People – Page 4 – Kintbury and Beyond

The Kintbury Martyr: 1

The late 1820s saw riots and demonstations break out in many villages and towns across southern England, including Kintbury. So what had happened to England’s green and pleasant land to cause this?

1830: A time of poverty, resentment and anger

In the early years of the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution was leading to the growth of factories and mills in the rapidly expanding towns of the north and midlands. However, counties in the south of England such as Berkshire remained predominantly agricultural. And it wasn’t just the men who worked the land: many women were employed in agriculture and even children worked on the land rather than receiving an education. As it would be another forty years before the introduction of free education for all, very many poorer people in the earlier years of the nineteenth century had no opportunity to learn to read or write.

A link to the wider world

The Kennet & Avon canal had been completed in 1810 so Kintbury people would have become used to seeing colourful barges pass through the village, manned by the itinerate families of bargees; such sights must have seemed strange and exotic to Kintburians who might never have travelled as far as Newbury. Travel for most was by foot or horse drawn vehicle, although occasionally coaches belonging to the better off would have turned off the Bath Road, down what we now know as the avenue, past the church and south through the village.

Whilst families such as those at Barton Court would have lived in comfort and luxury, home for the average agricultural labourer and his family was a very humble cottage, often little more than two or three rooms, sparsely furnished and lit by tallow candles.

Bread on the table

The war with France had ended some fifteen years previously but the peace had also brought with it a recession. Furthermore, 1830 saw the third poor harvest in succession, putting up the price of wheat and subsequently of bread. This was not good news for the agricultural labourer, whose wages for the year had dropped from £40.00 (15 shillings or 76 pence a week) in 1815 to £31 (12 shillings or 59 pence a week) in 1827.

Labourers in other occupations fared a little better with an average pay of £43 a year (16 shillings or 82p a week ). Meanwhile, colliers in the north and midlands averaged £54 a year (slightly over the lofty sum of £1 a week ) and cotton spinners £58.50 a year (£1 / 2 shillings or £1.10p a week ). It was no wonder that many agricultural workers in the north of England were migrating to the urban areas where work in mills and factories promised higher wages. But no such opportunities existed for the agricultural labourers of the south.

These wages were in stark contrast to the annual incomes of those in authority and positions of power. Whilst a clergyman was not considered wealthy within his class, an annual income of £254 or £4/17shillings a week must have seemed a fortune to the labourer. Meanwhile, far removed in their offices in Newbury or Reading, a solicitor could earn up to £522 a year. But this was a world away from the life of the agricultural labourer.

A restricted diet

So how did the agricultural labourer exist on 12 shillings a week? His family’s diet would have been restricted and unvarying, consisting, for example, of bread, bacon, small amounts of cheese, butter, milk, tea, sugar and salt – all carefully rationed. There might have been small amounts of meat other than bacon and some labourers were able to keep a pig. If the cottage garden was large enough and the soil suitable, vegetables could also be grown at home. Research has suggested that 71% of the family’s income would have been spent on bread alone: not surprising as it would have been a staple and eaten at every meal. The Berkshire Chronicle of April 3^rd 1829 records the latest price for a gallon loaf in Newbury to be between 1 shilling, 7 pence (1/7d) and 1 shilling, 9 pence (1/9d). Prices, however, varied according to the success or otherwise of the harvest each year.

No more rabbit pie

Whilst previous generations of country dwellers would have been able to augment their diets by catching rabbits and fowl on common land, the Enclosure Acts meant that land owners had been able to fence off vast tracts of land over which the labourers had previously been able to walk freely. It also drastically reduced the areas of land available for the poorer classes to cultivate for themselves. Furthermore, the harsh Game Laws resulted in strict penalties for anyone caught poaching. The law of 1816 imposed the penalty of seven years transportation (ie being sent to a penal colony in Australia) for anyone caught with nets to snare a rabbit, even if no rabbit had been trapped. Until 1827 it was perfectly legal for landowners to set mantraps on their land. These devices could, at best, break a man’s leg and at worst cause him a long and lingering death as a result of his injuries.

Keeping the peace

These are the years before the establishment of police forces across the country: Newbury Borough Police was not established until 1835. Instead, law and order were maintained through a system of harsh penalties designed to deter crime and the only way of dealing with more extreme disorder was to call upon the militia. The death penalty existed for over 200 crimes and for others, those convicted could be transported – a system of dealing with convicts, both men and women, until 1868.

In the towns and villages, watchmen and constables were responsible for keeping the peace and those arrested were taken before the local magistrates. These local magistrates, or Justices of the Peace, represented the face of the establishment for the villagers, and it was their business to uphold the laws enacted by parliament. In 1830, the Houses of Parliament might as well have been on the moon to the working people of England, most of whom were not able to vote until the early years of the twentieth century. One of Berkshire’s two MPs at the time, Charles Dundas, 1^st Baron Amesbury, lived at Barton Court, Kintbury. The wealthier villagers, particularly the very few men who were at that time able to vote, might have felt that Dundas represented their interests. This sentiment would not have been shared by the poorer working people.

