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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

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

The Enterprising Bassett Brothers

The Bassett brothers, Ferdinando and Elias arrived in Hythe in the late 1620s and quickly set about making themselves useful to the town. They were not then known as ‘Bassett’, but by their birth surname ‘Bassock’ (or Basock/Bassuck/Bassok/Bassuch). Presumably, over time, they got so tired of correcting people’s mispronunciations that they settled on ‘Bassett’ as being the easier option.

They were the sons of Gervase or Jarvis Bassock of Sandwich. Ferdinando was born in 1593 and Elias ten years later. They were both baptised in St Peter’s church in Sandwich, as were several other brothers, mostly short-lived: Jarvis, John, Michael, Clement and Benjamin. There were two sisters as well, Mary and Elizabeth.

St Peter’s church, Sandwich

When he arrived in Hythe, Ferdinando was already a married man. He had wed Mary Fremlin in 1627. Ferdinando claimed no particular trade at that time. He first appears in the Hythe Corporation records in 1628, when he supplied a rammer and sponge for firing the town’s cannon.  These would have comprised a long stick with a block of wood on the end round which was wound fleece or lamb skin and were used to drive home powder and ball into the cannon’s breech.  They were also used after firing to clean the piece.

A rammer

Hythe’s cannon were on a raised emplacement – ‘the mount’ at the end of what is now Mount Street in the town. Four cannon are shown on the 1685 ‘Hospital Map’ of Hythe and labelled ‘forte’.  As a Cinque Port, Hythe still had a duty to guard the coast against invasion and in case the local trained bands were insufficient to the purpose, 61 men of Sir Pierce Crosby’s Regiment had very recently been billeted in the town.(1)

That same year Ferdinando was paid for mending the town drum and he later used it when appointed town drummer and town sergeant from 1630 to 1636. The drum was presumably used to draw the attention of the townspeople to important events or announcements. The role of town sergeant was essentially to support and protect the mayor in his public duties. The post still exists in Hythe.

During this period, Ferdinando’s wife Mary died, having borne him four children, of whom only Richard, born in 1632, survived to adulthood.  Months after Mary’s death in 1635, Ferdinando married again (a wife was a necessity for a widower with children). His new bride was Marian Gibson, a 44-year-old spinster.  He described himself on his marriage licence as a haberdasher, though he seems to have turned his hand to many occupations. In 1636 the corporation paid him for drumming, maintaining the mount, and for keeping the prison.

These various sources of income must have been satisfactory, as when, in 1640, he leased 6 acres of freshmarsh in the New Innings from Hythe corporation, he was described as a yeoman, or landholder. (2) The Innings was the area of land south of Hythe which had until fairly recently been beneath the sea and was now ‘inned’ for grazing sheep and cattle.

Meanwhile, Ferdinando’s brother Elias had also settled in Hythe and married a local woman, Margaret White, there in 1629. He was seaman and sometimes fisherman, but as time went on, he acquired a collier and spent much time on the sea between Hythe and Newcastle, fetching the coals that kept houses warm and businesses running. Once off-loaded at Hythe haven, Elias carted the coals from the Stade up to his buyers, including St John’s Hospital in the High Street.

A typical collier

Elias’s wife gave him 5 children before expiring in 1639. He married again, another Margaret, and 2 more children followed.

As the 1640s drew on, the Bassett brothers became prosperous enough to acquire inns. In 1648 Ferdinando purchased the White Hart in the High Street from Henry Hart of Sellindge and in 1649 Elias became landlord of the George, further east along the road, though he rented this at £5 a year.   The White Hart was the bigger of the two, important enough to be shown on the 1685 Hospital map. Here musters of the trained band were held, the annual mayoral feasting took place and Members of Parliament were entertained. Elias also profited from the corporation’s largesse at the George, where the jurats (town councillors) had a running account.

The White Hart, Hythe, still trading today

The George Inn, Hythe, which subsequently became the Sun and is now the  King’s Head

The next obvious step in the brothers’ progress up the social ladder was to join the corporation itself, rather than just to serve them. Again, Ferdinando led the way and was mayor of Hythe in 1649. He was also appointed Bailiff to Yarmouth in 1653. The Cinque Ports had authority over the annual Yarmouth fishing fare (season), with the right to try criminal and commercial cases daily in the town during that time. The Yarmouth men generally resented the Cinque Ports bailiffs, and their reluctant toleration could erupt into quarrelsome, sometimes violent, outbursts. The appointment was not popular among Hythe jurats either. It entailed a long journey and some weeks away from earning one’s livelihood.   Hythe Corporation paid their delegate expenses of £9.6s 8d. In 1654 they had to borrow the money to pay Ferdinando, but he wanted – and got – a lot more. The previous year, the Hythe envoy had been given an ex-gratia payment of £25 because of the dangers of his journey. Ferdinando secured agreement in advance that he would get the same.

