The Emms of Bratton

In this account, started in March 2005, there are many gaps which I hope to fill in as time goes by. However, I feel that what is known should now be recorded.

It is now 2015 and a few extra details have emerged and a few corrections made but there is never a definitive end to this sort of story!

Nancy Cawthorne (née Emm)

1

The author, 2006

2 The Emms of Bratton

Main Characters in this Story

Benjamin (1) (1695?–1748), married Mary (Ingram)

Benjamin (2) (1735–1803), married Grace (Dew)

James (1) (1768–1833), son of Ben (2), married Mary (Smith)

Elizabeth (Betty) (1771–1845), daughter of Ben (2), married William Calloway

Joseph (1) (1778–1844), ‘Uncle Joe’, son of Ben (2), unmarried

Elizabeth (1794–?), daughter of James (1), married James Giddings

Benjamin (3), (1799–1845), son of James (1), married Jane (Fatt)

Joseph (2), (1803–1875), son of James (1), married Rosanna (Giddings)

Jane (1809–1883), daughter of James (1), married Robert Reeves

James (2) (1822–1873), son of Ben (3), married Elizabeth (Nichols)

George (1826–1901), son of Ben (3), married Mary (Prior)

Thomas (1829–1866), son of Joseph (2), married Susanna (Hillier)

Henry John (1864–1938), son of George, married Lydia (Emm)

Lydia (1863–1960), daughter of Thomas, married Henry John Emm

George Hillier Emm (1888–1962), son of Henry John & Lydia, married Elsie (Flower)

3

An Emm Family Tree (my direct line only)

1695?–1748 Benjamin (1) = Mary Ingram 1697?–1751 Married 1719

1735–1803 Benjamin (2) = Grace Dew 1735–1803 Married 1764

1768–1833 James (1) = Mary Smith 1770–1845 Married 1793

Benjamin (3) = Jane Fatt Joseph (2) = Rosanna Giddings 1799–1844 1797–1875 1803–1875 1799–1872 Married 1820 Married 1823

George = Mary Prior Thomas = Susanna Hillier 1827–1901 1827–1866 1829–1866 1824–1906 Married 1852 Married 1861

Henry John Lydia = 1864–1938 1863–1960 Married 1888

George Hillier = Elsie Mary Flower 1888–1962 1887–1932 Married 1919

Joan Mary = Leonard Toop Nancy Sybil = Alric Cawthorne Born 1920 Born 1920 Born 1926 Born 1926 Married 1945 Married 1948

4 The Beginnings 1642–1725

Elizabeth Emm, christened 5 February 1642/3

The very earliest mention of the name Emm in Bratton is in fact a variant, ‘Ems’, common enough in the early days, together with the other variants, ‘Em’, ‘Emms’ and ‘Emme’. In 1643 on the fifth day of February, Elizabeth Ems daughter of William Ems was christened in Bratton Church. I don’t know who this William was; he may have been the William Emm, son of another William, baptised in Warminster in 1612, the same one who married Alice Dredge there, on 31 October 1641, but that is only surmise.

Later in the year of Elizabeth’s baptism, the battle of Roundway Down was fought within sight of the village. King Charles I had raised his standard at Nottingham on 22 August 1642 and the Civil War was now raging. I wonder which side the people of Bratton and Warminster supported.

A William Emme is listed as a ‘householder’ in Warminster in 1665, long after the Civil War was over. He could have been Elizabeth’s father.

As far as I know, there is no connection between this William and the one from Sutton Veny who is the next character in our narrative.

William Emm 1679–1725

In the 1700s, we move into firmer territory and find a clear connection with the Sutton Veny Emms, whom I have written about elsewhere. We find a William documented as a blacksmith and churchwarden at Bratton. A son of John Emm of Keevil, he is mentioned in John’s will of 1701. When John Emm died, he left this son William one shilling (!). William and his two sisters Mary and Sarah (who also received one shilling) were children of John’s first marriage and were probably comfortably set up by 1701. We know in fact that William was already a blacksmith in Bratton in 1703 when he signed his true brother Joseph’s marriage bond. The family tree on page 7 makes all this more understandable.

There is a completely illegible plaque to William in Bratton Church commemorating his death. It is on the wall to your left as you enter. Fortunately this plaque was recorded in Monumental Inscriptions of Wiltshire, 1822 (Wiltshire Record Society), by Sir Thomas Phillips: ‘Also underneath lyeth ye body of William Emme who Depd Oct ye xiv, 1725, Aetat. Suae 43’.

If he was really 43 when he died (aetat. suae 43), he would have been born in 1683, but Mrs Fry – the Emm family historian of whom more later – puts his birth in 1679 when a ‘William son of John’ was baptised in Codford (as were some of his brothers and sisters). Indecipherable inscriptions lead to difficulties. (See below for Mrs Fry.)

5 Bratton Church

6 Be that as it may, William Emme, churchwarden at Bratton from 1717 to 1722 with William Whitaker, engaged in an acrimonious correspondence with Mr William Wroughton, vicar of Westbury, in 1721. Bratton Church had been engaged in disputes with Westbury since the dissolution of the monasteries as to whether it was an independent parish or a chapelry of Westbury. Bratton was to remain annexed to Westbury until 1845, when the argument was resolved.

I can find no record of a marriage or family for William, but there was a William Emm who married Elizabeth Pilton in Warminster in 1708. He would have been then approximately 28, so it is possibly ‘our’ William. I like to think that William’s smithy was at the end of Stradbrook where one still existed in my childhood. My sister Joan used to take the pony there from Hitchfield Farm.

Footnote: Phyllis May Fry, born 1899, was an Emm before she was married. She did a great deal of research into the Emms of Wiltshire. Our common ancestors came from the Chalke Valley. Her papers are now in the Society of Genealogists’ Library in London.

Mini Tree (1)

JOHN EMM of Keevil, died 1701

1st wife: Elizabeth Bishop 2nd wife: Elizabeth Pool l l sons Joseph & William son Benjamin & 2 daughters & about 7 other children This is Benjamin (1) see below

7

Benjamin Emm (1), born after 1695, died 1748

Mini Tree (2)

BENJAMIN (1) 1695?–1748, married 1719, Mary Ingram 1697?–1751

John William Elizabeth Joseph James Benjamin (2) Broadchalke Died 1739 Married Broad- Edington Bratton Smallpox? an Emm chalke No sons

This Benjamin is the first of many Benjamins that we find in Bratton. It’s a pity that we don’t have many established details about him. He and his wife Mary were after all the true progenitors of the Bratton Emms. What we do have is quite interesting. He was the youngest son of John of Keevil and quite young when his father died. He and his two sisters Elizabeth and Jane were the children of John’s second wife Elizabeth Pool, and therefore William Emm the blacksmith/churchwarden of Bratton was Benjamin’s half-brother. I have as yet found no record of Benjamin’s birth or baptism but, since John and Elizabeth were not married until 1695, he could not have been more than five or six when his father died in 1701. In his father’s will, Benjamin is to receive £50 when he reaches the age of 21 but in the meantime £10 is to be set aside to bind him as an apprentice to such trade as the executors, John’s ‘ever loving wife’ Elizabeth and his son Joseph, ‘shall think convenient’. Elizabeth and Joseph receive the residue of the estate. We don’t know where Elizabeth and the three children lived after John’s death. Perhaps they joined Joseph, who was quite prosperous, in Upton Lovell, Wiltshire, where he farmed.

The next piece of evidence about Benjamin (1) is his marriage licence, dated 1719. He is there described as a bell founder (a trade which the executors presumably found ‘convenient’) of Upton Lovell. His age is given as ‘about 24’, suggesting a birth date of around 1695 which tallies with our calculations. Mary Ingram whom he married came from Bapton, a hamlet near Fisherton Delamere in Wiltshire, and was aged ‘about 22’. The licence is not easy to read. They were married in Upton Lovell in 1719. Why they took out a marriage licence instead of having banns called in the usual way, I don’t know. Her father did not witness the licence attestation. Did he not approve of the match? She may have been already pregnant, since their first child was born in 1719 at Upton Lovell.

8 By 1722 it appears that Benjamin and Mary were living in Warminster, where their third child, William, was baptised. Sadly William died at Bratton aged 17 in 1739. His death is recorded in the diary of Jeffery Whitaker, a prominent farmer and schoolteacher of Bratton, and is likely to have resulted from smallpox which was rife in the village at that time.

By 1727 Benjamin and Mary were in Bratton. Their next five children are recorded in the registers of Bratton Church. Benjamin worked as a blacksmith, not a bell founder, perhaps taking over from his half-brother William. He may also have done some farming.

We next hear of him in 1744, when he falls foul of the parish authorities in Bratton. He was ‘presented’ by the churchwardens for non-payment of the Clerk’s dues. I wonder what his churchwarden half-brother would have thought of that! Why didn’t he pay? Later members of the family were to take up the Baptist faith. Perhaps this is what happened with Benjamin. Some credence is given to this theory since his son Benjamin (2) (of whom more later) is recorded in the parish register for 1735 as ‘born’ not ‘baptised’. I hope one day to look at the records of the Bratton Baptist Church. Earlier children of his were baptised: John in Upton Lovell in 1720/21, Joseph and James in Bratton in 1729 and 1732.

Benjamin (1) died in 1748. He is not listed in the Bratton burial registers. Perhaps this is another clue to his religious beliefs. Mary, however, who died in 1751, is buried in Bratton churchyard. Of Mary and Benjamin’s children only one, Benjamin (2), seems to have remained in Bratton. Joseph, Benjamin’s half-brother, had moved from Upton Lovell to the Broadchalke area, still in Wiltshire, and we find the three whose baptisms are detailed above appearing in 1745 on a deed, clearly identified as ‘the sons of Benjamin Emm of Bratton, blacksmith’ when they were added as ‘lives’ to a tenancy held by Joseph on Gurston Farm in Broadchalke. (This is fascinating to me as a lifelong follower of car-club racing because there is, and has been for many years, a Hill Climb known as Gurston Down, run by the British Automobile Motor Club, on land still belonging to the farm). In 1745, these three brothers were joint purchasers of a cottage in Gurston probably ‘College House’. John was settled in Broadchalke by 1747 where he fathered quite a dynasty, a branch of the family which eventually produced Phyllis May Emm in 1899. She pointed me in many useful directions. (See footnote on page 7.)

