Tag: Fowle

Kintbury in the time of Jane Austen

Jane Austen, the celebrated novelist, lived from 1775 to 1817. Although the Austens were a Hampshire family, there was a close friendship between them and the Fowle family of Kintbury and we know that various Austen family members visited our village.

The village Jane knew was, of course, very different from the village we know now. So, what do we know about Kintbury- and the wider world – in Jane Austen’s time?

For much of Jane’s life, England was at war with the French. When Jane was 5 in 1780, the Gordon Riots took place. In 1788 George III’s  first illness began and the first convicts were sent to Australia. In 1792, the September massacre took place in France and 12,000 political prisoners were murdered. In 1793 Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed and France declared war on Great Britain. Then, in 1797 the French landed in Wales, – the last invasion of Britain!  In 1798 the Battle of the Nile took place.

In 1804 Napoleon had himself crowned Emperor, then 1805 saw the battle of Trafalgar and the death of Nelson. In 1807 the Slave Trade was abolished, 1810 and 11 saw the King’s illness recur and the Regency established. In 1812 Napoleon invaded Russia and America declared war on Great Britain. The war ended in 1814 and 1815 saw the battle of Waterloo and restoration of Louis XVIII to the throne of France.

The 1834 Poor Law Act saw the building of more workhouses throughout the country to house the poor and destitute; one was built in Kintbury.

For cricket fans June, 1814 also saw the first match to be played at Lords.

Jane received letters from her sailor brothers and other relatives and was therefore conversant with European news. In her novels, sailors  and soldiers appear but there is never any specific reference to the situation in Europe or to war. Similarly, life in inland villages such as Kintbury would have been lived with far less reference to the turmoil across the channel and the fear of invasion than that which threatened some coastal areas during the war with France.

The Kintbury Jane knew was much smaller than the modern village we know today; most of the housing was located around the centre and surrounded by fields or open land. Dotted around the village were whiting pits as well as pits from which clay for brick making was extracted.

Irish Hill had its own little clutch of cottages which remained until the 20th century. Despite the legend that it was named “Irish Hill” for the Irish navvies who worked on the canal, the original name, which predated the arrival of the canal, was in fact Ayrish Hill. It was the site of yet another of Kintbury’s whiting manufactories and after the canal came into existence had a jetty where the whiting was loaded onto barges.

The Rev’d Thomas Fowle II was vicar of Kintbury from 1762 to 1798. He had been a close friend of Jane Austen’s father George since their days together as students at Oxford University.

The Old Vicarage in Kintbury
The Old Vicarage in Kintbury

In 1775 an alarming event at the Rev’d Mr Fowle’s vicarage was reported in the local papers: on Wednesday 6th  September, at about nine of the evening, a ball of fire entered the house at one of the garrets which went through the house, melted the bell wires, threw two candlesticks from the table, entered a cupboard and set fire to some papers. The family were much alarmed but no further injury sustained.

Also in June 1775, the paper reported that smallpox had broken out and was likely to increase. It was advisable to inoculate the poor and as the situation was very hazardous people were advised not to visit the area. This is the attack in which the Lloyd family at nearby Enborne suffered.  At this time, Martha – who was later to become Jane’s close friend – was 10, Eliza – later to be Mrs Fulwar Fowle – was 8, and their sister Mary,4. Sadly their brother, Charles, aged 7, died.

In 1779 Jeff Painter, an old parish pauper, was found dead and Mrs Giles, in a despondent state, cast herself into a well. The Jury’s verdict on this last was ‘lunacy’.

One notable Kintbury resident at this time was Samuel Dixon, a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn, who lived with his sister in Wallingtons, (now St Cassian’s Centre), Kintbury. One night in early 1784, when Dixon was staying in London, his butler, a man called Benjamin Griffiths, broke into Wallingtons, stealing several items and setting fire to the house which was burnt to the ground.

At first, Griffiths was not suspected of being the arsonist and, ironically, he was sent to inform Dixon of what had happened. However, his behaviour aroused suspicion. When charged he confessed and cut his throat but recovered, was convicted and hanged.

