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William Cox – Australian Pioneer

Oct 18th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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William Cox was born in Wimborne in 1764 and was educated at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School. He joined the army and quickly rose to Paymaster and at Cork he served against Irish rebels, many of whom were captured and ordered to be transported to Australia. He joined the New South Wales Corp and sailed on a convict ship to Botany Bay.
 
In Australia he acquired farming land and later became active in the construction of a major highway and several building projects. A natural leader of men he appears to have been well liked and a master at managing human resources, getting the best out of people whether they be his superiors, his workforce or convicts. Like a lot of successful people throughout history his financial affairs drifted into muddy waters but with these issues behind him he went on to become one of Australia’s pioneers.
 
After leaving school William’s father, Robert Cox, moved his family to Devises in Wiltshire and William married Rebecca UpJohn, the daughter of a Bristol merchant, with whom he had six sons and a daughter. The daughter does not seem to have survived.  He was a member of the Wiltshire Militia and joined the army in July 1795 receiving a commission as ensign in 117th Foot. In February of 1797 he became a lieutenant 68th Foot and in September the following year he was appointed Paymaster and ordered to Cork where he served against Irish rebels.

At Cork, Cox joined The New South Wales Corp and was given the same rank of Paymaster. The Corp left from Cork on the 24th of August 1799 for Port Jackson (Sydney) on board the Minerva which, after twice escaping raids from Spanish pirates and Spanish galleons, arrived in Sydney on 11th January 1800. On board the ‘Minerva’ were some 160 convicts including General Holt and the Revd. H. Fulton and Cox, recognising that the majority were political prisoners rather than criminals, made sure all were treated well and often allowed up on deck to get fresh air. It was this generosity of spirit that earned him the respect of all those under his rule.

On his arrival in Australia he immediately saw the opportunities and bought a farm of 100 acres and had General Holt, who was still officially a prisoner, manage it for him. Over time more acreage was added.

With William were his wife, Rebecca, and their four younger sons. The older boys remained in England to finish their education and didn’t join the family in Australia until 1804. James stayed in Australia but William returned to England with his father in 1807 when his father was facing financial ruin and disgrace.

In 1803 his estate was placed in the hands of trustees even though he had substantial sums of money owing to him and he believed the value of his assets far exceeded his liabilities.  He was suspended from office. In 1807 he was ordered to return to England to account for financial irregularities in his accounts while he was Paymaster. There are differing accounts of the outcome of these enquiries: on the one hand we are given to believe he was discharged the service and another account says he cleared himself; as a result was promoted to Captain in 1808. The later account seems more likely because back in Australia in 1811 he was the principal magistrate at Hawkesbury, New South Wales.

On July 14th 1814 Cox received a letter from the Governor accepting his offer to superintend the building of a road from a ford on the river Nepean on the Emu Plains across the Blue Mountains to a point on the Bathhurst Plains, a distance of about 100 miles.

He was given 30 labourers and a guard of 8 soldiers. The task took six-months to complete from starting work in July 1814 to completion in January 1815: this was an amazing achievement and in April the Governor drove his carriage down it from Sydney to Bathurst.The road opened up the opportunity to settle the land beyond the mountains and this began almost at once.

Cox, now a prosperous man, established a farm near the junction of the Cugegong and Macquarie rivers. Following the death in 1819 of his first wife Rebecca, William Cox married Anna Blackford with whom he had a further three sons: Edgar, Thomas and Alfred and a daughter, between 1822 and 1825.

William junior did not return to Australia with his father but stayed in Europe, served in the Peninsular War and did not return to stay permanently in Australia until 1814 when he was 24 and married. The other four sons born in England were significantly younger:  the third son, Charles, died, unmarried, on missionary work in Fiji when he was only eighteen.  And the sixth son, Frederick, died young.  That left George and Henry, who were only about three or four when they left England and their Australian-born brother Edward, born at Hawkesbury in 1805.

William Cox died at Windsor, New South Wales on 15th of March 1837. In St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney there is a window in his memory. “This window is the gift of George Cox of Wimborne and Edward Cox of Fernhill, Mulgoa, in memory of their father William Cox, of Clarendon, Richmond, N.S.W. Arrived in Port Jackson in the Minerva 10th January 1800 in command of a detachment of the New South Wales Corp, of which he was an officer.”  These days the house at Clarendon is in the care of the National Trust of Australia.

General Holt, who had worked for Cox, described him as “a man of great kindliness and fine character.” Only a man of real ability and a genius for managing men could have built a road across the mountains in so short a time, and it would be difficult to find an equal feat during the early history of Australia.

Lady Mary Bankes – The Mistress of Corfe Castle

Oct 12th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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When talking about womenfolk asserting themselves, and in particular the lady heroines of Dorset, the mind immediately switches to Lady Mary Bankes, who held besieged Corfe Castle, one of the impregnable fortresses of the kingdom for hundreds of years, for several months during the Civil Wars.

It was a remarkable achievement, and one showing great valour. The Bankes family were Royalists and Sir John Bankes, Chief Justice of England, was with King Charles II at his Oxford headquarters during the conflict.

Lady Mary, who came of Norman stock, had with her her six children when the fortress, the only one in the county not taken by the Parliamentarians, was surrounded. With a few retainers, never more than 40, she kept it secure. Hot coals were dropped on the heads of Cromwell’s men as they tried to scale the walls.

Sir John returned, but in a second attempt in 1644 the postern gate was traitorously opened from within the castle complex and it fell to its attackers.

A bronze figure of Lady Mary stands by the marble staircase at Kingston Lacy at Wimborne Minster, one of the great houses of Dorset, which was built on the site of another which had once belonged to the Crown and had come by marriage to a son of John Lacy, Earl of Lincoln.

The keys of the castle were kept and were hung up in the library, and many old pictures were saved too by Lady Mary. As for the castle, it was looted and partially destroyed. King Charles II was to restore the ruins to Sir Ralph Bankes, the heir, and today they make up one of the most striking landmarks in the south of England.

The Princess of Wales planted a rare Liquidambar tree when she visited the castle and had lobster tea at the Bankes Arms in 1908.

Corfe Castle saw the suppression of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty, murder, assassination, and attacks of the Danes in its long life. Standing on a steep mound within the Purbeck Hills, it was the scene of a murder as early as 978 AD by Elfrida of Devon, who had inherited it from King Edgar, her husband.

She had a son who was not hers stabbed in the back. And 22 French knights were starved to death in the dungeons during the reign of bad King John, who today lies in Worcester Cathedral. Edward II was a prisoner in the castle before being taken to Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire to die in brutal fashion before being buried in Gloucester Cathedral, in an ornate tomb.

