The Walsham Fakes family and non-conformism. Andrew Gosden has written for more information about the Fakes family. His Father Vernon born in April 30 1915 was I think a Baptist lay-preacher, and his mother sent a surviving letter from Birmingham in 1947 saying she had just been to a Christian youth rally attended by over 2500 (long before Billy Graham at Harringay). Her slightly older son Eric was a non-conformist missionary in Japan from roughly 1932 to 1970 and I will reproduce one of his interesting letters from 1939. The non-conformism came from the Josiah Fakes side of the family at Walsham, where his funeral took place in the general village cemetery opened in 1890, after a short service at his house on Summers Road, conducted by a minister in the congregation Church at Walsham that Josiah attended for most of his life. Many people did that but he also taught in the Sunday School there for many years. The congregational church, as a building, did not exist in Walsham until 1856, when Josiah was seven. He may have gone before that to the Baptist chapel or informal meeting house, which existed before the Walsham Baptist Church, opened in 1866. There was a Baptist burial ground at Walsham before 1866 and several of Josiah’s relatives were buried in it with still legible gravestones when I studied it. On the other hand his wife Emma has a photograph of the parish church on her notepaper, and the father of Josiah, John Fakes, was baptised in it in 1806. The independent protestants probably became a dominant influence just afterwards. (to be continued…)