Constance BYRCH (née BREMMER) (1856-1940)

Constance Byrch, née Bremmer (1856-1940) was a friend of the Sladden family when the Byrch family lived in Evesham.  At the beginning of the 20th century, the Byrches emigrated to New Zealand.  Constance wrote to Eugénie Sladden after they had moved overseas and May Sladden stayed for a few days with the Byrches on a visit to New Zealand in 1906.

Constance Bremmer was born at Chatham, Kent, in 1856, the daughter of John Traile Urquhart Bremmer and his wife, Julia.  Constance was baptized on 22nd September 1856 at St Peter, Mile End Old Town, London.

On 27th January 1878 at St Andrew’s, Deal, Kent, Constance married Evesham solicitor, Albert William Byrch.  She moved to Evesham where her husband’s firm, Messrs Byrch, Cox & Sons, was based.  At the time of the 1881 census, they lived at 5 Greenhill; by 1891 they had moved to The Elms, Bengeworth.

Constance and Albert had six sons and four daughters:  Albert Phillips (1879-1943), Charles Edmund M (1880-1880), Constance Eleanor (1881-1964), John William Urquhart (1883-1927), George Ernest Berry (1884-1952), Frederic Victor (1887-1915), Winifred (1888-1955), Florence Marion (1890-1984), Henry (1892-1978) and Marie Sybil (1894-1970s).

In 1902 the Byrch family emigrated to New Zealand and took on a sheep station at Mount Brown, six miles from Amberley, South Island.  All the family emigrated with the exception of Albert Phillips Byrch, the eldest, who was living in Guernsey.  It was at the Mount Brown homestead that May Sladden visited them in February 1906 and wrote about the visit in her diary.  Soon after the Byrches moved to a sheep station at Motunau near Canterbury.

Albert Byrch died at Napier on North Island in August 1909.  Constance remained at Motunau until her death on 5th February 1940, aged 84.  She was buried alongside her husband at Linwood, Christchurch.