Introduction
William Bray was a foreman involved in building the railway line at Hardington Marsh. He probably only stayed a year or two before moving on to another project. Originally from Leicestershire, he married in Dorset in 1857, while working on the Bridport line. He undertook work all over the country before returning to his home village by the age of fifty. For some of that time, including while at Hardington, he used the name “Lyster” or “Lester.”
Birth
William was born at Aylestone, Leicestershire, on 15 December 1825, the first of seven children born to John and Sarah Bray. His father, John, was a farm labourer.
In 1832, a railway line was built through the parish for transporting coal, which may have inspired William to become a railway navvy. By the age of 15, he had left home, but little is known about his life until 1857.
Dorset
When William was about thirty, he moved to Dorset to help build the branch line between Maiden Newton and Bridport. There, he met his future wife, Sarah Ann Rendell Honeyburn (also known as Honibond or Honeybun), who lived at Bradpole. Baptised at Loders on 1 June 1834, she was the illegitimate daughter of Elizabeth Honeyburn. However, her mother married her father shortly after her birth. Sarah had an illegitimate daughter herself in about 1855, born at Symondsbury.
By June 1857, work on the Bridport branch line was substantially complete, except for the section at Witherstone, and William would have been planning to move to a new railway project.[1] Sarah may have worried that William would disappear overnight like the navvy on the Bridport line who, in April, on the morning fixed for his marriage to a local girl, was found to have decamped from the neighbourhood.[2] Any such worries were unfounded. William and Sarah had their banns called at Bradpole church on three successive Sundays in July and were married there on Monday, 3 August 1857. The marriage register records William’s occupation as an “Excavator”. He married using his real name, “Bray.” William was 31, and Sarah was about eight years younger. Both signed the marriage register with a cross.
Name use
William sometimes used the name “Lister” or “Lyster”. He used the name Lister in the 1861 and 1871 censuses, and at Hardington, he used the name “Lyster” for the baptism of his son. At Castle Cary, he used “Lester” for the baptism of one child and “Bray” for another. Birth registrations have been found for six of his eight children, all under the name “Bray”
The name “Lester” may have originated as a nickname based on “Leicester,” which he then adopted as a surname for reasons that remain unclear.
Hardington
William’s next project involved working on the main line from London to Exeter. His son, William John, was born at Hardington on Sunday, 9 May 1858 and baptised that same day. The name “Bray” was used to register the child’s birth, but the name “Lyster” was used to baptise him.
William John’s birth certificate describes his father as a “Foreman of Rail Road Labourers.”
The family had left Hardington by March 1860.
A nomadic way of life
The birth of their second child was registered at Wimborne in the first quarter of 1860. The following decade or more shows a pattern of short stays in widely separated locations as William migrated for railway construction projects.
In April 1861, William was a railway labourer living in Ansford Lane, Castle Cary. The birthplaces of his children indicate other locations, including:
Circa 1864 Callington, Cornwall
1866 Aylestone, Leicestershire
1869 New Brompton Kent
1870 Enfield, Kent
1871 Ingleton Fells, Yorkshire (9 Batty Wife Hole)
1872 Bristol
Aylestone
As William entered his fifties, he embraced a more settled way of life. By April 1881, he lived in Lorne Road, in his home parish of Aylestone, where he worked as a general labourer.
Sarah’s death
In 1883, Sarah passed away at the age of 49.
William’s later life
William has not been found in the 1891 census. However, from March 1901 or earlier, he lived with his daughter, Alice, and her husband, initially at 67 Richmond Road, Aylestone and then at 313 Aylestone Road, Leicester.
Death
William died on 16 March 1908, at the age of 82, leaving an estate valued at £141-10s.[3]
Children
William and Sarah had five sons and three daughters together.
The will of William Bray of 313 Aylestone Road, Leicester
Executor: my daughter, Alice Berridge of 313 Aylestone Road, Leicester.
To my son, William John Bray: £5
To my son, John William Bray: £5
To my son, Allen Bray: £5
To my son, James Bray: £5
To my daughter, Elizabeth Henson: £5
To my daughter, Rose Turner: £5
To Alfred Berridge of 313 Aylestone Road: £5
To my son, John Henry Bray: £5 and all my wearing apparel,
To my daughter, Alice Berridge: the remainder of my property both real and personal.
William Bray, his mark
Wit: Henry George Hince, 2 Batten St, Leicester, Beer Retailer
Walter Brettell (Clerk), 315 Aylestone Road.
References
[1] Bridport News, 20 June 1857, p. 4.
[2] Dorset County Chronicle, 30 April 1857, p. 8.
[3] The will of William Bray, dated 25 January 1908, proved at Leicester on 2 April 1908.
