Hawthorn Cottage
7 rood 5 perches
In 1889, William Wilks made an arrangement with the Earl of Abergavenny to build a house on lease for 63 years at a cost of £160 and to pay £1 rent yearly.
On the 1891 census William is 54 years old, and a blacksmith. Lucy his wife was 40 and born in Penalt.
In St Peter’s Church records there is a burial on 8th August 1896 of Frances Louise Kirby aged 35 of Hawthorn Cottage.
The gross value of Hawthorn Cottage in 1910 was £15 and the rateable value was £12.
Both William and Lucy are still at Hawthorn on the 1911 census but in 1917 William died aged 70, he was buried at St Peter’s on the 30th April. (Read his obituary)
In November 1920 the Earl of Abergavenny sold many Goytre properties, Hawthorn Cottage being one of them, the lease was sold to Mrs Wilkes for £75, and the property purchased at the same time for £395 by Lucy Weeks.
Lucy Weeks died in 1926 and was buried at St Peter’s on the 15th January, there is also an article in the Free Press.
I checked the electoral registers and found Gilbert Savours Crook and his wife Eva lived at Hawthorn Cottage for a couple of years from 1927 but had left by 1929 as nobody was registered living there, but from 1931 to 1938, and maybe even longer, John and Eva Williams lived at there.