Arnold & Zettie Clark

Research by Joan West.

I first heard of the Clark family from my husband, John West. He was friends with the children of the family when they lived at Malmesmead, then called 'Lavender Cottage', in Kiln Lane, Lacey Green, just across the field from his home at Stocken Farm. It was only much later, from documents lent to me by Andrew Clark that I discovered their full names of Arnold Staffurth and Zettie Elinora Clark.

It was Dennis Claydon who also lived lived in Kiln Lane, a keen local historian and staunch Methodist who wrote the following :-

"Mr Arnold S Clark, a London businessman in the glass industry purchased Lavender Cottage. He moved his wife, Zettie, and young family to the cottage following the evacuation of London in 1939.

A distinguished Baptist Local Preacher, it was whilst resident here that Mr Clark first established his long association of almost forty years with Lacey Green Methodist and Loosley Row Baptist Church.

Regularly supplying the pulpits of the respective Churches, he is known to have delivered approximately one thousand two hundred sermons in Lacey Green Methodist Church, probably the greatest number of sermons ever delivered by one man in that Church. For more than a quarter of a century he conducted a combined Christmas Day service between the two Churches, held alternately in each Church. Both Churches closed in 2001.

In 1942 Mr Cark moved to Parslows Hillock.