Wallingtons is an imposing red brick gabled house on the south western edge of Kintbury. Known today as St Cassians and belonging to the De La Salle brothers, it is used as a popular retreat for young people; parties of teenagers from various Catholic schools across the country can often be seen making their way there from Kintbury station.
The history of Wallingtons, however, has not always been so peaceful.
At the end on the eighteenth century, the house belonged to Samuel Dixon, a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn, who lived there with his sister, Elizabeth.
Samuel Dixon employed as his servant one Benjamin Griffiths, a labourer living in Kintbury about whom there appears to have been a suggestion of a suspicious past. Griffiths had been one of the toll-keepers at the Colnbrook toll gate on the Bath Road in Buckinghamshire when, in 1781, his partner had been murdered. Although another person confessed to the murder, it seems this did not stop the finger of suspicion being pointed at Griffiths. Samuel Dixon was a trustee of one of the turnpike trusts, so perhaps this had something to do with his decision to take Griffiths on – we shall never know.
Samuel Dixon was in London on 7th April 1784 when Robert Griffiths broke into Wallingtons, stole a brace of pistols and a gun belonging to his master then set the house alight in several places. According to the Oxford Journal it was, “entirely burnt to the Ground with all the Furniture, Linen etc, a very curious Library of Books and Manuscripts, Pictures and other valuable Effects, nothing of consequence being saved.”
At first, Griffiths seemed to have got away with the crime and was actually sent to notify his master of the tragedy. However, his behaviour caused suspicion. When charged, Griffiths, “ cut his throat in a terrible manner but missing the windpipe it was sewed up and he is perfectly recovered.”
Griffiths was committed to Reading Gaol and stood trial in July 1784, where he was found guilty and condemned to death. Samuel Dixon tried to have the sentence commuted which perhaps seemed a strange thing to do for someone accused of burning down your house. Perhaps, however, there were circumstances of which he was aware and which history does not relate. His efforts were to no avail and Griffiths was hanged on 7th August 1784.
As a wealthy home owner, Samuel Dixon had been able to insure Wallingtons which he had rebuilt soon after the fire. We do not know for sure who the architect was at that time, although Pevsner says the north front, “appears to have had a Gothic makeover in the late C18th.”
Samuel Dixon died in 1792. In his will he left 5 guineas to two of Griffiths’ children – not an insignificant sum at that time.
Samuel Dixon’s memorial in Kintbury church
Elizabeth Dixon had died in 1786 and in her will she left money for the provision of a fire engine for Kintbury – presumably in the hope that no other family would have to suffer the fate of having their house burnt down.
The Wallingtons as we know it today is largely the work of the architect Temple Moore who remodelled the house for the then owner, William Hew Dunn between 1891 and 1893. Temple Moore’s work is in the then very fashionable Gothic Revival style.
As for Elizabeth Dixon’s fire engine, it is now in the West Berkshire Museum in Newbury.
– Penny Fletcher, September 2023
References:
Brother Anthony Porter: Wallingtons: A History of the House and Estate and the Families who have lived here. (inkpenhistory.uk/archive/Wallingtons)
The Oxford Journal & Reading Mercury (British Newspaper Archive)
Tyack, Bradley & Pevsner: The Buildings of England: Berkshire
For many people, their mental image of a knight from the “olden days” (whenever that was!) is of a male figure brandishing a sword, his face covered by a cylindrical helmet and wearing a white tabard on which is emblazoned a large red cross of St George.
This enduring picture book image most likely has its origins in an actual medieval Christian military and religious order known as “The Poor Knights of the Temple of King Solomon”, or more familiarly, the Knights Templar. Originally founded to protect Christians on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, they followed the austere Rule of Templars which restricted, amongst other things, the eating of meat to three days a week and an insistence upon wearing only plain clothing.
The Knights were recognised by the Pope in 1129 and were supported by rulers throughout Europe such that they eventually became very wealthy, owning property in many countries.
However, after coming into disrepute, the Order was eventually dissolved in the early fourteenth century and its lands given to the Order of the Hospital of St John.
So what is their link with the hamlet of Templeton, between Kintbury and Inkpen? It is believed that, as its modern name implies, this was once the site of a house belonging to the Knights Templar and then subsequently to the Knights Hospitallers of St John. Although it is difficult to find out very much about the early history of the settlement, the online archives of the Newbury Weekly News and the Reading Mercury have some interesting reports from 1884 concerning archaeological finds there.
In the early 1880s, Templeton Manor belonged to the Dunn family. They were having an extension built and the architect for the work just happened to be Newbury architect and eminent local historian, Walter Money.
As the workmen were digging a foundation trench in land which had never previously been built upon, three skeletons were discovered at a depth of about eighteen inches. According to the report in the Newbury Weekly News, the remains represented men of “robust form and vigorous physique”, of average stature, about 5 feet 8 inches. Unfortunately, the skulls, which at the time would have been the only way of getting more vital evidence, were missing. This, of course, was in the years before DNA profiling and other scientific techniques which would be able to indicate gender and more about a person’s origins.
