My Family Tree

England Births and Christenings
Name: Edw Strange
Gender: Male
Christening Date: 10 Dec 1737
Christening Place: TUNBRIDGE WELLS,KENT,ENGLAND
Father's Name: Wm Strange
Indexing Project (Batch) Number: P00840-1
System Origin: England-ODM
GS Film number: 0845142 IT 1
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He was the proprietor of the lodging house, "The Green Pales," Tunbridge Wells.
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NOTE
When he was 30yrs of age he married the 16yr old Ann Taylor. Tradition says she was a remarkably pretty girl. (There was a portrait painted and I have a photographic copy. see it on her page)

Edward saw a great opening for a livelihood in the fast growing Wells. When he was 30 he and his wife provided lodgings for the throngs who filled the fashionable resort.

In a list of lodging houses given in a local guide book dated 1797 the house called 'The Green Pales' on Mount Sion, Tunbridge Wells, is described as having 5 sitting rooms, 7 chambers and 7 garrets but in an earlier edition of the same book (1768) it is given as containing 5 parlours and 9 chambers available for visitors and one wonders where the children, of whom there were ten under 18yrs were stowed! Most of the houses in that locality were lodging houses and it is stated that the Clerk of the Chapel-of-Ease, who also had a house there, when he had a vacancy would give out with great gusto the psalm 'Mount Zion is a pleasant place'.

Tunbridge Wells was at that time at the height of its prosperity as a fashionable resort and Mount Sion was its most favoured residential district. The season lasted from May to October but the winter months must have been dull indeed, even the chapel and taverns being closed. The distinguished visitors, some who may have lodged at Green Pales included Lord Mansfield the famous Chief Justice, whose house in London had been burnt down in the Gordon riots; Lord North the Prime Minister largely responsible for the loss of our American colonies; Richard Cumberland, the dramatic writer and essayist: and many others. As the century drew to its close Tunbridge Wells was humming with activity and enterprise and Edward and Ann must have faced the new century in very comfortable circumstances.

A portrait exists of Edward Strange which was held by Mr E. Swift of Philadelphia. It represents a bucolic looking gentleman in a yellow striped waistcoat, holding a long churchwarden clay pipe. N.B. The picture was left to his niece in the USA.

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