George Duke of Clarence, who was drowned in a barrel of malmsey wine in the Tower of London, as Shakespeare tells, was an owner of the castle. A resident at one time was Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. Another was Sir Christopher Hatton, who was granted Corfe Castle by Queen Elizabeth I.

In the same period the town of Corfe Castle at the foot of the mount was granted the right of returning two members of Parliament, and cannon were mounted on the walls as a defence against the Spanish Armada in 1588.

From the time of the Norman Conquest the building was held as a royal castle, a castle of such strength and in such a superb defensive position that only the invention of gunpowder was to undermine its prestige. It was in this part of the southwest that the Lancastrian lords assembled an army.

Much later, Parliament captured Dorchester, Lyme Regis, Melcombe, Weymouth, Wareham and Poole. On May Day 1643,the rebels from Dorchester attempted to take the castle during the annual stag-hunt. Later, guns were brought into it from all over the island, to defend it. Threatening letters were delivered to Lady Mary.

At that time the castle had become almost the only place of strength between Exeter and London, holding out for the royal cause.

When Lord Chief Justice Bankes died in 1644 all his property was forfeited because of his loyalty to the King. After nearly three years of residence his brave lady had been dispossessed of her previously redoubtable fortress, which was left to the plunderers.

Many mansions in Dorset have been constructed out of its stone and timber. And it may be that the whole of the family plate lies at the bottom of a deep well within the castle boundary.

Henry Lock – From Winfrith to South Australia

Oct 3rd, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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We can only surmise why Henry Lock uprooted his family from the familiar surroundings of the Clay Pitts area of Winfrith Newburgh to embark on a one way, once in a life-time journey to Australia. It was a courageous decision probably driven by the grinding poverty endured by agricultural workers in Dorset in the mid 19th century and aggravated by a measure of religious intolerance. Henry was a follower of Wesley although he married Hannah Riggs and their children were baptised at the parish church, so he may have been a recent convert.

Henry (40); his wife Hannah (nee Riggs) (41) and their six children: William (18); Harriet (16); Mary (14); John (11); Elizabeth (8) and Edith (3) embarked on board the emigrant ship Marion at Plymouth, which weighed anchor at about 7 pm on the 24th of March 1851. On board there were 350 emigrants from all over the United Kingdom; the Lock family were the only passengers from Dorset.

The Marion was a 3-masted wooden emigrant ship of 919 tons built in Quebec in 1850 and under the command of Captain Kissock. The 350 emigrants had endured 128 days at sea and were within hours of reaching Adelaide when the ship struck the outer edge of Troubridge Shoal at about 10 pm on Tuesday 29th of July 1851. This area of the South Australian coast was known to be treacherous but when the Marion hit the reef only a slight fog and a calm sea prevailed. The ship was wrecked but miraculously all of the passengers and crew made land safely.

The shore was only a few miles away but the Captain ordered the long boats to be launched believing they could carry passengers ashore and return for the crew. Even though the long boats had compasses, some of the boats rowed east instead of west so rowing far more than necessary to make landfall.

Some 18 months later Henry wrote to his old friends and neighbours back in Dorset and he was able to tell them that his family “want for nothing” and that they were making a good life for themselves.

William Goodchild wrote to Henry in 1854. That letter has survived and brings sharply into focus how difficult life was for a labouring man living in rural Dorset in the middle of the 19th century. On a personal level William tells his distant friend that he has been in hospital following an accident and reports the birth of an addition to his family: a daughter, and delivers news of new births and the passing of some old friends and how the fledging church is growing. Henry learns of other friends who have departed for the New World and that still more are preparing to follow him to Australia. William reports on the weather and forecasts a better wheat harvest that year.

Below we publish a full transcript of William Goodchild’s letter, which includes mention of many Winfrith families: it is a gold mine of snippets of information for the family historian. References to “Mr Dear Brother” and people being “on trial” should be read in a religious context.

The number of people of European descent living in South Australia in 1836 was virtually zero and by 1851 when Henry Lock and his family arrived, that figure had grown to 65,000 but in that year there was a major exodus of people heading for the goldfields in the neighbouring state of Victoria. We believe Henry and Hannah’s eldest son, William, was amongst them.

A descendant of William Lock has told us that during the following 30 years as many as 75 people connected with the Lock and Riggs families and to Winfrith Newburgh emigrated to the Gawler area of South Australia.

The Letter

Winfrith April 18th 1854
Dear Friend and Brother,
   After a long absence of time I take the pleasure of answering your kind and most welcome letter which I received in the month of August and should have answered your letter before but about that time I met with an accident and cut off my ear with an axe and was in Dorchester Hospital for a month, but thank God I am quite restored and I hope you are all well, as it leaves us all at present.

I should very much like to see you once more and ………(unreadable)…….what I think upon you ….(unreadable)…. if we never meet again on earth my prayer is that we may meet in heaven.
I’m very glad to hear that you were getting on so well in this life for the times are much worse here now than when you left. Bread now is 10 (?pence) per loaf, Butter (?1 shilling ) per pound, Potatoes 16 s to 1£ per sack. Beef and Mutton is 8d per pound but we can hardly remember the taste of it and I sometimes wished that I lived along with you, for you said you do not want of anything and a sovereign is thought no more of than a shilling but thank God our table has been spread in the wilderness and we have had sufficient while others have been destitute. We have had an increase in our family, a daughter now few months old; Grandmother Hibbs is still alive and living with us.

Dear Brother I suppose you will like to hear some of the news of your native village. The state of our society is much the same as when you left. George Ellis, Stephen Simmonds, Fredk. and John Selby and Sally Chaffey are on trial and I hope they will hold fast to the end. Charles Selby has lost 2 children out of 3. Dairyman Andrews is dead killed by his horse with cart – coming home from Lulworth. Mary Brine, Margaret Bishop, John Farr, Mr John Talbot of Burton, Thomas Hooper and Mrs Scott likewise, young John Baker (killed on the railway) and his aunt Rebecca Simmonds is dead. Mrs Kerley and family are all well and has had an invitation from Daniel Wallis to come to America but I do not think he has decided to go. John Pearce is gone there and is doing very well and several more is going from Oraer (Unreadable) now and John Riggs and his family from here. I am very happy to inform you that our Sunday School is re-established and has got from 50 to 60 children and our congregation is much the same as usual, our members are all well and desire to be remembered to you and family. I am also glad to inform you that they have a nice little Chapel at South Down and it was opened last August when there was 300 to tea there. Old Esquire Greg (Cree?)is dead and John Hibbs has got liberty to hold a class meeting at his house.

