Eliza and the Colonel

In February 1875 a very old lady, Eliza Kelly, died in Hythe and was buried a couple of days later in St Leonard’s churchyard. There was nothing remarkable about her, except possibly her age – 92 years was unusual for the time. She had never married and had no known family. Who was she?

Eliza’s grave in St Leonard’s Churchyard, Hythe

She was born on 21 December 1782 and baptised two days later at the parish church in Deal, Kent. Her father was Francis John Kelly, a captain in the Royal Irish Regiment aged 50 and her mother Elizabeth nee Oakley, aged 17. They had been married for 10 months.

Eliza was joined by four siblings over the next 21 years. In the interim, her father had sold his commission and retired from active service. He then disappears from the public record until he surfaces again in Hythe in 1803, having been appointed barrack master to the Royal Staff Corps (RSC) stationed there. The family lived, it was written later, in ‘a small wooden tenement down a lane leading out of the main street of Hythe’.

An artist’s impression of the RSC, somwhere more picturesque than Hythe

Into this domestic bliss rode a young officer who would change their lives: Charles James Napier. He was the same age as Eliza. He fell in love, not with her, but with her mother.

Charles James Napier as a young man

Napier, once trained by the RSC in the mysteries of engineering which he learnt from involvement in building the Royal Military Canal, was transferred to the 50th Regiment and left Hythe. The Kellys stayed. One night in 1807, fire broke out in the RSC stables. Hythe’s fire engine was inadequate to deal with the conflagration and Eliza’s little brother, Henry, ran up the hill to the barracks in Saltwood to summon their fire engine. It drew water from the nearby canal and no human or  equine was hurt.

The next year, Napier was able to pay a visit to Hythe. We know this because he wrote to his mother from the town in March 1808:

‘I rode here, dear Mother, to see poor Sturgeon, who has lost his little wife, the betrothed of Emmett… They are going to take the body to Ireland’.

Napier was then sent to the Iberian Peninsula and fought at the battle of Corunna under General Sir John Moore, whom he greatly admired.  Moore was killed and at first Napier’s family believed he, too, was dead. Although seriously wounded, he made his way back to England and almost immediately went to visit Mrs Kelly who was staying with friends in Devon. ‘She, poor girl, betrayed the strength of their relationship by falling in a dead faint as he arrived’.

Next, Napier, now a major, was posted to Bermuda, where he was joined by a very young ensign, Eliza’s brother Henry.  His family had now left Hythe and Francis was working as a barrack master at Romford.  Mrs Kelly and Napier kept up a correspondence and met whenever he was in England until 1819, when he was sent to Greece. In 1822 he was appointed Military Resident in Cephalonia and while there, formed a relationship with a local woman, known only to history as Anastasia.

Francis Kelly died in 1826. Napier was free to marry Mrs Kelly, which he did in 1827. She was 61, he 45.  He had told her about his Greek liaison and the fact that Anastasia had given birth to a daughter, Susan Sarah and was expecting another (to be named Emily Cephalonia). The news of the wedding was not universally well-received. The former Mrs Kelly’s son-in-law called it ‘ridiculous’ and ‘unsuitable’ and said he would ensure that his children had nothing to do with her.  Napier retaliated by calling the man a liar and a scoundrel.

Charles James Napier in later life

After the wedding the newly-weds sailed back to Cephalonia together. Anastasia conveniently disappeared from the scene, leaving her daughters to be raised by the Napiers.

The marriage was not a long one. Elizabeth Napier became ill in 1830 and Napier brought her back to England.

Eliza’s mother died in 1833, but Eliza did not lose touch with her step-father and kept up a correspondence with him. This may have been out of affection, or duty, but maybe also because he made her an allowance. It was not a huge amount and Eliza makes frequent references to her lack of means. In 1836 she pointedly berates Napier for  sending letters to Sandwich rather than Hythe ‘whereby they cost me seven pence each, more than they would have done if directed here’ (postage was then paid for by the recipient, not the sender).

After her mother’s death, Eliza lived in lodgings in Sandwich during the summer, but spent winters in Hythe with her ‘good friend’ Martha Tournay, another spinster but twenty five years older – she was by then in her late 70s and well off.  It is possible that Eliza actually fulfilled the role of a paid ‘companion’.  Martha’s house, which tithe maps identify as being ‘The Dene’,  was certainly big enough to accommodate staff. Situated near St Leonard’s church, it had 9 bedrooms and its own brewhouse, cellars and dairy.

The Dene, Hythe, now demolished

Napier meanwhile married Frances (‘Fanny’) Alcock, the widow of a naval officer, in 1835 and lived with her for a while in Portsmouth. While Eliza also corresponded with Fanny from time to time, she liked to remind Napier of her mother ‘who is still cherished in your heart’. 

Eliza could be waspish. She had met Napier’s daughters and always asked to be remembered to them, but managed to sneak in little derogatory comments. On one occasion she said of Susan who  had suffered from ‘the loss of hair from that disagreeable complaint ring-worm’ and ‘had lost some of her front teeth’ (as children do) that ‘her mouth was rather large’. But, she concludes ‘beauty is so entirely a matter of taste that it is of little real consequence’. After praising Susan’s present docility, she then remarks that she used to be ‘inclined to violence’.

Eliza disliked change and innovation. The1834 Municipal Corporations Act, which changed the way in which Freemen were appointed and how elections were held, resulted, she wrote in  ‘the rag and bobtails being for the present of course uppermost;’ of the 1835 Poor Laws, ’tis said of the new poor laws, they will all work well after a time’; of proposals to build a railway near Hythe,  ‘in my humble opinion Kent, not being or likely to become a manufacturing county, does not require this kind of thing, large sums have been won and lost and the railway share market is the only one in which business is transacted to any amount. I suspect in a few years the share holders will look very blank’.

