Notepad Tales The Bradleys of Buxhall, Suffolk and  West Ham & Ilford, Essex ...   Smarts        Home John Pearl Bradley was born in Buxhall in Suffolk on the 3rd November 1844. He was a member of at least the 3rd generation of Bradleys in the village. His great grandfather was William Bradley (c1740-1801) who with his wife Sarah had at least eight children, among them James Bradley (1776-1845) who married Christian Otterwell in Buxhall on the 10th October 1798. Their son John Bradley (1817-1870) married Sarah Pearl from Hitcham on the 12th April 1842 in the Baptist Chapel, Rattlesden, Suffolk. This was the generation that saw the move away from both farming and Suffolk. John Bradley followed the occupation of Shoemaker and he took his family and his skills to West Ham where he joined several of his cousins in Church Street. Other cousins went further afield to become some of the first settlers in New Zealand. John Pearl Bradley’s occupation in 1861 was Shoemaker and he presumably worked with his father at 3 Church Street North, West Ham. By 1871 he was married to Mary Ann Butler and living at 21 Newbold Street, Mile End Old Town with a baby son Alfred and is a Sub-sorter General Post Office. He would spend the rest of his working life in the Post Office progressing to First Class Sorter. There are consistent family stories that John Pearl Bradley was a bell-ringer and that he took part in ringing a special peal at St Paul’s Cathedral that was commemorated on a plaque in the bell tower there, possibly for Queen Victoria’s jubilee. No actual proof of this has yet turned up. But there certainly is recorded a J.P. Bradley who was a West Ham bell-ringer: 20th August 1887 at Holy Trinity, West Ham; J Bradley 30th October 1887 Leytonstone;  J Bradley (West Ham) at Lavenham 29th August 1893; J P Bradley 2nd August 1902 in Lavenham, Suffolk. At the General Meeting of the Essex County Association held on 7 Jan 1888, a Mr Bradley from West Ham attended and this meeting concluded with the ringing of handbells in which Mr Bradley took part. The Ancient Society of College Youths admitted John P Bradley in 1868 but with no indication where he came from. A John P. Bradley is listed in their website history section for that date, member number 2443. As West Ham is a highly regarded “heavy 10” (a peal of 10 bells with a heavy tenor bell), as a serious bell-ringer, he would probably have kept his connection there even when he had moved away from the immediate area. In 1881 the family, now with four children, is living at 5, Bromehead Rd, Mile End Old Town. His wife Mary died before 1883 for in that year he married the widowed Anne Eliza Griesel. By 1884 they had moved back to West Ham and in 1891 the extended Bradley/Griesel family is living at 7 Cecil Road. The family consists of John Pearl Bradley and Anne Eliza his wife, her two sons from her short marriage to Adam Griesel, four children from John Pearl Bradley’s first marriage and three children from this second marriage. In 1901 they are at 24 Amity Road; some of the older children have left home and are married with children, and John Pearl and Anne Eliza have a further four children of their own. Shortly after 1901 they moved further out into Essex settling at 1 Chadwell Avenue, Chadwell Heath. Anne Eliza died here on the 8th April 1912. John Pearl Bradley died at 41 Priory Road, Barking on the 26th April 1915. Was this at the house of one of his married children? The informant who was present at the death was his daughter-in-law A. E. Bradley: this is Alice Edith Bull the wife of his son Arthur from his first marriage, but her address is in Vicarage Road, Stratford. Anne Eliza and John Pearl Bradley were buried in separate plots in the Buckingham Road Cemetery behind St Mary’s Church in Ilford: Anne Eliza in plot no. 309 on 13th April 1912 and her husband in plot no. 366 on the 1st May 1915. For more on the Buxhall Bradleys click here. This document lists all the members of the family I have traced so far through the censuses. Thanks to cousin Jill Bell for most of the research into bell-ringing and Michael Mann of St Mary’s for details on how to locate the graves and more on bell-ringing. Return to top of page John Pearl Bradley’s headstone All that remains of Anne Eliza’s headstone, with a recumbent stone bearing the same plot no. Across the far end of the cemetery with John Pearl’s grave in centre and Anne Eliza’s nearer the wall and slightly to the right. View from John Pearl’s grave across cemetery towards St Mary’s church.