Dear Brother, I saw your sister Kitty and family this evening and with tears she desired to be kindly remembered to you and said she should like to see you once more but if not she hopes to meet you in heaven, her son Robert’s wife has got a daughter and her daughter Ann, a son and they are all well. You said that Robert Davis would inform us of how you were getting on but he has never returned and his mother has desired me to ask you where you could give any information concerning him and send home when you write next. Thomas Angel has received the ‘plan’ that you sent him and likewise John Allen ‘the letter’ and Henry Burt and John Allen has been trying to emigrate but I cannot tell whether they will succeed or not. Mrs Reader is much the same as usual and has had 2 or 3 newspapers from Australia and I have had 2, and we suppose they came from you. There is much agitation at present concerning the war with Russia, about 10 or 12 has gone from this parish on board a man-of-war. Please to give my kind respects to John Riggs and family and Thomas Allen and tell them that William Toms has sent 4 letters and received 3 and was very glad to hear of their welfare. They are living now at Clay Pits near me, their son Thomas is dead and Henry gone on board a man-of-war. Sarah is at home and very good to her mother and father and Mrs Toms hopes that Elizabeth is a good girl and takes care of herself the last letter they received was on the 6th of April, they intend to write soon, they received what she sent them and very much obliged it was very acceptable, their kind love to all.

Dear Brother, I do not know but what I have told you all the news, we have not had but a few drops of rain these seven weeks, we had a very wet summer last year but I hope we shall have a very prosperous one this year. The wheat is looking very well at the present.  Betsy Allen has had another child and since that it is burnt to death. Joseph Ellis, wife and family are quite well. I never pass by the house which you used to live without thinking of you. I have to inform you that Mrs Atherton is dead and Mr Atherton married again. Miss Caster (Carter?)is dead where my son was stopping.

Now I must conclude wishing you every blessing in this life and in that which is to come and I desire to be kindly remembered to your dear wife and family and hope that they are all decided for the Lord for that will be better than all the gold of Australia and I hope we shall never grow weary in well doing. I should like to hear from you often and please to answer this as soon as you can make it convenient.
So no more at present
From your Friend and Brother
William Marks Goodchild.

June no 11 1854.

 

Dorset’s Roman Mosaics

Sep 28th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Mosaics can be traced as far back as the third millennium BC and were widely applied in Greek and Roman homes of the classical period. They are a pictorial form of enduring decorative ceramic for floors or walls, and demanded considerable skill in their assembling. Until the classical period only coarse pebbles were used, but in the 3rd century BC square, trapezoidal, or triangular glazed tiles or tesserae, varying from a few millimetres to 1 square centimetre in size were introduced.

When Britain became a province of its empire Roman techniques and designs were inevitably imported into the country through growing trade and commercial links with the continent. Mosaic floors were then laid in villas of the civil zone including in Dorset, and several examples of the art have come to light during the excavations of the residences of which they were once a part.

The mosaics found in the Dorset villas were not necessarily contemporary with the original building. A floor could have been laid after many generations of occupation, perhaps at a time of greater status attainment or affluence. Since the floors are usually the only part of the buildings to survive, the mosaics are often all that is known about a villa. But in any event the villas in Dorset seem to date mainly from later in the Roman occupation period, i.e. from the late 3rd century onwards. From the 1st century onwards there appeared a recognised Durnovarian school of mosaicists.

The Durnovarian school was based in Dorchester and at Illchester, now in Somerset but then well within the canton of the Durotriges (the native people of Wessex.) their style is characterised by fine-figured work of common themes and unusual reliefs which point towards a quite restricted cliché or school of expert artisans. The motifs employed are not so much geometric as concentric and were routinely framed by elaborate inter-twinning or guilloche.

While most of the floor would have been laid under the direction of a single mosaicist, there is at least one example of a villa floor in Dorset, which shows traces of completion by another worker of inferior skill to that of his master. There is also evidence to show that parts of some floors were repaired sometime after they were laid. Although more than half a dozen villas are known in Dorset, four in particular have yielded remains of mosaic pavements of sufficient extent to be worthy of conservation and description. These came from Frampton, Hinton St. Mary, Dewlish and Hemsworth.

The villa at Frampton was one of the earliest to be discovered and excavated, in 1796. It was found to have considerably large areas of well-preserved mosaic flooring laid around 350 AD, which were subsequently cleaned and drawn. Here dolphins are a prominent element in the designs, a motif also popular in Christian art. Hinton St. Mary is perhaps the most famous of the villa sites following its fortuitous discovery by the village blacksmith in 1963. As at Frampton virtually all that is known about the villa in through the mosaic, later bought by the British Museum.

But what is most interesting about the floors at both here and Frampton is that they include the earliest yet known icons of Christianity to be found in Britain as well as – and in tandem with – traditional pagan motifs. At both villas the mosaics featured the popular scene of the god Bellerophon slaying the monster Chimaera, as well as other hunting scenes and the popular inclusion of the wine god Bacchus. Yet at Frampton there is also the singular appearance of the Chi-Ro monogram – so called after the first two letters of Christ’s name in Greek (a reverse “P” superimposed on an “X”.)

This monogram appears again in the Hinton flooring, but here it was taken a stage further by the inclusion beneath the symbol of a portrait, which is difficult to interpret as anything other than a likeness of Christ himself. This element of the design appeared to be accorded special status, for it was positioned within an apse or semi-circular embayment seemingly provided for the purpose.

The villa at Dewlish was discovered in the grounds of Dewlish house and found to have almost complete mosaic floors in several rooms. In the entrance passage was a Greek key pattern, while a floral motif bordered by a guilloche with vines adorned the dining room. A room (numbered 11) showed a leopard killing a gazelle. Users of the bath suite changing room would have stood on a design with Cupid, a ram, leopard, dolphin, and a sea creature procession or Theasos. These probably surrounded a centrepiece showing perhaps Neptune, though this detail was missing when excavated, presumed destroyed in antiquity. The leopard and Gazelle fragments were mounted for display in Dewlish House; some of the other pieces went to Dorchester Museum, but the remainder was re-buried.

Excavation of the villa at Hemsworth exposed a fine, complete rhomboidal mosaic laid for the plunge bath in the bath-house. This piece was lifted and presented to Dorchester Museum by the executors of Lord Allington in 1905. In the museum’s conservation section is a roundel of Neptune or Oceanus lifted from the centre of a pavement at Hemsworth in 1908 and presented by the Allington estate executors. This shows the head of a sea-god with crab legs and claws growing from the forehead.

