Showing posts with label Kirkleatham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kirkleatham. Show all posts

Saturday 5 March 2022

Jane Atkinson of Kirkleatham (1751-1817), wife of Captain Thomas Galilee

I've revised an earlier post of May 2013 and, as it belongs with the preceding posts, I'll post it here as well.  

The two letters quoted below were among the small collection of letters referred to in the previous post about the Revd William Atkinson.  I have made some alterations to spelling and punctuation for readability's sake.

Jane was born in 1751, the daughter of Thomas Atkinson of Scaling Dam (a hamlet on the Whitby to Guisborough road) and his wife Elizabeth Featherstone.  She grew up at Kirkleatham where her father was Master of the Blue Coat Boys at Sir William Turner's Hospital.  Her younger brother Thomas  Atkinson was a surgeon who wrote a journal of a whaling voyage to the Davis Straits in 1774

Jane married Thomas Galilee on 4 June 1775.

The Newcastle Courant of Saturday 17 June 1775 records: 
Last week at St Mary’s Church, Rotherhithe, London, Capt Thomas Galilee of Whitby, to Miss Atkinson of Kirkleatham 
St Mary's Rotherhithe by Rob Kam
Jane and Thomas spent many years in Rotherhithe, where their daughters were born and baptised, living in a house that Thomas owned in Princes Street.  They were living there in 1788 when he wrote to his wife from Narva in Estonia on 21 May.  At the time, the main trade with the Baltic was in timber and Thomas was taking on a load of sawn boards ("deals").  
Narva, May 21st 1788

My Dear Jane, 
I have now the pleasure to acquaint you that I am all Loaded except one pram of deals which I hope to get on board to night.  We have had a very troublesome time of it in the Bay and very cold weather that several of my people is laid up.  I hope in God this will find you in good health and all my dear children as bless God I am at present and I hope soon to have a happy meeting.  I have no news to tell you as this is the first time I have been in town since I arrived – it seems to be a poor place and every thing is very dear so that I have not bought you anything.  Please to acquaint Mr. Richardson of my being loaded and not to forget the Insurance 
I hope soon to have the pleasure to see you, pray give my love to my children &c, I am your ever affectionate and
Loving Husband
Thomas Galilee
It seems he had two passengers with him – perhaps they were there for the experience – but they hadn't enjoyed the trip much.  He ends his letter
My Two young Gentlemen is very well but I fancy this Voyage will make them sick of the sea.
It seems very likely that, when the Ship News in the Kentish Gazette on 20 June 1788 reported that the "Amphion, Gallilee, from Narva" had passed Gravesend on 16 June, it was Captain Thomas Galilee returning home. 

Thomas Atkinson, surgeon (b1753) of Kirkleatham, Canada & Honduras Bay

This replaces a piece about Thomas Atkinson posted in November 2012.  As it belongs with the preceding posts about the Atkinsons of Scaling Dam & Kirkleatham, I thought I'd publish it here too.  

With many thanks to Stella Sterry for her information

Thomas Atkinson, the writer of the Whaling Journal of Thomas Atkinson of Kirkleatham, 1774 was a young man of 21 when he made the voyage to Davis Straits.

He was born in the spring of 1753 in Kirkleatham, a North Yorkshire village a couple of miles from the mouth of the River Tees. 

His father Thomas was Master at the Hospital founded in Kirkleatham in 1676 by Sir William Turner for the relief of ten "poor aged" men and women and the relief and upbringing of "ten poor boys and ten poor girls". 

The "poor boys" and "poor girls" usually entered the Hospital at the age of eight and left at sixteen.  At this time most of the boys came from the North Riding, from Scarborough to Askrigg, but some came from much further afield – from Ticknall in Derbyshire, Bristol and Hertfordshire.  They included the sons of a local clergyman, a Darlington bookseller and a Northallerton attorney, which must indicate that, in addition to the poor children, the school was taking paying scholars.  This was usual in schools that began as charitable foundations. 

Thomas Atkinson's mother was Elizabeth Featherstone (c1720-1805).  His parents were married in Westerdale in 1749, so Elizabeth may have been the Elizabeth, daughter of Peter Fetherstone, who was baptised in 1720 at Danby in Cleveland.

It seems very likely that Thomas Atkinson's sons were taught alongside the boys of the Hospital.  Wherever they went to school, he and his brothers clearly received a good education; Thomas's second son William was to become a Doctor of Divinity and Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. 

The career chosen for young Thomas may have been influenced by the surgeon employed at the Hospital (at a salary of £50, compared to the £45 paid to the Master), but the Hospital was also in contact with the York Infirmary whose surgeons pronounced one boy's "scrofulous disorder" as incurable in 1773.  

In his mid-teens Thomas's parents sent him to Ripon to be apprenticed for 6 years to William Chambers of Ripon, described by Thomas's father in the family Bible as "an eminent Surgeon and Apothecary".  Then on 27 February 1774 at the age of 21, he went to sea as a surgeon on the Hope of Whitby, on a whaling voyage to the Davies Straits.

Whitby whalers in the Davies Straits (from Richard Weatherill's book)

We don't know why he decided to make the trip.  Perhaps it was a hankering for adventure; perhaps he wanted to find out how he would cope in harsh conditions.  We don't know how he came to choose the Hope, but it's interesting to see that at this time one of the boys at the school was Thomas Peacock, son of the Revd John Peacock, curate of Stainton in Cleveland.  Perhaps they had a family connection to Captain Robert Peacock of the Hope.

It is clear from young Thomas Atkinson's journal that it wasn't the sea that took his interest, but the strange new lands he encountered and, above all, the Inuit. 

So it isn't surprising to find that, the following year, his curiosity and love of adventure led him to work for the Hudson's Bay Company

At the beginning of June 1775 he took up his post as a surgeon at Moose Fort (now Moose Factory), 
the Company's oldest settlement in Ontario, established in 1673 about 11 miles from the mouth of the Moose River on the shore of James Bay.

This was the home of the Cree and Anishinaabe peoples, but from the 17th century it was where the British and French fought over the fur trade.  (For more, see Tracing the History of Northern Ontario at the British Library by Shaelagh Cull)

In 1776 the Company was planning to establish a post on Lake Superior.  So they sent out a party of 5 men – Thomas was one of them – with two Indian families and instructions to "Build a Halfway House".  They set out on 16 October 1776 from Moose Fort and travelled about 200 miles by canoe along the Moose River, and by sledge, until on 11 December they reached "Wapuscogamee" Creek.  

Thomas chose a site for the Company's post – it was half a mile or so from the mouth of the creek, on the west bank of the Missinaibi River, which flows into the Moose River.  On 14 December they began to build a log tent in which they were to spend the rest of the winter.

When the spring came, they laid the foundation for the post and by early August 1777 Wapiscogamy House was ready for occupation.  Thomas was in charge there until 31 May 1778.

