My Woodbury Family History

My own formative years were spent in the seaside town of Exmouth in south-east Devon. Going to the main school there, a small bus load of children, including one of my best friends, travelled in every day, through the woodland, from the nearby village of Woodbury. Researching my family, I discovered I myself had familial links to the village.

My great grandmother Violet Grace Sandford (nee Mutters) (1894 - 1953), the beloved mother of my maternal grandfather, who sadly passed away whilst he, then only twenty, was completing his national service in the middle east; this once doting mother to three mischievous little boys, it turns out was born and grew up in the same village as my schoolfriend. A young Violet and her surviving siblings - Lily, Charlie and Willie - one hundred years earlier, even attended the same village primary school as my friend had.

Photograph of Woodbury Primary School, c 1900. Violet and her siblings attended the school in the 1890s and early 1900s. May they be amongst this group of Woodbury schoolchildren?

Around the turn of the last century, one would have found the Mutters family living on Globe Hill in Woodbury. There they are recorded on the 1901 and 1911 censuses; and it seems, according to electoral registers, that they lived there till Violet's mother (my great great grandmother) Emma's death in 1924.

Photograph of Globe Hill, Woodbury, 1904

Photograph of Globe Hill, Woodbury, 1914

Violet's parents and younger brother Willie, who passed away aged only eleven, are buried in Woodbury's churchyard (St Swithun's). The Woodbury History Society lists their plots: Violet's parents, George and Emma, are buried together at A331, and Willie is buried at A457. These plots are helpfully marked on their map of the churchyard. One day I should visit their graves.

Whilst Violet's mother Emma was originally from Exeter, her father, my great great grandfather George Mutters (1865 - 1918), though born in nearby Exton, was baptised, as were all his siblings, at the church in their own father's native Woodbury; and the family moved back to Woodbury when he was a very young boy. As a young man, George moved briefly to Exeter, where he met and married his wife Emma; they moved around a little, before returning to settle in Woodbury, where they brought up their surviving children.

George's father, my great x3 grandfather George Mutters (1825 - 1896), apart from living for a short while in nearby Exton, was born and lived most of his life in Woodbury. As a teenager in the 1840's, he worked as a servant for the Ashford family at Venmore Farm, as did his future wife Anna Maria Havill.

Photograph of (Higher) Venmore Farm, Woodbury

As well as an agricultural labourer, George went on to act as sexton, like his father John before him, at Woodbury Church.

Photographs of St Swithun's Church in Woodbury, c 1895, where George and his father John each acted as sexton in the 1800s.

In addition to being a religious man, it seems George was a keen gardener. Woodbury began an annual flower show in 1881, and in its first year, George won first prize for his spring-sown onions. In 1883, he won third prize for best cultivated cottage garden; and in 1884, he won joint third prize for best cultivated cottage garden.

Two of George and Anna Maria's children passed away as toddlers; poignantly, part of a sexton's duties included digging graves, meaning George likely dug the graves of little Elizabeth and William, and well as other family members. The death of little Elizabeth, one April morning in 1856, in their little labourer's cottage in Woodbury, was a most tragic accident. I will let you read of it...

From the Western Times of 3rd May 1856:

How traumatic her infant daughter's death must have been to Anna Maria. She's washing - such a normal domestic situation - and her attention is off her infant for but a moment, but in that moment, that life-changing moment, her daughter manages to pull the tub of boiling water over herself. Imagine the screams, the cries.

Another duty of George and John's as sexton was to keep order in the church during service. One Sunday in January 1863, this appeared a struggle for George, as young lads were laughing and chatting, disturbing the service and greatly annoying the rector; indeed, so much so that one lad, Sameual Lockyer, was later charged with indecent behaviour.

From the Western Times on 16th January 1863:

A decade later saw George himself in the dock, when he was accused of stealing the shawl of a Mrs Sarah Street, who had left the shawl at church. Though the shawl was later found at his home, George was found not guilty. George's wife Anna Maria claimed she had taken the shawl away to look after it until the owner could be found.

