Stuart McLeay

Tag: Romany Routes

  • Locating the Romany Camp at Claremont

    A note on the possible site of the Cooper family’s camp, and the history and layout of the Claremont estate. See also The Romany Family at Claremont. Victoria’s diaries tell us that the Romany camp at Claremont in December 1836 was by the Portsmouth Road — a number of her diary entries describe how the Cooper…

  • The Romany Family at Claremont – Part 1

    Part 1 – The Cooper Portraits Based on the informative articles by Sarah Murden in All Things Georgian (2016) and the helpful contextual discussions by Janet Keet-Black (2006), Eric Trudgill (2010), Jeremy Harte (2016, 2023), Alan Wright (2017) and David Cressy (2020), Victoria’s portraits of the Cooper family and her related diary entries are investigated…

  • The Benefactor

    Hop-pickers in Kent by Charles Corke (with mother and baby in the foreground) This is a story about my great great grandmother, Alice Ayres, who was the eldest of nine children in a Romany family. Her father was a basket maker and dealer from Hampshire by the name of Morris Ayres, and her mother was…