On October 18th the Heritage Hub team were joined by their partners on this part of the project, the Essex Society for Family History and brilliantly entertained and educated by the Company of Merrie Folke.
Visitors met four characters from the past who shone a light on the changing practices around death and burial over the centuries. Cecilie Sandys, whose prestigious Elizabethan monument still remains on the north wall of the chancel, told us of her challenging life as a wife and mother during this turbulent time in British history. Cecilie lived out her remaining years at Edwins Hall and her scrivener Marjory read excerpts from her will setting out her various bequests to family, servants and the wider parish. When Cecillie died in 1611 she left a huge estate accumulated by her husband Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York which would be equivalent to approximately £10 million today.
The audience were then invited to join Charlie Hawkins, a Victorian gravedigger in the churchyard to find out about his work and the standard practices of the day. The pupils of St. Mary’s Church of England Primary School in Woodham Ferrers were fascinated by the safety coffin Charlie was using.
Taphophobia or fear of being buried alive was a common Victorian phobia as a result of being incorrectly pronounced dead. This fear was not entirely irrational as before the era of modern medicine there were many incidences of people being accidentally buried alive! Charlie explained that for those who could afford it a safety coffin was constructed over the new grave. A rope was attached to a bell for unfortunates to signal their fate and people were set to watch on the “grave yard shift” in case the bell rang! Charlie told us that is where the expressions “saved by the bell” and “dead ringer” come from.
Thank you to Andy Wallace and his team for providing a very realistic grave!
Following an intense question and answer session with Charlie, the crowd moved on to meet Millie of 1924. Millie was there to recall a name on our war memorial Basil Plumptre. She talked about how the dead were honoured and what happened when Basil died. All the names on our war memorial are featured on this website and this was another opportunity to know more of the person behind the name recorded.
Visitors were then invited to view the exhibition boards on our Graveyard Mapping project and take a look at the new digital interactive map of the churchyard enabling researchers to locate a grave by name or date and see the accompanying burial registers. At this point some visitors had brought additional facts about those buried in the churchyard which need adding to the records. The Heritage Hub are looking for people who would be willing to assist with updating information as it comes in, adding photographs and possibly undertaking further research. It requires some computer skills and a couple of hours a week. Please email us via the website to find out more. St. Mary’s is the first church in Essex to use digital mapping software allowing free access to the family histories contained within it’s churchyard. This is an incredibly valuable resource where we can preserve our community history before it is forgotten.
Roy Bradnam was there to introduce his Recording Reminiscences project which will be available on our Heritage Hub website. Roy has been meeting long standing members of the local community to harvest their recollections over the decades. These anecdotes have been recorded and together with any relevant photographs and newspaper cuttings will be an oral history of our local community. You can currently listen to soundbites of the recordings.
Our joint project partners the Essex Society for Family History (ESFH) are currently celebrating their 50 Year Anniversary. Colleen Devenish and Tanya Sewell were on hand to meet lots of enthusiastic family historians. Andrea Hewitt of ESFH said of the project, “We are delighted to join forces with St Mary’s on this exciting opportunity to engage the general public with family history in a fresh and accessible way. As St Mary’s is the first church in Essex to make such information freely available, we hope that the project will pave the way for other churches across the county as they investigate their own burial sites and the many fascinating stories waiting to be discovered.” In the late 20th century ESFH generated maps and records for every church in Essex and without this original work many of the inscriptions would have since been lost forever.