According to the report, no coffins were found with the remains, which were “laid in regular order”, head to toe and in east to west orientation.
This discovery must have been of particular interest to architect and enthusiastic local historian Walter Money, who, a few months later, submitted the results of some research to the Reading Mercury.
According to Money’s research, as reported in the Reading Mercury, the manor of Templeton with Walkott (sic) had belonged to the Preceptory of the Knights Hospitallers at Sandford, near Oxford. Then, on 28th December 1543, it was granted by the King, Henry VIII, “upon the possessions of the hospitallers being vested in the Crown, to Richard Brydges Esq of West Shefford and John Knyght Esq of Newbury.”
It is difficult to imagine the area around Kintbury and Inkpen in medieval times. At Balsdon farm, slightly to the south of Templeton, a moat still exists which is believed to have surrounded a thirteenth century manor house but it is otherwise very difficult to picture a landscape in which almost all our modern points of reference are missing – with the exception of our village churches, that is.
Perhaps, some seven hundred or more years ago, Knights Templar, having disembarked their ship at a south coast port, made their way up and over the downs, travelling northwards. Perhaps they carried with them travellers’ tales of Jerusalem, of encounters with Jews and Muslims, of seemingly strange beliefs and perhaps complex new mathematical and scientific ideas previously unheard of in medieval England. Maybe, when they reached Walbury Hill and looked down to the north west, they were relieved to see the familiar sight of Inkpen and Kintbury in the distance and considered themselves to be nearly home.
“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.”
– Ode to Autumn by John Keates
The word September comes from the Latin septem, meaning seven. In the Roman calendar it was the seventh month.
Anglo Saxons called it gerst monath or barley month. This was when they harvested barley to make their favourite drink. It was also called haefest monath or harvest month.
In 1752 the British government decided to change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar but unfortunately this meant that there was a difference of 11 days between the “old style” and the “new style “ calendars. So, for example, 3rd September became the 14th. This caused much unrest and there were street protests with people shouting, ‘give us back our eleven days’. Some people thought they would die eleven days earlier as a result of this change!
Notable dates in September
The September 3rd is the anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War.
On the first Monday after the 4th, the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is performed.
September 23rd is the Autumnal Equinox, one of two days in the year when day and night are of equal length.
September 29th is the Feast of St Michael and also a “quarter day”, one of the four days in the year when, traditionally, rents were due to be paid.
St Michael and folk lore
In folk lore, St Michael was said to have cast the devil to earth where he fell into a blackberry bush -it is therefore unlucky to eat blackberries after this date. Scientifically, however, the first frosts could occur after this date and reduce the vitamin C in blackberries thus reducing their goodness.
There are two local churches, Enborne and Inkpen, dedicated to St Michael (most churches with this dedication are on a hill) and until fairly recently we often celebrated these Patronal Festivals together as a benefice.
St Michael’s Enborne (c) 2023 T Lock
The famous St Michael ley line runs across England from the tip of Cornwall to the Eastern tip of Norfolk on the Norfolk/Suffolk border, passing through the prehistoric sites of Glastonbury and Avebury, also numerous other significant sites either named after St. Michael or St. George, both dragon slaying saints.
In his book , “The Old Straight Track” (1925), Alfred Watkins identified what he called a “church ley”, five churches which, when looked at on an OS map, can be linked by a straight line drawn between all of them. The five churches in this example are not far from Kintbury:
Here five churches – Tidcombe, Linkenholt, Faccombe, Burghclere and Sydmonton – align precisely , and on the ley are homesteads with the ancient names of Folly Barn, Bacon’s (formerly Beacon’s) Farm, and Curzon Street Farm, with fragments of present-day road in approximate alignment
The house now known as the Retreat Hotel, Elcot Park, was originally built in the 1820s and situated in its own park land. In 1844 the estate was bought by Elizabeth, Lady Shelley, widow of Sir Timothy Shelley the former Whig MP.
Timothy and Elizabeth had married in 1791 and made their family home at Field Place, Warnham, Sussex. They had six children: Percy, b. 1792, Elizabeth b. 1794, Mary, b. 1797, Helen b. 1799, Margaret, 1801 and John, b. 1806.
It was the two youngest daughters, Helen and Margaret, who were to live for over twenty years at Elcot. They are recorded on the 1851 census where Helen, as head of the household, is described as “Landed Proprietor”, and again in 1861 and 1871. In 1871, Helen and Margaret are described as, “Baronet’s Daughters” – a reminder that this was an age when it was quite usual for an unmarried woman to be defined in terms of who or what her father was.