Apart from villa floor sections the County Museum also displays a number of other mosaic fragments discovered during excavations of townhouses around Dorchester, or during the laying of foundations for new buildings. For example a townhouse found in the grounds of the former county hospital yielded a rich 13’x21’ geometric mosaic of rope and diamond patterns in black, white, red, grey, blue and yellow tesserae. This was re-laid in the entrance to a residential home on the site.

In the Victorian Gallery can be seen a fragment from Durngate Street lifted and re-laid in 1905. This shows typical Durnovarian work with crested serpents and leaves similar to a design in the Hinton mosaic in the British Museum. This Durngate piece however is one of the few to show a fruit and leaf motif signature. Also in the gallery is a mosaic unearthed at a site in Olga Rd in 1899. Alfred Pope presented the fragment, which shows a vessel with ornate handles similar to a motif on a Cirencester mosaic, to the museum.

Fordington High Street has yielded a polychromatic mosaic also similar to one at Cirencester, and possibly dating from the 2nd century AD. Found in 1927 it was set up in the temporary exhibition gallery and shows a repair carried out in antiquity to the 3-strand guilloche surrounding one of the circles containing a stylised flower. Six red tesserae of a figure once occupying the central octagon are also present.

A fragment of orange-brown guilloche with flowers can be seen in the Roman Section of the museum. The then Devon and Cornwall Bank (now Natwest) discovered the piece when laying foundations for the new bank. By the main staircase is a fragment of mosaic from near South Street found in 1894 – the first piece to be acquired for the museum by Alfred Pope. Halfway up the staircase a geometric mosaic from the prison burial ground is displayed. It was found in 1858 when a grave for an executed man was being dug and was re-laid in the Prison chapel until that was re-built in 1885, whence it was moved to the museum.

The museum’s entrance lobby is laid with a mosaic made up in 1908 with tesserae from a mosaic surround found behind 45, South Street in 1905. The floor of the Dorchester Townhouse conserved in Colliton Park remained under cover after its excavation between 1937 and 1939 until 1997, when the mosaics were re-exposed and conserved.

Storm – 1824

Sep 21st, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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“Dreadful Effects of the Late Tempest”….The “Western Flying Post, Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury and General Advertiser for Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall” made much of its reports of the great storm of November 1824 and the associated tidal wave which swept far inland.

“We have rarely had a more melancholy duty to perform than the recital of the tremendous effects of the gale of Monday night last” began the account in the weekly newspaper of November 29th. “A tempest teeming with more frightful terrors is scarcely within the memory of man.” The storm beginning at 4 a.m. on November 22 appears to have come from the SSW direction and to have been accompanied at times by rain, lightning and thunder.

The pier at the entrance of Weymouth harbour was demolished by the sea, and the quays inundated. The esplanade was destroyed, and a stone bench carried over 200 yards. Lower apartments were filled with water and boats seen floating in all directions. Two smacks were lost and seamen were drowned. A 500-tonne vessel went down with all hands, and a Dutch galliot broke from her moorings and went ashore. Other vessels rode out the storm but were dismasted.

At Portland, in the village of Chisel 80 houses were swept away by the sea and 30 people died, while the ferry passage-house was almost demolished and the ferryman drowned. Along the coast to the west, a ship was wrecked in West Bay and 17 men from her were picked up and buried at Portland. To date 25 bodies had been picked up on the Isle of Portland. The fishermen had lost all their boats and nets.

Among the wrecks was that of a West Indiaman laden with rum and cotton, which foundered opposite Fleet, the whole of the crew perishing. The water swept over the barrier of Chesil Beach and inland to the village of Fleet, where it demolished the church only leaving the chancel or east end. Later the church was to be replaced by another nearby. Many houses were destroyed.

Although well inland, Dorchester did not escape. “The devastating effects of the storm were felt in every quarter of the town,” says the newspaper report. Here a heavy chimney stack fell on the home of the Rev. H.J. Richman, rector of Holy Trinity church, crushing him to death.

At Poole a roaring wind broke windows; trees were torn up by the roots and blown down, together with around 50 chimneys. The tide flooded the quays and craft were at the mercy of the wind and waves, and the town was surrounded on all sides. Some captains sank their own vessels to avoid them being damaged. Some £7,000 of damage was estimated to have been sustained before the tide retreated.

The Cobb at Lyme Regis was damaged, and a large number of houses were carried away at Bridport and sheep drowned. Damage there estimated at £20,000. And the effects of the storm were felt in Southampton and Portsmouth and even inland as far as Salisbury.

Nellie Titterington – Maid of Max Gate Pt.2

Sep 12th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Whatever happened at Max Gate now that her master was dead, Nellie knew she would not be working there for much longer; she would have been thinking about how to keep her pregnancy a private matter.

Nellie’s employment at Max Gate was full time and she lived in. Her hours of work being 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. with one half day off during the week and she had either Sunday morning or Sunday afternoon off  leaving little time for romance. Besides her employer the only other male in the household was the gardener Mr. Bert Stephens: he didn’t live in. There was a procession of distinguished men who regularly visited Hardy and later in her life Nellie commented about some of them quite warmly but most likely the father of her child was a lad from Dorchester. Whoever he was Nellie kept his identity to herself.

The widowed Florence Hardy shut up Max Gate and moved to London where in the closing days of August 1928 she took a flat or suite of rooms at the Adelphi Terrace. She wrote to Nellie telling her she needed the companionship of someone she could trust– Nellie later said this was quite a change of heart for, at Max Gate, Florence trusted no one. Mrs Hardy would have been surprised and taken aback not to have received a reply to her offer of a position.

For Nellie this was a dream job, an opportunity to be reacquainted with her mistress’s celebrity friends from the literary and artistic worlds, albeit from below stairs. So what kept the maid from skipping to the post box with a letter of acceptance?

While Florence was moving into her London accommodation her maid was in Dorset County Hospital, Dorchester where, on the 28th of August 1928, she gave birth to a baby girl.

A member of the extended family has told me “…her family wouldn’t let her keep the child and it was given to….” The birth was registered on September 20th and a certificate issued by the Registrar Mr F.J.Kendall.  In the margin of the certificate is a one word declaration signed by the Superintendent Registrar, Mr Henry Osmond Lock: the word is “Adopted.”  The arrangements for the adoption were well advanced before the arrival of the child who filled a gap in the lives of the adopting couple and ensured the child would be out of sight if not out of mind.

