I’ll start by introducing myself. My name is Steven John William Burt. In this year of 2025 I am 69 years old. I have a brother three years younger, Peter James Burt. At this present time we both reside in Norfolk; but our true family home and heritage is this village of Winsley. We are the last (as far as we know), of three big families related by marriage and living in the three villages of Winsley, Murhill and Turleigh. Neither my brother nor I have any children. Sadly when we pass-away so will our family name. So I leave this small family history on this plaque for as long as this bench may last, and hope that one day when the bench is worn by time and weather, someone may replace the bench and move the plaque over, or to another location in the cemetery so the story can live on.

The Burt’s family name derives from the 7th century ‘Byrht’ Anglo Saxon name which changed to ‘Berht’ under the Normans and then it moved through other changes as centuries passed. The first recording of the name spelt as ‘Burt’ was that of Hamo Burt in 1273, oddly over the East side of the country in the “Hundred Rolls of Norfolk” during King Edward 1st; he was known as “Hammer of the Scots”, obviously a ruffian… (please bear no grudges, it was a long time ago). The Burt family have a Heraldic Crest and shield as shown with the photos. I guess at some point we were up there with the nobility.
Apart from a small area across the English border with Southern Scotland the Burt name is very much exclusive to four areas of the West Country – Dorset, north Somerset bordering west Wiltshire and north Devon. It is not a common name.
Our great, great, grandfather another John Burt with his wife Matilda Cottle (a name that goes back almost a millennium in Winsley) had three sons and three daughters in Turleigh around 1840. (The first son died at two years old). John’s parents came to Turleigh early 1800 from Tisbury a village between Warminster and Shaftsbury. He set up a blacksmith shop in what would later become the Post Office. One of the sons of John and Matilda of which there were two – William Robert and Henry George would be one of our great grandfathers; Henry George Burt, became, as did many working men of this area, a quarryman. There were many quarries on the promontory on which Winsley sits overlooking the Avon valley; the quarrying of Sandstone, also round here known as Bath stone.

I have no records of William Robert, his brother, where he lived, who he married or if he remained locally; but that could be, and very likely is a branch of the family still in West Wilts to this day. I’ll return to this later…
Henry George married a girl from a big family, the ‘Sartain’s’ that lived in what is now Newtown in Bradford on Avon. Number 56 The Tory; was then the lower of the three Tory’s and is now the road Newtown, but in the late 1800s it was a track that ran above a long factory that made ropes; hence the new retired living building across the road from the row of old houses being called the Rope Walk.

The women Henry George married in July 1887 was Sarah Sartain the eldest of the Sartain children born to Joseph and his wife Grace (Ball). Both the parents were born in Winsley in the same year 1829.
Sarah Sartain was three years older than Henry George when they married; not young, he 27 and she 30. The Sartain’s were a huge family with 10 children in all. When married, Henry George and Sarah moved to a house in Murhill. They would live in number 60, just down from the sharp corner with the railings; known as Col Graths road. An officer in the Royal Madras Artillery, he built the lower road in 1882. The inscribed stone sits in the wall just down from the railings.
Also in Murhill lived the Hosey family. They date in Winsley from 1729. William Hosey born 1729 Great Chalfield married Olive Portch in July 1748 in Bradford-on-Avon. William died 1800 in Winsley his wife Olive died 1787. They had a son George who had a son Richard. There were probably more children but I’ll leave it with these as these are the names I know as staying in Winsley/Murhill. Richard married Sarah Annie Lovell. They had three girls and a boy; Annie, Rosie, Elizabeth and John. John would die in July 1900 as a Corporal in the Welsh Fusiliers in the battle of Wynberg which is now a part of Cape Town, South Africa. Rosie would marry a man from Murhill called Walter Badder and live, after leaving the house in Murhill, in Winsley; Annie would marry another of the Sartain children from Bradford – Fredrick, or Fred as he was known, he was the youngest of the brood born in 1872. He was Pete and my other great grandfather.

The marriage of Sarah Sartain to Henry George Burt and much later the marriage of the youngest brother Fred Sartain to Annie Hosey would bond the three families together.

