THE PARKERS OF WELFORD AND BADSEY

In the 1740s William Parker (I) and his wife Mary, then living in Welford, had a son, William (II) baptised on 21st September 1743. William II in turn married Elizabeth Evans.at Chipping Campden on 23rd December 1766 and their son, William (III), born next year, was baptised at Welford on 24th October 1767. William III married his namesake, Elizabeth Parker at Preston-on-Stour on Christmas Eve 1789 and William (IV) was born in 1791.

It was William IV who seems to have moved first from Welford to settle for a while in Pillerton Hersey. He seems to have married Mary Smith, a native of Pillerton, there on 3rd May 1824 and his daughter, Prudence Grace was born there in 1826. (The date of William’s marriage needs to be checked. There seems to have been another William Parker living in Pillerton at the same time).

After their marriage William and Mary seem to have moved fairly frequently. Prudence’s brother, William (V) was born in 1827 in the County Town of Warwick and baptised in St Mary’s Church on 2nd January 1828.

The next reference I have found to the Parkers is in 1851, when Prudence and William V (whom the census calls Edward) were living at the Manor House, Badsey and although still only 23 and a bachelor William is said to have been farming a arm of 82 acres and employing a man. A 23 year old farm servant farm servant, Thomas Tarran, was living in the manor house with them. I understand that it was William IV who had leased the house from Edward Wilson, then lord of the manor, and he and Mary later came to live there.

William V and Prudence were both married in about 1854. Prudence, who was then 29, married William Warmington in Badsey by licence on 15th June. (The witnesses were John Walton and Elizabeth Short). William is described as a farmer of Dorsington (which, coincidentally, borders, and is partly within, the Parker’s old parish of Welford). A few months later, their first child, William John Warmington, was born in Dorsington. However, the coupe did not stay long in Dorsington, and their second child, Frances Mary, was born in 1856 at Cleeve Prior and by 1860 they were living in Badsey, where all their subsequent children were born. Frances Mary died in 1862 when she was six. Further details of this family are given under the name Warmington.

Meanwhile William Parker V was still at the manor house in Badsey and in 1861 he is still stated to be the head of the household. By this time his farm had grown to 120 acres and he employed one labourer and a boy. He was married to Emilia (or in some documents Emlin), daughter of Cotterill Corbett of Lichfield and Emiline née Holland. Emilia had an aunt Rebecca, her father’s sister, from whom she inherited a little property in High Street, Stratford-on-Avon. William and Emilia had a six-year-old son in 1861, William Corbett Parker (the sixth William Parker in line) and two little daughters, Emilia Grace aged 2 and Prudence Mary, just 1 month old at the time of the census. The names Prudence and Grace became vested in later generations of both Parker and Warmington. Little Emilia Grace died when she was only 4 1/2 years old.

By 1861, too, William IV and Mary had come to live at Badsey Manor House with their son and his family. William, then aged 65 had probably retired. He died in April 1879 aged 83. Mary had died in 1862, aged 64. Both were buried in Badsey churchyard and a group of Parker graves lies very close to the church,near the Victorian porch entrance. The headstone,s in local lias, are badly flaked and some parts are virtually unreadable. Mary’s headstone, however, makes the point that she was ‘of the manor house’.

William V seems at some stage to have moved to Bretforton, where he died, aged 55, in January 1883, less than four years after his father. His widow,Emilia, lived on until 1905, when she died at Church Honeyborne , where she had moved. Both she and her husband were buried near their parents in Badsey.

Notes compiled by Allan Warmington, February 2004.