 Griffiths had previously been a toll gate keeper and was suspected of murdering his partner although never convicted of the crime.  There were, according to Newbury historian Walter Money, three toll gates between Newbury and Marlborough and Dixon was on the board of The Turnpike Trust which might go some way to explain why he later employed Griffith. Dixon tried, unsuccessfully, to get the death sentence commuted. In his will left money to two of Griffiths’ children.

Samuel Dixon died in 1892. His sister Elizabeth had predeceased him in 1786 and he had carried out her wishes in providing the parish with a ‘good fire engine’ which is now in the Newbury museum. 

Arson was not the only crime to be committed by a resident of Georgian Kintbury.

In October 1785, Charles Smart was transported for seven years for stealing wheat from Mr. Barker. Then, in July, 1787, Thomas Page was sentenced to be kept for three months hard labour in the House of Correction for leaving his family chargeable to the parish.

Also in 1785, an advertisement appeared in a local paper for a Kintbury School for Young Gentlemen.  It stated that the young gentlemen were to be carefully instructed in language according to the principles of grammar.  The charges for boarders at this school were:

  • Boys under twelve: 12 guineas
  • Boys 12-13: 14 guineas
  • Over 14: 16 guineas.

If the boys were kept at school over the Christmas and midsummer periods then the charge was 1 guinea.

In January, 1790, Thomas Hillin was committed to the county Bridewell charged on the oath of James Thatcher, surgeon of Hungerford, with attempting to extort money by threatening to charge him with a detestable crime! However, what, exactly, the detestable crime was, we do not know!

A village woollen manufactory was advertised in July 1797 as containing: “scribbling, raising, shearing etc in a high state of perfection, erected in a commodious building with 40 looms, twisting mill and other articles used in making cloth. A Dye House with every fixture for washing and dying and land surrounding the manufactory desirable and situated with ample supply of water and built to command ever benefit of light and air.”

This must have employed a number of people.

 There was also a silk manufactory said to be situated behind the cottages on The Cliffs.  Perhaps this was why local resident and MP Charles Dundas raised the question in the House concerning imports of French silk which were ruining the English silk trade.

1797 saw the completion of the canal from Newbury to Kintbury. A wharf was built opposite the Red Lion and a busy trade soon developed in all sorts of goods but also it aided the increasingly productive Whiting Industry. The inaugural voyage consisted of  a horse drawn barge carrying the band of the 15th Dragoons and several important dignitaries. They were watched by large crowds, reached Kintbury in two hours and dined with the Canal’s Chairman Charles Dundas before setting back to Newbury in the rain.

A crime particularly associated, in the popular imagination, with the Georgian period must surely be highway robbery and it is not surprising that there was at least one example of this crime recorded in Kintbury. In March 1798. John Williams alias Timms and John Davis alias William Emmery held up the Hon Hugh Lindsay and Robert Spottiswood on the highway in the parish of Kintbury.  The gentlemen were relieved of money, banknotes and a gold watch.

Daniel Heath is mentioned as innkeeper for the Blue Ball; He was still there in 1830 when, it was said, Prize Fights took place at the back of the inn. Prize fights were a popular sport in Regency times and mostly took place outside cities and towns and their location kept secret. This was the age of Tom Crib famous for his victory over the American Tom Molyneaux and Gentleman John Jackson, the English Champion, both of whom taught boxing to gentlemen.

A more peaceful pursuit was the annual was the Pink Show which began in 1778. Silver plate was presented as a prize and a dinner was held in the Blue Ball.

The Napoleonic  Wars formed the background of most of Jane’s life and in March 1794 a call had been sent out to the Lords Lieutenants of the counties to form infantry and yeomanry to defend their local areas.

Here in Kintbury, the Kintbury Volunteer Rifles played their part in preparing to defend  England if needed. 

Particular friends of both Jane and Cassandra Austen were the Rev’d Fulwar Craven Fowle and his wife, Eliza. Fulwar was the son of Rev’d Thomas Fowle II and had taken over the living in Kintbury in 1798.

 In 1805,  Fulwar led the local Volunteer Brigade to Bulmersh near Reading where they and the other Berkshire Volunteer Regiments were inspected by none other than King George III himself. According to a contemporary report, the troops were on parade at 10.00am and at 2pm the king and Royal Family arrived and then His Majesty rode down the lines whilst the band played a lively air. Afterwards His Majesty expressly desired the Duke of Cambridge to communicate to the Commanders, the particular gratification he felt at having witnessed the military perfection of his Berkshire Volunteers. The King, according to one source, told Fulwar that he knew he was a good clergyman and a good man, now he knew that he was a good officer. Praise indeed!