Nellie’s dramatically altered circumstances meant that later when she opened her front door and saw the mistress of Max Gate on the step she could accept Florence Hardy’s repeated offer to join her in London. The move from the steady pace of life in the County town to all the excitement and hurly-burly of life in the capital was just the tonic Nellie needed and she would be free of all the knowing glances and gossiping neighbours speculating in whispers about who was the father of her child.

In case you are wondering, Nellie named her daughter Florence Maxina Eunice, which tells us something of how she felt about her time with the Hardy’s, but later in life she said her days at Max Gate were not the happiest of her life. The inclusion of Eunice in the child’s name confirms Nellie knew who was going to bring up her child. We are left to wonder if Nellie followed her daughter’s life from a distance and if she knew the girl married and had four children.

The extent of Hardy’s fortune came as a complete shock to the two women but the gaiety of London life brought about a dramatic change in Florence. She became an altogether happier, less inhibited person, able to spend her miserly husband’s legacy. During this time Florence forged a friendship with Sir James Barrie, for whom Nellie would cook simple dinners at their flat. When a later quarrel ended the friendship with the author of Peter Pan, Florence and Nellie returned to Max Gate and soon after Nellie left Max Gate for good.

In the spring of 1941 Nellie’s mother passed away. Later in her life Nellie recalls that Hardy would often ask her to post letters for him at the General Post Office in South Street, Dorchester. Florence Hardy used to apologise for this cycle journey into the town, but Nellie didn’t mind because it gave her a chance to look in on her Mother for a few minutes.

In one edition of the Dorset Yearbook there is an article, which is the story in effect a biographic testimonial as related to a woman called Hilary Townsend, by Nellie towards the end of her life when in service caring for the author’s invalid mother. Despite becoming more infirm through arthritis she rarely left the old woman’s side, and still carried out all the domestic duties. One day she told her charge’s daughter: “If I stopped coming to you ma’am I shall die – I know I shall.”

Indeed, her words proved to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. One Saturday in 1977 Nellie Titterington missed her regular visit, saying that she was unwell. By Monday she was dead. The following day, the 24th of May, her younger sister Margaret Grace Hocking went to the Registrar’s office to record that Ellen Elizabeth Titterington a domestic servant of 1 Marie Road, Dorchester, had died.

So departed a highly intelligent, ever cheerful, unforgettable domestic servant who would be delighted to know that people are still talking and writing about her.

——————
[We have looked at the Hardy biographies (Seymour-Smith, Millgate & Tomalin,) the Monographs, Dr Marguerite Roberts work ‘Florence Hardy & the Max Gate Circle’ and Hilary Townsend’s article in the Dorset Year Book series as well as civil registration and census records and found nothing to suggest Florence Hardy knew about Nellie’s child.]

[We have placed a photograph of Miss Titterington in the photo section.]

Nellie Titterington – Maid of Max Gate Pt.1

Sep 7th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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She was a domestic in a class apart: a kindly, no-nonsense servant living towards the tail end of the age of domestic service. But Nellie Titterington was not just another woman in service in a household of the gentry or privileged upper class. She was privy to the private life and foibles of Dorset’s – and one of the worlds – most noted literary figures. For Nellie was the last, the longest serving, most understanding and probably the best parlour maid Thomas Hardy employed in his household.

Nellie Tetterington’s story begins with her birth on the 30th of March 1899 at 5 Brownden Terrace, Fordington, Dorchester. She was named Ellen Elizabeth but known as Nellie. Her parents were John Joseph and Mary Ada (nee Masters) Titterington: her father, a house painter was born in Malta in 1871; he was the son of an Irish soldier who was stationed there. Her mother was born in 1874 at Tolpuddle.  Nellie had an older brother, William, and three younger siblings Doris, Henry and Margaret.

Nellie is likely to have been a bright, high-spirited and pretty child, active and interested in everything and everyone around her. Certainly as an adult she had an interesting life, which she talked about almost incessantly. Nellie was said to have been “alert and neat, with a clean, well cared for complexion and white hair set off with hats.”

What is known is that in the last year of the First World War, when she had just turned eighteen, young Miss Titterington had made up her mind to enlist in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. Having filled out her application documents she left them on the mantelpiece, intending to discuss her move beforehand with her mother. Next day however, an interfering aunt had it in mind to post off the forms without any prior consultation or authorisation from her niece. Only a week later Nellie was amazed to find call-up papers in her letterbox; soon after she was to find herself serving as an orderly to a WAAF officer.

Following the Armistice, Nellie remained in the officer’s service as housekeeper after the officer had moved to a new home in Kent. But Dorset-born people living away from their native patch are especially prone to homesickness, and the officer’s servant was no exception. Put simply, in Nellie’s case the pangs of loneliness she felt emanated from the feeling that she was too far and remote from her beloved mother.

Then in 1921 Nellie’s prospects rose dramatically. Through an acquaintance, Alice Riglar, who appears to have been in service at Maxgate, Thomas Hardy’s country home near Dorchester, she learnt that the position of parlour maid at the house had fallen vacant. Alice then initially recommended Nellie for the position to Hardy, and then informed her of her recommendation in a letter. Before Nellie could begin the job however, Alice wrote again, saying she had second thoughts and asked Nellie not to come after all. It seemed that Alice, concerned about the gloomy, oppressive atmosphere at Max Gate (due mainly to the several trees Hardy had planted so close to the house when moving in) warned Nellie that it would not be “the best of places” as it had “an air of silence.” However, by then Nellie had made up her own mind and was in no way dissuaded by her friend’s misgivings. She therefore left the service of her WAAF officer and returned to Dorset.

Miss Titterington was soon to find Hardy an introspective man who, she said, regarded women not as women but as “shadowy figures fitting into a space like a jigsaw.” Nellie studied him intensely and in time came to understand and respect the writer’s intensely introverted nature. But she also discovered that Hardy was mean with money, had no hobbies and never discussed politics with anyone, though he had a deep, almost mystical reverence for nature.

His parsimony became apparent when Nellie learnt that Hardy would only give each of his staff a Christmas bonus of 2s/6d in an envelope – and even then the cook was instructed to leave hers unopened until later in the day. Hardy’s wife Florence later secretly topped up these bonuses to 10/-. Nellie also spoke of one particular winter evening when Florence had accompanied Lawrence to an event at Glastonbury, leaving Hardy alone with his servants. On this occasion Nellie had stoked up a particularly good fire in the dining room but on checking on its progress a little later she found Hardy removing the coals lump by lump with the tongs and arranging them neatly on the hearth!