Early C19: Trading at a Hudson's Bay Company Trading Post, by Harry Ogden

I hope he was a good doctor, because he wasn't very good at choosing a place for a trading post, or at planning its building.  

A report to Edward Jarvis, chief at Moose Fort, in 1781 described a site vulnerable to attack with no way of seeing the attackers coming.  There was a large creek within 200 yards of the back of the house and a ridge of high land within 100 yards, and at one end of the small, inconvenient house (it measured 26 feet by 18 feet) there wasn't a window or a port hole.  

The foundations were laid direct on the ground, so it wasn't possible to dig a cellar without undermining either the chimney or the frame of the house.  They couldn't find anywhere to keep the gunpowder except "directly under the fireplace" and the summer heat spoilt their "Salt Geese".   Edward Jarvis decided it would be better to build a new post somewhere else.

By this time, Thomas Atkinson had been moved on to Henley House, a transit post on the junction of the Albany and Kenogamy Rivers.  He was Master there for 3 months from September to December 1779.  Perhaps he was filling in for the arrival of another man because he dropped down to Assistant for the next few months.  From June 1780 he was Assistant at Albany, the company fort on the James Bay, and then he left for home on the Royal George on 21 September 1781.

On 21 September 1788, when his father repaired the family Bible and recorded the most recent details of his children's lives, he wrote proudly that his eldest son had been "sometime Governor" of one of the Company Forts and was now "Surgeon at the English Settlement in Honduras Bay".  

So Thomas, having experienced the extremes of heat and cold in Northern Ontario, had taken a post in Central America, where the British were cutting logwood and mahogany.  There had been a British settlement in Belize for over a hundred years.  

An undated entry in the family Bible records that it was there that Thomas died. 

The Revd William Atkinson of Kirkleatham & Cambridge (1755-1830)

This account of a quiet life is thanks to information from Stella Sterry, and to letters that were found years ago in a house clearance in Leeds.  They seem to have survived by chance, possibly because of Mr John Gaskin, MBE, of Whitby.  He was a significant figure in organisations in the town in the first half of the 20th century.  He was very interested in local history and philately and for several decades was a solicitors' clerk with Messrs Buchannan and Son, and then with the successor firm Buchannan and White.  However he came across the letters and whatever his reason – local history or the unusual postal markings – he kept the letters and they are now to be found at Northallerton Archives.  I'm quoting below from a transcript and I have made some alterations for readability's sake.

William Atkinson was born on 16 May 1755 at Kirkleatham, where his father Thomas Atkinson (1722-92) was Master of Sir William Turner's Hospital.  Perhaps he was named for his father's brother William, who died only two months later in the fever epidemic that swept through Scaling Dam.

William's elder brother Thomas went out to look for adventure, and worked as a surgeon in Canada and Central America.  His brother Daniel died in New York and his brother John on the coast of Africa.  But William Atkinson was a studious young man.  He became an academic and clergyman.

Bookplate of Revd William Atkinson
At the age of 21, on 10 October 1776, he was admitted to Catharine Hall, Cambridge as a sizar.  At a time when attending Oxford and Cambridge was only for the very well-to-do, this was how someone from a humbler background could go to one of the universities.  Originally a sizar paid his way by doing fairly menial tasks; as the centuries went on colleges might offer small grants.  But it was essentially for the poor and deserving, and it was a lowly social position.

William matriculated in the Michaelmas term 1778.  He was made a deacon in 1778 and priested in 1781.  He took his B.A in 1781, his M.A in 1784, and his B.D in 1792.  

These were eventful times in the outside world.  In 1783, King George III was forced to accept the loss of Britain’s American colonies.  In January 1788, the first convict fleet arrived in Botany Bay carrying 1,480 men, women and children.  The Greenland whale fishery was in full operation, with 21 vessels leaving Whitby that season.  Across the Channel, France was in the grip of runaway inflation and ever increasing economic turmoil and on 14 July 1789 the storming of the Bastille would mark the beginning of events that would shake Europe.  Meanwhile, back at home in North Yorkshire, Whitby was a major centre of shipbuilding, ranking third after London and Newcastle in the early 1790s.  Along the coast and the escarpment of the Cleveland Hills, men were mining alum, a valuable commodity and vital to the textile and leather industries.  

St Catharine's, Cambridge (called Catharine Hall until 1860)

Meanwhile, William was elected Fellow of Catharine Hall in 1781 and in 1807 he was a curate at Sawston, 7 miles south of Cambridge.  But from 1790 William became involved in a feud among the Fellows.  It lasted 20 years and involved petitions to the College Visitor, exchanges of acrimonious letters and finally a pamphlet war.  William and his friends were pitted against Dr Procter, the Master of Catharine Hall, and his supporters.  William's friend Dr Browne, Master of Christ's College, was also involved.  In 1808 William left Catharine Hall.  

Then on 2 July 1808 William was elected Fellow of Christ's; it was the first election in the time of his friend Dr Browne's Mastership.  It is all very convoluted.  William Jones, in his A History of St Catharine's College, Cambridge (CUP 1936) comments that  

One finds it difficult not to suspect that much of this feud was due to sheer idleness.  The Fellows at St Catharine's at this period were not busy with research.  They had no undergraduates, or practically none, to teach.  Unmarried, they had no home interests.  Satan, indeed, found work for idle hands to do

At the time of the feud, William wasn't living in College.  By 1788, he was living in the village of Whaddon, a dozen miles south-west of Cambridge.  By 1806 he had moved to Stapleford, about 5 miles south of Cambridge.  There he lived at the Grove at the fork in the road near Sawston Bridge.

1888-1913 O.S. Stapleford
CC-BY-NC-SA National Library of Scotland

Apart from being Mildmay Preacher between 1816 and 1818, Christ's has no record of him holding a College office, or a benefice, or being resident in College, though he never missed a meeting until his last five years.  

Christ's College, Cambridge: Fellows' Garden, showing rear of Fellows' Building

How did he spend his time (apart from taking part in the College feud)?  He must have lectured, perhaps he had pupils and he seems, on occasion at least, to have taken duty for another clergyman.  He certainly farmed.  He had his library, which was a typical middle-class collection judging by the inscribed volumes that have passed down through the years – and Jane Austen would have been pleased to see that he didn't disdain novels.  He had Samuel Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison.  We can imagine him working away at the system of shorthand that he invented.  It was a quiet life.

Thomas Atkinson (1722-92), Master of Sir William Turner's Hospital, Kirkleatham

This follows on from the preceding post, The Atkinsons of Scaling Dam in the 17th & 18th centuries

Thomas Atkinson was born on Friday 13 April 1722, between 9 and 10 o'clock at Night.

We don't know where he was educated – perhaps in one of the Whitby schools – but he clearly was something of a mathematician (for example, his answer to a problem was printed in Miscellaneous Correspondence, in Prose and Verse Volume 4, 1764).