The Rev Fulwar Craven Fowle

Whilst many villagers might well have been unfamiliar with Charles Dundas other than by name and as the owner of the large and comfortable house along the avenue on the way to the Bath Road, they would have been much more familiar with the local magistrate. The Rev Fulwar Craven Fowle was vicar of Kintbury, the third generation of his family to hold the living. He was also the grandson of Lord “Governor” Craven, sometime governor of South Carolina and previous resident of Hamstead Park. Thus, Rev Fowle was several rungs up the social ladder from the labourers at the very bottom, inhabiting a world far distant from theirs. We know from the letters of Jane Austen – a family friend of the Fowles – that Fulwar Craven Fowle could be bad tempered although there is evidence that he was much loved by his parishioners. Many of the village labourers, however, may very well not have belonged to the Anglican church and are likely to have been members of one of the non-conformist churches (or chapels) and so would not have known Rev Fowle as their priest, but as a magistrate and as a member of one of the better-off village families.

Thus Rev Fowle represented the face of an establishment which had introduced harsh and punitive laws, a system which had reduced the labourer to a life of poverty from which there was no chance of escape.

Representing the people

Charles Dundas, Baron Amesbury

by William Say, after Sir William Beechey
mezzotint, (1823)
NPG D11326

In 1830, only around 5% of the people were eligible to vote and, with the exception of a few women living in some towns, those who could vote were all men. There was much political corruption and some constituencies were always represented by certain, influential families. In Berkshire, Abingdon (then in Berkshire) returned one member of parliament, Reading two and Wallingford (also in Berkshire at that time), also returned two MPs. The rest of Berkshire – which then stretched as far north as the Thames –was represented in total by just two MPs. In 1830, these were Robert Palmer and the resident of Barton Court, Kintbury, Charles Dundas. Over the border to the west, Great Bedwyn, smaller than Hungerford, returned two MPs, and further south in Wiltshire, Old Sarum – a place with no inhabitants at all, continued to send two MPs to Westminster.

So whilst Members of Parliament were responsible for passing the laws which severely restricted the lives of the working people, causing much hardship, those MPs were answerable to very few. And those who could vote lived their lives pretty much untouched by the kind of challenges afflicting the poor.

Know your place

There existed a very clearly defined class system in England at this time. At the top of the social ladder were the nobility such as William Lamb, 2^nd Viscount Melbourne, the Home Secretary in 1830. Letters addressed to him begin, “My Lord…”.

Further down the social ladder, but still a long way from the bottom, those of the landowning classes who did not have titles have “Esq” – short for “esquire”- after their names whilst those on the next rung down are referred to as “Gentlemen”.

Newspaper reports of this time often refer to “gentlemen and farmers”, because a farmer was not necessarily also a “gentleman”. However, the farmer was several rungs above the labourers who worked for him. These labourers are not even afforded the title, “Mr” and in some reports are referred to as “the peasantry”.

The popular hymn, “All things bright and beautiful”, published in 1848, originally included the verse which read:

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.

Campaigning for change.

It is not surprising that there was, throughout England, a growing movement advocating reform. However, many who could remember the events of the French Revolution of the 1790s, which had seen the overthrow of the monarchy and the execution of many members of the upper classes, continued to fear that something similar would happen in England. Demands such as the right for everyone to vote, equal rights before the law or the abolition of child labour – all of which seemed perfectly reasonable to many – were regarded by some members of the establishment as a threat to their way of life and a slippery slope towards a repeat in England of what had happened in France.

By contrast, the events in France had inspired others to advocate reform of parliament and the law. One such was the wealthy farmer from Wiltshire, Henry Hunt, an inspirational speaker who had been given the nick-name “Orator” Hunt. In 1819, he had been invited to speak at a rally in Manchester which was attended by a crowd of around 60,000 people. Fearful of the effect one of Hunt’s rousing speeches would have upon the crowd, the local magistrates panicked and sent in the militia, who were armed with sabres. In the resulting massacre, up to fifteen people are believed to have been killed and hundreds injured.

Another radical thinker of the period was William Cobbett, the son of a farmer from Surrey who had become involved in political debate and the need for parliamentary reform. Cobbett was also a journalist and as well as essays and letters he published a weekly newspaper called The Political Register which soon became popular amongst the poorer classes. Not everyone was able to read Cobbett’s newspaper for themselves but it is likely that those lucky enough to be literate would have read aloud to others and so the views expressed were shared more widely than the circulation of the paper copies.

William Cobbett

possibly by George Cooke
oil on canvas, circa 1831
NPG 1549

It is very likely that that copies of The Political Register would have been shared or read aloud, perhaps in the public houses or other meeting places, around Hungerford or Kintbury such that the poor and oppressed rural labourers became aware of those who had already set out to challenge the status quo.

The Threshing Machine

The Threshing Machine , William Wilson © Estate of William Wilson OBE RSA

National Gallery of Scotland

Threshing is the process of separating the grains of wheat from the chaff. Before the introduction of threshing machines, this was a very labour intensive process done by hand using a flail. Threshing took place in the autumn after the harvest had been brought in and provided employment for hard-pressed agricultural labourers at a time in the year when there was very little other farm work available. At a time when wages were lower than ever and the price of bread increasing, what the farm labourer could earn by threshing helped to keep him and his family throughout the bleakest part of the winter.

