People

'Nephew Bill' in 1803: William Woodforde (1758–1844), Nancy's brother and the first member of the family to live with the diarist at Weston before he joined the Royal Navy and served in the American war [portrait as an officer in the Volunteers by his brother Samuel Woodforde, RA, detail: Woodforde Family Collection]This wide-ranging page is designed to help readers navigate the website in search of some key figures in the Revd James Woodforde's life.

It also gives prominence to those who seized on his great legacy, his diary, to promote a better understanding of this otherwise undistinguished man and the circles in which he moved.

Woodforde the man

Near the top of the Features page can be found links to each of twelve objects chosen to highlight aspects of Woodforde's world. These studies aim to forge connections between the diarist and his readers; the retiring clergyman has sometimes, unfairly, been characterised as a rather elusive, two-dimensional individual.

Thus the studies of his birthplace and his parents record the great affection in which James Woodforde held Somerset and the loving relationships he built there.

A description of his grandfather clock, now in the Parson Woodforde Society's possession, proves an entry point into an understanding of his home life in Weston Parsonage in his adopted county of Norfolk.

As illustrated by a study of one unlikely object, a cream jug, ways of combating loneliness proved a constant preoccupation of the rural clergy in eighteenth-century England, especially for bachelors like Woodforde. He welcomed his extended family to his rectory for lengthy stays, and offered a home first for his nephew Bill and subsequently his niece Nancy partly as their means of escape from an unhappy home life in Somerset.

The details of Woodforde's clerical career are given separately, as also his talent for home-brewing. His quiet spirituality shines throughout his diary-writing from the early years when he was a young curate in Somerset up to the last 27 years of his life in a small village north-west of Norwich. Weston had a population of 365 in the 1801 census, similar in size to Babcary (337) and larger than Ansford (237), the two Somerset villages in which he was based on first leaving Oxford.

Aspects of his ministry are covered in studies of his portrait in oils and the tribute to his memory erected in marble in Weston Church by his devoted nephew Bill and niece Nancy.

Woodforde's close family

The diarist's beloved parents Jane and Samuel died in 1766 and 1771 while he was still based in his home area of Ansford and Castle Cary in Somerset. A conscientious man, with a strong sense of family loyalty, he kept in very frequent contact with his brothers Heighes and John and his sisters Clementina Sobieski (Sophy) Clarke, Mary White and Jane (Jenny) Pounsett, all of whom lived in or close to Ansford.

His Clarke, White and Pounsett brothers-in-law played an active role in the family support mechanism, as when Robert White lent the young curate his farm waggon and three horses to convey his household goods to and from Babcary in 1764 and 1765. Having established himself in the parsonage there Woodforde revelled in hosting his extended family for meals and overnight stays. His family lay at the heart of his intensely sociable life during the Somerset years.

Woodforde seems to have been particularly close to Jenny, with whom he and Nancy would stay after her marriage to John Pounsett and her move to nearby Cole. His brothers however remained a source of irritation and at times shame owing to their hard drinking and their profligate ways. All these individuals fill the pages of his diary. They are featured in numerous Journal articles identified via the index which is updated every four months.
 
Anna Maria (Nancy) Woodforde (1757–1830), the diarist's niece; she lived with him from 1779 until his death. She too was a diarist, writing in the same household. [chalk drawing by Samuel Woodforde, RA]

Once he moved to Norfolk in 1776 the diarist still kept in close contact by letter and made the long, very expensive journey into Somerset every three years or so to maintain family relationships. Some of his close family made the effort to visit him, but when they did so the trip was not always a success. Sophy Clarke and her son Samuel proved trying guests during their six-month stay 1779–80.

Woodforde was much taken with Great Yarmouth. He took to showing off the busy port with its harbour fort and distinctive small two-wheelers to his relatives on their visits, as narrated in the links from the foot of the Yarmouth page. Nephew Bill, Nancy, the Clarkes and the Pounsetts were all treated to a stay in Yarmouth in the early Norfolk years, and without doubt the presence of his close family helped to counteract the diarist's incipient loneliness.

Heighes died in 1789, and in Woodforde's last years his relations with his youngest brother John seem to have improved. John, who died in 1799, and his wife Melliora made an apparently harmonious visit to Weston from May to October 1797 during the diarist's recovery from a serious illness. Somerset-based William Woodforde was also present at the start of their visit, alarmed by his sister's report of their uncle's condition.

Among this throng of family members it was his brother Heighes' two eldest children who meant the most to Woodforde, and it was Nancy and William who were remembered in his will. Nancy's life and her diary are covered elsewhere, principally under Publications and in the study of her portrait by her young brother Samuel in the year she joined her uncle at Weston. That page recounts the story of Nancy, William and Samuel, while Samuel Woodforde has his own page giving links to his paintings reproduced on this website.

