Charles Stent was our 2xGreat Grandfather. He is one of many people in our family that we know very little about other than census records. But even that small amount of information can yield some details of his life. Our connection to him arose out of the marriage between Henry George Hooper and Ellen Stent, Charles' daughter.

In 1841 aged 10 Charles was living with his family in Stratford, Essex, near the turnpike on the Great Essex Road. Downstairs was his father's tobacconists shop, with a back room and scullery. The family lived and slept upstairs - his parents William and Elizabeth, brother William (16) and two sisters, Sarah (15)  and Jane (13).  Their father William had been a miller, and they had moved to here after Stent's mill had been destroyed in a storm in 1834. There is an account of Stent's Mill in the original narratives accessible from the home page.

On the map below, their house and shop is between the Green Man and Essex Buildings. In census records the address is given as 'near the turnpike' - which is marked on the map adjacent to the Green Man. This road later became Stratford High Street. 

On 21st November 1848 the Stent family were asleep upstairs when they were wakened at about 2am by the sound of breaking glass. The shop downstairs had been robbed of some pipes in the window. The perpetrator was caught and sentenced to one year's imprisonment at the Old Bailey. 

William Stent retired in the 1850s and the family moved to Randall Street, Poplar. Charles had by now completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter and joiner. On the map of Poplar below, Randall Street is near the middle adjoining another street well known to us  - John Street, the home of Richard Hooper, marine store dealer.

In 1852 Charles married Emma Osborne, and they continued to live in Randall Street. Charles' parents died in the early 1860s, and Charles continued to live in Randall Street. By then they had three daughters one of whom was Ellen that we mentioned earlier had married Henry George Hooper. They will have met and known each other possibly for many years since the Hoopers lived just round the corner in John Street.  

Charles worked as a carpenter all his life - one interesting job he held was as a back maker in a brewery. Back is an old word for a wooden vessel for holding liquids - a barrel in other words. So a back maker was essentially a barrel maker, or cooper. But as well as barrels there were much bigger wooden vessels in breweries, such as mash tuns, and fermentation vessels, some as big as twenty feet high and ten feet across. So the work could have been very heavy.

Charles died in 1898, still living in Poplar.