A historic grave

This grave doesn’t look out of the ordinary. Like many a grave it is a bit unkempt but an ivy growth on it has been cut away. It is in the Easterton church yard and stands close by the road just below the former jam factory and near the entrance from that side.

A grave in Easterton church yard

We need to enlarge and enhance to read its history.

It is the first ever burial on this site

It reads – In memory of William Doel who died June 9^th 1875 aged 69 years. He was the first buried in this churchyard. Also of Joseph Doel who died Sep. 19^th 1882 aged 82 years.

Now William is a hard chap to trace. We think he might be the 58 year old general labourer who was living in Easterton in 1871. This census said he was married but he seemed to be living alone.

If you have already done your arithmetic you’ll have worked out that being 58 in 1871 doesn’t match the age 0f 69 on the 1875 grave. But was he 69 then? The entry in the records gives a very clear age at death of 63 – a much better match.

How old was William when he died? The grave says 69. The records say 63!

Joseph Doel can be found earlier, living with his brother, John, in 1851 in Market Lavington.

We’d love to know more about William Doel, with that historic ‘first’ in Easterton.

Who was Miss Michell?

All we know of Miss Michell is that in 1875 she paid rent to Edward Pleydell Bouverie. He owned the manor and all of its then extensive estate. What we have, at Market Lavington Museum, is the receipt for payment of a year’s rent, paid on 12^th October 1875.

Receipt for rent paid by Miss Michell to the Lavington Dauntsey estate in 1875

The rental was £2-12-6 but sixpence appears to have been deducted. The agent, whose name we can’t quite make out has signed over a Queen Victoria, Inland Revenue, one penny stamp of the time. In 1881 a new act came into being and the postage and Inland Revenue stamps became one and the same thing.

Nobody called Michell lived in Market Lavington at the time of the 1871 or 1881 census. If the more common name, Mitchell is tried, we get a zero return again.

But of course, the Manor Estate included interests in other parishes so maybe Miss Michell rented property elsewhere. But even then we draw a blank although there was a Michell family living in Bishops Cannings in 1871 who had been in Poulshot in the 1860s. They had moved on to Swindon by 1881.

So we are left with that question – who was Miss Michell?