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2010:

Sydney Smith – Musician and Composer

Jul 8th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Sydney Smith was born on 14th of July 1839 in South Street, Dorchester, the second of three sons born to Frederick and Helen Smith. He was destined for a career and fame in the world of music. Like his older brother, Frederick, he followed in the steps of his father who was a professor of music and dance. Their younger brother, Walter, trained as an assistant bookseller; he died aged just 25 years.

The parents of these three boys, Frederick Smith and Helen Boyton came to Dorset shortly after their marriage at Clifton, Bristol. Frederick Smith was originally from Deal in Kent and Helen Boyton from Clifton. Their father died in 1870 and is buried in Dorchester Cemetery. Sydney’s brothers Frederick and Walter are buried next to their father.

Sydney and his brother received their early musical tuition from their parents. Notices in the Dorset Chronicle in the late 1840’s refer to a series of concerts given by Frederick Smith (on violin) with his sons Boyton (on piano) and Master Sydney (on ‘cello.) [Frederick also had his mother’s maiden name and was known as Boyton Smith.]

In 1855, possibly as the result of winning a Mendelssohn scholarship, Sydney had a place at the famous Leipzig conservatory; he was sixteen. He spent the following three years there studying piano and cello.

Returning to Dorchester in 1858 his talent was recognised by the eminent violinist, Henry Blagrove, who had once been in the employ of Queen Adelaide and was later associated with the Royal Academy of Music. A year later following advice from Blagrove he moved to London and found lodgings in Upper Seymour Street. He quickly established a name for himself as a recitalist and was much in demand in society circles as a teacher of the piano. There followed the best part of three decades when his name was a household word; in today’s world he would have been a much sought after celebrity.

In 1867 Sydney married Hanna Birch. She was originally from Buckinghamshire and the daughter of a druggist in business at George Street, London W.l. She was a singer with the choir of the Philharmonic Society which is probably where the couple met. A year later at 45, Blandford Square, London, their first daughter was delivered and baptised Blanch Edith.

A son, Leonard Sydney, was born to the couple in 1870 and their daughter Linda May was born in 1872. The following year they lost their first child, Blanch, to rheumatic fever and another son, Granville Boyton Sydney was born, followed in 1875 by Eustace and their last child was born in 1878.

In 1886 Hanna died of Bright’s disease after five years of failing health. She was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery on the 16th of July 1886 in the grave of her first daughter. According to her death certificate her passing was notified to the registrar by Blanche Augustine Pinget.  Miss Pinget was 25 and had nursed Hanna through her last days but she had an earlier association with the family when she was nurse to the Smith’s children.

Possibly there was more to this relationship because a little over a year after Hanna’s death  Blanche Augustine Pinget became the second Mrs Smith at a ceremony at St. John’s Parish Church, Hampstead on the 28th of October 1887. After their marriage the couple lived at 28 Birchington Road, Kilburn.

This move from the fashionable heart of London may have been forced on the couple. Sydney was suffering from a “severe malignant tumour of the spine and ribs.” He had to give up his teaching and concert career which would have resulted in a considerable drop in income and there were no royalties to rely on although he had composed nearly 400 works.

Celebrity quickly dims and this was certainly the case for Sydney Smith. The tragic illness and the resulting hardship forced him to apply to The Royal Society of Musicians for assistance and they helped in a small way.

Sydney Smith, in his day a famous composer of popular music, was buried with Hanna, his first wife and his daughter Blanch in a grave marked by an un-inscribed cross. His star diminished by the changes in musical taste at the end he merited a short obituary in The Musical Times. He is remembered today in musical circles; his work, and that of his contemporaries is kept alive by the Sydney Smith Archive.

We have placed a photograph of Sydney Smith in the photo section.

Edgar Lane – Musician of Distinction

Jul 2nd, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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“Dorset has lost a distinguished musician, one who shed lustre on the profession with which throughout his lifetime he had been associated” (Southern Times, February 11th 1938.) So ran this obituary to one of the two most distinguished musical figures to be associated with Dorset in the 19th and 20th centuries. Nor was Edgar Alfred Lane only remembered and honoured by the provincial papers, as the Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, and Yorkshire Post also paid their respects. Yet today, even in his adopted county, this composer is virtually forgotten, sharing the fate of the brilliant organist-composer he succeeded as organist of Holy Trinity Church in Dorchester – the renowned Boyton Smith.

For some twenty-seven years it was Edgar Lane who would take up where Boyton Smith had to leave off when death plucked at is sleeve but Lane was not native to Dorset. He was born into a Norfolk family in Great Yarmouth on a date usually held to be September 3rd 1865, though his birth certificate proves it was September 23rd 1864. Edgar was the eleventh of the thirteen children of Benjamin Lane and Elizabeth Kemp Lane. His grandfather was James Christmas Lane, while his great-grandfather, another Benjamin, was the captain of a schooner taken prisoner by the French during the Napoleonic wars, but later released after the British victory at Waterloo. Edgar’s eldest brother, Benjamin, had emigrated to Australia even before Edgar was born.

Edgar’s schooling was nevertheless quite elementary, though he was certainly not lacking in brains – or precocious talent. He became one of the youngest church organists ever at Holy Trinity Church, Caister-on Sea, Norfolk when just 11. At Great Yarmouth Town Hall in 1881 he conducted his first concert when only 16 (the census of that year showed he was also working as a coal merchant’s clerk.) When not yet 20 he was appointed sub-organist at Ripon Cathedral. Two years later in 1886 he took up the post of organist and choirmaster at St. Peter’s Church and Magdalen College School, Brackley, Northants, where it is noted he was a keen cricketer. It was here also that he met his future wife, Sarah Jane Clarke, a talented pianist.

Edgar and Sarah appear to have had a peculiarly long engagement, for they were still engaged in 1892 when Edgar was appointed organist and choirmaster at St. Peters in Dorchester and so subsequently began the long residence in the county where he would remain for the rest of his life. The couple eventually married in April 1893, taking up residence in a house in Cornwall Road with an excellent frontal view of the Borough Gardens, where Edgar would relax and play croquet.

Their first child, Geoffrey Edgar, was born in 1894, but about 1896 when their second son Ronald James, was born the Lanes moved to a much more spacious house at 50 High West Street where orchestras and choirs could practice. In that year too the Dorset County Chronicle reported that Lane had been appointed conductor of the Dorset Vocal Association in place of Boyton Smith. To commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, Lane composed and conducted a special piece ‘For Sixty Years our Queen’ for a concert with massed choirs held at Maumbury Rings. Respectively in 1899 and 1902 the Lane’s last two children, Margaret and Arthur Noel were born.

Those heady ‘90’s, when the older children were growing up, saw Lane emerge as a kindly child-loving family man who loved to indulge his youngsters with “rubbishy rhymes.” His philanthropy was manifest in his arranging each Sunday for Margaret and Ronald to take a fully cooked meal to a lady in reduced circumstances living in Maumbury Road. This lady, Mrs Harding, was none other than Thomas Hardy’s earliest love and the inspiration for ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes.’

In the 1901 census Lane’s occupation is given as “Professor of Music/Organist/Principal of Dorchester School of Music.” That year he formed a choral society in Weymouth and, soon after, the Madrigal & Orchestral Society, whose concerts at the corn Exchange attracted large audiences. He resigned from St. Peters as organist in 1906 to become Warden of St. Mary’s, a church that formerly stood on the site of the present Dorford Baptist. While still in this position Lane was appointed organist at Holy Trinity in 1909.

By this time Edgar Lane had become well established as a private music teacher of organ, piano, violin, cello and singing, as well as pursuing a career as a composer and conductor. Although Lane’s salary from his organ post amounted to no more than £80 per annum, magnanimously he would not charge for lessons if he considered a pupil was hard up or if his or her parents could not afford the fee.

