William Barnard, referred to as “the parish clerk”, features in Chapter VI of A H Savory’s Grain and Chaff from an English Manor:
On the occasion of the wedding feast of the bailiff's daughter:
The parish clerk, considerably over eighty at the time, was one of the most sprightly members of the company; he kept us interested with historical recollections going back to the Battle of Waterloo, and spoke of Wellington and Napoleon almost as familiarly as we now speak of Earl Haig and the Kaiser. He had a strong sense of humour, and, after a very hearty meal, announced that he didn’t know how it was, but he’s “sort of lost his appetite”, pretending to regard the fact as an injury, premeditated by the hospitality of our host and hostess.
On the occasion of a concert at Malvern for Badsey Church Restoration Fund:
Among the performers at the Malvern concerts some professionals had been engaged from London. Our old parish clerk, at the time over eighty years of age, who walked three miles to Evesham Statin in the morning, ascended the Worcestershire Beacon – nearly 1,500 feet – and finally walked back from Evesham to Badsey at night, was much struck by the recitations of Miss Isabel Bateman at the concert. The dear old man was somewhat deaf, and told me that, sitting towards the back of the room, “I couldn’t hear nothing, but I could see as the gesters [gestures] was all right.”
This old clerk was prominently devout in the church responses, and had some original pronunciations of unusual words; in the Nicene Creed he generally followed a few bars, so to speak, behind the vicar, but one never failed to catch the words “apost’lick church” towards the end.
On the church:
There are, or were, two lovely old Chippendale chairs with the characteristic backs and legs inside the altar-rails of Badsey Church; they are valuable and no doubt duly appreciated, not only for their own sake, but because they were the gift of dear old Barnard, the clerk, who spent fifty years of his life in the service of the church.
William Barnard was born in 1803 at Cirencester, Gloucestershire, the son of Joseph Barnard and his wife, Elizabeth (née Thornton). He married Mary Anne Hayward at Cirencester in July 1824. He was tragically widowed after just five months of marriage. He married again in November 1826 to Nancy White at Cheltenham. William and Nancy had two sons, Henry (1828-1860) and Joseph (1831-1910), born at Cirencester. They later moved to Evesham, Nancy’s home town, where their next three children, Ann (1834-1853), John (1837-1906) and Edwin (1840-1873), were born. The Barnards had moved to Badsey by 1844 when their youngest child, Elizabeth, was baptised at Badsey (1844-1892). At the time of Elizabeth’s baptism, William was described as a tailor; in the 1851 census he was described as Parish Clerk and schoolmaster; in 1861, he was described as tailor and Parish Clerk.
William’s wife, Nancy, died in 1857. In later years, he went to live with his daughter, Elizabeth Warner, and her family on Old Road, Badsey (Old Post Office Lane). The 1891 census showed William Barnard still working as Parish Clerk at the age of 88. He died at Badsey in October 1892, seven months after the death of his daughter.