Regular readers of our daily museum blog, will have come across Edward Doubleday before. He was a butcher in the shop opposite the Market Place in the 1920s and 1930s. We know that he was ill by the mid 1930s (see Mr Doubleday at the Forbes Fraser Hospital) and that he died in 1936.
Recently, we have been looking through a set of newspapers, saved by museum founder, Peggy Gye, in order to accession those with a village connection into our museum collection. The Wiltshire Gazette from 25.6.1936 reported on Mr Doubleday’s death.
So, this is definitely a paper which we will keep at the museum.
And here is Mr Doubleday on the step of his shop, not long before he died.
At Market Lavington Museum, we welcome donations of items with a connection to our village and neighbouring Easterton. It is great when the donors are able to give information about the artefact and some history of its link to the village.
We have lots of photographs of local people and places, including this one of a local vicar.
Unfortunately, the only information we have about him is that he was Reverend Douglas, in charge of the parish in the 1940s. The date 1940 is given, so presumably the photo was taken then.
Looking at the list of clergy we have in a book in the museum, we do not see Rev. Douglas.
We know that there are lengthy gaps in this list. Maybe someone could tell us if and when Rev. Douglas was vicar here or whether, in fact, he was just here temporarily or was actually the vicar of another parish.
A recent visitor to Market Lavington Museum is a keen metal detectorist and has kindly loaned some of his finds for us to put on display. This little collection was found quite recently in our neighbouring village of Easterton. We collect items from there as Easterton was once part of the parish of Market Lavington.
The donor has a lot of knowledge about these items, which we hope to tap into, so that we can make relevant labels for our visitors to read, when they see the finds on display. We will feature some of these finds in more detail on this blog, when we have the information to share.
In our previous blog entry, we mentioned that some World War II evacuees were billeted in Easterton Vicarage. Perchance, we have just been looking through some of the items awaiting accessioning into our museum collection. These include a pile of old local and national newspapers and pages saved by our founder curator, Peggy Gye. We needed to look through these to ascertain which contained items of local interest, relevant to our museum collection, and whether some just held reports about relatives and acquaintances of the donor’s family, who were not resident in our collection area.
In amongst the papers, we have
which is full of information about the outbreak of the second world war. Towards the back we found this little item.
So, right from the very beginning of the war, children with some mothers and teachers were being evacuated to Easterton from places such as London, which were felt to be more dangerous.
Peggy would have been interested in this article as she herself was a billeting officer in Market Lavington.
In our previous blog entry, we looked at a postcard sent by someone in Easterton. Careful scrutiny of the halfpenny stamp shows that it was posted on 24th July 1914.
That was just before Britain declared war on 4th August, but there had been a period of anxiety and tension since the Serbian assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne on 28th June. No mention is made of looming world events on our postcard, just that the writer ‘is getting on all right here. It is a lovely place.’
Interestingly, the address given is Easterton Vicarage. This building on King’s Road is now known as Easterton House as the church in Easterton is now part of a benefice of churches in five villages and the rector does not live in Easterton. We do not have a good picture of this house. (The one on page 47 of the updated version of Sheila Judge’s book about Easterton’s history is a very distant view and the house is well masked by trees.)
We do not know why the writer was at Easterton Vicarage. Just maybe she was a maid or kitchen servant there. We do not even know if the writer was female. The writing looks more mature than that of a child. There is no clue in the message that the writer had moved out to the Wiltshire countryside due to the imminent outbreak of war.
Moving forward to World War Two, which broke out in 1939, this very house, Easterton Vicarage, was used to home a group of evacuee children from London. Seven or eight of the Evacuees in Easterton were at the vicarage.
The parish church in Market Lavington has featured on several different postcards over the years. Many of these are in our museum founder Peggy Gye’s albums, which can be seen on the round table upstairs in the museum.
The image we are looking at here is from about a hundred years ago.
This one, in Peggy’s album, was written in 1913, but we have just acquired another copy of the same postcard.
It was sent to a lady in Eastbourne, Sussex, by someone, unnamed, living in Easterton, a mile or two from Market Lavington. She felt she was in ‘a lovely place’ and was sharing her address with her card’s recipient.
Next time, we will consider some co-incidences to do with the dates and places mentioned on this card.
On 1st May 2024, our museum blog entry was about the celebrations in Market Lavington in 1994 marking the first one hundred years of Market Lavington Parish Council. The event actually took place on the May Bank Holiday Monday. This year, 2024, that holiday falls on 6th May.
In one of our museum scrapbooks, we have the Wiltshire Gazette and Herald newspaper account of the event, entitled
There were lots of events providing fun and entertainment for villagers of the late twentieth century, but they all had a Victorian flavour, based on activities that would have been familiar to villagers a hundred years previously.