In fact, she became very anti-railway.  In 1845 she suggested that the Directors of railway companies should be hanged and the next year blamed railway travel on a perceived increase in suicides. A couple of years later she had changed her mind, having discovered that the railway enabled her to travel easily to Canterbury to visit friends for a few hours, rather than endure a road journey which took half a day.

In 1835 she was writing from Elmstone Court, a grand house at Preston, near Canterbury and the 1841 census shows her living there as a Governess. Elmstone Court was then owned by Charles Delmar who had 7 children – all, apparently good-natured and well-behaved.

After Elmstone, Eliza lived permanently in Hythe. She writes in 1842 of a very hot summer in the town – though her suggestion that the temperatures reached 130 degrees Fahrenheit is clearly inaccurate. The Royal Military Canal was nearly dry and the Romney Marsh sheep and cattle suffering terribly.

By the mid-1840s, Eliza was resident with Martha Tournay who now approaching 90 had come to rely on her completely. Eliza could not leave the house unless there was someone else to care for Martha, who did not now leave her room. She did, however,  manage to get away to see her sister and niece in summer 1846 for 3 days.

Martha Tournay died in January 1848 and left Eliza £10, which, given her wealth, does not suggest any great degree of friendship.  Her goods and her house were sold by auction in 1849 & comprised everything that a respectable mid-Victorian household should: rosewood and mahogany furniture, a lot of chintz and damask, Brussels carpets and a dumb waiter.

Deprived of her home, Eliza donned mourning and went to stay in lodgings in Deal. From there it was to Sydenham and a visit to London to see the Napiers. Then it was to Devon to see her sister at Fowey, where her nephew persuaded her that railway stock was ‘as safe as any other of gov^nt . and not liable to income tax’. Her conversion to the railways was complete.

Napier after a very successful tour in India, where he captured Sindh Province and was knighted,  returned home permanently and died in Portsmouth in 1853.

Eliza spent the rest of her life living in lodgings, for the last few years back in Hythe. Her will reveals that she was far from impoverished and she made substantial  bequests to nephews and nieces. Her estate was valued at £2000, about £190,000 today.

This post is based almost entirely on the research of LucyAnn Curling. Her two books, ‘Curling Wisps and Whispers of History’, Vols. 1 & 2,  (both available from Amazon) and the letters of Eliza to Col. Napier (held at the British Library & which she has transcribed) have been invaluable. 

With thanks also to Mike de la Mare for identifying The Dene

The Legacy of Hay House

 

At the time of writing, Hay House in Hythe is in the news. A grade II listed building, owned by Folkestone and Hythe District Council and now comprising six flats, it is likely to be offered for sale. It is the last remnant of the barracks which, according to Cobbett, covered half Hythe during the Napoleonic wars. The house was bought in 1809 as a residence for the Commandant of the Royal Staff Corps and Director of the Royal Military Canal, Lt. Col. John Brown. It was next to the Royal Staff Corps barracks.  The Colonel was a military engineer who had conceived the idea of the Royal Military Canal and under his direction the Royal Staff Corps were responsible for its construction. He lived at the house, then called just The Commandant’s House, until his death in 1816. The Royal Staff Corps was disbanded in 1837.

Hay House today. This would have been the back of the house before the road was built. 

Sixteen years later, the War Department was looking for a site for its latest project – a training centre to instruct troops in the use of the rifle.

Until then, the Infantry Regiments of the British Army were equipped with a musket known as Brown Bess, which in various forms had done service since the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. Only the Rifle Brigade, raised in 1800 and armed with the Baker rifle, and the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, raised in 1815 were issued with rifles. Rifles were slow to load and though more accurate than Brown Bess, it was not thought practicable to issue them generally. But in 1849,  French Army captain Claude-Etienne Minié invented a bullet which would enable rapid muzzle loading. The rifle he produced to be used with the new bullets became, in theory, general issue to the British Army, but progress was slow.

Capitaine Minié

The new rifle was undeniably more accurate and had a greater range than the musket, but accuracy depended on a range of factors including elevation, the strength and direction of the wind, and ballistics. True marksmanship was once again possible since the longbow fell into disuse. Shooting ceased to be a drill and became an art.

Clearly, the art needed to be taught, and it was decided in 1853 that a corps of experts should be formed. The site chosen for the new, and incongruously named the School of Musketry, was at Hythe. The Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, Lord Hardinge, and the Inspector General of Fortifications, Sir John Burgoyne, visited Hythe and pronounced it the most suitable place in England for the School. The War Department purchased from Hythe Corporation 200 acres of beach for use as firing ranges, where stray bullets could fly harmlessly out to sea.  And the Commandant’s House still stood.

All that was needed was a Commandant and he arrived in Hythe in June 1853. He was Lt. Col. Charles Craufurd Ruse Hay of the Green Howards, otherwise known as the 19^th Regiment of Foot and although specifically selected for the job, he did not particularly  want it. He had hoped to be sent to the Crimea.  He brought with him Lt. Currie and Colour Sgt. John M’Kay as an instructor. He also arranged for another man, nearing retirement, to come to Hythe as his civilian Mess Master: George Cobay. George and his family were to play an important part in Hythe life over the next 70-odd years.

