Visitors’ Book

I have researched the Malin families of both Badsey & Offenham, who are related, and another unconnected Malin line in Evesham. Those who settled in Badsey (1860s) & Offenham (1830s) are all descended from Giles Malin who was born at Stanway, Gloucestershire in about 1680. The Evesham line are descended from John Malin (b.1760) who married Martha Weston in 1789 at Weston-on-Avon, Gloucestershire. The Sarah Malin who married Samuel Brookes in the 1700s does not appear to be connected to any of the lines I have researched locally.

However, there is a connection with the Brookes of Badsey and Offenham. Obadiah Brookes was born in Offenham in 1826 and baptised there 17.12.1826. He was the son of Thomas & Elizabeth Brookes (nee Moore) who were married in All Saints Church, Evesham 27.2.1824. Obadiah married Mary Ledbetter in 1847 and settled in Badsey where they had a large family (see under Brooks in our Surname Index). Obadiah died in 1898 and was buried in Badsey churchyard.

I have heard of Obadiah and Noahdiah too, who were from Offenham around the same time as my Great Grandfather, but I’ve not yet been able to link them with my tree but I’m sure there must be a connection somewhere. I’ll try and see if I can trace Thomas back into my line. My Great Grandfather’s Grandfather (also George Brookes 1799- 1852) had a farm in the Littletons called Norval which I’ve visited and there is a family grave in the churchyard in Nth Littleton (St Nicholas, I believe). I live in the east of England so don’t manage to get to Worcester very often.

 Isn’t it strange how a small pebble in a pond can lead to large ripples? Not only has your village website adopted a large rock some miles away, but also it has shown how the villages are linked by personal experience. All from a passing question and a spontaneous web surf. It is amazing how much information is now available. My Uncle began to investigate the family in the 1960s and he took years and many miles of travelling to find information we can now access at the click of a button.

Thank you Jane for your reply, just for information, Bonner was shot accidentally by his brother when they were both young men. It appears they were climbing over a stile and Bonner’s brother had forgotten to break his shotgun. His brother was sent, or volunteered to go to the Far East, in some disgrace and worked in Burma and Thailand before returning to the UK many years later and married. As two old Pebworth families the Shekells and Haines were distantly related.

Attached is a photo I took of the gravestone in 2001 after much crashing through the underbrush that conceals it. Mr. Rainbow, the tenant farmer of the Shekell property at Pebworth, had kindly directed me where to look. Bonner lived between 1864 - 1932.

Richard Shekelle, Friday Harbor, WA, USA

We guess your great grandmother is the same lady who was baptised at Badsey on 15 Jan 1893. So Ethel May Malin was a Badsey girl, as in fact was her mother before her. You will find records of her and her family on the Badsey website (start with the name index). Maureen Spinks has also written some notes on this family which we will forward these to you. Good luck with your search.

Mystery solved! It turns out it is not Badsey at all. Sarah wrote: Just to let you know that we have now finally detected the mystery grave and it is located at Pebworth .It is just off the Long Marsdon Road and you need to look out for a Windmill Farm on the left hand side. About five yards past this there is a ditch with two wooden planks running over it into a very dense overgrown area. If you walk over these planks into this area you will just see from the road a very large piece of stone in a misformed triangle shape. This is on top of what we believe to be a grave. The brass plaque which has been molded into the stone reads 'Bonner Shekell' and the dates 1864 - 1932. It is all very, very strange!! If you could throw some light on this I would be very grateful again. We are aware the the Bonner Shekells were very wealthy landowners around this area but which one the dates relate to remain a mystery and why they are buried in such a dense piece of woodland is also something of a mystery.

See also Andrew Shekell's letter received January 2010.

Since writing this Susan, tells us she has made contact with Ian and Maureen Tandy.

William Harris died in 1909, not 1910, which was why you were unable to find the correct death certificate. He was buried at Badsey on 7th October 1909. Smith’s Household Almanack for 1909 lists a William Harris as a Hay Trusser. Hopefully, the death certificate will give sufficient information to back up the family legend!

