Yesterday I mentioned coming across the name of Frederick Benjamin Dew in Upper Sheringham Church and this set me off on some research. I soon established by putting my family tree alongside another in Ancestry that there were a number of Dew names common to both trees. Frederick Benjamin didn't appear on my tree but there is no doubt that he is an ancestor and possibly a great great uncle or something of that kind. This needs more research.
What I did find out from the internet was that Frederick Dew was killed in action in Mesopotamia and is buried in Iraq and remembered on the Basra Memorial. He was born on 11th July 1892 in Baconsthorpe and died on 26th March 1916. His father was Benjamin Dew and his mother Rosetta Dew. In his probate report his address is given as The Hall, Sheringham. I have to assume that he was a servant. In his will he left £100 to his wife.
So we set off for Baconsthorpe to see if we could find out some more about Frederick. Baconsthorpe Castle is a very interesting building and one of the hidden treasures of Norfolk. Home to the Haydon family, it is now a rather large ruin owned by English Heritage. I will have some pictures of it tomorrow.
But my main interest in Baconsthorpe was in the church. First let me say it's a large strung out village that feels as if it's in the middle of nowhere. I well remember getting lost around there back in the 1970s when I was working as a young journalist at Cromer.
On one evening I had the pleasant job of going to Baconsthorpe to tell somebody that they had won the Where's The Ball competition held by the local newspaper. I seem to remember the prize was £600 which was quite a large sum in those days. I got totally lost and forever after referred to this area at the back of Holt as bow and arrow country. Remember this was in the days before mobile phones and Sat Navs. I just had to drive round and round until I found the address which I obviously did in the end.
Yesterday we did find the church. I usually find if you look upwards you can see church towers which is a bit of a giveaway. So we wandered round the church and there were two memorial boards to Fred Dew. There was also a Walter Dew remembered and I believe this to be Fred's brother (more research on the way).
On the way out, I left a message in the visitors' book with my e-mail address asking people to contact me if they had any information on the Dews of Baconsthorpe. We were just setting off to look round the churchyard when a dear lady shouted "Are you the people looking for members of the Dew family?" She must have read the visitors' book shortly after we wrote in it.
We then spent a good half hour chatting with her. Her name was Elsie Wesson, her maiden name was Smith and her grandmother was a Dew. She told us of somebody with the name of Dew who had a holiday caravan at Blakeney and who was her cousin. I left her with contact details just in case. Apparently there were quite a few Dews living in Baconsthorpe many years ago.
We carried on our conversation and she told me that she had been married to a professional footballer by the name of Robert Wesson who played for Coventry City. So on returning home I looked Robert Wesson up and found out that Bob Wesson was a goalkeeper back in the 1960s. He played over 150 games for Coventry and well over another hundred for Walsall. I actually found a picture of Bob Wesson being beaten by a goal by a Portsmouth player referred to as Ronald Saunders. He is still alive at the age of 81.
Ron Saunders became manager of Norwich City and was the first manager to take them into the top division (then known as Division One and now the Premiership). Saunders died a few years ago but as a manager was a hard task master, making the players the fittest in the league. He had them running up a hill in Norwich (yes we do have them) with weights on their legs. Players were allegedly physically sick after training sessions. But he did the business.
When I was at journalism college we had to do an end of course dissertation on a subject of our own. I chose Norwich City a sport and a religion. This wasn't blasphemous in the slightest because my two main interviews were with the wonderful Bishop of King's Lynn Aubrey Aitken who was a big football fan and Ron Saunders.
The interview with Aubrey was very easy. We had a chat over coffee. That with Ron Saunders was anything but easy. It was known that he didn't suffer fools gladly and didn't greatly like journalists either. I guess it was good of him to give me his time but it was difficult. I have no recollection of what questions I asked but I do remember his granite like jaw which seemed to jut out to answer every question in what seemed a rather confrontational manner. I was glad to get out.
Anyway a chance encounter in a churchyard in North Norfolk gave me plenty of material for today's blog. Hope I haven't bored you. Photos coming tomorrow.