Elizabeth Hosey’s story is a sad one. The youngest of the three daughters, she left home to work in service in 1900 for a well-to-do household in Bath and was molested by the owner’s son and put in the family-way. Pregnant she returned to Murhill and gave birth to a daughter; Dorothy (1910) who would, after WW2, marry Bert Blackmore and live in 25 King Alfred Way, Winsley. Dorothy’s life is an entirely separate and intriguing story that would fill a book on its own. Elizabeth then disappeared never to be seen again leaving the baby Dorothy with her two sisters to look after. Richard and Sarah the two elderly Hosey’s, the mum and dad, had passed away in 1903 and 1904 so avoided this embarrassment to the family. Annie had married Fred Sartain by this time and had Grace who was 10 years old. She became almost a sister to the little Dorothy and they would remain like sisters for life. I believe Rosie at that time was still in the family home in Murhill. They lived in a row of cottages half way down the trolley track; the track that leads down to the canal; this track was once cobbled and had rail or tram lines (until the seventies) where a steam winch would pull up goods from the canal to the road or on to the Sanatorium on the hill above. (You can still see the pit where the steam house was. It’s in off the road below the sandstone cliff face in the upper woodland on the left hand side as you’re walking up hill toward Winsley.
Off the trolley track there also lived a family called the Daggers. They also helped with the care of the motherless Dorothy and helped in her upbringing. Poor Dorothy grew up with a multitude of carers; but that was as village life in that era. I loved her dearly and spent a great deal of time with her and my uncle. She was a very intelligent women working her whole life in the Admiralty in Bath. She was very outgoing and happy also a true Christian churchgoer. At the end of her time in her little bungalow in Winsley, before going into care it would be a young decedent of the Dagger family, the granddaughter, Irene, who would clean and help care for Dorothy (or Dot as she was known) before she succumbed to ‘care’ at the ripe old age of 99. She died a still very with-it old lady in a care home in Trowbridge in 2012 at 103 years old.

Going back to Fred Sartain (not to be confused with Fred Burt who was a generation younger) joined the Somerset Light Infantry and served in India. This was before he married Annie Hosey. I would have loved to have known him because by all accounts according to our gran, he was a very gung-ho and adventurous man. He died in the year of my birth 1956 he was 84 years old a great innings for those years. They were good stock, the Sartain’s and Hosey’s not quite such long livers the Burt’s.
Anyway he was a second lieutenant in the SLI and in his photograph you’ll see the badge of a ‘Marksman’; I earned this same shooting accolade during my time as a Sapper (Royal Engineer) between 1971 and 1977. When Fred left the SLI in the late 1800s he married Annie Hosey; they would have known each other very well. They lived for some years in the trolley track cottages with old man Hosey and his wife till they passed away. Fred and Annie had a daughter Grace in 1900 (our gran) and when Grace was around seven years old the three of them moved from Murhill up the hill to the cottage in the old village just across the cross roads next to what was called the Wheatsheaf; and later, for those who remember it, Little’s shop. Their house is now two knocked into one, Spring Cottage. Fred after the army worked as a naive or roadman, improving and widening the Warminster road that leads out of Bath, round ‘Dry Arch’ and over the viaduct at Limpley Stoke and on through Beckington to Warminster, now the A36.
In all probability the cottage off the trolley track remained occupied by Rosie and Walter.

Back to Henry George Burt and his wife Sarah (Fred’s elder sister) in number 60.
The house is shown in the photo with Henry George, Sarah and one of the daughters standing outside. There is now a brick built extension on this front facing wall. Henry George and Sarah, although in their thirties, had six children Fredrick, Archie, Lesley, John-Thomas, William-Robert, Grace and Dorothy (known as ‘Dart’).

Fredrick Burt grows up and moves out of his parents house back to Turleigh where his grandfather is still living. So does Archie. Fred I believe worked in the blacksmith shop with his grandfather. He marries and has a son and a daughter the daughter is named Freda the son I do not know.
Fred moves his family to the north-west to work for a man who has a big estate (possibly as a blacksmith or farrier). This is pre-First World War. Robert William is the local postman and Archie works in the saw mill in Limpley Stoke, Lesley is a farm hand and John Thomas is telegraphist; whatever that may be. Dorothy ‘Dart’ Burt (not Dorothy Sartain/Hosey) has left the home in the 1911 census and Grace Burt the youngest is still in school. Dad Henry George is still working as a quarryman. War breaks out.