In 1911 the Dorchester Madrigal Society, then in its eighth season, held two grand concerts on May 30th that year, which included a Coronation March in E flat Lane had written. The combined Dorchester and Weymouth Choral Societies staged a performance of “Merrie England” at the Pavilion Theatre that included Edgar’s patriotic song “For the Empire” on December 11th, 1913. When the Great War was just five months old in December 1914, afternoon and evening performances of the sacred cantata “The Daughter of Jairus” were sung in Holy Trinity Church under Lane’s direction (singing the tenor solos himself because there was a shortage of singers.) By this time the Lanes had moved to a sub-let property out at Charminster called “The Yews” and though this meant Lane having to cycle into town, it was a cheaper home to rent.

In the midst of the appalling carnage of the Somme offensive on July 12th 1916, the Dorchester Madrigal Society, in association with the King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment, gave two concerts at the Corn Exchange. On December 7th that year, also at the Corn Exchange, Handel’s Messiah was performed. It was during these dark war years that Lane was appointed Music Master and, when military service led to a shortage of teachers, a form master as well at Dorchester Grammar School.

Following the end of the First World War in 1919 Lane established the Weymouth Operatic Society, which was then merged with the Madrigal Society. The years 1922 to 1931 saw Lane mainly pre-occupied with training his choirs and giving singing tuition to children in various schools in the area, though there were the occasional concerts to conduct. One of these, on August 8th 1930, was a performance of Mendelsshon’s Elijah in Colliton Park. It is interesting to note that one of Edgar Lane’s singing pupils was Gertrude Bugler who, as a strikingly beautiful farmers wife in her twenties, was then an amateur actress playing Tess in the productions of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ in Dorchester.

But 1928 brought personal tragedy. With the death of Thomas Hardy in January, Lane lost a close friend and associate, for it had been through Hardy that the Lanes had acquired their first Dorchester home in Cornwall Road. Lane became involved, as had Boyton Smith before him, in writing incidental music for productions of Hardy’s stories. As the writer’s wealth had grown through publication of his works, he became more of a man of property, including the Cornwall Road house, which he rented out to Edgar Lane. Hardy was then Lane’s landlord as well as his commissioner of works! The second blow for Edgar was distinctly more personal. When grown up Geoffrey, the Lane’s first child and eldest son went to sea, first as a rating in the Royal Navy then later as a purser on a P&O liner. Though said to have never had a day’s illness in his life, Geoffrey Lane contracted pneumonia late in 1928 and died.

For one of Hardy’s last birthdays in the 1920’s, Lane arranged for the choir of Holy Trinity to give the writer a personal recital of anthems and hymns at Max Gate. Later in that decade, when the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor) visited Dorchester and Max Gate, Lane wrote a special piece for the occasion.

In 1931 Edgar formed the South Dorset Festival Choir, but had not been conducting it for long when, soon after his last festival in 1935, failing health forced him from the podium. In 1936, following two serious operations, Lane went to Sussex to convalesce. By 1937 the composer was sufficiently recovered to return to conduct one more concert in the Borough Gardens featuring a march to mark the coronation of George VI he had written while in hospital. But the remission was brief. Soon after this event Edgar Lane again fell ill and on February 10th 1938, following further operations, he died.

Throughout his very busy life Edgar Lane was not in a position to take advantage of the kudos that came from publishing light music and the few years after 1906 found his family in quite dire financial straits. More than did Boyton Smith, Lane suffered from the march of progress in technology as the advent of the home gramophone, its records and radio broadcasting impacted heavily on the popular sheet music market. Furthermore it is not known whether Lane was ever awarded an honorary degree, though he certainly spent many hours of evenings pouring over books in an exhaustive effort to work towards attaining such a qualification.

Edgar Lane’s involvement with Hardy was probably inevitable rather than accidental, since Boyton-Smith proved to be the ‘link-man’ in mutual association with both. But it is also thought that Lane had an even more intimate relationship with the great writer than had Smith, for Margaret Lane has noted that Hardy and her father “had many musical evenings together.” Furthermore, Lane, as we have seen, twice received invitations to take a choir to Max Gate, and two Hardy settings by Lane “Men Who March Away” and “Songs of Joyance” have been located. The latter was written for the Prince of Wales’ visit and the composer also set some of William Barnes’ verse to music. But few recordings and manuscripts of his music have survived: only four of Lane’s own scores have been traced, while four Barnes settings are listed in the 1932 Dorset Year Book. Lane’s daughter accounted for this paucity by noting that much of Lane’s own and commissioned work for Hardy was accidentally included among works of another composer who was destroying them on a bonfire. It is thought that further Lane scores also perished in a fire at Max Gate. However, Lane’s setting of “Fight the Good Fight” which won for the Dorset Choral Association the ‘Prize Tune Award’ of 1925 was included in the inventory taken of the items in Hardy’s study after the writer’s death.

Overall, it appears that Lane’s music was primarily written for public consumption at major ceremonial occasions reflecting the fact that orchestras, bands and choral societies he wrote for were invariably present to mark these important events.

In conclusion it could be said that anyone who, over a career of some 44 years, had held two church organist positions; a church-wardency; a music master/form mastership of a grammar school; founded and coached several choirs; taught voice and four instruments, organised and conducted several concerts and found time to compose his own and commissioned music, play cricket and croquet, keep chickens and turkeys and grow his own vegetables, could wear himself out before his time or ruin his health. Edgar Lane did ultimately ruin his health, possibly as a result of overwork, but he achieved all of the above and a few more.

Lane’s surviving manuscripts, letters, performance billings, etc, together with copies of Margaret Lane’s short biography are now kept in an archive THE EDGAR LANE COLLECTION available for inspection in the general section at the Dorset History Centre, Dorchester.

Frederick William Boyton Smith – Part Two

Jun 23rd, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Smith had an unusually stylised signature which, while distinctive was yet legible. His forename was scored through with a backstroke from the “B” that also served to cross the “T” in Boyton, before passing through the loop of the “H” in Smith, to extend some way beyond; the hook of the “H” was then doubled back in a broad sweeping arc to entablature the whole name of Smith. (See photo in photo section.)

How well Frederick W.B. Smith and Thomas Hardy knew each other has long been a matter of uncertainty and speculation. What is known for a fact is that the two men were born within three years – and within three miles – of each other, and were virtually fellow townsmen of Dorchester who most likely often saw each other in passing without being aware of each other’s identity. And while Boyton Smith was no writer, Hardy was an amateur musician, having learnt the violin and how to sight-read music from his father who had been a player in the family’s gallery band at Stinsford Church.

The two men however, were evidently in almost daily passing contact from as early as the late 1850’s, for the office of the architect John Hicks, where Hardy was working as an articled apprentice and to which he would have walked each day, was situated in South Street, where Smith was then living. This office was also next door to the home of the great schoolmaster poet and scholar William Barnes. But it is likely that the intermediary who brought Smith and Hardy together was Walter Fletcher, a long-time walking companion of the latter, who also happened to be a friend of both Boyton and Sydney Smith. Fletcher was present during Sydney’s last visit to his elder brother in 1877, and it is probable that, quite independently, Smith was acquainted with many of the same people in Dorchester as Hardy was. He would therefore be familiar with many of the same aspects of life in the neighbourhood, and would have been involved in many of the same organisations.

An example of this close involvement came in 1904, when Boyton Smith was commissioned by the Society of Dorset Men in London to set ‘Praise o’Dorset,’ a poem by Barnes, to music for the occasion of their inaugural meeting. For the 1922 Dorset Year Book the Society’s founder and vice president, William Watkins, wrote a piece in which he imagined himself fifty years on at the annual dinner in 1971 and commented: “..it is glad beyond measure to hear the well-known strain of Boyton Smith’s setting to Barnes’ ‘Praise o’Dorset.”

