JOHN PIKE and his family 

... and the Grey Hound Pub

John Pike was an agricultural labourer’s son born in Compton c. 1830, the second of five sons of John and Hannah. At the time of the 1841 Census he was still at home, but by 1851 he was one of six servants working for Richard Tyrrell at what was then listed as Stox Lane Farm (recorded as Stocks Lane from the 1861 Census onwards).

At the other end of ‘Stox’ Lane, the first house going west on The Causeway (then called the High Street) was the late 14^th century - with mid-17^th century alterations  - Tudor House. Sarah Bosley had inherited the house in 1767 from Thomas Hayward, and by 1841 William Bosley owned it and Hannah Bosley was living there with her family. Hannah was described as ‘publican’ in the Census and therefore presumably running a beer house in part of Tudor House: Hannah died in 1843 and, as son Jonathan died in 1844, daughter-in-law Mary Bosley (nee Tyrrell) became ‘beer retailer’. 

In 1861 the Bosleys sold Tudor House to Richard Tyrrell, and in the Census that year John Pike is shown as having married Elizabeth Midwinter in 1856, they have two sons – George 4 and Seymour 2 - and he is ‘inn keeper and shepherd’ at Tudor House running the (in that Census) unnamed inn. Ten years later, and John Pike is now listed as ‘shepherd and publican’ at The Grey Hound, George is a baker’s assistant, Seymour (12) is an agricultural labourer. Albert was born in 1872-3, Elizabeth died in 1874, and in 1881 John is living as a shepherd in a cottage with 3 sons.

In the 1891 Census, John and George have moved to Mill Street and are both shepherds; Seymour has disappeared from the record; Albert is an agricultural carter lodging in Goring. John died in 1900 and so in 1901 George is living on his own in Mill Street as a shepherd; Seymour has re-emerged as a married stationary engine driver in St Pancras, London, with wife Beatrice and son Albert, and brother Albert is living with them as a railway stableman and groom.

In late 1901 George Pike married Annie Joyce, but then apparently died at only c. 40 in 1906: he is certainly missing from the 1911 Steventon census. In 1911 Seymour is foreman of the ‘Engine Cleaners Railway Company’, living with Beatrice and son Albert in Finsbury Park, London; Albert is a railway horse keeper in Blackhorse Road, Walthamstow, close to the station of that name on the Tottenham & Forest Gate Railway, married to Mary with two children Rosey and George. Then in 1921 Seymour is living Gospel Oak, London with Beatrice, and is a railwayman for the Midland Railway Co based at Kentish Town locomotive sheds; Albert is living with Mary, George and younger daughter Vera while working as a horse keeper also for the Midland Railway.