 1852 aged 18.  Together they had four children, John, William, Albert and Emma, before John died in spring 1865.  Emma married a widowed Hamble man called Truman Riddett, a mariner, on 27 November 1869. Emma had had a daughter, Elizabeth Vant, c 1869 just before they married, so possibly baby Elizabeth was Truman’s daughter. Truman also had a 10-year-old daughter Louisa and 8-year-old son Frederick to complete their household.

White’s Directory of 1859[iv] lists “Gill Eliz., Bugle Inn” in Hamble which is then “a small village and parish of 443 souls, and only about 600 acres of land”.  I also found a summary of the history of the Bugle Inn[v] via the Hamble Local History Society site – what a genealogy treat!

In the 1861 census Elizabeth is recorded in Hamble as Inn Keeper although annoyingly the census page doesn’t specify the address.  In her household are her married daughter Mary Price, a young visitor called Margaret Ashby, Elizabeth’s Water Man Charles Hurst again and a bricklayer from Birmingham who was lodging with her that night called Thomas Collington.

The 1871 census finds her occupation described as a ‘Widow of a Captain MS’ [Merchant Service]. She was her own 1-person household but in the same building was the household of Truman and Emma Riddett (her youngest daughter) with Truman a sailor and a shell-fish smack worker [shell-fish was a local industry]. Emma’s five Vant children were living with them, with 14-year-old John a servant and the younger children at school.

By April 1881 Elizabeth was living with Emma and Truman Riddett in Back Street, Hamble and after years of solo innkeeping was recorded as an Innkeeper’s Widow.  She died in 1882 at the grand old age of 91.

Websites used:

Words copyright Lynne Black
First published at https://starryblackness.wordpress.com/2018/01/03/elizabeth-kelynack-newlyn/ on 3 January 2018

[i] Hamble Local History Society, accessed 31 December 2017  http://www.hamblehistory.org.uk/community/hamble-local-history-society-12978/hamble—brief-history/

[ii] British History Online, accessed 31 December 2017 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hants/vol3/pp469-471

[iii] Hamble Local History Society, accessed 31 December 2017  http://www.hamblehistory.org.uk/community/hamble-local-history-society-12978/hamble—brief-history/

[iv] White’s Directory 1859, accessed via Hamble Local History Society, 31 December 2017 http://www.hamblehistory.org.uk/shared/attachments.asp?f=92f85852-4a70-491b-9ebb-f1f6379b1f1a%2Epdf

[v] Hamble Local History Society, history of the Bugle Inn, Accessed 31 December 2017 http://www.hamblehistory.org.uk/shared/attachments.asp?f=11895498-c343-4ffb-bb5d-a2ae08a1cc9e%2Epdf

2 thoughts on “Elizabeth Kelynack later Gill – the Bugle Inn’s Cornish Innkeeper”

  1. Pat Kelynack

    Hi there. Very interesting read about Eliz Kelynack. My husband is also distant relative of hers. Have you considered putting all these details into wikitree. She has a profile there.
    Regards

    Pat Kelynack

    Reply ↓

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