A perusal of the newspaper archives suggests that Helen and Margaret Shelley led quiet, conventional lives typical of their class at the time. They were present at society weddings, made contributions to charitable causes such as the Patriotic Fund and the Royal Berks Lifeboat Fund and attended, along with many others of the great and good of West Berkshire, the prize giving ceremony to members of the Berkshire Rifles. Their life style, as far as can be seen, was respectful and would have raised few eyebrows amongst those who knew them.
This is in stark contrast to their elder brother, Percy.
Percy was seven when Helen was born. By the time she was four he had become a pupil at Eton, although his time there was not happy as he was bullied. He gained a reputation for having a violent temper and also an interest in gunpowder and blowing things up. Despite this, Percy seems to have been academically successful.
Helen was ten when her big brother went up to University College, Oxford in 1810. Here he preferred reading and conducting scientific experiments to attending lectures. He also held radical and anti-Christian views and as a consequence would have been regarded as suspicious at the time by those who feared the destabilizing consequences of the revolution in France might spread across the channel. Percy was expelled from Oxford in 1811 as a consequence of publishing a pamphlet called, The Necessity of Atheism which he distributed to members of the church hierarchy and to Oxford tutors. This did not go down well with Sir Timothy and a rift developed between father and son.
In a continuing defiance of convention, Percy, now 19, eloped to Edinburgh with Harriet Westbrook, a friend of his sisters.
For a time Percy and Harriet shared their household with Harriet’s sister, Eliza and another friend in a communal arrangement more like that which we might now associate with alternative living of the 60s and 70s. However, these relationships did not endure and in 1814 Percy fell in love with Mary Godwin, the sixteen year old daughter of philosopher William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, the early feminist and author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women.
If Helen and Margaret Shelley could be said to have led a quiet and conventional life at Elcot in the 1850s and 60s, their elder brother’s life and loves during the earlier years of the century was nothing like it. What Helen and Margaret, then in their teens, would have made of Percy’s unconventional and increasingly complex relationships coupled with his radical religious and political views, we can only wonder. Harriet, now estranged from Percy, drowned herself in the Serpentine in 1816. Despite having philosophical objections to marriage as an institution, Percy married Mary although his living arrangements and personal relationships continued to be unconventional and complex.
By this time, Percy was a successfully published poet, something that must have been a source of pride to his sisters and brother. Much of his work was based around his response to political events, such as The Mask of Anarchy, written in response to the Peterloo massacre of 1819, although it was not actually published until 1832 for fear of libel.
Whilst Percy Shelley continues to be a much respected poet whose works are read and studied to this day, it is probably Mary Shelley’s work that is better known – or at least, the title of her most famous novel is better known, even though most people will not have read the original. In 1818, when she was just eighteen, Mary began working on what was to become one of the most famous gothic horror novels of all time, Frankenstein.
Helen and Mary Shelley were of similar ages and it is interesting to wonder if the sisters-in-law ever met. Mary and Percy travelled extensively through Europe so it is difficult to say if the couple would have ever returned to Field Place. Perhaps Helen and Margaret were proud of their brother the poet whilst at the same time regretting his wayward life style. Would there have been copies of Percy’s poem and Mary’s Frankenstein on the bookshelves at Elcot? We do not know.
Percy Shelley died as a result of a boating accident off the coast of Italy in 1822 and his ashes are buried in Rome.
By the time of the 1881 census, Helen and Margaret are no longer at Elcot, but have returned to the family home of Field Place. It seems, however, that it was not to be for long. Sometime in the 1880s the sisters downsized in their living accommodation, making their home at Queen’s Gardens, Brighton, in an elegant but modest terrace house they named, Elcot House. When Helen died in 1885 they were living in Godstone, Surrey.
In January 1801, Jane Austen wrote to her sister Cassandra,
Eliza has seen Lord Craven at Barton, & probably by this time at Kintbury…
The Eliza she mentions here was the wife of the Rev Fulwar Craven Fowle, vicar of Kintbury, and Lord Craven the influential land owner and member of the aristocracy then living with his mistress at Ashdown Park. But where was Barton and why was whoever lived there playing host to a local “bigwig”?
Barton – or Barton Court – still an imposing residence which can be reached along the Avenue, at that time the main route into Kintbury for traffic from the Bath Road, was the home of Charles Dundas. Since 1794 he had been Member of Parliament for the constituency of Berkshire, at that time stretching as far north as the Thames and including Wantage and Abingdon. As a member of a titled Scottish family, Dundas moved in some of the best circles of the time.
In keeping with their station in life and the fashions of the time, the Dundas family are well represented on the walls of Kintbury church where we can read that Charles and his wife, Anne Whitley, whom he had married in 1782, “had issue one daughter, Janet”. Anne died in 1812 and in 1822 Charles married Margaret Erskine, formerly Ogilvy, née Barclay.
