Dorset Ancestors Rotating Header Image

Puddletown

Rebecca Payne (nee Sparks): 1829 – 1885

She was the first child of James and Maria Sparks and the eldest sibling of Tryphena Sparks, who, it is generally agreed, had a romantic connection to Thomas Hardy, although there is little agreement about how serious the affair with Hardy was or how long it lasted.  Hardy was a cousin of the Sparks children; his mother was Maria Sparks’ sister, Jemima.

In 1962 Lois Deacon contributed Tryphena’s Portrait Album to the Monographs on the Life, Times and Works of Thomas Hardy series and in it asserts “Rebecca Payne (nee Sparks,) the supposed eldest sister of Tryphena, but almost certainly her mother.” Ms Deacon also claims that Rebecca was herself the illegitimate daughter of Jemima Hand, the mother of Thomas Hardy. Then there is her sensational claim repeated in her book written with Terry Coleman: Providence and Mr Hardy, that Tryphena and Thomas Hardy had a child. We have not been able to find any documentary evidence to support this and Hardy biographers give it no credence.

Lois Deacon is right to point out that Tryphena Sparks was baptised when she was about six years of age and uses this to hint there may be reason to wonder about who her mother was.  Maria Sparks registered Tryphena’s arrival in this world just a week after her birth in 1851.  As for Rebecca being anyone other than the child of James and Maria Sparks it is worth noting that her parents married on Christmas Day 1828 and Rebecca was baptised on the 25th of October 1829.

By all accounts Rebecca Sparks was a very good seamstress and dressmaker. In 1871 she was living in Puddletown with her widowed father, James Sparks. Tryphena was at a teachers’ training college in London. The following year Tryphena left the college and moved to Plymouth where she had accepted a position as headmistress of a school and, at the age of 43, Rebecca married Frederick Payne of Puddletown , a man several years younger than herself and, puzzlingly,  she immediately left him.

Rebecca probably returned home to live with her father who died in 1874. It is thought that at some time she was with her sister at the school in Plymouth teaching needlework. On the 15th of December 1877 Tryphena married Charles Gale and gave up teaching ; we know from the 1881 census that Rebecca was living with her sister and her family in Devon.

In the Gale household Rebecca was known as aunt Bessie because there was a Gale relative named Rebecca. Her niece, Tryphena’s daughter, Eleanor, described her aunt as “a very quiet, prim and proper ladybody”.  Eleanor was only six years-old when her aunt Rebecca died in Devon in 1885.

There is a photo of Rebecca Payne in the photo section.

Tryphena Sparks 1851-1890

She was born on the 20th of March 1851. Seven days later her mother went to the Registry Office and formally declared her daughter’s arrival in to the world. She was the sixth child so her parents were by now quite used to taking their children to St. Mary’s church at Puddletown for baptism and they were quietly confident this would be the last time – mother then being 46 years old. Although Tryphena was not baptised until she was six years old.

Fit and healthy, the girl sailed through school and at the age of 15 became a pupil teacher.  Her parents were justly proud when at the age of 18 she went on to a teacher training college in London.  On completion of her course in December 1871 she immediately applied for and was offered the position of headmistress at a day school for girls in Plymouth, Devon.  This was a prestigious post with a salary of about £100 a year – a princely sum for someone from a rural background well used to living amongst people scratching a living from the countryside.

Six years later she resigned her teaching post at Plymouth and married the proprietor of a public house. The couple had a daughter followed by three sons. After the birth of her last child there were complications from which she never fully recovered. Her health deteriorated and she passed away on the 17th of March 1890, just three days before her 39th birthday. She was buried at Topsham in Devon.

Her life had been full, interesting and worthwhile but not remarkable, which begs the question: why, when we enter her name into an Internet search engine, are we offered thousands of entries? Being the cousin of Thomas Hardy would not alone account for Tryphena Sparks’ posthumous celebrity.

