Chalbury

Mary Frances Billington – Journalist

Feb 23rd, 2013

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A Woman in a Man’s World

It was John Passmore Edwards, proprietor and editor of the London newspaper, the Echo, who encouraged a Dorset born woman to pursue a career in journalism. There were very few women journalists then and most of those worked on fashion, education and homemaking features. Mary France Billington was a reporter covering hard news stories; no doubt she had some prejudices to overcome but she went about her work in a way that commanded respect from her male colleagues. She also worked on the Graphic and the Daily Telegraph.

In 1896 in an article about lady journalists she wrote: “I can speak with experience of both morning and evening work. In the latter, the hours are certainly more reasonable, but all that one does, whether in the form of notes for the first editions, or in special descriptive accounts of events occurring in the afternoon for the late issues, has to be turned out at an exhaustingly high rate of speed. A morning paper often involves very late hours at the office, and I have wondered sometimes, how many women there are who could stand such a day.”

She went on to describe her day covering the arrival of the Shahzada on a visit to this country in 1895: “…we were in Portsmouth Dockyard at nine in the morning, inspected the ship, saw the various receptions and addresses presented on board, attended the Queen’s Birthday Review on Southsea Common, came up to town in the special train, and had three columns of material to write on arrival. However, special correspondence is not the department allotted usually to feminine hands, and I think I stand pretty well alone of my sex in what I have done and to do of it.”

She travelled widely in Russia, India, Nepal and Canada, and wrote a charming book Women in India. Between 1913 and 1920 she was President of The Society of Women Journalists and in 1920 she was the Overseas Delegate to the Imperial Press Congress held in Ottawa.

In 1896 she wrote a long article for Pearson’s Magazine entitled Leading Lady Journalists. Later she wrote The Red Cross in War, published as part of a series by the Daily Telegraph. During the First World War she travelled to France as a correspondent and also worked in hospitals and camps.

Her parents met in 1861 in Dorset: a clergyman from Cheshire and a clergyman’s daughter from Bedford. George Henry Billington was curate at St Giles Church, Wimborne when the aging rector, Robert Moore, had a visit from Frances Barber, a 74 year-old clergyman’s widow and her two daughters Frances Anne and Mary Elizabeth.

George and Frances, it seems, had a whirlwind romance; they were married later that same year. Both in their early thirties there was no time to loose, if they were to have a family. In 1862 George Billington became rector of Chalbury, a pleasant little parish in the east of the county close to the Wilts and Hants borders. The journalist to be was born at Chalbury in 1862; she was followed by three brothers: George in 1864, Roland in 1866 and Horace in 1868.

On retiring from a distinguished career she returned to Chalbury, where she involved herself in parish affairs and became organist at the church. She lies in the quiet churchyard close to her parents and brothers.

(see Chalbury Church, Published 24th February 2011, in the Chalbury Category).

Chalbury Church

Feb 24th, 2011

by Dorset Ancestors.

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In eastern Dorset, in the Cranborne Chase country near the Wilts and Hants border lies the barely registered hamlet of Chalbury. There has been a church here at least since the early 13th century, but one, which was never dedicated to any saint. It did not serve a community with a definitive nucleation around a green with cottages, shops, or an inn, but instead just a few dispersed dwellings clustered around the base of the low, though steep hill the church stands upon. But the building never underwent the development accretions that so many other churches in more prosperous parishes did.

This is clearly evident from the exterior appearance of Chalbury Church. To this day it remains a rustic memorial to a bygone society, way down on the scale of ecclesiastical architecture and appearing to show the hallmarks of a stagnant economy in the community it was built to minister to. This church still shows a simple nave – chancel plan, to which aisles, transepts or a tower were never added at a later stage. Instead the visitor is confronted by a long narrow building scarcely wider than a cottage, with only a south porch and a diminutive cubical bell-cote at the west end to summon the few faithful to worship through the tolling of its single bell.

Chalbury further departs from the customary appearance of churches in the more prosperous Dorset parishes by having a smooth whitewashed surface, as distinctive from the commonplace unadorned, frequently lichen-infested brick, stone and flint courses so evident elsewhere. Round-headed windows of only clear lights are set into the walls and the roof is of small, neat tiles, with a small skylight near the west end on the south side.

The appearance of the interior, as one might expect, is as unusual and unique as the outward aspect of this church. It is whitewashed, with a smooth corbelled ceiling below which some dark oak beams span the width of the nave. The original arch between the nave and chancel has been converted into a tripartite screen with a segmental-headed centre section with two straight-headed sections supported by classical columns on either side. It is several feet deep, so there is the effect of a short colonnade as well as screen.

This feature, as well as the interior details in general, is due to a re-ordering the church underwent in the 18th century, at which time also the original windows were replaced by the present ones. A further change of this century was the introduction of box pews, those on the south side being clearly some six inches than those on the north side. These pews reflect the status of their occupiers, and perhaps represent an apparent contradiction about Chalbury. It is a curious fact the the higher your status in the community, the higher the pew you occupied in church. In this instance the pews belonged to the tenant farmers of the parish, and may at first seem strange that these indicators of high social standing should be found in the church of such a small contracted community, instead of simple, crude benches.

But it is in the chancel that these higher social distinctions are even more apparent. On the south side there is a long seat reserved for the use of the Rector’s servants, but even more lavish is a balustraded and canopied pew, which was constructed for the Earl of Pembroke. A prominent triple-decked pulpit stands against the wall separating nave and chancel and embodies the great emphasise placed on the preaching of the word in the 19th century, But it is likely there were many more pews than worshippers to fill them.

Because definitive architectural features are rare, it is difficult to date the original building with certainty. The older parts are perhaps 13th century, while some extension was carried out in the 14th century. Then for four centuries any further development – at least in the form of structural alterations – at Chalbury was suspended. During this time it was one of a large number of English churches to be appropriated by a monastery, which appointed the rector. The monastery also had the right to the tithes in money and agricultural produce. Until the reformation and dissolution of the monasteries Chalbury was in the possession of St. Mary’s Abbey, twenty miles away at Wilton near Salisbury. The Earls of Pembroke became patrons of the living of Chalbury after Henry VIII sold possessions of St. Mary’s Abbey to the first Earl, William Herbert. The Earls had the right to appoint the rectors, but it is not known how often they occupied their pew, in the church.

The spacious churchyard has several large noble trees seeming to dwarf the low modest structure of the church. But the three hundred-foot hill on which it stands commands splendid views for miles around about which Hutchins commented: “A very high Elm tree standing by the church was used as a landmark because it could be seen from the Channel and might be plainly discerned from the hills that lie above Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight”. A storm in 1703 brought down the elm.

There are photos of Chalbury Church in the photo section