Just Williams – some of the Victorian tradesmen who shaped Egham High Street
Over the last few years we have seen many of the businesses in Egham High Street close – and welcomed new ones. Even without a pandemic these frequent changes are not unusual but it is always pleasing to see how some businesses stay for years, often under family management. This short series of articles by Margaret Stewart looks at some of the businesses which began trading in Egham during the Victorian era and continued for over 50 years. What they have in common is that they were all begun by men called William…
- William Nash, general dealer 23 High Street[i].
Born in Brentford in 1838 to a labourer, later turned basket maker, young William Nash started his working life as a basket maker.
By the time he was 17 he had moved to Egham, renting a tenement and yard at 22/23 High Street, where he continued to work as a basket maker. He married, in 1855, Eliza Collins the daughter of a Wraysbury papermaker and, in 1857, she gave birth to their first son, Henry.
There does not seem to have been any difficulty in his relationship with his family who he went back to visit in Brentford in 1861, taking with him 4-year-old Henry and 3-year-old Emma. Eliza did not accompany them: she was busy with their next daughter Amelia and probably pregnant with Louisa.
William was to find that his father Joseph had now opened a general store. Clearly inspired by this, and the need to support his growing family, he returned to Egham to set up something similar at 23 High Street. He was ambitious and focused not only on small household items but also sold furniture and later came to specialise in china and glassware.
By 1868 his brother Benjamin had moved to Staines and may have worked alongside William for a while before setting up his own basket making business in Staines High Street.
William and Eliza went on to have 16 children over 21 years, all of whom except one (Joseph 1870-1871, buried near his grandparents in Brentford) survived to adulthood. Most of the children served an apprenticeship in their father’s shop before going on to new careers of their own – or, in the case of the girls, marriage.
They scattered across England to Shepperton, Sunbury, Guildford, Enfield, Southend, Stevenage Kent, Bristol, Birmingham, Birkenhead and Staffordshire.
Of the seven boys, three were to set up shops of their own:
- Henry as a general dealer in Englefield Green, before moving to Shepperton where he worked as a builder/decorator, employing his brother Frederick.
- William Junior as a grocer in Edmonton and eventually a china & glass dealer in Walthamstow.
- Mortimer, the youngest child, as a grocer in Feltham.
Two of the girls were clever enough to become pupil teachers:
- Mercy, until her marriage at the age of 21 to Horace Dexter of Staines.
- Edith, who went on to qualify as a teacher and continued to work until her marriage to Ernest Tullet, a hairdresser from Sunbury, when she was 24.
Only Frederick did not live up to the family work ethic: he drifted from builder’s assistant to commercial traveller and was in a workhouse in Salisbury by 1911.
The early twentieth century brought some dramatic changes for the family:
Eliza Nash died in March 1902, doubtless worn out after raising so many children and beaten down by the deaths of two of her unmarried offspring in 1891 (Jessie aged 24) and 1894 (Ebenezer aged 25).
In 1904 daughter Rebecca and her husband, who had been living in Bristol, emigrated to Canada. Her sister, the second youngest daughter Sophia, who had been working as her father’s assistant , seems to have gone to visit Rebecca and her family shortly afterwards. She never returned to live in Egham and died unmarried in 1961 in Ealing, close to her father’s origins.
The only one of his children still in the area was Mercy who had lived for some time with her husband in Stroude.
Who was left to help William in the shop? Enter his second wife, Maria, who he married in 1905 or 1906. From their continued absence, it is reasonable to assume that none of William and Eliza’s children were happy with their new stepmother.
William died at the age of 73 in December 1911. In his will he left all his property to his wife Maria and did not mention his children.
She continued to run Nash’s general stores until shortly before her death in 1917,
At the time of her death she was living at 29 High Street Staines, the home of William’s surviving brother, Benjamin, now retired from basket making. She left effects of £183 (worth over £13,000 today) to be divided between Benjamin and another brother, Frederick[ii], a rag and metal dealer in Ealing.
The shop continued as a general stores and china shop under new owners, the Ellice family, until 1932.
23 High Street is now part of the Prestige House Apartments.
Sources: Egham Museum photograph and document collections (including ratebooks),
https://www.ancestry.co.uk , https://www.findmypast.co.uk
[i] There was another Nash – Edward George – running a business as a basket maker & cooper at 182 High Street from 1870-1923. Born in Egham Hythe he seems to have been no relation.
[ii] Frederick was in fact the most successful of the Nash family. At the time of his death in 1921 he possessed two properties in Ealing, was a local councillor and left an estate worth £9,599 (equivalent to over £500,000 today)