| Description | Edwin John Springbett Jesse was born in North Newnton, Wiltshire, in 1842. His father died in 1844, and his mother Sarah Sophia, nee Springbett, remarried in 1863. As a young man in the 1860s he seems to have worked with a Springbett relative at Wilsford Mill, near Pewsey, Wiltshire. At the time of the 1871 census (around the time he joined his uncle in Reading) Edwin was visiting friends in Somerset, and although then only 28 was described as a retired miller. He married Harriett Clements Sims (c.1850-1921) in 1878. The couple lived at Castle Hill House (described on census returns as 154 Castle Hill) from the 1870s until c.1901, and then moved to a house Edwin had built in Mapledurham. They had three children: Edwin William, born in 1880, Walter John, born in 1881, and Elizabeth Harriet Rose, born in 1883.
Edwin served as a Conservative councillor of Reading Borough, representing Castle Ward, and in this capacity he was involved in the rearrangement of the borough finances in 1880-1, mortage of Manor Farm etc. |