NOTES ON ST. DAVID'S CHURCH, MUCH DEWCHURCH by Hubert Reade (1936)

Part 5 : THE VERRY FAMILY; THE MOATED MANOR; GHOST OF A FAMOUS CAT?

The Church Registers begin in 1558 shortly after the accession of Queen Elizabeth, and although Welsh was undoubtedly spoken in the Parish at the time, contain few or no welsh entries - although the surnames are nearly all Welsh.

Some of the earlier ones are interesting; for instance, we note the change in the surname of the Pyes of the Mynde who, at that time, were one of the two leading families of the parish, from "Appie" to Pye".

Herefordshire was, until the Civil War under Charles I, one of the most Catholic countries in England, so it is a little surprising to find entries of Protestant refugees from the Continent in these Registers.

Foreign surnames occur, and Lewis Verrier of the Lowe Farm (Lewis the "Glassmaker"), the remains of whose glassworks may still be seen in a field on the side of the Worm under Pool House, which in Elizabeth's time probably formed part of the estate of Kivernoll, was evidently one of those from the Netherlands who fled to England to escape from the persecution of the Protestants by the Spaniards under the D uk e of Alva. The name Verrier continues in the Register until about 1650, passing into the forms of Verray and Verry, and their descendants are still to be found in the neighbouring parishes of Dewsall and Aconbury.

There are remains of similar glassworks in several places in the neighbourhood, notably in a field at Kivernoll, which about 1600 belonged to a rich landowner named Morgan.

Another family of distinction at Much Dewchurch were a branch of the Bodenhames of Rotherwas who held Old Bryngwyn, a manor house standing on the island in the moat in Bryngwyn Park from 1376 until 1793, when the estate was sold to the Phillips of Hereford. The Bodenhams, like their present representatives the Bodenham Lubienskis, were zealous representatives of the Ancient Faith, and consequently their names are rarely found in Much Dewchurch parish Registers, whilst unfortunately many of their tombstones were removed from the Churchyard at the time of the erection of the North aisle; transcripts of the inscriptions exist in the Pilley Collection in the Free Library at Hereford and people still living can remember an old retainer of the family.

In 1546 the then owner of Bryngwyn married the last heiress of the famous Dick Whittington, the Lord Mayor of London, whose arms are still borne by the Bodenham-Lubienskis.

An old lady, whose husband had formerly been gasman at Bryngwyn and who had lived at the gas works upon the island until the house was lighted with electricity, delighted in telling the story of the apparitions of a large grey cat which used to visit her home at intervals to the accompani­ment of jangling gas irons and falling crockery, and which disappeared as mysteriously as it came.

She was utterly unaware that the last representative of the Whittingtons had lived on her island, but a well-known local historian afterwards showed the present writer the proof of the fact in the Bodenham pedigree given in the Herefordshire Herald's Visitation of 1565.

It is curious to think that, even at the present day, cats are so rare in Uganda that the wife of a Herefordshire gentleman who is in the Uganda Civil Service told the writer that the present of an English Kitten was one of the greatest kindnesses she could do to a Uganda chief.

Evidently the tradition of Dick Whittington’s cat must go back to a very early time, although many writers have tried to make out that "Cat" really means the name of a trading vessel (as in "Cattenwater" at Plymouth) in which English traders traded with the North African coast.

Next month - Part 6 : Love thy neighbour? The Pyes of the Mynde vs. the Bodenhams of (old) Bryngwyn.

Copyright © 2009 [Much Dewchurch Society]. All rights reserved.
Revised: November 15, 2010 .