Threshing machines required very few labourers to operate them so their introduction meant the loss of work for many men. And loss of work at such a crucial time meant, for many, the fear of starvation throughout the winter months.

Many agricultural workers literally feared for their lives.

Bibliography

Griffin, Emma, (2018), Diets, hunger & living standards during the British industrial revolution, Past & Present.

Lindert & Williamson, (1983), English workers living standards in the industrial revolution, The Economic History Review

Phillips, Daphne (1993), Berkshire: A County history, Newbury: Countryside Books

Thompson, David (1969), England in the nineteenth century, Pelican

Trevelyan, G.M.(1960) Illustrated English Social History:4, Pelican

Woodward, Sir Llewellyn (1962), The Age of Reform, Oxford: OUP

Theresa A. Lock, Kintbury, October 17^th, 2020.

Whiting, bricks and Jane Austen’s stockings

As in many other villages in the nineteenth century, many Kintburians of the time were employed either in agriculture or other associated rural crafts. However, the position of the village between the chalk of the North Wessex downs and the clays of the Kennet valley gave rise to two other industries which have long since disappeared.

Chalk is a naturally occurring commodity hereabouts and it provided the raw material for the whiting industry. Excavated at various locations around the village – nineteenth century maps show several “chalk pits” now mostly filled in and long forgotten – the chalk would be crushed in specially adapted mills and mixed with water to produce whiting. The finished product had a variety of uses including bleaching ships’ sails, mixed with linseed oil to produce builders’ putty and more locally, to whitewash walls.

In 1862 there were five manufactories of whiting in Kintbury, one of which was making 600 tons of whiting per annum. Remains of what is believed to be an edge runner mill used in the preparation of the chalk can still be seen beneath the undergrowth on Irish Hill, just to the east of Kintbury. Another whiting works was situated close to a chalk pit in Laylands Green, just to the south of the village, and a third was situated on land belonging to Barton Court.

By 1905 there was just one whiting manufactory left: the Kintbury Whiting Company, which operated in the village until the 1930s.

Whilst some chalk was extracted using open cast methods and so leaving pits which, at a later date, required in filling, it was also mined. This method left cavernous underground caves as the photo on the Geological Society website shows:

http://www.ukgeohazards.info/pages/eng_geol/subsidence_geohazard/eng_geol_subsidence_chalk.htm

As it is very soft, chalk is not a good building material. There are very few stone walls around Kintbury although there is natural flint in some older buildings. It is not surprising, therefore, that brick making was an important industry in Kintbury until the early years of the twentieth century, utilizing clay extracted from various locations around the village.

The last known brick maker in Kintbury was George Thomas Killick whose brickworks were in Laylands Green. Some examples of Killick’s bricks can still be seen around the village, set into relatively modern walls and placed so that the “GTK KINTBURY” can be displayed. It is thought that these examples might have originally been made for advertising purposes rather than for use in bricklaying.

One lasting legacy of Kintbury’s industrial past is what is now Kintbury Newt Ponds Nature Reserve. The ponds are the result of industrial excavations, long since water-filled and colonised by three types of newt: smooth, palmate and great crested. As the great crested newt has statutory protection the site of their habitat cannot be built on. Today it is a nature reserve under the protection of the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust.

https://www.bbowt.org.uk/nature-reserves/kintbury-newt-ponds

A very different industry to either making bricks or whiting is the manufacture of silk. A naturally produced fibre obtained from the silk moth, it can be woven into a delicate fabric much more frequently used for a variety of garments and accessories in years gone by. The volume 4 of the Berkshire editions of the Victoria County Histories (London, 1924) says that there was a silk mill in Kintbury in the early nineteenth century. Unfortunately, there is no record of where, exactly, it was situated although it may well have been near to, or on the site of, the former mill ( now converted to apartments ) close to the station.

Very little is known about silk production in Kintbury. The census of 1841 – the first to record names and occupations – lists just one person in Kintbury whose occupation mentions employment in silk manufacture: eighteen year old Luisa Shuttle is listed as being a “silk winder”. By 1851, no one, it seems, was employed at the silk mill.

Tantalizingly, there is a fleeting reference to silk, with association to Kintbury, in one of Jane Austen’s letters of 1796. Writing to her sister Cassandra who was then staying with the Fowle family at the vicarage, Jane says,

“You say nothing of the silk stockings; I flatter myself, therefore, that Charles has not purchased any, as I can not very well pay for them; all my money is spent in buying white gloves and pink persian.”

It is likely that Jane is sharing something of a joke with Cassandra and we will, of course, never know its full context. However, it seems clear that Charles Fowle, son of Rev Thomas Fowle, with whom Cassandra was staying, had at some point been asked to purchase silk stockings for Jane and that it has to be extremely likely that this was because they would be produced in Kintbury.

Sources:

https://new.millsarchive.org

https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/gateway

Berkshire Chronicle (online at www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk)

“Chalk links in North Wessex Downs” https://www.northwessexdowns.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ChalkLinks_Racing.pdf

Ancestry.co.uk

Elizabeth Caroline Fowle: A story of good intentions thwarted

Elizabeth Caroline Fowle, known to her family as Caroline and born in Kintbury, 1798, was the 4th child and second daughter born to Rev Fulwar Craven Fowle, the vicar of Kintbury, and his wife Eliza.

