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Stephen Pope of Cripplestyle

We make no great claims for Stephen Pope, nor would he want us to. He was a hard working family man with a dry sense of humour. He lived at Cripplestyle in the parish of Alderholt, where he was born in 1843, the son of James and Elizabeth Pope.

In the autumn of 1867 he married Fanny Beal, a girl from the same parish and they had several children. He earned his living from the land as a woodman, hurdle maker and later as a driver of a corn threshing engine.
 
Stephen Pope was a godly man: he attended the small Williams Memorial Chapel, built in 1807. The mud walls and rough timbers would have fitted well with Stephen’s character and his strong Puritan ways. Later, with generous help from Lord Salisbury, the Old Chapel became a church and Stephen marched in the procession of villagers from the Chapel to take possession of the new Church.
 
Stephen’s interest in the little church to which he belonged remained strong until the end of his life; he told stories of past difficulties but was devoted to the place.

The land for the Old Chapel was given by Mr William Baily and it was his son who became the first Pastor. Stephen Pope was one of the Deacons of the church until he passed away in 1926 at the age of 82. On hearing of Stephen’s death the Marchioness of Salisbury wrote: “I cannot say with what regret we heard of Stephen Pope’s death; he was an old friend, and so striking a personality.
 
Men like Stephen are immortalised in the novels of Thomas Hardy.

Note: we have placed a photo of Stephen Pope in the gallery.

The Rector and the Church Mice

In 1951 the church mice resident at All Saints Church, Kington Magna, in north Dorset bit off more than they could chew when they set about the Rector’s church records. In the parish magazine the reverend gentleman put out an urgent appeal for good old-fashioned mousetraps, adding that he would provide the cheese from his own meagre rations. Post war rationing of food was still in force and the Rector’s sacrifice attracted the attention of a local newspaper reporter and it was not long before the national press took an interest in the Rector’s plight and interest did not stop there: the Rector, the mice and All Saints Church were making headlines in Canada, Australia and the United States.

From all over the country letters poured into the parish with advice on how to deal with the rodents without using the Rector’s precious cheese rations. One lady offered the loan of three kittens and the Bishop of Montana in the USA sent two mousetraps and four packets of American cheese compound. One day a Marshall (sorry, a Rodent Control Officer) strode into the village. Most of the mice took the measure of the man, but a few stayed and were eliminated; the majority packed a suitcase and headed for Dorchester, where they had heard there was potentially an enormous feast to be had at the Dorset Record Office!

Lytchett Matravers

On a clear day the views from Lytchett Matravers span woods and moorland and take in the Isle of Wight and Old Harry Rocks. Visible through a gap in the hills is Corfe Castle, disabled for centuries but still standing sentry. In the spring air are the memories of times past: the Maypole, the fairs, dancing and feasting on the green all become almost tangible.

Tholi, a Saxon, once owned the manor but was dispossessed by William the Conqueror. The Domesday Book records that the manor of Lytchett was held by Hugh Maltravers from William de’Eu.  Sir John Maltravers (1266-1341) spent much of his youth in Ireland; he was knighted with the first Prince of Wales in 1306 and he was a conservator of the peace in Dorset in 1307,1308,1314 and 1329. His first son, also John, was born in 1290. John was also knighted in 1306 and he became the first Baron Maltravers.  The younger Maltravers probably fought at Bannockburn and in 1319 he was returned as a knight of the shire for Dorset. He is most famously remembered for being implicated in the death of Edward II at Berkeley Castle. He lived in exile on the Continent for several years following a charge of treason against him in connection with another plot. After serving with distinction in the Flemish Wars he returned to England, having been pardoned by Edward III. He died in 1365 and is buried in Lytchett Matravers church, reputedly in his full body armour.

Later the Earl of Arundel held Lytchett through marriage to the heiress of the Maltravers and by a subsequent marriage the property came to the Norfolks. In 1651 the manor passed to the Trenchard family. An entry in the vestry book 1826 records that William Trenchard offered land and timber for the building of a school.

The early population lived in dwellings round the church, which is situated in the north-west corner of the village near to the manor house. The Black Death took a heavy toll here and the village came close to extinction. Nowadays the church is isolated from the rest of the village which has grown and been rebuilt to a haphazard plan. The parish extends to nearly 3,500 acres and lies about six miles from both Poole and Wimborne.

