Margaret Perry, nee Files, lived at Flint Cottage, which belonged to her uncle before her – Reg Files and her grandmother Ida Files. She sold it in 1982. John Davies, who now lives there, has kindly looked out Deeds and other legal documents dating back to 1892, and these are attached as PDFs below.
Margaret believes that her great grandfather, Francis Hillier, originally owned the property, but there is no sigh of his name on the deeds, which include include James and George Eames and the publican at The George, William Luff, and Ida Files. Click here for a collection of family memorabilia provided by Margaret Perry/Files.
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Margaret Perry emailed on March 26th:
I think I’ve cracked it. Although it’s very difficult to read as it’s so faded, the ‘testament’ gives the cottage to my Grandmother Ida Files but unless I am reading it incorrectly, not by William Luff but by his wife Emily. I think it says ‘her’ not ‘his’. Emily Miles was born on August 12th 1856 at Allington, a hamlet just north of Chippenham. On the 1911 census she says her birth place was Coombe. Allington and Boscombe are more or less combined and that is probably what she meant. She was fibbing hugely about her age though. I see on the E.M.parish records that William was buried in August 1920 in a double grave (131) and Emily in March 1921.
Emily Miles was born two years after Sarah Miles, my Grandmother’s mother, so Ida would be Emily’s niece. Sarah was the woman who debunked to the USA with another man and whom my grandmother went to stay with in 1919. No wonder she came back if she had been left a property. She obviously asked her father Francis Hillier to join her from Bath as he was now quite alone.
Emily is on the 1861 census and in Bath in 1871, after that she disappears and I can find no record of a marriage to William Luff anywhere,
I think the ‘testament’ mentions a Will. If it’s still extant it’s not in the Hampshire Record Office or the National Archives which is a pity. I wonder where it is. Is the piece just before the ‘testament’ dated January 1909 attached to it or not?, there is no date on the testament itself that I can see.
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