Of Ben (1)’s family, I am most interested in Ben (2), his fourth son. Altogether, Ben (1) and Mary had three daughters and six sons – quite a brood! One son, James, went to Edington where his male line ended with the death of two sons who predeceased him. One daughter, Elizabeth born 1725, features in documents in Broadchalke and spent her life there. She married another Emm in 1747. I have since writing this met many of their descendants. I find this intermarriage happens quite often in the Emm family!

9

Benjamin Emm, born 1735, died 1803 (Benjamin 2, ‘Our Ben’)

Mini Tree (3)

BENJAMIN (2) 1735–1803, married 1764, Grace Dew 1735–1803

Mary Sarah James Elizabeth Joseph Unmarried Unmarried Married Married Unmarried

This Benjamin welcomes us into familiar territory and almost into living memory, for he was the builder of the cottage in Lower Road, Bratton, which links us to the present day. Therefore I think of him as ‘Our Ben’.

Early in his life he still had connections with his uncle (or step-uncle, to be more precise) Joseph, executor of his grandfather John’s will. Joseph farmed for many years in Broad- chalke. Benjamin is mentioned as ‘nephew of the said Joseph’ in 1756, when he is a ‘life’ in a 99-year lease granted to Joseph Emm, yeoman, of a cottage there owned by Viscount Weymouth (earlier title of the Marquess of Bath), where Joseph probably spent his retirement.

Whether our Benjamin ever lived in Broadchalke, I don’t know. Mrs Fry says he ‘went back to Bratton, his father’s home, married and became a farmer’ – so she obviously thought he lived in Broadchalke for a while. There are later references to Benjamin in connection with Broadchalke. In 1792 a map of this part of the Earl of Pembroke’s estate, drawn up in preparation for an enclosure award, shows Benjamin as a copyholder (a leaseholder whose lease is recorded in the manor court rolls) or ‘customary tenant’ (virtually the same but originating in the habit of land being held by oath of fealty alone). The proposed enclosure award to him would comprise ten allotments ranging in size from 12 acres down to one acre – in total ‘49 acres 12 roods and 180 perches’ which included a section of sheep down of 6 acres 19 perches; the entire holding comes to about 53 acres. ‘Private carriage roads’ are mentioned. I think Benjamin may have sublet these holdings; he was by 1792 settled in Bratton and may even have retired from active farming. In any case by the time the enclosure award was granted in 1814 he was already dead.

Confirmation that Benjamin of Bratton is the same as the Broadchalke one comes from the renewal by the Marquess of Bath (in January 1792) of the 1756 lease that I have already

10 mentioned. It grants the cottage to ‘the above Benjamin Emm now of Bratton, gardiner, for 99 years to commence from the decease of the above Elizabeth [of Broadchalke, Benjamin’s sister] and the said Benjamin Emm, if James Emm, son, aged 23, of the said Benjamin Emm shall so long live’. This lease may have been set up for James the son of whom we shall hear more later. The word ‘gardiner’ refers I think, to the type of produce grown: Bratton was a great market gardening area and there were many fruit orchards there.

Benjamin was married on 24 August 1764 at Bratton Church to Grace Dew. Grace is described as ‘of this parish’ as is Benjamin, but I have not yet found out a lot about her except that her parents were Joseph and Sarah Dew and that she was born in 1735, the same year as Benjamin. (Note the Christian names of her parents: two of Benjamin and Grace’s children were called Joseph and Sarah). Even if they had Baptist leanings, Ben and Grace’s marriage would have to be a church one in those days, to make it legal. Their son Joseph was recorded as ‘born’ not ‘baptised’ in the church registers in 1778. This often indicates that the family was nonconformist.

In the Militia records now at the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre in Chippenham, there is a Benjamin Emm listed in Captain Beckford’s Company between 1767 and 1769. There was another Benjamin Emm – of Upton Lovell, born 1727, so I am not sure which one it was. Again – more research is needed!

Benjamin and Grace had five children: Mary born 1765, Sarah born 1766, James born 1768, Betty born 1771, and Joseph born 1778. Betty married a William Calloway in 1792 in Bratton. Mary, the eldest daughter, outlived all her siblings, never married and it was through her will that Ben and Grace’s cottage (No 15, Lower Road, as it is now) passed out of the family from 1904 until 1995 when Dick and I bought it back.

Mrs Jean Morrison, Bratton’s foremost local historian until her death in 2006, told me that Benjamin and Grace farmed Redlands Farm in Bratton as tenants and built the cottage in Lower Road to retire to. If this is true, he and Grace did not have long to enjoy it. Benjamin was buried at Bratton Church (not Chapel) on 19 April 1803 and Grace on 22 December 1803. They were born in the same year and they died in the same year.

We have Benjamin’s will, dated 8 April 1803 and proved on 3 May 1803 (how quick by modern standards!). He is described as a yeoman. This is an uncertain term – it is, I think, meant to describe one who farms his own land, but Benjamin was predominantly a tenant farmer. He did, however, own the land called ‘Waggons’ in Lower Road adjoining the cottage, and one acre of arable in ‘The Butts’ belonging to it, all of which he had bought in 1793. Apart from renting land from the Whitaker family at Redlands Farm (in the Steeple Ashton direction), he was also for many years the tenant of Watts Orchard, a property on the Lower Road owned by the Longleat estate, not far from the cottage. There was a dwelling house there. Where was he living when he died? We don’t know.

11

Redlands Farm

The will is unfortunately not very clear in its description of the buildings on his land in Lower Road, but nevertheless it is a seminal document in the history of our branch of the Emm family. The date when Benjamin built No 15 is recorded with the initials B, G and E (Benjamin, Grace, and Emm) on a stone in the wall of the house: G B.E. 1795 – the G is carved above the B and the E. (The photograph on page 2 shows this well.) I often wonder whether the G was an afterthought or whether Ben set her above him! I also wonder whether he was ‘taking the Mickey’ in putting this rather pretentious memorial on his little thatched cottage since, at about the same time, owners of more substantial houses in Bratton were doing the same thing.

Let us look at the story of Benjamin’s will and the picture it paints of the family in 1803. He has two sons and three daughters. He leaves legacies of varying values to his children and grandsons. The elder son, James, is left one ‘tenement or dwelling house and half a garden’ in Lower Road. James appears to be living there at the time. He is aged 35, married with five extant children. He also receives £40. James and his wife, who was born Mary, sometimes called ‘Molly’, Smith, are key figures in our branch of the Emm family, since from them descended both my grandmother Lydia and my grandfather Henry John. My father was a ‘double-dyed’ Emm. Mary came from Great Cheverell and had married James in 1793. She had been busy since then, producing seven children, two of whom had died.

12 If they were living in the tenement in Lower Road they must have been quite crowded! Their two sons, Benjamin aged four and Joseph, still a baby, are the ‘grandsons’ who figure in Benjamin’s will: £10 each is to be paid at the discretion of his executors towards their education. It was this mention of two little boys which assured me I was on the right historical track, for I had heard the story of Benjamin and Joseph from members of my family. The provisions for the education of the grandchildren echo the clause in the will of John of Keevil for the apprenticeship of Benjamin (1), the blacksmith who came to Bratton earlier.

So there was James, with his wife Mary and the family of children all under the age of nine. Where did James work, I wonder. He may well have worked on his father’s farm or on another farm in the neighbourhood.

To return to Benjamin’s will. To his eldest daughter Mary, aged 38, he left another tenement or dwelling house and the other half ‘of the aforesaid garden’. So since these are the only tenements and dwelling houses mentioned, there appear at this time to have been only two cottages there: the Ben and Grace cottage built 1795 and one more. Was Mary living there at the time? He doesn’t say. The will is ambiguous; it describes the legacy to Mary as ‘all that my tenement or dwelling house and the other half of the aforesaid garden with the appurtenances in Bratton aforesaid partly in the occupation of John Balsh and my said son James’. Is it the tenement or the garden which is partly in the occupation of John Balsh and James? We don’t know, but it sounds to me as if Mary was not there at the time – she was probably living with her parents. Mary was single, in fact she never married.

To daughter Sarah, aged 37, her father left £30 and no property. Again, I think she would probably be living with her parents. If they were still on the farm, there would have been plenty of work for both her and Mary: milking, dairy work, perhaps cheese and butter- making, looking after poultry etc – not to mention helping to run the house. Mother Grace by this time was 68 and perhaps not so active.

Elizabeth, 32, married by now to William Calloway, received £25. We shall hear more about Betty later.

And now we come to Joseph. He was a late arrival in the family; born seven years after his nearest sister, he was only 25 when his father died. For a 25-year-old, he was faced with considerable responsibilities. Judging by his later life, he had had some education, unlike James his brother, who was, in 1827, still ‘making his mark’ on documents, not signing them. In his will, his father leaves Joseph ‘that my acre of arable land called Waggons’. (This was the acre in The Butts.) The will also decrees that ‘in default of issue of my said daughter Mary’ Joseph should receive her tenement and part-garden. The will continues: ‘the rest, residue and remainder of any Monies, Goods, Chattels and Effects both Real and Personal which I am in any way intitled unto I give to my wife Grace and said son Joseph to apply the Rents, Issues, and Profits thereof to and for the joint use and Benefit of them, my said wife Grace and son Joseph during their joint Lives and the Life of the Survivor of

13 them and from and after the decease of her, my said wife Grace I give, devise and bequeath all my said residual Estate and Effects unto my said son Joseph’. Grace and Joseph were declared executrix and executor. When Grace died in December 1803, seven months after Benjamin, Joseph inherited his share of the proceeds of the ‘residue etc’ of the estate. Not bad, one would think, for a 25-year-old!

