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HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHIES
Alberd, Reginald. The reeve of Westminster
Abbey's manor of Bourton and Moreton in the late 1290s, and one of Bourton's
leading inhabitants. By 1327 he was dead and his son Richard Alberd had his
holding.
Alfrith. The first named inhabitant of
Moreton. He was the Anglo-Saxon freeman who was the Abbot of Westminster's
tenant of half a hide at Moreton in 1066 and 1086 - the only Saxon in the
area who kept his holding under the Normans. He
was a radman, one of an Anglo-Saxon group who did riding service, perhaps as
messengers or escorts, perhaps as members of a force guarding the Welsh
frontier. Although he was free, he owed service to the Abbot of ploughing,
harrowing, mowing and reaping.
Allen, Jim was an undertaker, painter and
decorator in Moreton for many years. Born in the town, he joined his father
William in the family business in the 1930s after some years boat-building in
Cornwall, and later ran it until his death in June 1981 at the age of 68. He
was a notable sportsman, playing football, cricket and hockey for the town.
He was a member of the local Oddfellows, and served in the Home Guard in
WWII. He was also a member of the Moreton British Legion band. His wife Doris
died in 1976, but his son Peter still runs the family business.
Anney, George Christopher worked for the Great Western
Railway for some 45 years and was stationmaster at Bourton on the Water
before becoming stationmaster at Moreton in 1904 until his retirement in
August 1921. He was very popular locally, and in October 1921 he was
presented with a gold watch, a cheque and an illuminated album by a committee
of local residents. He was a member of Stow Lodge of Freemasons and of
Moreton Bowling Club. His wife Susannah died on 22 January 1924 aged 59, and he died at 66 of pleurisy on 6 January 1926. They had no children.
Archer, Thomas. Born in Moreton in 1641, on 8 January 1669-70 he married Sarah Huckin of Chastleton at Great Rollright. He was a
blacksmith in the High Street on part of what is now the Bell Inn (then
called the George), and owned both properties. He had seven children, the
eldest of which - Thomas, a gunsmith - pre-deceased him. He died on 27 April 1721. In his will of 6 October 1720 he left his working tools to his two
surviving sons, Walter and Charles, who became clockmakers in Stow, and his
properties to his spinster daughter Sarah, £20 to one son-in-law, Henry
Weston, but only 1 s to the other, D Beal, and £5 each to his grandsons by
his dead son Thomas.
Aston, Edward Ernest. Police Sergeant Aston was
sergeant in charge at Moreton from 1918 until his retirement in June 1929
after 36 years service. He was the son of Mr 8s Mrs A Aston, of Leysbourne,
Campden, and was educated at the National School, Campden. He entered the police force on 1 September 1893, and served as a constable in Cheltenham, Bishops Cleeve, Beckford, Cheltenham again, Lechlade and Gloucester before coming to Moreton. He married Miss Devereux of Kemerton, and
they had three daughters. On returning from his honeymoon he stopped two
runaway horses pulling an omnibus in Cheltenham. He also did good work in a
horse stealing case in Todenham in 1920. In Moreton he was a member of the
Four Shires Guild of Bell Ringers.
Baker, Reginald Langford (1836-1925). Born at Chepstow on 7 December 1836, Mr Baker came to Moreton in 1867 as manager of the Gloucestershire
Bank. He retired in 1908, by which time it had become the Capital and
Counties Bank (now Lloyds). He married Emma Marion Glutton Brock of Pensax
Court, Worcs. He was a member of the Rifle Volunteers, a churchwarden, and
chairman of the managers of the Council School. He died at his home, Sunnyside, in the High Street on 4 March 1925.
Barking, Richard of. He was prior of Westminster Abbey when he was elected its Abbot in
1222. He was King Henry III's favourite adviser, and the King made him his
special counsellor and the chief baron of the Exchequer. He enlarged the
Abbey's estates, increasing its income by £200 a year. He spent most of his
time at his manor house at Eye and even when at Westminster, mixed little with the monks, but in 1225 he settled a long-standing
dispute between monks and Abbot by dividing the Abbey's lands between them.