Interestingly, although Woodforde chose to welcome his niece as his living-in companion from 1779 until his death on 1 January 1803, he did not devolve any responsibility for running his household upon her. The rector kept the management of the servants firmly within his power and acted when problems arose. Nancy did not serve as housekeeper at the parsonage, a role their friends might have expected would be hers.

The household servants become as familiar to Woodforde's readers as his blood family, and the Journal is full of fascinating articles about the individuals who formed part of the family in its widest sense. His manservants, first Will Coleman and then Briton Scurl, were entrusted with a great deal of responsibility and often accompanied their master on his excursions.

He also had two maidservants at any time, hired annually, who were treated with a good measure of consideration; this attractive quality in Woodforde had been apparent in his conduct towards his housekeeper Mary Creech and her daughter Betty in Somerset. The faithful living-in farm servant, Ben Leggatt, completed the quartet of Weston servants.

While not related to the Woodfordes, the Custance family of Weston House also features prominently in the diary. The rector and his niece regarded John and Frances Custance as their dearest friends, and greatly appreciated the stimulus provided by their presence in the village.

Recording the unrecorded: villagers' lives

Woodforde's diary is a treasure trove for family historians. His eye for detail brings the past vividly to life, and we gain insight into the fairly easy relations between the classes in the countryside.

Both the seventeen volumes of complete diary text published by the Parson Woodforde Society and the Society's Journals are fully indexed, as described on those pages. Links to the Journal indexes are freely accessible along with the Journals themselves. The full diary text and indexes have been digitised and are available for download to members of the Society.

Here we focus on just one Norfolk family, the Hardys of Weston, as an example of the resources offered by this website.

The south churchyard, Weston Longville. In the foreground is the memorial to James Hardy (buried 30 October 1850 aged 82), the former innkeeper of the village's public house. His wife Ann's headstone leans towards his. Woodforde's record sheds light on the lives of working people. [photo Margaret Bird 2024]James Hardy was innkeeper of the Hart at Weston from 1799; he appears in the last few years of the Diary entries. Three generations of Hardys served as innkeepers there through to 1879, including a 32-year-long stint by his daughter-in-law Mary, née Hardy (d.1870 aged 75), of neighbouring Ringland, who had been widowed early. James and his son innkeeping George (1794–1838) were both masons, a contemporary term for a builder or bricklayer.

While never entering the premises, even to attend the annual parish meetings held there, Woodforde bought drink off James Hardy in sizeable quantities; as a brewer himself he did not turn to the innkeeper for beer. He usually records the outlet's name as the Heart, although in the licensing records it appears as the Red Hart:

Five months later, on 17 September, Woodforde paid for another two gallons of rum, equating to sixteen pints, or a little over nine litres.

James Hardy junior, presumably the innkeeper's son, evidently followed his father's trade as a builder or decorator. He earned Woodforde's unqualified respect, even though the diarist was feeling ill and depressed at the time and was inclined to be querulous:

The younger Hardy was back whitewashing the kitchen on 9 May 1801 and again on 22 May 1802—when he also whitewashed the dairy and 'dined with our folks in kitchen', despite the disruption.

Relations between the two families at the rectory and the public house remained harmonious, with the rector selling pigs and wheat to the publican. The older Hardy was also entrusted with an important commission from Nancy when he journeyed to Norwich one Saturday:

The interplay between the diary text and later scholarship

The Hart became known as the Eagle after Woodforde's death and is now a private house. As described on the page for the Hart, it was common for male innkeepers to hold down other jobs to make ends meet. They relied on their wives and children to run the public house. Single women and widows could formally be licensees under statute law, but not wives. Almost certainly Mary Hardy had been well accustomed to running the Eagle during her married years despite bringing up seven or more children.

David Case chronicles the story of the Hardys in his study of the village's public house in the Society's Journal for Spring 2002, vol. 35 no. 1. The two-part article serves as a powerful illustration of the interplay between the diary text and later scholarship. Together they illumine the lives of those who would otherwise go largely unrecorded other than in the parish registers.

The Hart stood opposite the west end of the parish church in the centre of the village. A later competitor, the Five Ringers, which began life as a beerhouse in the mid-nineteenth century, changed its name in the late 1980s to the Parson Woodforde. This very popular venue opposite the church car park is now the sole pub at Weston Longville.