‘There was maypole dancing and a barrel organ and the Moonraker Morris Men gave colourful displays. There was a fortune teller and a Punch and Judy Show’ and ‘a traditional Victorian fancy dress parade.’ ‘In the evening there was a traditional pig roast in the market place and the village danced the night away to music by the Wyvern Country Dance Band.’
In our previous blog entry, we began to look at some of the names of people who bought Market Lavington composer’s first book of music for country church choirs.
We will now pick out a few more of the subscribers. Most people just bought one copy but Mr Richard Baldwin of Newport, Isle of Wight, bought six as did Mr Thomas Burrough of Devizes. (We have read that some were bought by a bookseller in Devizes, so maybe that was him.) The largest bulk purchase was of twenty five books, bought by Mr Benjamin Collins of Sarum (Salisbury).
Of course, our museum concentrates on Market Lavington and Easterton. John Smith was a Market Lavington resident, but let’s see who his local customers were. We do not recognise these people as they were here before censuses and our many directories date from the 1800s, whilst John Smith was composing in the mid 1700s.
So, in Market Lavington, as well as the Reverend Abbott, mentioned in our previous blog entry, there was also Mr Ambrose Draper, Mr Joel Green, Mr James Lock, Mr Samuel Miel and Mr Sainsbury. We learn a little more about three other Market Lavington residents. Mr John Matthews was a singing master here and Mr Parry was a surgeon.
Finally, we have ‘Henry Chivers Vince Esq. of Clift Hall.’ Clyffe Hall (https://marketlavingtonmuseum.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/clyffe-hall-2/) was built in 1732, by Edward Chivers Vince and taken over by his son. The Andrews and Drury map of 1773 shows Cleeve Hall, owned by Henry Chivers Vince and now we know that he bought one of John Smith’s books of anthems.
The other name from our museum’s collection area is Mr Thomas Sainsbury, Isterton, from our neighbouring village of Easterton.
So, not only can we take pride in having a local composer and seeing his music, we also gain a little more information to add to our limited knowledge of local residents nearly three hundred years ago.
In the 1700s, a composer of church music lived in Market Lavington. His name was John Smith. He produced three books of psalms and anthems for country church choirs. The first book contains
Te Deum Laudamus 4 Voices Page 1
Jubilate Deo 4 Voices 5
Magnificat 4 Voices 7
Nunc Dimittis 4 Voices 9
An Anthem on Psalm the 8th 3 Voices 10
An Anthem on Psalm the 28th 4 Voices 12
An Anthem on Psalm the 72nd 3 Voices 16
An Anthem on Psalm the 80th 4 Voices 19
An Anthem on Psalm the 98th 4 Voices 21
An Anthem on Psalm the 111th 3 Voices 24
An Anthem on Psalm the 147th 3 Voices 26
An Anthem on Psalm the 148th 4 Voices 29
Psalm Tunes (4 Voices):
Psalm 4th, 18th, 100th 33
125th (2nd part), 40th, 43rd 34
47th N.V., 48th, 68th 35
84th N.V. (?), 100th N.V., 150th N.V. 36
We have recently been given a copy of a list of people who subscribed to this first book.
Just having the list of names is fascinating as we only have censuses here from 1851. (The 1841 list is missing for this area.) The names are organised alphabetically,
The very first purchaser is of interest, as we appear not to have all the names in our list of vicars of Market Lavington, with only two in the 1700s, so Rev. Abbot can be added to the list.
Most of the addresses of subscribers are from the local area in Wiltshire, with the exception of those on the Isle of Wight, so we imagine that Stoke might be Erlestoke, rather than up in the Potteries.
Some of the spellings of other places have changed over the years. Chiveral is now Cheverell, Isterton on the subscribers’ list is Easterton, Ember is Imber and Urshfont is now Urchfont, though has been spelt Erchfont in the past.
We will take another look at this list in a future blog entry.
At Market Lavington Museum, we have more baby clothes with local provenance than we can display any one time, so we try to change the clothes on our dolls every year.
Mary is a doll who was played with in Market Lavington in the 1980s by a little girl, who called her Mary. She often sits in the high chair, which was used by the Burbidge family, who lived in the museum building, when their daughter Flo was a little girl in the early 1900s.
This year, 2024, Mary is wearing A little girl’s dress dating from the early 1900s. However, this garment is partly made from broderie anglaise, so needs a petticoat underneath. We have seen this before, hanging on the airer in 2022. (See A 1920s petticoat.)
So, here is Mary in the petticoat, which is rather too big for her.
Her dress is also rather large, but we don’t have any dolls matching the height of a toddler or older child.
We don’t really notice that Mary is swamped by her clothes, once she is seated in the high chair.
The museum re-opened for the 2024 season on Wednesday 1st May and Mary awaits your visits.
All text, images or other media on this blog is copyrighted to Market Lavington Museum.
Please do not use this material without first seeking permission from the curator.
Market Lavington Museum 