Keynsham & Saltford
Local History Society
Families & People
In this section we provide a summary description of some of the people and families who have had a role within the history of Keynsham and Saltford.
The Wingrove Family
The Wingrove family were prominent in Keynsham from the early 19th century. William Wingrove, a surgeon born in Bath in 1782, inherited property through his wife Eliza Rich. They had ten children, some of whom experienced early deaths, travelled to India, or emigrated to Australia. After William’s death in 1832, Eliza struggled financially and eventually sold their home. Several daughters returned as widows, and only a few family members remained in England. The last surviving Wingrove, Matilda, died in 1903. Despite the decline of the family line, the Wingrove name remained associated with Keynsham for many years thereafter.
The photo opposite, is of the Wingrove public house, Queens Road, Keynsham.
Credit: Summary of article produced by Sue Tatford in Journal Series 3 Vol 1 2020 (p.29)
Lucy Annie Cox
Lucy Annie Cox, born in Keynsham in 1894, was inspired by her pacifist father to pursue a life of activism and politics. After excelling academically, she became a teacher and joined the Independent Labour Party. A staunch pacifist, she served as secretary of the No More War Movement, advocating disarmament nationwide. She later focused on Labour politics, standing in several parliamentary elections and winning Plymouth Sutton in 1945. Active on international and local issues, she later edited Women in the Labour Movement. Despite fading from local memory, Lucy Middleton (née Cox) remained a committed advocate for peace and social justice until her death in 1983.
Credit: Summary of article produced by Brian Vowles in Journal Series 2, Volume 17, 2017 (p.33)
The Veale Family
The Veale family significantly shaped Keynsham’s community in the 19th and early 20th centuries through business, religion, and civic life. Descended from James Veale (b.1791), they evolved from laborers into middle-class shopkeepers, teachers, and civil servants. William Veale (b.1849) established a successful butcher’s business, while his children ran grocery, tailoring, and hardware shops. The family had strong ties to the Baptist Church, with several members serving as deacons. Other Veales worked in railways, gardening, and blacksmithing. Despite their deep local roots and influence, the Veales have largely vanished from modern Keynsham, remembered now through records and community memory.
Credit: Summary of article produced by Joy Cannam in Journal Series 2 Volume 11, 2011 (p.11).
The Exon Family
The Exon Family.
Farm labourer James Exon was born in Banwell in 1822. In the 1851 census he and his wife Elizabeth were found to be living on the Bath and Wells Road in Bristol with their four-year-old daughter, Mary, but later that year they took the road west to Keynsham where their family was to make a notable contribution to the life of the town.
Their arrival was recorded when at the Font of St. John the Baptist Church, they baptised the second of their ten children with the splendid name of Amanda Melvin Martha on 1st June 1851. By 1871, Martha had secured employment as a live-in domestic servant for Daniel Skuse who was then landlord of the Lamb 20 Lamb and Lark Hotel. It must have been during this time that she also started an unusual job for a woman, that of sextoness, for which the Parish Overseers paid her the annual salary of £16-8s-0d. After her husband's death in 1922, Martha lived to reach the age of 84 years before she died, poverty stricken, at St. Clement' s House (which was what the old Keynsham Union Workhouse had been more politely renamed in 1930) and was buried in Keynsham Cemetery on 2nd October 1935.
Later additions to the family included John James Exon b. 1853. He became a stone mason and a member of the local volunteer unit of the Somerset Light Infantry. Members of his family were Rose who married a Charlie Rayson, George who left to work on the railway in South Wales, and Kate who married soldier and later Frys’s worker Albert Rayson. Others included Jack Exon who when young worked at the Brass Mills and later foreman at the Colour Mills. For many years he was a leading member of the town band and Keynsham Town F.C. Another son Jim worked at Robinsons Jam factory for most of his life.
The 2nd son, born to James and Elizabeth in 1856, was named Albert after the Prince Consort. By 1870, he was working at the Brass Mill with other grubby-faced 14-year-olds. He stayed there for 8 years before setting off for Bristol to be a soldier of the Queen. He was duly enrolled in the 18th Hussars, a glamorous cavalry regiment, signing on for seven years army service and four years in reserve He was sent to India to take part in the Afghan War of 1879/80. No sooner was that over when the Hussars were sent to the Transvaal to take part in the first Boer War. Albert survived several "scrapes" and eventually returned to Keynsham in May 1886 and to his old job as a smelter at the Brass Mills.
James and Elizabeth's fifth child, Thomas, was born in 1857.
Bythe age of 14 years he was working as a labourer but moved on to become a platelayer on the railway. By 1891, when he was 33 years old, he began work as a wire pickier at the same brass mills as his brother, Albert and he was still working there in 1894. However, Thomas was ambitious and by 1897 had amassed sufficient capital to set himself up as a confectioner with a shop at 7, Bath Hill West. Later, he became a dairyman with a shop opposite the church at 4, High Street which was subsequently renamed 'The West End Dairy' when it was taken over by his son, Herbert, in 1923. Herbert, saw service in WWl with the Royal Garrison Artillery and returned to carry on the milk business at the West End Dairy right up to the 1960s when it was sold to United Dairies shortly after his death in 1961. He was a sidesman of Keynsham Parish Church, a member of the Conservative Club and the Over 60's Club. A founder member of the J. N. Fear Institute, he was, in turn, a committee member, chairman, and, at the time of his death, President of the organization. Herbert’s son Reggie was killed in the war when serving in the R.A.F
Their seventh child, Nelson had become a packer for the Great Western Railway with whom he continued to work until his death in 1925, aged 65,
By 1901, attracted by the plentiful supply of building work generated by the rapid expansion of the Victorian suburbs of London, their youngest son Charles and his wife Lizzie had taken their family to Leytonstone where he got work as navy's labourer and his children grew up as Londoners.
Credit: Article produced by Brian Vowles, 2026. Fuller version can be found in Society Journal Series 2 Volume 8, 2008..