Caroline’s elder sister, Mary Jane, had been born in 1792, and her younger sister, Isabella, in 1799.

Caroline’s grandfather had been the sometime governor of South Carolina, Charles Craven of Hamstead Park, and his wife Elizabeth. Lord Craven of Hamstead Marshall was a cousin of her father’s. As the daughter of the vicarage, however, it is likely that Caroline did not enjoy such a lavish or opulent lifestyle despite her family’s lineage.

Caroline was baptised in Kintbury on January 19^th 1798 by the Rev James Austen, brother to Jane and Cassandra Austen. James and Fulwar had been friends since their boyhood when Fulwar had been a pupil at the school run by James’s father, Rev George Austen, at Steventon in Hampshire.

Growing up in Kintbury, Caroline would have met other members of the Austen family when they came to stay at the vicarage, as well as Jane Austen’s lifelong friend, Martha Lloyd, who was also Caroline’s aunt, being her mother’s sister. Cassandra Austen, Jane’s sister, had become engaged to Caroline’s uncle Tom but sadly he had died in 1797 before they could marry.

We know very little about Caroline’s life growing up. In 1801, Jane Austen wrote to Cassandra that Caroline “is improved in her person; I think her now a really pretty child. She is still very shy & does not talk much.”

In April 1827, Mary Jane Fowle married Lieutenant Christopher Dexter, travelling with him to India. Unfortunately he died in Madras in 1834 so Mary Jane returned to Kintbury alone.

Isabella married John Lidderdale, the local general practitioner in 1845 and continued to live in Kintbury.

Caroline never married. On the 1841 census she is recorded as living alone and described as a gentlewoman. When Cassandra Austen died in 1845, she left £1000 to Caroline in her will. As it happens, this was the very same amount left to Cassandra in the will of Thomas Fowle, Caroline’s uncle. Cassandra also left to Caroline a large Indian shawl which had once belonged to Mrs Jane Fowle, Caroline’s grandmother. Quite why Caroline was the only sister to benefit from Cassandra’s will, we do not know.

At the time of the 1851 census, Caroline was living at the house known as Barrymores, off the Inkpen Road. The census shows that she had two live-in servants and was described as being of “independent means” both of which suggest that Caroline was relatively well -off.

A copy of Caroline’s will, now in the Berkshire Records Office shows that she wished Kintbury villagers as well as family members to benefit from her legacies. She wanted her money to pay for a school room, with a garden or playground, to be built or purchased for village children. There was to be a new organ for the church and various family members including her nieces and nephews were also to benefit.

Sadly, most of Caroline’s good intentions came to nothing. A problem arose for her executors and the Solicitor General had to be consulted because, “she had been of unsound mind about six months before her death and had been placed in a (indistinct) expensive private Lunatic Establishment.” As a result, “ the expenses of her maintenance exceeded the amount of her income so that her friends were obliged to make considerable ( indistinct ) out of their own monies to meet the demands of the establishment in the removal of her body for internment”.

The establishment at which Caroline died was Otto House in Kensington – a long way from the village in which she had spent all her life. We have no way of knowing exactly what had been the cause of her being “of unsound mind”; this might have been a form of dementia or any other mental health condition which, it is very likely, would have been poorly understood when Caroline died in 1860.

Furthermore, we have no idea why Caroline had been sent to Otto House. Perhaps, John Lidderdale, Kintbury’s GP and Caroline’s brother-in-law, believed it to be the best place for her oven though there must have been establishments nearer.

Mary Jane Dexter continued to live in Kintbury until her death in 1883. At the time of her death she was living with her widowed sister, Isabella Lidderdale. Isabella died in 1885. All three sisters are buried in Kintbury.

It is an interesting thought that Mary Jane, Caroline and Isabella would have been three of the last people in Kintbury to have known Jane Austen in person, to have been able to say, “Yes, we knew her, she was a good friend of our parents”.

Sources and references:

Jane Austen’s Letters. Collected and Edited by Deirdre Le Faye. 1995

Copy of the Will of Elizabeth Caroline Fowle, Berkshire Records Office

Ancestry

The canal comes to Kintbury and beyond

It is difficult to imagine Kintbury without the canal; today the Kennet and Avon has become part of the natural landscape as much as the streams of the Kennet and the surrounding meadows. However, it was not always so.

The very first canal to be built in England was the Bridgewater Canal, constructed in 1761 to carry coal from the Duke of Bridgewater’s coal mines to the newly industrialised Manchester. Over the next 70 years, many more followed, not as an amenity to facilitate leisure activities as we may think of canals today, but as part of the industrial revolution. Canals were, at the time, the easiest and cheapest way to transport heavy materials for distribution from source to work shop or factory.

Business owners, landed gentry and the like would have followed the progress of the canal network and the economic advantages it brought to each area. In March 1788, a meeting was held in Hungerford “to consider the Utility of an Extension of the Navigable River from Newbury to Hungerford as far further as shall hereafter be thought eligible.”

