ABSTRACT
The farm in the little village of South Mimms, where William Tinsley, senior, worked as a labourer, lay a good fifteen miles north of Marble Arch, in wild Hertfordshire countryside. He had been born in 1800, and, a fortnight before Christmas in 1827, he married Sarah Dover, a girl of the same village. Sarah Tinsley had a brother who had once been a shoemaker but became the keeper of the Toll Gate in South Mimms. At the South Mimms Toll Gate, the officially issued equipment and furniture was listed in an agreement dated 22 October 1845. The old coaching inn in South Mimms was where many of the coaches changed horses on their way to and from London, so news and gossip from there and from some of the Midland towns was freely discussed by coachmen, guards, post-boys, and passengers.