Charles Craufurd Ruse Hay

Hay had been born in Maidstone in 1807, the son of General Sir James Hay and his wife Isabella.. He joined the 19^th Regiment of Foot as an ensign in 1814 aged 16 and served in Great Britain, achieving regular promotion. In 1844, he married Ellen Francis Ashworth, the daughter of another General. They had a family of five children, two of whom were born in Hythe.  Hay was an excellent shot, which must have contributed to his appointment. There is a story that he would fire from St Leonard’s churchyard at targets on the ranges a mile away. This seems unlikely. However, Hans Busk another rifle expert and author of several books on the subject wrote that ‘The Colonel would stand with his back to a target eleven hundred yards away, turn on a word of command, whip up his rifle and hit consistently within three feet of the centre of the bull’. This was compared to standing at Oxford Circus and hitting a tea-tray in Tottenham Court Road. He was also a keen cricketer and  the owner of a yacht and of a small but successful racing stud.

His first task was to find a rifle to replace the Minié, with which there were a few problems. The first tests were carried out in October 1853 and the Enfield chosen as the standard issue. Hay recommended some improvements, all of which were adopted. In 1857, the School undertook an exercise to compare the Enfield and Whitworth rifles and judged the latter to be far better.

The School’s reputation for excellence spread and a similar system was set up in India in 1856. Hay’s reputation spread too. It was written of him: ‘None but an enthusiast would have stood from dawn to dark, as he daily did, on the bleak Hythe shingle, exposed to the piercing wintry blast that swept across it, while he tested endless rifles with his own hand.’

The bleak Hythe shingle, which is quite pleasant on a sunny day. 

The school was even mentioned in a comic verse 1858:

And when one’s done with depot

And expects to have one’s pay

One’s ordered off to Musketry

At Hythe with Colonel Hay.

 

When with that -hem! – Enfield Rifle

One must practise till, at nights,

Instead of sleeping soundly

One keeps on taking sights.

That year, 199 officers and 777 men were trained and Hay was made Major-General and Inspector General of Musketry.

The next year, he became a member of the newly-formed National Rifle Association., recognising its aim of creating ‘a nation of marksmen’ through its shooting competitions. Thanks to his encouragement the Association’s first Imperial Meeting was contested on Wimbledon Common in 1860, when Queen Victoria fired the first shot and gave a prize of £250 to the best individual marksman. At subsequent events, Hay took with him all his Hythe staff to supervise the ranges.

Competing for the Queen’s Prize at the NRA Im[erial Meeting 1861

In 1868, Hay was sent to the Cape as Commander in Chief. However, in March 1873, his health started to fail. He resigned later that year and returned home, but died in October on the Isle of Wight.  He is buried at Freshwater church.

The house in which he and his family had lived during his years at Hythe was known simply as the Commandant’s House and later Paddock House. The Small Arms School, as the School of Musketry later became, left Hythe in 1968 and the house passed to the local authority who re-named in in honour of Hay.

 

A Lost Boy

Alice Penrhyn Blakiston was the schoolteacher daughter of another schoolteacher turned civil servant, William Collins Blakiston. He retired to Hythe and brought with him his three unmarried daughters. He had bought property in the town and the women could live where they chose. The older two, Clara and Maria, lived together in Castle Road, Their younger half-sister, Alice, lived on the seafront, in West Parade.

She is shown there on the 1901 census with a servant and, a little surprisingly for a single woman,  an adopted son, Edgar Tacchella, aged nine and born in Derby. Alice had been an infants school teacher – perhaps  this was an orphaned child she had met at school and taken under her wing. The  truth is rather stranger.

West Parade in about 1906

Edgar William Hollinshead Tacchella was the son of Benjamin Tacchella and his wife Kate nee Hollinshead. He was born in 1892 in Derby where his father, an Italian by birth, was a language master at Derby School (he taught French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Latin and Greek).  He had two older sisters and a brother though three other brothers died as babies. The first three children of the family were born in Chiswick, where Benjamin was a freelance language tutor. At the same time, Alice Blakiston was working as an infants school teacher in Chiswick, so presumably they became acquainted there and continued the friendship when the Tacchellas moved to Derby in about 1887. The couple’s first daughter was named Madleen Alice, perhaps for their family friend, and Alice later said she was godmother to Edgar

At some point in the next nine years, Edgar became Alice’s adopted son. The adoption would have been unofficial, but such arrangements were far from uncommon. The question is why? Benjamin and Kate had already lost two baby sons, in 1886 and 1890. They would lose a third in 1899. Why were they persuaded that Edgar would be better off with Alice? Alice seems never to have worked again after the adoption, but is shown on census returns as living on her own means. Perhaps the Tacchellas made a contribution to Edgar’s upbringing.

Edgar later claimed that as a young man he had started a Merchant Navy apprenticeship. If this was true, he did not finish it. In early 1907 he travelled to Liverpool and embarked, alone and aged just 15, on the RMS Lucania, bound for New York. He had US$50 in his pocket. He travelled as Edgar H. Blakiston and told the authorities at Ellis Island that he was there to visit his uncle Duncan Blakiston, an artist who lived in New York and who had been born in 1868.

 

Apart from the fact that there was no actual blood relationship, was Duncan Blakiston real? The answer is yes, and he was born in 1869 in London. The relationship to the Hythe Blakistons was that Duncan was the grandson of William Collins Blakiston’s brother Arthur. That is, he was William’s great nephew, so a second cousin of Alice. He had emigrated in 1888 and may well have started out in New York, but soon moved to California, where he prospered as a portrait painter, illustrator and photographer.