‘Goodbye Ben and Grace!’

What happened to the family they left behind?

James Emm, born 1768, died 1833 (James 1)

After Ben’s death, son James and Mary his wife went on to have three more children, two of whom lived: Martha born 1805 and Jane born 1809. A boy named James died in 1808 and that is sad because already in 1795 there had been another James who also died. James was not a lucky name.

From Ben’s will one is almost inclined to feel that James did not get as good a deal as Joseph, but even if that is so we soon find him ‘progressing’. In 1805 there is a record of him leasing pieces of land for grazing on the road from Edington to Steeple Ashton. In 1810 he appears for the first time on the Court Baron rolls of the Marquess of Bath in relation to the tenement called ‘Harts’, which I think was in the centre of Bratton and included land where the Reeves Ironworks later stood, on what is now a playground and a car park. There is a commemorative stone to the Ironworks near the bus stop there. The Court Baron (manor court) met at the Court House in Bratton at the junction of Lower Road and Court Lane. There the Marquess of Bath’s tenants presented themselves once a year to pay their rents and conduct other business. I think it was quite a festive occasion ending with a dinner. (For a while, the Bratton court papers were deposited by Lord Bath in the County Record Office then located in Trowbridge, together with some expired leases, but these are now back at Longleat, though copies of some documents can be seen at the History Centre.) Since those days the Court House, built in the 1600s, has had a chequered history. At one time it was known as ‘Wincks’ and then divided into two cottages. Nowadays, one house again, its authentic but conspicuous coat of red wall paint rather spoils its charm for me!

14

The Court House, Bratton

In or shortly before 1812 we get a breakthrough in the history of the Bratton Emms; James, as subtenant to Philip Whitaker (main tenant of Lord Bath), takes over ‘Hodge’s Farm’. This is the farm which henceforward will be known as ‘Emms Farm’ with Emms Lane leading to it. It still stands today – a farmhouse only, now, with little land attached.

It looks as if James and his family moved into Emms Farm, as the land tax assessments for 1813 show that the occupier of his Lower Road cottage was a Peter Mead.

As well as the farm, James was the main tenant of Coldharbour Orchard (part of ‘Harts’, as mentioned above), which according to the tithe map was close to Emms Farm. Again, we see the importance in the past of fruit farming in Bratton.

It appears that Emms Farm was the home of James and Mary until his death in 1833, so let us leave them and their family there for the time being and turn our attention to James’ brother Joseph.

15 Joseph Emm, born 1778, died 1844 (Joseph 1, ‘Uncle Joseph’)

Joseph, whom we shall call Joseph (1) or Uncle Joseph to distinguish him from his nephew (Joseph the son of his brother James) never married. In 1805 we know that he was renting Redlands from John Whitaker. I think therefore the tenancy may have passed straight to him from his father Ben. Redlands is off Capps Lane, which runs towards Heywood from the Bratton/Steeple Ashton road, but a survey of 1812 shows that the farmhouse itself was not part of his tenancy at that date. Apart from Redlands, he still held Watts Orchard which his father had held. In addition, according to the land tax assessments, he held in 1810 a farm called ‘Whites’ as subtenant to James Finch under the Marquess of Bath. This was a more valuable farm than Redlands; its farmhouse stood on the main road through Bratton where Reeves farmyard now stands, opposite Bratton House. A confusing list of smaller land tenancies also appears in the land tax records and of course he is still paying tax on Waggons. By 1827 he had acquired the tenancy of Horsecroft Farm under Philip Whitaker (more on this later) and was probably the Joseph Emm paying tax on Capps Lane Farm by 1831. One of the more eligible bachelors in the village one would think! I think sister Mary kept the local girls at bay: 13 years older than Joseph, she was his housekeeper. I surmise that sister Sarah, 12 years older than Joseph, also lived with them (with her legacy of £30) until her death in 1807 at the age of 41. I wonder what she died of. I don’t know where they lived after Ben’s death but by the 1841 census Mary and Joseph were living ‘south of the turnpike road’ which fits the position of Whites. Uncle Joseph went on to be a minor pillar of village society. Still described as a yeoman he became a churchwarden and is listed among the assessors for the land tax.

He died in 1845, one year before his sister Mary. So Instead of Mary’s property in Lower Road passing to Joseph as proposed in father Ben’s will, the opposite was the case: Mary received Joseph’s share. (Brother James had died in 1833.)

From Uncle Joseph’s will we get a good glimpse of the man. Surprisingly he does not mention his brother James’ family at all, which makes me think he may have helped his Emm nephews earlier in his lifetime. There is some evidence of this. The will is that of a competent businessman, carefully drawn up. To his credit he set out to ensure the welfare of his two surviving sisters – Mary, his unmarried companion, and Elizabeth, now Calloway and a widow since 1837. He names as his trustee one James Giddings, and this is interesting because James was the husband of Joseph’s niece, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of his brother James. In 1833 when they married she was 39 and he was a widower in his fifties. His name keeps cropping up in family matters. James Giddings is left Joseph’s effects which perhaps were substantial but his duties as trustee seem quite onerous. Two people enter the picture whom we haven’t heard of before: Elizabeth Calloway’s son Benjamin (named after his grandfather?) and her daughter Fanny, who appears to be unmarried. They have obviously already been farming for or with him. James Giddings has the duty to supervise Joseph’s ‘business now in the hands of Benjamin and Fanny Calloway my nephew and niece’. James Giddings shall ‘permit and suffer my nephew Benjamin of

16 Bratton, yeoman, and niece Fanny, of the same place, jointly to carry on and conduct my business of a farmer which I have for some years past done at Bratton and Capps Lane in the parish of Westbury’. Ben and Fanny must present ‘true and just accounts’, and if they don’t then the business is to be sold and after expenses etc ‘the surplus is to be paid to my sister Mary before and during the term of her natural life’. And now for the two ladies: Betty Calloway is to be paid four shillings weekly for life from the profits of the farms. If, however, she goes to live with Ben and Fanny the payment must cease (!). As for Mary, Joseph writes ‘and I also declare my will and mind that my sister Mary Emm shall have her living and abiding with my nephew and niece for her lifetime’. I am not sure whether the juxtaposition of these two clauses has any hidden meaning but it’s quite intriguing.

The final nice touch in the will is the instruction to James Giddings to ‘give and provide my servant Elizabeth Cook with decent and respectable mourning clothes over and above any wages that may be due to her at the time of my death’.

I think I rather like Uncle Joseph. A final and rather sad note to the story is to be found in the Burial Book for Bratton Church: in 1868 a 22-year-old Joseph Emm Calloway died. He could only have been Benjamin Calloway’s son or perhaps grandson, born in 1845, a year after Uncle Joseph’s death. So the Calloways appreciated him too.

In my original version of this history I ended that last paragraph by saying: ‘I hope there were other children – I must try and find out’. Then in July 2006 more information about the Calloways came my way via David Emm of Coulston, Wiltshire. He acquired it many years ago from a Mrs Janet Kafarela of Herne Hill, Western Australia! The first interesting point that came to light was that Elizabeth/Betty Emm who married William Calloway was deaf! How on earth did she know that more than a hundred years after Betty died?

Betty was apparently William’s second wife, 25 years younger than he, and they had besides Fanny born in 1801 and Benjamin born in 1803, who feature so prominently in Uncle Joseph’s will, a son William and four more daughters. (Another look at the 1841 census revealed Fanny as part of the household of Joseph Emm described as a servant!)

The second and even more fascinating point from Australia was that the said son Benjamin Calloway married an Emm, his cousin Martha, daughter of none other than James (1), brother of Joseph and Betty. So Joseph was doubly connected to the Calloways. Sadly we also learn that Benjamin and Martha did lose a son, Joseph Emm Calloway in 1868, as I suspected, aged 22, but worse, they had also lost James Emm Calloway in 1859, aged 14 – oh dear.

17 The Family of James (1)

Mini Tree (4)

JAMES (1) 1786–1833, married 1793, Mary Smith 1770–1846

Elizabeth Grace Mary Benjamin Sarah Joseph Martha Jane Married Married Married Married Married Married Married Married James William John Jane George Rosannah Benjamin Robert Giddings Smith Fatt Fatt Hurle Giddings Calloway Reeves

We left James at Emms Farm. He died in 1833 at the age of 65. By that time his two sons, Benjamin and Joseph, and daughter Sarah had already married, and the eldest child in the family, Elizabeth, was married that very year to James Giddings, whom we have already met. At his death then we can assume that the household at Emms Farm consisted of James’ widow Mary, and the daughters Grace born 1796, Mary born 1798, Martha born 1805 and Jane born 1809. Of Grace and Martha I know little more than their dates of birth. We shall talk about Mary and Jane later.

James’ will is quite a contrast to that of Joseph his brother. (Interestingly enough, one witness is Benjamin Calloway). All his ‘freehold, leasehold estate whatsoever and wheresoever’ is left to Mary his wife for her natural life and after her death to his two sons and six daughters – which is spreading it rather thin! – ‘as tenants in common and not as joint tenants’. It sounds therefore as if Mary inherited for her lifetime one tenement in Lower Road, and this is confirmed on her death in 1846 when this tenement is sold by her children or their various heirs to none other than James Giddings. As for James (Emm)’s ‘goods and chattels and personal estate’ they too go to Mary for her lifetime. After her death, however, he says ‘I give and bequeath my mare now in foal with my cart to my son Benjamin and my other two horses to my son Joseph’ .Which bequest was worth more, I wonder? What remains of the goods, chattels and personal estate is to be divided between the eight children (!). James still signs his will as a ‘yeoman’ but one feels he was not such a prosperous ‘yeoman’ as his brother Joseph.

