Sarah was born on 7 August 1844 in Quevert, France, the daughter of John West Mallandaine and Cecilia Hawkes. Following her father’s death in Jersey in 1853, the family returned to England and settled in Folkestone, Kent.
After completing her schooling, Sarah took a position as a French teacher at the Medina Villas School in Brighton and later moved to Bury St Edmonds to take a teaching position at the Abbey School. The Abbey Girl’s boarding school was run by Anne Fulcher and it was through this association that Sarah met her future husband. She married Anne’s brother, Henry, on 5 December 1867 at her home parish of Christchurch in Folkestone.
Henry Fulcher was born in Yaxley, Suffolk on 22 March 1843, the son of Thomas and Mary Hunt, and baptised at the parish church of St Mary on 4 June. It appears from available records that the Fulcher family farmed in the area around Yaxley for several generations.
After their wedding, Henry and Sarah returned to Yaxley, a small farming village four miles south of Diss on the old Roman Road that ran from Ipswich to Norwich. In 1871, the village had a population of 462 people who supported a village shop and post office, a fishmonger, miller, tailor, watchmaker, blacksmith and shoemaker. The Cherry Tree public house was situated at one end of the village and the parish church of St Mary at the other. The village also boasted an Elizabethan mansion called Yaxley Hall — now a popular wedding venue — but the majority of the land surrounding the village was owned by the Henniker family and most of the village residents were employed in agriculture with many leaseholds passing from generation to generation of the same family.
Their first daughter, Mary Henrietta Cecilia, was born in Yaxley on 16 May 1869 and baptised at St Mary on 13 June followed by Charlotte Georgiana, known as Georgie, on 12 September 1870 and baptised on 3 October.
The family appears in the 1871 Census at Store House Farm on The Hall Road and Henry’s occupation was listed as Agricultural Steward. The Store House Farm was originally part of the estate of Yaxley Hall which dates back to the 16th century and was occupied by the Yaxley family for well over a hundred years. It was sold to Nicholas Leke, the Fourth Earl of Scarsdale, in the early 18th Century as a home for his mistress Margaret Seymour and their three illegitimate children. It was rumoured that the Earl had over 80 illegitimate children but only those born to Margaret were permitted to take his name.
The family completed substantial renovations to the hall in the ‘Gothick’ style of architecture soon after the purchase but when the Earl died unmarried in 1736 with no legitimate heirs, the earldom could not be passed on and was abandoned. However, the Earl bequeathed the Hall and surrounding property including Hall Farm and Store House Farm to his three children by Margaret Seymour and their descendants retained ownership of the Hall until the early 20th Century. Henrietta Leeke, the great-great-granddaughter of Nicholas Leke, married Patrick Robert Welch in 1840 and resided in the Hall until her death in 1905. Following Henrietta’s death, her daughters sold the estate to Lord Henniker who owned much of the land around Yaxley.
Their only son, Thomas, was born on 31 May 1872 and baptised on 21 July and two years later, their third daughter, Alice Mildred, was born on 21 July 1874 and baptised on 19 September. The Fulcher family was still living at Store House Farm in 1881 and Henry’s occupation was listed as a Farmer of 50 Acres employing 3 men and 1 boy. When the census was taken on 3 April, Thomas was visiting his grandmother, Cecilia Hawkes Mallandaine, and aunts in Folkestone, Kent but by 1891, he had returned to the family home at Store House Farm. His sister, Mary, was away visiting their relations, the Thomsons, in Penzance, Cornwall and Georgie was teaching French at the Yale House Ladies School in Whalley, Lancashire.
In 1894, their daughters Mary and Alice married at St Mary’s in the same week. Mary married Arthur Dyson Cooper, a solicitor from Croydon, on 5 June and Alice married James Francis Mathieson on 7 June. The event was reported in the Ipswich Journal and the village was decorated for the weddings including arches, adorned with banners such as ‘long life’ and ‘health and happiness’, placed along the route from the Fulcher home to the church and even the Red Lion pub was decorated with evergreens and flags in honour of the event. Following Mary’s wedding on Tuesday, a reception was held in a marquee at the Fulcher house and Sarah’s four sisters Alice, Fanny, Mary and Helen all attended the celebration. Mary and Arthur’s numerous gifts were listed in the Ipswich Journal article including many from the Mallandaine family — silver trays from James John and his wife Honora, a silver cream jug from Fanny, embroidered handkerchiefs from Mary, a silver plated tea kettle and stand from Alice, an oak tray from Helen and a silver backed brush from Fred and his wife Bessie.
The decorations from Tuesday’s wedding remained intact for Alice’s wedding on Thursday and ‘gave a festive appearance to the village’. The third Fulcher daughter, Georgie, acted as bridesmaid at both weddings and a second reception was again held at the Fulcher home on Thursday. The celebrations continued on after the event as the newspaper reported that, on Monday, ‘the men employed on the farm and their wives and friends were treated to a supper in honour of the happy events and the feast was followed by an entertainment of vocal and instrumental music.’ The article concluded that ‘if any evidence were required of the esteem in which Mr and Mrs Fulcher are held by their friends and neighbours it was abundantly afforded by the kindly and general interest manifested in the marriages of two daughters at the parish church.’
One year later, their middle daughter, Georgie, left home to marry George Ashton in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Six years later, Henry died aged only 58 years and was buried in the church yard of St Mary on 26 January 1901. When the census was taken two months later, Sarah Edith was living at Old House Farm and her occupation was listed as Farmer but there is no record of whether the move from Store House Farm occurred before or after Henry’s death. Her two sisters, Alice and Mary Mallandaine, were also living with her along with one boarder, a cook and a domestic servant.
Their son, Thomas, has not been located in the 1901 Census but the family story has Thomas travelling to Brazil to work but he was never heard from again. His parents agreed to allow their daughter Georgie to travel to Ecuador to marry in part because they hoped she and her new husband could find out what happened to him but they were not successful and it is assumed that he died somewhere in Brazil. There is a record of a T. Fulcher travelling to Rio de Janeiro from Liverpool on board the Orita on 26 October 1905 but the record does not contain enough information to confirm whether this is Thomas.
Eighteen months after Henry’s death, Sarah married a local farmer named John Stanford Tillott. John was born in Yaxley in 1841, the son of Robert Tillott and Sarah Ann Stanford, and lived and farmed at White House Farm his entire life. Robert Tillott was born in Wisset, Suffolk in 1807, the son of John and Sarah Tillott. Robert and Sarah Ann had five children and had farmed at White House in Yaxley since 1841. In 1861, their sons Robert and John were helping run the 265 acre farm but ten years later, Robert retired and John took over the farm. John had married Ellen Packard in Yaxley in 1866 and they had seven children before Ellen died in 1880.
Sarah Mallandaine died four years later in June 1906. John Stanford Tillott died in Yaxley in 1924, aged 83 years.
Mary and Arthur settled in Sutton, Surrey after their marriage and had two daughters, Yvonne Margaret and Irene Cecilia. Mary and Arthur signed the visitor’s book at St Mary’s when they returned to Yaxley for a visit in 1895, possibly to say goodbye to Georgie before she left for Ecuador. They were still living in Sutton with their two daughters in 1901 and Arthur’s occupation was listed as ‘living on own means’ and the family was wealthy enough to employ three domestic servants — a cook, a domestic and a nursemaid. Arthur and Mary next appear in the guest book in 1925 but their address was listed as St Servan, France — which coincidentally, was not far from her mother’s birthplace in Dinan — but is not known if Mary and Arthur ever returned to England.