Day 23- 11 May - Cotswold church tour with a team of 4 Grimmett males - Nigel. Tom, Sam and Jeff - all seeking out where their shared ancestors came from. Turned out to be a small (20km diameter total) area more or less centred on Burford Oxfordshire.
We kicked off at 18 Coxwell St, Faringdon, Berkshire - English home of our original Grimmett Kiwis - Richard & Charlotte Rachel et al. Couldn’t find it!! The street numbers went from 16 to 20?? - solved when the lady at #16 told us that #18 had disappeared into #20 during a renovation years ago. These houses were small - all 1 up and 1 downs - God only knows where that expanding Grimmett family lived back in the 1860s.
Burford was next - where Richard G’s parents lived. Real touristy old Cotswold stone village, fabulous old church alongside the Windrush Stream.
Cup of coffee and a scone and we were on the road to Fifield where Mum’s Barnes family came from - picturesque, tiny village of limestone buildings. Checked out the churchyard gravestones - none if our family found.
Back in the car to Lower Lemington and the Church of St Leonard (see cover pic)with its fabulous Saxon arch. Here the oldest record in the Grimmett family tree goes back to 1638. Of all the villages/churches we saw today, this was everybody’s favourite - only about 1/2 dozen houses left in the village and just felt like had stepped back in time.
Nigel wrote in the Visitor’s Book ‘the Grimmetts are back after 400yrs’ - which seemed to amuse us all. Then we found our uncle, Guy Grimmett (obsessive genealogist) had already been here in 2012!!
In the 1700s our line of the family had moved a few km down the road to Barcheston. Apparently 28 Grimmetts are buried in the St Marins Churchyard - 4 guys searched for about 20minutes - and found not a single Grimmett headstone? Probably too poor to buy one - and, after all, it all happened back 300 years ago.
These Grimmett men were all Richards and Thomas’s - sometimes both - and it was very cool that Tom (Thomas Richard) Grimmett (Nigel’s son) had taken a day off work to be with us today (see cover pic, L-R: Sam, Tom, Nigel, Jeff)
We rolled on to St Kenelms at Enstone, and St Giles at Bletchingham - both old (11C AD) churches that that used to include Grimmetts in their congregations. We were getting good a understanding medieval churches but no closer to discovering any Grimmett graves. Finally we made it to the locked up Church of John the Baptist at Stanton St John - another medieval church in need of repair, where farm labourer, Thomas (2nd)Grimmett, married Elizabeth Bowell in 1772 - before setting up house in nearby Bladon.
Somewhere in amongst all those churches we had a beer and a breather at an old head banging pub.
We were now getting confused and definitely all churched out.
The day was done and mercifully we elected to go home. Strangely enough we all enjoyed the day - these old churches were fascinating and clearly important places of worship for nine generations of our family. All this dry genealogy took on a whole new meaning as we worked our way through our family’s last 200 yrs (1640 to 1873) to final departure from England.
Needless to say - the best if it was the company sitting in the car talking to our own kith and kin. A day out with FOUR Grimmett males!!The repartee was spectacular! We wallowed in all things Grimmett (good and not so good) recognised the all encompassing power of the church and were glad to be living in the 21stC. It was a very special day, one for the next book and one I certainly won’t forget anytime soon.