Rev’d Fulwar Craven Fowle

As well as having an active interest in the military, Fulwar Craven Fowle also had an interest in the developing science of agriculture, keeping his own prize winning flock of sheep. In 1808 two dogs worried his valuable Leicestershire sheep, eleven of which died. It is to be lamented, said the report, that individuals are not careful in securing their dogs as a disaster of this kind is a very serious injury in this most valuable flock in the county.

Unsurprisingly, theft continued to be a problem in Kintbury. In May 1815,  someone entered the house of Fulwar Craven Fowle and stole the silver cutlery which had a crest of an arm holding a battleaxe surmounted by a ducal coronet. Silversmiths and pawnbrokers were asked to look out for it and £20 reward offered.

Then, in 1817, John Cozens had  a dark bay gelding stolen from the stables opposite the Red Lion and offered £5 reward. Seemingly he could not offer as much as Fowle had following the theft of his silver.

Throughout this period, populations of towns and villages were growing throughout England and Kintbury was no exception. During the years 1761-1815 its population rose from 1,170 to 1,430.

The marriage registers show that, although many people chose local partners i.e. from Inkpen, Kintbury, Hungerford etc  some brides chose their husbands from further afield: Binfield, Basingstoke, Marlborough and even Crewkerne. Similarly, brides appeared from Salisbury, Ramsbury, Chieveley, Farnborough and Hurstbourne. Of the grooms, 42% were able to sign their names and 34% of the brides, which suggests quite a high level of literacy at a time when very few people were able to have received an education.

Between the years 1761 and 1812 the average number of births per year was 42 –with an average of 7.2% being illegitimate.  Some of the mothers appear to have been in long standing relationships such as Ann Palmer who had five children surnamed Mason. Ann Darling had seven children of whom only one had a surname. Sadly Ann later appears in the workhouse records.

When Ann Green had her baby baptised the vicar wrote disapprovingly that, ’her husband had been transported some years’.

When Elizabeth Harrison brought her son James for baptism it was  noted that ‘her husband has been beyond seas for two years’.

Fathers could be summoned to pay for illegitimate children. The father of Elizabeth Watts’ son had to pay £1 towards the ‘lying in’ and one penny a week for the  maintenance and twenty pence weekly as long as the child was chargeable to the parish. Elizabeth had to pay or cause to be paid six pence a week. However, Mark Bird from Welford – the father of Esther Sawyer’s daughter – had to pay 40/- for the lying in and £4 19s 6d for maintenance . Esther had to pay 6d weekly.

Although the first census in England and Wales took place in 1801, its results were recorded numerically and it was not until 1841 that we begin to have a clearer idea of trades and occupations in each town or village. However, a study of the church baptismal records give us some idea of how early nineteenth century Kintburians made a living.

In 1813 the church baptismal records began to record the father’s profession and  from these  we are able to see that the village provided the following:

  • 3 shopkeepers
  • 1 gamekeeper
  • 4 wheelwrights
  • 4 blacksmiths 1 of them at Elcot
  • 3 cordwainers
  • 1 shoemaker
  • 4 sawyers
  • 1 yeoman who was Bailiff to Charles Duindas
  • 4 other yeoman: 1 at Clapton, 1 at Elcot and 1 at Walcot
  • 6 carpenters
  • 1 coachmaker
  • 1 publican
  • 2 bakers
  • 1 miller
  • 1 thatcher
  • 3 farmers
  • 1  pig dealer
  • 1 maltster
  • 1 grinder at mill
  • 1 tanner
  • 2 gentlemen identified as “Esquire”
  • 1 clerk in holy orders at Barton Court.

However, the majority of fathers were listed as labourers and these numbered around 80. Of course, these were only those men who had brought their children for baptism in the years 1813-1817.

Today Kintbury could be regarded as a dormitory village and a great majority of residents are employed outside the village. The Kintbury known to Jane Austen must have been a busy, vibrant place largely supporting its own community.

