Duffield Memorial

The Duffields were a prominent family in Chelmsford, having settled in Great Baddow by the time of Henry VIII.[1] William Ward Duffield was born on 25 November 1820, one of nine children to James Duffield, a farmer.[1][2][note 1] William Duffield went on to become a successful solicitor, founding two firms: Duffield and Son, in Chelmsford, and Duffield, Bruty and Co., in London.[1][5] As of 2023, the latter survives as Duffield Harrison LLP;[6][7] the former, by then known as Duffield Stunt, merged into Backhouse Solicitors in 2015.[8][9][note 2] He also held many public roles, including clerk to the Chelmsford Board of Governors, clerk to the Justices at Chelmsford, registrar of the Chelmsford County Court and Bankruptcy Court, and governor (and later chairman) of the King Edward VI School.[1] His private positions included director and chairman of the Chelmsford and Braintree Gas Companies, the Chelmsford and Blackwater Navigation Company, and the Reliance Life Assurance Company, and chairman of the London Board of the Norwich Union after it acquired Reliance.[1][11]

William Duffield married Marianne Bartleet on 10 March 1860.[12] The couple had three surviving children: sons William Bartleet (1861–1918[13][14][15]) and Arthur Stewart (1867–1930[16][17]), and daughter Florence Marion.[18][note 3] Marianne Duffield died on 22 June 1910,[20] three months after the couple had celebrated their 50th anniversary.[21][22] She was buried in the churchyard of Church of St Mary in Great Baddow, following a family tradition of several generations.[23] Her husband died two years later, on 7 August 1912,[1] and was buried in the same grave.[24] William Bartleet Duffield died a bachelor six years later in Aix-les-Bains, France, where he had been wintering for his health.[13]

At the time of William Ward Duffield's death, Herbert Maryon was 38 years old and a teacher of sculpture at the University of Reading in Reading, Berkshire.[25] One of his colleagues was Walter Geoffrey Duffield, a professor of physics at Reading and the grandson of William Ward Duffield's brother Walter.[26][note 4] Maryon had studied at The Slade, Saint Martin's School of Art, and the Central School of Arts and Crafts,[28][25] where his teachers included Alexander Fisher and William Lethaby.[29][30] He subsequently led the Keswick School of Industrial Art from 1900 to 1904, where he designed numerous Arts and Crafts works, and taught metalwork at the Storey Institute.[28] Maryon taught at Reading from 1907 to 1927, then at Armstrong College until 1939.[31] He designed a number of other memorials while a teacher, including First World War monuments for East Knoyle,[32] Mortimer,[33] and the University of Reading.[34] After the Second World War, Maryon went on a second career as a conservator at the British Museum; his work on the Sutton Hoo ship-burial led to his appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.[35]

Like the Duffields, the Maryons were native to the area; a family pedigree by Herbert Maryon's brother John Ernest started by declaring that "[t]he Maryon family has been located for centuries in the centre and west of co. Essex, the east of co. Hertford, and the south of co. Cambridge, so that a radius of 20 miles would include nearly every place in which they have held property or resided before the year 1800."[36] This included a branch of the family in Chelmsford.[37] Samuel William Maryon, whose grandfather was likely Herbert Maryon's great-great-grandfather (or the brother thereof),[37] served as the Inspector of Corn Returns for the Chelmsford Corn Exchange Company, of which William Ward Duffield was the Secretary.[38][39][40]