I began this page after an enquiry by Kay Beard from Swindon about her family tree. Kay's grand-father Charles John Stanley Bint, born 1904, was one of the Goosey family and descended from the Sparsholt Bints.

Having collected a fair number of parish and other records relating to that area over the last three decades I was about to begin the daunting task of building a tree from 'scratch' when a casual search on Ancestry pointed me to Linda Elliott, another Sparsholt Bint descendant, who has already extensively researched the same family.

Linda's tree traces the Sparsholt family as far back as Christopher Bint who married Agnes Rowland at their Parish Church in 1589.

I guess it will be easier if I start this family history in more recent times with Desmond Bint's family as that is where the original query came from via his daughter Kay.

Desmond Bint and his brother Raymond , were the sons of farm worker Charles John Bint  (born Goosey 1904) and Winifred Horsell whose birthplace was the Rifleman's Hotel at Swindon in 1902.

Raymond was born at Goosey in 1931. He married Christine Ruth Spinage (bn 1933) at Wantage in 1956. The couple were to have seven children.

By 1933 Charles and Winifred had moved to the Swindon, Wiltshire area where their second son Desmond was born in 1933. He married Margaret Ann Tilling at Ashbury in 1958 and the couple settled at Stratton St Margaret. They had six children. Desmond's daughter, Kay Beard, who contacted me, now lives in Melksham, Wiltshire.

Charles Bint's wife Winifred was the daughter of Swindon born Albert John Horsell (1873-1903) who in 1901, and at the time of her birth, was listed as the landlord of the Rifleman's Hotel in Regent Street, Swindon and married since 1895 to Kitty Humphries (1875) from Frome in Somerset.

Albert tragically died in 1903 when Winifred was only a few months old.

Her husband Charles John Bint (1904-1978) was the thirteenth child of farm worker Charles Bint (1853) from Goosey and his wife Ann Neville (1857).

"Swindon is a market town in the hundred of Kingsbridge, eighty miles from London, thirty-eight from Salisbury, nineteen from Devizes, and eleven from Marlborough; pleasantly seated on the banks of the Wilts and Berks canal, by which navigation the trade of this place is much facilitated; - Mr William Dunsford, whose residence is at the Wharf, is the superintendent. Adjoining the church yard is a fine spring of water, which turns a corn mill within fifty yards of its source; and about a mile and a half south of the town is a reservoir, covering upwards of seventy acres, for supplying the canal. The population of the entire parish, according to the census of 1821, consisted of 1,580 inhabitants." (From Pigot & Co's National Commercial Directory for Cornwall, Dorsetshire, Devonshire, Somersetshire and Wiltshire, 1830)

Swindon in the early 1900s with the Rifleman's Hotel on the left.

Swindon

Swindon in 1821 was a small market town with a population of only 1580.

In 1832, members of the Bristol Merchant Venturers and the Bristol Corporation proposed a rail  link between London and Bristol.  By 1840 the line was in use and Daniel Gooch and Isambard Kingdom Brunel decided that a locomotive depot would be ideally situated in Swindon.   An estate of stone houses in neat rows, back to back, were built for the workers to live in. 

Daniel Gooch records in his diary that machinery started at the Swindon site on 28th November 1842 with the factory beginning  work on 2nd January 1843 resulting in the building of a major industrial construction and repair centre. This was in a location with, at that time, no schools, recreational facilities, shops or markets within easy reach. 

In 1841 the population of Swindon was just 2,495, but the GWR works expanded and the area became a magnet for labour. By the turn of the century Swindon was already an industrial town with a population of about 45,000. 

At the outbreak of the First World War the local railway industry had reached its peak. The GWR works employed about 15,000 persons and with another 1000 employed on the railways themselves it is estimated that three in every four jobs in the town at that time were in the railway industry, with many others indirectly dependent on it.

The railway works finally closed in 1986, however thanks to a diversified economy, Swindon was well able to ride through the recession of the early 1990s and is now one of the most economically successful towns in Britain and has a population of around 200,000.

Goosey

Goosey Church

Goosey Green

GOOSEY, a chapelry in Stanford-in-the-Vale parish, Berks; near the river Ock and the Great Western railway, 3½ miles NW by N of Wantage. Post town, Stanford-in-the-Vale, under Faringdon. Acres, 958. Real property, £2, 397. Pop., 202. Houses, 37. The property is divided among a few. The living is a p. curacy, annexed to the vicarage of Stanford-in-the-Vale, in the diocese of Oxford. The church is good.    

Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales  1872

The name comes from Goose Island; this part of the Vale having once been a marsh, and the 'ey' part meaning 'island' is very common locally indicating a number of island settlements. Geese were kept in the village by the Benedictine monks who had a cell on the site of Abbey Farm. The manor belonged to Abingdon Abbey after Offa, King of Mercia gave it to the Abbot of Abingdon in 785. The monks established dairies in the village which provided dairy produce for the Abbot's table.

Name

Born

Registration District

Died

Registration District

*** Desmond Bint's Swindon family are descended from Charles Bint (1853) and Linda Elliot from Thomas Bint (1843)

SPARSHOLT, a parish in Wantage and Faringdon districts, Berks; near the Wilts and Berks canal, 2 miles SSW of Challow r. station, and 3½ W of Wantage. It includes Kingston-Lisle and Fawler; and has a postal pillar-box under Wantage. Acres, 6,340. Real property, £8,340. Pop., 863. Houses, 190. The property is divided among a few. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford. Value, £363.* Patron, King's College, Oxford. The church is chiefly decorated English, and has a peculiar Norman doorway. A chapel of ease is in Kingston Lisle. There are a national school, and charities £20. Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales `1872

In 1327 John Bineyse was listed on the Sparsholt Subsidy Rolls.

19th Century Sparsholt and surrounding area

An old wooden Saxon Church once stood on this site and dated from the 8th century. All that remains of that original church today today is a plain stone font.

The Norman replacement was built in the late 12th century. 

The present building mostly dates from an almost complete rebuilding in the late 13th & early 14th century when the chancel and the two transepts were added and the tower heightened. 

Sparsholt enclosures 1802. Is 'Bent's Ground' on West Street a mis-spelling?

In a  Sparsholt Estate sale during July 1798, Taylors Leaze, Upper Bent's Ground, Middle Bent's Ground, and Lower Bent's Ground were all listed.

*  The hearth tax was imposed by Parliament in 1682 to support the Royal Household of King Charles ll.  One shilling was payable twice-yearly for every fire-hearth or stove in all dwellings and was payable at Michaelmas, the 29th of September, and Lady Day, the 25th of March. This unpopular tax was abolished in  1689 when William & Mary came to the throne.