I have taken a look at the school registers to try and find out when the Harris family left Badsey. The youngest son, Ernest George, last attended Badsey School on 9th October 1909, two days after the funeral. Interestingly, though, Albert Vernon, did not leave school until 21st February 2010. He was nearly 13 at the time of his father's death and so presumably it was not felt worth moving him to another school as he was so close to school-leaving age. Frederick William, the eldest brother, had already left school on 9th August 1909. The normal school-leaving age was 14, but children who passed an examination showing proficiency at Standard V were allowed to leave early. What happened to Florence, the little sister, born in 1901? She was never a pupil at Badsey.

As far as the Mustoe family is concerned, there does not appear to be a connection between Lavinia Sarah and the Mustoes of Badsey. Mustoe seems to have been a fairly common name in Gloucestershire. The William Mustoe of Badsey was born at Cirencester in 1841 and lived to the grand old age of 102! His parents were William and Hannah Mustoe of Siddington. But presumably your Lavinia, even though she bore the surname of Mustoe, was not actually a Mustoe by birth if William Mustoe had already been transported to Australia in 1866.

I have researched the local papers regarding William Harris and can find no reference to his death in 1909, not even a notice of his death. The fact that other accidental deaths are mentioned in the same year in the papers, would suggest that William did not die as a result of injuries received.

There is a possible clue on the Blackminster Business Park website which gives some history of the site. They say the site was built in the early twentieth century by George Cadbury of the Cadbury's Chocolate family. His plan was to create a fruit canning factory. But there is no reference to chocolate being produced there. LBG took over the site from Cadburys. Is it possible the map just got it wrong, or is there more to discover?

I suspect that the chocolate factory was just an assumption on the part of Ordnance Survey. As far as we know, it was just a fruit canning factory. Graham Corbett (see below) tends to confirm it was probably just fruit canning. His mother, Molly, was born in 1911; she married Frank Corbett in 1934. I think she worked there in the 1920s and 1930s after leaving school and before getting married.

My mother did work at Cadburys at Blackminster and it was a fruit canning factory. I have a few photos of her their with her work colleagues. I don't know if they ever made chocolate there but I have a vague recollection of mother saying that she had chocolates there to eat. Perhaps they had an internal shop there for employees. I would not be confident enough to say that was so for sure ... I am sure that the Cadbury World history department would be able to give an answer.

There is some information about the Girls' Friendly Society on our website. See if this helps. Also, on page 111 of 'A Brief History of Badsey and Aldington' there is a photo with the caption 'The motor caravan of the Girls' Friendly Society parked outside Seward House whilst on a visit to Badsey in the 1920s.'

There are two houses called Tower View in Badsey and another one in Aldington. But only one these is old enough to appear on the 1911 census. Today it is numbers 33 & 35 Brewers Lane, Badsey. The house carries a date of 1903, built at a time when the market gardening boom led to lots of new housing in the village. The name is probably a reference to Broadway Tower which should be visible from the house. You will find more on the history of the plot on the website. It is likely that your family were the first occupants of the house. Can anyone add more information?

A bit more to add to the information. The School Admissions Register reveals that the Clements family lived in Badsey for a year, 1910-1911, Lily and William enrolling at Badsey Council School on 25th July 2010, having previously been at Evesham National School. They were there for exactly a year, leaving the previous summer. I don't know who the first occupants of Tower View were. I assume the owner was James Brewer (the baker, after whom the road is named) who had bought the land. Nos 27, 29, 31, 33 & 35 Brewers Lane (although of course they weren't numbered then, and I'm not sure when it actually started being called Brewers Lane) were all built within a few years of each other. The Brailsford family lived at No 33 from at least 1913. A member of the Brailsford family continued to live at No 33 until about 2001 when he moved into a Home and the house was sold to the owner of No 35 who has converted it into one residence. The houses on the opposite side of the road were not built until 1906 so, at the time of building in 1903, there would have been a clear view of Broadway Tower.

Martin. Perhaps you are already aware that your grandfather Henry Samuel Clements and his wife Elizabeth Ann are interred in Waterside cemetery, Evesham in Section A, Plot 2252. There is a monument [kerbs] on the plot.