Reading the Dundas memorials on the church walls, anyone would conclude that Charles Dundas had just one daughter. However, research into historical records reveals that this was not the case. Charles’ daughter Marrianne was most likely born in 1793. Her mother was not Anne Whitley. At the time, a child born to a mother not married to its father was often referred to as the “natural” child of whoever; Jane Austen gives an example of this in her novel, Emma, where Harriet Smith is referred to as the “natural” daughter of an unknown person Emma choses to imagine as someone well-to-do. Harriet Smith has been sent to live at a boarding school for girls and, it seems, no one acknowledges her as their daughter and her family remain a mystery.
We know from looking at the 1851 census that Marrianne had been born in Kintbury but I can find no record of her baptism or indeed who her mother might have been. It is impossible to find out anything of her early life – perhaps, like Harriet Smith, she was sent away to a girls’ boarding school. However, thanks to online marriage records, we know that in 1815 Marrianne Dundas married the Rev William Everett of Romford, Essex at the then very fashionable St George’s, Hanover Square, Westminster. We know Charles Dundas was present at the ceremony as he has signed the register.
It is particularly interesting that Marrianne is known by her father’s surname although all the available evidence suggests that Charles Dundas was never married to her mother. This was a time when a “natural” son or daughter was usually known by their mother’s surname, an example from Kintbury being William Winterbourn who, during his lifetime, was known by his mother’s name of Smith as his parents weren’t married. It would seem to me that, by the time of her marriage at least, Charles Dundas acknowledged Marrianne as his daughter.
Marrianne and William Everett had three children: William, born and baptised in Kintbury in 1821 became a fellow of New College, Oxford and also a barrister; Charles Dundas Everett, born in Kintbury in 1825 entered the church; finally Alicia was born in Kintbury 1827. Interestingly, the 1861 census actually shows Alicia having been born at Barton Court so it has to be likely that her brothers were born there, too. There is no evidence that the Everett’s family home was ever in Kintbury; perhaps it had been decided that Barton Court was a preferable place for a confinement that the Rev Everett’s draughty vicarage!
We can only assume that Charles Dundas’ second wife was welcoming to Marrianne and her children.
On November 27th 1851, the youngest child, Alicia, married the Oxford master brewer, James Morrell of Headington, at St George’s, Hanover Square – the same fashionable church at which her parents had married. The service was taken by her brother, Charles.
James had inherited Headington Hill Hall which he had extended in the Italianate fashion and this large, imposing residence became the family home for him and Alicia. Marrianne was living there herself when she died on 4th December 1861.
James and Alicia’s only child, Emily, was born in 1854. In 1874 Emily married her cousin, George Herbert Morrell and so the Oxford brewing business continued to be run by the Morrell family for the next three generations. By the 1960s the company was run by one Colonel Morrell, a well known name in the Oxford area, not least in the Lock household as my father’s firm did a lot of work for the brewers. I believe Colonel Morrell would have been Marrianne’s great, great grandson. The natural daughter of Charles Dundas, therefore, can be regarded as the dowager matriarch of Oxford’s celebrated brewing family.
In 1953 the Morrell family sold Headington Hill Hall to Oxford City Council from whom it was later leased by one Robert Maxwell, infamous for having defrauded his employees’ pension fund and having disappeared from his yacht named the Lady Ghislaine, after his daughter.
Today, Headington Hill Hall is leased by Oxford Brookes University.
So, whilst there are many Dundas names on the walls of Kintbury church, Marrianne’s – due, I suppose, to the circumstances of her birth – is not one of them. But despite being Charles Dundas’s “natural” daughter, her fate was not that of a Harriet Smith. Her life might not be recorded on the walls of our church but through the generations her family certainly made their mark in Oxford.
One mystery, however, remains: there seems to be no way of knowing the name of Marrianne’s mother. That chapter of her story is no different from that of Harriet Smith.
According to records kept by the National Archive, at the time of the 1901 census, just over 40% of adult women in the UK were employed as domestic servants.
The early 20th century was a time when access to education and onwards to the professions was denied the great majority of young women for whom a position in the household of a wealthy family might have seemed the only employment option. For a significant minority, however, there were alternatives to domestic servitude.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Kelly’s Directories published lists of gentry, landowners, charities and those employed in commerce for every town and village throughout England. Listed under “Commercial” in the 1903 edition for Berkshire, Kelly’s Directory records 64 names in Kintbury, 33 in Inkpen, 17 in Enborne, 11 in Hamstead Marshall and 1 in Combe. But of the grand total of 130 people involved in “commerce” across what is now our benefice, only 13 are women.
In Kintbury, Mrs Maria Abraham and Mrs Ann Bance are both listed as bakers while Mrs Harriet Penny is a butcher. Mrs Eliza Peck is a shopkeeper and Mrs Elizabeth Taylor is a beer retailer, presumably running a pub. In Inkpen, Mrs William Killick is a grocer. It is likely, I think, that most of these women, if not all, are widows continuing with the businesses previously run by their husbands.