The Parish Church is dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin. Its walls are of carstone rubble with dressings of Purbeck and greensand; the roofs are covered with tiles and slates. The church was built c.1200 and consists of a chancel, nave and west tower (with six bells) with a north aisle that was added in the mid 14th century, but this and the north arcade of the same date were completely taken down in alterations of c.1500. In c.1400 the chancel was enlarged. Near the altar is a small brass of a 15th century priest in a shroud and there is a brass plaque in the floor that tells us that Margaret Clements, who died in 1505, financed much of the rebuilding work. The font is of Purbeck Marble decorated with the badges of Maltravers and Arundel. St. Mary’s was again restored in 1873, the north vestry and organ chamber were added in 1876.

The Manor House was built by one of the Earl’s of Arundel sometime before the 17th century and later became the seat of the Trenchard family, though little remains of the original structure. In the village there are several late 18th century cottages built of cob mostly faced with brick or stucco and with thatched roofs.

Within the church is an interesting Coat of Arms to George IV that records him as George IIII. The large brass in the north aisle records the death in 1365 of John, Baron Maltravers and commemorates his life; a life spent largely plotting and scheming the downfall of others.

The Day West Bay Fished a Dinosaur

One day in the 1980’s an ignominious lump of nondescript bone was brought into the Dorset County Museum in Dorchester by a Mr E Taylor. It soon became apparent however that it was a portion of the skull of an animal, for it bore sockets for the creature’s teeth and in its dimensions varied from 46 to 67 millimetres in size.

The skull fragment had apparently been caught up in a fishing net during a trawl for scallops off West Bay, west of Portland. As a remnant of an ancient vertebrate this find in itself was not that unusual, for the seabed in the area in question forms part of the world-renown (and richly fossiliferous) Jurassic Coast Heritage site, and consists of a stage of the Jurassic strata known as the Lower Kimmeridgian, after the village of that name near Kimmeridge Bay. Long before the discovery of the skull, numerous vertebrae of  marine reptiles and possibly even of dinosaurs had regularly been obtained from the same area as tidal action wore away the enclosing rock. While some of these show wear and colonisation by bryozoans and worms, others are fresh-looking suggesting that the bones are still being eroded from the entombing clay.

But the West Bay skull-bone shows both fresh and eroded areas. From examination, it was clearly part of the skull of a large theropod dinosaur, and isolated and fragmentary bones of this kind are generally classified as Megalosaurus (or “large lizard”). This is a genus of dinosaur originally identified from Jurassic strata at Stonesfield in Oxfordshire. The type specimen exists as a group of bones first described by William Buckland in 1824. Although the specimen skull fragment from West bay is similar in general appearance, it evidently belonged to an individual much larger than the reptile(s) who’s remains were excavated from Stonesfield. Thus the latter’s  subnarial height exceeds 164 millimetres, as compared with 110 mm for the Stonesfield specimens. The teeth are also relatively closer together in the Dorset example; the inter-dental plates relatively lower in height.

Sherborne: Edwin Childs (1859-1934)

As the Victorian era was drawing to a close the 20th century was taking its first breaths. The Horseless carriage, the motor car to you and me, was becoming less of a rich man’s novelty and more a viable form of transport. The penny-farthing had evolved into the safety bicycle, there was farm machinery to be kept working and industrial machines to be maintained; this was a good time to be a mechanical engineer.

Six decades earlier things had not been so good. For Charles Childs of Yetminster this meant moving to Deptford in Kent soon after his marriage in 1841 to Harriet King. Their son Charles was born there in 1847 followed by a daughter, Sarah Ann, in 1849. Later the couple moved to the Old Kent Road area, which was then a part of Surrey and where their son, Henry, was born in 1852.

When Charles Childs secured a job maintaining new machinery that had been installed at Willmott’s silk mills in Sherborne he was able to bring his family home. They lived in the Westbury area of the town and had three more children: Temperance in 1855, Albert in 1857 and Edwin in 1859.

