St Andrews Walberswick

Last year I had the pleasure of visiting St Andrew’s Church in Walberswick in Suffolk. The small town itself has a lot of history but it was the church I was mostly interested in.  It has seen many changes over the last 600 years.

It is set in a pleasant location as one enters Walberswick.

                   

 In the 1400’s there were two churches in the town, one by the marshes which became unused and was taken down in 1473,….and another church on the site where the present day church stands.

This original church had a pitched roof, and a tower which had been added in 1426. The tower was left standing to act as a landmark to the ships at sea when this church was pulled down 1480. A second larger lavish church was then erected adjacent to this tower in 1493, with a nave added in 1507.

….. The ruins of this lavish church still hold sway with the imagination, and it’s easy to imagine when walking round them what it must have been like when the church was in it’s early C16 heyday

Chancel and East Window ruins of original church

Part of the Nave of ruined church

The early part of the C16 proved to be a prosperous time for this church and the town of Walberswick….until Henry V111 claimed all the church tithes c1538  Then the puritan movement via the men of William Dowsing in 1643 ransacked the church of all it’s imagery and brass plaques and smashed the many stained glass windows. So much damage was done to the church that it was left to decline into decay. The church stood for almost a century neglected, as the declining prospects of the people of Walberswick meant they could not afford to put the church back into good repair

….Eventually it was allowed, via a petition, to take off the church roof and build a smaller simpler church in 1695 inside the fabric of the original one.

 The same fate befell the church at Covehithe just along the Suffolk Coast ….(One of my earlier blog postings is about St Andrew’s Church at Covehithe. *Church Within a Church*)





It looks as if many a bottom has  sat on this C14 porch bench over the years.....




The present day church at Walberswick contains a traditional C15 East Anglian Font with lions and angels around it’s bowl.

A Jacobean chest stands near the font.

There’s a medieval pulpit plus the lower part of a screen….this screen could possibly have been saved from the rood screen of the previous larger church.

There are some choir stalls dating from the C15 which have poppy head carvings on their ends and a beautifully carved C14 chair

 Fragments of the smashed stained glass original windows were found and  made into a mosaic, this has been inserted into one of the present church’s clear glass windows.

A new organ was installed in the church in 1961

A modern statue of St Andrew stands in a niche on the exterior of one of the Porch walls of the church.

The ruins of the original church were repaired in the latter part of the C20 with the help of generous benefactors.

                Interior of present church.... beautiful in it's simplicity

The old church ruins are haunting but in a good way.They remain to give us an insight into the social history at the time of the English Reformation.

.I fully intend to make a return visit this delightful church. 

A lovely little church...

This is the time I begin my Summer months of church and churchyard research each year. I'm never happier than when I'm up to my knees in undergrowth searching for someone's long lost ancestors, or checking out the history of medieval churches.
This is my first one for this year.....

                                           Somerleyton Church

This unimposing little church of St Mary’s is approached by it’s own driveway off the main road, but unlike most Suffolk churches it doesn’t have a round tower.

The church was almost derelict when it was brought back to life in the mid 1850’s. The 15^th century tower. chancel and North aisle were restored and a new nave was built..

This is the family church to the Lord of the Manor of Somerleyton.

On entering the church one is struck by it’s simplicity.  Over the South door is a sculptured slab of the four Evangelists, this at one time was part of the original stone carved altar rerdos, until the vandalisation of the medieval churches  in the 16^th century. This slab had laid undiscovered in the church grounds for 350 years, until restoration work began in 1854.

 Turning right to walk down the nave one is faced by the beautifully carved 15^th century oak Altar screen. with sixteen painted panels – the colours of which are still well preserved.

These paintings represent figures of.....
St Michael the Archangel

St Edmund…King of East Anglia, martyred in 870 AD

St Apollonia..martyred 249 AD by burning to death

 St Lawrence..martyred 258 AD by roasting

An unknown martyred saint…possibly St Faith

Thomas of Canterbury..murdered in 1170 AD

St Anne..mother of The Blessed Virgin Mary

St Andrew Patron Saint of Scotland

St John the Evangelist

St Mary Magdalene

St Felix of Burgundy?

St Petronilla…daughter of Saint Peter

St Stephen martyred by stoning to death

St Dorothea martyred in 287 AD by beheading

St Edward the Confessor  last of the Saxon kings

St George martyred 300 AD and Patron saint of England

 
The stained glass windows in the Nave are 14th century Flemish and were removed from a nearby Priory...the original stained glass was removed in the 1640's by the Puritan movement

Restoration of the church in 1854 was due mainly to the efforts of Sir Morton Peto (1809-1889) The reredos was added in 1874 and the chancel was extended an extra 15ft in the same year.

The organ although built about 1912 was only placed in this church in 1971, after being rescued from an old chapel.