The same would appear to be true for the two carriers listed by Kelly’s: Mrs Emma May in Inkpen and Mrs James Miles in Hamstead Marshall are both continuing with businesses recorded in the 1901 census as having been run by their husbands. Of course, it may well have been that the women had long helped their spouses run the family business, but this would not have been recorded by the census enumerator.
Women had been employed by the Post Office nationally since the 1870s, where they could sort the mail and operate the telegraph system. In Inkpen, the Post Office at Upper Green was run by Miss Matilda Goodfellow Froom and in Kintbury by Mrs Emma Page who is also listed as a stationer. Although the smallest village, even then, Combe has its own post office, which is run by Miss Rose M. Salt.
Two women to have control of what must have been larger businesses are Mrs John Goddard of Hamstead Marshall and Mrs Mary Jane Dymond of Inkpen who are both listed by Kelly’s as farmers.
According to the 1881 census, John Goddard was farming 67 acres. In Hamstead Marshall. By 1891, his son, Richard was also working on the farm. However, John died in 1894 and by the census of 1901 Martha, John’s widow, is recorded herself as farmer with Richard employed by her.
It is a similar story over in Inkpen where Mary Jane Dymond had been running her 30 acre farm for over twenty years since the death of her husband John.
It would be easy to presume that these women must have had equal status with the men running similar businesses close by. Surely Eliza Peck or Maria Abraham’s experience of running their shops would have been largely similar to that of the male shopkeepers further down the road? Would life on a farm have been so very much different for Mary Jane Dymond or Martha Goddard when compared to farms run by men?
Apart from everyday sexism expressed in such phrases as , “the weaker sex” and “a woman’s place is in the home” and so on, the perceived inferior status of women was enshrined in certain laws. For example, whilst many women would have controlled a business budget, they would not have been able to open a bank account in their own names or apply for a loan.
However, for Mary Jane Dymond, Martha Goddard and the rest, the position of women in society was changing – but very, very slowly. The 1882 Married Women’s Property Act had enabled women to own and control property in their own right although it was not until 1922 that the Law of Property Act gave men and women equal rights to inherit property from each other.
Women ratepayers – that is to say, women who owned or rented property – had been able to vote in borough and county elections since 1888. So most, if not all, of the women in business in 1903 would have been able to vote for their local councillors although as women there were not able to stand for election themselves. Women – and many poorer men- were still unable to vote in parliamentary elections.
In 1902, textile workers in the north of England had presented a petition to parliament demanding votes for women and 1903 saw the formation, at the home of Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst in Manchester, of the Women’s Social & Political Union, a campaigning group concerned with extending the franchise to women. It is likely that both these events passed by even the most avid newspaper-reading folk of West Berkshire – however, news of the burgeoning women’s suffrage movement would gradually appear in the pages of the Newbury Weekly News.
Emmeline Pankhurst addressing a crowd in Trafalgar Square by Central Press, by Central Press, bromide press print, October 1908, 7 in. x 8 7/8 in. (177 mm x 226 mm) image size, Given by Terence Pepper, 2008, Photographs Collection, NPG x131784
The NWN of March 31st 1904 reported that the local Women’s Liberal Association held a packed meeting at which Mr Richard Heldene MP spoke on the subject of women’s suffrage. In 1906 members of the same association listened to an address given by Mrs Eva McLaren, “in favour of political rights for women”.
It seems that the issue of women’s suffrage had not always been taken seriously. On 21st March 1907, the NWN carried a report of a debate in Reading at which Mr Mackarness, MP for South Berkshire had spoken. According to the report,
…there was a great deal of joking on the subject but for his part he always looked on it from a common sense point of view… They had given women votes in all local affairs therefore he could not quite see upon what line of argument … they were to refuse them a vote in Parliamentary matters.
Whilst the NWN was happy to report objectively on debates or speeches in favour of women’s suffrage, this seems not to have been the case when covering the actions of more militant campaigners such as the members of the WSPU. On 28th March, 1907, it reported,
The women suffragists made another scandalous disturbance on Wednesday in avowed attempts to enter the House of Commons.
But it would seem that not everyone in the area agreed that the tactics employed by the more militant suffragettes ( as they were eventually known to distinguish them for the more peaceful suffragists ) were “scandalous”.
In November 1909, the newspaper of the WSPU, “Votes for Women” reported that a Miss Keevil, “is speaking at two meetings in Newbury. Sympathizers there are very anxious to hear about militant methods.”
In June 1911, the same newspaper reported that there were to be outdoor demonstrations in Reading, Newbury and Basingstoke, and that the Newbury & Reading contingent would march under a banner bearing the words, “Pro aris et foris”. A Miss Daukes of Newbury would be acting as sergeant, the newspaper reported. The WSPU was nothing if not well organised and this was expressed in the use of such military language.