The youngest boy, Edwin, inherited his father’s interest in all things mechanical and in his teens he was apprenticed to Joseph Read of Westbury. Read was a general smith, engineer and bell-hanger and through his works came many farm wagons, gigs and broughams (light, four-wheeled horse-drawn carriages) and there was plenty of business to had keeping primitive farm machinery running. Edwin was ideally suited for his placement with Joseph Read and this hands-on experience was supplemented by reading about his chosen trade in books and magazines.

The family was non-conformist. The children with their parents attended the Congregational Church. Edwin was a bell-ringer too, became captain of the Abbey Church bell-ringers and played a trumpet in the town band. In 1884 Edwin married Jane Bown in the Abbey Church at Sherborne and his eight children were all baptised there but he continued his allegiance to non-conformity. Edwin and Jane made a perfect match; she supported and encouraged his driving ambition to make something of himself and shared his enterprising spirit. They set up home in Hound Street, Sherborne and started to save for the future – no easy task on an income of thirty shillings a week.

In 1892 Edwin and Jane bought an ailing business, The Sherborne Coffee Tavern, for a deposit of £50 and a mortgage of £500 advanced by the Foresters Benefit Society.  An odd choice of business for a mechanical engineer but it was a means to an end. At that point in their married life they had four children. Edwin continued to work for Joseph Read and had set up his own workshop and forge behind their cottage, where he carried out small jobs for his friends and kept up to date with his reading, while Jane served endless cups of coffee and innumerable trays of buns at the Tavern.

Two years on and Edwin was ready to launch his own business. The tea and coffee urns, counter, table and chairs went to make way for bicycles, bells, bags, lamps and oil. He commenced trading as a Cycle Agent selling Singers, Rovers, Ormonds, Swifts and Sunbeams. He hired out, repaired and cleaned bicycles and trikes and even taught customers how to ride. His timing was spot-on and after years of hard work he had his own business spurred on by a wave of bicycling enthusiasm that swept the country at the turn of the century.
 
1896 brought the first London to Brighton car rally and the first London Motor Show opened. Locally a Colonel Baxter who lived in Sherborne bought his first car, a Clement Panhard, and became Edwin Childs’ first automobile customer.

Motoring in those early days could be a hazardous experience. The heroic Colonel and his car would venture forth, but more often than not the car would stop and fail to restart somewhere along the planned journey and Edwin would be standing by to rescue the stranded Colonel and his car. Borrowing two strong horses from the Brewery and equipped with a strong rope he would tow the car back to his workshop and sort out the problem.

Bicycle sales increased but Edwin Childs was not a man to rest on his laurels. The windows of the Tavern were knocked out and double doors put in, large enough to facilitate entry of the very first tri-cars, the frames of which were mounted with a single cylinder four-stroke engine with a wicker-work passenger carriage fitted in front. The family’s first car was a tri-car with twin seats. On a Sunday morning, ignoring protests from an anxious mother, Edwin would drive his two youngest children the five miles to Yeovil and he prided himself always to have them back in time for Sunday lunch.

In 1903 the Motor Car Act was passed and came into force on the 1st of January 1904. This increased the speed limit to twenty miles-per-hour and required all drivers to have a licence then costing five shillings. Edwin Childs and his eighteen year-old son Charles were number thirty-nine and forty in the Dorset Licensing Register.

About this time Edwin purchased a plot of land in Long Street and on it he built a garage, the first in Sherborne.  In the 1909 edition of the Handbook of the Motor Union of Great Britain he is listed as: “E.Childs. Repairer. Standing for twenty cars.” Not everyone who could afford one bought one but amongst his early customers were Colonel Baxter; E.A. Ffookes; R.T. Grantham; E.W. Bartlett, and Harry and Reggie Boden.

The car was not welcomed by everyone in Sherborne, for some saw the car as a danger to the town’s ancient heritage. The Church and School watched with distaste the innovation of the dust-raising mechanical carriage.

Edwin was convinced the car was here to stay and began to build a fleet of cars for hire. He already owned a pre-1900 Benz and added a 12 horse-power Vulcan, a 16 horse-power Argyle and a 22 horse-power Darraqu. The Darraqu was an open touring car with leather upholstery and canvas hood and windows, which, with the removal of the hood, could be winched into position by block and tackle. It was much in demand from the hunting fraternity for ferrying to and from various Point-to Point. The Darraqu could be converted into a car for all occasions. It was the ideal limousine for weddings and funerals and was also used for Hunt Balls that were held throughout the county during the hunting season.