Nellie also responded positively to the great man’s love of nature. At one time Max Gate had five owls roosting in the trees over winter and the parlour maid would fetch Hardy to see them. Once, when a hare from adjoining Came Wood strayed into the garden Hardy, Nellie and the gardener together caught it in a net; but then the writer lifted his corner of the net to let the animal escape. On the day of her master’s funeral Nellie noticed that some of the mourners were wearing red fox hunting jackets. Had he been able to see them, Hardy, a fervent abolitionist regarding foxhunting, would have been incensed.

There was one animal at Max Gate however that Nellie probably lost no love over but had to suffer not gladly all the same: Hardy’s rough-haired terrier Wessex. The dog was of a disposition that was both peculiar and nasty, being fiercely protective of his master and as jealously suspicious of most other people as he was evidently devoted to Hardy himself.

Nellie’s approach to dealing with her mistress took much the same form as that towards her master. Florence Hardy was a socially insecure woman with a difficult temperament and other clearly discernable faults. Almost madly suspicious, she would trust no one else with the house keys, and would often accuse one or other of the servants of breaking something or even stealing it. Over time Nellie became accustomed to her awkwardness, and came to pity this second-time-around wife, who married Hardy after the death of his first wife Emma. One particular skill Nellie possessed was flower arranging. Yet when, as often happened, a visitor asked Mrs Hardy in Nellie’s presence who was responsible for the floral display the parlour maid would silently dare the mistress of the house to take the credit for the work. Florence, though much younger than her husband, was nevertheless accustomed to reading whole tracts of books aloud to him in the evenings. It was this devotional side of her nature that made Nellie feel sympathetic towards Florence.

Thomas Hardy died on Wednesday, January 11th, 1928. The following morning Nellie cycled over to ‘Talbothays’ at West Stafford to deliver the news of Hardy’s passing to his sister Kate. Away from Max Gate she had time to think about a growing personal problem.

Nellie was pregnant.

To be continued…..

The Amazing Lady Charlotte of Canford

Sep 1st, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Between Bournemouth and Poole lies the heathland parish of Canford, today an area of intense development pressure. However, for most of the earlier 19th century it was an estate of thirteen thousand acres about to be transformed through the intervention of a businessman and his remarkable wife.

The wife in question was born Charlotte Bertie in 1812, the only daughter of the ninth Earl of Lindsay and his wife Charlotte Layard. When young Charlotte was only six her father died and her mother entered into a second marriage to a hard-drinking, violent clergyman called Peter Pegus, whom the wife and step-daughter were later to turn against. Charlotte junior’s response to the intrusion of this disagreeable step-father into her life was to withdraw into herself with the consolation of reading.

Whether or not this habit and her abnormal family life were contributory factors, Charlotte’s abilities expanded such that she developed a phenomenal intellect and capacity for learning, even by today’s standards. She learnt Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Persian, French and Italian; could play the piano and harp, do copper etchings, and find time to go riding, hunting and shooting. Yet her two younger brothers were mentally retarded.

Charlotte also enjoyed frequent trips to London. It was during one of these trips when she was 21 in 1833 that she was introduced to Benjamin Disraeli, who in turn presented her to a venture capitalist of his acquaintance called Josiah John Guest.

Guest was then 48 but of a very different background and age to Charlotte. He was then the owner-manager of an ironworks his grandfather had established at Dowlais near Merthyr Tydfil, and a year before he married Charlotte he had been elected the town’s MP. Over the first twelve years of their marriage they had ten children: five boys and five girls.

In 1838 Charlotte was presented at the court of the newly-crowned Queen Victoria and by the end of that year Sir John, as he was by then, had been made a baronet. Lady Charlotte also sought a position at court, but in 1844 her husband’s health began to fail after undergoing a gall-bladder operation. It was this change in their circumstances that convinced Charlotte that they should seek to make their home in Dorset.

Subsequently in 1845, the Guests purchased the Canford estate for £335,000, Charlotte immediately taking upon herself the mammoth work of re-organisation. The great architect Sir Charles Barry, who a decade before had designed the new Palace of Westminster, was commissioned to re-style Canford Manor as a Gothic mansion – an undertaking that took several years to complete.

Following the opening of the Liverpool to Manchester Railway the Dowlais Ironworks turned to making railway lines. Charlotte became much involved in the day-to-day running of the company, even adding Welsh to her linguistic tally so that she could converse with the labour force at the works. Her mastery of their mother tongue however, further enabled her – over the course of eight years – to undertake the first translation of the Welsh folklore epic The Mabinogion into English.

Sir John died in Charlotte’s arms in 1851, barely a year after the Guests were able to move into their mansion at Canford. Thereafter Charlotte took total control of the Dowlais Works, but soon after her husband’s death, she was confronted by industrial unrest caused by calls for higher wages in the face of recession and competition from abroad. A settlement was eventually reached without the need for a lock-out.

However, Canford was about to become the beneficiary of an unusual and valuable legacy of Empire. Lady Charlotte’s cousin on her mother’s side was Austen Henry Layard, an energetic, argumentative archaeologist, diplomat and Liberal MP whose father – Charlotte’s uncle – was a civil servant in Sri Lanka. While excavating at a site in Assyria in the 1840’s Layard uncovered a large cache of treasure, most of which went to the British Museum, though a residue of this find went to Canford. Through the familial connection Layard was a frequent visitor to his cousin at the mansion and eventually married one of Charlotte’s daughters, Mary Enid. Her mother again commissioned Barry to add an extension to Canford specifically to house the Assyrian Collection.

About this time Charlotte employed a 27-year-old Fellow of Trinity College called Charles Schreiber as a tutor for her first child and oldest son, Ivor, who was soon to go to university. But when he was struck down by a near-fatal illness Charlotte nursed him back to health, an act which, though the tutor was 13 years her junior, established a solid bond of love between them. In 1855 Charles and Charlotte married. Ivor eventually fulfilled all his mother’s expectations of him, but many of her other children were to cause Charlotte much consternation in the first four years of her second marriage. Ivor took over the management of the ironworks after leaving Cambridge with a first-class degree. In 1885 Charles was elected MP for Cheltenham.

Lady Charlotte’s retirement from managing Dowlais left a void in her life which she filled by collecting a plethora of household articles that included china, tea-caddies, thimbles and snuff-boxes.She travelled abroad widely in her search for new additions to her collection. Disraeli again met Charlotte at a reception in 1870 and through his recommendation Ivor received a peerage the following year.

