Grace Warnes (1894-1977)
Among the many names of dulcimer players that Billy Bennington passed on to us, there was just one woman, Grace Warnes.
Grace Beatrice Warnes was born and baptised in Marlingford, a generation younger than Herbert Sadd and his brother Marshall, both dulcimer players. She grew up near the Bell, run by the Sadd family, so it’s possible that she might well have heard music coming from the pub, no doubt including a dulcimer on occasion!
In the 1901 census, a Gypsy family of travelling showmen were camped just by her house, including sons of the famed fiddler Adolphus Gray.
The 1911 census shows Grace, aged 16, working in domestic service in Norwich, but by 1917 she was back in Marlingford where she gave birth to a son, Philip. In the 1921 census, both she and her child’s father, George Fox (also from Marlingford) were living with her parents, and later that year they married. They went on to have another four children and by 1939 were living in a council house in Barford, where Billy Bennington’s parents were living at the time, whilst Billy himself was in Hethel, just across the A11 trunk road.
Quite when Grace would have played the dulcimer is unknown, but Billy did say she was from Marlingford, and he did use her maiden name, so he must have remembered her having a dulcimer before 1921. Billy didn’t move back into Barford until the 1970s, but may well have bumped into Grace Fox (née Warnes, d. 1977) when they were both in their seventies!
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