XXXVII Chestnut Cottage

Page 127	London	Fanny	27	daughter
	Herbert	Sydney	14	relative
	Barfield
	Whiteman	(F)	74	mother

Fanny London, a young unmarried woman, lived here with her widowed aunt Amy Whiteman and a 14-year-old boarder, Sidney Barfield. (This name tallies with that in the 1861 census - why he appears as Sidney Herbert is a mystery).

It appears that Fanny’s mother Eliza (born in 1810) was an unmarried schoolmistress, the daughter of Robert London and Elizabeth (née Waterman). Fanny was born in Chelsworth in 1847 when her mother was 37. Eliza died in 1862.

Amy Whiteman was Eliza London’s sister and the widow of shoemaker William Whiteman or Wightman (1783-1859) whom she married in 1839 when she was 42. It was his second marriage, following the death of his first wife Sarah (née Griggs) in 1838 after 25 years of marriage. He owned and lived in Tudor Cottage in the 1830s, having inherited it from his mother Sarah. In his will, he made provision for the cottage to be sold, the proceeds to be invested in the Cosford Union Savings Bank and twenty pounds a year to be paid to his widow Amy.

Fanny was described as a seamstress, and her mother Eliza was a dressmaker before she became a school mistress; these would have been conventional employments for single women in those days.

Fanny did get married in due course, in 1877. Her husband was George Brown, son of Phoebe and Thomas of "Days". However, she died just two years later in Bildeston.

This was a family with rather complicated relationships and we cannot tell who Sidney Barfield-or-Herbert was - only that he was related to Fanny London. Property in this area was owned by a William Barfield in the 1830s and it may be that his son married a daughter of Robert London before moving to London, where Sidney was born.

Page 129	Bruce	(F)	72
		William	23	relative

Jane Bruce (1799-1881) was the widow of maltster William Bruce - born in Aldham in 1796 - who had died in 1863. Her son William, who married Ellen Gage, lived at Waterfall View but here, opposite the maltings, was the natural place to be.

Jane Bruce was Jane Farthing, and married William in Aldham in 1818. She was supposedly born in Chelsworth but as in some other instances there is no plausible evidence of this.

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