He married Elizabeth Featherstone (c1720-1805) on 21 September 1749 in Westerdale.  Elizabeth may have been the daughter of Peter Fetherstone, who was baptised on 2 February 1720 at Danby in Cleveland.

On 9 May 1751, when Thomas was 29, he took up the post of Master of the Blue Coat Boys at the Turner Hospital at Kirkleatham.  When he and his family moved into the master's house, the Hospital – which consisted of almshouses, boys' and girls' schools and a chapel – had only recently been extended and remodelled by Sir William's great-nephew Cholmley Turner.  Thomas must have been very pleased with his new situation.  He and his family stayed there for nearly 25 years.   

Sir William Turner's Almshouses by Mick Garrett

He was clearly an able and meticulous man, and in 1774 he drew up a map of the parish and manor of Kirkleatham for his employer.  So perhaps when he left Kirkleatham a year later at the age of 53, and went to Marske Hall on the Cleveland coast, it might have been to become steward for Lawrence Dundas.  Dundas was an ambitious and forceful Scottish businessman and politician who had bought the Marske Hall estate a dozen years earlier, at about the same time as he bought the Aske estate in Richmondshire.  

By 1788, Thomas was in retirement and he and his wife Elizabeth were with their son William in Whaddon in Cambridgeshire.  

He now had time to repair the family Bible that had been spoilt and defaced after his father's death in 1755, when it had been 

clandestinely taken away from my Mother, by one Hudson who had not the least Right or Pretention of Right to it; after having kept it several Years in his Possession, I obliged him to return it; but it was in such bad Condition by his writing his own Name a vast Number of times, and a Repetition of the Names of his Children and many Sentences too ridiculous to be seen in a Book of this Sort; I thought proper to cut out the Pages he had so Contaminated and to introduce several Leaves of fresh Paper in their Stead; whereas I shall transcribe such Particulars as my Father thought fit to leave on Record in this Book relating to our Family; and do hereby earnestly recommend this Book to the Care of my Children, that they never suffer it to go out of the Family for the future. 
Example of Thomas Atkinson's repair to the family Bible

Thomas Atkinson and Elizabeth Featherstone had 6 sons and 2 daughters:

  • Jane Atkinson, born 9 March 1751
    • on 4 June 1775 at Rotherhithe, she married Captain Thomas Galilee (1744-97) (for more on his family see here
    • they had 6 daughters who survived infancy: Mary, Elizabeth, Margaret, Jane, Harriet & Henrietta
    • Jane died on 19 December 1817 aged 66 and was buried at Whaddon, Cambridgeshire
    • for more on Jane and her daughters see later post, Jane Atkinson of Kirkleatham (1751-1817), wife of Captain Thomas Galilee
  • Isaac Atkinson, born 5 March 1757
    • was a London wholesale linen draper with premises in Cheapside, while living out of town in the country air of the parish of St Mary, Islington
    • he died aged 46 on 6 July 1803 and was buried with his father at Whaddon on 13 July 1803
  • Daniel Atkinson, born 7 February 1759
    • he is known to have married and had 3 children, because they are mentioned in his brother William's Will, made in 1828:
    • An undated entry in the family Bible says that Daniel himself "Died at New York"
  • John Atkinson, born 12 February 1761
    • an undated entry in the family Bible says that John died on the coast of Africa
  • Robert Atkinson, born 8 February 1763
    • he died in infancy and was buried on 14 June 1765 in Kirkleatham
  • Elizabeth Atkinson, born 18 February 1764
    • she was baptised on 29 Feb 1764 and died 3 days later.  Buried at Kirkleatham

Thomas Atkinson died on 1 February 1792 at the age of 70.  A note in the burial register records that he was "late of Marsk near Gisborough N Riding Yorks died at the Vicarage house at Whaddon Feb 1"

Thomas's son William wasn't the vicar of Whaddon, so that wasn't why Thomas was living in the vicarage house.  William isn't recorded as having held any benefice, and I think a Revd Thomas Wilson was vicar at the time.  According to the Victoria County History 

In the 1790s the vicar had only a room in an old cottage, probably the old vicarage, which was enlarged in the early 19th century, and again c1877  

Robert Hurlock, who succeeded Mr Wilson and was vicar from 1797 to 1852, also held Shepreth.  It must have been more comfortable at Shepreth before the Whaddon vicarage was enlarged, because by 1807 he was recorded as living at Whaddon.  So perhaps Thomas and Elizabeth were renting the old cottage that had been the old vicarage.

St Mary's Whaddon, Cambs by Alan Kent

Elizabeth survived him by 7 years.  She carried on living with her son William at Whaddon and it was there that she died on 19 November 1805 aged 85.  

Thomas and Elizabeth were both buried at Whaddon.  

Elizabeth had also outlived her son Isaac, who died aged 46 in 1803.  Though he lived in the parish of St Mary Islington, he was buried with his father at Whaddon on 13 July 1803.  Whaddon was to become the place of burial for all of the family who lived in Cambridgeshire:  Thomas and Elizabeth, their children Isaac, William and Jane, and their granddaughter Harriet.

When Stella Sterry visited Whaddon in 1970, she was able to read the inscriptions on the gravestones of Thomas, Isaac, Elizabeth, Jane and Harriet.  William's gravestone, with its Latin inscription, was not very legible.  

Excerpt from insert in Atkinson Bible


The Atkinsons of Scaling Dam in the 17th & 18th centuries

This is the sort of thing that one always hopes for – in 2013 I posted the Whaling Journal 1774 of Thomas Atkinson of Kirkleatham and articles about the Atkinson family of Scaling Dam.  And recently I was contacted by Stella Richmond Sterry, a descendant of Thomas's sister Jane Galilee (as I am myself) – but she has the family Bible!

And so, armed with all that lovely information, I've been able to do more research on the family.  I hope it's (a) of interest and (b) of use to people who are trying to disentangle their own Cleveland Atkinsons.  

An extra bonus for me is that I get to go back again to the Civil Wars, which I left reluctantly after finishing work on Alice Wandesford in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms 

………

The young Thomas Atkinson who took the whaling voyage in 1774 (you can find it here) was the eldest son of Thomas Atkinson (1722-92), Master of Sir William Turner's Hospital at Kirkleatham.

In 1788, towards the end of his life, Thomas Atkinson senior repaired his father's family Bible, which had been damaged after his father's death in 1755.  And in it, very wisely, he left a written record which he entitled "From Oral Tradition".  He began with the story of his great-grandfather Atkinson, who was a soldier in the Parliamentarian Army during the Civil Wars – the Wars of the Three Kingdoms – and who lived afterwards at Scaling Dam.

Scaling Dam was (and is) a hamlet more or less half way along the moors road between Guisborough and Whitby.  Then, the North Riding of Yorkshire was thinly populated and the moors were wide and empty.  The antiquarian Ralph Thoresby, F.R.S., (1658-1725) took the moors road in November 1682 and didn't like it at all, recording in his diary that he travelled "over the rotten Moors for many miles without anything observable."

