My associations with Calstone are through the Moore family and the Bowsher family. I used to visit my Bowsher grandparents in the 1930s when they had retired and were living at the cottage called Wayside at Blacklands crossroads.
The Moore family appear in many parish registers in the Calne area, particularly to the north, but the first member of the family to live in the Blacklands and Calstone area was John, born about 1760. He and his first wife, Rachel, must have lived in Blacklands because a daughter, also Rachel, was baptised at Calne in 1788 and buried at Blacklands in 1790, as was Rachel her mother in 1794.
John, their eldest son, married Sarah Batten by banns at Sutton Benger in 1807 and they had a son called William born in 1808. Another son, Isaac, was baptised at Calstone in 1820, but I have not traced any other children who may have been born between 1808 and 1820. Perhaps they moved elsewhere during those years. In 1823 a daughter, Sarah, was baptised at Calstone and buried at Blacklands in 1825, and then there was another girl in 1826, also named Sarah.
John’s occupation like that of his father was as a labourer, but when Isaac and the first Sarah were baptised the entry in the parish register said shepherd, although labourer when the second Sarah was baptised. William, the eldest son, was born at Compton Bassett, but baptised at Sutton Benger. It was often the custom for the first child to be baptised in the mother’s home parish church.
The 1841 census lists John as Ag.Lab., his wife Sarah as Shopkeeper, their son Isaac as Ag.Lab. and his sister Sarah has no given occupation. There are no clues as to the whereabouts of the shop or where they lived. William, the eldest, had gone to London by 1830 and married Elizabeth Hood, and their first child William Isaac was born in 1831. The daughter and granddaughter of William Isaac Moore visited Calstone from London and appear in a photograph taken outside the Reading Room and shop in about 1885.
At the time of the 1851 census Isaac, the son, is absent as is his mother, but Sarah, his sister, is listed as housekeeper, aged 25. By the time of the 1861 census their house is described as village shop, with John, now 73 shepherd, his wife, Sarah, also 73 and Sarah, the daughter, now a widow, aged 35, occupation grocer and with two children, Emily Bowsher, age seven and Frederick age six. John’s wife, Sarah, died in 1863 and was buried at Blacklands.
Sarah Moore married William Bowsher in Calne Parish Church on 3 January 1853. The marriage certificate showed William to be a bachelor, occupation sawyer and he made his mark, but Sarah signed the register. William’s family came from Kington Langley according to the 1851 census, but in 1861 their place of birth was given as Langley Burrell. However, by 1841 they were living in Chippenham. William’s father, John, was a sawyer. This John is my great grandfather and was one of ten children including three sets of twins. How accurate was the census enumerator? Four of the seven sons became sawyers; one daughter was variously described as silkmender/dressmaker and I imagine the others became labourers and domestic servants.
I have been unable to find William Bowsher’s baptism. Sarah and William’s first child was baptised on 19 July 1853 at Calstone and their son Frederick, born 7 February 1855 was also baptised at Calstone so possibly the family lived with Sarah’s parents from the time of her marriage. By Christmas 1860 William was dead. The death certificate shows he died on 23 December 1860 in the County Lunatic Asylum, Devizes of ‘paralysis p.m.certified’. Could this have been a stroke? He was 37 years old and ‘late of Chippenham a sawyer’.
Sarah was left with two children aged seven and almost six. They appear on the Calstone census from 1861 onwards. Frederick was a regular pupil at the Sunday School and received little booklets as a reward for having 20 tickets for regular attendance. He was presented with a Certificate of Merit Primary Examination or third class in 1868 by the Southern Counties… Education Society. In 1869 he was apprenticed to Thomas Gough (Builder) for a premium of £10; his wages to be a shilling a week, rising by a shilling a week until the seventh year when he reached and stayed at seven shillings a week until he was of age. He walked to and from Calne each day- a round trip of six miles. I have the original apprentice agreement and a few of Frederick’s tools, but his tool chest and most of the surviving tools are now owned by the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society.
In 1884 Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice gave the money to build a Reading Room at Calstone. There was a shop and house attached. Kelly’s Directory of 1885 for Wiltshire lists Mrs Sarah Bowsher as shopkeeper. She and her daughter, Emily, were also bakers. The North Wilts Church Magazine for 1st November 1884 reported there were daily and weekly papers, games and a free library in the new Reading Room. The inspiration for broadening the life of the villagers of Blacklands and Calstone came from the Rector of Calstone and his successors, with help from Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice and possibly from Lord Lansdowne who owned much of the village.