Penelope Fletcher ©2024

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 19th 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  

Kintbury’s Rev Fulwar Craven Fowle – Sheep farmer?

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)

Jane Austen : Our Kintbury Connection

This story begins in the second half of the eighteenth century with the families of two West Berkshire priests.

 In 1771, the Reverend Noyes Lloyd became vicar of Enborne, a small village to the west of Newbury in Berkshire. Noyes and his wife Martha had three daughters: Martha, Eliza and Mary, and a son Charles.

A few miles further to the west, in Kintbury, the Reverend Thomas Fowle the younger had been vicar since 1762. His wife, Jane, was the sister of Martha Lloyd over at Enborne. Thomas & Jane Fowle had four sons: Fulwar Craven, Thomas, William & Charles.

When  Jane & Thomas Fowle were considering an education for their boys, they decided to send them to an establishment run by an old friend of Thomas’s from his university days. The friend was one George Austen who had opened up his vicarage home in Steventon as a school for boys.

This might seem to us a very odd thing to do but back in the eighteenth century it was not unusual. And so despite having seven children of their own living at home, the Austens welcomed even more young men to share their vicarage with them. What Mrs Austen thought of this is not recorded but it would seem that she was perfectly happy with the arrangement!

 And so, Fulwar, Thomas, William & Charles Fowle were to spend some of their formative years in the home of the Austens and of course, they got to know the Austen children, including Jane & Cassandra, very well.

Jane herself was still quite little when the first of the Fowle brothers arrived at her home. To her it must have been something like having extra brothers in the house.

At this time, obtaining a degree from Oxford or Cambridge, and becoming ordained as a clergyman was considered a very solid, respectable career path. Fulwar Craven Fowle went on to obtain a degree from Oxford then followed his father into the church and eventually became vicar of Kintbury in 1798. By this time he had married his cousin from Enborne, Eliza Lloyd, daughter of the Rev Noyes Lloyd. Jane Austen’s brother James – a good friend of Fulwar – was at the wedding and this is very likely the first time he would have met the Lloyd family.

However,  Eliza’s sisters were soon to become very close friends with Jane and Cassandra. When the Rev Noyes Lloyd died, his widow and her two unmarried daughter, Martha & Mary, left Enborne rectory to live in the parsonage at Dean, very close to the Austen family home at Steventon. And so began the very close friendship between Jane & Cassandra with Martha & Mary Lloyd.

 We know from Jane’s letters that the Austen family maintained their close friendship with the Fowles at Kintbury. Several Austens – father George, the brothers, Jane & Cassandra themselves – sometimes stayed at the vicarage in Kintbury.

In 1792 Cassandra Austen became engaged to Thomas Fowle,- that is to say, Thomas Fowle III, the second son of Thomas Fowle junior and his wife, Jane. By now, Tom Fowle is an ordained minister himself, although too poor to marry. In 1796 he accepted a position as chaplain on a voyage to the West Indies but tragically died on the voyage. It was months before Cassandra – or indeed the Fowle family -received the news of his death. It must have been a very difficult time for both the Fowle family and the Austens. However, it seems as if the mutual loss only served to strengthen the relationship between Cassandra and the Fowles and she seems to have become almost a member of their extended family staying often at Kintbury.

Then, in 1797, Mary Lloyd – daughter of Noyes Lloyd of Enborne and sister to Eliza in Kintbury – married Jane Austen’s brother, James who had been widowed in 1795. Martha Lloyd continued to live with her mother at Dean but on Mrs Lloyd’s death in 1806, she moved in with the Austens and stayed with them as they moved from Southampton to Bath and finally Chawton.

I think this tells us a lot about the position of women at this time. Martha Lloyd of Enborne could claim aristocratic ancestry – indeed, her grandfather was the Honorable Charles Craven sometime governor of Carolina. Her grandmother, the former Elizabeth Staples was the second wife of Jemmet Raymond and a bust of her likeness can be seen on the very elaborate Scheemakers tomb in Kintbury church – a monument which, when it was new, was extremely expensive and would have said much about the wealth and status of those it commemorated. Yet, on the death of both her parents, Martha – as yet unmarried – does not have her own household. Until 1828 when she became Francis Austen’s second wife, she shared the home of Jane & Cassandra Austen.