In 1907 Thomas Hardy OM, JP was appointed President of the SDML, and in a journal letter of November 23rd of that year described Smith’s musical efforts on the organisation’s behalf, giving the composer’s address as Wollaston Road, Dorchester, having moved from High West Street, showing that by that year the composer and the writer were evidently known to each other and in rudimentary contact with each other. This interaction is likely to have increased exactly a year later, when the Dorchester Debating and Dramatic Society (later The Hardy Players) staged a production of Hardy’s ‘The Trumpet Major’ under the direction of a local chemist and JP, A.H. Evans. This production is of interest since it included four settings by Boyton Smith of Hardy’s poetry: ‘Budmouth Dears;’ ‘My Love’s Gone a-Fighting;’ ‘The Night of Trafalgar’ (from The Dynasts,) and ‘Valenciennes’ (from Wessex Poems.) Smith also provided a harmonisation of Harry Pouncy’s setting of Hardy’s ‘The Sergeant’s Song,’ also from Wessex Poems.

The tune of Budmouth Dears seems to have struck a popular chord with London Society, for in a letter to Pouncy in February 1908 Hardy mentions that: “it is true that the song Budmouth Dears has hit the London taste – all reviews quote it nearly.” But it had been one particular scene from The Trumpet Major, enacted in isolation, that had inspired the Rector of Holy Trinity, Rowland Hill, to include it as a piece of whimsy at that year’s May Fair. At this point it is thought that Boyton may again have become involved, since by this time he was Holy Trinity’s organist. In a December 1912 production of The Trumpet Major at the Cripplegate Institution in London, music of the Boyton Smith songs was reproduced in the programme of this performance.

A more intensive collaboration between Hardy and Smith certainly occurred about September 1910 when Smith harmonised some books of traditional carols once owned by Hardy’s father and grandfather. The carols were used in a production of Under the Greenwood Tree under the title of ‘The Mellstock Squire’ in November 1910, on which occasion Hardy received the freedom of Dorchester. Significantly, there exists in the Hardy Memorial Collection in Dorchester a photograph showing Hardy at a rehearsal of this play. The harmonisations of the carols appears to have been completed in early October and were much appreciated by the Dorset County Chronicle as well as Hardy himself, for Smith’s manuscripts were found among the author’s papers in his study after his death.

It appears that Boyton Smith and his father had leanings towards arranging Dorset’s traditional folk music, though many of these pieces never made it to publication. A list produced by the SDML, includes ‘Merry Bleake o’Blackmwore,’ a setting of Barnes by Smith, and ‘That Do Vollow the Plough,’ a traditional air that Smith harmonised. It is likely that this interest in folk music was responsible for involving Smith with the Society, since among the Society’s objectives to promote or encourage were a fuller knowledge of folk-lore, literature, natural history, art and music. Hardy himself, in a letter of 26th December 1907 to A.M. Broadley confirmed he was “…looking for some old Dorset psalm tunes, either composed by Dorset men, much sung in Dorset, or bearing names of Dorset places for the Society of Dorset Men in London.”

Fellow Durnovarians of Boyton Smith became enthusiastic officionados of his music and obviously relished the local associations it invoked. For instance, in the November 2nd, 1905 edition of the Dorset County Chronicle it is noted that at the previous evening’s Old Grammarians Annual Dinner, those present sang their favourite anthem Praise o’Dorset to Smith’s music. Hardy was a member of the Old Grammarians, for he held the position of Governor of Dorchester Grammar School. The Smith setting of Praise o’Dorset was also played during a forthcoming Hardy Players production of The Woodlanders.

Naturally, William Barnes had been a life-long mentor, fellow townsman and friend of Hardy, and it seems likely that Boyton Smith also set further works of Barnes to music as well. After all, Sydney and Boyton Smith attended Barnes’ school, and their parents also had close association with him. Following an enquiry about Dorset songwriters from Major William Arnold, Hardy replied in a letter of November 23rd 1907: “Mr Boyton Smith of Wollaston Road, Dorchester, has lately at the request of the Society of Dorset Men in London, melodised some of Barnes poems which are sung with great success at the Society’s meetings and he might be willing to do the same with any you might choose…Barnes’ poems in Dorset dialect, some of them set to music by Mr Boyton Smith.” That Hardy clearly approved of Smith’s settings of his poetry and incidental music for his productions is shown in the writer’s recommendation of the composer to Major Arnold and Granville Barker as one who could portray Dorset as equally well in music as Hardy had in the written word.

But in return, what was Boyton Smith’s opinion of Hardy’s work?  Clearly Smith’s settings were undertaken as commissions from local societies, and not merely because he was inspired to write them as unsolicited labours of love. It is possible that the settings would not otherwise have been a commercial proposition, for he was a typical Victorian composer of light pieces for the sheet-music market. Since even Kipling – who of course was an author and poet – once confessed to Hardy that he did not understand the people and places in his Wessex novels, would it have been likely that an upper-middle class composer like Smith could have appreciated the plots and characterisations of rustic novels? Smith, as far as is known, had no interest in, or little time for reading, but he was not alone in pursuing a career of composing for the Victorian parlour.

On February 23rd, 1911 the county Gazette bore the following sorrowful statement in an obituary column: “It is with sincere and deep regret that we have to record the death of Mr Boyton Smith which, after a short illness, happened at his residence in Wollaston Road on Friday night within a week of his 74th birthday.”

Smith had passed over on the 17th, and throughout the three columns that followed this paragraph, many facets of his character and work were cited. It is recorded that his “masterly knowledge” of organ playing gave the congregation at Holy Trinity the opportunity to hear a proper interpretation of liturgical music. So much was music a life-long love of Smith that he devoted every hour to it. No labour was begrudged, and his genial disposition and inspired enthusiasm met with a ready response from choir men and choir boys of Holy Trinity across the twenty-two years of his association with the church. Indeed, such was his devotion to music that he persisted in it to the limit of his endurance in his declining years, and it was a sad day when, through advance of age and frailty, Boyton Smith was compelled to resign his position as organist. Not least among those who mourned his passing would have been Cannon Hill, who brought to Smith a friendship as close as the friendship towards the minister’s predecessor, Henry Everett, had been.

Smith dearly loved his home town, where he was furthermore a generous and charitable citizen ever ready to help any good cause, his great talent contributing to the object in hand. His acts of kindness were many and this aspect of his personality won him the hearts of many. For Boyton, loftier ambitions would always subordinate to unselfish consideration for his fellow citizens. Yet out of a patriotic duty, he managed to find time for service in the Dorchester Corps of the Volunteers that in those early days saw the enrolment of many Dorchester townsmen. The obituary further noted that Smith had served as the first ever Weymouth representative of Trinity College, London, for a number of years. As a tribute, the music for the first Sunday service at Holy Trinity following Smith’s passing was of a special character. The Dead March (from Saul) and his arrangement in G of the Te Deum was impressively played by his organist successor, Edgar A Lane. On this occasion the special preacher was Arthur Hippersley Smith of Langton, East Yorks, son of the Curate in Charge, Revd. P.A. Hippersley Smith. At evensong canticles were sung to the composer’s favourite tunes, as well as a rendition of his beautiful anthem “I Will Lay Me Down in Peace.” Following the Blessing the choir sang the sublime quartet and chorus “Blest are the Departed” (from Spohr’s “Last Judgement.”) Special services of remembrance were also held at St. Peters and All Saints.

Frederick W Boyton Smith left his wife Penelope and five children behind, the most prominent of whom was his surviving son Sydney, who was by the time of his father’s death the Revd S. Boyton Smith, vicar of St. Clements Church, Bristol. The others were Florence (Mrs Edward Salisbury of Streatham;) Margaret Ada (Mrs G.H. Lock of Shrewsbury;) Helen (Mrs Philip Harding) then living in Canada, and Frances (Miss Boyton Smith.) From these, Boyton Smith had eight grandchildren.

 

Click on this link to hear Phillip Smith play Boyton Smith’s ‘ Isle of Beauty.’ http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Phillip+Sear+Boyton+Smith&aq=f

Powerstock – St. Mary’s Church

Jun 15th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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I made my first visit to Powerstock on the first Saturday in June 2006. It was the first real summer’s day we enjoyed here in Dorset that year and just the right time to get away from the county town and visit a country church. I recall three ladies were sharing a bench and the shade from an overhanging tree while their husbands were laid out on the grass soaking up the sun and staring at the wisps of cloud suspended in an otherwise clear blue sky. I returned to the parish on the first Saturday in June this year and again I was blessed with a fine sunny day.

