The Foundry
From Lacey Green History
click Gomme for others in this family, click Baker for others in this family & Families for other local families
click Families for other village families
1939 Registration (census). Ralph Gomme born 1874 iron mpoulder, Ellen Gomme born 1876, 1 closed for war. click Ralph & Ellen Nolan Gomme for their life story
Research by Miles Marshall is printed below the Deeds
Research by Joan West. Details from 1840 taken from the Deeds of the property, lent by Graham Baker.
In the Enclosures of the parish of Princes Risborough land that was allotted at Loosley Row to Joseph Tomkins was exchanged and then lay in two pieces. The copyhold was held by the Lord of The Manor of Princes Risborough.
The land contained 3 acres 2 roods and 17 poles, also a cottage, blacksmith’s shop and other buildings on one of the pieces of land.
John Gomme took the tenancy of this property and on 13th July 1840 was accepted as tenant of the Manor.
Mortgage. 13th November 1843. A mortgage was taken out 13th November 1843 for £230 at 5% per annum interest.
Death. John Gomme of Loosley Row, engineer and ironfounder, died 9th December, 1882, aged 42.
22nd December 1883, John’s widow Sarah and Kilburn John Gomme, their son, took out a mortgage with Maria Hodsdon of Oxford and Joseph Gillett for £450
14th February 1884, John’s widow Sarah and Kilburn John Gomme, their son, took out a mortgage with Daniel Clarke of High Wycombe for £150.
10th October 1895. Conveyance of Mortgage. Between Ann Maria Hodsdon and Joseph Gillett, Daniel Clarke and Sarah Gomme with Robert Davenport Vernon.
3rd December 1886 Notice to Pay
Notices issued to Sarah Gomme and Kilburn John Gomme by Maria Hodsdon and Joseph Gillett for £450 with the interest and also by Daniel Clark for £150 with interest, giving three calendar months to pay the principles of £450 and £150 with interests due or action would be taken to exercise the power of sale vested in the mortgage indentures.
1st October 1908. Mortgagees were R.D. Vernon and Mary Giles
24th June 1915. Mortgagees were G.D. Vernon and Ann Giles
9th February 1917. Conveyance of mortgage. Ann Giles and G.D. Vernon with John Gomme.
10th February 1917 Mortgage. Florence Annie Tyler and Helena Amelia Tyler with John Gomme.
April 1917. John Gomme died intestate.
28th July 1917 Conveyance of mortgage. Florence Annie Tyler and Helena Amelia Tyler with Alice Francis Gomme (executor and widow of John Gomme), John Gomme and Ralph Gomme.
30th July 1917 Mortgage. Colonel Michael A. Tighe of Loosley House, gave a mortgage to Ralph Gomme for £350 on the blacksmith’s shop, the adjoining cottage and the cottage opposite.
31st July 1917 Agreements Regarding the Family Business of the Foundry, known as Gomme and Sons.
SOLD. The Business of Gomme & Sons. All sold to Ralph Gomme, including the adjoining cottage and the cottage opposite.
Ralph Gomme paid £50 to the executor of John Gomme, deceased April 1917, for one third of Gomme & Sons
Ralph Gomme paid £50 to Kilburn John Gomme for one third of Gomme & Sons
Ralph Gomme paid £50 to Sarah Gomme, widow, for one third of Gomme & Sons
The cottage adjoining the Foundry, in which Sarah Gomme lived to be hers for her to live in for her lifetime at a rent of 5 shillings yearly, if demanded.
31st July 1917. Letting Agreement. Ralph Gomme agreed to let to Kilburn John Gomme, iron founder and engineer, the cottage and garden opposite the foundry, already occupied by Kilburn John Gomme for some years past, until 31st December 1917 for a monthly rent of £1.
31st July 1917. Mortgage. Ralph Gomme took out a mortgage with Kilburn John Gomme for £50. In lieu of interest, one quarter of the annual net profit of the business “Gomme and Sons” to be paid annually. This mortgage was paid off 5th April 1941, £50 being paid to Rupert Gomme and Hilda Gomme, the son and daughter of Kilburn John Gomme.