“Votes for Women” was eventually replaced by a new newspaper representing the WSPU campaign, The Suffragette. Copies were sold in Newbury Market Place and reports included the successful, “At Home” held by Newbury’s Mrs Whittington and a meeting held at the Guildhall Hotel, Mansion House Street. The campaign for women’s suffrage had definitely come to town.
Nationally, Emmeline Pankhurst’s WSPU involved women from all social classes at all levels of the organisation. However, it must have been far easier for women of comfortable financial means and less demands upon their time to participate in local campaigning. Marian Daukes, Hon Sec of the Newbury WSPU branch, was the daughter of an architect and lived during the early 1900s at a house called Diglis on the Andover Road. At the time of the 1891 census she had been living on independent means in Surrey which suggests that she was most likely of the class of women able to spend their time as they chose. To working women such as Mary Jane Dymond and Martha Goddard, or Maria Abraham and Ann Bance, Marian’s life would have seemed a world away from theirs. It is impossible to know if these women from the villages ever saw a copy of The Suffragette, sold in Newbury Market Place. We do not know what they would have thought, had they read anything in the NWN of the campaign for women’s suffrage – I think it likely that some would have ignored it, others would have been appalled at the more disruptive or militant campaigns, whilst others may well have approved – but possibly secretly.
The 1907 Qualification of Women Act allowed women to be elected as borough and county councillors, also as mayor. Thus women were able to participate in local decision making for the first time. In Newbury, it was not until 1922 that Elsie Kimber was elected the town’s first female councillor. Elsie went on to become the first female mayor in 1932 and first woman Alderman in 1943.
The Representation of the People Act of 1918 granted the right to vote to all men over 21 but only to women over 30 who owned or rented property with a yearly value of at least £5, or to be married to a man who qualified to vote in local government elections. For many women who had run businesses or taken the places of men in agriculture or other industries during the 1914 to 1918 war, this must have been a bitter disappointment. For the many women still employed in domestic service, their position in the eyes of the law had changed very little.
In May 1919, political discussion came to Kintbury when a meeting of the Kintbury Branch of the South Berks Women’s Unionist Association, an organisation of the Conservative party, was held in the Coronation Hall. In attendance were many well known ladies of the village including Mrs Dunn and Mrs A.E. Gladstone. One speaker, the Hon Ethel Akers-Douglas spoke of the urgent need for self education with regards to politics. Another, Mrs W.A. Mount, wife of the local Member of Parliament, spoke of the “threat” of a Labour candidate in the constituency at the next general election. She explained the party’s intentions to see the conditions of the working men improved, however, “when people said there could be full equality, it was their duty to point out that such a state of things was absolutely impossible.”
Such was the mind-set of many at the time, although we do not know how many of the women running shops or businesses, particularly on behalf of men killed or disabled in the war, would have agreed with her. I wonder what Elsie Kimber, at her family’s shop in Newbury, would have thought.
Women were not granted equal voting rights with men until 1928. The first woman to be elected to the Westminster Parliament was Constance Markievicz in 1918, although as a member of Sinn Fein she refused to take her seat and so the distinction of being the first woman to sit in parliament goes to Lady Nancy Astor who won the Plymouth Sutton seat in 1919.
Emmeline Pankhurst believed that, once women achieved parliamentary representation, it would follow that other legislation to benefit the lives of women would soon be enacted. I think she would have been shocked to know just how long it took for women to achieve equality with men in so many areas. Back in 1903, Mary Jane Dymond would have been unable to open a bank account independently. This situation did not change until the 1960s and it was not until the 1970s that a woman could apply for a loan without having her application endorsed by a man – literally any man. Similarly, the Equal Pay Act did not come into law until 1970 before which it was quite legal for businesses, including high street banks, for example, to offer career prospects to young men with salaries higher than those offered to similarly qualified young women.
I believe Marian Daukes and her fellow WSPU supporters in Newbury would be disappointed – or even incredulous – that by the 2019 parliamentary election, out of 650 seats only 220 were filled by women. Similarly, although the position of women in society has changed in many ways that would surprise a Mary Jane Dymond or Martha Goddard, many businesses still have only male names over the door or in trade directories. Further more, to see the words, “And daughter” on a commercial vehicle is still very, very rare. So much has changed, but then, so much has remained the same.
From, “Something of great public interest” to “stupidity second to none”.
For hundreds of years, the fastest form of transport known to most people, either in towns or villages, was the four or five miles an hour of the carrier’s cart. The heady speeds achieved by the stage coach might be enjoyed by the wealthier classes but for most, life could only continue at a gentle, plodding pace.