The church, dedicated to St. Mary, sits in a commanding position at the centre of the village above the junction where four lanes meet. The village is small but by Dorset standards Powerstock is a large parish that takes in the hamlets of West Milton, Wytherstone and Nettlecombe.

In the second-half of the 19th century our Victorian ancestors were busy restoring churches all over the country; in Dorset it is difficult to find churches they didn’t work on, sometimes tampering and meddling unnecessarily. St Mary’s at Powerstock didn’t escape their attentions but here the restoration was justified to remedy a dilapidated structure that was too small to accommodate a growing congregation.

No sooner was Thomas Sanctuary installed as vicar of Powerstock than he determined to have better education for children of the poor and better church accommodation. Work on the church started in 1854, under his supervision, and took five years to complete. Sanctuary was vicar here from 1848 to 1889 and his wife is thought to have designed and painted the holly and ivy decoration on the walls in the nave.

During Sanctuary’s time as vicar some of the most distinguished prelates of the 19th century came to Powerstock including Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and Winchester, and Dr. Magee, Bishop of Peterborough; also Dr. Fraser, Bishop of Manchester and Dr. Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln.

St. Mary’s dates from the middle of the 12th century and consists of chancel, nave and west tower. Aisles were added to the nave in the 14th century when alterations were made to the tower, which was altered again and heightened a century later. The 1850’s saw the north aisle and arcade added but both retain 14th century features. The south aisle and porch are modern.

The chancel was completely rebuilt during the 1850’s improvements, except for the magnificent mid 12th century chancel arch, of which Pevsner tells us “is the most elaborate Norman chancel arch in any Dorset parish church.” The arch is lop-sided, leaning to the south a result of work done in the 14th century when two hagioscopes or squints were made in the wall south of the arch. During the 1850’s makeover two galleries were removed from the west and south sides.

The partly restored 14th century north arcade of three bays and two-centred arches is generally similar in date and detail to the south arcade. The north aisle, said to have been rebuilt in 1858, incorporates four 14th century windows each with two lights – one in the east wall and three in the north wall.

The south aisle is part of the 1850’s expansion and restoration and incorporates a 15th century doorway into the south porch, which has been described by one expert as “a rich work of great merit which would suffice alone to give the fabric very special distinction.” The windows in the south aisle are modern. The 13th century font was reinstated in 1972 having for a time been removed to the churchyard. Special mention should be given to the baptistery window in the west wall. Known as The Sanctuary Window it was designed by Thomas Denny and dedicated at a service on 17th of October 1991. It was presented by the widow of Mark Stapleton Sanctuary. The late Saxon or Early Norman piscina in the chancel was found on a farm not far away in 1925; a vestige of the original building – around its base there is a cable mould similar to the chancel arch.

The west tower is of three stages with an embattled parapet and the arch leading into the tower was opened up during Thomas Sanctuary’s improvements. The west doorway dates from the 14th century. The bell-chamber has, in each wall, an early 15th century window of two lights and is home to six bells: five; 1st, 3rd and 5th are by Thomas Bilbie of Cullompton and are dated 1772; 2nd is by Thomas Purdue and dated 1712. The number 4 tenor bell bears the initials T.P (probably Thomas Purdue) and date 1684. This bell was recast in 1897 when the bells were re-hung to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The sixth bell is a recent addition; hung in 1960 in memory of Mr William Sykes.

There are memorial plaques to Thomas Larcombe, churchwarden, 1610; Montague Rush, a former vicar at Powerstock who died in 1821 and one to Thomas Russell who died in 1788. In the churchyard the graves of Thomas Burt 1747;  James Burt 1774 and Mary his wife 1784; Thomas Burt 1749 and his wife Elizabeth 1751; William Travis 1646, and another William Travis 1682 and Joan Travis 1717; Richard Sanders 1706; Ester Syms 1701; Henry Smith Snr., 1706; Rebekah, wife of John Mitchell 1712. 

For four decades the village of Powerstock was home to Admiral Sir Victor Crutchley VC: he died aged 92 in 1986 at his home at Nettlecombe and is buried in the churchyard beneath a wooden cross with the “For Valour” insignia of the Victoria Cross.

Frederick William Boyton Smith

Jun 10th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Today he is virtually forgotten, yet he fathered no fewer than one hundred and ninety three short salon pieces and organ works. Information about his remarkable life is distinctly hard to obtain, yet he was a contemporary and associate of Thomas Hardy, and set many of the writer’s poems to music. Now, after more than a century, the obscure and remarkable persona of Frederick Boyton Smith has been partly rediscovered through exhaustive researches at the Dorset History Centre and lengthy behind-the-scenes correspondence with Ms Susan Bell, to whom the author of this biographical portrait would like to acknowledge thanks for all her helpful information about Frederick Boyton Smith and his brother Edward Sydney Smith.

Frederick W Boyton Smith was born in Dorchester in September or October 1837, and is recorded as having been baptised on October 13th in Dorchester’s St Peters Church. Frederick was clearly born into a musical family, for his father, also named Frederick William Smith, was a musician; his mother, Helen Boyton and her sister Clara (who was a teacher of music) were the daughters of Richard Boyton, a professor and teacher of piano. Helen was originally from Clifton, Bristol, where she married Boyton’s father in September 1835. To avoid confusion with his father, Frederick jr. is usually known as Boyton Smith. The 1861 census shows that Boyton Smith’s father was originally a Kentish man from Deal, had moved with Helen to Dorchester. He is recorded as being ‘a professor of music and dance.’

At the age of four, Boyton is recorded as living with his parents and brothers Sydney and Walter at Cornhill, Dorchester, but by 1851 the family had evidently moved to 16 South Street. However, the census that year does not include Boyton, as by this time he was studying the organ under George Townshend Smith at Hereford Cathedral, and instead is noted in that town’s census as visiting the home of one Mary Ann Watt on census day. It is thought that Boyton was probably a boarder at the Cathedral school rather than living in with Townshend Smith, but it is uncertain whether he received further training in the subsequent years. By the time of Dorchester’s 1861 census the Smiths had moved to 53 High West Street and Sydney Smith had left for Leipzig in 1855 to study piano, violin, cello, harmony, counterpoint and composition.

Boyton Smith, too, by 1861 had left Dorchester to live in with a spirit merchant’s widow called Ann Gare and her two daughters in Chard, Somerset. The connection seems to have been through Boyton, who by now was recognised as a professor of music, possibly working for the British National School where Mrs Gare was Mistress. One of her daughters, Janette, is recorded as being an assistant at the school, which was situated close to the Gare home in the High Street.

While Boyton and Sydney would have learnt music from their parents at an early age the former’s earliest known published piece was a transcription for piano of a two-part song by Mendelssohn called “Greetings” in 1861. The rest of the decade continued to be a productive and fruitful time for Boyton, during which time forty compositions were published. These were variable pieces suitable for the drawing room, many being for the piano, but also including arrangements based on operatic songs and melodies. There are also songs based on the poetry of Longfellow, Kingsley and Goethe and one piece of sacred music. Most of these works were published by Chappell & Co, Edwin Ashdown, Weeks & Co, or Novello. Of especially high value to Gilbert and Sullivan officionado’s is an arrangement of a lost song from a comic opera by Sullivan called “The Chieftain,” first performed at the Savoy Theatre in 1894.

Boyton appears to have had a penchant for giving his pieces titles in French such as “Sur le Lac Morceau de Salon pour Piano.” This reflects a trend for all things French at the time among upper class Victorian ladies and a good deal of published sheet music in the 1860’s either came from Paris or else purported to come from there.

Yet despite his prolific output in catering for the 19th century demand for drawing room pieces, Boyton Smith and his music are largely forgotten, and even in his home town his name is largely unrecognised and his achievements undocumented.

