Roger Parsons is to give a second talk about the Porch family — Glastonbury’s most prominent name for well more than a century but now vanished — on September 24 at St Ben’s school hall, 7:30pm. This one is called “Monty Porch: a charmed life” and will focus on the man who became Winston Churchill’s stepfather.

  Roger then plans to publish his researches in booklet form.

  He filled the auditorium at Millfield prep school for his first talk, on April 16. The Porch family fortune was made through banking: at one time they held mortgages on half the property in Glastonbury; they owned the Abbey and built Abbey House and Edgarley Hall, preserving many fine pieces of carved Abbey stone.

  Infamy and downfall came in the early 20th century when a Porch heiress married a ne’er-do-well playboy, poisoned him in Japan but was spared the gallows — it was international headlines at the time, and few of the Porch descendants ever returned here.

  Roger Parsons taught history for many years at Millfield prep school, which for decades has been sited at Edgarley Hall and its grounds, the former home of the Porch family. He is the school’s archivist.