William Lane: another marriage settlement

William Lane was a small farmer in West Haddon around the time of the fire. He had two daughters. The elder, Mary, married Thomas Knowles in 1663 and all attempts to trace any record of the couple thereafter have so far failed. A few months after the wedding his wife Dorothy died, leaving his younger …

Elias Page: Living by his loom

The families who lost everything in the fire have left very little trace behind them. But using a few surviving scraps of evidence we can put together a fleeting, patchy impression of their lives, leaving our imaginations to speculate over the gaps… Elias Page was a handloom weaver. His father was a small farmer, but …