In 1864 Boyton Smith married a Clifton woman. Penelope Mary Ann Rawle, Penelope had been born in Clifton in 1842, but the 1861 census clearly shows that by then Boyton’s future wife was working as a governess at Burton, Winfrith Newburgh. The birth of a son, Sydney, was registered in Dorchester in 1865 showing that the family was living there by then. The Dorchester Holy Trinity Baptism Register notes that Sydney was followed by Florence (1867), Helen (1868) and Margaret Ada (1869.) The 1869 record gives Boyton’s occupation as organist (he was appointed Organist at Holy Trinity) and his address as Alexandra Terrace, Dorchester.

In February 1866 Boyton’s younger brother Walter, a bookseller by trade, died from nephritis aged only 25. By 1871 the family was living at 39 South Street, close to the home of Helen, Boyton’s mother, who had been widowed the previous year. The census shows that another son, Frederick, was added to the family only one month before and the presence of three servants show that by then Boyton Smith was well-to-do in his capacity as a professor of music. Indeed, the 70’s again saw the publication of another forty or so small compositions and works for the organ. These included sacred music such as “Lo! I will Give you Rest;” “Andante con Moto” (an organ piece) and arranged piano duets such as “The Flying Dutchman.”

However, most of the forty compositions of the 70’s hang on lightweight pieces for the parlour in the manner of “L’Echo du Tyrol” fantasy for piano, or “Jeanne de Arc,” a gallop de salon. “The Love Who’s All to ME” was a popular ballad, while “The Ash Grove” was a well known aire. Yet Boyton was also moved to write music designed to help beginners and students, seen in, for example, “The Pianists Daily Practice” and “The Russian National Hymn.”

But the 1870’s also spelt tragedy for Boyton Smith. The family had evidently moved to Melcombe Regis soon after the 1871 census day, for the Cemetery Chapel there records the burial, on January 2nd, 1872, of the infant Frederick at only 9 months and in January 1876 the burial of a later infant son, baptised Frederick Walter aged only ten weeks. The family’s address was then 2 Frederick Place, Melcombe, but by 1881 it was Lawn House in Lennox Street, where Boyton’s other daughters Helen and Ada also resided. Here another baby, Frances, was born in 1881.

During the years in Melcombe Boyton’s occupation is given as Music Teacher, where his pupils would have attended at Frederick Place. During the 1880’s Boyton was still composing and arranging, his tally for the decade being about another 45 pieces. The Boyton Smith’s with their daughter Helen were still living at Lawn House on census day 1891, their youngest daughter Frances by that time being a boarder at the same school in Wyke Regis that Helen had attended ten years earlier. It is possible that by this time too, Sydney, was studying for a BA in Durham, for the same ‘S Boyton Smith’ appears as President of the St. Cuthbert’s Society, on that city’s St. Cuthbert College’s register in 1895.

Though only 50 when he died in 1889 Edward Sydney had by the end of his life established himself as a prolific composer in his own right, searches having brought up details of four hundred and sixty-seven published compositions. We will publish a brief biographical piece about Sydney Smith shortly.

The end of the 19th century saw the publication of a great volume of sheet music for the middle class amateur to play at home. During this period Boyton Smith published his “Fantasia” based on four more Sullivan operas as well as other opera-based arrangements and waltzes. Yet a discernible shift in genre from parlour to sacred music is evident in Smith’s repertoire during the 1890’s. In all, seven pieces of church music for Novello’s Parish Choir Books and organ pieces such as his Grand March in D were published. The latter is still played occasionally as the recessional at church weddings, though its composer’s name has long since become disassociated with it.

Sometime before 1901 Boyton Smith had evidently moved back to Dorchester; for he is listed in that year’s census as living at 56 High West Street. Very near his parent’s former home at No. 53. He was then 64 years old, still a professor of music, though one ‘employed on his own account.’ Living with him was his wife Helen, her 84 year-old spinster aunt Mary Jane Rawle and one servant. The couple’s elder daughter Florence had become Mrs Edward Salisbury living in London with her husband, their four-year-old daughter, and sister Frances, then twenty years old. Florence and Edward had married in 1887 in a ceremony witnessed by both Sydney and Frederick Boyton Smith. Ada had married George Herbert Lock and was living with her husband, two daughters and sister Helen, then 32, in Shrewsbury. In 1893 Ada had published a composition of her own called “Romance for Violin and Piano” under the name of Ada Boyton Smith. Boyton Smith’s son Sydney went into the Church, becoming an Anglican clergyman who married an Irish woman from Enniskillen called Mary Cooney. By peculiar coincidence the 1901 census shows that Mary’s father William was living in Clifton with her and Sydney, so maintaining a Bristol connection within the family.

At the time when Boyton Smith embarked on his career as a composer, other European composers, whether of piano music or more ambitious works for orchestra, were much in vogue, while England was regarded as something of a musical backwater or desert, which not even the great Godsends and legacies of Elgar, Parry or Vaughn Williams could entirely dispel. The only way a young English composer could hope to gain recognition or financial reward was through the composition of pieces for gifted amateurs. Over the decades Boyton Smith recognised the opportunities that the growing popularity of British musical comedy presented. By the beginning of the 20th century this medium had established itself as the most successful school of operetta in Europe. But as the century progressed the nature and character of Smith’s repertoire changed. Music with commercial potential diminished in importance, a luxury of omission Smith perhaps felt he could afford now that his children were financially independent.

Between 1900 and 1919 Boyton published another twenty-eight pieces of music, half of these being sacred music for the Church. But during this period too, another highly important and ultimately world-renown figure was about to enter his life. He was not a composer or primarily anyone with a career in music; nor was he some distant nonentity from afar off, but a world-renown contemporary who had lived and worked in Boyton Smith’s own town and neighbourhood throughout both their lives. Two men who had made names for themselves in their own ways and had perhaps rubbed shoulders without getting to know the measure of each other.

So did Frederick William Boyton Smith join the throng of the many notables who were friends or associates of the great Thomas Hardy…

To be continued…

[Cut and paste or click on this link to hear Phillip Sear play Boyton Smith’s ‘Isle of Beauty.’ http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Phillip+Sear+Boyton+Smith&aq=f

My Brief Wartime Escape to Dorset

Jun 2nd, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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It was the autumn of 1943, the blitz over London and its suburbs was intensifying when my parents decided it was time to find somewhere a little safer for us. When I say us, I mean myself a lad of 7 years, and my baby sister who at that time was around 9 months.

We lived in a little end of terrace house in Norbury, South London and every night we were obliged to scramble into our air raid shelter for protection, but the introduction of Germany’s ‘flying bombs’ meant that our safety could no longer be guaranteed. My Mother’s brother and sister had already made the move to Dorset with my cousins, and it was therefore quite natural that she should write to them to see if any accommodation could also be found for us.

It was not long before my mother, myself and younger sister found ourselves in the village of Leigh. How we travelled there, I cannot remember, but we were evidently expected and were taken to stay at the vicarage in the centre of the village. Reverend and Mrs Back made us welcome and gave us a large downstairs room at the rear of the property as our ‘bed-sit’ for as long as we needed it.

The vicarage was reached by a drive from the main village street and the local school was situated to one side of the gateway. Village life was strange for me, and I didn’t make friends or see much of the local children outside of school. The school was very small by comparison with the one I had left behind and consisted of only two classes. As a Londoner, I was treated with suspicion and it took me some while to get used to the mixed ages of my classmates, and the fact that our teacher taught us on every subject.

It was my role, every morning before school to walk down the vicarage drive to the farm which lay on the opposite side of the road on the corner of the road leading to Yetminster. I took a milk can with me and this was filled up with fresh cows milk by one of the two ‘foreign’ men who were working there. I subsequently learned that they were Italian and although resident in this country at the start of the war they had been taken into custody and then assigned to work on the farm at Leigh. I still remember their funny accents as both they and I grappled with payment for this daily milk supply. My mother used to take us out for walks at the weekend, and we walked for miles all around the local lanes and when necessary as far as Yetminster where they had a few more shops.

