Snell Window

Bow Church - The William and Ann Snell Window

The window over the West entrance is to the memory of William and Ann Snell and. It was erected by their two sons Samuel Eastabrook and William in about 1890. It is the work of Frederick Drake of the Exeter firm of Beer and Driffield.



William senior was born in Lapford in 1806. In 1833 he married Ann Easterbrook (born in Bow in 1807).


They farmed at Nymet Barton, by Bow Church where their two sons were born, then at Yeo, North Tawton.



Ann Snell died aged 46 at Yeo on 18th November 1852. Wliiam remarried in 1861 to Mary Sarah Wills Nosworthy from Manaton. He died at Yeo Farm on 13th April 1866.



The elder son, Samuel Eastabrook Snell, was born in 1838.He became a wholesale grocer in Pimlico Road, London, working with his uncle Thomas Snell (1822-1878). He married Alice Annie Hatch nee Markwick in 1883 but had no children. Samuel died in 1893. They are buried in the Brompton Cemetery.



William Snell Junior was born in 1844. He carried on at Yeo Farm after the death of his father, then moved to Broadnymett, a large farm between Bow and North Tawton. In 1877 he married Mary Elizabeth Dunning Prickman, whose father previously owned Broadnymett; they had five daughters. He became a magistrate, and Alderman of Okehampton. He died of a haemorrhage from his lungs at Burton Hall, North Tawton, aged 60, in 1904 and was buried in the family vault along with his parents, at Bow Church, overlooked by the window he endowed.

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