Killed by Lightening

We have recently received a request for information about the house that was thought to have been called “Rushes”, at Lower Haysden, still existed. The applicant's grandmother had grown up there and though he had very little information he did enclose a copy of a photograph of the house, with the whole family (eleven people) outside it, which he said was called. Mr Lucas is dressed in his gamekeeper's attire and with his dog The photograph did not resemble any existing houses in the Haysden area. However, a resident of Haysden had done some research into the history of that area. There had been a house just out of the hamlet, up the footpath/cycle track in the direction of Ensfield and Leigh; and there were two large fields on old maps which are shown with the name Rushets [not Rushes] on them.

John Jarrett of Manor Farm who had lived in Haysden for over 70 years mentioned that when he was young, before the Second World War, he remembered that there was a very old lady that used to push an old pram from that direction to collect supplies from the pub, which in those days doubled as the local store. She was dressed from top to toe in black. The children were all frightened of her because they thought she was a witch!

Looking back into the history of the applicant's family, we think that they were connected with the very well-known Leigh brothers, Jack and Harry Lucas but are not quite sure how. The master of the house in the photograph is John Lucas who had been born in Leigh in 1851 and had married his wife, Elizabeth, in 1877. They had 12 children of whom seven were still alive at the time of the 1911 census. All seem to be shown in the photograph which probably dates to the turn of the century (in age order, Susan, Lucy, John, Henry, Joseph, Simeon and Victoria). Susan was Mr Johnson's grandmother. She married a Mr Albert Randall and they had three children.

The 1911 census shows that all the Lucas children except Simeon had left Rushets but that three grandchildren, Reginald (8), Ruby (7) and Dorothy (4), all with the surname Randall, are living in the house. Mr Johnson says that Susan, the children's mother, had died of TB in 1908 which was why they were being brought up by their grandparents, John and Elizabeth Lucas.

The applicant told us that the family were always told that John Lucas died after being struck by lighting – perhaps a first – if a very sad one - in Leigh?

To see a photograph of the house and the Lucas family, click here.