Edwin Childs was a good husband, father and employer. He had spent his life working towards a personal ambition and with its fulfilment he found his leisure time and income increased and he now started to work towards his chosen good cause, the Yeatman Hospital; this, in the days when the Welfare State was still a dream of radicals.  Eventually he was made a life governor of the Cottage Hospital. At the beginning of the First World War, he bought, maintained and provided a driver for an ambulance for the Red Cross to carry injured servicemen from the station to some local buildings and houses including Sherborne Castle, Leweston Manor and Chetnole Grange, that had been converted to receive them.

Edwin and Jane Childs had four sons and four daughters. One son served in France another in the Middle East and later the two younger sons were posted to army camps in different parts of the country. During the war there was still hire business to be had and because of the war effort more tractors had to be kept going, Petrol was rationed but people who had cars were using them in the service of their country, and these, too, had to be kept running. Approaching old age Edwin Childs found himself working as long and hard as he ever had at any time in his busy and eventful life. When the war ended the motor car was a fact of life. He died in 1934.

We have placed photographs pf Edwin Childs in the photo gallery.

FOOTNOTE: We have been contacted by Andrew Norwood who says about the Clement Panhard mentioned in the article: “ I am pleased to tell you that 110 plus years later the car is still going strong – although it is as temperamental as it was back in 1900. I own the car and you can find more about it at www.clementpanhard.com under ‘Our Car’ “ Mr Norwood has sent us a photo of the car and we have placed the image in the gallery.

Thorncombe’s Thorn

The Cornish writer, poet and historian Richard Polwhele, in his History of Devon, says with reference to Thorncombe which, until 1843, was a part of Devon: “Some attribute its name to one remarkable thorn near the combe, at a place in the parish known as Thorncombe’s Thorn.” Here, some 600 feet above sea level and a few hundred yards from the village is a cross roads with a house which to this day is known as Turnpike Cottage, although it is now greatly extended.

This was an ideal spot to have a Toll Gate and we found a reference to it in the surviving parish records: “March 1785. Paid Mr Phelps cart to carry the people to Exon – 4s.0d., Paid Turnpike forwards and backward at Thorncombe’s Thorn 8d.”

As the government struggles to find innovative ways to raise money for new roads and for the maintenance of the existing ones, high on their agenda is charging for road use, i.e. Toll roads. There is nothing new about this – it was first tried in the 17th century.

In 1663 the government of the day passed the Turnpike Act. The act allowed magistrates to charge for using the roads and the money raised was spent on the upkeep of the roads, an idea initially trialled in three counties. It proved to be so successful that the scheme was soon adopted all over the country. In 1706 the first of many private company schemes was set up. These businesses, known as Turnpike Trusts, allowed the public the opportunity to invest. The income from charging people to use the roads, the toll, was divided between the costs of maintaining the road and profits for the investors.

Toll gates were set up and pedestrians, carts and carriages would have to stop and pay the toll before being allowed to proceed. But not everyone liked the idea and people would leap over the gates to avoid paying; it was not long before spikes were put on top of the gates to dissuade people from trying to avoid the toll. It is from this that the term turnpike comes and anyone accused of damaging a turnpike would have faced execution.

Thorncombe derives its name from the Saxon words Torn and Cumb, meaning a bottom or low ground subject to thorns. We have placed a photograph of Turnpike Cottage in the gallery; it was taken in the mid 20th century.

North Poorton and the Church of St. Mary Magdalene

It was the Revd. Thomas Sanctuary the Archdeacon of Dorset and Vicar of Powerstock who commissioned the Dorchester architect John Hicks to design a replacement church for North Poorton, since the existing church was in ruins. Built in 1861-1862 the new church is thought by some to be Hick’s crowning achievement.

The consecration service took place on October 4th 1862, a day when all the trains on the line stopped, especially at Powerstock Station and for the convenience of visitors Omnibuses were operating between the Station and North Poorton. The Bishop of Oxford preached during Morning Prayers and in the afternoon Dr Wordsworth of Westminster preached at Powerstock Church. The new church is dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene.