Throughout the hard winter of 1881 Charlotte was confined to Canford at a time when Charles’ health was in decline from lung problems. That year his wife had undertaken the last of her collecting trips and began the mammoth task of cataloguing her collection. On his doctor’s advice, Charles went out with Charlotte to South Africa in 1884, but died in Lisbon on the 6th of January from the effects of a rough voyage. For Charlotte this tragedy was compounded by the devastating news, borne in a letter from Ivor shortly before, that a fire had broken out at Canford and gutted a large part of the mansion.

Lady Charlotte returned to face the ordeal of the fire damage and Charles’ funeral. She was then 72 and decided that she must split her collection – thereafter known as the Schreiber Collection – 50/50 between the British and Victoria & Albert Museums, though the cataloguing would take up the rest of her life. Apart from two stays with the Layards in Venice she had completed her travels by 1890.

From this time on Lady Charlotte’s declining years were spent with her youngest daughter Blanche, Countess of Beesborough. Lady Charlotte Guest Schreiber died in 1895 and was buried in Canford Churchyard beneath a great white three-tier “mastaba” type granite tombstone topped with a full-length raised crucifix.

Truly a fitting memorial to one of Dorset’s most remarkable Victorians.

 

[We have placed in the gallery two photos by Chris Downer of Canford Magna parish church.]

Mysterious Rempstone and its Hall

Aug 26th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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From almost the earliest antiquity, the parish of Rempstone in Purbeck has been an area of unresolved enigma and dark secrets. Possibly over four thousand years ago Neolithic farmers or traders created a track, possibly a trade route, along the north flank of the Chalk ridge called Nine Barrow Down, connecting the mound of Corfe Castle with the coast at Studland. Centuries later, in the second millennium BCE (Before the Common Era,) pagan priests of the Bronze Age constructed a ceremonial circle of nine stones a little to the north of the hogsback track way, later much damaged by medieval clay workings. The remaining stones today stand half hidden in a block of woodland on the manor estate. Along the ridge itself are the nine barrow graves of Wessex chieftains, while on the hills opposite Rempstone Hall are two enigmatic earthworks of unknown date and undefined purpose.

Then in Iron Age and Roman times the parish became caught up in the plundering of Purbeck’s wealth in extractive mineral resources, as its heathland was turned into an industrial landscape for the extraction and exporting of iron, clay, shale and finished pottery goods. At Church Knowle, only a quarter of a mile west of the manor, lie the remains of a Romano-British villa. By the time of the area’s industrialisation in the Middle Ages, Rempstone was already an ancient manor and hamlet, becoming a farmhouse in the 16th century.

Rempstone Hall itself is an isolated house two-and-a-half miles from the nearest villages of Corfe and Studland. Situated to the east is Kingswood Farm, while to the west lie Rollington and Brenscombe Farms. Over two centuries the Hall has become impounded by mature woodland of oak, chestnut, birch and pine, planted in 1790.

Regarding the name Rempstone, several options have been put forward as to its origin. According to historian John Hutchins the earliest, or one of the earliest, Lords of the Manor was Robert Rempston, who died in 1464, though it has been suggested that he adopted his family name from the pre-existing place name, not the other way round. Another popular theory is that George Trenchard, who occupied the house in the 17th century, called it Rempscombe after the Old English word combe, meaning “narrow valley.” However, as the “valley” from Corfe to Studland is only one-sided, grading into the heath and is anything but narrow, it is difficult to see how this interpretation can be accepted.

Etymologist Eilert Ekwall has argued that Rempstone may derive from the Old English “Hrempi’s Tun,” meaning the home or village of one called Hrempi, though there is no record of such a person; or else it derives from “Hrimpan” (wrinkled.) Most likely however is “Hring-Stun” – Old English for Stone Ring – surely significant, since the stone circle lies only 300 yards from Rempstone Hall.

Whether or not Rempston was the first Lord of the Manor, his immediate successors seem to have been the Miller family of Corfe, who in turn relinquished the estate to the Uvedales of Sherborne. The estate then passed to the Framptons of Buckland. By 1664 Rempstone was in the hands of the Trenchards of Wolfeton, and then finally (i.e. up until the latter 18th century) becoming the possession of the Rose family of Dorchester.

But the modern well-documented history of the estate begins with the highly interesting political and military Calcrafts, a family that had its roots at Grantham in Lincolnshire. The Calcrafts established a dynasty that lasted from 1726, when the second John Calcraft was born, until the last male Calcraft died in 1901. John Calcraft the younger was the supposed son of another John Calcraft of Grantham, though it is more likely he was actually an illegitimate son of Sir Henry Fox, father of the famous Tory politician Charles James Fox. John himself became a prominent Whig politician and MP for Wareham, who bought up much of its property after the town’s great fire in 1762.

In the 18th and 19th centuries the Rempstone estate extended in a broad band right across the Isle of Purbeck from the southern shore of Poole harbour to the coast at Worth Matravers and Winspit.

John Calcraft began a relationship with Elizabeth Bride and bought Rempstone Hall from the last of the Dorchester Rose’s in 1757. Calcraft however was already in possession of several other estates in Lincolnshire, Kent, Wiltshire and elsewhere. At that time Rempstone Hall was a considerably smaller house, consisting of the original 16th and 17th century core building. During the time of John’s son, the Rt.Hon. John Calcraft MP and his wife Lady Caroline Montagu Calcraft no major alterations took place, but in the early 1790’s John Hales Calcraft, John the second’s grandson, considerably enlarged Rempstone by the addition of another wing, ever since known as Lower Rempstone to distinguish it from the earlier Upper Rempstone. More minor additions to the Hall were made in the 1830’s.

During the time the manor was in the ownership of the Calcrafts, the highly formalised, labour-intensive system for household management of the gentry came to full fruition. For example the 1861 census records that Rempstone Hall had ten resident servants, two footmen, two ladies maids, a cook, a cookman, a butler, a scullery maid, and a carpenter. This tally did not include non-resident daily workers and outside servants. Like many country houses, Rempstone was effectively a self-contained self-sufficient community producing much of its own food.

The last of the Calcrafts was William Montagu Calcraft, who died in 1901. His successor was a nephew, Guy Montagu Marston RN, the son of William’s sister Katherine and the Revd. Charles D Marston. Marston carried out repairs to the house in 1906 and 1919, where drainpipes bearing his monograph date from this time. Although outwardly respectable, Marston is better known for his friendships with the poet Rupert Brooke and the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley, who performed ritualistic magic at the house. In 1927 Rempstone Hall came into the possession of Major Douglas Claude Dudley (Jack) Ryder, and it was he and his family who were occupying the house at the outbreak of war in 1939.