Then the railways arrived, first in the industrialised north then, thanks to Isambard Kingdom Brunel, in the south and west as well. By 1841, Brunel’s Great Western Railway between London and Bristol had fully opened and for the very first time passengers could experience travelling through the Vale of the White Horse at over 25 miles an hour.
Clearly, railways were the transport of the future and many in our part of Berkshire were keen for a slice of the action. In 1845 an Act of Parliament was passed which, with the support of the already well-established GWR, created the Berks & Hants Railway Company. This was to be a branch line from the Great Western, leaving the main line just south west of Reading towards Theale. This was the “Berks” section of the line; the “Hants” section turned south east towards Basingstoke.
There were to be four stations on the way to Newbury: Theale, Aldermaston, Woolhampton and Thatcham, then to the west, Kintbury and Hungerford. The line finally opened on the very cold morning of 21st December 1847 when, according to the report in the Newbury Weekly News of December 24th, there were initially few spectators but, as the day advanced, however, ” the bustle began to increase and it was very evident that something of great public interest was occurring.”
The NWN was not impressed by the speed of the new service which covered the eight and a quarter miles between Newbury & Hungerford – with one stop at Kintbury – in 25 minutes, but commented, “this will doubtless be improved”. The reporter seems to have forgotten that this speed was probably four times faster than a carrier’s cart would have completed the same distance, but perhaps expectations had been raised by the railway company.
However, those who travelled along this new branch line were, apparently, unanimous “with respect to the very great smoothness, absence of oscillation and of noise which appears to distinguish the Berks & Hants from other railways.”
It would be interesting to know how many of these travellers enjoyed seats in first class carriages and how many, if any, took that first journey in a second or third class carriage.
Many of the wealthier classes of our villages – the inhabitants of West Woodhay House, Kirby House, Hamstead Marshall Park, Barton Court and so on – might well have availed themselves of the opportunity to travel up to London at previously unimagined speeds though I doubt many cottagers would have joined them. For some people, the arrival of the railway meant a serious decline in business: canal travel could in no way compete with the speed of the train, for example. Coach travel took a blow, too: previously, seven horse-drawn coaches a day had left Newbury for Reading but this service was soon discontinued.
William Huskisson M.P. was famously the first person to die in a railway accident when he was unable to get out of the way of a moving engine before it ran him over. That had been in 1830. But other people failed to appreciate how dangerous it could be to get too close to a fast moving engine.
The Bath Chronicle of November 1847 reported the story of , “a lad in the employment of Mr Alderman of Kintbury” who was crossing the line at Hamstead (sic) with a donkey and cart when he saw an engine coming down the line, “at a pretty rapid rate”. Presumably to get a better view , the young man, “actually pulled up with his donkey and cart on the middle of the line on which the engine was running.” His stupidity, the paper opined, was second to none.
Luckily, “the son of Mr Gibbons of Hamstead” was passing by and he ran up to him and, “succeeded in hurrying the donkey off the line just as the engine came up.”
You can imagine something the conversation in the Gibbons’ household that evening!
It is perhaps not surprising that fare dodging arrived with the railways. The Reading Mercury of January 1848 reported the case of Daniel Gingell and Richard Tiggell who had jumped out of a second class carriage at Kintbury, “to evade the payment of their fares and thereby defrauding the company.” They were fined £2 3s 6d each (the equivalent of several weeks pay at least) or one month’s imprisonment.
I bet they didn’t do it again.
By 1862, our branch line was extended to Devizes. Originally, this line was of Brunel’s preferred broad gauge of 7 feet ¼ inch although lines across the Great Western were eventually replaced by standard gauge to conform with the rest of the country’s growing railway network. However, if you walk along the canal to Vicarage Bridge, Kintbury (left), you will see two lengths of former broad gauge rails being used to buttress the bridge on the east facing side. A relic of Brunel’s engineering!
If you are a railway enthusiast or if you know anything about the early days of the Berks & Hants railway, I would really like to hear from you. Email me at kintburyandbeyond@gmail.com
Tessa Lock
Note from the editor: We do not have a photo of a wide gauge engine, and have had to make do with standard gauge GWR Pendennis Castle no. 4079, pictured here at Didcot Railway Centre. Apologies!
When anyone speaks of a priest’s ”flock” it might be presumed they are using a rather old-fashioned term for his or her congregation. However in the case of Kintbury’s Fulwar Craven Fowle (1764 -1840) his flock were actually sheep: the relatively new variety – at the time – of New Leicesters.
Sheep had been important to English agriculture for hundreds of years, primarily for their wool which was an important export as well as the material from which most clothing was made. Indeed the Lord Chancellor had sat on the “woolsack” – a symbol of the importance of wool to the economy, since the time of Edward III.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the industrial revolution had resulted in a rapid growth of towns and an increasing urban population needing to be fed. Improvements in farming helped meet the challenge and for some wealthier landowners able to experiment with stock breeding and crop growing, agriculture became a new science.