The church was built by men from the village using local stone. It consists of a nave and chancel but its outstanding feature is a minaret tower or, as Pevsner describes it, a “turret with spire” housing a bell dated 1635. In the vestry are several monuments dating to the 18th century; these were transferred from the old Church.

The specialist carving work was done by Benjamin Grassby, who is responsible for the corbels and capitals, while the richly detailed carved stone pulpit is the work of Richard Boulton and much of the wood carving is by Thomas Champion of Frampton. Correspondence has survived from Richard Boulton to the Revd. Thomas Sanctuary and it appears that at the start of the project Benjamin Grassby was an employee of Richard Boulton but once the work was under way Grassby became employed directly by Revd. Sanctuary, something Boulton was not at all pleased about.

Early records from 1381 mention a Chapel at Poorton dedicated to St. Nicholas, but it seems from 1405 onward there has been a church here dedicated to St. Peter. The adjacent burial ground was declared full and closed in 1768. Thomas Sanctuary had been Rector for over ten years when he commissioned the new church for Poorton because the old church was “dilapidated and inadequate.”

This old church accommodated sixty-eight people, which is about what the parish population was during this time. There was a three tier pulpit and a font dating from the early 15th century. The old font stood outside the entrance to the new church until 1908, when the Rector passed the font on to the parish of Holy Trinity in Weymouth because it was “derelict”; seems an odd kindness.

Poorton comprises two hamlets: north and south which are both small and isolated. North Poorton benefits from a large 17th century farmhouse with additions from the 18th century; this stands about 200 yards from the church. Also of interest are two thatched cottages: one dating from the 17th century and the other from the early 18th century. Three centuries ago the community here was on a larger scale; many of the houses have disappeared but it remains a parish.

Knowlton and the Riddle of its Rings

Knowlton is a deserted village hamlet on the B3078 in the east Dorset parish of Woodlands, 10 miles north of Wimborne. The motorist passing speedily through the place on the main road may notice nothing more than a number of low mounds and embankments, which may convey nothing to the untrained eye. Seen from an aircraft or balloon however, and the full extent of an amazing complex of earthworks will be immediately apparent, ideally in the low, raking sunlight of evening.

The ancient structures scattered across nine fields at this site are the funeral and ceremonial monuments of Neolithic and Bronze Age communities occupying this area from about four and half thousand years ago. Possibly the locality was favoured for the fertility of its soil and/or the proximity of a stream for water supply. But the sheer density of the earthworks, indicate a very long phase of occupation spanning over a millennium. There is not just a scatter of a few graves at Knowlton, but a complex of memorials on the scale of necropolis. Indeed, it has been said that in their day these earthworks ranked only third to the great megaliths of Stonehenge and Avebury.

Central to this complex of prehistoric remains is a close-knit scatter of four of the ring-bank and ditch enclosures known as henges. These structures diminish in diameter from south to north and are ramified by the course of the B3078 and a minor road running northwest from it. The main road actually bisects the Southern Henge which, with a diameter of 220 metres, is the largest enclosure in the group. In the angle thus formed by the main and unclassified roads are three other henges: the central but smaller Church Henge and, 100 metres to the north-west, the still smaller Northern Henge and the tiny enclosure known as Old Churchyard.

Approximately equi-distant from the henge complex to the northeast and southwest are two dense scatters of round-barrow mounds, and known respectively as the Northern and Southern Barrow Cemeteries. A further ten barrows have been identified and plotted with a random distribution among the henges, with another four in an imperfect east-west alignment across four fields slightly to the west. One dominant barrow (Great Barrow) with an unusually distant ditch lies 50 metres east of the Church Henge. These barrows vary widely in size and represent higher caste burials of the Bronze Age Wessex Culture, dating from a later period than the ritual henges of the Neolithic settlers. The barrows now mapped at this site now number about 55.

Clearly the reconstruction and interpretation of this site would represent archaeological bodies with a challenging source of material for investigation. So it was that in 1993 landowner Arthur Thomlinson and a confederation of other local landowners granted permission for a programme of surveys and excavations to be conducted by Bournemouth University with funding from English Heritage. The results of these investigations added considerably to the knowledge of the site in general and Southern Henge in particular.

