The LOARINGS of WINSHAM

The LOARINGS of WINSHAM The LOARINGS of WINSHAM a study by Maurice Loaring Contents page Introduction 1 Loarings Ancient 2 The descent from Ancient to Modern 3 Loarings Modern: Tom, Dick & Harry 4 Loarings Modern: the sons of Thomas Malachi Loaring 5 Notes & Acknowledgements 8 Abbreviations 9 The descendants of Thomas Loring 10 Appendices: 1 Table of Heads of Families 36 2 Index of Kinsfolk & Spouses 37 3 Index of Loarings 40 © Maurice Loaring, February 2013 The LOARINGS of WINSHAM - INTRODUCTION Although I had the great good fortune to be born and brought up on the Isle of Wight I have never felt that my roots were there. My mother was only a first generation Islander, and my father came from Winsham; how they came to meet in Rangoon is related later, and it suffices to say that they married in 1922 and settled in Cowes, where my brother and I were born. I grew up believing the name Loaring to be rather distinctive, and I heard occasional mention of other Loarings - for example John Loaring, a Canadian hurdler who won a silver medal at the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936. There were said to be Loarings in the Channel Islands and one also came across the odd Loring, but they were obviously of a lesser breed. Before World War 2 we spent several holidays in Winsham, and in June 1942, after our home was destroyed by bombing, my mother, brother and I were evacuated there. We stayed with my grandmother Ellen and cousin Kathleen Loaring in Fore Street until the end of 1944, by which time the end of the war was in sight and, more to the point, Kathleen had just married and it was better for us to get out of the way. Those two and a half years at a formative time of my life had an effect on me far beyond the acquisition of a Somerset accent, and not surprisingly I developed the feeling that Winsham was where my real roots lay. Soon after our return to the Island I went to Southampton to take a degree in civil engineering, and then joined the Western Region of British Railways at Paddington; I spent my whole career with BR, in one place or another. In1967 I was posted to the London headquarters and was surprised to find that there was already a Loaring listed in the office telephone directory, a Miss Gwen Loaring. We met, and she told me that she had done some research into her family and had found its early 18th Century origins in the village of Awliscombe in south Devon, near Honiton and some fifteen miles from Winsham. We could find no connection between our families and, although we kept in occasional touch, there the matter rested. In 1978 Gwen passed on to me a letter from a Canadian Loaring, her cousin (and son of the Olympian), who was "carrying out a genealogical research project" on his family name. He expressed the opinion that "as the surname was so rare, it should be possible to establish relationships in all cases that come to light"; I have been pursuing that elusive aim ever since. After accepting the chance of early retirement in 1984 family history became a serious hobby, and in due course I became a member of the Society of Genealogists, the Somerset & Dorset Family History Society, the Devon Family History Society, and the Guild of One Name Studies. On behalf of the latter I am undertaking a formal ‘One Name Study’ of the surname Loring and its variants. Those, then, are my credentials for offering these notes on the Loarings of Winsham. Their preparation has brought back many happy memories. Maurice Loaring Christchurch, Dorset February 2013 1 The LOARINGS of WINSHAM - ANCIENT The name LORING can best be taken as meaning ‘the man from Lotharingia’, which was the Kingdom of Lothar II, a great-grandson of Charlemagne. It was created in 855, and comprised the whole of Holland and Luxembourg, the northern part of Belgium, and parts of northern France; what is now known as Lorraine in France is only the rump of the old Kingdom. The first known mention of the name in England was in about 1060, when Albert ‘Lorigensis’ became a chaplain to Kind Edward the Confessor. How the name came to the West Country is a mystery, but the Loarings of Winsham were not unique: there were Lorings in and around Axminster from the same early times, and although they probably had a common ancestor it has not been possible to prove this, DNA testing having been inconclusive. What the Winsham Loarings can claim is that they have been in the village for over 460 years, something that no other parish comes close to matching. In common