Honeybone, Mrs

Singer

Collection date: Sept 1911

Area: Oxfordshire

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Mrs (Naomi) Honeybone at Ascott-under-Wychwood (1860-1939): 2 songs (FT2673,4) on 15 Sept 1911: In his notes for ‘Lord Lovel’ (FT2673) Sharp wrote that Mrs Honeybone had learned her songs from her grandfather, who came from Sandford-on-Thames (4 miles S of Oxford). He was 'a soldier, who had fought at Waterloo. He died at 83, when she was 17'. This turns out to be absolutely accurate, as follows:-

Mrs Naomi Honeybone was baptised ‘Naomi Cross’ on 1/4/1860 at Hook Norton, Oxfordshire, daughter and 5th child of Charles Cross, agricultural labourer and his wife Mary Ann. Charles was born in 1830, son of William Cross by his first wife Ann. William Cross was born in 1794 and served in the 43rd Foot Regiment. He was admitted as a Chelsea Pensioner at the age of 79 in April 1874 (Admission Book WO116 piece 107). He died in July qr 1876 aged 82 (3a 450), at which point his granddaughter Naomi would have been in her 17th year.

Naomi grew up in Hook Norton where her grandfather also lived for the last 25 years of his life, so she was close to him. She married Thomas Honeybone, agricultural labourer, on 1/6/1879 at Hook Norton church but by 1881 the couple had moved to Ascott-under-Wychwood, where they raised 11 children. Thomas Honeybone was originally from Ascott, where his father John Honeybone had been a morris dancer. Naomi Honeybone's son Ralph (b1893) was a member of Reginald Tiddy's revived Ascott morris side.

Thomas Honeybone died in 1905 but Naomi lived on until July qr 1939.