Your great great great grandparents, Richard and Elizabeth Vacher, and your great great grandparents, John and Ann Vacher, are mine too. You can imagine my surprise, coming across your Conversation Thread on the West Tytherley website, while researching my own family history.
My great grandmother, Catherine Vacher (b 1859) was sister to your great grandfather Richard. My understanding is that John and Ann had a further 10, rather than 6, children,after moving to West Dean : Ann b 1857, Catherine (as above), Eliza b 1861, Henry b 1862, John b 1863, Mary b 1864, Fanny b 1866, Rebecca b 1868, Dinah b 1869, and Louisa Rose b 1873.
The 1881 census gives John as a farm labourer in West Tytherley, and son Henry as gamekeeper. I can find no documentary evidence for John having been on the railways, though Catherine's husband Richard (Light) went from being an under gardener in 1881 to a railway porter in 1891, and thence to a railway goods warehouseman. Maybe that's where the idea came from?
I'm afraid can't really help with your cottages query. The only contemporaneous ones I've seen are the gardeners' cottages near Norman Court School, where Catherine and Richard lived while he was working on the Norman Court estate in 1881,and they are on private land. Whether John and Ann would have been able to retire there, I've no idea. The 2 entries on the 1891 census page prior to John and Ann's have the words 'Dean Road' and 'Common' in brackets after each. I wonder if that will help?
I don't know whether you would be interested, but I do have several photographs, - one is a copy labelled 'Grandad and Grandma Vacher' which I presume to be John and Ann, sitting outside in an unidentifiable garden. I also have one of John as a gamekeeper - complete with bowler hat! Also one of the Catherine (b 1826 and known as Aunt Kitty) who was sister to Richard and John, when she was an elderly lady. They are in 2 large Victorian photograph albums which have come down to me, but which are, frustratingly, full for the most part, of photos which are unlabelled. I would be happy to e mail them to you if you are interested.
You have, by the by, completely made my day!
Regards,
Christine Patrick (Woodbridge, Suffolk)
Dear Paul,
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