On a fine day in the autumn of 1861 a group of farmers put on military uniforms and took to the parade ground at Lyneham in the Devon countryside. After weeks of rain the weather was finally suitable for harvesting but these farmers gave up the opportunity to attend to their crops and turned out instead for a parade of their volunteer unit, the 7th Devon (Yealm Vale) Mounted Rifle Volunteers. This was a time when England was still in conflict with France and there was a fear that the French might invade the south coast so volunteer brigades were formed to help repulse any attack. The 7th Devon Volunteers were a part of this larger group of locals and they gathered to drill and march before the Government Inspector to display the skills they had learnt as infantrymen and cavalry. After it was over they dispersed back to their properties to continue with the harvest. The event was faithfully recorded in The Volunteer Service Gazette which heaped praise on the men, reporting that Major Hume, the Government Inspector was most impressed, singling out their drill instructor, Private Benjamin Taylor of the Royal Marines, for special praise. The Gazetter reported
‘Previous to the inspection the men were put through a few preliminary movements by their drill instructor, Benjamin Taylor, of the Royal Marines, who deserves credit for the excellent manner in which he has brought the men on in their drill.’1
Private Taylor was stationed in Plymouth and lived in the Royal Marines Barracks in East Stonehouse, which is the featured image for this post.
No doubt Private Taylor saw the drill as a chance to avoid the tedium of barracks life. The marines were not on active duty at this time and were confined to basic duties in England. The Royal Marines had taken part in some of the bloodiest fighting in the Crimean War, with some of them being among the first winners of the newly created Victoria Cross, but that war had recently ended and servicemen like Benjamin were involved in more mundane tasks at home, such as helping to train local farmers in the arts of infantry and cavalry work.
The Royal Marines have a long history with the Corps being founded in 1664. Because they were a marines force they were stationed in Plymouth where they had ready port access. The East Stonehouse Barracks were constructed in the 1780s.
Benjamim was originally from Lancashire and probably signed on to the Marines there. I have been unable to find out when he joined but I assume that he had not been in the corps long because he was only a private at the time of the volunteers drill training.
In 1854 Private Benjamin Taylor married the 18-year-old Sarah Goss who was also at the East Stonehouse barracks, where she lived with her father, Colour Sergeant John Huxtable Goss. Benjamin was 23 years old when he married and the ceremony took place in the ancient Church of Saint George in Chapel Street, East Stonehouse. The remains of the church are still standing but it was considerably damaged by German bombing during the Second World War.
After they married Benjamin and Sarah moved into a house at 9 Durnford Street, next to the main barracks. Besides being the home of the Royal Marines, Durnford Street has another claim to fame as it was the site of a medical practice part-managed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes novels. The Hound of the Baskervilles is set on Dartmoor in Devon and Holmes took his inspiration for the gothic feel of the novel from the moors. The Taylors’ Durnford Street house is still there but has been converted into apartments.
The Taylors had their first child a year after they married and they named him John, either after Sarah’s father or Benjamin’s father who were both named John. A second son, whom they named Benjamin like his father, was born in 1860. There is a record of baptism for Benjamin who was christened a Catholic even though his parents had been married in an Anglican church.
In 1861, the same year that Benjamin senior put the volunteers through their paces, Britain conducted another one of its ten-yearly censuses and this picked up the Taylor family in Durnford Street. There were two families living at Number 9, Benjamin Taylor’s family and another marine named John Hodge. The census mentioned that Benjamin had been born in Liverpool and Sarah in Queenstown, Ireland. Their son John was a six-year-old schoolboy at the time while his younger brother Benjamin was still an infant.
Private Benjamin Taylor retired from the Royal Marines and went back to Lancaster. The census of 1871 found him working as a park keeper living with his family in Anfield Road2, Walton On The Hill. Benjamin was given a Royal Marines pension when he retired and it supported him for the rest of his life. His name appears in the Royal Marines pension books each year but entries cease in 1879 after he died.
Benjamin’s father John is as far back as we can go in the English records and although there are plenty of Lancashire Taylors in the parish records it is impossible to say with certainty which ones are members of this family. The Taylor family stayed in Lancaster after Benjamin died but young John eventually left, emigrating to New Zealand. There is nothing in the parish records about Sarah or young Benjamin and it is possible that they stayed in Lancashire.
The Christian names Benjamin and John were favoured Taylor family names and Clarrie’s father, Benjamin John Taylor, was given both of them. Benjamin John’s brother Sydney Ernest Taylor is the odd one out, however, and probably reflects the fact that the family was living in Sydney when he was born. The name Sydney came to be Clarrie Taylor’s second name and the names Ernest and John were the names of two of his brothers. People were not very adventurous with given names in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the same names get repeated in families generation after generation. That custom has ceased in the 21st century where unique and unusual given names are usually preferred.
The Goss Family
Benjamin Taylor’s wife was named Sarah Goss. She was the oldest of th five children of Colour Sergeant John Huxtable Goss and his wife Anastasia. Sarah had four brothers, John (born 1844 in East Stonehouse), William (born 1847 in Ireland), Henry and James (both born 1850 in East Stonehouse). Sarah had been born in Ireland. and The different birthplaces of the children suggest that their father had moved between England and Ireland during his life, probably through his deployments with the Marines.
At the time of the 1851 UK census, John, Anastasia and three of the boys were living in East Stonehouse.
I cannot find the family in the 1861 census (perhaps they were in Ireland) but by the following census in 1871 the census showed that John had married again and had another daughter (Emma) who was born in East Stonehouse. Anastasia must have died because John is described in the census as a widower. At the time of the census John was 57 years old and he was described as a Greenwich Pensioner and dockyard timekeeper. John and his family were now living with two other families in a house at 45 Duke Street, Stoke Damerel, Devonport where he moved after his retirement from the Marines. John had been born in Devonport so he may have decided to return there after retirement to be near his family.
We do not know much more about John Goss or his first wife, Anastasia. Their marriage record stated that John’s father was named Henry Goss and was a Merchants Clerk, but that is all the information that we can find. John’s second wife Eliza was born Eliza Rowley and her father’s name was James Rowley. James was also in the Royal Marines.
John Huxtable Goss died in 1879. He is buried in the Anglican section of Ford Park Cemetery, Plymouth. He was Clarrie Taylor’s great great grandfather and Anastasia was Clarrie’s great great grandmother.
- ‘Official Inspection of the Yealm Vale Mounted Rifles’, Volunteer Service Gazette, 7 September 1861, p 729. ↩︎
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