Tower and Town, March 2022

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St Mary’s People

Memorial plaques and commemorative windows in churches are often able to tell us something of the people who worshipped in these places before us. One such window in St Mary's dedicated to Thomas Baverstock Merriman (1802-1867) introduces us to two families who dominated life in Marlborough in the late 18th and much of the 19th century. It depicts the Annunciation, and sits alongside a matching window of the birth of Christ dedicated to Thomas' son, Edward Baverstock Merriman (1839-1915).

There are plaques to both families, Merrimans and Baverstocks, in St Peter's. The former, strong supporters of non-conformity in Marlborough in the eighteenth century, claimed descent from a Captain John Merriman who came to Marlborough as one of the commanders of a troop of horse in the Parliamentary army in the civil wars. John Merriman was one of those entrusted with the custody of the king while he was a prisoner at Carisbrooke Castle, and it is said that he carried out his job with “so much consideration and good feeling that His Majesty gave him several tokens of his favour and regard”.

By the nineteenth century the family was clearly well established in the local community, as attorneys, doctors and grocers, maltsters and cheesemakers. In 1835 Thomas Merriman is described as ‘the head man of these selected gentlemen’ in a list of twelve ‘corporators’ presumably drawn up as part of the reorganisation of local government enacted by Parliament that year. He was a solicitor and a tenant of Lord Ailesbury, as well as being his steward. His father had been a cheese factor, and gave £100, the income from which was to buy bread for the unrelieved paupers of the parishes of both St Mary’s and St Peter’s. Running the borough with Thomas was his brother, Benjamin, and his two sons, Thomas Baverstock Merriman (as commemorated in the window in St Mary's) and William Clark Merriman. The former name shows the coming together through marriage of two of the most powerful families in the towns - there was one Baverstock who was the senior member of the corporation for 30 years. Both families feature frequently in local affairs throughout the rest of the century, and are mentioned in conjunction with many others, such as the Maurices and the Halcombs.

David Du Croz