O.S. map 1888-1913
CC-BY-NC-SA National Library of Scotland

The hamlet's name doesn't come from the reservoir which was built there in the 1950s – it appears, for example, as Skallingdam in the 1675 map of John Ogilby.  I suspect the hamlet was given its name to show it was a sort of outpost of the village of Scaling but near the dam – the Dam Bridge can be seen on the map above.  It was, of course, a very practical place for a settlement, being on the moors road at the junction with the road to Staithes.  It isn't surprising to see that the 1888-1913 map shows both a pub and a smithy, both of which must have been there for very many years.  Both Scaling and Scaling Dam were in the parish of Easington in Cleveland.

Atkinson the Parliamentarian Soldier

The family didn't remember the Soldier's Christian name, but knew that he had been at the battles of Marston Moor (1644), Naseby (1645), Preston (1648) and Dunbar (1650).  The fact that Marston Moor seems to be his first major battle suggests the Soldier was a Northerner, and the fact that he spent the rest of his life in Scaling Dam seems to me to show that he was almost certainly an East Cleveland man.  It's hard to think an outsider would find his way to Scaling Dam in the middle of the 17th century.

The Soldier used to talk of the battle of Dunbar, Oliver Cromwell's miracle victory.  The histories say that when the right wing of Scottish cavalry broke under the English attack, Oliver Cromwell and General Lambert didn't allow the English troopers to go in pursuit and, as the troopers regrouped, they sang the 117th Psalm

O praise the Lord, all ye nations:
praise him, all ye people.
For his merciful kindness is great toward us:
and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever.

When the Soldier looked back on the battle, Thomas wrote, he used to say of the singing

their Notes were more pleasing to Him who is the Giver of all Victory than the Clashing of Swords and roaring of Canon.  

The Soldier was very probably a member of one of Cleveland’s Trained Bands, the local militias made up of householders and their sons, who were obliged to turn out when summoned for training and action.  The ability to read and write was spreading fast among the common people at this time, but the sort of family that was liable for Trained Band service would certainly produce a literate man like the Soldier, whose constant reading of Scripture led him to have, as Thomas wrote, "the Bible and Testament almost by Heart".

Soldier Atkinson was in the minority in the North Riding of Yorkshire, which was almost entirely Royalist in sympathy – though many, if not most, people didn't want to choose a side at all and simply wanted to be left in peace.  The North Riding gentlemen who supported Parliament had a difficult time raising troops and the troops, when assembled, weren't keen.  Sir Henry Foulis reported that a Cleveland foot regiment that had mustered 500 men at Yarm had rapidly dwindled to 80 at the approach of the enemy.  (see War in Yorkshire: 1642-1643)

Parliamentarian gentry included the Foulis brothers, whose father Sir David Foulis had been put in the Fleet Prison for several years because he opposed the King’s man, Sir Thomas Wentworth (the story can be found here) but their family estates were at Ingleby on the western escarpment of the moors.

A Parliamentarian gentleman from the close neighbourhood of Scaling Dam was Nicholas Conyers.  In fact he came from the parish of Easington itself, being the son of Nicholas Conyers of Boulby, and, like Soldier Atkinson, he was at Marston Moor.  Two of his brothers died fighting for the King.

Nicholas Conyers was in the Scarborough garrison under Sir Hugh Cholmley of Whitby when Cholmley changed sides and took the town over to the Royalists in 1643.

Cholmley first made sure that anybody wanting to leave Scarborough before it became Royalist had left the town.  Many did, including Nicholas Conyers.  If Soldier Atkinson was there with Sir Hugh's forces, he too will have left for the Parliamentarian garrison at Hull.

Atkinson the Soldier was clearly one of the Godly – a Puritan – and committed to Parliament's cause.  This makes him an interesting figure in the overwhelmingly Royalist North Riding.  Perhaps there were many more like him among the ordinary men of Cleveland, but we only know about the gentry and we don't know how many of the Soldier's neighbours and relatives shared his views.  And we don't know what his views were – how ardent a Puritan he was, how radical a Parliamentarian.

Thomas describes the Soldier as a subaltern.  I've checked with Phil Philo (do not miss his new blog Of Things Trent-North) and this was not a term used at the time.  I think all we can say for definite is that his family remembered that he had men under him.  So he could have been a junior officer, or a sergeant or a corporal.  Nor do we know if he fought in the foot or the cavalry.

Pikemen.  Photo by John Beardsworth

In the same way, Thomas thought that he lived to a very great age "being near a hundred before he died".  This isn't any help in identifying him, as the Easington parish registers for the time are fragmentary and don't record the age anyway.  But we can certainly say that he was notable in the area, with his past history of bloody and brutal warfare, his command of the Bible and his great age.  

After the fighting stopped, everyone must have had to learn to live together and mend the divisions within families and neighbourhoods.  It can't have been easy after so many deaths and so much destruction. 

We don't know how the Soldier made his living before and after the wars, but we can guess that if his father was a farmer then he wasn't the eldest son, because then he would have been needed on the land.  So he would have had a trade.  At some point the Soldier married and had at least one son, whose name was John, who was "brought up to the business of a Tanner", so perhaps the Soldier was a tanner himself.  

Tanning was a vital industry at this time, with leather necessary for so many things, from boots, shoes and gloves to horse collars, and Scaling Dam was a good place for the tanning process, with water from the Dam Beck nearby.  Tanning was done in pits lined with timber.  The bark of young coppiced oaks was used, or lime, and the process took time, hard manual labour and skill.  Most villages had a leather worker and they were to be found in much larger numbers in towns.  Tanners often farmed on the side.

Saturday 15 February 2020

The 17th & 18th century Jacksons of Broughton Grange

With many thanks to Jim Watson for this information.  We hope that publishing it here will be helpful to people trying to disentangle their Jackson ancestors as well of course to those interested in Great Broughton.

The Jackson family of Broughton Grange, 
descendants of Robert Jackson of Wilton
by Jim Watson  

Today, Broughton Grange is a large arable farm set at the south end of the village of Great Broughton, near Stokesley in North Yorkshire.

Broughton Grange was a farm under Rievaulx Abbey, near Helmsley, from 1316 until the Abbey’s dissolution in 1538.  The subsequent lease changed hands several times before being granted to Hester and John Hewerdyne by Queen Elizabeth.  The Hewerdyne family was resident at Broughton Grange at least until 1629. 

Some time between 1629 and 1636, the Jackson presence at Broughton Grange commenced with William Jackson son of Robert Jackson of Wilton.  In 1637, William Jackson was sued for non payment of tithes for some fields for the year 1636.

In 1650, William Jackson of Broughton Grange conveyed to his brother Robert of Lazenby a messuage and 2 oxgangs of land at Lazenby, and in the same Indenture the conveyance by William’s father Robert to William of Topliffe Farm Great Broughton was recorded.