In 1226-1228 he built the new town of Moreton Henmarsh on its present site along
the Fosse Way, which he widened to make a long market place. The original hamlet
then became known as Old Town. He obtained several charters from Henry III, in 1226 for a weekly
market on Tuesdays, in 1228 one to make this permanent, and in 1241 a third
to hold the market on Saturdays instead of Tuesdays. He died in 1246,
assigning rents from his new town of Moreton to celebrate his anniversary by
the ringing of bells and chanting on the day following St Matthew's Day, with
wine and two good pittances for the monks and bread and ale with broth and a
dish of meat or fish for 100 paupers. He is buried in the Lady Chapel of the
Abbey.
Bloxam, Rev. Matthew.
Rector of Bourton on the Hill with Moreton in Marsh 17681784. He was an MA
of Pembroke College, Oxford, and
was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Worcester of 20 May 1733, and priest on 1 June 1735. In addition to being Rector
of Bourton, he was chaplain to the Earl of Coventry. In 1778 he was also
presented to the more valuable rectory of Barwell, Leics., and obtained a
dispensation to hold both. In 1784 he resigned the Bourton living.
Brain, William. A Moreton farmer who died in
the spring of 1593, leaving his property to his son John. His daughter Ann
got one land each of wheat, rye, pulses and barley, the heifer he bought at
Compton, the bullock he bred the previous year, four strikes of wheat and
rye, his third best pot, his second best bed cover and pair of sheets, and
his second best cauldron. Her two daughters and John's son William got a
sheep each.
Busby, Henry Goodear (1798-1867). The third and last Busby to own the biggest business in Moreton in the
C19. He inherited from his father in 1821, and erected a linen factory in Church Street in 1824 on land he had been allotted in the 1821 inclosure which
adjoined his house (now the Manor House Hotel). In the 1830s and `40s he also
had a draper's business and managed the local branch of the Stourbridge &
Kidderminster Bank. He was a director of both the Stratford and Moreton Railway Company and the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway, and in 1845 presented each of his OWWR
fellow directors with a linen table-cloth made at his factory. In 1851 the
factory employed 100 hands, and he also farmed 200 acres on which he employed
18 labourers. He was a churchman, and was a churchwarden from 1851 to 1865,
presented the pulpit now in the church in 1858, and, with his fellow
churchwarden, paid for the recasting of the treble bell and two others when
they were rehung in the new tower in 1862. He also gave the town the land for
the Nonconformists cemetery. His wife died in 1864 and he followed her on 10 April 1867. They are buried in the churchyard.
Nicholas Cartwright – The
Rector of Bourton on the Hill with Moreton in Marsh from 1617 to 1634. Born
in 1584 to an ordinary Worcestershire family, he matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford, on 11
June 1602, got his BA on 16 December 1605 and his MA on 25 June 1608. On 15 July 1617 he was presented to the
Bourton Hill living by the patron, Nicholas Overbury Esq., and was sworn and
instituted by the Chancellor. On the 15 November
1617
he compounded for the first-fruits of his benefice, his sureties being
Nicholas Overbury again and another gentleman of Bourton on the Hill, John
Gilbye. He survived a series of episcopal visitations without comment -
although he was sometimes referred to as Timothy' Cartwright - and disappears
from the Bourton on the Hill record in 1634 when he was 50.
Gerald Clifton (1903-1990)
– was born
in Shenington near Banbury, where his father George was a well-known stone
mason. He established a butcher's shop in Shenington and in 1932 bought
Price's butcher's shop in Moreton High Street. He was one of the leading
butchers in the town and twice president of the South Western Area Butchers
Association and a former chairman and director of Evesham Butchers. He joined
the special constabulary in 1938, rising to superintendent, and in 1967 was
awarded the BEM. He also had the War Service Medal and the Queen's Coronation
Medal. He was a former Town Councillor, Chairman of Governors of St David's
School, and a Governor of Campden Grammar School. He was twice married, his
son Martin becoming a doctor. He died on 28 December
1990,
aged 87.
