For those of you who have read “TheMasters of Walcote, Leicestershire”, you will have read several references to Des Masters who was a key informant about our family in Walcote. It was Des who located the headstone of young Joel Masters, the brother of William Marsters of Palmerston. Joel was born in 1840 and died in 1853 of “rheumatism of the heart”. He was buried at St Leonard’s Church in Walcote, Misterton, and all that remained of his burial site in the small church grounds, was his headstone which Des had found, and it was the first thing that Des took me to when I visited Walcote in 2007. It was lovely to make these family connections from so far back in our history.

The family of Des Masters had mentioned that his last wish was that some of his ashes were to be buried in Palmerston which had always been a passion for him since he discovered the family connection. And in 2017 his ashes were dutifully delivered and buried on Palmerston (with another family member who had died a few days previously). Recently, his plaque arrived on the island which will forever remind everyone of the descendants of the family that Richard Masters (known to us as William Richard Marsters) left behind in Walcote, where he was born in 1831 and died on Palmerston in 1899.