with most C of E Churches, the parish registers of St Stephen’s date back to 1558, and the earlier registers were written in Latin. The parish clerk entered details as he heard them, so it is not surprising that the broad south Somerset dialect could be misinterpreted, leading to a wide variety in the spelling of the basic surname LORING. In general the handwriting was poor, and difficult to read. The first entry for the Loaring family in Winsham was a baptism: "17 September 1560 Agnes filia Thoma' Loring" or Agnes daughter of Thomas Loring There is no way of knowing how long Thomas had been in the village, nor of knowing whom, where or when he had married, though it was probably the ‘Edith’ who died in 1610. Agnes seems to have been their first child, as there are no entries in the registers that can be related to an earlier one, so one could reasonably suppose that Thomas would have been about 25 when she was baptised, and hence that he was born c1535. Thomas had four more children after Agnes, who died aged two: two sons and two daughters. The first son, John, was born in 1565 and only lived for two weeks, but the second son, William, born in 1566, survived, married and fathered two sons to continue the family line forward. In 1718 a new parish clerk started to use the spelling Loaring, and it has largely remained so ever since. The line of descent from the original Thomas Loring to modern times is shown on the next page. 2 The LOARINGS of WINSHAM - Line of descent from the original Thomas Loring to modern times 1 Thomas Loring (c1535-1591) m Edith Nk ? (c1540-1610) 2 William Loring (1566-1627) m Eliza Heirins (c1570-1641?) 3 Thomas Loring (1598-1677) m Alice Sergeant (c1605-1677) 4 William Loring (1628-1695) m Nk 5 William Loring (1677-1729) m Dinah Bond (c1680-1741) 6 Robert Loaring (1718-1803) m Joan Kender (c1725-1800) 7 Nathaniel Loaring (1745-1822) m Elizabeth Paul (c1745-1821) 8 Thomas Loaring (1787-1875) m Sarah Hodder (c1790-1841) 9 Thomas Loaring (1818-1903) m Mary Bond Denning (1823-67) 10 Thomas Malachi Loaring (1857-1932) m Ellen Rosa Stoodley (1852-1945) Fuller details are given in the charts starting on p 11, where the line down to Thomas Malachi Loaring is shown in red . 3 The LOARINGS of WINSHAM - MODERN TOM, DICK and HARRY: those with long memories may recall these brothers, the sons of Thomas and Mary Loaring, née Denning. TOM Thomas Malachi Loaring (1857) was the eldest, a thatcher by profession and, in his latter years, a lay preacher at the Ebenezer Chapel, Stony Knaps. DICK Richard Denning Loaring (1861) was the youngest, also a thatcher, and a bachelor. His claim to fame is that he carried the flag at local parades, and is shown doing so on one or two old picture postcards. HARRY Henry Alfred Loaring (1859) another thatcher, who lived in a cottage off Fore St, next to Churchill’s the blacksmiths, and who was memorable to me for having a parrot in his window. All bar one of the Loarings born in Winsham in the 20th century were descendants of either ‘Tom’ or ‘Harry’. Henry Alfred Loaring married Sarah Singleton in 1877, but of their five children only one stayed in the village; that was their eldest, Mary Ann (Polly), who married William Norris. Henry’s first son died in infancy, two more daughters married away, and the other son William left to work in a colliery in Radstock. Descendants of his still live in North Somerset. It was Thomas Malachi Loaring who kept the line going in Winsham. He was my grandfather, but as he died when I was only four years old my recollections of him are shadowy; a stern man whose bookcase in the parlour held such light reading as ‘Fox’s Book of Martyrs’, and who was remembered by my mother for expostulating; ”What’s this? Toys on a Sunday?” In 1881 he married Ellen Rosa Stoodley (1852) from Wayford, who by contrast was a quiet, sweet little lady. She loved her garden and knew not only the name of every plant but, more importantly, who had given it to her They lived in ‘The Barracks’ in Fore Street which, I am told, was originally a single thatched building with one open end used for stabling and storage. No one seems to know how or when it came by that name, but it has been suggested that it dates back to the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685. At some stage the open end was filled in and turned into a separate dwelling, now known as ‘Kimmerdene’; the main part is ‘Barrack Cottage’, sold in 2006 after countless years as the family home.

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