William died in 1658, leaving his widow Dorothy with five under-age children.  The eldest Jane married William Harrison of Kirkleatham.

It has been recorded in several submissions to the Court of Chancery, that following her husband’s death, Dorothy set about acquiring property to ensure that her three sons would have satisfactory incomes.  It was also recorded that Dorothy spent large sums of money on the Mansion House at Broughton Grange, in excess of £300.  This makes it clear that the Jacksons of Broughton Grange were a wealthy family.

Son William achieved his majority in 1665, and it may be no coincidence that there is a lintel in the Mansion House bearing the initials WJ and the number 1665.  William junior married and had two daughters Anne and Dorothy.  William’s brother Richard died in October 1673, followed by William in November 1673.  Subsequently William’s widow Ann married a widower Edward Edwards, probably about 1681.  The record of the marriage has not been found, and it doesn’t appear to have occurred in the local church St Augustine’s in Kirkby.

Widow Dorothy’s second daughter Margery remained single until her death in 1678.  Dorothy died in 1685, leaving her youngest son Robert as her only surviving male descendant.  About 1690, the Edwards family moved to London, where William and Ann’s two daughters Anne and Dorothy found themselves a husband each, respectively Charles Tracy a lawyer and John Harper a watch maker.

It is possible that there was no Jackson presence at Broughton Grange from about 1690 until Robert Jackson first became a tenant of part of Broughton Grange in 1705.   Later Robert became tenant of the all of Broughton Grange and by 1707 he was also agent for Ann Tracy and Dorothy Lee and their husbands.

Robert remained as tenant at Broughton Grange until 1727, possibly a few years later.  By this time Robert was already in his seventies, but he had recently married, and he disposed of a significant amount of property to a local mason Robert Patton in 1729.  It was about this time that Robert Jackson became embroiled in a nasty sequence of suits with the London section of the family that eventually ended up in the Court of Chancery.  Robert’s property sale may have been to ensure Robert had sufficient funds for his legal expenses.  The Court found in balance in Robert’s favour, but not until after his death.  In the meantime, Robert and his wife Hannah retired from Broughton Grange to the Dog House, a property Robert had purchased about twenty years earlier.

By the time that Robert retired, Anne Tracy née Jackson, by then a widow had probably returned to Great Broughton and for most of her time in the village she lived at Broughton Grange, though she owned other property in the village.

Shortly before her death, Anne moved into one of her other properties in the village along with her widowed daughter Elizabeth Amaiday.  Broughton Grange was sold by Henry Harper, Anne’s eldest nephew, to John Preston an attorney of Stokesley in 1742.  Anne died in 1742 and her daughter Elizabeth died in 1743.

Jackson family presence in Great Broughton continued after Robert Jackson’s death.  Robert and his wife Hannah had three children, Robert, Dorothy and William.  Robert had the unenviable task of executing his father’s over generous Will, effectively a hopeless task, even after the Court of Chancery settlement produced in excess of £600.  Fortunately, Robert’s mother, brother and sister cooperated in solving the financial headache, and eventually the matter was dealt with, but at the cost of the complete disposal of father Robert’s estate, including splitting the Dog House into four separate dwellings and much reduced legacies to Hannah and Dorothy.

What became of Robert Jackson’s three children?  Robert, became a mariner and appears to have left the village about 1760.  William became a bricklayer and lived in Stokesley.  Dorothy married John Raw with whom she had at least ten children, three of whom died in infancy.  John and Dorothy Raw lived in Great Broughton till 1771, thereafter they appear to have left the village.

Sources

Borthwick Institute:  
Cause Papers:  CP.H.2171 (1637),  Dispute re Tithes, Sutton v Jackson
Wills and Probate;  PROB Register 85, Folio 150 on MIC 1005, Robert Jackson’s Will      

National Archives:  
Cause Papers:  
C 6/289/59  1664,  Watson v Howardyne et al, gives details of previous lease holders.
C 11/1/44  1713,   Cornforth v Geer,  contains reference to the conveyance of the Dog House and Harrisons Farm from John and Margaret Cornforth to Robert Jackson
C 11/1495/36  1731,  Harper v Jackson
C 11/2695/42  1732,  Jackson v Tracey
C 11/2695/47  1733,  Jackson v Harper
C 11/1370/14  1733,  Harper v Jackson  Statements taken at Durham
C 11/1370/17  1734,   Harper v Jackson, Deponents statements
The above five references relate to the financial dispute between Robert Jackson and the executors of William Lee, Dorothy Jackson the younger’s third and last husband.  They include some vital event data for the London Jackson family, ie Tracy,Harper, Sadler and Lee.

North Yorkshire County Record Office:
Kirkleatham Papers:  
ZK 4223  Conveyance of property within the Jackson family in 1650.
Old Parish Registers:  
Kirkby cum Broughton, vital event data relating to Broughton Grange and Great Broughton.
Wills and Deeds:   
DB 114 53, refers to sale of property by Robert Jackson to Robert Patton, original Indenture to be retained by Isaac Chapman, 
A 503 616,  14/8/1738,  Henry Harper agrees terms for Anne Tracy occupying part of Broughton Grange.  Anne had been living in Great Broughton several years before this Indenture was executed.
P 379 619  2&3/1742,  I 392 460  3/2/1742  and  B 120 33  3/2/1742,  all relate to the sale of Broughton Grange by Henry Harper to John Preston.



Thursday 20 June 2019

Update on 'Thomas King of Kirkleatham, brewer & smuggler'

I have just been looking over an early blogpost on Thomas King of Kirkleatham, the brewer who was said to be in partnership with John Andrew, the famous smuggler of Saltburn.  

I've updated the links to the Skelton history website – the old ones were invalid.  And I've also done a little more work on the subject, so for a couple of 18th century newspaper reports on the lugger called the Morgan Rattler – and for an explanation of what a Morgan Rattler actually was – do follow the link.

Thursday 20 July 2017

Miss Margaret Clarke (1833-97), "highly-respected Northern educationist"

Margaret Clarke belonged to the generation of pioneers in women’s education. She was born in 1833 in the parsonage in Wolviston, Co Durham, one of a large but impecunious family.  She didn’t follow the paths we might have expected for a woman of her time – she didn’t marry, she didn’t become the useful spinster aunt and she didn’t become an unregarded and underpaid governess.  She became a gifted teacher, a skilled networker and a good administrator and businesswoman.

Margaret Clarke's origins

Her father was the Revd Lancelot Christopher Clarke (1793-1864).  He was born in Stanhope, Co Durham; his father, the Revd John Clarke, was then perpetual curate of St John’s Chapel in Weardale.  John Clarke must have made his way on his own merits.  A History of Northumberland in Three Parts by John Hodgson (1820) says that he was born in 1756 in the Morpeth deanery in “a solitary farm-house, called Ridpath, within the boundary of the Wallington estate, and on the north side of Harwood and of Fallowlees-burn”. 