18

Bratton Baptist Church

Benjamin Emm, born 1799, died 1845 (Benjamin 3)

The son Benjamin mentioned in the will, whom we shall call Benjamin (3), married at the age of 21 Jane Fatt, of Edington, who was two years older. (She gave up one strange name for another, you might say, but I think I prefer Emm!). She came from a Baptist family and they were married according to the Baptist rites. Thus began a strong affiliation with the Baptist faith which was to cause trouble later on for my grandparents. Benjamin and Jane’s first four children were born in Edington – Sarah in 1820, James, who did not live, in 1822, Grace in 1823 and Eliza in 1826. I still hope to find out what Benjamin was doing in Edington and where they lived. The Fatts seem to have been blacksmiths rather than farmers. I have had a most amusing correspondence with a descendant of the Fatts on the illegitimate side – Edward B Kenwood, of New Orleans.

From Edington Ben and Jane moved to Bratton; their fifth child George, my great-grand- father, was born in Bratton in 1827. More children were to follow. As we have seen, in 1827 Uncle Joseph was named as ‘occupier’ of Horsecroft Farm in the land tax assessments. Horsecroft Farm is very near to Redlands Farm, off Capps Lane. Both can be seen from the White Horse. We know from various documents that Ben and Jane lived at Horsecroft Farm

19 and I think, though I can’t prove it, that Uncle Joseph put young Ben in to run it. Uncle Joe at this time seems to have been living at Whites in the village with his sister Mary. By 1842, the Bratton section of the Westbury tithe map names Benjamin as main tenant of Horsecroft. We will return to him there later.

Joseph Emm, born 1803, died 1875 (Joseph 2)

James and Mary’s younger son, Joseph – Joseph (2) or ‘young Joe’ to distinguish him from his Uncle Joseph – seems to have been a bit of a livewire when young. I have been told that when he was 17 he carved his name, age and the date on the barn at Emms Farm and I hope one day to see this work of art. At the age of 20 he married Rosanna Giddings, on 19 October 1823. Rosanna (such a pretty name!) came from Urchfont, near Market Lavington, and she was the daughter of Thomas and Jane Giddings. (She was to call one of her sons, who turned out to be one of my great-grandfathers, after her father, and the name Thomas continued in the Emm family until 2004 when my cousin Tommy died.) Thomas Giddings was the brother of James Giddings, whom we have met before as Uncle Joseph’s trustee – I suppose Rosanna met young Joe through her uncle. She was born in 1799 and was therefore four years or so older than him – old enough to know better one might think! On 8 January 1823, before they were married, a little girl Jane was christened at Urchfont, described as daughter of Rosanna Giddings, reputed father Joseph Emm (whose name appears in the parish register in a garbled form). I was told about this by a member of the Giddings family who had been in touch with Jane’s descendants. So at 19 years old or thereabouts, Joseph was a father. Can you imagine the uproar that must have caused in the families at the time! I now know that Rosanna’s mother, Jane Giddings, had died in 1803 when she herself was four years old; her father married again. Rosanna chose her mother’s name for her baby. I have always thought of Rosanna as a rather romantic character – somehow suggesting a Thomas Hardy heroine – but this is just being fanciful.

According to the land tax assessments, a Joseph Emm was renting Capps Lane Farm from the Long family from 1831 onwards. Young Joseph would have been 27 then, so I thought he might be the tenant, but it seems more likely to have been Uncle Joseph. Capps Lane Farm seems to have disappeared, swallowed up in the grounds of the Cement Works. It seems to have been quite a large farm, since the tax in 1831 was £8 15s 3d. (Whites was £3 18s 10d and Horsecroft £4 8s 3d). Young Joe might have been employed by his uncle on one of the farms, but in the 1840s he was living in Lower Road. At the time of his father’s death he and Rosanna had four children under seven: Mary born 1825, Benjamin born 1828, Thomas born 1829 and John born 1832.

20 Emms Farm

James (1)’s Daughters Elizabeth, Sarah and Mary

Let us now turn to the daughters of the family. Presumably at James’ death they were living with their widowed mother at Emms Farm. James may have been ailing for some time, for we find that in the Bratton Court papers he had paired up with a joint tenant of Emms Farm, none other than James Giddings. James Emm’s eldest daughter Elizabeth, at the age of 39, married James Giddings in the year of her father’s death, 1833. He was a widower in his sixties and through the marriage became brother-in-law to his niece Rosanna. Was it a marriage of convenience? Even if it was, the Emm family found him to be a good friend in life and a generous benefactor on his death. The marriage of Elizabeth to James Giddings was witnessed by Elizabeth’s brother Benjamin and her sister Sarah. (Sarah was already married to a George Hurle and their descendants were still in Bratton after the Second World War).

In 1834 daughter Mary married John Fatt of Edington, the brother of Jane who married Benjamin (3), so sister and brother married brother and sister. The evidence of her marriage casts severe doubt on a story circulated about Emms Farm. Mr John Hamilton- Wilkes, who lived there in the 1990s, wrote about Emms Farm in the Bratton History Association Journal (vol. 3, p. 6, 1993). He talked of a ‘Miss’ Mary Emm as being a tenant there for many years. I think he was mistaken; the person who took over the tenancy of

21 the farm, together with Coldharbour Orchard, ‘Lilkins Leaze’ and some arable land at East Marsh Farm on Lower Road – all leases which James had held – was almost certainly his widow, Mrs Mary Emm, at first in association with son-in-law James Giddings but later as sole tenant. (There was another Mary Emm, the unmarried sister of James, but she lived at Capps Lane Farm.) Spinster or widow however, Mary may well have a connection with a story about the Seagram family which bears repeating.

The Emm–Seagram connection

A drama occurred in Bratton in the 1830s when the son of the owner of Bratton House, Edward Seagram, the ‘big-wig’ of Bratton, fell in love with the proverbial village maiden, ‘Millier’ or Amelia Stiles. The father in true melodramatic style threatened to cast off the son, Octavius, without a penny if he married Amelia. Octavius took off to America, shortly followed by Amelia where they married and later moved to Canada. Such was the wrath of the father that he turned Amelia’s family out of their cottage (owned by him) and pulled it down! The very high wall around Bratton House stands in its place on the main road through Bratton to this day.

Octavius and Amelia had two sons. The couple struggled to make a living but he did have a small allowance from his mother’s side, probably under the terms of her marriage settlement. His father, true to his word, had no further communication with him; his sister occasionally wrote letters of a strictly religious nature. Unfortunately Octavius died in his early thirties leaving Amelia in a parlous state. She discovered that under Octavius’ will the boys would receive nothing until they were 21. Appeals for help to their grandfather ‘went unanswered’ (as the story goes). Eventually she remarried a Mr Barbour, who also approached Edward Seagram to no avail. However, Barbour – who was fortunately of a different calibre – brought the boys up and gave them a good education. Barbour and Amelia had a daughter but sadly Amelia died in childbirth. The little girl survived for at least six months but we don’t know what happened to her.

You will have heard of Seagram’s Gin and the Seagram Company’s empire as it exists today. It was built up by Octavius’ and Amelia’s son, Joseph Emm Seagram. So, ‘ya- boo!’ to Grandpa. It is astonishing however that the Seagram family claimed him back when he died: his death is recorded on a family tomb in Bratton churchyard. Mrs Morrison had a request from a present member of the Seagram family to investigate the name Emm given as a second Christian name to Octavius’ son. I think nobody over here had any inkling of this connection with the Emms until a few years ago. So there’s a fascinating thing! A visitor from Canada in 1998 told us about a history of the Seagram Company that had been published over there from which we discovered more about the beginnings of the Company. (Hidden Roots – for a photocopy see reference 3433/1/29 at the History Centre.)

I have a copy of a very touching letter which was given to Mrs Morrison by a member of the Stiles family. We think it is almost certainly written by Amelia herself – though other

22 members of the Stiles family followed her to America later (who could blame them?). It is worth giving in full; the spelling and punctuation are as the original: july 21, 1842 Dear father and mother i receive your letter the beginning of june i am very sorry to her that you have had such trouble sometimes i think i shall never be happy no more about you but i hope the lard will provide for you that is all i can do now i have got a little Boy now a year old but he is very weakly he has been ill for a month past from his teeth that is the reason i did not write before that dear father and mother altho i have left you my heart is as near you now as ever i wish you could come out to us then i should be happy this is a fine country but the winters is very long and cold we cannot keep anny thing in the house from fresing in the summer it is so hot that we can hardly bear it i know father would not like America and if you can get a living at home it is better than America there is no place of worship for us to go to the nearest english church is 10 miles from us so i have never been to one since i left Bratton this is a good country for labouring men they get half a doler day in the winter and ther board and a doler in the summer and ther board all sorts of provisions is cheaper hear than in england clothing of all sorts is very dear all sorts of spirits is cheaper hear than at home horses is cheaper we can get a good cow for 20 dolers a doler is four shillings english Dear father i hope you do not blame mother for any thing on my account i should be very sorry if i know you did i have not wrote to Mrs knaps for when i came to New York i had scarce monney enough. to take me to preston but i will write to her after harvest i have not heard from unchel james nor richard yet but when you write pleased to send me their derictons and i will write to them please to answer this letter as quick as you can and tell me how you are geting on and what you are dowing and ware you do want for any thing or know and whare richard is staying with reeves or no and whare gorge and Philip is and ware ant betty is married to or not or ware she is staying give my kind love to all my brothers and tell my brother john i am sorry to hear he is so unkind to you if he canst help you it would be a comfort for him to come and see you if i could only see you it would be a comfort to me we are geting on better than we was the first year but i dont like this country as well as england everything is so diferant here from home. Mrs dolman is moved and live a mile from us Mrs Pepler lives 6 from us they are all well i thank my dear brother for writing to me Dear father and mother what you see amis please to pardon for since i had your letter i do not know what i have done i herd a long time ago you was moving from bratton i did not know whare so that is the reason i did not write we are both well and join in love and best wishess for your health and hapyness i hope theas few lines will find you well pleas to write as quick as you can i long for the time to come to hear from you again so no more at present from your affectonate daughter A S Dont let anyone know that you have had a letter because it might offend Mr Seagram so take great Care you Don’t

The letter has no envelope but is folded with the address written in the middle of the fold – Mrs J Stiles, Diltons Marsh, Near Westbury, Wiltshire, England. The postmark is ‘New York AUG 7th’ and there is a stamp ‘LIVERPOOL SHIP LETTER’.

