Thrale history

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later. John, William and Thomas farmed Cell Barnes in St. Peters, together and had very unhappy family squabbles. John and William left no male descendents, but through Thomas who was at the end of his life holding the Street Farm, the descent to the present St. Albans family continued. The remaining brother Ralph sought his fortune elsewhere and moved to Offley, four parishes to the North of Sandridge, and it is with he and his family that this part of the chronicle will continue.

For what reasons Ralph Thrale went to live at nearby Offley is not known but in 1693 he married Anne Halsey at St. James Church, Dukes Place, London.⁹ The Offley parish registers tell us most of the details of this one generation stay at Offley, his son Ralph being born in 1698, and he himself dying there in 1711, Anne having died in 1704. In the same year of Ralph's death, a daughter Susan also died. He would appear to have been a keen churchman as the Herts Quarter Sessions show him to have signed the Sacrement Certificate in 1702. He was evidently subject to human failing however for in 1697 Elizabeth, wife of Francis Zarvite was attacked by other Hitchin women for breaking marriage vows by consorting with Ralph Thrale.¹⁰ It is also curious to note that the estate at Great Offley was sold to Sir John Spencer of Althorp and remained in his family for two hundred years, and thus the Lords of the Manor of Offley were the same family as that of Sandridge. By further turn of the wheel of fortune, the estate eventually passed to Anne Spencer who married Sir Thomas Salusbury in 1751 and was uncle of Hester Lynch Salusbury - 'our famous Mrs. Thrale' - whose story is so soon to be told.

Attention has now to be turned to the Anchor Brewery at Southwark, for it is from the succession of the brewery ownership and from Ralph's marriage with Anne Halsey that the destinies of the Streatham family evolved. Southwark had always been famous for its breweries. Chaucer wrote of 'the ale of Southwark'. About the year 1616 James Monger of Southwark built a brewery on a site in Southwark adjacent to where the Globe Theatre used to stand, the second Globe Theatre being pulled down in 1644, the first having been burnt in 1613. It was not until 1777 that the site was taken over by the Thrales to extend the brewery. James Monger's ownership of the brewery passed to James Child, and from then on ownership was influenced by the female succession in various families. In 1659 Child married Ann Minnie and one of his daughters married his manager, Edmund Halsey, for whom he had a deep affection. Halsey, son of a miller at St. Albans, had purchased a partnership

Footnotes

9. Phillimore's London Parish Registers Marriages Vol_III pg. 145.↩︎
10. Hines History of Hitchin.↩︎