Dean, H. W.

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Gender: Male

In about 1930, the American collector James Madison Carpenter collected the Bisley Wassail from H W Dean in Bisley, noting that the wassail bowl, which had come from Stroud, was a big washing[-up] bowl, trimmed up with ribbons. holly, mistletoe, apples and oranges.  The bowl was used to collect money.  Mr Dean’s version is basically the same as that collected from Mrs Stevens in 1977, with one extra verse:

Here’s to our master and to his right ear
May God send our master a happy New Year
A happy New Year that we may all see
O, a waysailing bowl, we’ll drink unto thee.

H. W. Dean is probably Herbert Walter Dean from the family below. This is the only Dean family living in Bisley in the 1911 Census.

Herbert Walter Dean was born in the Stroud Registration District in early 1897. In 1901 he was living in Bisley with his parents Daniel and Annie Matilda Dean and his brothers and sisters William aged 11, Florence A. Aged 10, Millicent E. aged 8. Daniel was a baker born in Berkeley. Daniel and Annie had married at the end of 1889 in the Stroud registration district. Annie was born in Stonehouse and all the children were born in Bisley. By 1911 Herbert was a domestic gardener still living at home in Stancombe, Bisley. His father, Daniel, was a farm labourer and he and his wife had been married for 22 years and had 8 children, all of whom were still alive: William was a farm labourer and Charley a journeyman baker. None of the family had any infirmity.

On 21 June 1930 Herbert Walter Dean married Edith Alice Sollars of Eastcombe, in Bisley. At the time he was working as a timber cutter. Edith had been baptised on 14 March 1897 in Eastcombe School Chapel, the daughter of Alfred Sollars who was a farm waggonman, but Edith died and was buried in Bisley on 21 September 1939.

Herbert Walter’s father, Daniel, died and was buried in Bisley on 5 February 1941 and Herbert Walter Dean died in April 1984.

Notes by Carol Davies May 2015