23 The Emm connection is as yet still a mystery. Our first thought was that some member of the Emm family had helped the young couple before they escaped from Bratton. The letter mentions Philip Stiles, Amelia’s brother. In the 1841 Census there was a Philip Stiles working for Mary Emm at Emms Farm and living-in. His age is given as 15 but ages are rounded down in the 1841 Census. She perhaps gave him a home. Another possibility is that some Emms emigrated to America at the same time as the young couple. It is interesting that there is a mention of Mrs Pepler – Peplar also spelled Pepler was a well- known name in Bratton at that time. The weakly baby that Amelia mentions must be the elder son, Joseph Emm Seagram, born in 1841. He would have been at an age to receive that legacy under his father’s will when, as reported in the history of the company, he married and bought his way into the firm that was later to bear his name. I shall continue to try and find the link. I could look at the Liverpool passenger lists, for instance.

Footnote: I am grateful to Alison Maddock of Bratton for the following information. Squire Seagram had in fact died over two years before Octavius, so stories of his turning a deaf ear to Amelia’s entreaties must be taken with a pinch of salt! The family and executors, though horrified by the marriage, did interest themselves in the boys’ education and authorised some financial support. John and Mary Stiles, Amelia’s parents, next appear in Chalford, near Westbury Leigh. Mary died in 1844 and in 1851 John was in prison in Devizes for felony. A Philip Stiles, probably ours, was a beer seller at ‘The Martin’s Nest’ in Chalford in 1846, when he was fined for allowing after-hours drinking. No comment!

James (1)’s Daughter Jane

The youngest daughter of James and Mary Emm, born in 1809 and presumably living at Emms Farm at her father’s death, married a Robert Reeves two years later, in 1835. This was to be a most advantageous marriage though perhaps she did not realise it at the time. She was to be at the centre of the modernisation of Bratton: her husband and his brother were about to change radically the life and the appearance of the village. For more than a hundred years Bratton would bear the stamp of the Reeves family. Robert Reeves, born in 1810, was the son of Thomas Peplar Reeves. The Reeves and Peplar families had been blacksmiths in Bratton since the 1750s (following on from William Emm, mentioned above). Thomas Peplar Reeves took out a lease on Harts in the centre of the village where the Duke car park and the play area are now and this is where their business developed.

Dr Marjorie Reeves, the historian and member of the Bratton Reeves family, wrote an interesting book about Bratton, Sheep Bell and Ploughshare, published in 1978 by Moonraker Press. The early history of Bratton Ironworks is detailed there. The quotes that follow come from her book. Robert, with his younger brother John, seemed to have ‘seized the chance to branch out into wider business’. Of the two, Robert, who was actually a carpenter, was the main entrepreneur who developed the carpentry side and also started the foundry. ‘The foundry with its tall chimney, the whirring sawmill ... must have been something of an intrusion into the changeless pattern of a farming community.’ When

24 Thomas Peplar Reeves died in 1849 the inventory shows what a flourishing concern it had already become – it even had a steam engine and pump and had spread along the main road where the ‘upper yard’ and the paint shop covered the area which is now grass behind the bus stop. As Dr Reeves says, the brothers had caught the moment when … … farmers were just awakening to the possibility of a wide range of implements. Thus a ripe local market seems to have been the start of their good fortune and on this rising tide they were carried forward into national and international trade. Important in this growth was the factor of personality: the drive and inventiveness of Robert Reeves.

He probably had little education: ‘it does not seem that the family bothered much about this’. Robert is likely to have had only a grounding in the three Rs. Be that as it may, medals were won at shows and exhibitions. The final accolade came around 1864 when the billheads bear the legend ‘Patronised by his late Royal Highness the Prince Consort’.

The Reeves were builders among their other activities. Robert Reeves built cottages and rebuilt the original part of the Jubilee Hall with material from the old Infants School. (The old Jubilee Hall built for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee has just recently been doubled in size to honour the 50th Jubilee of Elizabeth II.) The carpenters’ shop at the foundry made the coffins for the village and among the many apprentices trained there were to be offshoots of Jane’s Emm family.

The Reeves family were staunch members of the Baptist Church – another Baptist connection. In Dr Reeves’ book there is a picture of a group of worthies at the opening of the Cheverell Baptist Chapel. It includes Henry Reeves, a son of Jane and Robert, and when I first saw it I thought it was my grandfather, Henry John Emm. At that time I did not know of the family connections. The likeness is not surprising when you consider that Henry Reeves was Henry John’s first cousin once removed. Another of Jane’s sons built the house that is the favourite of my daughter – ‘The Wilderness’. Henry lived at ‘The Butts’ close by. I don’t know where Robert and Jane lived.

The amusing adventures of the local fire engine, horse-drawn and hand-manipulated, which was housed in a corner of the Works, are recounted in the book. It is now, would you believe, in a museum in Canada – nothing to do, apparently, with the Seagrams.

The Ironworks provided employment and dominated the centre of the village well into the 20th century. I can remember it clearly from the days I visited Bratton as a young girl. It was finally demolished in 1973 and Bratton returned to the calm of the early 1800s as if it had never been.

So much for Jane Emm. I was surprised when I discovered the connection with the Reeves. I had never heard any mention of it in the family.

25 To return to the Emm family: I think it is correct to say that the period of the late 1830s and early 1840s marked the height of the prosperity of the Bratton Emms. They held four substantial farms in the district. Uncle Joseph and his sister Mary held Reeves Farm, as Whites was later called; Mary, James’ widow, held Emms Farm; Benjamin and Jane were at Horsecroft Farm, and the Calloways were at Capps Lane. Emms also held grazing and arable all over the place and the Lower Road cottages and land were owned by various members of the family. And they were prolific: Benjamin and Jane had eight children, Joseph and Rosanna had four. The 1841 census gives us an overall picture: Uncle Joseph described as a farmer aged 62, has sister Mary, still going strong at 76 living with him. Mary Emm at Emms Farm, described as a ‘gardiner’, has her daughter Martha, obviously still unmarried, living with her, and there was also Philip Stiles, described as a servant (a farm labourer?). All these lived south of the ‘Turn Pike Road’, the main road running through the village. Benjamin and Jane lived north of the turnpike road at Horsecroft Farm, as did young Joseph and Rosanna, probably in Lower Road. The fact that young Joseph is described as a farm labourer seems to bear out my suggestion that Uncle Joseph was the main tenant of Capps Lane Farm. Jane née Emm lived somewhere south of the main road with children, Ellen, Henry and Anna. There is a servant, Ann Nash, in the house, so they are beginning to do well.

The Family of Benjamin (3)

Mini Tree (5)

BENJAMIN (3) 1799–1845, married 1820, Jane Fatt 1797–1875

Sarah James Grace Eliza George Martha Alfred Joseph

Married Married Married Married Married Married

Elizabeth William Mary George ? ? Nichols Flooks Prior Flower

On 18 October 1841 an apprenticeship deed was signed to bind George Emm, second son of Ben (3) of Horsecroft Farm, as an apprentice to a Westbury saddler, John Chapman. It was this document, given to me by my father, that first inspired me to take an interest in the Emms of Bratton. At the age of ‘almost 14 years’ George ‘of his own free will and accord and with the consent of his said Father put himself Apprentice to John Chapman’ for

26 five years. The terms and conditions are illuminating: one wonders what the average 13- year-old would think of them now! George, the said Apprentice … … his Master faithfully shall serve his secrets keep his lawful commands everywhere gladly do he shall do no damage to his said Master nor see to be done of others but to his Power shall tell or forthwith give warning to his said Master of the same he shall not waste the Goods of his said Master or lend them unlawfully to any he shall not commit fornication nor contract Matrimony within the said Term he shall not play at Cards or Dice Tables or any other unlawful Games whereby his said Master may have any loss with his own goods or other during the said Term without Licence of his said Master he shall neither buy nor sell he shall not haunt Taverns or Playhouses nor absent himself from his said Master’s service day or night unlawfully.

Benjamin, George’s father, paid John Chapman £10 at the signing and promised to pay a further £10 two-and-a-half years later. In return John Chapman ‘by the best means that he can shall teach Instruct or cause to be taught and instructed the said Apprentice in the Art of a Saddler, Collar and Harness Maker’. He will pay him one shilling a week for the first year, two shillings a week for the second and so on until the fifth year. Benjamin undertook to keep George in food and clothing so it seems that George lived at home rather than with the saddler in Westbury.

The deed was drawn up and witnessed by the Justice of the Peace, Edward Frowde Seagram – we already know about him! 1841 is described as the ‘fifth year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lady, Queen Victoria’. The boy George would be a true Victorian: he was to die in 1901, the same year as his ‘Sovereign Lady’.

Both Benjamin and John Chapman signed not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of their ‘executors and administrators’. Reading the document with hindsight it is sad to note that Benjamin would be dead before his son finished his apprenticeship – his executors and administrators would indeed have to honour his commitment.

Another piece of written evidence tells us what happened next – a ‘Notice of a Farm Sale at Horsecroft Farm’ from the Devizes and Wilts Gazette of 16 February 1843. An auction sale is to take place on the premises on Tuesday 21 February 1843 at 11am of the ‘Valuable Farming Stock, the property of Mr Benjamin Emm who is about to quit the Farm’. The notice describes the exact whereabouts of the farm and points out that refreshments will be provided. Finally it emphasises again the value of the livestock: ‘Public Attention is respectfully directed to the above as meriting the particular notice of purchasers of stock’.

