Vickery, W

Singer

Collection date: Sept 1904

Area: Devon

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W Vickery at East Worlington, North Devon (1856-1935): age 48, 1 song 'Banks of Green Willow' (FT427) on 14 Sept 1904. Click vwml link above: East Worlington is 5 miles south of Meshaw. There was no W.Vickery in either East or West Worlington in the 1901 census but there was a William Vickery in Witheridge 2 miles away and Sharp only indicates that he got this song ‘at’ East Worlington. This William Vickery was born and brought up in East Worlington and may have been visiting his father (singer) John Vickery, when by accident or design Sharp met him. Neither singer is related to Capt Vickery of Minehead.

The information about William Vickery is that he was born c1856, eldest child of John Vickery, a carter and his wife Jane. In 1871 William was already a farm servant at William Hosegood’s farm in West Worlington but then moved to Witheridge village, where he was a ‘woodman’ in the 1891 census with wife Sarah. In 1901 he was listed as a ‘dairy farmer’ but there were no children. It seems that the couple had sadly lost 3 children but then twins Ivy and Gertrude were born in 1906. William’s choice of song ‘The Banks of Green Willow’, in which a mother and baby are cast overboard their ship, takes on added meaning. Sharp would note the song 10 times in Somerset and it would soon appear in Folk Songs from Somerset vol 1. William died on 25/1/1935 in Brompton Regis.