27th April 1933. Mortgage Transfer.
Edward Anderson of Darvills Hill Farm, Darvills Hill, Lacey Green and Ralph Gomme, of the cottage opposite the foundry, agreed that the above mortgage be transferred from Colonel Tighe to Mr Edward Anderson.
There was a public well at Loosley Row, near Gomme’s foundry. It was said to be 80 feet deep. It was a nuisance for the business as people would hang around chatting and getting the way.
In Hallmark October 1974 an article about Hilda and Madge Gomme by Madeline Cleaver was published. The following is an extract :-
The Misses Gomme lived in Loosley Row down by the Foundry, where there was a public well. Most houses relied on water they collected in a butt from the roof etc. for ordinary use, but came down to the well for drinking water. In fact in a dry spell people came from further afield, even from Lacey Green, i.e. at the top of Promised Land Farm and then over the footpath known as The Grubbin, using a yoke and two buckets.
Research Note It is not currently known when it was dug, nor when it was filled in.
Hallmark June 1992. News Comment. The old bogie man - European Community has turned its attention on Loosley Row. For two hundred years the Gomme's Forge so much a part of old Loosley Row has been making iron- casting; now a new E.E.C. directive will require this small, three man establishment to fit a new air purification system which would cost over £80.000 over the next three years - much beyond their capability. Graham who works with his son Jeremy and brother Geoffrey says he would certainly regret having to abandon iron-casting.
Research by Miles Marshall. Gomme's Forge
Behind this flourishing local enterprise there lies an unrecorded family history going back at least four generations in the same craft.
The earliest Gomme to have worked as an ironfounder on this site was John Gomme. The date 1865 appears on the brickwork of the Foundry. We know however that John Gomme had three sons click John & Sarah Gomme for their family history. John seems to have worked up a considerable trade for his foundry, making and repairing farm machinery of many kinds. Certainly plough bodies, shares and mouldboards, harrows, rolls and so on.
John Gomme was clearly an enterprising fellow for he seems to have built his own crane for the foundry, his name is still visible on the main casting of the crane and the timber framework for of Loosley Row, engineer and ironfounder, died 9th December, 1882, aged 42. this simple but effective device would have presented no difficulty in his carpenter's shop. It is believed that he also cast the window frames for his workshops.
At one time the business employed no-less than sixteen men, including ironfounders and pattern makers, carpenters, wheelwrights and a millwright, who must surely have been called upon to attend our treasured windmill? The old crane,’ shown in the drawing, is still in working order and is used occasionally to lift the heavier moulding boxes, some of which can be seen on the sand floor.
John Gomme unhappily died quite young, about forty years of age, leaving his widow Sarah and three young sons. Sarah was a remarkable woman for she took charge of the business herself and ran it for many years with her two elder sons working in the forge and foundry: young Ralph had decided to seek his fortune amongst the gold mines in South Africa soon after the Boer War. What luck he found there we do not know, but only three years later he returned to a somewhat diminishing trade at his mother's foundry and put his shoulder to the wheel.
His mother was 102 when she died.
Ralph Gomme had fortunately inherited his father's skill and enterprise and besides reviving the traditional and essentially rural trade, developed new cutlets for the workshops, as the pattern of farm work changed, by making woodworking machinery for the Wycombe chair trade. These included such things as planers, bandsaws etc., for which there was a steady market as trade gradually picked up again after the great depression of the early thirties.
It was about this time that Sidney Cubbage, an engineer in High Wycombe started to manufacture heating stoves for the furniture trade, for space heating, kiln—drying and heating the hotplates for the gluepots. The essential feature of these stoves was that they burned wood-offcuts, a waste product of furniture making. At the same time, young Fred Baker comes on the scene, also from the furniture trade, and marries Ralph Gomme's daughter Connie. (click Fred & Connie Baker for their life story)
The two events are not unconnected for Ralph had secured the contract.to supply the castings for Sid Cubbage's stoves and the popularity of this welcome economy device to the struggling chair trade meant a heavy demand for castings, and when father-in-law offered Fred a full-time job to help him keep pace with the orders, he was quick to accept this happy alternative to uncertainties of piece-work in the factory. He joined the firm just a year after his marriage.