He had no patron to give him a living with a substantial income but must have had a friend at Durham Cathedral because in 1802 he was made a Minor Canon and in 1808 the Dean and Chapter appointed him vicar of Billingham where he stayed until his death in 1831.  He wrote several tracts (A Brief Illustration of the Morning Service, &c and others) which were printed at Durham and later reprinted in an edition edited by his son.  His position at the cathedral must have been useful in obtaining from the Dean and Chapter the preferment of the chapelry of Wolviston – which lay within the parish of Billingham – for his son Lancelot.

So Lancelot came to Billingham as a boy of about 14 and it was there that he met his future wife, Isabella White (1800-73).  They married in 1819 after Lancelot came down from Emmanuel College, Cambridge and was priested at Durham.  

Isabella was born and brought up at Brook House, Billingham.  Her father Robert White was the farmer there; her mother Margaret Blackburn came from Guisborough.  Brook House Farm lay not far from Billingham Mill, just above the mill race which led into Billingham Beck.  An industrial estate covers the site now.  

Lancelot and Isabella began their married life in Billingham and their first two children were born there.  They moved into Wolviston Parsonage in 1823.

Wolviston was enticingly described in An historical, topographical, and descriptive view of the county palatine of Durham of 1834 – the year after Margaret was born – as “pleasantly situated on the turnpike road between Sunderland and Stockton ... The soil on which it stands is dry, and the southern prospect is extensive and beautiful”.  It was a sizeable village, with “several good houses” and must have been a lively place as it contained 6 public houses, a spirit & porter merchant, 5 shopkeepers, a corn-miller, 4 butchers, 2 gardeners, 2 stone-masons, a bricklayer, 4 joiners & cartwrights, 2 blacksmiths, 2 tailors, 2 shoemakers and a saddler.  

The young vicar was full of energy.  On 23 January 1830, the Durham Chronicle reported that he had – by his “zealous exertions” – led villagers from Wolviston to the aid of people fighting a fire that had broken out “in some wooden sheds, used as workshops, adjacent to the splendid mansion of the Marquis of Londonderry”.  Luckily there was a strong wind blowing from the north east so that the fire did not reach the “noble Marquis’s Orangery” or threaten “his Lordship’s magnificent house”.

During that year, the chapel at Wolviston was enlarged by the addition of “a neat, elegant steeple, of polished Yorkshire stone” which, according to the Durham Chronicle of 25 December 1830 “is now seen to tower up in the centre of the village, presenting to the eye quite a new and highly ornamental feature in the scenery of the surrounding neighbourhood.  The whole has been effected by means of voluntary contributions”.  The chapel re-opened just before Christmas with Lancelot giving “an appropriate and impressive sermon”.  We can’t see Lancelot’s church now – I see from the Victoria County History that it was rebuilt in 1876.

By that time Lancelot and Isabella already had five children.  There were to be several more – they had eleven children, as far as I can see.  Margaret was the seventh, baptised on 16 March 1833.  It was a full household and by 1841 it also included his mother-in-law, Mrs Margaret White.  

I think money must always have been tight, as the stipend was not generous and Lancelot had so many mouths to feed.  The 1834 View of the County Palatine shows that he was then running an Academy.  He later tried his hand at farming, but it evidently didn’t answer the purpose because by the early summer of 1847, when Margaret was 14, his financial situation came to a terrible crisis and he ended up in Durham Gaol as an Insolvent Debtor.  He spent four months in gaol.  Perhaps he was helped by friends or family, because he was able to come to an arrangement with his creditors and I’m glad to say that he seems to have bounced back.  The day after his appearance before the Durham County Court he was at the third Annual meeting of the tenantry of the Londonderry estate enjoying a good dinner with the other local clergy.  But it must have been a searing experience for the family.

Margaret's education and early career

Unsurprisingly, Margaret was sent to the Clergy Daughters School at Casterton, where she could be educated cheaply.  This was the later incarnation of the school at Cowan Bridge, which was described so vividly and unfavourably by Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre.  The school had moved to the healthier situation of nearby Casterton in 1833, eight years after Charlotte and her sisters were removed from the school by their father.  

We find Margaret there, aged 18, in the 1851 census together with her younger sister Mary Ann, aged 14.  Margaret was one of the older pupils and I think she must have stayed on as a Pupil Governess because her obituary in the Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough records that she went from there to become an associate of the Sisterhood of Holy Trinity, Oxford.  

The Society of the Holy and Undivided Trinity was an Anglican Sisterhood which ran a convent school in Oxford – the buildings now form part of St Antony’s College.  There she must have gained more teaching experience.

I suspect that during her later years at Casterton she encountered Miss Dorothea Beale, who was superintendant of the school during 1857, because in 1860 Margaret was invited onto the staff of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College, where the celebrated Miss Beale was Principal.

Margaret sets up her own school


Margaret remained there five years and then, in 1865, set up her own small school at the Old Hall, Kirkleatham – the building we now know as Kirkleatham Old Hall Museum.  She had made good use of her time at Cheltenham and clearly had made some very useful connections.  Here is her advertisement from 1868:
Newcastle Journal, 19 December 1868
HOME EDUCATION  MISS CLARKE, Kirkleatham Old Hall, Redcar receives TEN YOUNG LADIES to educate on a system adapted to the highest purpose of Education.  The domestic arrangements are those of a private family.  Terms from £60 to £100 per annum, according to age and requirements.  There are two Vacancies.  References can be given to the Dowager Viscountess Barrington, the Lady Ponsonby, the Rev Canon Woodford (Vicar of Leeds), Dr Acland, F.R.S., Regius Professor of Medicine, Oxford, &c

Margaret was targeting the affluent market and had references – and fees – to match.  She soon realised that she could build on her growing success and decided to relocate to London where it would be very much easier to find staff of the calibre she required.

She took a house in Warrington Crescent, Maida Vale, in a terrace of tall white-stuccoed Italianate town houses.  They were five stories high including the servants’ quarters on the top floor and only recently built.  There she and her sister Catherine (who seems to have been generally known as Kate) set up their school.

At the time of the census in 1871 they occupied numbers 26 and 28 Warrington Crescent and their widowed mother and older sister Elizabeth were there with them.  The school remained popular with parents from the North, and among the 15 pupils were four from Yorkshire and three from Newcastle.  A closer inspection of the census details reveal that two of the Yorkshire girls were from Middlesbrough and that they were girls who have featured on this blog before: Annie and Ellen Richardson, aged 14 and 13, the daughters of Dr John Richardson and his wife Margaret Elizabeth Weatherill.

Expansion of the school & the last years of the Misses Clarke

Perhaps Margaret was always on the lookout for a large house in its own grounds, because it was not long before she took out a lease on Brondesbury Manor House in Willesden.  The buildings dated mainly from the late 18th century and early 19th century; the grounds had once been landscaped by Repton, who commented favourably on its hill-top position.  The railway had reached Willesden and from the late 1860s houses for merchants and City professionals were being built.  It must have seemed a very appropriate area.  Margaret took possession in around 1881 and seems to have begun building work to make the buildings ready for occupation by the girls.