From the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette on the 15th May 1874:

From the Western Daily Mercury on 2nd July 1874:

The vicar at Woodbury, one Rev. Fulford, defended George's character, calling him "an honest man"; but thirty years earlier the word of Fulford was not so respected in Woodbury.

When Fulford came to Woodbury in 1846, he caused upset in the village as he preached the new Tractarianism (which later developed into Anglo-Catholicism) and not Church of England Protestantism.

In an incident reported in the Western Times of 22nd January 1848, George's father, my great x4 grandfather, John Mutters (1804 - 1862), then sexton, was described as "respectable", standing up to Fulford by refusing to hand over the church keys.

John was both carpenter and sexton. Poignantly again, as the village carpenter, he likely made the coffins of his parents and three children who died young, and well as digging their graves, in his role as sexton - that is till his son George took over the role.

Whilst the men were sexton-ing around Woodbury, the women were busy lace-making. George's wife, my great x3 grandmother Anna Maria Mutters (nee Havill) (1826 - 1897), though not born in Woodbury, spent most of her adult life in the village and died and was buried there; she and her adult daughters are recorded on censuses as lacemakers; as are the generation before them, John's wife, my great x4 grandmother Mary Mutters (nee Marks) (1797 - 1869) and her adult daughters.

Being a lacemaker was a common occupation for labouring women in east Devon till recent history. Lace-making required great skill and was often taught to girls from a young age, with the skill and knowledge being pasted down, as in this side of my family, from mother to daughter. One can picture them, in their little caps, sat on the front step on sunny days, or huddled around a single lamp indoors on dark evenings, craving the light to see their detailed work by; the older ladies supervising, the younger learning their craft, whilst those younger still play around, there not long ago in the front rooms and on the front steps of labourer's cottages in quiet, old Woodbury.

Whilst sexton John's parents were not native to Woodbury, his lace-making wife Mary's were. This far back one can no longer look to censuses, but is forced to rely on church records - records long scrawled in Woodbury Church by the famous Fulford's predecessors.

Mary's mother, my great x5 grandmother, Mary Marks (nee Pearse) (1767 - 1837) was baptised, married and buried in Woodbury - it seems she spent her whole life in the Devon village. Her parents, my great x6 grandparents, Henry Pearse and Grace Pearse (nee Westcombe), had married in Woodbury Church in 1763 and were both described as of the parish of Woodbury; however, I cannot find record of their own baptisms there.

Mary's father, my great x5 grandfather, Thomas Marks (1772 - 1845), agricultural labourer, and his siblings were also baptised in that same church. There too their parents, another set of my great x6 grandparents, William Marks (1734 - 1792 or 1806) and Elizabeth 'Betty' Marks (nee Howell) had married in 1758. Both parties were described as of the parish of Woodbury, and it appears likely William at least was baptised there in 1734, with his parents, my great x7 grandparents, John Marks and Joan Marks (nee Perryam/Perium/Periam) being married also in Woodbury Church in 1733.

A John Marks was baptised in Woodbury in 1705. His mother's name is not given, but his father was called William Marks. The baptism records of John Marks and his siblings in the late 1690's and early 1700's are the earliest records of the Marks family in Woodbury. However, John Marks' wife, my great x7 grandmother, Joan Perryam/Perium/Periam was also baptised in Woodbury in 1705. Being base, her father's name is not given, but her mother was called Elizabeth.

An Elizabeth Perryam/Perium/Periam was baptised in Woodbury in 1696 - too young to be Joan's mother, being about nine in 1705, if baptised soon after birth. However, there was definitely a Perryam family in Woodbury in the late 1600's, as church records prove. Indeed they seem to have been in Woodbury for generations before this.

There you are - I can trace this particular branch of my family tree all the way back to Woodbury in the late 1600's, if not before, with over two hundred years of my family's history taking place in that small Devon village. And to think, as a child, all I knew about Woodbury was that was where one of my friends lived.