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Family Verralls Name |
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How I came to be Interested |
by Peter Verralls
My interest started when a collector for a cancer charity called at my door when I lived in Parkstone, Poole, GB, around 1980. Unusually, the collector knew how to spell my name. He asked me if I knew of its origins. I had to admit that I did not. He said that before retirement he had worked for a solicitor called Verrall who lived in Ferndown, Dorset, who had traced his roots back to Lewes in Sussex. He told me that in Lewes many businesses in the high street were once owned by the family Verrall, but now there was no trace, not one left in the Lewes phone book.
One summer’s evening, a year later, I dropped into Lewes when returning from a business trip to Brighton. I remember finding a church with graves with headstones Verrall in various spellings. I thought I remembered a brass plaque in the church to a town surgeon named Verrall. There was a tourist guide showing Victorian photographs of the old High Street with Verrall over the shops and a sepia photograph of the local brewery owned by Verrall.
Sadly, I left it at that. Then my brother, who lived in Hong Kong, asked me to help him gather more information. In 1989 we sent out a mailing to all named Verralls in the GB phone book, about 20 or so. We could not locate the solicitor from Ferndown. The information that we obtained from the mailing was interesting but we were slow to reply and to consolidate the data.
In 1998 my brother, Stephen, spurred me into action once again. He had put our relations onto a program called Family Tree Maker.
In July 1998 I returned with my wife, Roxana, for a weekend in Lewes. We could not find the original church with the surgeons plaque. Had my memory played tricks? Instead we found three churches with Verrall’s graves and tombs. Southover Parish Church had a carved marble memorial on an inside wall to two generations of Verrall. The plaque referred to a large tomb in the cemetery. There was also a brass plate in the church entrance commemorating the donating of the tower clock by Francis Verrall, Lord of the Manor, in memory of his father. Sadly, the gravestones and tombs were overgrown and deteriorating and will soon be indecipherable.
We were struck by the longevity of the Verrall. Most died in their eighties and nineties, which I would have thought unusual in the 1700 and 1800’s. Perhaps it was the brewery that kept them so well preserved. In which case Steve and I should make a century!
We stayed overnight in the White Hart Inn, the first landlord of which was Dick Verrall around 1707. The White Hart Inn was the meeting place of the Headstrong Society, a radical debating group. We have a record of a Verrall debating with Tom Paine. Tom Paine was a radical whose writings furthered the cause of the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. Tom Paine "retired" to the America where he furthered the cause of Independence. This may interest our American cousins.
On arriving in Lewes we went to the tourist office and said we were looking for the origins of our name, did they know of the name. "Oh yes", said the girl behind the desk, "I went to school with them!". She went to school in Peacehaven with the children of the Town Clerk who had the surname Verrall. It’s such a rare name in Dorset, no one can pronounce it let alone spell it.
Lewes, home at last! Maybe the title "Lord of the Manor" is up for sale. Steve will have to beat the Americans to it! Shame about the HK $.
We now think that Verralls probably originated in Kent. There was no reference to the spelling Verralls in Lewes.
