Cosburns 1913 – Newbury Street Key

From 1873 until 1917, shortly before his death, George Cosburn printed Cosburn’s Directory for Newbury & 100 Parishes in Berks, Hants, Oxon & Wilts every year.

These directories are a wonderful source of information, especially for Newbury. A relatively small section of each book was the Newbury Street Key which lists, in theory, every abode in town with its occupier and, often, the occupiers occupation. Street by street we see the changes taking place, people moving in or out, new houses arriving. Sadly the key is not complete, the smaller courts and yards are not covered fully, especially in earlier editions. Nevertheless these are a wonderful source of information on the town during these years.

Not all volumes have survived, the earlier years are lost completely – as fas as we know. If you know of a copy of this directory we would desperately like to find the following years: 1873-1882, 1884-1886, 1892-1893, 1897, 1899.

The downside of looking for a name in a street key is that the names are not indexed, you have to read through every entry to find the name (or convince yourself it isn’t there).

The table below is a transcript of the Newbury Street Key from 1913 volume and is searchable and sortable – making it easy to find a name. There is a lot more in the complete volume. The page number is that of the book – a copy is available in Newbury Reference Library. It would be wonderful to have all editions transcribed in this manner. If you have time to spare and would like to help transcribe a volume or two please get in touch via the contacts link above.

Newbury Street Key, 1913