Hi there - I think we may have been in touch before, I am the granddaughter of Philip Neal, the youngest son of Philip Neal and Sarah Wilkins. Sarah and her twin Elizabeth were born in Brussels, where her family had moved as their father, William Wilkins, was a steam engine fitter working for Pegsons based in Coalville, Leicestershire. Pegsons is an engineering firm which is still based here in Coalville. Like you, I couldn't find a record of them in the 1881 or 1891 census records. The twins were born in Belgium in 1882 but their son William was born in Coleorton in 1879, so they must have gone between 1879 and 1882, and returned by 1901 when they were living on Talbot Lane in Thringstone. From the census record William and Sarah Wilkins had also lost an older son and daughter (also Elizabeth and William) before they left the country. My dad can remember when Philip and Sarah's house was emptied after her death, there were books about Waterloo and Lions Mound in Belgium, as that was close to where she lived as a child. My uncle Kenny also remembers Sarah (his grandmother) very fondly. When he was at Thringstone Primary School, at dinner time he used to walk past his home and go up the road to his grandmother's for lunch as she was such a good cook. Betty (Kenny's cousin, Grace's daughter) would also walk down from where she worked in Whitwick to have lunch there. After Sarah's death, her house on Thringstone Green was demolished and my grandad Philip had 2 houses built, one for himself and my grandma and one for their daughter Annette who had recently got married. I lived on Thringstone Green with my grandparents on the site of Sarah and Philip's old house until I got married in 1984. I remember Sarah when she was very elderly as until I was 5 I lived with my parents in the house across the road from hers. My parents bought their house on The Green from another member of the Wilkins family. I thought her house was very old fashioned. The garden was quite big but I wasn't allowed to play in it on my own as there was a well. There was a beautiful old fashioned rose, like a pink and white carnation, which my grandad took a cutting of and it used to grow in the garden of the house my grandparents' had built. I can remember Sarah's funeral as the hearse stopped at my grandparents' house on Main Street and I went out with Lyn (Betty's daughter, who was about the same age as me) and we put a posy on her coffin. Sarah and Philip Neal are buried in Thringstone churchyard in the same plot as the ashes of my grandparents, Philip and Annie Neal, and my aunty, Annette Neal.
