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The name Bazley is fairly uncommon and this particular branch of the Bazley - or sometimes Bazely or even Besley - family is recorded in Lyme Regis and Uplyme and the surrounding towns and villages at least as far back as the 16-17th centuries. But, it is likely that the family originated further west, because judging by the number of old parish Bazley records discovered in Devon and Cornwall this would seem to be the area where the name Bazley first came into use.
The Bazleys of Lyme were apparently tradesmen of various sorts. In the Piggots Directory of 1830 there are two butchers, John and Matthew, a baker John Bazley of Broad Street (my Great/Great Grandfather) and also - to complete the nursery rhyme - a candle stick maker, George Bazley (actually called a Tallow Chandler). In the next edition of Piggots 1842/44 only John the butcher is reprinted, the other three are not mentioned (but we know from the 1851 census that John the Baker and Matthew the Butcher were very much alive) but he has now been joined by a brewer, Robert Bazley of Church Sreet.
Yet, by the census of 1881 not one Bazley remains in Lyme - or even in the whole of Dorset - to be counted. Why and where did they all go? Well, some we think may have moved a few miles to Uplyme just inside the Devon boundry (yet to be researched) but we believe most joined the great exodus from the country and, in common with millions of other country folk, went to feed the great industrial revolution of the 19th century. Except for two members of that family, we still have little idea of where they went.
The one person we know the most about is George Hallett Bazley, born in Lyme in 1822; we think the second name Hallett came from his Grandmother Sarah Hallett. His Father was John the baker born 1792 and listed in the 1830 edition of Piggots and also in the 1851 census. As a young man George Hallett said farewell to Lyme and travelled all the way to London on his horse and cart, so my Father told me, probably just before 1850 (he does not appear in the 1851 census for Lyme) to found a pickling and dry salting business close to the new Great Northern Railway Terminus (later called Kings Cross Station) and the Battlebridge Canal basin. George Hallett was my Great Grandfather and in May 1854 - a few months before the Charge of the Light Brigade - he married a Yorkshire farmer's daughter from Pickering, Jane Collins, at Islington. Interestingly, another George Hallett is listed as a witness on the marriage certificate. A great uncle perhaps who came up from Lyme for the wedding?
They lived at various addresses around Kings Cross and all of these early Victorian and Georgian houses have survived the ravages of time and the Luftwaffe. George must have lived on his wits and his horse and cart trading in whatever paid the rent. At various times he is described as a Dry Salter (a dealer in pickles and sauces) an Oil Man (selling paraffin for oil lamps) and a dealer in the Italian Trade (probably antiques and bric-a brac). He must have done fairly because as the years rolled by the houses changed from small to large as the family climbed the Victorian social scale, ending up in Derby Street, a well-to-do area at that time, now called St Chads Street.
George died of a stroke in 1875, still only in his early fifties, at number 4 Derby Street a handsome terraced Georgian House close to Kings Cross that is still there to this day. He was buried in Highgate cemetery, and the grave survives in remarkably good condition bearing his address Derby Street Kings Cross and the epitaph "Not my will but thine be done" that sounds like a family admonishment to God that 54 years was too soon to take their Father. George left a wife, Jane, three sons, George Hallett junior, John Collins and William and three daughters, Louisa, Jane and Kate. The eldest son George Hallett Bazley was born in 1858 and lived to the ripe old age of 88. He was my Grandfather, I knew him well.
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