Silas Worboys and Wilfred Bryant

Silas Worboys at the door of the Wheelwrights Shop, High Street

Wheelwrights shop

Wheelwrights in Ashwell

You may remember how in “the Village Blacksmith,” the poet Long fellow speaks of the children coming home from school, passing the forge, and stopping to look in at the open door. Well in the High Street at Ashwell for many years children coming home from school stopped in like manner to look in at the open door of the wheelwright’s shop, where two life-long friends, Mr Silas Worboys and Mr Wilfred Bryant, spent their working life.

Mr Bryant passed on some years previous but Mr Worboys attained the great age of ninety-two.

These two men worked together in complete harmony for a great many years, and their skill and cunning workmanship lives on in the honest wheelbarrows they made, for so these useful articles were described by one who knew Mr Bryant and Mr Worboys well, who had travelled to the other side of the world and carried the memory of “those honest wheel-barrows” with him.

Methodist Preacher

Throughout all his life Mr Silas Worboys was been closely connected with the Methodist Church in Ashwell. The date 1881 on the Circuit Plan opposite his name, and was the first name on the list of Local Preachers, showing Mr Worboys to be the oldest member of the devoted band of men and women who serve the Church and the Circuit in that capacity, bears witness to his long life of service.

In his prime he had a marvellous memory and could recall the texts and in many cases the sermons of the preachers he had “sat under” years before. At the Services his kindly handshake, pleasant smile and welcome, will remain in the memory of all who passed that way.

In the pulpit he was a very acceptable preacher, he took many texts in the course of his long life but the theme of everyone was the same and is expressed in the line so often on his lips. “O let me commend my Saviour to you.”