Laburnum Terrace

No. 18 Gloucester Road, Thornbury

This is a special house to us, the developers of this website, as it has been our home for more than 25 years.

The drawing of the house  shown on the right was drawn by Valerie Gregory for the cover of an audio cassette produced by the Thornbury & District Oral History Society.  The cassette contains an interview with George Excell carried out in March 1995.  George had been Town Clerk of Thornbury from 1952 to 1984, and for the early years he had used the back room of his house at number 18 as the council's office.  Thus, it became known as 'The Smallest Town Hall in England'.

When we started researching the history of the house, we were disappointed to find that our deeds didn't show anything earlier than a document dated 1947.  We subsequently found from the 1840 Tithe Map that the house and garden on the land now occupied by number 18 was owned by John Hodges.  John was either living in the house or the one next door (now number 16); a Thomas Longstreet was living in the other house.  It seems likely that Thomas Longstreet lived at number 18.

Next, we discovered that the deeds of numbers 8 and 10 Gloucester Road both contain copies of an indenture dated 14 August 1865 which relates to our property.  Reference in this document is made to an earlier indenture of lease and release of 23rd and 24th August 1832 which shows the land was conveyed by James Ford to John Hodges.  So we have to assume that the house was built by John Hodges at some time between 1832 and 1840.

In the 1841 and 1851 censuses, it is not entirely clear who is living in number 18 or whether it is occupied at all. 

In the 1861 census, it looks fairly certain that John Hodges was living in number 18 with his new wife, Hannah (nee Ball).

Name	Status	M	Age	Occupation	Birthplace
John Hodges	Head	M	75	Licenced Appraiser
Hannah Hodges	Wife	M	76		Thornbury

Click on the following links to see information on the OWNERS of No. 18 and the families who occupied the property as TENANTS

This page was last updated: 09/04/2007