In 1653, Elias had also become a jurat and Chamberlain (treasurer) of the Hythe corporation. Since the town did not have the money to pay Ferdinando the £25, Elias had to provide a bond promising to pay it before February1654.  Despite what may be seen as extortion, Ferdinando was made mayor again in 1654. He and Elias were now well-to-do. The next year they lent the corporation £100 to pay the workmen trying to save Hythe haven by digging it out and in 1659 Ferdinando gave the corporation land on which to build a new market house.

The brothers were serving during the difficult years of the Interregnum following the execution of Charles I and there was also the shadow of the abortive 1648 Kent rebellion hanging over the corporation.

William Brockman of Beachborough near Hythe, one of the leaders of the 1648 uprising

Ferdinando was possibly the more enthusiastic about parliamentary rule and about the new Puritan ethic of the Church of England. As mayor, he made a personal contribution to the upkeep of Hythe’s new minister William Wallace, appointed directly by Parliament but not maintained by them.

With the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the brothers’ fortunes differed. Ferdinando refused to sign the oath of allegiance and was removed as a jurat and as warden of St Bartholomew’s hospital. Elias did sign and took over his brother’s wardenship. He went on to be mayor of Hythe three times, in 1662-4.

One of Elias’s sons, James, may have been as enterprising as his father and uncle, but with less regard  for  the law.  1662, he was arrested at Sandwich  for ‘extraordinary insolence and violence used against the Customs Officers’. James was then the gamekeeper at the country house of  Viscount Strangford, Hythe’s M.P. He was accompanied by the estate’s gardener and three known smugglers. Perhaps it was a youthful prank – he was only twenty three, and the case against him was circumstantial. At any rate, he survived the escapade, perhaps with some influential intervention.

By this time, both Elias and Ferdinando had been widowed again and both had married for a third time, Ferdinando to a ‘maiden’, Mary Smith, and Elias to a widow, Johan Pashley.

Ferdinando died in September 1663 and was buried in St Leonard’s churchyard. The burial record describes him as ‘jurat’, so it seems he was reinstated.

St Leonard’s churchyard

His probate inventory describes him as ‘gentleman’.  The White Hart, which he had made his home must have provided very comfortable lodgings. There were three letting rooms, each with an expensive featherbed (mattress) and Ferdinando kept 38 pairs of sheets, 33 pillow cases and 31 towels,  so that guests’ linen would always be fresh, not a given in many inns. In his own quarters there was ‘ green room’ and, unusually, a round room.

Ferdinando’s son Richard claimed the Freedom of Hythe by inheritance, as was his right, but then disappears from the records. It was Elias’s son John who took on the White Hart. He was already a freeman of the town through marriage and was a grocer and in 1665 became mayor of Hythe, following his father’s three-year tenure.

Halfpenny tokens issued by John Bassett in 1670

He died in 1674. Elias outlived him by 6 years, and lived to see John’s son, another Elias, in his twenties and on the road to becoming himself mayor of Hythe.

This Elias lived until 1737. It seems he married at least twice and there may have been children to carry on the family tradition of being useful to the town.

(1) ‘Charles I – volume 103: May 1-15, 1628’, Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Charles I, 1628-29 (1859), pp. 97-1121628, May 17.

(2) Kent Archives Hy/T4/5

 

Troubled Times in Hythe

The 1650s were one of the most divisive and dangerous (but possibly exciting) times to be in local government in England and Michael Lushington of Hythe was in the thick of it. Born in River, near Dover, in 1624 he had already been widowed when he moved to Hythe. In 1652, he married again and in 1653 a daughter, Alice, was born. This was the year he was first chosen as a jurat (town councillor) for Hythe. Charles I had been dead for four years and the new government was still finding its feet. In 1655, Lushington was elected as Mayor and by then Oliver Cromwell was Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Oliver Cromwell

Early in his mayoralty, the town was visited by Quakers. The name ‘Quaker’ was originally an insult. They called themselves  the Religious Society of Friends. They  emphasised direct experience of God and believed that priests and rituals were an obstacle between the believer and God, who can be found in the midst of everyday life. They called churches ‘steeplehouses’, and refused to take off their hats when entering.

What made them feared was their challenge to authority, particularly that one man might have authority over another. They refused to pay tithes, they interrupted sermons, they intervened in the activities of ministers. They refused to acknowledge their elders and social superiors by removing their hats, addressed everyone as ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and acknowledged no distinctions of class. They attracted violent antipathy.