Obviously, the proposed canal was going nowhere without the co-operation of other landowners; not surprisingly, the idea was sold to them by insisting that a subsequent reduction in the price of the carriage of coals and other heavy materials would significantly advantage their estates.

The landowners, it seems, were easily won over and in its edition of October 14^th 1793, the Reading Mercury published the following:

“Notice is hereby given, That application is intended to be made to Parliament in the next session, for leave to bring in a Bill and to obtain an Act for making and maintaining a navigable canal and communications for Boats, Barges and other Vehicles… from the River Kennet at or near the town of Newbury … to the River Avon at or near the City of Bath.“

We are so used to the presence of the canal today that it is easy to forget this proposal and its impact in its day must have been very similar to the decision in the late 1960s that the new M4 motorway should be built across the Berkshire Downs.

The first chairman of the Kennet & Avon Canal Company was to be Charles Dundas Esq., MP for Berkshire since 1794. He lived at Barton Court, near Kintbury.

The engineer to be responsible for the new canal was the relatively inexperienced young Scotsman, John Rennie. However, very few people had actually built canals at this time so new skills had to be learnt and adapted from the experience of military engineers.

There were, of course, no mechanical diggers, earth movers or any other high tech equipment available to Rennie and his workforce. The 40 feet wide and 5 feet deep canal was dug entirely by men using picks, shovels and wheelbarrows. The men – known as “navvies”, a shortened form of “navigators” – were mostly recruited from agricultural workers who could earn much more working on the canal than they had been able to on the land. Unfortunately, though perhaps not surprisingly, gangs of young men, most probably living away from their homes and families for the duration, often turned to drinking and drunken, disruptive behaviour became a feature of the navvies’ life style.

As it passed just to the north of Kintbury, the canal avoided most of the village although one notable exception was the vicarage. At that time, this was the much older house that predated the 1860 Victorian gothic building and was the one known to Cassandra & Jane Austen. We know that various members of the Austen family would have stayed with the Fowle family at the vicarage during the years of the canal’s construction or just after and I cannot help but wonder what Jane would have thought of all the earth moving and construction work being carried on just yards from the house.

In June 1797, the eastern end of the Kennet & Avon canal opened from Newbury to Kintbury. The Reading Mercury reported,

“A barge of near 60 tons having on board the band of the 15th Regiment of Dragoons left Newbury at twelve o’clock and arrived at Kintbury at half past two where the Committee of Management, having dined with their chairman, Charles Dundas, Esq., embarked at six.”

Kintbury had entered the canal age. A wharf was built opposite the Red Lion (now the Dundas Arms) to facilitate the transport by barge rather than the slower carriers’ cart and this benefitted local businesses such as the whiting industry. This was the march of progress and the future was to be horse-drawn and afloat.

But that, of course, was before the railway!

References:

Reading Mercury (britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk)

The Kennet & Avon Canal Trust ( katrust.org.uk)

The Waterways Trust (thewaterwaystrust.org.uk)

Hungerford Virtual Museum (hungerfordvirtualmuseum.co.uk)

How violence at a football match led to accusations of witchcraft

If the events of 1598 are anything to go by, football violence is nothing new!

One of the oldest monuments in St Mary’s church, Kintbury is a brass situated to the right of the altar commemorating John and Alice Gunter. John died in 1598 and according to the inscription on the brass, there is a similar monument in Sisister ( the old name for Cirencester in Gloucestershire ) where Alice died.

For all we know, John and Alice lived a quiet life when they were in Kintbury. However, the same cannot be said for other family members who achieved a certain notoriety during their lifetime.

Anne Gunter, the youngest child of Brian Gunter, had been baptised in Hungerford in 1584. By 1598, Brian was lay rector at North Moreton, in the Vale of the White Horse.

There are several versions of what happened next but the main events of the story go something like this:

Some time in 1598, a football match was held in North Moreton. Back then, the sport did not enjoy the rules or regulations that we have today – a match could involve any number of people and take place over a very wide area, not a specified pitch. However, one aspect we are still familiar with today was the occasional outbreak of associated violence. It seems that, during the game, two brothers, John and Richard Gregory, along with Brian Gunter’s son, William, were involved in some sort of fight. Brian Gunter intervened, hitting Richard and John with the pommel of a dagger. As a result of the injuries caused by this, both brothers died.

Not surprisingly, the deaths of the brothers resulted in animosity between the Gregory and Gunter families. When Anne Gunter became ill in 1604 and then again the following year, Brian Gunter tried to blame Elizabeth Gregory along with Agnes Pepwell and her daughter Mary for causing Anne’s illness. This was, of course, at a time when many people believed in witches and witchcraft and it was not uncommon for certain women to be blamed when unexplained illnesses or deaths occurred in a village.

The wide range of symptoms which Anne was experiencing, including vomiting and fits, Brian Gunter maintained, were the result of her being bewitched. It is more likely, however, that these symptoms were the result of the toxic mixture including wine and salad oil which he had made his daughter drink.

Elizabeth Gregory and Mary Pepwell were tried for witchcraft at Abingdon in 1605. They were found not guilty.