At the end of 1940 the military requisitioned the west-end of the house. The squash court became a canteen. Bren-gun carriers were em-parked in the driveway. By the end of 1942 the army had taken over the entire hall. The windows of Rempstone had to be protected with sandbags. One night in 1940 the household received a phone call to say church bells were being rung because it was believed an invasion was imminent. Rempstone Hall itself was never hit, though during the Battle of Britain several bombs fell nearby.

When the war ended many unexploded bombs and shells had to be cleared from the surrounding area. Rempstone continued to be occupied by army and navy personnel until 1949, by which time much interior and exterior restoration had to be carried out. At this time also, the connection between Lower and Upper Rempstone was broken and the lower part sub-let to tenants. Tourist coaches on the road would point out that Rempstone was the house where the D-Day landings were planned, though written proof of this has not been found. However, Rempstonee Hall as the local Army HQ is thought to have been visited by at least some of the wartime leaders.

Rempstone Hall is a residence that over its centuries has acquired more than one ghost, including that, it is said, of the religiously fanatical Lady Caroline Calcraft. Possibly the supernatural disturbances and darker goings-on can be attributed to Cowley’s evil magic rituals, also to an underground stream said to flow beneath the house. This is entirely credible, for there is one other feature that underground streams have been particularly associated with: megalithic stone circles.

John Beard – Educator of Bridport

Aug 17th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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For the townsfolk of Bridport January 4th, 1911 was an occasion of dreary solemnity and from something more than just the depressing effect of wintry weather. People at home drew the blinds of their windows down; businesses put up their shutters. A cortege bearing a plain oak coffin passed through the town en route to the cemetery. Clearly someone special, someone almost everyone in Bridport had taken to their hearts, was no more.

This special citizen who had prompted such an outpouring of reverence and mourning on his last journey was John Beard. Beard was born in Bristol on March 20th 1833 and died in Bridport on December 30th 1910, his allotted 77 years being ones of making outstanding strides in the education and rectitude of generations of Victorian boys growing up in a Dorset market town. Indeed, many prosperous men had John Beard to thank for the special training they received.

As a child growing up in Bristol, Beard became a pupil-teacher at that city’s Red Cross School, where the more advanced boys taught those in the lower forms. On leaving this school he attended Borough Road Training College from 1852 to 1853, from there going on to teach at Chatham for a few months.

But in 1854 Benjamin Templar, then Headmaster of Bridport General Boys School left to take up another head position in Manchester. The position of headmaster at the Bridport school, which had only opened in 1849, was then filled by Beard, an appointment that was to last for the next forty years. Under its new Head, the school would soon make its presence felt in the community – and in the fortunes of a rising generation of its acolytes.

Beard’s own dedication and attendance record were legendary. In his two score years at the school he was known to have been absent no more than about four days from incapacity. He was also possessed of a stoical sense of duty, being so devoted to his job that he often kept working when he should have rested. A colleague once told him: “I’m afraid you are too young (he was only 22 at the time) in fact some of the pupil-teachers are nearly as old as yourself.”

But from the first it was evident that the new Headmaster was an exceptionally gifted man. On the founding of the General School just five years before, it was intended that technical instruction should be in the curriculum. To this end the school even bought up adjoining allotment land for use as an open-air gymnasium. However, at the time no rigid code or syllabus had been drawn up. Beard was therefore not limited by curriculum; he taught mensuration, land surveying and any other subject fitting boys for science and technology-orientated careers.

When he had been in post at Bridport for only four years, Beard met and married Ellen Swain, the youngest daughter of a local captain, at the Congregational Chapel in Bridport’s Barrack Street on June 20th 1858. It was for both parties a marriage as successful as the groom’s academic career. The Beards raised three sons and two daughters, two of the sons themselves becoming teachers, while the third, Ernest, having apparently inherited his maternal grandfather’s love of the sea, became a sailor and emigrant. The grandfather – Captain Swain – was a harbour master at West Bay, a job which Ernest was to take up in a new life in Calcutta. Sadly, Ellen pre-deceased John by twelve years in 1898.

After some time the state began to interfere more in the running of schools. School Commissions had to march in a rigid step according to new rules. Beard was given – and heeded – the advice that he should obtain certificates in sciences, so qualifying him to teach these as a supplement to the ordinary school course. In fact, John Beard was the first teacher in Bridport to qualify as a science master, and was one of only three in the whole county. Besides giving special class instruction, he extended his expertise to private schools and seminaries. Evening schools were begun, though these were dropped after a time. In about 1874 however, John Beard revived evening schools in Bridport, these being attended by 150 to 200 pupils.

Beard also took an active interest in the Working Men’s Institute in South Street, appreciating its worth as another means of combining education with recreational activities. Here his lectures were highly instructive, appreciated and well attended. He always gave of his best when coaching dozens of young men privately for examinations towards lucrative positions or occupations. By the 1800’s Beard’s name was a household word in Bridport.

At the time, the Headmaster was getting through a prodigious amount of work, despite having no assistant master to share the burden, and only two or three pupil-teachers. His institution was almost a secondary school without rates to support it, though many of his former pupils who had become wealthy men regularly sent subscriptions to support the General School. Alas, the grants ultimately dried up, and the sciences had to be discontinued.

Needless to say John Beard was no less industrious during school holiday time. Much of this time was spent touring the continent with his family, collecting any material he thought would be of interest to his pupils. He also visited many places of historic interest and was in Paris at the time the Franco-Prussian War ended. His lessons based on this foreign material were always of exceptional interest during the new term.

In his latter years Beard also found time to write two books, on English History, and another entitled ‘Outlines of the English Language.’ The key to John Beard’s great success lay in the practical and attractive way he imparted knowledge while leaving his students to think for themselves. He further managed to temper a firm, disciplinary approach with an amiable, smiley demeanour and kindly greetings.

In politics Beard was a life-long Liberal, and indeed served for some years as Vice President of the Bridport Liberal Association. Though he resigned when Gladstone presented his Irish Home Rule Bill.

Sadly though, John Beard’s retirement in the company of his wife of forty years proved to be all too brief. Ellen died only four years later, leaving John a widower for the remaining twelve years of his life. At his own funeral in 1911, the Revd. J. Menzies, for so long a friend and colleague of the former Headmaster delivered a last moving address at the graveside in Bridport Cemetery that bleak winter afternoon.

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