In 1655 some London Quakers undertook a missionary visit to Kent.  At Dover they were ordered to leave and at Folkestone they were thrown out of the parish church. Undeterred and guided by God they made their way to Hythe. One of them, George Rofe, visited St Leonard’s church there during the Sunday service. According to his later complaint to the Cinque Ports Brotherhood and Guestling, he went in just as the final blessing had been delivered by the minster, William Wallace and stood before the pulpit. He was then moved by the Spirit to speak a few words to Mr Wallace. The mayor, Lushington, took this amiss, and allegedly said ‘take away this fellow’. ‘ A great multitude’ then dragged Rofe from the church and threw him down the steps of the south porch, kicking and beating him as they went. His blood, he said, ran down into his shoes, but the Mayor refused to call a parish constable to help him.

Deciding that Hythe was not ready yet for conversion, the evangelists went on to Lydd, Ashford and Tenterden, where they were welcomed. Their mission ended in being put in the stocks and whipped as vagrants in Maidstone.

Later the same year, Cromwell issued a proclamation prohibiting ‘Delinquents,’ that is anyone who had actively supported the king in any way, from holding office or having a vote in any election. In February 1656, during one of Hythe corporation’s quarterly meetings, they were unexpectedly visited by Captain Laurence Knott of Sandgate Castle who, with several of his soldiers burst into the Common Hall, flourished this proclamation and proceeded to read it aloud.  He then insisted that despite having been cleared of any offence by the County Committee, most of the corporation were, in fact, Royalists who had signed the 1648 petition to parliament to make peace with the king.  They were therefore delinquents and should give up their places on the corporation. He refused to leave the building until they had done so.  Four jurats did, along with the Town Sergeant. There was a very hasty election of replacements.

A 1735 view of Sandgate Castle. Not much of it now remains

Four years later, matters had changed.  On12 May 1660 the Proclamation of Charles II was  read at the market place, the west and east bridges and at Mr Beane’s conduit in Hythe. The new King’s Cavalier parliament passed a Corporation Act, with the aim of purging their enemies from borough governments. The responsibility for purging Hythe lay with the new Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, the Duke of York. He passed on instructions that any Royalists who had formerly been excluded from office were to be readmitted, and any who had been ‘eminently active against the King, and especially such as expressed themselves in opposition to his late happy restoration’ were to be removed.

Charles II

The winter of 1660 to 1661 saw another shake-up of the corporation.  The Lord Warden’s enforcer was Francis Vincent. A royalist of impeccable credentials, he judged that at Hythe, seven men were of ‘dangerous principles’. In early January 1661 they were ordered to be dismissed from the assembly and banned from holding all offices of trust in the corporation.

Vincent had not finished with Hythe, however, and later that month wrote again about  Michael Lushington, who ‘seven or eight years ago had spoken much to the prejudice of His Majesty and his royal father.’ Apparently, Vincent had an informer in Hythe.  Lushington was now also dismissed.  He would not take this lying down. He wrote to Hythe’s M.P. Phineas Andrews who obtained a mandamus – a court order- telling the current mayor, William Knight, to reinstate Lushington. Knight was furious and quite illegally imprisoned the unfortunate messenger who brought the legal documents, but in the end had to comply.

Then on 26 August 1662, six Commissioners for the Well Governing and Regulating of Corporations, a sort of mini-Inquisition, visited Hythe. Parliament’s Corporation Act also  sought to exclude religious dissenters (such as Quakers) from the governing bodies of towns. It demanded the taking of the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and office holders had to receive the sacrament of communion according to the rites of the Church of England.  They were also required to abjure the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant, drawn up by parliament to enable a civil and religious unification of Scotland Ireland and England. Twenty-six members of Hythe’s corporation signed. Lushington refused.

This appears to have been the end of his involvement in Hythe local politics and he moved to Folkestone, where by 1665 he had also become a jurat. Although he was reluctant to accept that the aspirations of parliament had failed, it seems that he must ultimately have accepted the rule of a monarchy.

We know that he had two sons named John, both of whom died young. The daughter Alice born in 1653 simply disappears, but another daughter, Mary, born in 1661 survived to marry Peter Bassett in 1684.  Lushington’s wife died in 1674. Of the man himself, there is no further trace, neither burial record nor will.

Details of Lushington’s career taken from the Calendar of State Papers; records of Hythe Corporation and records of the Cinque Ports Brotherhood and Guestling held at Kent Library and History Centre.