Robert Bakewell of Dishley in Leicestershire was one of the many farmers concerned with a more scientific approach to breeding. In 1760 he had produced a new variation of the traditional Leicester sheep, capable of an increased production of high quality fatty meat, popular at the time. Production of mutton was now of greater importance to the sheep farmer than production of wool.
During the Napoleonic Wars (1805 – 1815), it had not been possible to import Merino wool – used in the production of fine cloth -from Spain. So, partly due to an initiative by “Farmer” George III, Merino sheep were imported into England so that fine wool could be produced domestically.
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the preferred method of keeping sheep was by “folding”. This method was particularly popular on poorer chalk soils such as on downland and involved keeping the sheep in relatively small pens constructed of hurdles. The folded sheep would be fed on root crops such as turnips which had been found to improve the condition of the ewes and the ultimate survival of lambs, particularly twins. As they ate, the sheep would also be fertilising the land – important in an age when more specialised fertilisers were as yet unavailable. The pens or “folds” would be moved along the downland at regular intervals, making this an effective way of fertilizing the soil but a very time consuming one.
By the early nineteenth century, more breeders were moving away from keeping sheep traditional to their particular area. Kintbury’s Rev Fulwar Craven Fowle was one such who chose the faster maturing New Leicester breed which he kept on his land at East Woodhay, just over the border in Hampshire.
In 1820, Rev Fowle was admitted to the Hampshire Agricultural Society, an association of the land owning classes which included the nephew of his friends Jane & Cassandra Austen: one Edward Knight junior Esq of Chawton House.
South Downs and Merinos were the breeds of sheep usually seen at the Hampshire show at this time. However, in June 1820, Rev Fowle exhibited a pen of Leicesters – the very first time this new breed had been seen there. According to the report in the Hampshire Chronicle, they “excited much attention” and were admired for their, “weight, symmetry, smallness of bone and lightness of offal.”
Rev Fowle was praised for his husbandry. The appearance of his animals, “reflected the highest credit on the management of Mr Fowle.”
Regarding feeding, “their actual state of maturity was attained without the assistance of either corn or cake, sliced Swedish turnips having constituted their sole food…”
This was a time when the potential weight of an animal counted more than most other features so it was decided to conduct an experiment comparing Fowle’s New Leicesters with Merino sheep belonging to Mr Simmonds of St Cross. Three three-year-old New Leicesters were to be kept and fed with three three-year-old Merinos and three two-year-olds of each breed were to be folded together.
When the results were compared the following year, the three- year- old Leicesters had shown a greater increase in weight than the Merinos although the two-year-old Merinos had shown the superior increase. A similar experiment concluding in 1822 showed the advantage to favour the New Leicesters.
Although Rev Fowle is praised for his husbandry, the reality was most likely that a shepherd in East Woodhay was the one responsible for the day-to-day care of the New Leicesters. As always, the working people who supported the upper and landed classes passed through history almost totally unrecorded, particularly in the years before census returns. So here’s to that unknown shepherd.
The working people, however, were not the ones able to instigate change even though it was their hard graft that saw it through. There are some well-known names from amongst the landed and upper classes who experimented and contributed to improvements in agriculture from the eighteenth century onwards. In this area, Jethro Tull (1674 – 1741 ) who farmed at Prosperous, near Hungerford is probably the best well-known. However, the contributions from the less well-known such as Rev Fowle, competing with their contemporaries in local agricultural societies, would also have played their part in the agricultural revolution.
Theresa Lock, June 2023
Sources:
Hampshire Chronicle, British Newspaper Archive (on line)
“On the sheep’s back” : The rise and fall of English Wool by Richard Martin. (cotswoldwoollenweavers.co.uk)
Pentecost or Whitsun is the date in the Christian calendar which commemorates the Holy Spirit descending upon Christ’s disciples following his death and resurrection, and occurs on the seventh Sunday after Easter.
The old English word hwit can mean “bright, radiant; clear, fair”.
Years ago, the newly baptised wore white at this time. (In the 50s when I was young it was a time for Confirmation, when we also wore white). It is one of the three festivals when one is supposed to take communion: Christmas, Easter, Whitsun.
In medieval times, it was an important date because those in domestic service to a landowner would be free to celebrate. Among the traditions associated with Whitsuntide are Whit Walks, including brass bands and choirs. Whit fairs and parades also took place during the break, along with Morris dancing.
Drinking Whitsun ales was customary. In 1826, answering a survey, the Kintbury’s Rev’d Fulway Craven Fowle was asked the question:
“Have you any Wake or Whitsun-ale doles, annual processions or perambulations?“
He answered:
“Chiefly at night. A drunken whitsuntide and not a sober feast.”
One presumes this also applied to other villages near by: Inkpen, West Woodhay, Hamstead Marshall etc.
Kintbury and Beyond 