Local History


commendable practices such as very early opening and very late closing so serving people on their way and going home from work. Tavistock, not being an industrial town, was perhaps an unusual choice; but it may have been selected on account of its strong local support at that time for the temperance movement.


insolvency.”


Nationally, by the early 1880s many proprietors of the British Workman refreshment houses had found them to be very hard work, and barely financially viable. Some proprietors were forced into the ultimate ignominy of having to sell alcoholic beverages in order to avoid insolvency. William Shepperd was not forced into such an extreme measure but he did have to widen his customer base. Also he pursued other business interests including being the local agent for mineral water companies and using the hotel premises as a distribution point for soft drinks. Ian also tells us about some other members of his family: My great grandfather on my father’s side was John Walters, joiner born Tavistock in 1840, son of William and Sarah Walters, both born in Tavistock in 1816. John moved to London and married Maria Wilson in 1863. My father’ parents were John and Maria Walters’ son, John William Wilson Walters, and Annie Emma May Shepperd (second daughter of William and Annie Shepperd) who were married in September1899 at Tavistock. The groom had


alcohol.. to avoid


“..sell


countryside’. In 1921, when both were in poor health, they returned to Tavistock to be cared for by their oldest daughter, Florence Richards, who lived at 5 Trelawny Terrace (sic). Florence Richards had previously run a guest house in West Street, Tavistock.


been working in white- collar employment since the age of 13. At the time of the wedding he was 34 years old and working at the Prudential in Holborn.


Walters and Annie Shepperd took place at the Tavistock Parish Church on Tuesday the 19th September 1899. The wedding breakfast held at the temperance hotel was attended by many guests. The happy couple honeymooned in Llandudno. The bride, then aged 31, had been for many years the headmistress of Milton Abbot School, a lovely little village school not far out of Tavistock.


is possible that she met her future husband some years earlier while she was working as a trainee teacher in the Home Counties.


John and Annie Walters had two sons; Cyril Walters born in 1901, and my


It The wedding of John


father, Jack Dudley Walters, born in 1904 at Brixton, but christened at Tavistock Parish Church in the same year. As a youngster he used to travel to Okehampton by train from London and then on to


“..Tavistock ‘by


haywain’...”


Tavistock ‘by haywain’, he said, to spend summers with his grandparents at the hotel and subsequently at a house in the countryside nearby. Those holidays were somewhere around 1908 to 1918.


After they moved from the temperance hotel in 1912 William and Annie Shepperd retired to a house they called ‘Parkwood’ at Lewdown so it is probable this was the ‘house in the


The council offices, which the hotel became of course, kindly allowed my father to look around a few years back. He pointed out where various tasks in the hotel business had been performed including butter churning. The council staff must have been bemused. The latest chapter in my family history today sees my daughter Kimberly Walters at a senior rank in Hilton Hotels. Perhaps the hotel trade is in the genes? William Shepperd died aged 81 on the 12th November 1922 after catching a chill while attending a Liberal party rally. Annie Shepperd, who was known locally as a kindly lady, died aged 78 on the 5th September 1923. They are buried in the Plymouth Road cemetery where there is a headstone. Ian would be delighted to be contacted by other descendants of the Shepperd and Walters families through the West Devon Diary office, Tel: 01822 610575 or email: the-diary@hotmail.co.uk .


Saturday 23rd April 2011 and until the end of October 2011. The featured exhibition this year will be ‘The 1911 Sale of Bedford Estate Properties’.


37


Tavistock Museum will be open daily 11.00 a.m. to 3.00 p.m. from


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