The font is octagonal depicting lions and angels holding shields with  a Jacobean cover which was placed over the base in the 16^th century.

 The carving on the pews  is delightful in it’s simplicity

Under the old stone floor of the chancel lie the remains of Edward Jernegan who died in 1515, he is buried alongside those of his first wife. There are other memorials in the church, notably one of Sir John Wentworth and his wife. He was Lord of the Manor of Somerleyton and died in 1651 aged 77yrs.

…..and  also a memorial to Sir Thomas Allin a 17^th century squire of Somerleyton.

 Three of the six church bells are about 400 hundred years old so date from before the reformation. Two of the other bells were added in the 18^th century and the final one in 1872.

St Mary’s church is no different to so many of our country churches, It has a tale of it’s own to tell, and scratching beneath it’s surface has been fascinating.

Hannah's Tale..

Life for a mid eighteenth century girl was not always a happy one…this is the story of one such girl.

Hannah was born into a comparatively stable family, her father was a Stone Mason, so there was usually plenty of work for him to earn a living.

   I imagine her childhood was fairly uneventful, so she was in her mid teens before a young ‘Jack the lad’ named Robert called at the family home to ask for work and turned her life upside down

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Whether she and Robert fell in love or whether it was just teenage hormones, but Hannah fell pregnant and gave birth to a baby son named John on September 20^th 1747 - Just two weeks after she and Robert had been married on September 4^th 1747

……I wonder if this marriage was forced upon a reluctant Robert by Hannah’s parents (??)…

By that Christmas Hannah had joined Robert on walking the roads to find work but sadly there is no further mention of baby John after his birth – perhaps he died shortly after birth, as early infant deaths were not unusual at this time.

In late 1750 Hannah found herself pregnant again and at the time of the birth of their second son Edward in April 1751 she and Robert had found accommodation in a small village.

Things were evidently not going well at this time between Hannah and Robert as he walked out one day, leaving his wife and son behind

….I think he must have been a feckless character, as there is no further record of him after this time, and I wonder if he may have changed his name after leaving so that he couldn’t be traced (?!?)

Shortly after his departure because Hannah had been left destitute, she and her son Edward were served with a Settlement Order to leave the parish they were living in. This meant they had to return to the parish Hannah was born in to ask for their help in sustaining them

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            Settlement Orders were normal practice at this time

A few years after returning to settle in her birth parish, Hannah went on to have more children.

John born 1754 who lived for five months

John born 1756 – he died aged three months

William born 1758

Dorothy born 1762

There is no Father’s name on any of these children’s birth records, so it’s evident to me that Robert had decided to disappear for good.

Hannah continued to dwell in her birth parish near her family until her death on March 17^th 1797… She was survived by her children, Edward, William and Dorothy

I hope the end of her life was as happy as her childhood years had been.

I need an explanation..

I  had an experience a few days ago which was quite unsettling, in fact it’s something which I still can’t understand.

The day was like any other. It was early afternoon and I was sitting in the lounge reading in a chair opposite my front window which looks down my drive..

I think I must have been about to fall asleep as I had one of those unpleasant jolts which suddenly brought me back into focus.

As I was about to continue reading I glanced out through my window and saw my Dad come through my double gates and walk up the drive and carry on alongside one of my side windows. To be honest my immediate thought was to wonder why Dad was calling on me at this particular time. ...I started to rise from my chair to go and greet him and then quickly sat down again…..My Dad died twelve years ago!!

I was shaking and rushed outside to see who was out there, but there wasn’t anyone.

This was no fleeting apparition or shadow which I’d seen, and my dad had not been in my thoughts previously during the day where I could have perhaps projected thought into vision.. He was as solid and real as ever he’d been, and was in my sight for at least eight seconds as I watched him dressed in a burgundy pullover I'd knitted for him, walk up my drive and passed the side window 

I’m definitely not a fanciful person and am a complete sceptic about unexplained things, but to say this unsettled me is an understatement.

 I no have explanation for what happened and nothing like this has ever happened to me before.

I would appreciate any feedback.

19C Factory Acts....

Recently I’ve been researching the working conditions of women and children in the textile mills and the pits in the 19C before the Factory Acts were passed.…It’s difficult for us to comprehend what terrible conditions they had to work through….such very harsh times! Working class children never knew what it was to enjoy their childhood.

There was a great demand for female and child labour. In the textile factories women and children were expected to work very long hours, often in twelve hour shifts.

            In 1819 the government passed an Act making it illegal for children under the age of nine to work in these textile mills, but because no-one was appointed to check if this new Act was being adhered to, no changes in the working conditions were made. So another act was passed in 1833 and Inspectors were appointed…..