Samuel Creswick (1622-1683)
– the
youngest son of Francis Creswick of Bristol, who had married Ann Nicholls
of Moreton. He inherited his father's property in Moreton, based on Lemington
House, in 1649. He married Hester Ash of Stowford, Wilts., and they had seven
children: Hester, born 21 March 1661, who married Richard Ingles of Stanton;
Henry, 30 May 1662, who married Anne Earle of Bradenbrook, Wilts.; Samuel, 8
November 1663; Ann, who died unmarried in 1757; Elizabeth, who married
Penyston Hastings of Daylesford; John, 30 December 1669, buried 20 February
1670; and Jonathan, 21 December 1670, buried 14 January 1672. Mrs Hester
Creswick died in 1682, and Samuel himself on 24
April 1683 at the age of 61. His will, made two days before he died, asked that
he be buried as near as possible to his wife in the chancel of St David's,
and left 40s to Moreton's poor and £10 to St David's, £200 to Elizabeth
Hastings on condition her husband let Henry Creswick off the marriage bond,
£800 to Richard Ingles as his daughter Hester's marriage portion, four full
length pictures to Elizabeth Hastings, and to Hester Ingles a silver tankard,
six silver spoons, and the red bed with its furniture and a quilt. Minor
bequests to servants and others included £50 to Hester Harper, 10s to Mathew
Norton, 40s to Mrs Ivor, 10s to John Owyn, and 20s for rings to his brothers
John and Joseph Creswick. The flat memorial stone in St David's bore his coat
of arms, a red lion rampant reguardant on a gold background.
John Crocker esquire – the owner of the first Batsford Park in the late C16 and early C17,
and the third and last of his family to possess the manor. He was the son of
the previous John Croker who had married Elizabeth Freeman of Batsford. He
married Joan Riddall of Riddall in Herefordshire, by whom he had a number of
children, not all of whom lived beyond infancy. His eldest surviving
daughter, Dorothy, baptised at Batsford on 30
April 1592, married John Hales of Coventry, while her sister Mary married
Sir Robert Pye and the youngest, Joan, Edward Goddard of Southampton. On 18
November 1619 John Crocker made a family settlement dividing his estate between his
three daughters. But when he died on 6 April 1630, only Lady Mary Pye had
survived him.
Mrs G M Dee (1895-1979)
– one of
the most popular residents in Moreton for nearly 50 years. She grew up at
Frampton Farm, Alderton, and was a Miss Slatter before her marriage to James
Carpenter Dee. They farmed at Shenberrow Farm, Stanton, and Hailstone Farm,
Blockley, before settling in Moreton. During the Great War she did VAD
nursing at Dumbleton Hall. During WWII and afterwards she worked in the box
office of the Playhouse Cinema, and provided a home-from-home at The Cottage,
Oxford Street, for airmen stationed at RAF Moreton and for many newcomers to
Moreton. She was a WI member and a keen bridge player, but was most widely
known as a bowls player, both at Moreton and Broadway, but also for
Worcestershire; she also took part in the national bowls championships at Wimbledon on several occasions. She and
her husband, who predeceased her, had two sons and four daughters, all of
whom survived her when she died at 84 in January 1979.
Robert Drury (1848-1924)
– was the
second son of William John Drury of Moreton. In the early 1870s he set up a
stationery shop at the old Post Office, north of the Redesdale Arms, which he
later rebuilt and modernised. He married Emma Peach of the town, in whose
memory he presented the oak screen in St David's. He was in the church choir
and a trustee of the local lodge of Oddfellows.
1st Lord Dulverton (1880-1956).
He was the second but eldest surviving son of Sir Frederick Wills, the lst
baronet, of North Moor, Somerset. He was an MA of Oxford
University, and in 1914 married Victoria May, daughter of Rear-Admiral
Sir Edward Chichester. He served as a Captain and Major in the Great War,
first with the Royal North Devon Hussars and then with the Machine Gun Corps
in Gallipoli and France. He was mentioned in dispatches and awarded a
military OBE. Before he came to Batsford he was Master of the Dulverton
Hounds. He was also a sculptor who had exhibited at the Royal Academy, a musician and a writer of
verse. He sat in the Commons as Conservative MP for Taunton 1912-1918 and as Coalition MP
for Weston-super-Mare 1918-1922. In 1921 he was PPS
to the Postmaster-General. He was President of the Moreton Cottage Hospital
1919-48, bought the Redesdale Hall for the town, and presented the town's
football field. He was awarded the TD and made a JP. In 1928 he was High Sheriff
of Gloucestershire. He was Chairman of the Imperial Tobacco Company 1924-1947
and then President until his death. He was also a director of the GWR. He was
raised to the peerage as Lord Dulverton of Batsford in 1929. He was always a
great benefactor to charitable causes, including Guy's Hospital in London, and the restoration of St
Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, and in 1949 set up the
Dulverton Charitable Trust, designed especially to aid youth and
conservation. In 1951 he presented the Redesdale Hall to the local authority.
