His grandfather Arthur John Evans was born in Wing on 17 July 1886. A J Evans parents, Henry Evans and Sarah Giles worked on the nearby estate of Baron de Rothschild some three miles away. He as a groom and she as a housemaid. The Baron built Mentmore House and it still stands today. More on Mentmore and the Rothschild's in a later blog on Gorebridge, Scotland.
In Wing we stopped and looked around the village and the first places we saw were Rothschild Cottages where I guess some of the workers lived.
Mentmore House was surrounded by tall trees but John managed to walk along a golf course on the estate grounds and then climb over the churchyard fence to get a few snaps of the house.
Mentmore House. The Evans family lived in Mentmore village at one stage, next to the policeman's house. Today Mentmore village only comprises of a few dozen houses. We saw the vicarage, the church cottage and the laundry house - but no police house. The whole village is still surrounded in rolling fields as it would have done in the 1880's.
The Church Cottage.Next stop was the churchyard in Harlington where Susan Giles and Henry Evans are buried. We could find no sign of their graves but there were a lot of unmarked plots about. We did find tombstones for Jonathon Giles, Jane Corbet Ward, Annie Corbett Giles and Peggy Ross all together, so with the help of Arthur Brighton in Chester will check out their relationship to the Parkin's.