If you visit Jane Austen’s house in Chawton today, you will see that Martha Lloyd was her very close friend and companion. Jane’s letters reflect the close and supportive relationship between Martha, her sister & brother-in-law at Kintbury and Cassandra and herself. Although Cassandra Austen destroyed many of her sister’s letters after Jane’s death, many of those existing are written to Cassandra while she is staying at Kintbury. In them we read of visits to Fulwar & Eliza, news of their children, the receipt of a basket of apples in return for one of fish and even a request for Charles Fowle to purchase Jane some silk stockings. Martha’s new maid, we learn, is the niece of someone from Kintbury.

And so it is that Jane’s connections with Kintbury are so much more than Cassandra’s fateful relationship with Tom Fowle. The Fowle family of Kintbury and their cousins the Lloyds of Enborne were all part of the Austens’ extended family circle and emotional support. Kintbury meant something to Jane Austen.

There are just two existing descriptions of Jane, by those who knew her. One is from her nephew James Edward Austen Leigh but the other is from our own Fulwar Craven Fowle. He recalled that she was:

“…certainly pretty – bright and a good deal of colour in her face – like a doll – no, that would not give at all the idea for she had so much expression – she was like a child – quite a child very lively and full of humour.”

We know that Jane’s last visit to Kintbury was in the spring of 1816. Fulwar’s daughter, Mary Jane Dexter, recalled that,

“She went about her old haunts and recalled old recollections with them in a peculiar manner, as if she did not expect to see them again.”

Theresa Lock, June 2023

Fifty miles of good road?

And what is fifty miles of good road? Little more than half a day’s journey. Yes, I call it a very easy distance.

Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice

That was the opinion of Mr Darcy from Jane Austen’s novel of 1813, Pride & Prejudice. Whether many travellers of the time would have agreed with him it is difficult to say.

Of course, roads in towns and cities would have been very different from roads – where they existed – in rural areas such as ours. The villages of our benefice would have been linked back then, as now, by a network of winding lanes  but then they would have become muddy and impassable in bad weather. Street names sometimes indicate what would have been the most direct or preferred route into larger towns such as Newbury Street in Kintbury, the road which can be followed eastwards through Hamstead Marshall and Enborne to enter Newbury on the south side, or oldest, part of town. This would have been the route used by the carriers’ carts and others for whom life moved at a much slower pace.

In Jane Austen’s day many working people rarely travelled beyond a few miles from their homes – although there were, of course, exceptions, such as the servants who travelled with their more affluent employers. But for many people the local villages furnished all their day to day needs and even somewhere as small as Combe had its own shops and even a post office.   

But for some local people – and it goes without saying these were the upper classes – travel to the world beyond was part of their lives.

For the benefit of these people, with their liveried carriages, many roads had been steadily improving since the early years  of the eighteenth century. This was when turnpike trusts, with responsibility for improving and maintaining important routes, were set up by acts of parliament and toll houses  with their accompanying gates, became a familiar sight. So, whilst the lanes through Kintbury to Inkpen, West Woodhay and the like would have remained dusty or muddy track ways, roads linking important towns were much improved to facilitate coach travel.

At this time, Bath had become a very fashionable venue for the upper classes, many of whom travelled there from London. Consequently, the road we now know as the A4 – the Bath Road – was much repaired and widened. The stretch between Marlborough and Newbury in particular saw much improvement after 1744 when an act of parliament established a turnpike trust responsible for its repair. Milestones erected along the route at this time can still be seen today. One of its trustees was a man local to our area, a Dr Brickenden of Inkpen House, who, one can presume, could see the advantage of faster travel beyond his village.

The first public stage coaches to run between London and Bath had begun in 1657 when there were two regular services a week. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the service had grown to over 150 a week. The Bear Inn, Cheap Street, Bath even advertised “A day and a half coach to London every Monday, Wednesday and Friday”. This was the express travel of the day.

For those able to afford to travel, mail coaches offered a more comfortable – and speedy -travelling experience. In 1782, John Palmer, a theatre owner from Bath, suggested to the Post Office in London that mail could be transported more quickly using the service he had developed for transporting his actors and stage scenery. An experimental run proved he was correct and his coach travelled along the Bath Road to London in just sixteen hours.