 

The General – part one

The Solly-Flood Family in Hythe 1892 – 1904

General Frederick Solly-Flood and his wife Constance arrived in Hythe in 1892, having bought the Old Manor House, which dated from the seventeenth century and lay a stone’s throw from St Leonard’s church. The general had paid £4000 for their new home. His life, and that of his family, had been peripatetic for the forty-plus years in which he had served in the British army and they must all have been grateful to put down roots at last.

The Old Manor House, Hythe

Frederick was born in 1829, one of the seven children of another Frederick Solly-Flood of Ballynaslaney House, Co. Wexford. His father practised law until gambling debts forced him to sell his practice and accept, in 1866, the post of Attorney-General in Gibraltar. This Frederick was, according to his descendants, a villain. His eldest son, Edward, on his 21^st birthday, inherited a substantial fortune from his maternal grandfather. Frederick senior deceived him into signing the whole lot over to him and then lost the lot gambling on the Derby, or so the family story goes. Others suggest that it It may not be true, but whatever the case, Edward was left in desperate straits and lived with his wife and children in Slaney Lodge, which his father had built and rented to him.

Frederick senior’s tenure in Gibraltar is remembered chiefly for one thing: the Marie Celeste mystery.  The American ship was discovered adrift and deserted off the Azores on December 4, 1872. She was brought into Gibraltar by a three-man salvage team who sought their salvage money. Frederick oversaw the legal hearings and decided, based on no evidence whatsoever, that salvage team had murdered the crew of the ship. They were eventually awarded only a fraction of what they might have expected. One historian has described Frederick senior as a man ‘whose arrogance and pomposity were inversely proportional to his IQ’ and as ‘… the sort of man who, once he had made up his mind about something, couldn’t be shifted.’

The Marie Celeste, a so-called ghost ship

Frederick junior was apparently his father’s favourite son. He was born on 19 March 1929 and at twenty years old was commissioned into the 53^rd Regiment of Foot. He was sent to India, where he would spend the next 18 years. He served first on the North-west Frontier, then in the Indian Campaign, a response to the Indian Mutiny, then helped relieve Lucknow and Cawnpore. While aide-de-camp to Sir William Mansfield during the course of several campaigns he was severely wounded. His last position in India was as Military Secretary to Lord Sandhurst, Commander-in-Chief in India. He had, by then, reached the rank of brevet-colonel.

His next posting was to Gibraltar, where his father still lived. He was Assistant Adjutant In 1884. He was then appointed Commandant of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, promoted Major General in 1885 and in 1886 sent back to India to Poona (Pune).

Sandhurst College Muster Roll, 1885, bearing Frederick’s name as Commandant

He had managed to find time to marry, in 1863 in Bombay (Mumbai), Constance Frere. Her family were resident in Bombay, where her father, a lawyer, was a Member of Council, but were originally from Breconshire.  They had four children together: Constance May (known as May), born in 1864; Frederick Frere (Fritz, Freddie or FF) in 1867; Arthur (Artie) in 1871 and Richard (Dick) in 1877. Another son, Claude, survived only a few weeks. Only May moved with her parents to Hythe. Artie and Fritz were already serving in the Army and Dick was at Eton.

After Poona, Frederick retired and he and Constance lived for a while in London before moving first to Folkestone, where they rented a house while looking for somewhere to buy. Frederick had family living in nearby Dover – his maiden sisters Adelaide (Tita) and Frances (Fanny) and another who was widowed, Mary Brewster.  There was also a large military establishment in the area, at Shorncliffe, and Frederick had many friends and acquaintances among the officers.  Among them was Dr John Coates, former Medical Officer at the School of Musketry in Hythe, but now ‘a sad invalid.’ A fellow-Irishman, his career had stretched from the Crimean War to Bermuda to India to Malta and Gibraltar – which is presumably where he met Frederick. He lingered in failing health until 1896 and is buried in Hythe’s St Leonard’s churchyard.

Almost as soon as they moved into the Old Manor House in February 1892, the callers started arriving. Among the first was Colonel Charles Slade, Commandant of the School of Musketry which had been established in the town in 1853. There were calls to be made, too. May was assiduous in cultivating mew contacts – networking, we might say today.  Within a couple of weeks of moving in, she had called on the Halls, the Dennes,  the Hackneys, the Osbornes, the Lovegroves, the Davises, the de Hoghtons, the Mackesons,  the Hutchinsons, and the Baldwins.

The School of Musketry in Hythe in the early 20th century

The Halls and the Dennes were near neighbours, the Halls at the vicarage and the Dennes at St Leonard’s Cottage. Thomas Guppy Hall had been Vicar of Hythe since 1873 having married his predecessor’s daughter, Charlotte Sangar. The Misses Denne were maiden ladies, aunt and niece. John Hackney was a medical man as were Drs Osborne, Lovegrove and Randall Davis. It seems that May might have been seeking out the best man to attend her mother, whose health was always delicate.