Brian Gunter was not happy with this verdict and managed to take his grievance to the king, James I. James referred the case to the Archbishop of Canterbury who in turn referred it to Samuel Harsnett, an Anglican cleric who was later to become the Archbishop of York and someone known to be skeptical about the popular belief in witchcraft. The case was eventually heard in the Star Chamber, a court of appeal that sat in the Palace of Westminster.

When she was cross questioned, Anne admitted that her illness had been faked and that her father had persuaded her to play out the deception. It is thought that she was eventually acquitted since she had been coerced into cooperating with her father’s plot to discredit the Gregory family.

It is possible that Harsnett and other members of the church became involved in this case, taking it to the higher court, as they wanted to see an end to those profiting from exorcisms in which non existing “daemons” were “driven out” of gullible victims.

Kintbury Women’s Institute in the 1930s

The Women’s Institute is a community based organisation for women which originated in Canada in 1897. By the 1930s branches had been formed throughout Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Penny Fletcher’s perusal of Kintbury W.I. minutes through the 1930s reveals a world of thrift, a need for economy and an enthusiasm for self-help.

On Friday 9^th May, 1930, a meeting was held in the Coronation Hall to consider forming a Women’s Institute in Kintbury. Mrs Clifton-Browne, wife of the sitting MP, addressed the 56 women present and afterwards it was decided to form a branch of the W.I. in Kintbury.

The first meeting took place in the Coronation Hall on 11^th June, at 2.30pm. Eighty-four ladies joined and enjoyed a most helpful demonstration of ‘Fruit Bottling’. Stalls and Entertainment Committees were formed, and 3d was to be charged for tea. There was to be a minimum age of 16 and women from Hamstead Marshall would be eligible to join.

The K.W.I. was in business.

At the second meeting thirty-six new members joined bringing the total membership to one hundred and thirty. These pioneers were treated to a talk on “Myths and Legends of Trees and Flowers”. Members were hesitant, through either shyness or modesty, as to whether they would enter for a Handicraft Exhibition.

It was proposed and seconded that the Coronation Hall caretaker be given 1/6 (12.5p) each meeting for carrying water for tea and that she should charge for laundering tablecloths and tea towels etc. The pattern was established for one afternoon meeting and one evening.

In August, the meeting was held at Hungerford Park, home of the President, Mrs. Turner. One hundred members attended. Mrs. Toynbee was due to speak on “Health” but she arrived too late so “various competitions and amusements” were indulged in and a very happy time was had by all. It was past 7.00pm when the Hungerford Band played ‘God Save the King’ and members returned by coach having had a “real good time”.

The September meeting had a good attendance. Members suggested that in future speakers should stand on the platform the better to be heard at the back of the hall. There were also requests for talks on herbs, classes on First Aid, Home Nursing, Glove Making, Dressmaking and Cookery. The business at this September meeting was followed by a talk on, “Travel in The Sahara”, two violin solos from Mrs. Thomas and community singing. “Musical parcels” caused much merriment.

The glove making classes were started as requested and during the rest of this first year there were also talks on Dressmaking and The League of Nations.

However an attempt to practise for a community singing competition was not successful as the hall was too dark owing to the electric light being cut off. There was, however, a Round Table Conference on Dental Treatment.

In January 1931 the Hall Committee raised the rent to 5/- (25p ) for monthly meetings and 2/- (10p) for committee meetings. The January and February meetings were held in the afternoon because of the weather but it was impossible to carry out the January programme because the electricity was cut off again. In February, the bad weather kept the attendance down to sixty.

The Institute now settled into a regular pattern. The lectures included a speaker from the blind veterans’ society, St. Dunstan’s. He was described in the minutes as a, “brave and interesting man”, who was listened to attentively. Other talks covered a variety of topics including health, soft slipper making and sweet making.

Competitions included: the best ironed cotton garment, pegging clothes onto a line in a given time (the winning time 2 minutes 10 seconds), and a workman’s dinner made for a maximum of 6d (2.5p).

In December a Round Table Conference was held on “My Best Cold Remedy” and “My Pet Economy”. Finance was clearly a pressing issue at this time and the members had already decided to postpone the purchase of a tea trolley to save money. Also in that month a letter was received from H.Q. urging members to “Buy British Goods” to help the country in this “time of crisis”.

1932 opened with a lecture “From Plantation to Tea Pot” by a Lyon’s representative with lantern slides of Indian tea estates and the tour of the London factory by The Prince of Wales.

During 1932 other talks were given on The History of Kintbury by Mrs Mabel Bowen and Mrs. Turner’s visit to India. The lantern slides which accompanied these lectures were always shown by Mr. Chislett. The social time held such delights as card games, gramophone records and sketches. After a discussion as to whether the W.I. should contribute towards a new piano for the hall, it was decided on the advice of the Treasurer that money should not be given because there was a need for greater economy.

The weather was very cold and showery in February 1932. Each year W.I. members bought bulbs in the autumn and in the spring the resulting blooms were judged by the gardener at Barton Court, by kind permission of Colonel Lawson.

1932 saw Inkpen W.I. performing a “Tableux –scenes from eight countries” and the printing of Mrs. Bowen’s “History of Kintbury and The Great Bell”, which cost £1.10/- (£1.50p) Copies sold at 6d (2.5p). Fifteen copies of “The County Cookery Book, From Hand to Mouth” were sold.