Staying in the vicarage, we felt obliged, of course, to attend the parish church services. The church was a little way along the village street and then down a side turning. The services were strange to me and I soon became bored. On the other hand, my uncle who was living in the nearby village of Evershot was a Methodist lay preacher and would come over to Leigh every few weeks to take a service in a little chapel. I looked forward to those times as it was good to see someone who I knew and also I would more easily follow the service.

It was after the finish of one of my uncles evening services that there was great excitement. On coming out of the chapel we were greeted by smoke and it was soon obvious that the thatched roof of one of the cottages was on fire. The cottage was opposite the chapel and backed onto the grounds of the vicarage. After returning to the vicarage I was permitted to go and stand in the garden and watch the firemen at work. The old thatch had, for economic reasons, been covered with corrugated iron sheets and the firemen had to get these off before they could hose the burning straw. Sadly they were unable to prevent the fire spreading throughout the cottage and come next morning only the walls were left standing. I remember the stench of burnt wood and straw was around for days and I still clearly remember the lady and her family who occupied the cottage throwing their belongings out of the windows into the garden in a desperate attempt to save as much as possible.

My mother found it very difficult living in the confined space of the bed sitting room and eventually arranged for a sort of holiday for us in Evershot. We walked with my sister’s pram to a little railway station called Chetnole Halt, where we boarded a Great Western Diesel Railcar painted chocolate brown and cream, and travelled to the next stop which was another little halt at Holywell. This no longer exists. We then walked some distance over East Hill into Evershot. We were put up by a lovely lady who lived in Summer Lane opposite the farm on the corner of The Common. Her name was, I believe, Mrs Gilham and she lived there with her son who must have been in his teens at the time.

Although I only stayed at Evershot for two weeks and visited the village on perhaps only two or three other occasions, I remember more about it than Leigh where we stayed for several months. Having my cousins already living there meant that I was soon caught up with village life and they made sure I was not left out of their activities. As our break was during normal school term time they were all at school during the day, but I remember waiting for them at the school gates and then going off with them to explore the countryside around the village.

My uncle was working on the local Melbury estate and lived in a lodge with his family. I remember visiting them and seeing all the good things that my uncle was helping to grow. My Aunt from the other family, together with my cousin David were living in a cottage in Fore Street that was the home of the local bus driver. Whether or not he owned the bus I do not know but he regularly ran a one man service to the towns of Dorchester, Yeovil and Sherborne. I never got a chance to go on this bus, and I was very envious of cousin David who was allowed to go with him, and was given the task of issuing the tickets to the passengers as they boarded the bus.

Mrs Gilham made us very welcome, and the cottage was very cosy. Her son, who name now escapes me, often played a game of ‘lotto’ with me which I thoroughly enjoyed. Lotto, of course, subsequently evolved in ‘Bingo.’ We never played for money but just for our own amusement, and as a seven-year-old with time on his hands any thing like that was very welcome. I also remember the pictures on the wall of the cottage which I found fascinating and was forever asking questions about them.

Sundays in Evershot were different. We all went to a little chapel where I found the services much easier to follow. To be able to sit with my cousins and just enjoy their company seemed to make this strange existence much easier to bear.

I recently returned to both Evershot and Leigh for the first time in 63 years. I was surprised to find that I did not recognise much of Leigh. It did not help to find that the vicarage has now become a nursing home, the old school along side the drive to what is now a nursing home has been turned into housing, and the farm to which I trotted each morning to collect milk is now derelict. Sadly, I did not recognise any other building or road in the village; so much had changed in the intervening years.

Evershot was different. As I drove down Fore Street I immediately recognised the row of cottages where my cousin had lodged with the bus driver, although I must admit to having totally forgotten the raised footpath all alongside one side of the road. It was also strange to see the road full of parked cars. To see private cars in those rural locations during the war years was very rare and I think we used to walk along the roads as there was just never any traffic.

Then reaching the junction with Summer Lane I immediately recognised the turning and especially Mrs Gilham’s cottage. I did not attempt to find out who lives there now or to ascertain whether her son is still around. I just took some photographs to remind me and then drove away leaving those memories behind me.

As my wife and I drove on to our home in Sussex we marvelled at how far my mother and I used to walk in those days and how much we enjoyed the countryside. It is a different story now with so many vehicles travelling along those once quiet byways that it is just not the same.

Winterborne Stickland – St. Mary’s Church

May 26th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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One of the more historic churches in Dorset, St. Mary’s parish church in Winterborne Stickland occupies a central position in the village and dates from the 13th century. Built using a fabric of alternating flint and stone courses, the roof is partly tiled and partly slated. The church is on the usual east-west axis and features a Perpendicular 15th century tower on the west side constructed of banded flint and ashlar.

150 yards south east of the church stands the Rectory. It is recorded that in 1291 a portion of eight marks was paid out of the Rectory to the Chapter of Coutance in Normandy; a further four shillings was paid annually to Milton Abbey, and a pension of forty shillings annually to the Rector of Durweston. The west part of the Rectory was built in 1685 on the waste of the Manor, the Rector paying 20 shillings for “acknowledgement yearly to the Lord.” The earliest incumbent of Stickland for whom a record survives was Simon Avenel, who became vicar of St. Mary’s in 1312. During his ministry he held the living from the Chapter of Courtances after the purchase of Milton Abbey in 1336. About this time also the Manor of Stickland was granted to the Bishopric of Coutances.

The present Rectory is of two storeys with dormer attics and constructed of banded brick and flint with a tile and slate roof. An extension was added to the east end of the range in 1768 and to the west end in the mid 19th century. A stone cross formerly stood opposite the entrance to the churchyard.

The tower of the church is of moderate height in two stages and embattled with pinnacles. In the south wall of the tower there is a blocked door and the upper stage has belfry windows with cinquefoil leaded lights on the east, north and south faces. The belfry houses four bells inscribed thus: a tenor “Give Thanks to God ID RT 1626”; “Serve the Lord IW 1622” and a treble “John Stevens, Henry Wooleryes, Wardens RA TB 1670” plus another treble of 1905. Internally the tower has 18th century panelling with an oak dado.

The porch is of banded flint and ashlar. It dates from the 16th century but bears a rough 15th century sculpture of the Holy Rood on a wall. This rood was discovered during restoration work in 1890. Ashlar quoins above the porch door suggest that its walls were once higher. Above the gable there is an 18th century sundial with Roman numerals on its south east and south west faces. When passing through the outer doors into the porch the visitor should note the small tympanum above the door with its carved 14th century crucifixion; this is suspected of being originally Norman in origin, with the crucifix itself being a later imposition.

The nave of St. Mary’s is mainly 13th century work but with the imprint of a restoration in 1716. It is 20’ x 40’ with a south wall generally similar to the north wall, but buttressed only at the east and west ends. The east end is 13th century, while the west end is the same age as the tower (15th century). The south door from the porch is probably 18th century. More impressive is the wagon roof, which is in 24 compartments defined by lengthwise and semi-circular ribs. The compartments are whitewashed plaster representing restored portions of the 16th century original, while the partitioning has been re-painted in the medieval colours of bright blue with gilded bosses.

Like the nave, the chancel is contemporary 13th century, with an extension of the 16th century wagon roof. It is 20’ x 13.5’ with a gabled east wall in which there are three widely-spaced and deeply chamfered graduated lancet windows possibly adapted from an Early English triplet. On the north side is a bracketed monument of an ionic capital surmounted by a large oval shield. In the south wall there are two casement-moulded windows of 1500 AD and a priests doorway of about the same age, with a 13th century piscina nearby, and possibly another altar. The west shows traces of an earlier 13th century window. There is an elegant candelabrum of the late 17th or early 18th century purchased with money raised from fines imposed on truant choirboys.

A tomb-chamber (otherwise known as the Skinner Aisle) was added to the north side of the chancel in the later 18th century to accommodate the burial of Thomas and Barbara Skinner in 1756. The centrepiece of this chamber, which belonged to Quarrelston Farm, is the Skinner tomb itself, of classic design raised on a single step and covered by a polished black marble slab. The inscription in Roman capitals states it is the tomb of Thomas Skinner of Dewlish, who died October 5th, 1756, and his wife Barbara (died December 13th, 1769.) Thomas Skinner was the son of Thomas Skinner senior, builder of the present Dewlish House, and a grandson on his mother’s side of John Bingham of Melcombe. The Bingham family is also commemorated in a shield, which further bears the arms of the Turbervilles, Chaldecots and Trenchards.