Queuing at Ellis Island c. 1911

Edgar made his way somehow to Duncan’s home in San Francisco’s fashionable Haight-Ashbury district and is recorded as living there in 1908, now under his birth name of Tacchella. His ‘uncle’ can hardly have had much notice of his arrival, but acted quickly when he arrived and in June 1907  Alice was herself en route from Hythe to the USA.

Victorian houses in Haight-Ashbury

This was no easy journey. She was nearly 50 and travelling alone. As far as we know she had never been further than Derby before, but now she sailed across the Atlantic and then travelled another 3000 miles to a city where, only a year before, thousands of people had been killed in a dreadful earthquake. She must have been quite devoted to Edgar.

San Francisco after the quake

Once in San Francisco, she made the acquaintance of a fellow ex-patriate Englishman, Ernest Andrews, who  worked for the Canadian Bank of Commerce in the city. Edgar was found work in the San Francisco branch as a teller. It seems that on the strength of this, Edgar moved to Vancouver in 1909 and took Canadian citizenship.

He served in the local militia there, but in 1913 went back to England. His stay was short: In July he sailed from Southampton to Cape Town to join the British South African Police. He attested in August 1913 and left the force on 1 September 1917.

The paramiltary force was founded in 1889 by Cecil Rhodes and served as the police force for what was then Rhodesia (Zimbabwe since 1980). The officers were trained as both policemen and soldiers. During World War 1, the force fought in German East Africa. Perhaps it was there that Edgar was, as Alice later reported, badly wounded.

Men of the BSAP

While he was away, his father died in January 1914. Benjamín specifically excluded Edgar from his will, stating that Alice had adopted him and that he would receive nothing unless Alice died and did not leave him her estate. He went further and said that Edgar would receive nothing on his mother’s death either unless Alice had by then died and left him nothing.

Edgar went back to England and to Alice. In 1921 they were living together for the first time in fifteen-odd years in Barnes, West London. This time around, under ‘relationship’ Alice wrote ‘none’ on the census form.  Edgar had found employment as a clerk at the Ministry of Health in Acton. It must have seemed tame after his adventures, but  perhaps tame was what he was seeking.

He also seems to have been seeking regular oblivion and drank heavily, not unusual among soldiers returning from the horrors of World War 1. He cannot have been easy to live with.

That said, he was a valued employee at the Ministry of Health and after nearly ten years as a ‘temporary’ clerk was taken onto the establishment in 1929. He enjoyed the social life offered and particularly the swimming club.

In February 1934 he took a few days leave, but did not return to work on the appointed day. Enquiries revealed that he had been admitted to hospital. He died the next day. A post mortem showed that he had extensive haemorrhaging throughout his lower intestine caused by cirrhosis of the liver.

The Ministry of Health sent a couple of officials to the funeral with ‘a handsome floral tribute’ but there is no record of any family members attending. Edgar’s remains were cremated at Golders Green cemetery. This in itself was quite unusual for the time, when fewer than 5% of bodies were disposed of in this way. Golders Green is a fair distance from Barnes, so it is likely that Edgar had made known his preference, though he left no will that we know of.

Alice was now alone in the world. Her father, step-mother and all her siblings had pre-deceased her. She died herself nine months after Edgar.  Apart from a few bequests of jewellery to friends, Edgar was to have received  the £700+ that she left. In the event, it went to her nephew, son of her only brother Arthur, who lived in Norwich.

One of the executors of her will was Ernest Andrews, who had helped her nearly thirty years earlier.  He had returned from San Francisco to England in 1910 to work for the London branch of the Canadian Bank of Commerce.  Alice refers to him in her will as ‘my friend’.

 

The Oddfellows in Hythe

At the east end of Hythe High Street is a sizeable building, part of which is now the Carousel Lounge. Outside is a bus stop. Waiting there, you will find yourself standing next to an impressive, though perhaps puzzling, tablet set into the wall. It reads

LOYAL

FOUNTAIN OF FRIENDSHIP LODGE

M.U.I.O.O.F

No. 3406

THIS STONE WAS LAID BY

1. J. JEAL ESQ J.P

MAYOR OF HYTHE

ON THE 15^TH DAY OF APRIL 1903

ES WILKS      C. R. NELSON      T. L. FEARON

ARCHT                 PER SEC              BUILDER

The Grand United Order of Oddfellows was founded in the eighteenth century, but in 1810, Manchester members, dissatisfied with its administration, established the Manchester Unity Independent Order of Odd Fellows – M.U.I.O.O.F. The movement was organised in lodges and when one was set up in Hythe, it was given the number 3406 and named the Fountain of Friendship.

The Oddfellows were a Friendly Society.  They offered a means for workers and their families to pay small regular sums to insure themselves should they fall on hard times. They pioneered early forms of sick pay, unemployment benefit and life insurance.

By 1850 the Oddfellows had grown into the largest such society in Britain. Its motto was ‘Friendship, Love and Truth’ (in Latin: Amicitia Amor et Veritas), its emblem was the Three Links and its members known as Brothers and Sisters. Like other Friendly Societies, much importance was placed on ritual – initiation ceremonies, the singing of the Oddfellows odes – and regalia for office holders.

The first record of the Hythe lodge dates from 1846, when its forty-nine members met at the Duke’s Head on alternate weeks.  Its popularity grew – four years later, meetings were weekly and there were a hundred and eight members. It was decided that Hythe should separate from the Hastings District, of which it was a part and become a District in its own right.

By 1866 the new District comprised three lodges, in Hythe, New Romney and Elham. Active in Hythe at this time were Thomas Crunden, father of Sydney who founded the  Hythe High Street greengrocery; John Nelson,  a retired Coastguard; and Richard Baker, landlord of the Duke’s Head. They were responsible for assessing the merits of claims for assistance and for dispensing aid.