In 1888 the boundary was redrawn between the parishes of Calstone and Blacklands and Mrs Bowsher’s shop was then in Calstone parish. It is likely that by this time William Bowsher had been in business on his own account for some years as a builder and carpenter. The Calstone churchwardens accounts record payment on 3 April 1877 ‘Bowsher.Coals 6s and 3d’ and in 1879 payment to ‘F.Bowsher.of 3s.0 for roof skylight’. In 1880 Miss Bowsher was paid £4.0.0.for playing the harmonium and £1.5s for taking the choir. This appeared to be her annual salary from 1876 to 1880.
Emily Bowsher continued to help with musical activities in the church and to sing at social events, and to help her mother, Sarah, in the shop and bakery, and also to cater for special events. The North Wilts Church Magazine recorded innumerable occasions on which Mrs Bowsher provided tea for Sunday school treats and choir suppers. Probably the largest gathering was on 1 July 1887 when approximately 200 people sat down ‘to an excellent dinner arranged by Mrs Bowsher, in Mr Maundrell’s barn which had been most tastefully decorated for the occasion’. They were celebrating Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. The children had tea at 4.30 and afterwards there was a bonfire near the Monument on Cherhill Down.
Meanwhile Frederick had become secretary in 1884 of the Pig Insurance Club and continued to act as general builder and carpenter for the neighbourhood, including making coffins. According to my father he made the lych gate for Blacklands Church, dedicated on 1 August 1897, ‘the whole was executed by native talent and reflects very great credit on all those concerned’. He also made a prayer desk for Calstone Church and did general maintenance, including removing a hornet’s nest from the tower.
In 1896 his mother, Sarah Bowsher died aged 70 and was buried at Calstone. Frederick was then 41 and still a bachelor. Perhaps the circumstances of the family home, including the presence of his mother and sister had made it difficult to marry and have a home of his own. But on 18 September 1897 he married Jane Elizabeth Moore, aged 37, at St Gabriel’s, Pimlico. Jane’s brother Walter, a piano tuner, and her mother Jane were witnesses.
Jane, always known as Jenny was the daughter of William Isaac Moore, first cousin once removed to Frederick Bowsher, and although she had never lived in Wiltshire, she had probably met Frederick on and off over the years through other Moore cousins. Jenny had travelled with her employer on the continent and to Scotland and had led a very interesting life and I wonder if, at the age of 37, she felt this might be her last chance of marriage or perhaps she had been fond of Frederick for many years and could not face playing second fiddle in the same house as her mother in law.
Emily, Frederick’s sister continued to live with Jenny and Frederick. Their first child Walter John Bowsher, my father, was born 17 May 1898. The birth certificate gave occupation of father as ‘a master carpenter’. Another son Frank Frederick was born 24 August 1899 and a daughter, Kathleen, on 1 February 1901.
Emily, presumably, now ran the shop and Frederick who had resigned his post as overseer, was appointed sub-postmaster sometime between 1893 and 1896. He would have had daily duties and was required to put up a bond and established in the post around 1910.
At the Easter vestry meeting in 1908 Mr Bowsher was appointed Vicar’s Warden, a post he held again in 1911 and perhaps every year until he resigned in 1917. He was appointed a Manager of the school in 1899 and probably continued until 1917, but the minutes of the School Managers are very sketchy for some of this period. He also did repairs at the school from time to time.
Walter and Frank started school on the same day, 8 June 1903, when Walter was five and Frank was three years and 10 months old. Kathleen started school at four years old. The boys left Calstone School in April 1909 and went to the boy’s school on the Green in Calne. I cannot find any records for this school and I have no idea when they left or what they did before enlisting in the Wiltshire Regiment in the First World War.
The three children had an idyllic childhood, growing up in great freedom in the village under the Downs. They had a donkey, a pony and cart, poultry; they tobogganed down the hillsides on tin trays and collected birds’ eggs, once carrying a ladder up to the Wansdyke to take an egg from a raven’s nest in a Scots pine. This egg collection still survives in a private house in Wiltshire, but has not been registered.
Walter inherited a gift for playing the piano by ear, although he was given formal lessons. The North Wilts Church Magazine reported that in January 1909 there was a children’s entertainment at Calne and Walter Bowsher played a pianoforte selection and Kathleen Bowsher sang a solo called Pussy Cat Mole.