It is said that in the Skinner vault beneath is the effigy – if not the burial – of the Bishop of Coutance who was on the business of the Dean and Chapter. Described as being the stone figure of a man with a shaven head, holding a book in his left hand and a crozier in his right hand, this is the effigy already stated as having originally been placed in the Churchyard, but recorded in 1790 as being set into the floor of the church before its transfer to the vault.

The church also contains a number of other memorials. These are to the memory of John Richardson, clerk and formerly fellow of King’s College Cambridge, who was a former Rector of 30 years standing, and who died on November 27th 1795 aged 67; Mary Beale, sister of Admiral Beale of Upway, died in the Rectory on April 19th 1822, aged 84; The Revd. Samuel How of Corpus Christie College, Oxford, died in Zurich on July 4th 1825, with his wife Sarah, who died on the 14th of January, and Julia Charlotte Mackenzie, wife of the Revd. William Churchill (died 10th August 1857) with two of her children who died in infancy.

There is also a black column with a capital and entablature on a bracket. The Latin inscription running round the front of the column commemorates Rachel Sutton (died 1653), wife of the Revd. William Sutton, a former vicar of Stickland. This memorial is also to two of her children – William (1645) and Barbara (1652) who died in infancy. A little to the north of the nave can be seen the sculptured memorials of Elizabeth Hall (died 1711) and George Lillington (died 1782).

The font of St. Mary’s is early 18th century work in Portland stone in the form of a square-sectioned ballaster surmounted by an octagonal bowl. The present pulpit is also 18th century, but is only the top section of an earlier three-tier one; St. Mary’s plate is a 16th century cup and cover.

The church registers began in 1615 and include affidavits for burial in Wool. Registers held at the Dorset Record Office in Dorchester: Baptisms (1615-1883) Marriages (1616-1837) Burials (1615-1969) and Banns (1754-1893)

St. Mary’s underwent a restoration in 1892.

Lewis Tregonwell – the soldier who ‘invented’ Bournemouth

May 21st, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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As may be surmised the name of Tregonwell is of Cornish origin, though it is a moniker that has come to have a singularly significant resonance for east Dorset. By the 16th century this noble family was in possession of the Milton Abbey estate after having been granted to Sir John Tregonwell by Henry Vlll in 1539. Nearly a century later a scion or branch of the family arose which came into possession of the Anderson estate near Winterbourne Zelston when that estate passed to Sir John from Sir George Morton of Milbourne St Andrew in 1620. Tregonwell then built Anderson Manor on the site of a former Turberville residence in 1622.

It was at Anderson that Lewis was born in 1758 and given the full baptismal name of Lewis (alternatively spelt Louis) Dymoke Grosvenor Tregonwell, the son of Thomas Tregonwell of Anderson. As a young man Lewis enlisted in the Dorset Yeomanry and soon rose to the rank of Captain. His first wife, Katherine, was the daughter and heiress of St. Barbe Sydenham of the Devon/Somerset Sydenhams. By her Lewis had a grown-up son called St Barbe, who followed his father into the army and became a lieutenant. After the early death of Katherine on February 14th 1794, Lewis married Henrietta Portman, the wealthy daughter of Henry William Portman of Bryanstone House near Blandford.

By 1796 concern over the possibility of an invasion from Napoleon had become a major preoccupation in southern England. The Tregonwells were then living in Cranborne when, accompanied by his son Lieutenant Tregonwell, Captain Tregonwell was assigned the task of leading a detachment – the Dorset Rangers Coastal Division – to patrol and guard the coastline in the area of Poole Bay until 1802. This however was an early warning measure against an invasion that never materialised. In 1807 Henrietta gave birth to a son the couple decided to name Grosvenor, but the baby suffered a sudden tragic death on the very day he was to be baptised.

At this point the story goes that the distraught mother became ill from grief. On retiring from the Army in 1810 Tregonwell took his wife with him on the 14th of July that year for a stay by the sea at Mudeford, partly in the hope that she might regain some measure of health and contentment but also from nostalgia for the area he had come to love when guarding this part of the coast just a few years earlier. While there Lewis took Henrietta for a ride across Bourne Heath for a view of the sea. The couple stayed at the only inn then existing in the area, which may be identified as The Tapps Arms (later The Tregonwell Arms) completed just a year earlier. It was this nostalgia sojourn by the sea that would have far-reaching consequences in the years to come.

In the first decade of the 19th century the future site of Bournemouth was known as Poole Heath, an area of acid sandy soil and gorse criss-crossed by tracks, with a stream called the Bourne draining into the sea and wooded dells (chines) cut by other streams. The only settlement of the area was by cows, gypsies, and a few fishermen living in rickety timber-framed cottages. Much of the land was in the possession of Sir George Iveson Tapps-Gervis, Lord of Christchurch Manor, who acquired 445 acres after the passing of a local Inclosure Act in 1802 and an inclosure Commissioners Award in 1805 transferred the land into private ownership. Tapps-Gervis was responsible for the landscaping of some public gardens, but the only other home of any size recorded nearby by 1762 was Decoy House, a haunt for smugglers.

As it happened Henrietta was so captivated by the area that Tregonwell readily acceded to her suggestion that they should make a second home there. He duly set his sights upon an eight-and-a-half acre parcel of land overlooking the Bourne, situated between Decoy House and the sea, which he purchased from Lord Tapps-Gervis for £179. On this plot Tregonwell built a house which, when completed in 1812 he named The Mansion or Bourne Cliff. This was effectively the earliest building in the future Bournemouth. Although it is known from Henrietta’s diary that they did not occupy the house until 24th April 1812, her sister Charlotte recorded in May 1811 that: “a party of pleasure to Bourne Cliff…dined on cold meat in the house.”

Tregonwell also built a number of smaller homes in the grounds for his staff; one of these, called Portman Lodge, built for his butler, was destroyed by fire in 1912. Inspired by a popular Regency notion that the turpentine scent of pines had health-restoring powers, the captain planted a number of these stately conifers in the area. It was these trees, salt water and a balmy climate that in the 20th century would establish Bournemouth as a fashionable health resort.

The first eight years from 1812 saw Tregonwell inviting several high society figures to Bourne Cliff including the Prince Regent, later George lV, with whom Lewis apparently became acquainted. The Tregonwells would be living alternatively at Bourne Cliff and Cranborne Lodge for some years to come, the former serving as the family’s summer retreat. Later Tregonwell leased the home to the Marchioness of Exeter, whereupon it became known as Exeter House. Further extensions were added over the years so that today it is fully developed as the Royal Exeter Hotel.

In 1820 Prince George became King and from that year on Tregonwell bought up more land from Tapps-Gervis for building a number of cottages and stylish villas set along newly-laid streets for leasing to holiday-makers. These holiday retreats of course would establish the core function of the developing resort. By this time Captain Tregonwell was a JP, Squire of Cranborne Lodge and had been made Deputy Lieutenant of Dorset.

Development of the resort was continuing apace when in 1832 Capt. Lewis D.G. Tregonwell died, leaving his sons to carry the landlord-ship and property development process forward. Yet growth was initially slow. In 1836 George Tapps-Gervis Jr, who by then had successes his father, commenced the building of a row of villas on the east side of the Bourne. By the mid-1840’s most of the land west of the Bourne was in the possession of the Tregonwells, but by the end of the decade Bournemouth was still little more than a community of cottage-homes and villas which had not exceeded the status of a village. At the time of the 1851 census the resident population of the heath was still under 700, yet ten years later it had tripled!

Tregonwell was at first buried at Anderson but his widow later arranged to have him exhumed and re-interred in a vault in St. Peter’s Churchyard in Bournemouth. Evidently this move did not come a moment too soon, for just three weeks later Henrietta herself was dead.