Now, children under the age of nine were banned from working in textile mills and children aged between nine and thirteen were only allowed to work for twelve hours each day…Older children up to eighteen years of age were given a maximum of sixty nine hours per week to work, and no-one under the age of eighteen was allowed to work at night.

…This was a big step forward!

The year 1842 saw the Miners act which banned all women and children under the age of ten from working underground…the conditions underground in the pits at this time were terrible! .. Further Acts in 1850 and in 1867 made more slight differences to the working conditions in the pits for women and children.

           

1844 saw a further Act concerning the textile factories. It banned women from working for more than twelve hours per day, and from 1847 both women and children were only allowed to work ten hours maximum each day in the textile factories

…definite progress!

In 1871 Bank Holidays were created, and some skilled workers were given a week’s annual paid holiday – Although it was the middle of the 20^th century before every worker enjoyed this concession. By the end of the 19^th century it was common practice for all workers to be given a half day’s holiday on a Saturday.

Family History throws up a surprise

 When I first started researching my paternal family history one of the people I discovered was a lady (Iris) who turned out to be my (step cousin x1) Unbeknown to either of us, it turned out our grandfather Charles had been married twice – Iris  was his granddaughter via his first wife and I’m his granddaughter via his second wife.

Of course this exciting news gave us lots to correspond about and we exchanged all the information we each obtained over the years about our paternal family ancestors….Eventually we thought there was nothing new to add to our family tree, until one day completely out of the blue, I found an old 1933 newspaper obituary notice of a lady named Mathilda

….I can’t explain why I had the compulsion to read this particular notice as her name meant nothing to me, but I did, and was stunned to read that our grandfather Charles was in attendance at this lady’s funeral, and reported as being her father!! This meant Iris and I now had an Aunt which neither of us had any previous knowledge of..

We exhausted every means at our disposal but couldn’t find this particular Mathilda on any early records or census’ It wasn’t until recently that we discovered that after the early death of their mother, she and her younger sister (Iris’s mother)  had been brought up by their maternal grandparents, and was known throughout childhood by  their surname not their own.

 Mathilda subsequently emigrated to Australia in her late teens after some altercation with her grandparents. Seemingly there was no communication between them after that, until she came back to England c1930 when she knew her health was failing…she was only in her early thirties at the time of her death.

The puzzling thing is that Iris’s mother never mentioned that she had an elder  sister who’d gone to Australia….maybe she was too young at the time to understand…

It appears our grandfather deserted his children after his first wife’s death and later went on to marry my grandmother and start another family…who he again deserted, leaving my grandmother with four young children.  He never divulged to my grandmother nor any of my direct ancestors that he’d been married before and already had a family.

 He even set up home with a third lady, but that’s another story!!

It became obvious with Mathilda being in Australia under a different surname why she didn’t appear on any of the relevant UK census’ and her existence wasn’t known among the UK family until I accidently found and read her obituary notice.

The knowledge of our family not only grew by one when finding Mathilda, but we now have two more cousins and their families to add to it, as she had two children of her own when living in Australia. The only information we have about Mathilda’s adult life is what little we have gleaned from correspondence with her Australian descendants.. they had no previous knowledge of the family she’d left behind in the UK.

Such complications crop up from time to time when researching Family History…. so it’s lovely when a golden nugget of information turns up unexpectedly to enlighten us. 

A new start to a New Year

After a few bleak months leading up to Christmas, it’s nice to see 2013 enter with a glorious sunrise followed by a blue sky and sunshine, which continued throughout the New Year day… I hope this is a good sign for what’s in store for the whole of this new year.

Not long after the euphoria of the 2012 Olympics had died down I was faced with my little Cairn Terrier going down with a serious pancreatic illness.. She had to spend some time in the Veterinary Hospital and it was a big worry right up to Christmas. ..Although she’s still not completely well, I’m hopeful that she’s on the road to recovery – but there's still some way to go. I’ve been told this is an illness that could flare up again at any time, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this won’t happen.

..Animal lovers will understand my concern.

I noticed this morning that the joggers were out in force along the cliffs again – no doubt a New Year resolution to get rid of the excesses of the holiday period…..This happens every year, but it only needs a few nasty mornings and most of the joggers will prefer to stay at home and rely on the intake of a sensible diet alone to lose those extra pounds….I call them *fair weather joggers*

….I wonder how many New Year resolutions are seen through to the bitter end!!

I never make a New Year resolution myself as I  know I’d never be able to keep it going all year. (at least I’m being honest) lol

To anyone who spends a few minutes every now and again throughout the year reading my ramblings and observations on Family History on this Blog, I wish 2013 will bless you with happiness and good health…..An ancestor of mine used to say as the New Year was heralded in… *quote* I managed to get through the last year, so as long as this new one is no worse, I’ll be here this time next year to tell the tale *unquote* …Prophetically wise words.