Unlike other types of circular enclosures, henges are defined as having the corresponding ditch on the inside, not the outside of the bank. It was the Southern Henge upon which the attention of the BU archaeology unit was primarily focussed, with a preliminary geophysical survey of a cross-section of the bank and ditch on the south east side being carried out. However, the result was inconclusive, as the bank of the henge did not respond well to the survey techniques. For the 1994 season the following year the university project team excavated a 3 by 30 metre trench across the area surveyed the year before to access the extent of plough damage and to examine in more detail the earthwork’s stratigraphy. It was found that the henge bank survived to a depth of only 20 centimetres and had indeed been extensively damaged by ploughing. A burial soil was also discovered beneath undisturbed portions. The ditch, which is separated from the bank by a 9.5 metre platform, was 5.5 metres deep, though only 4.5 metres could be excavated at the time.

The ditch fills suggested that it had been cut with almost vertical sides, and there was evidence of episodes of slumping. Two slot-trenches were also found one with posts and the other with wattle work. On the floor of the post trench a piece of worked chalk was discovered.

Elsewhere, this season saw a geophysical survey being conducted over the north-east quadrant of the Southern henge, where aerial photography had indicated past entranceways, now possibly obscured by the main road or farm buildings. A contour survey was also carried out over the eastern half of the henge and another geophysical survey was undertaken of an area to the south where some ring-ditches had been identified. One of these was a double ring-ditch 29 metres across, while the others formed a tight cluster; one large ditch was cut by smaller examples.

Following the arrival of Christianity in Britain, a popular practise was to consecrate and thereby perpetuate henges and other prehistoric enclosures as holy, ritualistic sites by building some of the earliest churches within them. In so doing it was likely thought by the early ecclesiastics that they were symbolising the triumph of Christianity over paganism, whether or not the sites were foci of some kind of tellurian energy which could be tapped for religious purposes. Normally however, evidence of the maintained use of a prehistoric ceremonial site by the Christian priesthood will have been obscured by trees, boundary demarcations, etc, such that unusually circular churchyards in areas of prehistoric settlement may be all that is visible to betray the practice today.

But as a consequence of unusual circumstances, this was not the fate of the Church Henge at Knowlton. This monument is probably unique, for no-where else in England, if not the UK, can one see a better example of the heathen-to-Christian transition in its bare native state, for this church was never walled or consecrated for burials. And this enclosure may have been sacred to Celts, Romans, and Saxons before the Norman’s built a stone flint-rendered church here sometime in the 12th century.

Records state that this church had once been a ‘Chapel of Ease’ for Horton, was enlarged during the 15th century, and had a curate (Richard Saunders) in 1550, when there were three bells in the tower. But it is likely that the effects of the mediaeval plagues, which led to the de-population of the village, also affected the church, and in about 1650 regular services ceased. After a brief period of restoration and revival, the church was abandoned after a roof collapse some time later. The font was removed to Woodlands Church.

Today the empty shell of this church stands within the henge approximately 300 yards from the deserted village. This henge is about 100 yards in diameter and became the focus of attention from the archaeology team for their 1995 season. At this time a contour survey of Church Henge was conducted, the results suggesting that the bank around the west entrance (one of three) had been altered after the henge’s construction, possibly when the church was built. Other evidence led to the supposition that the northeast entrance of the henge may have been created some time after, by infilling the ditch at that point and removing a portion of the bank.

1995 also saw the University students surveying the northern henge and Old Churchyard. Northern Henge is a curious earthwork consisting of a sub-rectangular ditch enclosed within a horseshoe-shaped bank, both of which are broadly open to the southeast. Old Churchyard, the smallest of the four enclosures at Knowlton, is even more unconventional, having a small squarish bank enclosed by a circular 60-metre diameter ditch with one entrance on the northeast side. This configuration and small scale is difficult to parallel, and has no precedent among the classes of ringed earthworks known. Furthermore, the feature does not conform to a henge in the strict sense, since here the bank-ditch positioning is reversed. However the finding of scatters of burnt flint in the vicinity of the enclosure clearly points to a prehistoric origin, and contemporaneous with the true henges. It has been thought this feature could signify a valuable link between earlier and later Neolithic monument methods and styles.

