[nb-NO]Object number[nb-NO]
2008/96
[nb-NO]Description[nb-NO]
This metal signboard reads ‘BASKETWORK and Repairs of all kinds J. BANKS’. It used to be on a post outside the Old School House in Lower Basildon, Berkshire. John Banks was a blind basketmaker who was born in King’s Norton, West Midlands, and worked as a Journeyman basketmaker in Balsall Heath, West Midlands. He moved to Lower Basildon some time before 1917 and worked as a basketmaker on the Basildon Estate when it revived osier growing and basketmaking during World War I. John Banks continued to work as a basketmaker in Lower Basildon until 1955.
The sign now appears to be painted white, but originally the letters were black and the basket light brown.
[nb-NO]Physical description[nb-NO]
advertising sign: metal sheet; lettering very faded
[nb-NO]Archival history[nb-NO]
Email, Matthew Banks to MERL, 26 April 2009 – ‘I have been told by Clive Williams, who wrote a book about Basildon, Berkshire, that you have the old tin ‘Banks’ basket maker sign that used to hang outside the Old School House at Lower Basildon… The sign belonged to my great-grandfather, John Harry/Henry Banks, who was born in King’s Norton, Worcestershire, in 1886 as the eldest surviving child of David Banks and Lucy Barnickle. John was, according to family, and census returns, blinded at the age of six in Brimingham. My father and his siblings were told by my grandfather that John had been blinded by his little sister Beatrice Ellen, who was holding a pair of scissors. // The 1911 census says : John Harry Banks .. Basket Maker .. Blind Institution, Journeyman; so he must have had some sort of apprenticeship. He was living in Balsall Heath, Birmingham, at that point. Also living with the family was an Able Hubbard, two years John’s senior, also a basket maker. // John must have moved to Basildon before 1917, as he married in Basildon St. Bartholomew’s Church on 27 October to Dorothy Agnes Smith… He died on 16 January 1959 at John Radcliffe Infirmary aged 72, and is buried in an unmarked grave at Basildon. // John is mentioned in the Basildon Parish Registers as a Basket Maker and when his son Jim was baptised in 1931, was living at the Old School House.’
[nb-NO]Date[nb-NO]
1911
[nb-NO]Object name[nb-NO]
[nb-NO]Material[nb-NO]
[nb-NO]External document[nb-NO]
- L:\MERL\Objects\JISC 2012\Documents\Scans\2008_96_doc_01.tif - High resolution image
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- L:\MERL\Objects\JISC 2012\Documents\Scans\2008_96_doc_10.tif - High resolution image
- L:\MERL\Objects\JISC 2012\Documents\Scans\2008_96_doc_11.tif - High resolution image