Job Rose was born in Sturminster Newton in 1812, he was the son of James Rose, a miller, and Charlotte his wife. Job married Hannah Chaffey in Sturminster Newton in 1838. Being the son of a miller, he would have learned the trade during his childhood and, in the 1840’s, he moved to become the miller at Woodbridge Mill, Bedchester, which is within the parish of Fontmell Magna. By 1861, they had 8 children: including Kate, their youngest child born in about 1855.
Now, Job had become a well-known character in the locality, and in 1851, he travelled to London to visit Prince Albert’s great exhibition at the Crystal Palace.
The story of his London adventure reached the ears of the great Dorset poet, William Barnes, who composed a poem about it, in which he describes Job as a jolly soul and the best of Millers.
Not only was Job a big character, he was also a big man physically. Barnes in his poem tells us that ‘Across the chest he wer so wide as two or three ov me or you, an’ wider still vrom zide to zide, an’ I do think still thicker through. Vall down, he coulden, when he did lie on his side, he wer so high as up on end or perty nigh.’
There is an early photograph of him, which shows how large a man he was. In fact, he was reputed to have weighed over 30 stones (190kg).
Job Rose (1812 – 1871)
During these years, there was a farmer living in the neighbouring hamlet of Twyford, named William Tapper, who farmed 43 acres and employed two labourers.
William was married to Emma, and in 1862, they had three children, the eldest of whom was 5-year-old Henry John Tapper.
Methodism strongly featured in the lives of the Rose and the Tapper families. Their faith and the way they worshipped was very important to them.
By the 1870’s he had dropped his first Christian name, and he was thereafter known simply as John Tapper.
Growing up in Twyford and Bedchester during those years, John would have become well acquainted with Kate Rose (Job Rose’s youngest child) and her family and, in the spring of 1878, they were married. John was aged 22, Kate aged about the same age.
By 1881, at the age of only 25, John had become a farmer in his own right. The census records him as a farmer of 70 acres, employing one man.
John Tapper (1855-1949)
He was a staunch Methodist. He was Sunday school superintendent at Hartgrove for 50 years and was a circuit steward on the old Wesleyan Methodist circuit. This commitment to Methodism was passed on to his children and one of them became a Methodist minister.
John and Kate produced five children, Geraldine, James, William, Mary and Hannah
Geraldine married a Methodist minister, Mary married a dairy manager, who later became an Estate Agent’s clerk. James and his wife were married one day and on board a ship bound for Australia the very next day. Hannah married a man who was a sales representative for an iron & steel company.
William was born on Christmas Day 1883 at Burden’s Farm in Twyford, Compton Abbas. He followed in his father’s Methodist footsteps and joined the ministry and, in 1911, aged 27, was studying theology at the Wesleyan College in Handsworth, Birmingham.
By 1921, aged 37½, and following service as an army chaplain in the Middle East during the First World War, he became a Wesleyan Methodist minister living at Bootle near Liverpool
William Tapper (1883-1968)
Then, in the autumn of 1927, aged 39, William married a young lady named Emma Hinds in Croydon, Surrey. Emma was aged 21. A year later their first child, Patricia, was born. Then, during the winter of 1931, Geoffrey William Tapper was born in the registration district of West Ham, London.
In 1939, William and Emma were living at 264 Wuffield Road, Belper in Derbyshire. William was now an established Methodist Minister and will have been a great influence on his son, who went on to be a Methodist local Preacher and well-known doctor in the Shaftesbury area.
This photograph taken in the early 1940’s, shows John Tapper leading the family off, perhaps to church, or possibly to a wedding. In the foreground Hannah Hart (nee Tapper)hugs an unknown little girl. From left to right – Peter Stammers, Helen Hart, Ellen Hart,Alfred Hart, and a young Geoffrey Tapper.
John Tapper passed away at the age of 86, on the 9th November 1949 and his body was brought from London to be laid to rest with his late wife, Kate, in the churchyard at Fontmell Magna.
Family members and many others attended his funeral, including his son, the Reverend William Tapper, who was now described as being in the Methodist ministry at Hounslow in West London.
Meanwhile, Geoffrey was growing up in Bedchester, and very much influenced by his father and no doubt his grandfather. He survived tuberculosis and experienced a growing feeling that he was under an obligation to serve the public.
Geoffrey married Philippa Hesketh in the Autumn of 1956 and, during the years 1961 to 1972, four sons, Henry, Gregory, Rupert and Albert were born.
He received a fine education and qualified as GP. He was in fact my own doctor during the 60’s and most of the 70’s when I lived in Fontmell Magna. He was a doctor of the traditional kind and his son, Henry, related that he would often make 40 house calls during a day, dashing about the locality in his mini. It was a duty that he carried out happily throughout those years and for most of the 1980’s.
He certainly fulfilled the obligation to serve that he considered himself to be under. It manifested itself in his life through his career as a doctor, and in his political activities.
He began his political life at Shaftesbury Town Council in the 1970s and was mayor in 1974 during the last major reorganisation of local government that saw the demise of the old Shaftesbury Borough Council.
When he retired as a doctor, he did not relent in the pace of his work. In an interview he gave to the Guardian in 2001, he explained that when he unexpectedly became the first Liberal leader of Dorset County Council, he discovered that the existing council had been underspending their social services budget by 23%. He was the opposite of a “woolly liberal”, he got things done.
Henry stated that he loved being his son, he was a bonkers Dad and made him laugh with his mad antics and his crazy poems. He wrote limericks such as:
I suppose that I’d better be frank
I’m not at my best in a bank
I can’t cope with oddities
Stocks and commodities
If that cheque is mine- leave it blank.
This won him a bottle of whisky in a competition to write a limerick on a financial topic.
He also won a holiday for two in the Loire Valley for writing the following:
Don’t speak to me of the Acropolis
Or Astyopolea, where the girls go topolis,
It’s all Greek to me.
In Shaftesbury he worked hard to secure accommodation for older folk. Butts Mead House, was an early project, but it was Castle Hill House and then the Cedars – which were his most remarkable legacies. His understanding of geriatric medicine, his political nous and his sense of public duty made growing old in and around Shaftesbury a lot easier.
Everything he was involved in, refereeing for North Dorset RFC, Nordcat, Lindlar Hall, the St Johns Ambulance and latterly his Bridge Clubs, all benefited from his involvement. He never gave less than everything.
He was a president of the Hardy Society, a postal historian and a philatelist. He was a rambler, a botanist, a capable recorder player and he loved to sing. He was a village cricketer and a very poor golfer, though he could not be beaten at table tennis.
For many years, Geoffrey was also a keen member of the Fontmell Magna Village Archive Society. He contributed in many ways to the society’s activities and exhibitions, and his many anecdotes were always enjoyed by the committee.
As a practicing Christian, his work as a doctor, politician and all those other activities, always came second to his devotion to Methodism.
Dr Geoffrey Tapper died, on the 9th March 2018, aged 86, at Westminster Memorial Hospital in Shaftesbury after a long illness.
Derek Beer paid tribute saying that ‘The quality of life had been improved for so many local people by the hard work and determination of Geoffrey, and his legacy will remain with us for decades ahead. We all have so much to thank him for.’