An analysis of the molluscan (snail) profiles in the ditch of the Southern Henge revealed that considerable change during use and decline of the monument had taken place. One other feature of the site identified by aerial photography and the University research was an as yet undated track way leading off southwest across a large field from the south side of the Southern Henge. This may be Medieval, but it is yet another controversial element in the complex history and remarkable sequence of human activity at Knowlton.

Thomas Coram (1668-1751)

On the 14th of August 1739 a charter incorporating the Hospital for the “Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children” was signed by King George II. This was the culmination of seventeen years of determined campaigning by Thomas Coram, who was concerned about the number of abandoned and dying children on the streets of the capital. On a bleak November day in the same year in a room at Somerset House, London, the Governors of the Foundling Hospital convened for their first meeting.

We have to search his later correspondence for glimpses into the early years of Thomas Coram. He was born in Lyme Regis and we believe he was the son of John Coram who was in the merchant shipping business and traded from Lyme Regis.  John Coram was baptised in 1629; his wife, Spes, died in 1677. Thomas wrote that his mother had died when he was a young boy; his father had remarried and moved to Hackney. Thomas went to sea when he was eleven and later his father apprenticed him to a shipwright.
 
At the age of 24 he was appointed by the government to audit tonnage and supply transports for Ireland and this brought him to the attention of some London merchants, who put him in charge of a plan to establish a new shipyard in Boston, Massachusetts. The colony was Puritan and Coram was an Anglican; he acquired enemies and an attempt was made on his life during the ten years he was there. He married Eunice Wayte on the 27th of June 1700. Correspondence with his wife’s family suggests it was a happy marriage but childless.

Coram returned to England in 1704. His interest in the North American colonies led him to identify Boston’s need for a lighthouse and fraud in contracting navel stores from there.  In 1712 he was elected to a role in the private enterprise, Trinity House, which combined public responsibilities with charitable works. He was considered a diligent and reliable public servant as well as a businessman. In 1735 Horace Walpole told his brother Robert, then Prime Minister, that Coram was the “honestest, the most disinterested and the most knowing person about the plantations I ever talked with.”

In England he pursued his business and charitable interests from his home at Rotherhithe. He regularly travelled into the city and on those journeys he saw abandoned, dying and dead children on the streets. In 1722 his moral and civic spirit compelled him to take action.

He had a wealth of experience and many acquaintances, some of them with great influence while he had persistence; against him was his rough-manner and rather blunt way of speaking. Initially there was little interest in his attempts to promote a foundling hospital – indeed, some were positively hostile to the idea on the grounds that it would encourage more illegitimate births.

The situation improved in 1729 with the ‘ladies petition,’ which was signed by peeresses and had the patronage of Queen Caroline, but it took until the 21st of July 1737 for Coram’s petitions to be laid before the king in council. A committee of the Privy Council was set up to consider the proposal, while Coram was given the responsibility for finding the first governors.

It was Coram who looked for suitable sites for the hospital, designed its seal and researched similar institutions in Europe. The hospital opened on the 25th of March 1741 at a site in Hatton Garden. The first two children to be baptised were named Thomas Coram and Eunice Coram (it was usual for children to be given a new name when they entered the hospital). Mothers left a token to identify their child should they wish to claim them later.

Coram’s involvement in the governance of the hospital ended in 1742 under a cloud: he was said to have been indiscreet in his criticisms of other Governors and how the hospital was run. A new hospital was built at Lamb’s Conduit Fields and began to receive children in October of 1745.  The hospital continued into the 20th century, moving out of London to Berkhamstead in Berkshire in 1926; it finally closed as a hospital in 1954. Over the centuries the institution cared for over 25,000 children; the ideals and work continue to this day as the children’s charity known appropriately as “Coram”.

The Foundling Hospital prospered and surprisingly became a meeting place for fashionable society, who by then supported the project. People came to admire works of art donated by prominent artists such as William Hogarth, Francis Hayman and Joseph Highmore; George Frederic Handel organised annual concerts at the hospital from 1750.