In 1890 on hearing of her death Hardy penned a poem he entitled ‘Thoughts of Phena at News of Her Death’ in which he referred to her as “…my lost prize.”  The poem was first published as part of Wessex Poems in 1898 but  interest about a relationship between Tryphena and Thomas Hardy really took hold in 1962 with the publication of ‘Tryphena and Thomas Hardy’ by Lois Deacon in the ’Monographs on the Life, Times and Works of Thomas Hardy’ series.  Deacon claimed the couple had a child together and suggested Tryphena was the daughter of her “supposed elder sister,” Rebecca.  In 1968 Lois Deacon and Terry Coleman published their book ‘Providence and Mr Hardy’ repeating the sensational claim about their being a child.

A few Hardy scholars came out and supported Deacon in her claims and by the early 1970’s even the pages of The Dorset Year Book became part of the battlefield for warring scholars. The claims have been given no credence by Hardy biographers and we have failed to find any hard evidence such as a birth certificate, baptism register entry, census record, or death certificate and conclude that Lois Deacon read too much between the lines of the novels and poetry of Thomas Hardy and relied too much on the memories of a very old lady, Mrs. Eleanor Bromell, Tryphena’s daughter.

Accountants, we are told, can make figures say whatever you want them to say and so it is often the case with family historians who are tempted to bend the facts to fit in with their wishful thinking. It seems Lois Deacon may have fallen into this trap and read far too much into three little words and in the process elevated a young Dorset born school teacher into something approaching cult status.

There are photos of Tryphena Sparks in the photo gallery

Puddletown – Church and Parish

Puddletown: small town or large village? The name suggests the former and in earlier times there is no doubting it deserved the rank. Nowadays, with the decline of services and facilities common to all rural areas its role has diminished to a dormitory for Dorchester. The designation large village is more appropriate for a parish of some 7,185 acres.

Puddletown attracted people from the surrounding villages and hamlets and was the commercial hub for this rural and under developed part of Dorset. Only about half of the nearly 1400 inhabitants recorded in the census of 1851 were born there. The town had permission, granted before the reformation, to hold two fairs each year and to hold weekly markets. There was employment for all kinds of craftsmen and tradesmen.

In addition to the several shopkeepers there were three bakers, a couple of butchers, a grocer and a post office complemented by two inns, two pubs or alehouses, six cordwainers (boot and shoe makers), three stonemasons, a cabinet maker, three blacksmiths, a saddler and harness maker, two tailors and two dressmakers, all doing business in the town. Puddletown also had a surgeon and a dentist and the town employed two school mistresses.

The parish church is near the centre of the village. St.Mary’s is a church that has escaped being mucked about by our Victorian ancestors but since the 12th century it has enjoyed its fair share of restoration works. There was a church here in Saxon times but the oldest part of St. Mary’s visible today is a section of the tower, probably no older than the late 12th century. Transepts added in the 13th century, turned the earlier structure cruciform in plan.

Most of the building we see today date from around the beginning of the 15th century when the glorious oak roof was put up. A century later more restoration work saw the roof being raised, the addition of a clerestory, a north aisle, the tower heightened by 20ft with an external staircase built on and the parapet on the tower was added at the same time. The tower’s bell chamber is home to six bells one dating from 1599.

In 1634 the people of Puddletown were to agree to fit out the church with much of the interior furniture and fittings we see here today. New seating, a new pulpit and prayer desk, communion table and rails as well as a new font cover were commissioned. The texts on the walls are from this period.

The unusual tumbler shaped font is from the 12th century decorated with a repeating pattern of acanthus leaves; the octagonal pyramid shaped cover is from 1635. From the same period the magnificent three stage pulpit with tester, the box pews and, the most ambitious addition from this time, the west gallery.

Difficult to believe now but the chancel was a tiny space till restoration works paid for by Revd. J.C. Brymer and completed in 1911. Nowadays, the east end of the nave, the carpeted chancel and the north east chapel make a wide open spaced area contrasting with the nave proper resulting in that appearing a little cluttered by the box pews that are, nevertheless, delightful. The nave has a north arcade of four bays and there is a wide north aisle. There is a south chapel containing tombs from the 13th to 16th centuries, and a south vestry.

By the end of the 19th century the population of Puddletown had fallen by about a third but now, no doubt because of its convenience for the county town, the number of inhabitants is back up to levels not seen for nearly two hundred years.