Fred moves back from the north to Turleigh with his wife and Freda, but we don’t know if the son returns with him or not; but most likely not. Fred joins the army, the Wiltshire Regiment in 1914, right at the outbreak of the war along with his brother William Robert. Archie joins the merchant navy. A year into the war John Thomas also joins the Wiltshire Regiment. Lesley is in reserved occupation as a farm hand. Three of the five boys are now in military service in the trenches in France and one is helping the war effort as a merchant seaman the other a farm hand.
Meanwhile Grace, not Grace Burt but the young Grace Sartain (Her full name was Rosina Grace, but oddly she was always Grace) who would eventually become our gran was fourteen years old and went to work as an ancillary nurse in the Winsley Sanatorium hospital. A hospital built in the late 1800s to take patients that suffered with chest/bronchial illness. It was built on top of Winsley hill because of the fine air quality. It is now luxury apartments. Grace worked there for 3 years. All the patients at the time were soldiers from the trenches who had been ‘Gassed’ and were very ill with lung damage. However Grace fell in love with the son of an aristocrat, the son of the owner of Fry’s chocolate factory in Bristol. The feelings I’d like to add were mutual. (This story is directly from my gran) When Fred found out he was horrified and immediately removed Grace from the hospital and relocated her working in service for Henry Mieres Marshall and his wife Cecil Mabel (Belflour) who had the big house with the entrance at the top of the trolley track in Murhill; the house would later be taken over by his son Sir Hugo governor of Nigeria and his wife lady Christine Marshall.
Relationships across such a huge social divide were unheard of at that time and totally taboo. It was just not done.

I knew Lady Marshall as a boy growing up in the village and she knew me. It was impressed on me by my gran that I should always be courteous when meeting her in the village, pass the time of day and if she had shopping, offer to help carry it. I believe regardless of the social divide my gran and Lady Christine, not being that far apart in age, six years, had become good friends over the years gran was in service with the family.
The war ended 1918 and all the Burt brothers survived; nothing short of a miracle. Fred, John Thomas and William Robert had all initially joined the Wiltshire Regiment. But Fred the eldest and the first to join up had transferred to the Machine Gun Corps. He advised his two younger brothers to do the same. Apparently life expectancy was slightly higher. You didn’t attack an enemy trench just gave covering fire. However the down side was when the enemy attacked you; they done their best to wipe out the machine gun positions before launching the attack. I suppose it was six of one and half a dozen of the other. John Thomas, our granddad, was wounded in 1917, repatriated to England for medical care and then transferred to the Oxford and Berkshire Regiment and sent to Southern Ireland to join the army trying to suppress the uprising among those Irish fighting for independence from Britain.
In the last year of war, February of 1918, Fred Sartain, now 45 years old enlists in the Royal Flying Corps. He is accepted, serves, but does not go overseas. Records of his RFC service were destroyed with many thousands of others in the bombing of Somerset House in WW2. But I’m led to believe he served in the Balloon Corps based locally to observe for zeppelin raids on the city of Bath; he remained in the service until February 1919.

Home from war the two Burt sons Fred and Archie remained living in Turleigh. Fred had the shop which is now the glass fronted house 273 The Old Bakery and lived in the first house at the bottom of Green Lane, Green Lane Cottage, number one. His daughter Freda married Paddy Cosgrove and they lived in the bungalow half way up Turleigh hill next to the steps; now demolished and rebuilt very modern. They had one daughter Maureen who died in a car accident around 1963. At this point Paddy and Freda move away. I’m led to believe to the North West where Freda’s brother possibly stayed when she, her mum and her dad retuned to Turleigh at the outbreak of WW1. Freda returned to Bradford on Avon I’m told around 2005 and saw out her final years here. Arthur or Archie as he was known lived in the large house on the side of the hill overlooking Freds shop, now called Briar Cottage. He had a son Cyril who married Betty (maiden name unknown) and they lived in a lovely detached house behind the old Post Office in Winsley old village now called The Granary.

I do not know Archie’s occupation following the war, but many local village men worked for a large employer, the Avon Rubber Company converted from the many large old textile factories in Bradford on Avon, it’s likely this is where he worked with our grandfather and also later our dad.
After WW1 John Thomas and William Robert returned to Murhill to their parents house. Grace Burt had gone to work in service and Dorothy Burt had married a miner from South Wales (Smith) and lived in Farleigh Wick; a hamlet over the common from Conkwell Pinckney Green. They had three daughters and two sons. The son Bert, our uncle was a lovely man who fought in WW2 as a Sapper (Royal Engineer) he fought with the 8th Army across N Africa was at the Siege of Tobruk. He was so chuffed to know I’d joined the Sappers. He never married, he had a stroke in 1970 and died just before I left the army in 1977.

