Great Grandfather West

A Memory of Kirkstead.

I have no personal memories of Kirkstead, but it was an important place in the history of my family.   

My great grandfather, William Gilbert West, and his wife Rebecca farmed somewhere in the Kirkstead area during the 1870s.  From census entries we know that their 9th, 10th and 11th children, all girls, were born there, the first of these being in 1874.  The three girls were Gertrude (my grandmother), Nellie and Alice West.

The family must have moved to Kirkstead from the coast in the early 1870s.  The births of the previous children had been registered in Hogsthorpe or Trusthorpe. The 1891 census shows them as having returned to Hogsthorpe (where Rebecca had been born) and Chapel-St-Leonards, but exactly when they went we don't know.  

As a child I knew some of William Gilbert's and Rebecca's children as great aunts. Of the three sons I never knew Richard and William Gilbert who must have died before I was born. The third son, and sixth child, Walter, had emigrated to the USA. I have no memories of the two oldest girls, Mary and Lizzie, although I believe I can remember being taken to see the third, Great Aunt Carrie, when I was very small. I have a picture in my mind of a frail elderly lady dressed in black, old-fashioned clothes sitting in a wicker bath chair! She must have been very old, as she was over eighty when I was born!  The remaining great aunts, Maude, Beatrice, Nellie, Alice and, of course, my grandmother, hold much clearer memories for me.

As well as being a farmer my great grandfather was a Methodist Local Preacher and a frequent visitor to chapels all over, I assume, the Spilsby circuit. Family tradition has him as a bit of a tyrant, but I have no idea whether this description really matches the man. My grandmother told stories of her childhood which, I now know, had Kirkstead as their backdrop!     

I am trying to discover more about this family.  

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