Publicising the Diary: John Beresford and Roy Winstanley

John Baldwyn Beresford (1888–1940), who first brought Woodforde to public notice by publishing the abridged Diary in five volumes 1924–31 [ by Lucy Graham Smith 1913]A thread running through the Woodforde story is the impact of just one man: his first editor, who presented the retiring cleric to an admiring public and secured Woodforde's place as one of this country's foremost diarists.

The tale of John Beresford's achievement is told across this website, for the Parson Woodforde Society acknowledges the scale of the debt owed to him. A scholar at King's College, Cambridge, where he gained a First in History, Beresford served in the First World War and settled down as a civil servant in the Treasury. But his heart lay in his books and in the countryside. He had a rural retreat at Ashwell, in Hertfordshire, the village where he first encountered the manuscript diary of James Woodforde held by a descendant of Nephew Bill.

A leather-bound first edition of volume 1 is featured as one of the dozen objects in Woodforde's world, in which Beresford's style as an editor is analysed. Beresford is also celebrated for giving us, through his abridged transcription, access to the missing years of the diary: one of Woodforde's manuscript notebooks from which the editor worked cannot now be found. A photograph of Beresford at about the time he was publicising the diary is shown on the Publications page, which lists some of the many studies generated by his pioneering work.

It was the title of the original five-volume edition, The Diary of a Country Parson, which led to the adoption of 'Parson Woodforde' as the popular shorthand in the public mind for the Revd James Woodforde.
 

Almost as influential has been the legacy of Roy L. Winstanley (1913–2000). For close on thirty years he served as editor of the Parson Woodforde Society Journal (and author of numerous studies within its pages), became the first transcriber of much of the complete text of the Diary published by the Society—in itself a monumental achievement—and wrote the first and so far the sole biography of the diarist.

Tributes in the Journal speak of him in glowing terms. George Bunting's short appreciation when Roy stood down from the editorship appeared in Spring 1999: vol. 32 no. 1. The full obituary, also by George Bunting, came two years later: vol. 34 no. 1.

Roy Winstanley was not afraid to speak out forcibly. He directed his verbal fire repeatedly at the unsteadiness of William Woodforde as a young man and at the inadequacies, as he saw them, of Beresford's style as editor. But his work is always eminently readable, and his passion for his subject infectious. Here he muses on the significance of James Woodforde in his 1996 biography:

Celebrating Woodforde today

Dr David Case (1938–2023), a leading Woodforde scholar [Case Family Collection]The Parson Woodforde Society was founded in 1968. Its first Journal was launched immediately, in the spring of that year; its cover bears a 1780 drawing by Bill Woodforde showing the south side of Weston Church. It is very recognisably the same journal as the ones produced today, although at 24 pages it is considerably shorter.

The Society had already attracted 100 members, as Canon Leslie Rule Wilson announced on page 3. Although busy as Rector of Winterbourne Stickland, near Blandford Forum in Dorset, and with two other parishes to care for, he was evidently a man of great energy, imagination and determination. He gave the Society inspired leadership in its early years.

As early as July 1968 the tradition of a frolic had also been established, although the gathering did not yet bear that name; instead it was conceived as a 'pilgrimage'. More than sixty members took part. Weston, naturally, was chosen as the destination, together with some neighbouring parishes familiar to the diarist. In two fascinating accounts David Case, a long-serving officer in the Society, traces its history published in Summer 1997: vol. 30 no. 2, and Spring 1999: vol. 32 no. 1.
 

At our Bath frolic in September 2025, when we were based on the University of Bath's campus high above the city on Claverton Down, we learned at first hand about the Society's foundation. Libby Birts, the daughter of Charles and Nancy Clutsom, recalled at our AGM how Canon Wilson and the then Rector of Weston, the Revd J.E. Wynne-Roach, had met at her parents' house during 1967–68 to plan the formation of a group of Woodforde enthusiasts. Her father, the last squire of Weston and owner of the Weston estate, had died in 1964; her mother remained a churchwarden for 25 years and helped to arrange the 1968 frolic.
  Members of the Parson Woodforde Society. Our 2025 frolic was held in Bath, a city well known to the Somerset-born Woodforde. Expeditions exploring Woodforde locations have been a feature of the Society since its inception. [photo Margaret Bird 2025]

Libby and her husband Anthony are in the group photograph taken just before we explored No. 1 Royal Crescent, the imposing house devoted to fashionable life in Bath in the late eighteenth century.
 

The Society today remains faithful to its founders' conception, yet manages also to devise fresh ways of promoting the study of Woodforde and his diary. These ideas—notably the website itself, the expanded Journal, the Newsletters, the digitisation of the Journals and Diary volumes and the introduction of digital membership—expose Woodforde to a wider audience, and the feedback has been extremely positive.

Please keep those comments coming, using the email addresses on our Contact us page. We love to hear your views.