Mail coaches were pulled by teams of four horses, each team replaced every ten miles at one of the many coaching inns which had become well established along the Bath Road.  Journeying more frequently through the night when the road was less busy, the black and maroon coaches with the coat of arms and words, “Royal Mail” emblazoned on the doors would have made a striking sight on a moonlit night as they made their way towards the toll house by the Hoe Benham turning.

There would have been a stop, too, at the Elcot turning; we know this because mail for the local area was deposited with the blacksmith there. We have, at St Mary’s, Kintbury, a letter written by Rev Noyes Lloyd of Enborne regarding his communication with the sculptor Sheermakers regarding the monument to the former Lady Craven, now in the north transept. Presumably written and sent from London, the letter is for the Rev Thomas Fowle of Kintbury but the direction is to the blacksmith’s at Elcot. From here the mail would have been collected and distributed. For those of the letter-writing classes, having relatively easy access to a speedy mail coach route must have been a big advantage.   

But would this much improved turnpike road, along with the availability of fast travel to the bright lights of London or the fashionable resort of Bath, have really made much difference to the working villagers of Combe or Inkpen, West Woodhay or Kintbury? For those for whom travel was either by the carriers’ cart or a stout pair of boots, the answer is most probably no. The road to Newbury would have remained the lane through Enborne and the route to Hungerford was across the common.

For the toilers in the fields to the north of Kintbury, Hamstead Marshall or Enborne, the site and sounds of fashionable coaches rumbling past must have emphasised the great gulf between their lived experiences and those of the better off. So who would have used the new, improved Bath Road?

It goes without saying that the upper classes and members of the wealthier middle classes are most likely to have made the Bath Road their route of choice, particularly those who kept and maintained their own efficient carriage and horses. Dr Brickenden of Inkpen House, an early Commissioner of the Turnpike Trust, was most probably acting out of self interest in his support for the road.

Members of the Craven family of Hamstead Marshall may well have availed themselves of the fashionable amenities and social life to be had at Bath during the season. For the likes of them, a seat with very easy access to the turnpike road was equivalent to one’s country retreat having easy access to the M4 and onwards to Heathrow today.

Another person for whom the improved Bath Road must have been particularly convenient would have been Charles Dundas, member of Parliament for Berkshire from 1794 to 1832. Dundas lived at Barton Court which was – and still is – situated just off the Avenue, Kintbury. Two hundred years ago this route was one of the main roads into the village from the Bath Road, thus making access to the turnpike road particularly convenient for someone who could afford the very best carriage and team of horses. 

Kintbury to Westminster along the Bath Road was – and still is – around 65 miles so just a bit longer than the fifty miles of good road which Mr Darcy thought “ a very easy distance” to travel  in little more than half a day. I think Dundas would have needed the very best horses and several changes to travel to parliament in so short a time. However, if Palmer’s coaches managed nearly twice the distance in sixteen hours, it seems likely that the MP could have reached The House from his house on the same day as he set out, all other things, such as weather conditions, being equal.

Tessa Lock, May 2023

Lifelong friends

Between 1739 and 1840, three generation of the Fowle family held the living at Kintbury. The first Thomas Fowle became vicar in 1739, his son Thomas in 1762, then his son, Fulwar Craven Fowle, in 1798.

Back then, it was not unusual for a living to be passed on through the family like this because the appointment of a vicar was often in the gift of a particular patron. This was the way in which Pride & Prejudice’s Lady Catherine de Bourg was able to appoint Mr Collins – although it has to be hoped that not all patrons were as interfering!

Until the middle years of the nineteenth century, there were only two universities in England: Oxford and Cambridge. Both were regarded as very fitting destinations for the sons of the educated upper and upper middle classes; Thomas Fowle the younger was no exception and he became a student at St John’s College, Oxford.

It was at St John’s College that Thomas Fowle met another student, George Austen of Tonbridge, Kent. There were no female students at either Oxford or Cambridge at that time – indeed it was to be over 150 years before women were admitted to either university. However, George Austen met his future wife at Oxford: Cassandra Leigh was the daughter of the Master of Baliol College whom he married in 1764.

