S K Silvey

Martin Horton

My mother died recently and we found this amongst her collection,  could be 1920/22 and was marked 'Uncle Sam's First Bus'.  So this would be the SK of SK & F Silvey.  She was born Dorothy Meadows from the union of Bill Meadows and Eliza Silvey, both of Epney.  According to something she wrote:

"The Framilode Churchyard by the Severn had stacks of grave stones with the names of Silvey, Calcombe (an Aunt) and Meadows.  Longney Churchyard also has many Meadows.

Grandmother Silvey lived on the Banks of the Severn at Epney - house named Severn Farm and started a bus service (yellow coaches) between Arlingham and Gloucester in the name of SK & F Silvey.

Eliza was the eldest of grandma Silvey's family and lived at Severn Farm at Epney.  There were Eliza, Winnie, Sam, Ella, Felix and Grace (though not necessarily in this order).  Sam and Felix ran the bus service started by grandma Silvey.  Before that grandfather Silvey, like the Meadows family, had owned a sailing ship and lived in the same village of Epney.  Eliza became a schoolteacher at Quedgley School.  Grace ran a flower shop at one time in Gloucester and later worked in the trade in Taunton. Ella married a sailor who was on the aircraft carrier The Arc Royal that was sunk in the Second World War.

As a child I spent my 6 weeks school summer holidays at Epney and rode the buses between Arlingham and Gloucester.  I came to know the route well. Winnie married a man who had a large family.  Rust was his name and he ran a stall in Gloucester market.

My father's father, George, also lived at Epney and died aged 93. He was a seafaring man and the owner of a sailing boat called the 'Epney Lass’, which plied between Ireland and England during the First World War. William (Bill) was unable to go to sea - being sick just looking at it. Frank, his brother, went and so did another brother, James, who was drowned at Sharpness.  He fell into the water and George, his father, searched in vain then walked home to Epney along the Sharpness canal bank to give the heart-rending news to the family.  There was also a daughter, Alice, who never worked and was a bit simple and childlike.  Bill had a gift for engineering and married Eliza Silvey, the daughter of Susan and ?. His wife, clever and businesslike, suffered delusions of grandeur and they thought that Bill was unworthy of her daughter and refused to join the wedding party.  Sam Knight - Susan's maiden name."

Curiously, there is conflict about who owned the 'Epney Lass'.  The Saul register has it as F Silvey (Felix I assume), my great Uncle; but my mother's recollection is that it was owned by her grandfather  (Captain) George Meadows.

A surviving bus that can be seen on the traveller homes website is similar to those I remember at the farm at Epney where the SK & F Silvey buses were housed.

A list of Silvey's taken from the census are actually too old to recognise as any of my mother's aunts or uncles.

A list of vessels operated on the Severn reveals four owned by the Silvey family.  Mum has mentioned the Epney Lass to me as my great grand father's ship.  A vessel owned by the Knight's is also listed.

It appears that Reuben Chappell produced a picture of the Epney Lass.