I began by exploring down a rural track and found the old school, now converted into two private houses. Both owners were very helpful and lent me photos of the school and its pupils during the 1890s and 1900s. Some of the children in these photos were named on the back, including Eliza Worsfold and one of her brothers.
Back at the museum I delved into our archives. I used censuses to establish approximate birth dates. I then looked up Worsfold baptisms, marriages and burials in our copies of the parish registers at around this time. I found the seven brothers and sisters and their parents. As you can see in the Worsfold family tree, I was then able to trace backwards through other parish registers and civil registrations online. At this stage, I also discovered more about some of the other children on the photos.
Next, I made a visit to the West Sussex County Record Office in Chichester to read the school log book that spanned this period and I also checked through the school admissions register, which had some of the children’s birth dates as well as when they started at the school. This valuable information enabled me to date each of the photos and add more names, which was a great help.
When Alice Worsfold and her two elder siblings were born, and for the preceding two generations, this Worsfold family lived in Partridge Green (within the West Grinstead registration area).
Between 1880 and 1882 they moved to Wiston, where they were settled by the time their fourth child Phyllis was born in 1882. In Wiston they lived at ‘Near Smith’s Shop’ and ‘Stocks Cottages’ and also at ‘New Cottages’ (or are these all the same place?). Whilst here, all the children attended Wiston and Buncton Parochial School. Their father, Edward, was one of the two sawyers listed as working at Wiston and a ‘Sawyer’s Wood’ on the Wiston Estate.
After 18 years in Wiston, they moved to Steyning around 1910, probably at about the time when Edward (born 1849) was admitted to the Sussex County Hospital (as it was then known) in Brighton, where he was a patient during the 1911 census. (It’s possible, as often happened, they might have been evicted from their Wiston home when Edward was no longer able to work on the estate.) His death was registered in Brighton rather than Steyning, so perhaps he remained a patient in that hospital, or in a nearby workhouse, until his death.
In the 1911 census, Ellen, his wife, plus daughter Eliza May, now listed simply as May, were residing at the home of elder daughter Ellen Eliza and son-in-law John Groves in Steyning.
I was particularly interested in what might have happened to Alice and Eliza after they left Wiston school. I found that Alice married a sailor, George Divall, in 1913 – the marriage register gives the name of his ship. Other research online showed that he went off to sea again shortly afterwards on a long voyage. On a hunch, I looked at our list of names on the WW1 War Memorial and, sure enough, George Divall’s name was on it. I then looked for him in our list of gravestone inscriptions and found him there, having died in 1916 at the Battle of Jutland. The gravestone also includes a poignant verse, obviously chosen by his devoted young widow, Alice. I looked up the Battle of Jutland on the internet and found out all about the sinking of George’s ship, with the loss of more than 1,000 lives, including rear-admiral Hood, whose flagship it was.
Alice sadly did not marry again. Eliza, the youngest of the family, never married and died a spinster in Worthing, followed many years later by the death of Alice, also in Worthing. Checking Wiston and Steyning parish registers again, I was able to trace their siblings’ marriages and children, some of whose families still remain in the Steyning area today.
If you have any of the names Worsfold, Holden, Groves, Robins, Boynette or Munnery in your family, then you may be related to Alice and Eliza.
As part of this research, a number of other resources from our archives were used, such as Victorian maps to locate where they lived and reference books to find out more about the school and its area in those days. This, like most family trees, is a work in progress and I am keen to widen my research to find out about the other scholars at Wiston School in the 1890s.
In my next post I will publish three school photographs from the period, which include members of the Worsfold family. If you know of anyone who attended the school or have heard any stories about those days, please contact me on familyhistory@steyningmuseum.org.uk
Jacquie Buttriss
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