SIRMON FAMILY GENEALOGY Eldersfield, Worcestershire, UK UK History: The Church of St. John

Eldersfield probably derives its name from a Saxon chief called Helder, who is said to have taken possession of the land hereabouts when the Britons had been driven from Gadbury Bank. This is a low, flat hill, to be seen some little distance from the church, which in ancient times, formed part of a line of defence with the Malvern and Bredon Hills. The boundaries of Eldersfield are listed in Edgar's charter to the Abbey of Pershore in 972, and especial mention is made in the Domesday Survey of Eldersfield's woods, formerly part of Malvern Chase. Several very old trees, part of the Chase, can be seen in the surrounding fields, and behind the church can be seen in the remains of what was once a huge pollard ash, said, at the end of the nineteenth century, to be probably the largest and oldest in the county

At the time of the Norman Conquest, the Manor of Eldersfield was seized by William Fitz-Osbern, Earl of Hereford, but after a rebellion by his son, it reverted to successive kings in whose possession it remained until the reign of Henry I. He bestowed it upon his natural son Robert Fitz-Roy, first Earl of Gloucester, whose abilities, and loyalty to his half-sister Maud, ancestress of the Plantagenet dynasty, made him one of the foremost Englishmen of his day. It is worth recording here that the head of a family given a gift of one hide of land by Earl Robert, and taking the surname de Eldersfield from his property, was obliged in return to serve his overlord on Christmas Day wearing red stockings, the costume at that time of a nobleman's jester. The de Eldersfields are found, still holding their land, and still wearing their red stockings in the reign of Edward I, a century and a half later.

Robert, Earl of Gloucester, granted the Manor to William de Berkeley of Coberley while Henry I was still on the throne. Thereafter, through seven generations, and for the next three centuries, although the earldom of Gloucester passed eventually through the female line to Gilbert de Clare, son of the Earl of Hereford, who thus became Lord of Eldersfield, the Manor itself remained with the Berkeleys, although they appear to have regarded the Manor of Coberley as their principal estate. In Coberley church, there are effigies of Sir Thomas Berkeley, who fought at the Battle of Crecy, and his wife Joan. She remarried after his death, and became the mother of Sir Richard (Dick) Whittington, and this explains the persistent memory of him which lingers on in the village, and is also the reason why his coat of arms is on the font.

Early in the fifteenth century, Alice Berkeley inherited the Manor of Eldersfield and married Thomas Bridges. Giles Bridges, her son, was MP for Gloucestershire in 1455, and his grandson, a second Giles, was knighted for services at the Battle of Blackheath in 1497, and became Sheriff of Gloucester in 1499. Sir Giles the second died in 1511 and was succeeded by his son John, who was also knighted in 1513, after the Battle of Spurs. He became Lieutenant of the Tower, in which capacity it was his duty to attend Lady Jane Grey to the scaffold. Touched by her gentleness, he begged a memento; she gave him a prayer in her own handwriting inscribed in a prayer book which is still preserved in the British Museum. Bridges later became Constable of Sudeley Castle, where he had charge of the Princess Elizabeth, and in 1554, was raised to the peerage by Queen Mary as Baron Chandos. Three successive Barons Chandos retained the Manor of Eldersfield, but the first Lord's grandson was followed by daughters who sold the property, thus terminating a connection which had lasted for four centuries, covering the entire period of Plantagenet and Tudor dynasties. In 1624, the estate is found in the possession of Sir Henry Spiller, IBaronet, an ardent Royalist, who fell into the hands of the Parliamentary Army in 1646, towards the end of the Civil War. He had been a notable benefactor to the church and his wealth must have been very great, for, despite his pleas for leniency on the grounds of harmlessness and broken health, the Commissioners for Sequestration demanded that he forfeit £8,961; a huge sum of money in those days, which he was still struggling to pay at the time of his death. B y 1715, the estate was in the hands of Anthony Lechmere of Severn End, and it remained in the possession of that family until modern times.

The church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, dates from the twelfth century. The chancel arch is Norman, and the greater part of an ornamented Norman doorway is still to be seen from outside in the south wall. This was reinserted when the wall was rebuilt in 1876. The Rev. Holmes, Vicar at that time, was careful to have the doorway put back over the entrance exactly as before, but the base of the angle shaft appears to be 2 ft 6 ins. above the ground. However, it is known that in 1851, a great deal of earth was cleared away from the church walls, and the level outside may originally have been much higher. Adjacent to the remains of the Norman arch can be seen pieces of an early stone altar, incised, as was the custom, with crosses. This was broken up in error, and used by the workmen engaged in rebuilding the wall.

Probably during the thirteenth century, the church was considerably enlarged; the present chancel was erected, the nave lengthened, and the massive lower part of the tower constructed. The upper part of the tower and buttresses are in early Decorated style, whilst the west window, the tracery in the head of which is cut out of a single piece of stone, is Perpendicular. In the lower stage of the South West buttress is a trefoiled niche containing a figure of a man with a shield on his left arm, and his right hand on the hilt of his sword. This could possibly be a representation of a Crusader, and it is known that the Order of Knights Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, obtained from Richard I a grant of woods in Eldersfield, which gives some basis for this suggestion. The north aisle and spire of the church were added in the fourteenth century, as was also a two-light east window high up in the chancel wall. The spire is one of the finest in the neighbourhood, but has, unfortunately, proved to be a great expense to the parish. It was repaired in 1839 and 1862; then in 1867, after being struck by lightning, it had to be partially rebuilt. Further substantial work has been carried out in more recent times, the sum of £5,000 being raised in the early 1980's.