Our granddad would not visit his sister Dorothy as her husband had refused to fight. When miners were asked to go to France as Royal Engineer tunnellers to dig under the enemy defences he refused. Our granddad always viewed him as cowardly.
As far as I’m aware Lesley had a bad accident and spent the rest of his life in an invalid hospital in Semington near Melksham. He died in 1940.
After his stint in the RFC Fred Sartain takes up a new job with the Kennet & Avon Canal Company as Wharf Master on the junction of the K&A and the Somerset Coal Canal at Dundas. The crane he operated in his job is still there on the quay side. Gran told me her father lost a finger in the cog mechanism. Grace Sartain is still working at the Marshall’s; working with a girl of similar age from Swindon, Amy Cockell. They were good friends and at some point started dating the two Burt brothers. Bearing in mind Sarah Burt and Fred Sartain were brother and sister this made John Thomas Burt and Grace Sartain cousins; although distant enough to be able to marry.

William Robert married Amy which would link the Burt’s to a huge extended family in Swindon, the ‘Adams’ who thanks to our cousin Robert and his boy Ross having two male offspring are still going strong. John Thomas Burt married Grace Sartain.
William and Amy lived in Bradford until William Robert died; he’s buried in an unmarked grave in Christchurch cemetery Bradford on Avon; Amy then went back to Swindon with her little girl our aunt Ada.
John and Grace rented a cottage in the Chapel Rank terrace in Winsley old village. They had two children Susan and Denis John. Susan died at 5 years old and is buried in the small grave next to the footpath coming down from the wicket gate just here in this churchyard.
Denis John, or John as he preferred to be called, grew up in Chapel Rank with his parents and through a quirk of fate married a German girl Elsa Hopp who came to the village in 1949 to work as a nanny to Captain Svenson’s children where Grace was working as family help. She came to Winsley to escape the deprivation of post war Dusseldorf/Germany. Her story is recorded in three books which are available on Amazon Books – Innocence Lost, Return to Neckarstrasse and Bridge of love by Else Elfriede Hopp; they are a three part series. She worked in the house on the corner opposite ‘Dorothy House’ now Winsley Croft. (in German Else is spelt with an ‘e’ but pronounced with an ‘a’ Mum hated being called Elsie, the English way, and so spelt her name with an ‘a’). Elsa met John through Grace.

John and Elsa had two boys, me – Steven, born 1956 and Peter born 1959. We are the last known decedents of these three families from the village. However there are other related Burt’s, Hosey’s and Sartain’s out there; Henry George had brothers, and Fred’s son remained in the North West. Cyril and Betty had no children. I even sat next to another Steven Burt for four years while at secondary school in Trowbridge 67-71; same years same class, same name and yet it never occurred to either of us that we may be related…
For employment reasons John and Elsa moved to Norfolk in 1971 leaving Cyril Burt, (Archie’s son) and his wife Betty; Grace, our gran and Dot Blackmore (Hosey) as the last Winsley residents of our once big and extended family within the village. All have now passed; as have John and Elsa; John in 2003 and Elsa in 2023. Their ashes are buried here in Winsley cemetery, as I hope one day mine will also be. This was and always will be my village, my home where I spent the first most wonderful fifteen years of my life and where, when I visit, I feel my family around me.
The pub, the Seven Stars was our pub, the pub where our forefathers drank, played dominos, skittles and darts. There are photographs on the walls of the pub which included our men folk. Bowls, football and cricket all these sports for our village included our family name.
The account I have given here, to the best of my knowledge is factual as are the dates. The records were gleaned from Ansestry.com, the archive centre in Chippenham, also from a descendent of the Hosey family and keen archivist Janet Player. I also had the family history rammed at me from my gran Grace and my aunt Dot Blackmore. Both of them wanted this history passed on. The demise of our families in the village came swiftly during the 1960s-1970s with all the great uncles passing away Paddy & Freda moving north; and our family moving to Norfolk. The remaining few were gran; Grace Burt d.1982; Cyril & Betty both died early 2000 and Dot Blackmore, otherwise known as Dorothy Hosey who passed at the grand age of 103 in 2012.

The only small thing I’m unsure about was John and Matilda’s profession in the early 1800s in Turleigh; some records show carpenter others say blacksmith; I’ve written blacksmith because I’m sure Fred went to work in the North in that profession. If reading this you are adamant that there is a serious mistake please let me know. Also if you are of our ‘Clan’ arrived here in this lovely cemetery to look for one of your ancestors and would like to get in touch please do. stev061@hotmail.com