Twenty years later, the Hythe District included new lodges in Cheriton and Newington. John Nelson’s son Charles Rice Nelson was the Provincial Grand Master and Richard Baker’s widow the relieving officer who dispensed benefits.  The Oddfellows did not exclude women from these roles, though true equality was a long way off.

Meetings were sociable affairs and there were sporting events, too, including football and cricket matches against the Ancient Order of Foresters, the town’s other Friendly Society. For the more sedate, there was an annual ball at Hythe Town Hall.

By 1891, when bootmaker Charles Capon was Grand Master, there was a new Juvenile lodge.  The next Grand Master was Charles Booth, a gardener who lived in Hillside Street. Both were family men and self-employed, so would have been well aware of the financial disaster that could befall a family if the breadwinner could not work.

Such was the popularity of the Oddfellows among young people in Hythe, that a second Juvenile Lodge was set up in 1898. It was followed by the first women’s lodge in 1900. Both these groups met at the Wilberforce Temperance Hotel in the High Street – presumably the usual venue, the Duke’s Head, was considered unsuitable for either children or unaccompanied women.

The Wilberforce Temperance Hotel

The Folkestone Herald insisted on calling the women’s lodge the ‘Oddmaidens’, but approvingly noted that although men were excluded from meetings, they were still run in a very business-like way.

With its large membership, the financial position of the Hythe lodge was sound. In 1902, it bought a plot of land at the east end of the High Street. In 1903 the foundation stone of their new premises was laid by John James Jeal, the mayor of Hythe, who had always been a supporter of the Oddfellows and their self-help ethos.

The main hall and two ante-rooms were on the first floor. Electric lighting and heating were installed. On the ground floor were three shops, leased to a tobacconist, a confectioner and a furniture dealer and the caretaker’s accommodation.  The building cost three thousand eight hundred pounds.

The Oddfellows Hall in the 20th century

The hall was well used. The women’s lodge held socials; the Juveniles were treated to meat teas and entertained with humorous songs; the men got up a billiards club and were soon competing against other clubs. A dance was held every Wednesday evening and the space was let to other organisations, including the Free Masons and the Theosophical Society.

In 1910, members celebrated the centenary of the Manchester Unity with a parade through the town and a church service in St Leonard’s church.

These Edwardian years were probably the heyday of the traditional Oddfellows organisation. From 1911, changes were afoot. The state pension had been introduced in 1908, and now the National Insurance Bill introduced compulsory insurance contributions to cover sickness and unemployment for many, but not all, workers. It was one of the foundations of the welfare state, but removed some of the need for Friendly Societies.

Society was changing, with demands for women to be given the vote. In 1912, one of the shops which formed part of the Oddfellows premises became vacant, and a group of local Suffragettes was allowed to set up a shop and club there. The venue, at 83 High Street (now 164) was opened by Lady Brassey, wife of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. There was a tea party and the premises were decorated in the suffragette colours, purple, white and green.

The former suffragette shop & club

Then came the Great War. A hundred and thirty-five Oddfellows members served and fourteen lost their lives.  In 1921, at the hall, a Roll of Honour and Memorial was unveiled listing them all.

The war had seen a change in the role of women and the ensuing years saw a surge in female membership in Hythe. Many of their jobs were not covered by National Insurance arrangements. In 1935, the Hythe District appointed is first woman Deputy Grand Master. They were busy years, too.  From 1912 until 1948, when the Ministry of National Insurance was established, the Oddfellows administered National Insurance contributions and benefits on behalf of the government.

Part of the Oddfellows’ work had always been supporting orphans and this continued in the twentieth century. Children in Hythe were enabled through their assistance to stay on at school and take ‘O’ and ‘A’ level exams, enhancing their future prospects.

However, membership was falling and from the 1960s on, many events were held jointly with other Districts. By the 1980s, lodges were closing across the country and the Fountain of Friendship was among them, though the Hythe District remained and the lodges in Cheriton and Folkestone welcomed Hythe town members to their meetings and events. But by 1995, the District, too, was defunct, merged with Canterbury.

Today, though the Hythe hall has become the Carousel Lounge, Oddfellows continues to offer social events, volunteering opportunities and care and welfare support to its members wherever they live.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

King George Slept Here

The Old Manor House near St Leonard’s church in  Hythe was built by Julius Deedes in 1661. It passed in time to his son William, and afterwards to his son, another Julius. This Julius was, like his father, a Whig and was three times mayor of Hythe.

 

The Old Manor House

He unexpectedly had another distinction bestowed on him early in 1726, when the King came to stay at his house.

George I, Elector of Hanover, had succeeded to the throne in 1714, when he was fifty-four. He was not a universally popular monarch and his coronation was marked by riots. Although, contrary to common belief, he did speak some English, he was wooden and dull in public. His private life was not beyond reproach, either.

George I

His wife, Sophia Dorothea had conducted a passionate love affair with Count Phillipp von Königsmarck. They were betrayed. Von Königsmarck was assassinated and  George divorced his wife. She was effectively imprisoned for life  in Schloss Ahlden, denied access to her children or to re-marriage.

Sophia Dorothea

Meanwhile, George had taken a mistress, Melusine von der Schulenberg. He was not subject to the same rules as Sophia Dorothea and brought Melusine and the couple’s three daughters to England with him in 1714. The women lived at St James’s Palace and Melusine was granted the titles Duchess of Munster and Duchess of Kendal.