Thomas Coram’s career had been at the sharp-end of life. Hands-on, dealing mostly with ordinary men, he was not equipped with the airs and graces necessary to mix easily with London society in the 18th century; his bluntness and straight-forward speaking did not sit comfortably with those he wished to gain influence with.  Nevertheless, his achievements were significant: Boston harbour had a new lighthouse, the Georgia trustees permitted female inheritance, and a civil settlement was established in Nova Scotia. All these things Coram had campaigned for.

In his good works he often used his own resources, with little thought for his own needs. He was not ashamed to admit “in my old age, I am poor.” However, his friends and supporters raised a pension to see him through his last years free from want.

Sir William Martyn of Athelhampton

Lord Mayor of London?

Promotion to the nobility came late in life for William Martyn, which is not to belittle his achievements earlier in life. He was actively engaged in administration for the government at a local level; he was at various times a Commissioner for the Peace, his name appears as a witness on many local documents and in 1492 a William Martyn was the Steward of Dorchester. He was Collector of Customs and Subsidies in Poole in 1473 and 1476, a position his father had held in 1449 and later his son and heir, Christopher, in 1499.  A licence to import wine was granted to him in 1486, suggesting he was a merchant as well as being a member of the landed gentry and a sheep farmer.

He was born in 1446 and inherited the manor of Athelhampton and estates in Somerset at the death of his father, Thomas Martyn, on the 14th of September 1485. The standing of the Martyn family in Dorset was on a par to that of the Trenchards and Strangeways; in short William Martyn was a figure of importance in Dorset society of the day. We think it unlikely this busy member of the Dorset gentry could have found time in 1492/3 to hold and fulfil the duties of the office of the Lord Mayor of London, a role credited to him by most commentators from the usually reliable Royal Commission on Historical Monuments to the less reliable Wikipedia and most in between.

The Evidence

A trustworthy source nearer to the events of those days, Hutchins, makes no mention of Sir William Martyn holding the position of Lord Mayor of London – neither does an earlier source, Coker’s Survey of Dorset.  

In 1495 a Licence was issued by Henry  VII: “To William Martyn, gentleman, and his heirs, to enclose and fortify their manor at Alampston, co. Dorset, with walls of stone and lime, and to build towers within the said manor and crenellate the same and to impark and inclose with pales 100 acres of their lands called ‘Adlampson Parc’ and 60 acres called ‘le Est’ and le Mydell Closes’ belonging to the said manor and make a park thereof so than none shall enter the said park or warren to course or take anything which belongs to park or warren under a forfeiture of 101”.
 
Hutchins says the father of William Martyn of Athelhampton was called Thomas; elsewhere it is stated that William Martyn, Lord Mayor of London, was the son of Walter Martyn of Hertford. Furthermore, the Chronicles of London report that William Martyn, Alderman, was knighted in 1494, but in the licence granted to William Martyn of Athelhampton in 1495 and mentioned above he is referred to as a gentleman and this continues to be the case until 1501.

We might also question why separate general pardons were granted for offences prior to March 1502: one to William Martyn of Athelhampton, co. Dorset, knight and another to William Martyn, knight and alderman, a citizen of London. Another pardon roll refers to one Richard Martyn, gentleman, skinner or merchant of the staple as being “son and heir of William Martyn knight, late alderman of London.” The heir to Sir William Martyn of Athelhampton was named Christopher; William’s second son was named Richard and is later referred to as Richard Martyn of Exeter, not London.

Then there is the matter of the Wills. Sir William Martyn of Athelhampton died in 1504. According to The Chronicles of London Sir William Martyn, described as a “skinner and late mayor”, died in October 1505. In the Will of Sir William Martyn of Athelhampton many Dorset place names are mentioned but there is no reference at all to London. In “The Index of Wills Proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury” a will was proved in 1504 of a Sir William Martyn of Puddletown, Dorset. A further will was proved in 1505, that of Sir William Martyn of St. Christopher’s, London.

Conclusion

All the evidence points to there being two men who shared the same name, rank and importance within their own communities yet certainly nothing we have found detracts from the status and respect afforded of Sir William Martyn of Athelhampton.