Of the others, the de Hoghtons were a military family and James de Hoghton heir to a baronetcy; the Mackesons owned the town’s brewery. and the Hutchinsons and Baldwins had no need for any profession or trade – they were people of independent means.

All these folk lived in Hillside Street, a few yards from the Old Manor House, but May and her father soon cast their net wider (Constance rarely paid calls). By summer they had visited or left cards with Mrs Deedes at Saltwood Castle, with the Brockmans at Beachborough and with the Porters of Moyle Tower.  Frederick attended a garden party at Beachborough and another at Dover Castle to welcome the new Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava. Frederick liked to mix with titled people and always mentioned the encounters in his diary.  By September, the family felt confident enough to throw two small garden parties of their own, with croquet matches part of the entertainment.

The triple-barrelled Lord Warden

Sometimes, however, visitors were not wholeheartedly welcome. In July ‘May stayed at home to receive the Fitzclarences who had invited themselves to tea by telegraph’. The Hon. George Fitzclarence was a son of the Earl of Munster and descended from William IV and his mistress Dorothea Jordan. His wife, Lady Maria, was also an earl’s daughter. Refusing them would have been unthinkable, however bad their manners. Then In October, Frederick returned home from a walk and was ‘appalled by this room full of visitors.’

Similarly, paying calls could be tiresome, In 1893 he records ‘C & I had to dine at the vicarage to meet General & Mrs Trent-Stoughton’.

Walking was something Frederick took seriously. He walked nearly every day, whatever the weather, at least once, often twice. These were not short strolls. His morning walks were often eight miles long and he sometimes walked to Lyminge and back, a distance of about ten miles, with steep climbs. On one occasion he noted ‘walked to Folkestone Town Hall 1h 5 minutes and back in 1h 9 minutes.’ This is a distance of just over 4 miles each way with another steep climb. He was then in his seventies.  He also had a daily exercise routine.

Sometimes he was accompanied by May and often by a dog or two, of which there were a succession. They were never kept on a leash with the resultant fights with other dogs, killing of chickens (for which Frederick had to pay compensation) and running away – but always returned by kind townspeople. He did not like all pets, however, and bought Fritz an air rifle so he could ‘practice shooting at obnoxious cats’.

Gardening was another passion and one in which May joined him, though Frederick also employed a jobbing gardener, Valentine Hobday. He planted a rose garden and visited the American Garden in Saltwood in May each year to admire the rhododendrons and azaleas

The American Garden in Saltwood, still blooming today

Although Constance was often confined to her bed, Frederick seems to have enjoyed robust good health, though he did suffer periodically from ‘my old enemy, weak action of the heart.’ He consulted a doctor who told him there was nothing wrong with his heart but that he was suffering from a ‘disarrangement of the nervous system’. This set him worrying that his mind was going (it was not).

The Old Manor House was very conveniently placed for attending church services. Frederick always went on Sunday morning and often again in the evening. He also sat on the Parochial Church Council. In summer he regularly complained that the church was packed with visitors at the 11 am service, despite there now being an additional 9.30 am service for the military. On one occasion, he was caught unawares by the annual Civic Sunday event, when the mayor and councillors ousted him from his usual pew.

The whole family found the holidaymakers irksome. As well as packing the pews in church, they ‘stop the residents getting on trams & buses’ and on one occasion Constance ‘tried to go to Folkestone by tram but was too disturbed by noisy trippers’.

Frederick was quite dismissive of the town council and Hythe town life in general. The mayor in 1892 was Mr Scott – ‘a builder apparently’. One December he remarked of a torchlit procession in the town: ‘the meaning of it, if it has one, I don’t know, except an evening diversion for the lower orders it being early closing day’. (There was, in fact, no ‘meaning’: torchlight processions were briefly in vogue in the 1890s).  He wrote of the annual illuminated tableaux on the Royal Military Canal that ’they are pleased to call it a Venetian Fete’. Mrs Herbert Deedes, of Saltwood Castle ‘poses as the great lady’, he wrote. His snobbery was based not on wealth – the Deedes family were very well off – but on class and pedigree. He himself was far from rich, but his wife had been presented at court, whereas Rose Deedes had not.

To be continued…

The above is taken from the diaries of Frederick Solly-Flood, kindly lent to me by Robert Melrose of Eastbridge House, supplemented by local research and by  Bob Solly, Solly-Flood Family Notes November 1999 edition of Soul Search, the Journal of The Sole Society