Melusine von der Schulenburg

George was more at home in Hanover than in England and visited five times during his short reign. The journey was arduous and he frequently returned late, forcing his exasperated Ministers of State to prorogue Parliament. He travelled with a huge entourage including Melusine and their daughters, a physician, a chaplain, a Secretary of State or two, several titled hangers-on and dozens of palace servants and officials.

In early June 1725, George set off for his fifth trip, arriving at Herrenhausen, his summer residence in Germany, nearly three weeks later.  He hunted, a favourite pastime, took the waters and did politics with the Prussians. He was supposed to leave in mid-October, but decided to stay a bit longer as he enjoyed the hunting so much, spending three to four hours in the saddle daily. By mid-November, the press reported that he was not expected home for another month. On 30 November he told the court to get ready to leave in mid-December and indeed his heavy baggage left then, but George  delayed, finally leaving on 22 December.

Schloss Herrenhausen

Late December was not a good time to be crossing northern Europe and then the English Channel. George was expected home on Christmas Day. On Christmas Day he was believed to  be somewhere in Holland. By 3 January he was expected ‘hourly’ and on 4 January 1726, he unexpectedly landed at Rye having survived a terrible storm in the Channel.

George and the rest of his party disembarked and the citizens of Rye managed to give him a suitable welcome with ‘all possible Demonstrations of Joy’. He stayed at the Mayor’s house and in thanks stood as godfather to the mayor’s newborn son, freed all the prisoners in the town gaol and paid their debts and gave £100 to the poor.

After a suitable rest, the King’s party proceeded towards Canterbury, but the roads were so muddy that they were obliged to halt at Hythe. There is no record that the people of Hythe went to any particular effort to welcome him. His stay at the Old Manor House is only briefly recorded in the press.

Why stay there? Julius Deedes was of suitable social rank; the house was big enough; and perhaps critically, it was relatively modern. Most of the larger houses in Hythe were adaptations of medieval hall houses and likely to have been cramped, dark and smoky. The Manor House had large, high-ceilinged rooms and  magnificent views out to sea.

George departed the next day and if he made any gesture of thanks to his hosts, it is not recorded. He set out for Hanover again the next year, but did not arrive, suffering a fatal stroke in Osnabruck.

Julius Deedes renewed his acquaintance with the  royal family that same year when, as a Baron of the Cinque Ports,  he carried the canopy over the new king, George II, at his coronation.

 

 

Happy New Year – and Thank You!

At the end of 2023, it’s time to wish all my readers a very Happy New Year and to thank you all for looking at my blog. This year was a record-breaker with over 9000 views – not bad for a li’l ole local history blog, I think.

Even more amazing is the widespread audience. The UK accounted for about half the views, but the rest came from no fewer than 85 different countries.

So thank you to everyone – my followers, regular readers, occasional readers, readers who were searching for something specific and found my site and people who were looking for something else entirely and landed (metaphorically speaking) in historical Hythe.

And special thanks to those who took the time to ‘like’ to comment, to give feedback and provide corrections (which are always welcome).

I wish you all a very happy and peaceful 2024

Bonne année! Frohes neues Jahr! Feliz Año Nuevo! Buon anno nuovo! Częśliwego Nowego Roku!  Šťastný nový rok! Καλή Χρονιά! Gelukkig Nieuwjaar!

Happy New Year!

Not Just Milk Stout

Some years ago I posted about the Mackeson family of Hythe, brewers.  I took these posts down a while ago because a chance find in local archives gave me the opportunity to research the family further.

In early 2020, I was at Kent History and Archives Centre in Maidstone looking at something else entirely when I came across the Mackeson papers. There were the usual accounts books, business letters and property indentures but most importantly, a cache of personal correspondence. Harry Mackeson, one of the brothers who founded the Mackeson brewery, kept a great number of family letters and also copies of his replies. They reveal  a remarkable family story which spread far beyond the boundaries of Hythe.

Harry was one of eleven children born to his father, who was married three times. Harry, who ran his father’s wine business,  and his brother William, who was by profession a man-midwife, decided in 1801 that together they would buy a brewery in Hythe from John Friend, a distant relative. Not long afterwards, John Friend died and left Harry, William and their four full siblings a great deal of money. So, the family were comfortably off and looking forward to a rosy future.

It didn’t work out that way. William, it turned out, was a financial disaster area and when he died suddenly  left his widow and nine children destitute.  Harry stepped in and ensured that they were taken care of and the boys educated at his  expense.

A satirical view of a man-midwife

The next brother, John, was equally inept at managing money. After a rather lacklustre career, he resigned his East India Company commission and married an heiress instead. They went to the Caribbean to run the coffee plantation she owned, but John somehow managed to lose both his inheritance and his wife’s money.  They had to return in straitened circumstances to England.

Then there were the half-siblings, who had not inherited from John Friend, but nevertheless seemed to think that Harry should maintain them. Philip died of cholera in India, leaving two children whose futures he had not provided for: Harry had to pick up the pieces. His sister Kate married twice and, left destitute by her second husband’s business failures, joined the ranks of impecunious relatives who constantly pestered Harry for help.

Harry struggled on, beset by adversity. As well as his immediate family, there came shocking news of others; one had spent time in a ‘lunatic asylum’ and, fearing return there, took his own life; another was assassinated (or was it an honour killing?) in Afghanistan; and a nephew falsely accused him of fraud and tax evasion.

He managed, somehow, to run the brewery in uncertain economic times and to raise his own children and at his death handed over a healthy business to his son, Henry Bean Mackeson.