Kathleen went on to the Technical School in Calne in 1913. All three children are in the Calstone school photograph reproduced in the Millennium book. Their life long friends Willie and Cissie Lock, children of the Blacklands miller are also in the picture. Willie, as an old man told me, that Jenny, my grandmother, was always happy to leave her housewifely duties and persuade Frederick to go off on a jaunt with the children. Once they all went off in the trap up the Hollow probably through Bishop’s Cannings, Coate and Etchilhampton because they ended up at the pub at Lydeway.
My father recalled taking a horse to sell on behalf of his father at Tan Hill Fair and returning with the horse which hadn’t sold. They kept bees and would sometimes go over to see Mr Ruddle, the schoolmaster at Bishop’s Cannings who was also a beekeeper. My grandfather collected his timber from Honeystreet.
From the detailed reports of church and village affairs reported in the North Wilts Church Magazine I learned that my aunt, Kathleen Bowsher was confirmed in July 1915. But the First World War soon changed everything for the family. A meeting of the School Managers on 11 October 1916 minuted that ‘Mr Bowsher was asked to do the work ordered to be done last May’. This was the last meeting at which his name was mentioned. There is no letter of resignation and no note of any letter of thanks to him from the other managers. Had he by this time gone to Bristol to work, leaving his wife behind? Earlier in April of that same year the Rector had nominated him as his Warden. Emily, Frederick’s sister, died on 1 May 1916 and on 24 October 1916 the Post Office records show that at Calstone Wellington the Sub-Postmaster was insolvent. The Post Office closed in 1917. Perhaps there was a slump in the building trade and Frederick had difficulty in maintaining his bond.
Wright’s Bristol Directory for 1919 listed Frederick William Bowsher as living at 64 Greville Road, Bedminster and there he stayed until about 1925. My father and his brother Frank both returned safely from the war and I have a picture of Kathleen standing between two smiling young men in the garden of their house.
Sometime about 1921/2 my mother Sarah Mary Harris was on holiday in Torquay and my father also there on holiday met in trying to find the parents of a lost child. They married in November 1922 and lived in Bristol for two to three years before buying a small farm near Lacock. At more or less the same time my grandparents, Frederick and Jenny, moved back to Wiltshire buying a cottage, now called Wayside near the crossroads at Blacklands. They also bought the adjoining row of cottages, all like their own without bathrooms and indoor sanitation and with privies in the garden. I am not sure if there was a mains water supply, but I remember the shallow brown sink in the scullery and the range in the kitchen cum sitting room. A ditch ran along behind the cottages and this was foul smelling because all the waste was emptied here although possibly the contents of the bucket in the privy were buried.
My grandfather had a workshop at Wayside, but I doubt if he did any paid jobs because his sight was failing. My brother and I liked to creep into the workshop when he wasn’t looking and play with his tools. The move back to Blacklands may not have been welcome to my grandmother whose opportunities for going out and about were restricted by my grandfather’s increasing blindness. I remember the early years of my visits when Frederick still had a pony and trap and we would drive to Calne where he stabled the pony at the White Hart and my grandmother would buy bacon and pork at Harris’s and Chelsea buns at Maslens. When I was older we would walk to Calne and back again along the bridle path, My grandparents took me to Calstone Church and occasionally to Blacklands and I once won a fancy dress competition at the Church fete wearing a blue dress to represent the Madonna. It had been loaned to me by Mrs Matthews, the Rector’s wife. Occasionally my aunt Kathleen would be visiting her parents at the same time and then I would sleep in the little room over the porch. She was bookkeeper for a big firm of fruit importers, first in Southampton and then in Bristol.
My grandfather died in June 1937 and my grandmother sold Wayside and the row of cottages and went to live with my aunt, her daughter Kathleen, in Bristol. They were bombed out during the war and eventually bought a house in Greville Road, the road where my grandparents had lived during the First World War. My grandmother Jane Elizabeth Bowsher died in January 1949 and was buried in the same grave in Calstone churchyard as my grandfather, Frederick William Bowsher. My parents returned to Wiltshire to live at Etchilhampton in 1959 and we often visited Calstone and Blacklands walking along the Drove, and taking relatives and friends to see the two churches.
Dorothy Kathleen Robertson
Etchilhampton, Wiltshire
29th December 2002
Dorothy sadly died in 2017