XXII The House we call "Listers"

This building is an odd case - a substantial house but one of which there is virtually no documentary record apart from this survey. An old sale notice for the house was at one time exhibited in The Peacock, but it has now disappeared, no doubt in the course of the frequent changes of management in recent years. We call the building "Listers" after coal carter George Lister and his wife Martha (Fosker), who once lived in the house. Martha was the daughter of Clara and granddaughter of William and Sarah (Cutter) who lived in Weavers in the late 1800s.

In 1870, three sizeable families made their home here.

Page 83	Mann	William	28
		Sarah	27
		Louisa	21.10.61
		Alice	3.5.66
		Charles	19.11.67
		Emma	24.4.69
		Jane	5.6.62

William Mann and Sarah (née Willis) lived in the western end of the house. He was born in 1840 in Lindsey, the son of James and Sarah (née Hazell), and became a master shoemaker after working as a farm labourer.

Sarah Willis was born in Groton in 1842, and married William in about 1858. Of their ten children, born over twenty years, two were christened in Lindsey and the rest in Chelsworth. At least three died under the age of five.

Alice afterwards went into service at Mill House, Nedging.

Page 85	Farthing	James	50
		Sarah	47
		James	1.12.61
		Ernest	25.12.66

James Farthing was the brother of Joseph, who used to live at Waterfall View with their mother Grace. She was Grace Waterman of Hitcham (1787-1864), wife of James Farthing, who had died in 1841, leaving seven children.

James junior was a gardener and groom. He lived to the age of 95 and died at the outbreak of the Great War. His wife was Sarah Ann, from the large Keeble family of Monks Eleigh, and was born in 1823. They had six children and she lived to the age of 73.

James Farthing senior was from Hitcham, and in 1816 married Grace, the daughter of Francis Waterman and Grace (née Bennett), who were, prior to their marriage in 1777, the parents of John Bennett senior of Cakebridge Lane cottages.

Page 87	Harvey	Robert	43
		Rachel	39
		Maryanne	30.10.54
		George	9.5.61
		Frederick	29.3.65
		Henry	19.11.67

Rachel Barton was born in Chelsworth in 1830 and married Robert Harvey in 1852. They had nine children, including four who did not survive their first year of life. She died in the Union Workhouse in 1915.

Robert was a farm labourer, like his brother Jacob in Mouses, across from The Peacock, and uncle James at Rush Cottage. He was born in 1828, the son of Jacob Harvey (1808-1858) and Susanna (née Lister) - she in her turn being the daughter of Jemima and Thomas Lister, and the aunt of James in The White House - a really well-founded Chelsworth for them all ! Robert died in 1912.

Rachel Harvey was the daughter of George Barton and Eliza (née Shepherd), and so the cousin of James Barton in the other half of Mouses, and niece of Letitia in the bungalow on the common, John and Edward Barton. Her father had died in 1854 aged 51 and her mother Elizabeth (or Eliza) then married a widower from Semer called Henry Grimwood or Grimwade.

Henry and Elizabeth later emigrated to New Zealand with his youngest children Georgiana and Nathaniel, where they joined the families of Henry's married children Sarah Sadler, Letitia Scarf and Robert Barton, who had gone out severally in 1859, 1860 and 1862.

Frederick Harvey was described in the 1881 census as "machinist (general shop)". It would be interesting to know what that meant. He might have been the only Chelsworth man of this time to have finished up in a genuine 19^th century factory, except that he was still living at home in Chelsworth.

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