Genealogy Chat

See below in a moment.

Have downloaded a PDF copy of a will I got from the National Archives download site and put it on a free file-hosting site for any kind people on here to have a look at and help me try and unscramble a couple of words (place-names). http://www(.)freefilehosting(.)org/pupload/view/7736 (remove the brackets in this address) Most of it is readable and makes sense to me, names of children, and brother-in-law, etc., but there are a few parts where places are named, and I don't know what these places are and can't even read or make a good guess on them. I thought maybe someone here could put a new set of eyes at it. The will is of a wholesale linen merchant named John Bouch who lived in Monument Yard, Central London, and died in 1830. I had assumed he was born in London, but the will seems to indicate that he has an estate in Cumberland (now Cumbria) and that his brother-in-law John Jefferson is of somewhere in Cumberland too, but I can't make out what the place is, ditto with the address of the other executor of the will, his brother William - of Sydenham, but also some lane in London that I can't make out either. If anyone fancies a go at any of these place names and trying to make some sense out of it, please do, as I'm getting brain fog - can't decide whether I'm looking at 'L''s, 'D''s or 'S''s!! Michael

Okay, the estate looks like 'Grainger Houses in the County of Cumberland'. The executor looks like 'my brother William Bouch of Lawrence Lane London and of Sydenham in the County of Kent' (that means either one was his business address and the other his home or he had two houses) But John Jefferson's address - a bit more tricky. Looks like Hawhigh in Cumberland? But I don't know if there is such a place. Back in a minute... Kate.

Googling 'Grainger Houses' comes up with a few matches including some Cumbria ones, so that could be right, and my London A-Z has a Lawrence Lane in EC2 so I bet that was where William worked. But google doesn't help with 'Hawhigh', and I'm sorry but I have to go out shopping in the rain now. Maybe somebody else can come up with a better answer for that one? Kate.

Thanks Kate, I was reading that lane in London as 'Saviour's Lane' but couldn't find it in an A-Z anywhere. Lawrence Lane could be right as it's in the same area of London as Monument Yard, so I'll hop of to historicaldirectories.org and see if anything comes up at this address in 1830. I was reading 'Grainger' as the possible first word to his Cumberland estate too, but the second word doesn't look much like 'houses' at all to me, and doesn't seem to pinpoint it much. I'll try a google search though. The other Cumberland place-name doesn't make any sense to me at all. The IGI has quite a lot of instances of the name Bouch all across Cumberland, and I really need to narrow down my search a bit, but without translating these place-names and finding out where they are or were, I'm a bit stuck. Any more thought welcome while I continue my search.