Henry Bean was one of those Victorians usually described as ‘indefatigable’. He was a geologist, an archaeologist, town councillor, mayor of Hythe nine times, a breeder of fancy chickens, a meteorologist, a naturalist, a historian, an archivist, a railway enthusiast – the list goes on. He was also no mean businessman and  like his father, passed a healthy going concern onto his sons.

The Mackesons’ home in Hythe

These two Mackesons, Henry and George, were to be the last in the family to own the brewery. Under their management, it produced its first Milk Stout in 1909: the brand was a runaway success. The brothers sold the business and retired to gentlemanly pursuits, Henry as a country squire, George  to cricket and the church.

A local advertisement for Milk Stout

On last link between the Mackesons and Hythe was the town’s election of Harry Ripley Mackeson a its MP in 1945, bucking the trend which saw a huge electoral swing to Labour. It was he who brought to the family a title, being created created  Baronet, of Hythe in the County of Kent in 1954.

My early researches in 2020 were brought to a full stop in March that year. When the archives eventually re-opened, and as I read more, I realised that there was a book in these stories. Happily, The History Press agreed with me and ‘Not Just Milk Stout: The Mackeson Family & Their Hythe Brewery’ was published on 2 November. It is, as they say, available from all good booksellers.

 

Dora Brogdale – For Armistice Day

 

A small grave in a country churchyard, the last resting place of a young woman who died as a result of serving her country. The inscription reads:

DORA
THE BELOVED DAUGHTER OF
S. AND M. BROGDALE,
WHO FELL ASLEEP MARCH 2ND 1923
AGED 29 YEARS.
AFTER 4 YEARS ILLNESS CONTRACTED
ON ACTIVE SERVICE IN FRANCE, DURING
THE GREAT WAR
“SAY NOT THAT I AM DEAD WHEN JESUS
CALLS ME TO LIVE FOR EVERMORE”

Dora’s parents were Samuel and Miriam Brogdale. Samuel, the son of a Nottinghamshire agricultural labourer, had secured work as butler to the Deedes family at Sandling Park, in Saltwood, Kent just up the hill from Hythe. Now established in good employment, he married  Miriam Wilkins in Holmwood, Surrey. She was the daughter of a bootmaker.

Sandling Park, designed by Joseph Bonomi for the Deedes family at the beginning of the century, was rather splendid. It had a staff to match, with thirteen live-in servants besides Samuel. Now a married man, and very soon with a family on the way, he was given accommodation in a cottage near Saltwood Castle, a mile or so distant.

The Brogdale’s cottage where it is likely Dora was born

The Deedes family had owned the castle since the later 18th century, and used it to house impecunious relatives and aged retainers.

Sandling Park, destroyed by enemy action in 1942

Saltwood Castle before the Deedes family restored it

Samuel and Miriam had six daughters: Mary, Agnes, Annie, Miriam, Sybil and Dora. Probably they all attended the village school, but once they were in their mid-teens, they needed to find work. Mary became a cashier; Agnes a dressmaker; Annie a lady’s maid,  Miriam a book-keeper; Sybil a shop assistant. At the age of 17, Dora was the only one without an occupation.

The First World War changed her life. At first  there were limited opportunities for women to contribute to the war effort beyond nursing or munitions work. Then in February 1917, the Queen Mary’s Auxiliary Army Corps was established. Dora joined up in June.

A recruitment poster

Over 50,000 women enlisted during the war. They were non-combatant and restricted to auxiliary roles, such as store work, administration and catering. Dora was given the rank of ‘worker’, which meant she could be involved in any capacity and at any place, including France.

QMAAC workers clearing up after an air raid, Abbeville, 1918

It was in France that she contracted the TB that eventually killed her. She was discharged in June 1919 as ‘medically unfit’ and went home to Saltwood. Samuel had retired from butlering and was working as a jobbing gardener, turning his lifelong hobby into paying work.  He had been allowed to stay on in his Castle Cottage. The only sister left at home was Miriam, who now worked as a bank clerk, an unthinkable idea pre-1914, but now quite acceptable.

Dora has no official war grave. The Commonwealth War Grave Commission’s criteria only cover those who died between 4 August 1914 and 31 August 1921. Because Dora lingered for 18 months beyond the closing date, she has instead this memorial from her parents, who, when their time came, were buried with  her.

Twin Tombs

The Saltwood tomb

The Hythe tomb

Two identical tombs, the first in the churchyard of SS Peter and Paul in Saltwood, the other a  couple of miles away in St Leonard’s churchyard in Hythe. The first bears the names of only three people: a seventeen-year-old girl, her grandmother and her uncle, though there is plenty of space allowed on the sides of the structure for more family members. The second tomb is covered in names,  marks the last resting place of eleven people and commemorates five others.  The link – a woman called Ann Andrews, born in Hythe in 1731.

Ann was the daughter of Edward Andrews. The family were well-to-do. Ann’s brothers, Edward and Robert, were successful tanners who also became property owners. Robert’s daughter Rachel, inherited most of their wealth in 1803 and went on to become Lady Rachel Douglas (see Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, posted 1 March 2020). Ann, meanwhile, married Henry Gipps on 29 April 1756.

Henry Gipps was baptised in Ashford in 1718, the son of a soldier turned stay maker.. He was apprenticed to Charles Knowler, apothecary  of Canterbury,  and in 1740, took over the premises of Dr Carter in Hythe, promising the people of the town that he would serve them with ‘the Best of Medicines and as Cheap as at Canterbury’.

Four children ensued, Henry , Elizabeth, George  and Anne, who died as an infant. All were baptised in the Saltwood parish church of SS Peter and Paul.  Henry senior himself died quite young, aged only 50 after just 13 years of marriage. He was buried in Saltwood and his plot is marked with a very modest stone, giving the briefest details.