In the fifteenth century, Thomas Holford added a chantry chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and the east window of this is wholly original, consisting of three trefoiled lights with early fifteenth century tracery. Holford gave land and a house in the south west corner of the parish for the support of the chapel and its priest; after the Reformation, this became known as Dob's Hill, as it is to this day, and it was here that the famous Henry Savage, Master of Balliol College, Oxford, and Chaplain to King Charles II was born in 1604. There is a memorial tablet in Latin on the wall of the chapel to Winifred Savage, the mother of Henry, who died in 1615. At one time, the south window of the chapel contained stained glass coats of arms of all the Lords and holders of the Manor of Eldersfield from the time of Henry I to Charles I; these were placed there by Sir Henry Spiller, who held the Manor in the early seventeenth century, and whose own coat of arms, dating from about 1629, may be seen in the lower part of the nave window nearest to the vestry screen. Another similar stained glass coat of arms still hangs in the hall of Eldersfield Court, the Manor house, opposite the church, this having been originally part of a window there. Unfortunately, the chapel window was stated by the Worcestershire historian Nash, who died in 1811, to be much broken when he visited the church, and eventually, those coats of arms which remained were hung in the nave and chancel windows. Three of those of the Berkeleys of Coberley, while in the chancel are those of Sir Richard de Clare and the Bridges family.

The font is thought to be fifteenth century, and has on it the arms of great families connected with the Manor, not very skilfully executed, and so possibly carved by a local stonemason. Amongst these are the arms of the Whittingtons, who traditionally, are believed to have held lands at Rue Green, a short distance from the church, also those of the Berkeleys, Despensers and Beauchamps.

The nave pews of linen fold panelling date from the time of Henry VII, although some of these were reconstructed using old wood during the middle of the nineteenth century. There is almost certain to have been a rood screen, for the reading desks on both the pulpit and lectern are made of fragments of richly carved wood, thought to have come from that source. The pulpit itself is seventeenth century.

There are now no tombs in the church older than the seventeenth century, but of those remaining, by far the most interesting is that of William Underhill, which can be seen in the floor near the font. He served at Court in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I and Charles I, and died in 1647, aged 70. In his will, he left lands at Highleadon to the poor of Eldersfield, directing that the rents should be distributed on his tomb twice yearly at nine o'clock in the morning on both St. Thomas and St. John the Baptist days. This unique custom has unhappily now fallen into abeyance, because the amount of money at the disposal of the Vicar and Churchwardens is so very small, but it continued for over three hundred years, and the records of the Charity show that, in 1856, 55 people received sums ranging from five shillings downwards. It is interesting to note that the land belonging to Underhill remained for centuries in its original form of mediaeval strips which, when the land in the area was later enclosed, were to be found along the edge, or even in the middle of fields. The boundaries of the strips were marked by stones which had the letters EP (Eldersfield Poor) on them, but these were constantly quietly being pushed into the ditch by the owners or tenants of the remainder of the fields who had the trouble of ploughing round them, and finally, the Charity Commissioners agreed that the land should be sold, and the money invested. In 1960, the fourteen and a half acres which Underhill had left to the poor over three hundred years ago made £680.

There is a fine ring of six bells, cast in 1705 by Abraham Rudhall of Gloucester, although numbers two and three were recast in 1891 by John Taylor & Co. of Loughborough. These were not the first bells in this tower, however, because in an inventory of the church goods taken in 1552, there is the following item -- in the steple iij bells ij litell bells, thone called a leche bell thither a sacrying bell.

The church registers go back only to 1718, although there are in the Worcester Record Office Bishop's Transcripts dating from 1611, with several gaps. In the year 1728, at which time the population of the parish was about six or seven hundred, there were no less than 65 funerals in the churchyard, no doubt as the result of some fearful epidemic. In the fields near the church, the sites of a number of mediaeval cottages have recently been found, showing that there were once many more dwellings than there are today. There is said to be a plague pit nearby; if so, it has never been discovered; but it does seem possible that, the owners of the deserted cottages having died at the time of the Black Death, a new centre of population sprang up elsewhere, perhaps at Corse Lawn, leaving the church isolated, as it is today.

The churchyard is large, and contains many ornate and costly tombs, including quite a number of those of obviously wealthy people from neighbouring parishes. One wonders if being buried in Eldersfield were the fashion in the eighteenth century. There are 10 table tombs, and those that are still decipherable stand in desperate need of restoration before their inscriptions, too, are lost for ever. From past records, we know that there was one to Thomas Halsey, who died in 1678, and another to John Jakeman, Gent; Master of Arts and Professor of Physic, Astronomy and Geometry; fortunately, we can still read those of the two Freemen of the City of London; Captain Richard Dyer, Gunmaker, died 1722, and Job Carter of Downe House, Redmarley, gent., and chirurgeon, died 1706.

Near the bottom gate into the churchyard lies a very ancient stone coffin lid, which, many years ago, was probably taken from the interior of the church. It was discovered buried several feet underground during the restoration of 1876. It is extremely thick, and has upon it two crosses, one in a rough circle at the breast, and the other, a plain Latin cross, deeply but irregularly cut at the feet. An archaeologist visiting the church in the late nineteenth century thought this almost certainly Saxon. J M S August 1981