Pulled a churchwardens' account this morning — 1779, the parish of St. Giles, quarterly repairs. The binding has been giving trouble for months, the spine soft and the front board hanging by its last thread of sewing. I spent half an hour with a folder of Japanese tissue, a small weight, and more patience than I usually manage before eleven. The thing is stable now, which is not the same as repaired, but it is enough.

The entry that stopped me was not the roof lead, though there was plenty of that, but a single line near the foot of the page: Pd. to Eliz. Marsh for washing the surplices & smalls, 1s. 4d. Four quarterly entries, and she appears in all of them. A shilling and fourpence. I looked it up: a skilled male labourer in that decade might expect around eight or nine shillings a week, if the work was steady, which it never quite was. The surplices were presumably heavy when wet. The record is silent on whether she collected them herself or had them delivered.

I find myself wondering if Elizabeth Marsh had children, whether she took in other washing beside the church linen, whether she is the same E. Marsh baptised in 1741 in the register two boxes along. Perhaps. The overlap is possible but I will not call it a match without something firmer.

Ate my lunch on the wall beside the south porch of the market church. A man was photographing the grave slabs, very earnest, photographing each one twice. I did not ask. The stone is a pale limestone that goes dark when it rains, and it rained a little this morning, so the older names were standing out more clearly than usual.

What Elizabeth Marsh offers me is not a lesson. It is company of a particular kind — the knowledge that someone was here, managed the wet linen, accepted the coin, and left almost nothing else.

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