The inscription reads:

Henry Gipps died ? June 1769 aged 50

The twin tombs of Hythe and Saltwood were probably made in about 1803. The date is significant. It was the year Rachel inherited, the year her mother died and the year in which Ann’s granddaughter, seventeen-year-old Mary Bolland, passed away. Rachel and Ann were both faced with finding suitable memorials for their loved ones. It is likely that it was Rachel who chose the elaborate design – she had a taste for the ostentatious in mourning. Maybe it was she, newly wealthy, who paid for the identical tombs for her mother and her cousin.

The design is not the only similarity. The Saltwood tomb is outside the south porch of the church and unmissable as you enter the churchyard through the lychgate. The Hythe tomb is near the west door  of St Leonard’s and again, is in one’s direct line of sight on entering the graveyard.

Presumably, the Hythe tomb was placed over the graves of Ann’s parents (Rachel’s grandparents)  who died in 1766 and 1770. Ann chose not to interfere with the original grave marker of her husband in Saltwood. Probably she expected that future generations of the Gipps family would choose her elaborate memorial for their last resting place. It was not to be. Ann herself was buried there in 1807 and her son Henry in 1812, but there were no more interments. Mary Bolland’s parents, John Bolland and Elizabeth Bolland nee Gipps were buried in Surrey; the Rev’d George Gipps, Ann’s second son, had been buried in his parish churchyard in Ringwould in 1802 and his wife joined him there in 1823.

Ann had at least four other grandchildren besides Mary Bolland. Elizabeth Bather, married to a barrister in Shewsbury; Anne Taswell who lived in Canterbury; Major Sir George Gipps, a one-time Governor of New South Wales and The Rev’d Henry Gipps, canon of Carlisle Cathedral. All died at a good old age in the later 19th century, their Saltwood roots and the grand designs of their grandmother forgotten.

With thanks to Mike de la Mare for bringing the Saltwood Tomb to my attention

Demetrius Grevis, Lawyer, Soldier and Lord of The Manor

When I first encountered Demetrius Grevis in Hythe records, I thought perhaps he was Greek. Not so. He inherited his Christian name from his English grandfather and his surname apparently was pronounced to rhyme with ‘sleeves’.

Demetrius was born in Hythe and baptised at St Leonard’s church there in June 1776. He came to attention in local records in 1790 when he was assaulted by another Hythe citizen, but apart from that, his early life is lost to history. His father was Captain Charles Grevis and his mother Elizabeth James. She was the daughter of Colonel Demetrius James who had fought with General Wolfe at Quebec. The James family owned Ightham Mote in Kent, a beautiful moated house.

At the age of 15, Demetrius was apprenticed to an attorney, John Rittson of Chancery Lane, London. It seemed that the law rather than the army, was to be his future. Once he had served his time, however, and reached his majority, he made his own decision and joined the Marines as a  2nd Lieutenant in 1798.  In 1801, he was present at the sea Battle of Copenhagen, with the British fleet  under the command of Admiral Hyde Parker, with Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson as second-in-command.

He served in the frigate H.M.S. Amazon. Her captain, Edward Riou, was highly thought of by Nelson and selected by him to lead the small craft in shallow waters to attack the heavy batteries along the shore of Copenhagen harbour. The enemy bombardment was severe and the situation became so critical that the Admiral signalled to disengage. This was the celebrated occasion when Nelson turned his blind eye to the telescope, but the Admiral had expected him to disregard the signal if he thought fit. The casualties aboard the Amazon amounted to fourteen men killed and twenty-three wounded. Demetrius escaped unhurt, though he witnessed Captain Riou torn in half by a chain shot.

Capt. Edward Riou

Although promoted a couple of years later, Demetrius seems to have left the Marines and gone to live in Yorkshire. There, in 1812 , he married Mary Shutt, only child and heiress of James Shutt, of Humbleton Hall, Holderness. Their first son, Demetrius Wyndham Grevis, followed in 1815.

Their lives were changed forever by the death of Demetrius seniors’ second cousin, Richard James of Ightham Mote. The James family had not been very successful at producing heirs and the house and all that entailed was inherited by Demetrius.

Ightham Mote

He changed his surname to Grevis -James,  assumed the arms of James in addition to those of Grevis and moved back to Kent.  There he fully embraced his new role, becoming a Justice of the Peace, Deputy-Lieutenant for the County, and, in 1833,
High Sheriff.

Demetrius and his wife had eight children together Demetrius was particularly devoted to his eldest daughter, Frances Maria. She, however, when she was twenty-eight, fell in love with a tenant farmer on the estate, Thomas Charlton. In spite of her father’s protests she married him, at the village church, in 1841. Demetrius was so distraught by this that he decided to shut up Ightham Mote. He moved to Tunbridge Wells, where he built himself a fine house in spacious grounds, which he called Oakfield Court.  He lived there until he died in 1861, aged eighty-five.

Oakfield Court

He and Mary his wife are commemorated in Ightham church by a stained-glass window depicting scenes in the life of Saint James, together with a brass tablet.
His hatchment hangs in the nave, the last of the family hatchments.

Remarkably, one other memorial of Demetrius is one of his shirts, which has ended up in a private collection. Marked in ink, ‘12 D. Grevis James 1821 ‘, it is described as ‘made of ‘fine quality linen’.

 The shirt                         John Bright Collection

Demetrius Wyndham Grevis-James inherited Ightham Court, but true to family tradition, died without children. The estate was divided and the house sold in the 1920s