He died in 1956, leaving his widow and three sons, the eldest of whom,
Frederick Anthony Hamilton Wills, born 1915, succeeded to the peerage.
George James Dyer (1894-1915)
– one of
the 44 men of Moreton and Batsford who fell in the 1914-1918 war, was the
fourth son of William and Emma Dyer of New Road, Moreton. His father had been
groom-gardener for Dr Yelf's family for 44 years when he died in January
1925. All six of William Dyer's sons fought in the Great War. George Dyer was
a regular soldier with the 2nd Worcesters in 1914, and landed in France on 12
August 1914. He went through the battle of Mons, but was wounded in October.
In May 1915 the 2nd Worcesters mounted two unsuccessful
attacks along the Richebourge Front against enemy positions that had not been
broken by artillery fire. In the second attack on 14 May the 2nd Worcesters lost 250 men. George Dyer was
first reported as missing, but in November 1915 it was confirmed that he had
been killed in the battle of Festubert on Sunday, 16
May 1915.
He was only 20 years of age. He is commemorated on Moreton's War Memorial and
on the Le Touret Memorial, Pas de Calais, France.
Herbert Hinton d'Este East (27.5.1851-20.5.1919)
of Bourton House died of heart failure in May 1919 aged 67. He had come to
Bourton House nearly forty years before on the death of his wife's uncle, Sir
James Buller East, but they had then lived for some years in the south of France for his wife's health before
returning in 1907. For nine years until March 1918 he represented Moreton on
the Gloucestershire County Council, and was a prominent member of the Board
of Guardians and Rural District Council. For ten years he had been chairman
of Bourton on the Hill Parish Council and of the local War Savings Committee,
which he had been instrumental in setting up. He was also a member of the
Campden War Pensions and Old Age Pensions Committee. He was one of the
longest supporters of the Moreton in Marsh Cricket Club and President of the
Moreton Bowling Club, and one of the trustees of the Moreton Cottage
Hospital. He was one of the managers of the Church Schools and a governor of Studley Agricultural College. He had travelled widely, and
had long been convinced of the reality of the German menace, and gave lantern
lectures in the neighbouring villages on the necessity of National Service
for all. He had always been very fond of children, and large numbers of them
attended his funeral in Bourton Hill church.
John Edgley (bu.
29.7.1661), a Moreton butcher in the mid-C17, married his wife Ann in the
1630s, and had two sons and six daughters, though two daughters died in
infancy. He lived and worked in a house in the High Street which enabled him
to graze cattle on Moreton Heath. He was a very pious man, and a great friend
of the most prominent Moreton citizen of that time, Samuel Creswick of
Lemington House. When he made his will a few weeks before his death in July
1661 he described Samuel Creswick as `his loving friend'. He left his house
to his wife Ann and then to his eldest son John. The second son then got £20
and each of the four surviving daughters £5. His will, to which he made his
mark, was proved on 14 October 1661.
Albert W Edmunds (1848-1933)
came to Moreton in 1913 as licensee of the Swan Inn, which he kept for
several years, and then took over the management of the Crown Inn until it
closed in 1921, when it was converted into the Curfew Garage. He retired to
Bournheath near Bromsgrove, where he died just short of his diamond wedding,
leaving a widow, a son and four daughters.
George Eldridge (1882-1923)
was married and had a wife, Mabel Alice, and worked for the GWR in their
carriage works at Oldbury before the Great War. He joined up in the first
month of the war, being drafted as a Private to the 1 st Battalion
of the Rifle Brigade. He arrived in France on 26
January 1915, and at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle he received severe wounds in the
back and leg. After a year in hospital he was discharged from the Army in
March 1916 as being no longer fit for war service. He received the 1914-15
Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. He then worked as a motor
mechanic, but developed tuberculosis, and died at his home in East Street on 30
November 1923, aged 41.
George H Ellis (1855-1928) was the eldest son
of George Ellis, a carpenter and upholsterer of Moreton, and lived and died
in the same house in Moreton from the age of 10. In 1908 he married Miss
English of Oxford, and until 1925 carried on the same
trades as his father. He took an active part in the formation of the local
Sick and Dividend Society, and for twenty-one years was its hon. treasurer
and secretary. He was also a member of the British Legion.
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