The detail makes interesting reading. Horsecroft Farm was obviously a substantial farm. There are 37 cows and heifers and ‘one capital bull, coming three years old (cross between the Hereford and short-horned breed)’, 35 sheep (Leicester and Southdown), one sow and pigs, two ‘useful’ draft horses and two cart colts ‘rising two years old’. The other listed possessions help to paint a picture of farm life at that time: wagons, field rollers, timber carriages, rick staddles, drags and harrows, harness, iron bound casks, corn shovels, etc.

27 There is a cider press and 200 gallons of cider! Dairy utensils include cheese presses and tubs, vats, milking pails, a butter churn, etc. Reading details of such items as ‘wether tegs’ (young sheep), a ‘barrener’ (barren cow) and ‘trendles’ (who knows?) is fascinating but the situation is a sad one. I knew that Benjamin (3) died in 1845 having given up the farm but until I discovered the farm sale notice I did not realise that he must have been ill for two years. He died at the age of only 46 on 31 March 1845, the cause of death being given as ‘Pneumonitis’.

I assume that the family left Horsecroft Farm after the sale – it seems going to live in Lower Road in one of the cottages standing there at the time. Of their eight children some had already gone out into the world; the eldest, Sarah, was already 25. In the 1851 census, eight years later, only two children were listed as living in Lower Road with widow Jane, now aged 54: George, aged 23, described as a saddler, and his younger brother Joseph, aged 15, a carpenter’s apprentice. Jane herself is described as a ‘grocer’. (In Kelly’s Directory for 1848 she is listed as a ‘tea and coffee dealer’.) So this is how she kept body and soul together. Her shop was often mentioned when I was a child and was still there well within living memory. We shall return to the story of the shop later.

Horsecroft Farm

28 Benjamin’s was not the only death in the family in the mid-1840s. Uncle Joseph died in 1844, aged 66, predeceasing his sister Mary who was 79 and thus reversing the expectations in their father’s will whereby Joseph would inherit from Mary. She died in 1846. A shadowy figure now emerges whom we will call James (2) – a person I had never heard of until quite a while after we had bought No 15. He was the eldest son of Benjamin (3) and therefore George’s elder brother, and set in motion events which would eventually let the Lower Road properties escape from the family. It is not surprising that I knew nothing of him since he went off to London – Bethnal Green of all places! What a change from Bratton! He trained as a carpenter, no doubt in the carpenter’s shop at Reeves Works and was still at home with Benjamin and Jane for the 1841 census. In 1846 he inherited from his great-aunt Mary her and Uncle Joseph’s share in the Lower Road property – land and one tenement. He was already ‘heir at law’ of the other tenement as eldest son after his father’s death (Ben (3) being the eldest son of James (1), James (1) being the eldest son of Ben (2) – phew!) So he owned all the property in Lower Road. We have records of the improvements he made. He put up two ‘tenements’, now Nos 13 and 11.

All this before he left for London. I’m not sure when James went to Bethnal Green – he does not figure in the Bratton census returns for 1851 but we find him in 1861, a boarder (spelt ‘border’) at the house of Samuel Moore, a beer retailer, 32 Marion Square, Bethnal Green (still to be found in the A-Z Guide despite the London blitz). In 1862 at the age of 40 he married Elizabeth Nichols at St John’s Church, Bethnal Green, giving as his address her brother’s house at 36 Marion Square. At this time he must have felt the need for some money, for he took out a mortgage on Lower Road. I have a copy of the mortgage deed which gives useful details. David White of Edington, Wilts, cordwainer, ‘well and truly lent’ to James Emm the sum of £114 on the surety of ‘one dwelling house and garden, 27 perches, now in the occupation of William Prior [No 15] and also all those 2 tenements or dwelling houses and garden now in the occupation of Jane Emm, the mother of the said James Emm and Elizabeth Newman [Nos 11 and 13], erected by the said James Emm and adjoining the said last tenement’. The deed then goes on to describe the inheritances by which James became owner of the properties – a very informative document. (Note for future reference the tenant William Prior.) In 1866 James was living at Low Leighton, Essex and on 29 September of that year he sold the Lower Road properties, but they still did not quite go out of the family. The mortgage to David White was still outstanding. The new owner was one George Flower, a sawyer aged 30, who on 28 July this same year had married Martha Ann Emm aged 32, the sister of James (2). She was at that time living with and helping her mother Jane in the shop. David White was a witness at their wedding so he must have been a friend of the family. James received £50, the excess in the value of the three cottages over the £114 still owing to David White. James (2) fades out of the picture after this date; he died in 1873 at Edmonton, aged 51. I think he cannot have kept in touch with his family or I would have heard of him.

We left George in 1851 living with his mother in Lower Road, now a qualified saddler aged 23. Living in No 15 (the cottage) was William Prior. Described as an agricultural labourer,

29 he had a daughter Mary aged 25. In 1852 George literally married the girl next door, at the Baptist Church in Bratton. After the birth of their first child they moved to Paulton, across the boundary into Somerset where George set up a saddlery business. Why Paulton? I think, first, there was a strong association between the Paulton and Bratton Baptist churches and, second, there were industrial links between the Bratton Foundry and the then busy coal mines in the Paulton area. Paulton was a thriving industrial village with not only mining and an iron foundry of its own but shoemaking activities also. Communications, earlier by canal and later by railway, were good. I think George saw a commercial opportunity and he prospered. My grandfather, Henry John Emm was born to George and Mary in Paulton in 1864. I wrote the history of his saddlery business for Radstock Museum Society’s journal Five Arches (Spring 1997 and Summer 2010 issues).

The Emm family must have attended a succession of funerals between 1844 and 1846: Uncle Joseph in 1844, his sisters Betty Calloway and spinster Mary in 1845 and 1846 respectively, and James’ widow Mary also in 1846. That was the end of the older generation but saddest of all must have been the funeral in 1845 of Benjamin (3), aged 46, a member of the younger generation.

In a short space of time the farming activities of the Emm family in Bratton had much diminished: with the death of Uncle Joseph it seems that Capps Lane was given up and the illness of Benjamin (3) caused the exodus from Horsecroft Farm.

Joseph Emm (2), Rosanna and Family

Mini Tree (6)

JOSEPH (2) 1803–1875, married 1823, Rosanna Giddings 1799–1872

Jane Giddings Mary Benjamin Thomas John Married Married Married Married Married William James Ann Susanna ? Green Holloway James Hillier

We last saw Joseph and Rosanna probably living in Lower Road, but with Joseph perhaps farming on one of the family farms. In the 1861 census he is described as a farmer occupying 4½ acres, but we don’t know where these were, and between census years it is difficult to be certain of dwelling places.

It is heartening to know that Joe and Rosanna’s firstborn, Jane Giddings/Emm, born in 1823 before marriage, seems to have been included in the Emm family circle. Thanks to

30 information from the will of James Giddings (her great-uncle) and further research by Alison Maddock, we know that she married a William Green in Westbury in 1848. Daughter Mary married James Holloway in Bratton in 1846. The eldest son Benjamin, whom we shall call Ben (4), married Ann James of Westbury in 1850. He worked at the foundry. Members of his family were the last real Emm inhabitants of Bratton in that they spent their lives there. We will talk about them later.

The youngest son John, who was born in 1832, moved to Somerset near Radstock but still maintained property/tenancy dealings in Bratton with the Giddings and Reeves families. Interestingly, he features in a tenancy deed with the Earl of Pembroke at Broadchalke – a link with the family’s past. He is named at the age of three (!) as the ‘last life’ on a property in Broadchalke, and from that we know that he died in 1909, since his death had to be ascertained to prove that the tenancy had expired. One of John’s descendants ran ‘Bernard Emm’s Danceband’ which I danced to in my youth in Somerset, and very good they were too!

Thomas, the middle son born in 1829, is of more immediate interest to me since he was my great- grandfather and lived on the property in Lower Road. We know from documentary evidence as well as family information that he built a cottage on part of that often-mentioned piece of land called Waggons. I believe he acquired that land via the will of his uncle, James Giddings – that name again! – who had bought part of Waggons from the heirs of James (1) and his widow Mary. However that may be, in about 1861 Thomas built what was always known as Myrtle Cottage there – now No 19 Lower Road – set back from the road close to the stream (Stradbrook). We know it was built on Waggons – it says so in the deeds. In the same year Thomas married Susanna Hillier from Sandy Lane, a village on the Bowood estate of the Marquis of Lansdowne near Calne. I have written about the Hilliers for Wiltshire Family History Society’s journal (‘Lydia’s Story’, April 1996); the name was given as a second Christian name to Thomas and Susanna’s son and to my father. Susanna Emm née Hillier According to Auntie Alice, my father’s sister and a mine of information, Susanna became a cook at Bratton House (those Seagrams again) which would explain how Thomas met her. Thomas was a carpenter, no doubt trained at the foundry. Again quoting Auntie Alice, he made a table for Bratton Church which was there for many years. I can see no sign of a table there now unless it is in the vestry. Myrtle Cottage is a neat doll’s house of a place,

31 lovingly cared for by its present owners. I don’t suppose Thomas built it brick by brick but he would almost certainly have done the original carpentry. There my grandmother Lydia was born in 1863 followed two years later by a son called Henry Hillier, known as Harry.

Then tragedy struck again – Thomas died in 1866 at the age of 37, leaving Susanna with the two very small children. It is sad to consider that in that little colony in Lower Road there were now two Emm widows: Jane, widow of Ben (3) and Susanna widow of Ben (3)’s nephew. Jane ran her baker’s shop. How did Susanna survive? She started a ‘laundry’ – though this may be a grander title than the business really merited. An extension was built onto the back of Myrtle Cottage towards the stream. It is still there. Did she use water from the stream, I wonder. According to Auntie Alice she employed girls from the village and ‘took in washing’. It sounds like a hard way to make a living. In addition, we know from census records that she had a lodger, the curate of Bratton Church.