The 1881 census shows that the school had expanded dramatically.  Margaret and Kate now had three houses, numbers 24, 26 & 28 Warrington Crescent.  The seven teachers (described by Miss Clarke as “governesses”) included a young French-born British woman and a young woman from Germany, so we can see the pupils were learning both French and German.  The housekeeping staff consisted of a housekeeper, an accountant, a matron, a cook, 2 parlourmaids, 5 housemaids and a kitchenmaid.  

There were 48 pupils aged mostly between 14 and 18, the youngest child being 10 years old.  They included four girls from overseas (India, Cape of Good Hope, Portugal and Canada) and several from the North of England – a girl from Newcastle, another from Kendal, and Elizabeth Faber, the daughter of Henry Grey Faber, solicitor in Stockton-on-Tees, and Kathleen Newcomen, whose father owned Kirkleatham Hall, the great house that was demolished in the 1950s.

By 1891, the school had expanded further still.  Brondesbury Manor was nearly ready for full occupation and in the meantime the census shows that the sisters now had four houses in Warrington Crescent – numbers 24, 26, 28 & 30.  The pupils, teachers and domestic staff were divided between the houses.

In Number 24, there were 12 girls, four of them from Yorkshire, living under the supervision of three teachers.  One taught German & Music, another English & Music and the third taught English.  In Number 26, Miss Kate Clarke presided over the domestic staff – a secretary, a matron (from Gateshead), a housekeeper, a cook, parlourmaid, 5 housemaids, a kitchenmaid and a 15 year old boy as a page.  There was another Music teacher living there.  In Number 28, an English teacher and a French teacher were in charge of 14 pupils, including 2 from Yorkshire and one from Tynemouth.  In Number 30, yet another English teacher had the charge of 7 girls (including one from Nova Scotia and another from New Zealand).  Also living there were a carpenter, a housekeeper, and a 13 year old described as School Boy.  Clearly the school prided itself on music and English – masters will have visited the school to teach other subjects.   

At Brondesbury, the census reveals Margaret presiding over three teachers (one taught German & music, the other two English) and 27 pupils, including a girl from Australia.  She was assisted by a manageress born in Wynyard, Co Durham, and her staff consisted of a ladies’ maid, parlourmaid, 4 housemaids, a cook and a houseboy.  A gardener and his family lived in the Manor House Cottage.  Staying with Margaret was an old pupil, Miss Agatha Skinner, aged 33.

While Miss Kate Clarke stayed in Warrington Crescent, chiefly with the younger girls, work continued apace to build a school chapel.  The building was largely financed by a generous donation from Miss Agatha Skinner, and the chapel was dedicated on 7 June 1892 by the Rev W H Cleaver.  The first Confirmation was held by the Bishop of Marlborough, Alfred Earle, whose daughter was a pupil.  Soon afterwards the houses in Warrington Crescent were given up, and all the girls moved into the Manor House, which had been extended to accommodate them

Miss Margaret Clarke presided over the Manor House for only a few more years.  She died on 11 February 1897 at the age of 64.  Her obituary in the Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough on 26 February called her 
“a once well-known [clearly her renown in London did not count] and highly-respected Northern lady educationist ... known to the leading educationists of the day as one only second to the late Miss Buss [of the North London Collegiate School for Ladies] in powers of organisation and devotion to her work.”
Kate Clarke carried on the school for the next two terms, but it must have been a very difficult time and she must have been very glad to find a buyer quite quickly.  This was Miss Lucy Helen Muriel Soulsby, headmistress of Oxford High School, who arrived at the school in September 1897 and took it over completely from Kate at the beginning of 1898.  Kate lived only two years longer.  She died on 11 February 1897, aged 59.

The two Misses Clarke had not only made their school a resounding educational success, they had also made a substantial fortune.  When Margaret died in 1897, she left £8,114 10s 1d; Kate’s estate (which obviously included the sale of the business) amounted to £18,717.  

Brondesbury Manor House School under Miss Soulsby (1856-1927)

Miss Soulsby – such an apt name, I feel it would have been chosen for her by Charles Dickens – had bought the school with her own objective already fixed in her mind.  Her mother was the strongest influence in her life and, in the words of the Dictionary of National Biography, Miss Soulsby reverenced “the power of the home”.  She intended to put character-building ahead of academic achievement and she intended to form “fine wives and fine mothers”.  

She drew further inspiration from the works of John Keble, Charlotte M Yonge and Elizabeth Missing Sewell (who, with her brothers, has already appeared in this blog), emphasising the importance of developing spirituality and self-discipline.  She was clearly a very charismatic character and was very much in the public eye, a great committee woman, traveller and writer of pamphlets and books.  Unsurprisingly, she opposed female suffrage.  

She retired from the school in 1915, leaving it in the hands of Miss Frances Abbott, but she was still very much in charge.

During this time, Northern families remained loyal to the school, perhaps unconscious of the changes that had taken place.  Mrs Margaret Richardson, who had sent her daughters Annie and Ellen to Miss Clarke’s school in the 1870s, sent her stepdaughters Averil and Madge Buchannan there as well.  They evidently remembered their schooldays with affection because they sent their own daughters there after the First World War.  Alas, by then the school was not the congenial place they remembered, and several of the girls were actively unhappy while all of them seem to have resented the petty discipline and the poor academic performance.

Memories of the school in the early 1920s

Mary Hurst attended the school between 1921 and 1923.  The best that can be said for it, as far as I can see, is that it gave her plenty of time to daydream during lessons; she had two novels, Thy People and The Bond of the Spirit, published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1928 and 1930.

In her unpublished memoirs, Mary left a vivid portrait of the school, which her sister-in-law Katharine Stubbs described tersely with the words, “Lousy education.  Sadistic discipline.  Good on arts.”  Interesting to note that Mary came to Brondesbury from the Oxford convent school in which Miss Clarke had once taught, and which Mary found preferable in terms of education, discipline, kindness and lack of silliness about boys.
Brondesbury Manor House, c1921
Mary wrote that even in the years that she spent at Brondesbury, Miss Soulsby still “periodically made formidable descents on the school to see that [her customs] were being duly continued”.

