Ben Tawn of Fressingfield Adrian Marsden

Ben Tawn of Fressingfield Adrian Marsden On 16th November 2019, whilst visiting the church of St. George Tombland in Norwich to see the memorial of Francis Aylmer, a wool comber and issuer of a seventeenthcentury token (Williamson 140), I met the verger, Peter Callan, who had let me know of the existence and location of Aylmer’s memorial. A week later I revisited St. George’s with some material I had printed out on Aylmer’s career and a photograph of one of his tokens. I was touched when Peter gave me two tokens issued by his grandfather, Benjamin Tawn of Fressingfield in Suffolk, and the kind gesture induced me to carry out some research on this issuer. It also offered something in way of a change from the Norfolk Token Project’s continuing research into seventeenth-century Norfolk issuers, the opportunity to look into the case of a twentieth-century Suffolk token issuer. The two tokens are struck in different metals, one in aluminium and the other in what appears to be a brass-type alloy, but are otherwise very similar in general appearance. Both are of approximately 23mm diameter and, on the obverse, carry the legend of BEN TAWN FRESHINGFIELD (figure 1). In a way curiously reminiscent of seventeenth-century issues (can there be no escape!), the place name has been rendered incorrectly. The correct spelling of Fressingfield, a village with a population of around one thousand some twelve miles east of the market town of Diss, appears as FRESHINGFIELD. No doubt the reasons for the twentieth-century misspelling were the same as they were in the seventeenth, a die sinker unaware of the existence of Fressingfield, let alone how the name was spelled. Ironically, in the seventeenth century, Freshingfield was a common variant spelling for the place. December 2020 Page 184 Token Corresponding Society Bulletin Vol.13 No.5 Fig. 1: Obverses of the two Ben Tawn tokens Close study reveals that both tokens have been struck using the same obverse die. The reverses differ (figure 2), that of the aluminium example reading 1/- (for a shilling) and that of the brass example 1D (for a penny). Aluminium tokens of this type invariably date to the 1920s or 1930s and Benjamin Tawn’s issues surely date to the inter-war period or, perhaps, to just after the Second World War, to the late 1940s or 1950s. There is no maker’s name rendering the question of where they might have been produced unanswerable. Fig. 2: Reverses of the two Ben Tawn tokens A note from Peter records the tokens as having been ‘issued by my Grandfather, Benjamin Tawn, Farmer, of White House Farm, Fressingfield, Suffolk’ and notes that they were given to workers picking strawberries. They certainly would have suited a use as agricultural checks or tallies, being given out as fruit pickers returned what they had gathered for weighing in return for payment. Presumably, they would have then been accepted as currency locally, being later redeemed, or they would have been exchanged for proper money by Benjamin Tawn or his subordinates at the end of the picking season. Token Corresponding Society Bulletin Vol.13 No.5 December 2020 Page 185 Jean Weetman and I began to set about finding out what we could about Benjamin Tawn(1). In some ways, researching a nineteenth or twentieth-century issuer is much easier than researching a seventeenth-century one. The records are normally far more complete although errors do still occur and as recently as the late twentieth century. Jean, for example, had previously found her maiden name spelled incorrectly on her own marriage record! Despite the records being – in the main – far more complete there are other problems in researching more recent cases. For example, only census records over a hundred years old are available online, a particularly annoying problem with regard to where Benjamin Tawn was located from the period 1912 until his death in 1970. Benjamin’s early history is easy to reconstruct. He was baptised at Wisbech on 27 th September 1886, the son of Benjamin, a postman and farmer, and Mary. Interestingly, his year of birth is always described in Census records as 1887. The Fressingfield History Group state that the family moved to Fressingfield Hall in the 1890s (2). It must be the case that only some of the younger family members moved; the 1911 Census describes Benjamin Tawn as a single farmer, aged 24, living at Hall Farm, Fressingfield, with his sister Nellie and brother Ernest. Benjamin senior, described now as a coal merchant and fruit grower, was still at Wisbech with his wife and a number of younger children. Given his date of birth, Benjamin junior cannot have moved to Fressingfield until a year or two before the 1911 Census. He married Thirza Feaveryear at Hartismere in 1913 and their son Benjamin was born the following year. Benjamin’s daughter, Beryl, born in 1917, married Patrick Callan at Gipping in Suffolk in 1941. Peter Callan is their eldest son. Benjamin Tawn’s name occurs in various entries to be found in various editions of Kelly’s Directory. In 1912 he was listed as living at Fressingfield Hall, surely the Hall Farm mentioned in the Census of the previous year; by 1927 he had moved to the White House at Fressingfield where he is described as a farmer and attested in entries for 1927, 1931 and 1937.This accords well with information received from the Fressingfield History Group which describes a move to White House Farm in the 1920s. Fig. 3: Press cutting from 1936 December 2020 Page 186 Token Corresponding Society Bulletin Vol.13 No.5 One interesting press cutting was provided by the Fressingfield History Group, from the Framlingham Weekly News, dated 23rd May 1936. It describes a traffic accident in which a motor bike, driven by Benjamin Taun (sic) with William Mills riding pillion, hit William Runnacles’ push-bike (figure 3): ‘Taun and Mills were thrown. The former received nasty superficial injuries to face and nose, and had to be medically attended, but the two others involved escaped with severe shakings.’ Interestingly, from information supplied by the Fressingfield History Group, we know that the Mills family owned a grocery shop in New Street, Fressingfield; presumably William Mills was one of their number. We cannot be sure whether the Benjamin Tawn mentioned was the token issuer or his son; given that Benjamin Tawn junior would have been in his early twenties at the time, we might suspect him as being the more likely candidate. References 1. All information from the websites www.thegenealogist.co.uk and www.findmypast.co.uk 2. Fressingfield History Group, personal communication per Duncan Pennock, 14 th December 2019. Acknowledgements. I have many people to thank, who have each played their part in the production of this short note. It would not have been written were it not for Peter Callan and his kind gift of his grandfather’s two tokens. Duncan Pennock adverted my attention to information he had in his turn been supplied with by the Fressingfield History Group. Finally, Jean Weetman has scoured the internet and the two genealogy websites mentioned in the endnotes for information on Benjamin Tawn. Token Corresponding Society Bulletin Vol.13 No.5 December 2020 Page 187