Myrtle Cottage

32 Henry John and Lydia

Mini Tree (7)

GEORGE 1827–1901, married 1852, Mary Prior 1827–1866

James Thomas Sarah Jane 3 other children Henry John b.1853, Bratton b.1854, Paulton b.1864, Paulton

Mini Tree (8)

THOMAS 1829–1866, married 1861, Susanna Hillier,1824–1906

Lydia Henry Hillier b.1863, Bratton b.1865, Bratton

The young lives of Henry John at Paulton and Lydia in Bratton were both blighted by tragedy: Henry John’s mother Mary died of apoplexy at the age of 40 in 1866 when he was two: he was reportedly in her arms when she died. Lydia’s father, as we have already noted, died also in 1866 when she was three. Maybe even when they were children they felt they had something in common.

George, Henry John’s father, married again in 1867 – to Susan Sims of Paulton, aged 30, a very staunch member of the Baptist Church there. She does not get a very good press from members of the family for various reasons, as we shall see later, but however that may be, one can understand why George was anxious to remarry – he had six children to be looked after ranging from 11 to 2 years old. But the brief message on Mary’s tombstone in the Baptist Chapel Yard – ‘In Affectionate Memory of the wife of George Emm’ – no doubt hides volumes.

Meanwhile in Bratton around the same time other events were taking place in Lower Road. In 1865 Jane Emm (George the saddler’s mother, remember) handed over her business to daughter Martha: ‘This Is to Certify that I have this day given to my daughter Martha Ann Emm the whole of the fixtures in my little shop, together with the business, consisting of two flour bins, counter, drawers, scales and weights etc in consideration of her undertaking

33 to pay all debts due from me to the persons who were in the habit of serving me with goods. November the eighth 1865’. This is followed by ‘The Mark X of Jane Emm. Witness, David White.’ So Jane was not able to sign her name and yet she ran her business.

In 1866 Martha, aged 30, married George Flower as we have already noted, at the Baptist Church in Bratton. He was also aged 30, and was a ‘sawyer’. Since George Flower bought from James (2) his property in Lower Road (although still subject to mortgage to David White), we have the situation where George and Martha hold all the properties outlined in Ben (2)’s will, except for the land on which Myrtle Cottage was built. Myrtle Cottage belongs to widow Susanna. In 1867 Jane died, leaving all her belongings to her daughter Martha. (The Emm family does appear to have short ‘momentous’ periods when everything changes.)

Susanna, according to my grandmother Lydia, was a strict mother. When quite a small girl Lydia was set to mend the curate’s socks. If she interwove the wool too loosely her mother would cut out the darn and it had to be done again ‘… and of course the hole was bigger then!’, complained my grandmother. But Susanna did her best to set her children up in the world. Lydia in due course was to learn ‘ladies’ tailoring’ – much more upstage than ‘dressmaking’! – and the son Harry became a carpenter/cabinetmaker’s apprentice, not with Reeves this time, but with George Fenter of Manningtree, Essex, who married two of Susanna Hillier’s sisters (in succession, I might add, but that’s another story).

Friends of Susanna and her children at the time were the members of the Walter family. There were family connections too – we find instances of intermarriage between Emms and Walters. George Walter was bailiff on John Whitaker’s extensive holdings in Bratton. His daughter Annie was a particular friend of Lydia and continued to be so well into the 20th century. She was very musical and played the organ in Bratton Church for many years. (She played the organ in 1945 at the wedding of my sister Joan). She married Oliver Smith, of that Smith family who started Bratton Band. Because there were so many Smiths in Bratton she was always referred to in my family as ‘Annie Oliver’; very confusing: Walter, Smith, Oliver – how many surnames can you have?! Walter and Annie’s descendants have been prime movers, band-leaders etc in the Bratton Band ever since. Graham Smith, Oliver and Annie’s great-grandson, was a leading light in the Band until his sad early death. Annie’s Aunt Polly was a tailoress and young Lydia became her trainee. Later on (1880), Susanna remarried – to a George Smith. Whether he had a family connection with Oliver Smith, I don’t know. She left Bratton with her new husband and moved to the north of England. Lydia did not want to accompany her and went to live with the Walter family.

George Emm (saddler), though he lived in Paulton, did not forget the village of his youth: close contact remained with the family he left behind, particularly his mother Jane and then his sister Martha in Lower Road. So Henry John his son, as he grew up, was familiar with Bratton and all his relations there. Grandmother Jane’s shop was only two doors away from Myrtle Cottage, so it wasn’t surprising that pretty young Lydia, daughter of his father’s

34 cousin, caught his eye. The connection came closer when Lydia joined the tailoring establishment which Henry John’s sister Sarah Jane – always known as Sally – set up in Broadmead, Bristol. Henry John’s stepmother was furious. Why? Because Lydia’s family went to Church not Chapel. Henry John and Lydia were married at Bratton Church in January 1888. Stepmother Susan (who was always referred to by my grandfather as ‘the old dame’) had wanted Henry John to marry Lizzie Flooks, a staunch Baptist, of whom we shall hear more later. Henry John had of course been reared as a strict Baptist. Susan swore she would never have Lydia in her house – nor did she. The story of the newly- married pair travelling from Bratton through freezing weather in a pony and trap to Paulton is apocryphal in the family. Thankfully a kind neighbour had warmed their house and prepared a welcome meal for them. She remained a friend for life! Henry John went on to be a pillar of Paulton Church: churchwarden and singing in the choir with (I thought) a beautiful bass voice.

Lydia Emm

35

Henry John Emm

Sarah Jane Emm (Aunt Sally)

36 Harry, Lydia’s brother, worked as a carpenter, first in Warminster and then in London. He did not return to Bratton until he retired – to Myrtle Cottage, which he inherited. Susanna, widowed once more, eventually went to live at Paulton with Lydia where she died in 1906. I think she is buried at Bratton.

In the meantime my father, George Hillier Emm, had been born in Paulton in December 1888.

Lower Road was ‘Lovers’ Lane’ for our branch of the family: first my great-grandfather found his bride there at the house next door and then his son came back visiting and discovered Lydia on the doorstep, so to speak. No wonder I feel at home there!

The End of an Era?

At Lower Road in 1860 we left Martha Flower, née Emm, inheritor of her mother Jane’s shop, living with her husband George. George had bought the properties there from James (2) in 1866. In 1888 he cleared the outstanding mortgage of £114 with the executors of David White, who had died the year before. At some stage Vale Cottage was built next door to and adjoining Ben and Grace’s original cottage. Now No 17, it is a typical Victorian house, quite different from the other ‘tenements’.

George Flower died in 1901, leaving everything to Martha. Martha lived another three years, dying on 10 May 1904 – their tombstone is in the Baptist churchyard. At this point the property in Lower Road, which had come down from Ben (2) (with the exception of Myrtle Cottage added after his death), ceased to be owned by an Emm. Martha’s will, dated 1901, bequeaths ‘all my real and personal estate to my trustees upon trust for my nephew Frederick John Flukes and my niece Elizabeth Flukes’. The Flukes (or Flooks) were described by Auntie Alice as Martha’s ‘wards’. Looking into the Flooks family I have established that both relationships apply. A William Flooks was a witness at the marriage of George Emm (saddler) and Mary Prior in 1852. I have discovered that this William had married George and Martha’s sister Grace in 1847 at the Baptist Chapel in Westbury. William and Grace were the parents of Elizabeth born 1860 and Frederick born 1863, and of two other children. William and Grace both died in 1872 when Lizzie (as she was always called) was 12 and Fred was 9. Martha and George Flower looked after them: we find them in the 1881 census all living together in ‘Lower Bratton’. I wonder what happened to the other two orphans.

The property was mortgaged once more, by the Flukes in 1912, this time for £70. The mortgage deed is interesting since it gives a description of the property involved: one four-

37 roomed brick cottage and garden, rent £6 per annum (presumably No 17) and one thatched brick-built cottage and garden, rent £5-10s per annum. (No 15). Both of these are let. The remaining property is occupied by the owners: a brick-built dwelling ‘containing two sitting rooms, shop, four bedrooms and a landing, Bakehouse and Oven and garden. Gas is laid on. There are brick-built Stable and Pigstye [sic], brick-built Trap and Woodhouses and galvanised shed adjoining.’ This is the most detailed description we ever have of the properties at any period of time. Nos 13 and 11 were (it seems) one establishment at that time. It is interesting that when the mortgage deed was drawn up the tenant of No 17 was a ‘Mrs Emm’. She was in fact a ‘Miss’ – Miss Sarah Emm, ‘Aunt Sally’ the tailoress, now retired. The Flooks’ shop lasted well into living memory; my sister remembers it and Bratton people have mentioned it to me. ‘Lizzie’ died in 1926 and Fred sold the properties in 1929. The end of an era – almost: my husband and I bought No 15 in 1995, 200 years after it was built in 1795 – so an ‘Emm’ came back.

38 (Below and previous page) Early 20th-century postcards of Bratton

39 Ben (4) and Family

Mini Tree (9)

BENJAMIN (4) d.1892, married 1850, Ann James

George b.1850 Thomas (2) b.1854 Ben (5) b.1867 3 other children married married married Isabella Wynne Mary Jane Bailey Sadie Walter

Georgina Fred Florence Daisy Edward James Kate married married Adam Sloan Emily Maria Henderson

Andrew Emm Sloan Edward William

Roger married Lois

Looking back to Joe and Rosanna’s family – Mini Tree (6) – we see a son called Benjamin whom we shall call Ben (4), brother of Thomas and therefore Lydia’s uncle. He married Ann James in 1850 at Westbury Baptist Church (!). He stayed in Bratton and worked at the Foundry. He died in 1892. He and Ann had six children. Of Ellen born 1853, Roseanna born 1854 and John born 1859 I unfortunately know nothing. The other three siblings as shown on the tree were George born 1850, Thomas born 1854 (whom we had better call Thomas (2) to distinguish him from his uncle Thomas, Lydia’s father) and Benjamin, Ben (5), who came along considerably later in 1867.