Francis Glisson

May 17th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Dorset has given birth to several prominent men in the world of medicine, but probably the earliest of these was Francis Glisson, born the second son of William Glisson at Little Rampisham in 1597. Although it is known that his early education was at Mr Allot’s school in Rampisham, the family history and early life of Francis Glisson is otherwise obscure. However when he was twenty in 1617 he entered Caius College, Cambridge, graduating in 1621 with a BA, and then proceeding to take an MA in 1624. His academic study was further advanced with his incorporation as MA at Oxford in 1627, going on to take an MD at Cambridge in 1636.

Having qualified as a physician, Glisson remained in Cambridge for the next four years, lecturing on comparative anatomy and physiology. During these years he was also elected to a lectureship on these subjects at the College of Physicians in London. About 1640 he moved to Colchester, but when Cromwell’s army besieged that town in 1648 during the Civil War, he was appointed as mediator to General Fairfax. This proved unsuccessful as a number of houses were burnt down, though Glisson’s was not among them. But with Colchester impoverished and in ruins, Glisson resolved to move to London. The capital would remain his home base for the rest of his life.

When he reached London, Glisson leased a house in the parish of St. Bride, Fleet Street. Here he had ample unhindered opportunity to devote his energies to epidemiological study, since he never married and so had no family commitments. He continued his active schedule of lectures often in other places around the country, including several visits to his native Dorset. It was in this county that he first became aware of the deformative condition known as rickets in the children of poor labourers, an observation which led him to devote much time to the study of this “new” disease, though it was known to a Roman Physician as early as 98AD.

Glisson had noticed that the main symptoms in children were misshapen bones and enlarged joints, but at that time no-one had any real idea of the cause. But Glisson may have been the first to suspect that rickets had something to do with a deficiency in the diet, although he thought that over-feeding was a likely cause. By this time Glisson had become respected and admired by his contemporaries as a writer on childhood diseases, and proposed that a greater consumption of milk and other dairy foods could prevent the condition, which it is now known is caused by lack of vitamin D.

In 1650, Glisson published ‘The Treatise on Rickets,’ his definitive work on the disease, based on the cumulative data of five years of study. This work, which ran to 416 pages of original observations, won great acclaim in the medical establishment. Even today, over three hundred years later, there is little to add about the disease.

By nature Glisson was a forceful character as well as a brilliant medical man. For example, it is recorded that he tenaciously demanded payment of arrears in his salary while Professor at Cambridge after he had not been paid for five years. He persisted until an order in council was issued in Whitehall ordering payment to be made.

At 53 Glisson had made a firm mark on the scientific establishment and his fame had spread widely. But his duties in Cambridge were becoming restricted by the widening scope of his interests. He therefore appointed, in 1675, the Master of Caius, Dr Brady, as deputy Professor of Physic. Glisson himself was deeply involved in the College of Physicians where, since 1656 he had been censor. This post was followed by a two-year term as President of the CoP from 1667. On leaving the Presidency Glisson donated £100 to the College Building Fund to help relieve a shortfall caused by the theft from the treasure chest in the plague year of 1665 and to restore the college building destroyed in the Great Fire the following year.

One way in which Francis Glisson showed that his interests were not confined to physiology was his membership of an elite band, which held meetings of enquiry into natural and experimental philosophy. From this sprang the foundation of the Royal Society, with Francis as one of its first fellows.

Francis Glisson was foremost a doctor and anatomist, turning his attention next to the physiology of the liver. ‘Anatomia Hepatis’ described in meticulous detail the normal and morbid structure of the liver, particularly its fibrous membrane, which was likened to a bag, and ever after known as ‘Glisson’s Capsule’ in his honour. Glisson was doctor and friend to Anthony Ashley, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, whose patronage and help at various times he appreciated. Dr. Glisson was also physician to the Earl’s family.

An entirely different work by Francis Glisson followed in 1672 with the publication of ‘Tractatus de Natura Energetics,’ a deeply erudite investigation into Aristotelian philosophy. The work was dedicated to Earl Ashley and reflects Glisson’s love of scholarship to a greater degree than his earlier writings. Ten years before its publication the London Society had been granted a charter by Charles II at its Gresham College home. Here, early fellow members included Thomas Willis, Robert Boyle, Sir Christopher Wren and first president, Lord Brouncker.

Even at the age of 75 Glisson was still writing. Drawing on a lifetime’s experience of lecturing, ‘Tractatus de Ventriculo et Intestinis’ was his last treatise, which he dedicated to Cambridge University and the CoP, with whom he had been associated for so long.

Francis Glisson died in October 1677 and was buried in St. Bride’s Church. Thus the man from such humble beginnings in a Dorset village became one of the country’s outstanding scientists of materia medica. Doubtless his monument in the Fleet Street church is a fittings memorial to this eminent Dorestian who never returned to cross the divide on his native patch of Wessex.

Godmanstone – Holy Trinity, the Parish Church

May 16th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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It is often said that the two pillars of village life are church and pub and if that were true Godmanstone is blessed with a beautiful church and a public house. It has to be said the village is more famous for its pub, The Smith’s Arms, than for its church.

The parish of Godmanstone is located four miles north of Dorchester at the foot of Cowden Hill. The Parish Church of Holy Trinity stands on the east side of the parish and has been a place of worship for at least eight centuries. The walls are of local flint and stone rubble with bands of flint and stone facing and freestone dressings; the roofs are covered with stone slates, slates and lead.

In the 15th century the nave was rebuilt and the west tower added; in the 16th century the north and south chapels and the south porch were added. The chancel-arch, originally 12th century but rebuilt in the 16th or 17th century is unusual in that it has four shafts separated by ridges, in places like spurs, with scalloped capitals and moulded bases. In the 17th century the tower was partly rebuilt, the north chapel and the chancel were rebuilt in the 19th century when the church benefited from an extensive restoration.

The chancel has a 15th century east window of five trefoiled ogee lights with tracery in a square head; in the south wall there is a similar window and a modern doorway; the north wall has a late 16th century window of two four-centred lights in a square head.

The 27-foot nave has, in the north wall, a-mid 16th century moulded arch, and there is a modern window that looks as though it replaced a doorway. In the south wall is a 16th century arcade of two bays similar to the arch in the north wall; the pier has four attached shafts. The 12th century south doorway has been rebuilt and partly renewed.

The north chapel is 16th century but has been much restored; it has windows in the east and west walls both of three four-centred lights and in the north wall is a window similar to the east window found in the chancel. All of these windows have to a greater or lesser extent been restored.

The south chapel is 16th century and has an east window of three four-centred lights in a square head. The two windows in the south wall are similar but have two lights. In the south wall is a 15th century piscina.

The 15th century west tower has been restored and the top stage rebuilt in the 17th century. It is made up of three stages with a plain parapet and pinnacles. The west window is of three cinque-foiled ogee lights in a two-centred head. The second stage has a window of one round-headed light in the west wall and the bell chamber has in each wall a 17th century window of two square-headed lights and incorporated in the north window is a beast-head corbel.

The 15th century font is an octagonal bowl with modern panels in each face and has an octagonal stem and splayed base. The four bells are all 17th century.

The parish registers that have survived can be seen at the Dorset Record Office in Dorchester and include baptisms from 1654 to 2001, Marriages 1654 to 1990, Burials 1654 to 2001 and Banns 1754 to 1811.

Standing on the banks of the river Cerne is The Smith’s Arms the village pub, which claims to be the smallest public house in the country. It was a thirsty King Charles II who stopped at the blacksmith’s forge and requested a glass of porter but was refused with the words “I cannot oblige you Sire, as I have no license.” To that the King replied “From now on you have a license to sell beer and porter.” There is a comfortable 20’ and 10’ bar in the building, which is made of mud and flint and has a thatched roof. The sign depicts the smithy at his labour. Patrons can sit on the bank watching the River Cerne meander bye while enjoying a glass or two and feeding the ducks who have made this place their home.

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