Cook

In April 2014, Jim Cook posted to the website, querying our use of the phrase 'tar gang' to describe the group of men laying tarmac in the early 1930s. They were, he said, 'not a tar gang, they were the gardeners at Leydene House, seen in the picture constructing the driveway at the House, Jack Cook, near front with shovel and smoking a pipe, was my Father.' (We agreed that, if not regular road-builders, they were on this occasion working with asphalt ...) Jim also helped us identify some of the marchers in our photograph of the Coronation procession in East Meon, as 'members of the local lodge of Ancient Order of Foresters'. He was also in possession of the original bill from Thomas Adams, to his grandfather John Cook when he moved to Oxenbourne in 1889. The correspondence is attached as a PDF. Later in the correspondence, Jim sent us pictures of the Shepherd's Hut he was restoring, in which he found an inscription by John Cook, his grandfather, and others of Colonel Le Roy Lewis, owner of Westbury Park, and of T Treble, the Westbury agent. He also sent us an account book, for 1893, of the East Meon Court of the Ancient Order of Foresters. This includes several names of families featured elsewhere in this archive (see tags).