In September 2006, Andrew Emm Sloan contacted the [email protected] website from Canada and furnished another piece of the Bratton Emm jigsaw. His grandfather, George, was the eldest son of Ben (4) and Ann. George left Bratton to join the First Battalion of the Royal Scots. He married Isabella Wynne in Edinburgh in 1876. Their daughter Georgina, one of five children – four girls and a boy – was Andrew’s mother. She married Adam Sloan in 1909 and Andrew, born in 1927, was the youngest of six children. She gave him the name ‘Emm’ as a second Christian name.

Andrew emigrated to Canada in 1955. In Sudbury, Ontario he married Gracie Teresa Kennedy, born in Ireland. It is interesting that in Ben (4)’s family we shall find Scottish, Irish and Welsh connections – not to mention Canadian.

40 Thomas (2) married Mary Jane Bailey in 1874 at Bratton Church – not at the Baptist Chapel – and had five children. (The Bratton Emms do seem to have been a little uncertain in their religious allegiances, but attitudes on the subject appear to have been more relaxed in Bratton than in Paulton – a good thing too!) Thomas’ younger brother, Ben (5), married Sally Walter, always known as Sadie, sister of Lydia’s great friend Annie Walter/Smith/ ‘Oliver’. I’m not sure when they married but it was almost certainly at Bratton Church since they are buried there. They had no children. At the turn of the 20th century he was captain of Bratton Cricket Team as mentioned in Dr Reeves’ book Sheep Bell and Ploughshare. I can just remember going to visit Uncle Ben and Auntie Sadie at their cottage, which is still there in Lower Road but at the opposite end to the other properties. As far as I know Ben (5) was the last in a long line of Benjamins in the Emm family.

Thanks to a letter I received in 1991 from Horseforth, Leeds, and to army records retrieved from The National Archives in 2007, I know the history of Edward James, the son of Thomas (2) and Mary Jane, who was born in 1879. He enlisted in the Wiltshire Regiment when he was aged 18 years 9 months. Described as an agricultural labourer, 5ft 7½in tall, with blue eyes, light brown hair and a scar on his knee, he was serving in India in 1899, transferred to the Reserve in 1905 at the end of his seven-year stint and was discharged in 1909. The letter from Leeds takes up the story. The writer was Mrs Lois Emm married to Edward James’ grandson. Edward James married Emily Maria Henderson in 1907 at Westbury Church and worked as a railwayman. (Westbury is still, of course, a busy railway junction.) In connection with his work they then moved to Aberdare, Glamorgan. Emily first had two children, Dorothy born (?) and Lois’ father-in-law Edward William born 1913, and then sadly she died at the birth of a son, Jack. From Bratton came sister Kate, born in 1885, to look after her brother’s family. She eventually married and stayed there. Edward James himself was killed by a steam engine at Aberdare in the 1940s – still working on the railway, though he must have been at least 61. There are male descendants still living in the area.

Back in Bratton there remained three other children of Thomas (2) and Mary Jane: Frederick born 1882, Florence (always known as Flossie) born 1887, and Daisy the youngest daughter. They were still in Bratton in the 1920s. My sister Joan remembers a very happy Christmas spent with them there. Flossie married a Snelgrove while Daisy married a Bratton farmer called Wareham and stayed on. I have two pictures of the other brother Frederick, known as Fred: in one he stands beside the Bratton Fire Engine, always housed at the Foundry where he worked, and in the other he is part of a group celebrating the hanging of a new bell in Bratton Church tower. I believe he was the last male Emm to have been born in Bratton and to have spent his life there. As far as I know he never married but I must find out more about him.

41 George Hillier and Elsie at Hitchfield, 1926–1929

Mini Tree (10)

HENRY JOHN (1864–1938), married 1888, LYDIA EMM (1863–1960)

George (Auntie) Frederick Winifred Harry Hillier Alice Thomas Married Hubert (Killed 1916) Arthur Stokes (Bratton)

Joan Nancy Thomas, David & John

Henry John, trained as a saddler by his father George, inherited the business in Paulton and he and Lydia did well. More children followed George Hillier: (Auntie) Alice born 1890, Frederick Thomas born 1893, Winifred born 1895 and Henry Hillier born 1903. George Hillier was sent to a boarding school, Sexey’s (!) School at Bruton, Somerset, and also trained to be a saddler. Alice married a farmer, Stephen Speed of Chewton Mendip. (To be properly equipped to be a farmer’s wife she went away to learn cheese- and butter- making.) Frederick Thomas was killed in 1916 on the Somme in the First World War. Winifred married a Bratton man, Arthur Stokes, son of Nelson Stokes, miller of Lower Road. Arthur was in fact Winifred’s ‘half-cousin’ since his mother Emily was Henry John’s half- sister, daughter of ‘the old dame’ (phew!). Auntie Alice, who loved Bratton all her life, remembered being sent there in charge of her young brother Harry for a spell in 1909 at the home of the Walter family when Lydia was unwell. While there she witnessed the exciting event of the demolition of the factory chimney on Cleeve Terrace in Stradbrook.

George Hillier was in the Royal Engineers from 1914 to 1919. When he came back he married Elsie Mary Flower, a teacher of Temple Cloud, Somerset. Strangely enough she had been at Sunnyhill School in Bruton when my father was there but they did not know each other then. George could not settle down in the saddler’s shop after the war. My sister Joan Mary was born in 1920 and two years later he decided to try his luck as a farmer at Hitchfield Farm in Bratton – a small farm on the edge of the village under the White Horse. Having had experience with motorised transport in the army he augmented his income by running a taxi service using Model T Fords. In fact he is listed as a ‘garage proprietor’ in a contemporary trade directory. My sister went to school in Bratton and I was born and christened there in 1926. It is interesting that Aunt Sally the dressmaker came to live in the cottage adjoining Hitchfield while George and Elsie were there. She attended the Baptist Chapel, taking Joan with her.

42 In 1929 farming conditions and the general economic depression made it more and more difficult to make a living. George’s experiment failed and we returned to Paulton – the decision no doubt being influenced by the fact that Elsie’s health was failing. Sadly, she died in Paulton in 1932; constant asthma attacks weakened her heart till she could survive no longer. My father, sister and I stayed in Paulton, living with Lydia and Henry John. So for our small family, apart from occasional visits, that seemed to be the end of our association with Bratton. At least we were there long enough for me to come into the world! Surprisingly, I can remember very well living there and Joan of course has many memories of that time.

Elsie Mary Emm née Flower

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Alice Emm (Auntie Alice)

44

Fords at Hitchfield Farm

Sapper G H Emm Royal Engineers (served 1914–1919)

45

Private F T Emm Killed 1916

46 Another one who came back: Henry Hillier Emm 1865–1948

Henry Hillier Emm

Henry Hillier Emm, son of Thomas and Susanna and therefore brother of Lydia, came back to Bratton when he retired, and lived at first at Myrtle Cottage which he had inherited from his mother. In the meantime his first wife Ellen Manship, with whom he had raised a family of four daughters and two sons, had died in 1924. It is interesting that Henry took advantage of his Wiltshire connections even when living in Fulham, London. He applied for financial assistance to ‘The Wiltshire Society’ in order to apprentice his elder son, Thomas Charles Hillier Emm, as an engineer to W Douglas & Sons Ltd in Putney in 1909. The Wiltshire Society was a charitable institution which had as its aim ‘the apprenticing of some poor Wiltshire children’, and its records report that Thomas was granted £50 to cover five years. It is sad that there were no longer kindly legacies in family wills to help the young ones on their way!

Henry remarried in 1928. This time he married an Emm (!) – Alice Mary Emm – born 1883, not to be confused with ‘Auntie Alice’. Where did this Alice come from? She was descended from Ben (3) and Jane – see Mini Tree (5). Ben and Jane had more children besides George the saddler. One son, Alfred born 1835, farmed Church Farm at Westbury and had the distinction of being struck by lightning in his fields. Alfred’s son Charles lived in Bath and had three daughters: first Bessie, who became a schoolteacher in Shepton Mallet, second

47 Alice Mary, and third Annie, who kept house for her sister Bessie. When Bessie died Annie joined Henry and Alice in Bratton. Henry must have made good. While still owning Myrtle Cottage he bought Court Farm House in Court Lane, and its deeds – kindly shown to me by the present owner, Richard Sneyd – reveal that he indulged in quite a few property deals in Bratton. This, I suspect, must have given him considerable satisfaction.

He died in 1948 and Myrtle Cottage passed out of the family. When I came back to Bratton in 1995 people would still talk to me about the last Mrs Emm, who died in 1962 (Alice Mary). I don’t know when Annie died. It is strange that the last two Emms who were ‘proper’ residents in Bratton should be two sisters: a Miss Emm living with a Mrs Emm.

Epilogue

In 1995 my husband and I were taken with the idea of buying somewhere in England where we could sometimes escape from the sprawl of the South-east. I had already over the years started investigating the background of the 1842 apprenticeship deed so was more and more interested in Bratton. We were on a weekend trip to Devon and decided to divert to Bratton to look at the cottage I had been reading about – ‘Ben and Grace’s cottage’. Imagine our astonishment to discover a For Sale board in the garden! Disaster though – it was at that very hour being sold by auction in Bristol! We continued on our journey, frustrated. However, on our return we rang the estate agents to discover that the auction reserve price had not been reached. It was meant to be; we bought the cottage exactly 200 years from when it was built.

So another Emm has come back near to her ancestors. My husband has joined them in the churchyard and there I shall be in due time. Very fitting!

Apologies: I fear there may still be inaccuracies in this account. Without the invaluable help of Alison Maddock there would have been many more!

Fascinating details of these bygone families keep emerging, but think of the many stories that we shall never hear!

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