William Savill

"William Savill was ... a remarkable man who did a great deal to help the poor of the village. He started his working life as a pupil teacher in the Clavering School (Upper room in Church Cottages, Clavering) and attending Borough Road Normal School in London during his first Harvest Holiday to get himself qualified. In order to finance the school which had closed in debt he rented Curl’s Farm and took up farming. He found he was unable to continue teaching and farming and gave up teaching but he donated an acre of land to build a new British School (Non-Conformist) and he and his friends including Ebenezer Ault set about raising the money to complete the school and set it up. He sought suitable teachers and I have a copy of a six page letter he wrote to the land owner Christ’s Hospital appealing for assistance. This letter sets out the social conditions prevailing in Clavering in the 19th century. He was turned down we guess due to the fact that they were dissenters appealing to the established church, but the school was built and opened anyway. The school log books are in the Essex Records Office in Colchester. All this while he and his wife Rebecca Parnwell brought up 14 children half of whom died in infancy or childhood. There is a memorial to these children in Clavering Independent Chapel (formerly Congregational Church). He also contracted and recovered from small pox and sustained a severe back injury. He guaranteed the wages of a doctor for the village, there not having been one for many years. several of his daughters were assistant teachers in the school who married the masters who were employed there. This included my great grandmother Fanny Savill who married the master Alfred Lines".²