"If you go to All Cannings, you will find Esau's grave."

So said my great-grandmother to her Grand-daughter.

Throughout my childhood my mother often spoke of the times when her grandmother Collett, would talk to her about the history of her Wiltshire family, her father being a well-to-do shoemaker "of fancy shoes" with a shop near the church in Melksham. Everest brought up her younger siblings after her mother had died, and eventually went to London to follow a nursing career. In 1868, when she was in her thirties, she met and married George Durnford, a young widower who was also working in London. George may have been known to her from the time of their youth, for he too was from Wiltshire, the eldest of a large family from All Cannings.

Esau, George's father, was my great-great-grandfather. His name was always a source of fascination for me, and although I knew nothing of him, I felt that in a strange way I could imagine him, and indeed almost knew him.

It was not until many years later that I decided to find out more about this intriguing keyhole glimpse of my family. After doing some research about the family, I decided to visit the gravestone, and so made my first visit to All Cannings. What I found was a beautiful atmospheric village, still isolated in fine countryside, and even now, in part, comparatively unspoilt and as it must always have been. But where was Esau's gravestone? After a hunt around the churchyard we found it, still quite clearly engraved and in a prominent position beside the church:

Also of Anna, his wife, who died 17th August 1877 aged 71'

During the years since that first visit, I have pieced together the story of Esau and Anna.

Esau was a twin son of Thomas Durnford and his wife, Sarah Maslen. The names Maslen and Durnford may be traced back to the first parish records of the village. The Durnford family was in earlier times described as land owning "yeomen", but by the time of Esau's birth the family fortunes were reduced, and Thomas was an agricultural labourer, as became his son Esau. However by 1845 Esau was in service at the Rectory, working for Rev. Thomas Methuen; (the eminent and long serving Rector of All Cannings), being described variously as stableman, groom or domestic coachman, a post he held until the end of his life.

   On Friday 7th June, 1832, Esau married Anna Woodroff at All Cannings Church. She was probably the daughter of Stephen and Dorothy Woodroff and was actually baptised Susannnah, on 29th June 1800, being the youngest of three daughters. Anna could have received little education had it not been for Methuen. She was twelve by the time the village school opened in 1818, and as the children left when they were ten or twelve she could not have been educated at school. It seems likely that Methuen started the original school, however in 1833 he built a new school on land given by Lord Ashburton who owned village.

 When she was old enough and until her marriage, Anna (as well as Esau) was in service at the Rectory , but left at the time of her marriage when Methuen presented her with a Bible in which he wrote:

June 7^th 1832. Thos Ant’y Methuen

The couple had eight children from 1833 –1849, George, Anna, Charles, Henry, Thomas, Joseph, William and Edward.

By 1851, and after Anna had completed her family, she had returned to work. Not this time into service, but as the village schoolmistress, leaving her teenage daughter "employed at home". It is most likely that Methuen, with his commitment to education, had tutored Anna for this post during the time she was working for him as a servant before her marriage. In 1851 the family lived at "the school" (possibly the old house next to the school), but it seems probable that for most of their married life they lived at The Rectory coachman’s cottage which still stands in the lane beside The Rectory.

The Post Office Directory of 1855 tells that "Mrs. Ann Denford" (clerical error here!) was at the time mistress of  "The Free School", and she possibly held that position until 186I when her daughter-in-law, (wife of Charles) and her father, Charles Laamb, took over.

Anna quite obviously influenced her own children's education as well.  Her eldest son George eventually inherited Methuen's bible. In it he has written:

"George Durnford. Left to him by the dear Mother who taught him to read it, and by the Grace of God to love it" ;

George left the village as a very young man, and eventually became butler to various members of the nobility, including General Sir Redvers Buller and Lord Stafford, and travelled widely with them. Most of her other sons also left the village in order to further their careers, one of her grandsons becoming butler to the Duke of Devonshire in the early years of this century

.    Suddenly, on Friday I9th April, 186I at the premature age of 58, Esau died:

Wiltshire Gazette , 25^th April 1861

An unusually graphic piece of Victorian writing!

One can speculate that these may be the words of Thomas Methuen, and that the expensive York stone memorial in such a significant and well chosen place in the churchyard shows Methuen's influence - if not financial contribution.  The site chosen for Esau's burial was beside the path leading from the church door to the school.

By the time Esau died he and Anna had moved into a "private house" in All Cannings Street, with the four youngest boys, Edward aged 12, being still at school. After Esau's death Anna retired from school teaching.

Amongst George's collection of photographs is one of a stone pantiled cottage from those times, which may be of their house (which I think no longer exists today). There are also two photographs of Anna which show a dark haired woman in her 50's wearing a crinoline, holding a book.  In one of these she sits beside a pleasant looking younger woman, presumably her daughter, who stands next to her rather protectively.

Anna died of apoplexy at the home of her daughter in Union Street, Melksham, on 17th April, 1877, aged 71, and was brought back to All Cannings to be buried with her husband in the grave beside the path along which they must so often have walked.

Young Anna eventually moved to London to take on a job as a cook in a fine house in Upper Berkeley Street in order to live near her brothers - George the butler, William the barrister, Tom the prosperous builder, and Harry (Henry) the business man, all of whom had benefited so much from the education that their mother had been able to give them due to the influence of Thomas Methuen, an influence which has carried on in our family, and doubtless in many other All Cannings families even today.

Not having visited the village for some time, I returned about eighteen months ago only to find that the inscription on the gravestone had become corroded and almost unreadable. So that future generations of our family can enjoy the story of Esau and Anna at All Cannings as I have done, and find the stone in good readable condition, I decided to have it restored. This work is finished now, and with the treatment that it has been given should last in its present condition for a very long time.

   ***** 

I hope you too have enjoyed this story - a story of the evolution of a country family at a time when Victorian society was beginning to leave the villages and for economic reasons become increasingly centred upon the towns and cities. Perhaps you may ponder upon how many other stories there may be hidden amongst those well weathered gravestones. Perhaps you might even know some of the stories that the stones could tell .....

What I have written is a short summary of all the information I have. If you who live in the village, and may have roots in All Cannings too, have any connection with or special interest in what have written, I should be delighted to hear from you.

Heather Everest Fawcett.

31.05.99