When my grandmother was born her family were living in the Coachmans's Lodge at Cranford House on Kenilworth Road near Blakedown and Old Milverton in Warwickshire. George Timms was listed as the Coachman on the 1901 census at the same address before he was married. They remained there living above the stables until about 1908.
As Coachman, George would have tended the horses, groomed them and fed them as well as being in control of them when they were harnessed and out and about. He probably wore a uniform of sorts because the job would have been relatively prestigious at the time and image was everything when out representing your employer.
George was born in Milverton in August 1877, the youngest son of James Timms and Jane Lawrence. His mother died when he was 6 months old and he was probably cared for by his older sisters and his mother's parents who lived nearby. By 1891, his father had remarried and his older siblings (5 sisters and a brother) had all left the family home. Some were married, others had moved to Birmingham looking for work or were employed locally.
It must have been from his father that George learned to tend horses and drive a cart or carriage. James, who came from a long line of Oxfordshire Ag Labs, had found employment as a drayman, jaunting car driver and coachman after arriving in Milverton some time during the 1850s. George embraced new technology and the advent of motor cars, becoming a chauffeur and motor car driver and later a taxi driver.
Apart from those eight or so years at Cranford House and a couple of short periods in different houses he lived his life just metres from where he had grown up with his siblings along Rugby Road and in Stamford Place. In fact for a time he lived with his own young family in the exact house where he had been born.
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