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Secretary for Stanstead PCC

Secretary of the PCC is Mrs Lynne Ryder.

The Taylors of Stanstead

We asked Mrs Felicity Wright, daughter of Mrs Anstace Gilson-Taylor, if she would kindly give us a short account of the involvement of her family in the life of Stanstead Church and village - we knew it would be significant and we were not mistaken. She writes:

“At the end of the 1920's Archibald and Dorothea Taylor (my grandparents) moved into Barnfield with their two boys, Hugh (my father) and his younger brother Robert. My grandfather was a Churchwarden, and Rev. Spreckley and his wife lived in the Rectory. After the Second World War Robert married Rev. Spreckley's daughter Joyce, and they lived in West View next to the then functioning Methodist Chapel (now Wesleys).

As grandchildren, we can remember staying often at Barnfield. When Dorothea died in about 1959 my grandfather Archibald moved to Gosfield and my parents Hugh and Anstace moved into Barnfield. As they already knew Stanstead and its residents, it was easy for them to become involved in village activities and I know they were always busy. My father became a Churchwarden and my mother started up a branch of the Women's Institute. She did the Church flowers and was one of a group of women embroidering new hassocks. My father started up a local Parachute Regiment Association and both my parents were on the Parish Council. My father had woodworking talents and made the notice boards outside the Church and White Hart Pub, and my mother bought her groceries from the Ringers' shop at the bottom of the village.

As children we remembered the Summer Fetes at Barnfield, followed by Beetle Drives in the drawing room, and the Harvest Suppers were in the old barn. There was a large orchard, and one particular tree was called the Charity Tree which gave us hundreds of apples every year and the children from Dr Barnados in Melford would come and collect them. At Christmas we went Carol singing.

Stanstead seemed to me, growing up in the 50's and 60's, to have been a very happy, quiet little community. I have happy memories thinking of my childhood there. I walked from Barnfield to the Church with my father on Sundays and we knew each home we passed and the name of the occupants. There were quite a few elderly single women, perhaps because of the Great War. I learnt to play the organ with Mr Banham the organist who lived near the Church, and my brother and I did bell ringing. Happy days! After my father died in 1984, my mother moved to Melford, but she still took an interest in the village and received the Parish Magazine each month.

My grandfather gave the Rector's Prie-Dieu in memory of my grandmother and there is a plaque to her on the wall above what was the family pew. There used to be a little flower vase attached to it. In memory of my grandfather, my father donated two Churchwarden staffs, and in memory of my father my mother donated the Communion Cruets.”

We thank Mrs Felicity Wright for sending us this most interesting and evocative account of her family's association with Stanstead Church and village.

Stanstead PCC