Sophia HARDINGHAM (née Sole)
Contribution received from Devina Hardingham in May 2003.
Sophia Sole was born in Gissing/Pulham St Mary Norfolk in 1810. She married Thomas Hardingham. They moved to Woolpit. In 1848, Thomas a railway porter was hit by a truck and died on the railway line, leaving her a widow with 6 young children. In 1881/1891 censuses, she is found living in the Gardiner’s Almshouses Elmswell, next to St Johns Church. We are told her pension was 16d/7p a week, + yearly supply of ready- made gowns of coarse blue cloth/stuff, paid from poor relief. She resided here until her death in January 1892, aged 85. She is buried in Woolpit Church Yard.
By the 1901 census, her son William 57, born in Woolpit, and foreman of Pages brickyard, had moved to 112 Kiln Lane Elmswell, with his wife Susanna 60, and 2 of their remaining 4 children, the other 6 children being buried in Woolpit Church Yard. Harriet 35, and Clement 29, he married Kate Eleanor Plummer the following year. The youngest son Clement gives his trade as Saxton and Harness maker.
Here to date information on this branch of the family ends. But in1912 we are informed that there was a saddle and harness maker still living in Elmswell, was this Clement Hardingham?
Where do we fit in? Sophia Sole had another son called John Hardingham born 1835, who after his father’s death, went to live with relations in Weeley, Essex. He had a son called Walter Hardingham who married Eliza Simpson and moved to Great Bentley Essex; they had a son Jack Hardingham who married Kathleen Young and had a son Roger Hardingham, who is my husband. We have 1 son Marcus, and we live in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex.
NB: two Hardinghams in the cemetery.