As has been reported elsewhere the Parish Project Group has recorded all the names on the gravestones in the churchyard. The lists can be consulted in the church and here under the Parish Project section. A revision will be prepared in due course.

One of the stones tells a very sad story. Elizabeth Willcocks died on 17th November 1851 at the age of 62 and her husband followed her just under two weeks later aged 66.

On the same memorial stone is recorded the death of three children, all on the same day, 23rd February 1821:  Elizabeth, aged eight, Mary aged six, and Grace aged two.

I have tried in vain to find out what tragedy occurred. The burial register purely records their burial without explaining what happened; it is too early for death certificates, as these were only started in 1837. The other possibility was a mention in the Exeter Flying Post, which fulfilled a similar coverage to the present-day Western Morning News, but an assistant in the Devon Local Studies Library in Exeter who was kind enough to check, could find no reference to a tragedy. I believe that John Willcocks was the miller at Marsh Mills at the time, so it is just possible that the three little girls were drowned.

If there are any Willcockses out there who know what happened I would be delighted to hear from them.

Just to complete the sad story, the couple had another child later who they also named Mary, but she died at the age of two.

Addendum

Bill Pearce wrote from Orpington in Kent to say that he is descended from the family and confirmed that John Willcocks was the miller at Marsh Mills at that time, having succeeded his father Richard who was there from 1790 until his son took over.

Bill has examined the burial statistics for Aveton Gifford in the 1820s and found that in 1821 when the children died, the number of burials rose to nineteen from seven in the previous year and five in the succeeding year. The February which saw the burial of the Willcocks children had a total of eight burials and the burials of the year as a whole were mainly of children with only 3 adults. His deduction from this is that there was an epidemic at the time and that the three Willcocks children were its victims.

The story of this family gives some idea of the vicissitudes of life in those years.