George Austen & Thomas Fowle remained friends after graduation and leaving Oxford. George was appointed rector of the parish of Steventon, Hampshire in 1761 and it was here that he and Cassandra brought up their eight children. A country rector’s income was not large so to augment his earnings George opened a school in the rectory where he taught the sons of other gentlemen along with his own boys.

By now, Thomas Fowle was himself vicar of Kintbury and he and his wife, Jane, sent each of their four sons to Steventon to be educated alongside the young Austens. And so Jane & Cassandra Austen came to know Fulwar, Thomas, William and Charles Fowle in what must have seemed something like an extended family.

The Austens and the Fowles were to remain lifelong friends.

Theresa Lock, May 2023

Lord Craven of Hamstead Marshall

Eliza has seen Lord Craven at Barton, and probably by this time at Kintbury, where he was expected for one day this week…She found his manners very pleasing indeed.

Eliza has seen Lord Craven at Barton, and probably by this time at Kintbury, where he was expected for one day this week…She found his manners very pleasing indeed.

Lord Craven was prevented by company at home from paying his visit at Kintbury, but, as I told you before, Eliza is greatly pleased with him and they seem likely to be on the most friendly terms.

Jane Austen, letter to Cassandra, January 1801

The Eliza to whom Jane refers is Eliza Fowle, wife of Fulwar Craven Fowle, vicar of Kintbury and sister to Jane’s close friend Martha Lloyd. Barton – or Barton Court – was the home of Charles Dundas, M.P. and is a large house about half a mile north of Kintbury church on what would have been the old coaching road into Kintbury.

Lord Craven  was a distinguished military gentleman who  served in Flanders and was AD to the King and a favourite of Queen Charlotte. He was reputed to be a bit of a rake before his marriage – as Jane Austen remarked in her letter to Cassandra:

The little flaw of having a mistress now living with him at Ashdown Park seems to be the only unpleasing circumstance about him.

Some people believe that Jane based Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility on Lord Craven.  However, the novelist R. L. Delderfield wrote as a preface to one of his books that,

…every character in fiction is an amalgam of factors drawn from the author’s memory and imagination.

I disagree with the assumption that Willoughby’s character was based on Lord Craven’s. Why? Well Craven’s mistress was the young Harriet Wilson. Craven was 31 and unmarried at the time. Harriett was much younger and does not give Craven a good press. Her memoirs start with the line,

I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven…

Harriet leaves the reader in no doubt that she finds the Earl boring and old-fashioned, with his night caps and his endless talk of his cocoa trees on his estates in the Indies. She left him for Lord Melbourne.  Mind you if as a teenager one had been isolated in Ashdown House on the Lambourn Downs I think most of us would have been a tad miffed even if our career was that of ‘entertaining men’!  

Christopher Hibbert wrote that Harriet had a Swiss father and was renowned not so much for her beauty as easy manners, gaity and flighty charm. Sir Water Scott described her as smart, saucy with the manners of a  wild schoolboy. Harriet was a well-known ‘lady’ in certain circles. When she grew too old to charm, she wrote her memoirs, sent the relevant passages to the gentlemen concerned and offered to suppress it for a fee. This caused the famous reply of Wellington: Publish and be damned! 

So, I believe Harriet Wilson did not resemble the girl described as Colonel Brandon’s ward. She was seduced by Willoughby aged 17, and left without help, friend or home. He promised to return but didn’t and after breaking another girl’s heart married a rich wife.

Lord Craven on the other hand went on to marry an actress, Louisa Brunton, (without informing his very formidable mother) after Harriet had left him. They lived in Hamstead as a close family and the Countess was renowned for her gracious generosity. Obviously unlike Willoughby, Craven did not marry Louisa for money

The Georgian gossip collector Creevy, wrote that in January 1816, Lord Craven embarked, on his own yacht, for the Mediterranean. There were 70 members of his family on board at an expense of £40,000. Creevy added, somewhat ominously, that it gave a good chance to his brother Berkley, especially as he would rely much upon his own skill in the management of the vessel! Evidently they all survived Lord Craven’s seamanship and Berkley was disappointed.

Lord Craven died at Cowes in 1825 aged 55.

Penny Fletcher, May 2023