It was suggested that a Jumble Sale be held to finance a charabanc (an open topped coach) outing to Bournemouth but so many jumble sales were being held that it had to be a Whist Drive. It was also proposed to form a Croquet Club but it was impossible to find a ground and would have entailed expenditure.

The 1932 Christmas party made a profit of £2-4s-2d ( £2- 21p) which was given to the Nursing Association.

During 1933, talks were given on re-modelling hats, home dying, a nature talk with slides, and herbs and their value –this given by a medical herbalist. The inevitable travelogue for 1933 was on Japan. Miss Johnson demonstrated “the best use of an old macintosh”. Competitions included: packing a parcel in a given time; refooting stockings; a woman’s dress for 4/-(20p) and a child’s for 2/- (10p) and reseating boys’ knickers! Members sang, danced and produced sketches.

Classes in hat making were started and members agreed to help at Newbury Market Stall each month. A charabanc outing to Bognor was arranged for 6^th July, fare 5/- (25p) ,children under five-free. A Baby Show was organized and Mrs. Frances Belk and her pupils gave an exhibition of dancing.

The year ended with the Social Services League asking members to help by sending materials or attending working sessions. By February, 1934, The Social Services Working Party had sent 550 garments to Reading and Gateshead and were working on a community blanket.

The W.I. members willingly agreed to help in a combined effort to pay off the hall debt for heating. Controversy arose regarding the giving of prizes for competitions and the President urged the awarding of marks instead

In March 1934 the meeting had to be abandoned due to bad weather –only 35 members attended.

Folk Dancing was rather popular especially after the meeting in May, when eight members of the English Folk Dance and Song Society gave a talk and demonstration. The Girl Guides attended and the minutes called it “a merry meeting”.

The most interesting talks of the year were “What Countrywomen of the World are Doing”; ”The Handy Woman” with many useful tips for safety, mending and comforts for the home; and an inspiring talk by Mrs. Norman May on ”Our Institute” when apparently her remark about ‘broody hens’ caused much amusement.

In October a handicraft and produce exhibition was held and opened to the public. There were 232 entries and the Thrift Cradle was offered to Savernake Hospital, Marlborough.

The year ended with members bringing their children to a Punch and Judy Show which was much enjoyed by young and old.

1935 opened with yet another travelogue, this time by a Mrs. Seymour who had moved to Kintbury and had been to Fiji. Economy was still clearly very much an issue as the competition was for something new produced from something old. First prize went to a child’s pullover, skirt and knickers; and second to a coatee, dress and bonnet produced from a lady’s blouse.

Mrs. Bowen urged members to make the meetings more enjoyable socially.

In April ideas for the Jubilee celebrations were discussed and a tea for 300 children was decided upon. The resulting event was a great success.

A talk on birds to which husbands and friends were invited was pronounced one of the most enjoyable talks ever –this truly voiced the opinion of all present, apparently.

Mrs. Clifton-Browne gave a “useful” talk on “Using our wits to use our bits” which appeared to be many practical garments from women’s underwear. She also gave the W.I. a “jolly social half an hour by introducing new games”. It is to be hoped Mabel Bowen appreciated this.

In July, the Flower Show was cancelled due to lack of exhibits and Shefford Woodlands were congratulated upon winning the ‘Sun-Ray Diagram’- whatever that was!

In September Lady Glyn talked on “Clinics and Physical Training”. After demonstrating exercises she spoke of their value to all women whether busy mothers or women of leisure. After this invigorating talk members were soothed by Mrs. Robinson and Mrs. Johnson playing the harp and piano.

October produced a very wet afternoon and late arrivals. They came to hear Inspector Taggart of The Women’s Auxillary Service talk on Women Police and their work. She stressed that they exist mainly to assist in cases concerning women, girls and children. There was also a short address from a W.I. visitor from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

1936 opened with the death of the King on 20^th January. A subscription was sent towards a wreath that had been sent to Windsor.

The year’s travel talks took place in March and July and were on Mallorca and Sweden. A request for a lower rental for the hall was met with a reply from Mr. Killick that he regretted all the committee could do was to allow the W.I. to have 11 meetings for £5 instead of £5-10s.

Mrs. Baring asked for help as she was having “some poor persons from London” to spend time in her garden. In July she gave particulars of the treat that she intended to give these “poor” Londoners.

The summer outing to Brighton was to cost 7/6 (37.5p) and there was a competition for “Six conditions to help promote’ happy and healthy motherhood.”

A “Bring & Buy” sale raised £1 – 12s -9d ( £1-62p ) to go towards the extension to Newbury Hospital.

The Newbury Agricultural Show was held at Elcot Park in September of this year and Inkpen and Kintbury joined forces to visit it and run a stall.

At the Annual Meeting it was decided to form a choir and Mrs. Turner appealed for small gifts for Kintbury inmates of the Hungerford Institution ( the workhouse ) and toys for the Personal Service League. Both these appeals received a very good response. It was also decided that in the event of a member dying, they would give one dozen red roses with a sprig of rosemary, tied with a green ribbon.

Social half hours consisted this year of folk dancing, whist drives, old time choruses and table games.

