12. Back to the Beginning

My father’s family were builders and carpenters, my mother’s family ran a sand and ballast business, all entrenched in Essex, English, except my great-grandmother who was from Romany. 

One evening around 2012 on the journey back from Wales to London, to catch my plane to Switzerland, I stopped at the Magor service station on the M4 just before the Severn Bridge for a coffee. 

I picked up some of the papers my mother had given me in Wales, one of which was a family tree a distant cousin had been researching. I opened the document and the word “watchmaker” appeared. 

The name that stood out from the others was Henry King (1852–1931). By the 1871 census, Henry was 18 years old and living with his parents in Stanford Rivers, Essex. The village is to the east of Epping, the town I grew up in. 

In his early life Henry King is noted as a farm labourer but he took over the Sawyers Arms in Magdelan Laver, Essex on August 25th 1877.

The public house must have been doing OK because when the 1881 census for England and Wales was taken, Henry appears to have gained an additional skill. His profession is shown as not only a Publican but also a Watchmaker. 

We know that he was holding down two businesses because he is first listed in Kelly’s directory, the Victorian Yellow Pages, for Essex in around 1878. Here he is operating as just a Beer Retailer, meaning that beer has played a role in my family’s life for more than 130 years.

By the time of the 1891 census things had changed for the King Family. In the census form the entry for the family has a circle and an arrow around the word “Publican” with the arrow pointing at the line for Henry’s wife, Fanny. 

Henry and his immediate family continued to run the Sawyers Arms public house until about 1900.

By the time of the 1901 census, Henry had retired from the publican business and was working full-time as a watchmaker. The family had moved to Tylers Green just to the East of what is now North Weald Airfield, a military base during the Second World War, which played an important part in the Battle of Britain and where my Father who was a fitter in the airforce met my mother.

Henry King bought what is now a Grade II Listed property, Brickwall house is a sixteenth-century timber-framed building that was altered in the 20th century. It has an extension used for workshop. The watchmaking business was now a family affair, with both his eldest son, Arthur, and second son, Harry were working with him.