Here is her description of the school regime:
When the present girls left they did not become simply old girls but some sort of flower, the earlier Miss Soulsby generation being Rosemaries and the later Water Lilies, but the original Manor House-ites, to whom my mother-in-law and her sister belonged were simply called “Miss Clarke’s old girls”.  I fancy Miss Clarke, an uncompromising Puseyite lady devoid of whimsies, would not have approved of all the horticulture.
Brondesbury crest
We were given over to the care of our respective “school mothers” for the first two weeks of school life.  It was a good idea, and conscientiously did my worthy if uninspiring “mother” perform her heavy task.   
She made me rise at 6.30 in order that no possible thing should be left undone to ensure a tidy bedroom.  The bedrooms were inspected when we were at Prayers and the names of the untidy people and their offences were read out by the Head at breakfast.  It was an offence to have a piece of cotton on the floor, a corner of blanket hanging crooked on the chair when the bed was stripped, a blind out of line or a single dead flower in your vase.   
You belonged to a block house, a group of seven or eight girls under a Captain.  “Lucknow” was the Scottish block-house where I, who have not a drop of Scottish blood in my veins, spent two terms; but indeed I started in the Kitchener’s Army block-house and ended as Captain of Revenge, the Navy one, without the faintest connection with either.   
The untidy offender followed her block-house Captain upstairs and picked up the cotton or whatever it was.  If there was no excuse the whole blockhouse lost the Red Star for that week.  It taught us neatness all right, but when I tell you that we lost the Gold Star for a word spoken at any time in the bedrooms (the worst offence of all), the Green Star for a word in the passage, half another star for a shoe adrift in the boot-room, half for any unpunctuality and another whole star for an untidy drawer, you can imagine life was rather hazardous.   
Every morning our persons were inspected from hair to shoes in a vaguely military manner by the Blockhouse Captain and her lieutenant, and it went ill with you if the white starched apron in which each girl was clad had a tear or a button missing.  
The rooms in which the girls slept were named after places that appealed to the imagination of Miss Soulsby.  The landings on the first and second floors were named after her favourite countries – Spain, Italy, France, Greece, etc – and the rooms were named accordingly.  Mary seems to have been in an Algerian section, sleeping in the room called Timgad, which led out of Tiemcen.  The 6th form room was called Byzantium.  The passage by the garden door where girls could read the Illustrated London News was called The Fourth Estate.  I see from a map I found amongst Katharine Stubbs’ papers that the naming extended to the garden, where could be found Bunyan’s Arbour, Little Gidding, Tigris, Arabia and a path named Path to Fairyland and St Hilda’s.
We were placed in classes for sitting, standing and walking.  I soon acquired a more poker-like posture, but my walk was beyond either threats or entreaties.  We were exhorted to strive to be Harebells, which involved always being very straight-backed, courteous and tidy and thus gaining the right to wear a brooch with a harebell upon it. 
At the beginning of every term came the ceremony of obtaining a motto for your cubicle.  “Ich Dien” and “Noblesse Oblige” were the most popular, but “I can because I must and by God’s help I will” was quite a good second.  The mysterious “Here Stand I.  I can no other,” and “Here or nowhere is America,” were low on the list.  “Don’t think of the carriage-in-pair in front but the donkey-cart behind” was deservedly rejected, and “He is so much in love with misery who likes to sit down on his own little handful of thorns” (a most uncomfortable bed-time thought) was at the very bottom.  Miss Soulsby’s passion for mottoes ran riot in every corner but was there or was there not a glint of humour in putting “E’en the light harebell lifts its head exultant from her airy tread” over the school’s main staircase?   
Miss Soulsby was present in person and we were told to bow or curtsey low to her when we entered the drawing-room.  Distracted by seeing a youthful mistress appearing, far too daringly, as an ancient Briton in a hearthrug, bangles and enough brown stain to render Dominion bathroom unusable for days, and hampered by shortsight, I prostrated myself before the only strange lady in view, who turned out to be the Normanbys' governess, who was visiting Katharine Phipps [daughter of Lord Normanby], only to be later confronted by a prodigious vision in a Mary Queen of Scots mantilla, who was obviously the great Lucy S.
There is a photograph of Miss Soulsby in the mantilla on the Brent Museum & Archives website.

The Sunday routine sounds particularly uninviting:
A Manor House Sunday began for those who had not been to Early Service, with shortened prayers before breakfast and after breakfast a promenade round the grounds as on weekdays, only always with hats on because of it's being Sunday.  This was known as First Walk. 
Then we sat in the schoolroom and learned alternate verses of a poem from The Christian Year, then we were herded into the Chapel for Morning Service ending abruptly with Ante-Communion but no communion to follow.  After this came Long Walk which was the only walk taken outside the garden, and the neighbourhood was so dreary that this hardly caused surprise.   
Then we stood in twos in the schoolroom and said our verses from The Christian Year.  After lunch came First Sweet Walk, round and round the garden again, everyone with hats on.  Then the actual sweet-eating, an unseemly exhibition in the Boot-room where you were often unable to have any of your own sweets as they had to be universally distributed and greedy people always asked if they could take two.  Then there was the Second Sweet Walk, followed by the oasis of silent reading from which we were rushed to Chapel for Church History or some such.   
Then tea, and after tea we all took chairs and trailed into the drawing-room where there was hymn-singing (it was amazing that in a finishing-school where so much weight was given to music there was hardly a girl who could play for this adequately).   
After hymn-singing there were readings from George Herbert and The Pilgrim's Progress, Miss Abbott having previously recorded the Stars of each block-house on a special board prepared by the Bell-ringer and had a good stare at any star-losing culprit, who had to stand up for the purpose.   
Then we went back to our class-rooms and wrote our home letters.  Then we had supper and some more improving reading in the drawing-room and then went, exhausted, to bed.  
Only one girl in the Sixth Form in Mary’s time passed Matriculation.  It is cheering to note that Miss Soulsby’s strong aversion to women’s suffrage had no effect on the girls of Mary Hurst’s time.  She herself was already very politically aware and her father Gerald Berkeley Hurst, Conservative MP for Moss Side, Manchester, always impressed upon his daughters and granddaughters that they must vote, because women had died for them to be entitled to do so.  Katharine Stubbs, on leaving school, went and helped a friend’s family electioneering in Eastbourne, while Katharine Phipps, always known to her schoolfriends as a Communist, went to work in the East End at the Camberwell settlement.

Miss Soulsby died on 19 May 1926, and the school continued – but with something of a change of direction.  It was examined and approved by the Board of Education and it gained a science laboratory.

The school went on to have several new manifestations.  

In 1934, after a move from Brondesbury to Cranleigh, Surrey, it became known as Brondesbury-at-Nanhurst.  Brondesbury Manor House, described as “shabby-looking”, was bought by a builder and demolished to make way for housing.  In 1941 the school evacuated to Shakenhurst Hall in Cleobury Mortimer, Shropshire.  The following year it moved again, to Stocks House near Tring, where it became known as Brondesbury-at-Stocks.

And it was there that Miss Clarke’s school at last came to an end in 1972.


Sources: 
Unpublished memoirs of Mary Hurst
Information sent to Katharine Hill née Stubbs in 1987 by the Grange Museum, London Borough of Brent: copy of the Silver Jubilee issue of the Brondesbury Magazine 1930
Notes left by Margaret Isobel Stubbs née Buchannan
Photographs by Katharine Stubbs