As the Bayeux Tapestry goes on display at the British Museum, Tavistock can reveal its own remarkable connection to the historic treasure.

Anna Eliza Bray, one of Tavistock’s most important nineteenth-century writers and the wife of the town’s vicar, was accused of cutting a fragment from the tapestry and taking it as a souvenir.

The story was repeated for decades and even grew into a claim that she had confessed on her deathbed — while she was in fact still alive.

Anna Eliza married the Rev Edward Atkyns Bray, Vicar of Tavistock, in 1822.

Edward was born at Abbey House, on the site now occupied by the Bedford Hotel. His father was a solicitor and manager of the Duke of Bedford’s Devonshire estates. Before becoming Mrs Bray, Eliza had been married to the antiquarian artist Charles Alfred Stothard.

In 1816, the Society of Antiquaries sent Charles to Bayeux to make a detailed record of the tapestry. A later catalogue recorded that he brought a fragment to England in December 1816.

Anna Eliza Kempe did not marry Charles until February 1818. She travelled with him to France later that year, but he had already possessed the documented fragment for approximately fourteen months.

Jeff Moody, Tavistock deputy mayor and a West Devon borough councillor, said: “My wife Beverley and I have portrayed Edward and Eliza Bray for many years, in historical performances with the Tavistock Edge Players, at Tavistock Museum and on the very popular Tavistock Ghost Walk.

“We have always known the story that Eliza supposedly took a piece of the Bayeux Tapestry. But when I looked properly at the dates, the penny dropped. Charles had the fragment in December 1816. Eliza did not marry him until February 1818. She simply could not have taken it in the way the later story claimed.”

The false accusation took hold following an incorrect museum catalogue published in 1870. When the fragment was returned to Bayeux in 1872, a notice blaming ‘Madame Stothard’ was displayed with it.

By 1881, visitors were reportedly being told that Eliza had confessed on her deathbed. She was actually alive, in her nineties, and able to deny it. Her family publicly challenged the allegation, and later research by the Victoria and Albert Museum confirmed that the accusation was wrong.

Modern scholarship considers Charles the most likely person to have obtained the fragment. However, it remains unknown whether he removed it, collected material that was already loose or damaged, or received it with permission.

After Charles’s death at Bere Ferrers in 1821, Eliza married Edward Bray and made her home in Tavistock. She became celebrated for works including The Borders of the Tamar and the Tavy, preserving the history and folklore of the town and surrounding area.

Jeff added: “Anna Eliza Bray should be remembered as an important Tavistock writer and preserver of local history — not for an act the evidence shows she did not commit.”