The year ended with “character songs” – a jolly effort judged by Major Fleetwood – and a mime entitled “The Tale of a Royal Vest” which ended amidst enthusiastic applause.

The 1936 Children’s Party, which had been postponed because of the King’s death, had now been postponed again because, “there was so much illness about”.

The Great Western Railway Co sent slides of Lorna Doone and Westward Ho country for which Mr. Chislett, as always, lent his lantern and showed the slides. In the following month of March he again assisted Colonel Johnson Smith with his lantern lecture on East Africa. This last was followed by country dancing by the Kintbury Team – and they well deserved the hearty clap accorded to them.

In April, Mrs. Bowen, as a representative for The Preservation of Rural England, asked to be informed of the destruction of wild flowers and other such damage. Rural England must have been the topic of the year for the May talk was on trees and later in the year members were asked to “collect sheep’s wool from hedgerows for making a co-operative patchwork quilt.”

In June a photograph was shown of the W.I. decorated wagon for the Coronation Day procession. Mrs. Baxendale then asked if anyone was interested in a trip to Paris – but no one was. October produced a most inspiring lecture by Mrs Coslett on “How to Turn Ourselves into what We Want to Be” after which the audience left no doubt as to their appreciation by the applause accorded her.

Social half hours and competitions included: home made buttons, dressing a model in a sheet, a smelling competition (?), hats from crinkly paper and pins –this last was popular and twelve artistic models were displayed. In October it was remarked that too many whist drives were being held in the village. The year ended with Miss. K. Weatherby singing carols and giving a brief description of the age and origin of each. A small choir of W.I. members rendered the Grasmere Carol.

1938 opened with members offering to work on a banner. Afternoon meetings were changed from 2.30pm to 2.45pm and the Keep Fit Classes were postponed until the autumn due to the difficulty in obtaining an instructor.

February brought forth a discussion on the advantages of a drainage scheme and this was followed in April by a Mr. Raine from Hungerford who gave a short talk on the possibilities of a drainage scheme in Kintbury.

In March the ever hopeful Mrs. Baxendale asked for names for a trip to Holland.

A Whist Drive was successful enough to raise £4-9s-6d (£4 – 47.5p) for the outing and it was decided to go to the Zoo. The cost was to be 5/6 (27.5p), children 3/- (15p) with 1/- (5p) deposit to be forfeited if members failed to go. There was much enthusiasm for starting a cricket team which was to be financed by a Jumble Sale. That spring all members agreed to plant two tubers of Sharpes express potatoes and send the crop to an institution or hospital. Members were also asked to bring daffodils for the same cause.

In the summer it was announced that Harry Offer, son and grandson of two members, was one of only four children in the country to win the RSPCA Band of Mercy competition styled ‘Animals in our Garden’. Five other W.Is joined Kintbury in July for a meeting at Hungerford Park, home of Mrs. Turner. In September, owing to exceptional weather, the Flower Show schedule was omitted.

Also in September the decision was finally taken to begin Keep Fit Classes. The cost was to be 2/6 (12.5p) for 24 lessons. Unfortunately the start was delayed for at least a week owing to the “International Situation.”

The W.I. was asked to raise funds for the decorating of the Coronation Hall and so it was planned to run two socials, one for the Hall and one for the Cricket Club.

In October ’38, Miss Ada Ward delighted all with her descriptive talk on a ”Day in London”. Her charming personality and ready wit acted as a tonic after the anxiety of the previous week.

The year included the usual travelogue, this time on Spain. Lady Peel spoke on folk songs, Mrs. Goodheart spoke on Fish Cookery, and there was a talk on local history – presumably by local historian Mabel Bowen.

The year ended with particulars being given of a new Pension Scheme, pamphlets explaining which could be obtained from the Post Office.

– Penny Fletcher, October 2023

A devastating fire and the Kintbury fire engine

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 7^th 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 7^th 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

The Shelley Family & Elcot Park

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.

Mary Shelley by Richard Rothwell, oil on canvas, circa 1831-1840, NPG 1235
© National Portrait Gallery, London

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.

Theresa Lock, August 2023

Acknowledgements:

Images in this article have been reproduced under creative commons licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

The hidden life & legacy of Marrianne Dundas

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”?

Charles Dundas, Baron Amesbury by William Say, after Sir William Beechey. Mezzotint, (1823) 8 5/8 in. x 7 1/2 in. (218 mm x 189 mm) paper size. Given by Mrs Masterman, 1963, Reference Collection NPG D11326 © National Portrait Gallery, London

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 27^th 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 4^th 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.

Theresa Lock, July 2023

Photograph of Charles Dundas reproduced under creative commons licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

A Woman’s Place?

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.

Image: Suffragette March in Hyde Park, by Christina Broom. Cream-toned velox print, 23 July 1910
4 1/2 in. x 5 5/8 in. in. (113 mm x 144 mm), given by Winifred Margaret Broom, 1940, Photographs Collection, NPG x17396 © National Portrait Gallery, London.

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

© National Portrait Gallery, London

The NWN of March 31^st 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 21^st 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 28^th 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.

Theresa Lock, July 2023

Acknowledgements:

Photographs in this article have been reproduced under creative commons licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/