Her family has a major personal connection with Alfred, who even wrote a poem - and probably three - about her ancestors. And Caroline, who is secretary of the society, is the proud owner of a unique Alfred artefact that has become a family heirloom.

The Ockwells are an ancient local family with strong links with South Marston, and origins - as far as family history researches have been able to uncover - centred on Somerford Keynes, just over the border in Gloucestershire.

In the 1881 census we find George Ockwell, Caroline's great-grandfather, and his family at South Marston, sharing Cambria Cottage, Alfred's birthplace, with the Williams family. It isn't clear whether it was then a single cottage or sub-divided into two, but we are sure that the young Alfred became a close childhood friend with George's son, Charlie Ockwell, who was 18 months his junior.

Charlie eventually went off to Bristol to become an engine driver, but the two remained good friends and, ironically, got married in the same year, 1903. Charlie married Esther Loxton at Wells and they had two children - another Charles (1905) and Gwendoline (1907), and Esther was pregnant with their third child, Maida, when tragedy struck in June 1909.

Charlie's death from appendicitis, aged 30, had such a profound effect on Alfred that he wrote a poem about his grief called On The Death of My Old Playmate, Charlie Ockwell.

"The family has always felt a special connection with Alfred," said Caroline, "on top of the links we have with South Marston and other places Alfred wrote about, where my ancestors lived.

"I joined the Friends of Alfred Williams along with my sister Christine when we discovered the poem was written about my great uncle. Our real feeling of connection with Alfred was from the fact that our dad had obviously known him well and fostered in us a deep sense of admiration for him. When I co-founded the Alfred Williams Heritage Society it was partly out of a sense of wanting to please my late father, if that makes sense."

The probability of a second poem about Charlie's death, written three years later, appears to provide an even stronger link. After the tragedy, the widowed Esther and the children went to live with her bachelor brother, and it seems that Alfred's 1912 poem, On a Lost Friend, may recall a visit to the grieving Esther, as this verse suggests:

The mother mourns
Beside the cot,
The infant turns
And knows thee not;
Upon the grass,
With noiseless tread,
The neighbours pass,
And name thee dead.

"I'm sure the poem relates his sadness when he visits Esther and finds her nursing the baby in the cot who never knew her father," said Caroline, who only made the connection in 2010 when she re-read the poem. Charlie Ockwell's story was to become even more tragic as his widow Esther herself died in 1914, leaving the children to be brought up by their maternal grandparents.

There are plenty more connections between Alfred and Caroline's family. Charlie's maternal grandfather was William Bridges, a market gardener who is mentioned in A Wiltshire Village, along with his brother, John 'Jacky' Bridges:

I have spoken of Jacky Bridges, or Dart, the road-mender. He lives in the little old original cottage at the corner of the lane as your turn to go up to Nightingale Farm, beyond the Roman ruins. The tenement is his own, and was his father's before him. It was really a kind of squatter's cottage...

The little cottage is of one story, and contains three fair-sized rooms - one for living, and two for sleeping. The roof is of thatch. There is a fireplace at each extremity. The pantry is a small "lean-to" at one end, without the house. The original front was of rubble, but it has been modernized; brick has been substituted...

Jacky's father lived here before him. He worked on the highways too. When the old people died, the son took up his residency under the paternal roof, and here his family of four - two boys and two girls - were born. These are all grown up, and scattered to the four winds almost, and one is dead. He committed suicide. Entering the army, he served through the South African War in the cavalry; but as is so often the case, he contracted habits of dissoluteness, from which he could never free himself afterwards...

Grandfather Bridges, the old market-gardener, who is eighty-six, is brother to him, and cuts about like a young fellow of forty. "Bless you, mister," he says, "I eats well, and drenks well, and enjoys life as well as ever I did; the only difference is, I gets tired a leetle quicker, you know."

There is a strong possibility that a third poem is dedicated to a member of Caroline's family, as the suicide victim that Alfred speaks of - Jacky Bridges' son - may well be the subject of Lines On A Suicide. The connection is made by Alfred's biographer, Leonard Clark, and there are certainly parallels between Alfred's prose and poetic versions to suggest the suicides he writes about are actually one and the same.

As if all these links weren't enough, the Ockwells of Somerford Keynes - almost certainly more relatives of Charlie Ockwell and therefore Caroline - are included in a list of singing families who provided lyrics for Folk Songs of the Upper Thames. Yet more Ockwells are noted as other sources.

Caroline has a family heirloom to remind her of all the Alfred Williams connections - a postcard that Alfred sent to Sarah Ockwell, Charlie's mother (pictured right). Alfred must have had fond memories of the time the Williams and Ockwell families both lived at Cambria Cottage, because the card (front and back pictured below) was sent to wish Sarah (Mrs George Ockwell) a happy Christmas in 1910, even though, by then, she had left South Marston and moved to a converted chapel in Swindon, Road, Stratton St Margaret.

"Alf was obviously a very close friend of the Ockwell family," said Caroline. "My dad, who was born in 1905, always held him in very high regard. He was brought up by George and Sarah, and Alf was a frequent visitor to their home.

"Since I became involved in the Alfred Williams Heritage Society, I've heard varying views on Alf's personality. Some people thought him aloof, but I don't consider this to be true. If that had been the case, my father would definitely not have had such a high opinion of him.

"I feel very privileged that Alf apparently wrote two poems about my great uncle Charlie and perhaps a third about another ancestor. I'm also proud that we still have the postcard.

"I remember as a child that it was framed and hung on the wall at home - although, at the time, I had no idea of the stories behind it."