Whilst I don't know where William's family lived in Badsey, I DO know where his younger sister, Sarah, lived after her marriage. As you probably know already, Sarah Houghton married Valentine Knight at Badsey in 1823. They had ten children and remained living in Badsey until Valentine's death in 1849 and Sarah's in 1866. Sarah and Valentine lived in the house which is now Nos 46 & 48 High Street, which is at the junction with Mill Lane. At the time of the Badsey Enclosure Act of 1812, the house was owned by Valentine's father, Thomas Knight. It remained in the Knight family until the 1850s or 1860s when it was sold to Joseph Woodward. If you go to "Roads and Streets" on the Badsey website, and click on High Street, you will find a brief description of the house, and there is a photo on the left-hand side (six photos down after the sign saying "High Street" - a white cottage with Victorian extension, present-day No 50 High Street.

My database for Bengeworth has a George Kinchin buried in Bengeworth cemetery 1/7/1868 aged 45. Section A, Plot 87. A Mary, a widow, was buried in Bengeworth cemetery on 28/01/1908, aged 81. She was interred in Section G, Plot 18. These are possibly your great-great grandparents?

The name could be related to the WILSON family who were Lords of the Manor of Badsey from 1657 to 1866. Most of the men holding that title were called Edward Wilson. I have no evidence that the Wilsons were benefactors to the EMMS family but it is a possibility. If you read through the letters below about the Malins family, they also used Wilson as a first name.

The last Edward Wilson served as a churchwarden at Badsey from Easter 1849 to Easter 1851, but seems to have left the village soon after that as he is living in Birmingham on the 1851 census and appears to be absent from the village until about 1880. So it is unlikely he was around at the time of the 1852 baptism, but may have helped the Emms family a few years earlier perhaps.

The answer probably lies in an article "Badsey suffers from a volcanic eruption" by Maureen Spinks in the Badsey Society Newsletter No 19, January 2007. A shortened and edited version is reproduced here:

"The eruption of Laki (in Iceland) began on 8th June 1783 and lasted for eight months. Just over two weeks later, a deadly fog entered Britain. The naturalist, Gilbert White of Selborne, described it as "the peculiar haze or smokey fog that prevailed … unlike anything known within the memory of man." Local newspapers up and down the country reported the freak weather conditions. A very hot summer of 1783 was followed by record-breaking cold winters of 1783-4 and 1784-5, the severest Britain had seen for 250 years. In addition, millions of tons of toxic fumes were released, suffocating many in the process.

 The Icelandic eruption has been forgotten in all but its mother country, but the consequences were extreme. It is estimated that 23,000 people died in Britain as a result of the extreme weather conditions and the toxic haze which enveloped the land. This cloud was resident for two to three years after the eruption and led to, or accentuated, the extremes of heat and cold. The "Timewatch" scientists reported that parish records up and down the country tell the same story of increased mortality. I was intrigued to see whether this was paralleled in Badsey. Amazingly, this was the case.

In the decade preceding 1783, the number of burials in Badsey varied between one and four each year (remember, the population then was only about 300). But in 1783 there were 12 burials, in 1784 there were 18 and in 1785 there were 32. The number of burials then declined in the following years. ... We consider ourselves immune to natural disasters. But history warns us we that should not be so complacent."

Peter Stewart has kindly let us have the burial figures for the nearby villages of Bretforton and Offenham, and for the town of Evesham. He says that nothing relevant is mentioned in these registers.

Robin has added this comment: "Maureen's explanation fits very well. Infections were common and many diseases we regard as trivial now were lethal then. A population stressed by cold and starvation, for two years, becomes very susceptible to relatively trivial disease. Catch a cold, goes to chest, die of pneumonia. But in those days mumps, measles, scarlet fever, TB and many other infections were common. If you were rich you would do better but my family the 'Brittains' were probably at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder so 4 out of 8 of their children died. Looking at the pattern of deaths I would imagine that an infection spread round killing people in sequence. There are no burials in April, May, and June 1785 and a new sequence starts in July with a peak of 10 in September. I wondered if somebody had travelled in and started an outbreak of something like smallpox."

For more on the Laki eruption see this Wikipedia article.

Can anyone help Barry with this one?