Fred Baker worked for thirteen years with his father-in-law and during these years picked up a thorough working knowledge of his adopted trade. Although the manufacture of farm machinery was already passing to big firms in the industrial centres. Ralph Gomme had retained a considerable trade in repairing local farm machinery including the big steam traction engines which, in those pre~-combine-harvester times, not only powered the threshing machines with those long, whipping, exposed, driving-belts, but towed them and their train of ancilliary equipment from farm to farm to thresh the stacked corn. Fred still recalls the arduous work on those monsters of replacing the boiler tubes which had to be hammered home from a most uncomfortable position.
Despite the poor health which today prevents his taking an active part in the work of ‘The Forge', Fred Baker still looks and sounds a youthful seventy-two and when he feels well enough likes to potter about in the Forge and ‘get his hands dirty', as he puts it; but a new generation has taken over.
Mr. and Mrs. Baker have two sons, Graham and Geoffrey. The elder, Graham, born soon after his father joined the firm, could never be kept out of the workshops, even as a toddler, and encouraged by his grandfather, despite the protests of his anxious mother, persisted in getting himself black all over. He grew up a natural craftsman and on leaving school was apprenticed to The High Wycombe Foundry Co. After National Service in the R.A.F. he came back to The Forge. click Graham & Lucie Baker for their life story).
Geoffrey started work with his father directly after leaving school.
Both brothers greatly increased their mastery of welding of all kinds through CoSIRA (The Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas) who run training courses in all kinds of crafts, and they are both all-round men at their trade, though each has his own specialities. They share the work and management of the business ably assisted in the office by their married sister, Jenny (Mrs. Maciejewski), who doubles as truck driver when needed.
The thriving business now employs two Journeymen, Mike Tilbury from: Parslows Hillock, who lives opposite the foundry and, their former apprentice Craig Smith from Longwick, also it has a wide-ranging output of both functional and ornamental iron work – wrought and cast - and also of castings in aluminium. When I visited the Foundry I saw an immensely heavy lamp standard in cast iron, from the parapet of Henley bridge, being reproduced in hollow, aluminium castings, skillfully moulded from the original. What a weight saving for this rather delicate old bridge!
Within the last three years, Graham and Geoffrey have transformed their great grandfather's carpenter's shop into a most inviting showroom which displays many beautiful examples of their craftsmanship. It is interesting to note that many of the traditional cast-iron fire baskets are moulded from old designs handed down in the family. The fire dogs and irons, and open fire baskets are made to their own designs. Several complete grates are attractively placed in brick built hearths and, in cool weather, the visitor is usually welcomed by a ‘real fire’ burning in one of them.
Beneath the polished-wood, open-tread staircase, which will lead eventually to a new office, may be seen two generations of hand-operated bellows which fanned up the hearth in the old smithy before the days of electric blowers.
Work is often undertaken to special order for architects, shopfitters etc. who will supply detailed drawings of their exact requirements. On the other hand they will work from quite simple sketches, interpreting the customer's wishes, or perhaps Graham. will sketch out his suggestions for approval.
Another speciality of The Forge is a variety of designs in cast aluminium of individual house nameplates in many graceful shapes. (They incorporate raised, easily-repainted lettering). One of these plates characteristically carries the Firm's name on the side of their truck, and yet another, across the road, outside a charming old house, the former home of Mrs. Ralph Gomme. where Graham now lives, logically carries the word 'GRANNIES'.
I am greatly indebted to the Baker brothers for the friendly and helpful way. they let me wander round their workshops for inspiration and to make my sketch, and to Mr. Fred Baker for most of the facts on which this history is based.