old_church

THE OLD CHURCH HOTEL  

Early Years

  Researched and written by Janet Minshull 

[email protected]

Website: www.oldchurch.co.uk

EMail: [email protected]

 

 The Yew tree at Old Church was planted in about the year 500. To put it into historical context, that is about a hundred years before Christianity reached Britain's shores and a mere one hundred years after the Romans ceased tramping along the High Street ridge. For the next hundred years the warring factions of Picts and Scots fought against the mercenary tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes. The name Ullswater is believed to derive from the Saxon Ulfs Water and the frequent appearance of Viking terminology and place names in and around the Lake District, shows that they, too, did their thing beneath the Yew tree's boughs.

 

In the mid seventh century, King Edwin of Northumberland's minister, Coifi, once chief of the Pagan Priests, became a Christian missionary, travelling to Cumberland and converting others. He came as close as Dacre, but then his Christian King, Edwin, was defeated by Pagans Ceadwalla, King of the Britons, and Penda, King of the Mercians, at Hatfield Yorkshire, so it is unlikely that the Watermillock church was built at that time.

 

The tree was about seven hundred years old by 1218 and the first recorded mention of a curate at a church on the margin of the lake at Watermillock. Quite why it was built there is a mystery; the main theory is that the tree had been the site of Celtic or Pagan worship and was simply adopted by early Christians. At that time a lot of the land between Dacre and Watermillock was managed by a monastery at the top of nearby Dumallard and a convent at Maiden Castle behind the higher end of Soulby Fell.  The place name of Bennet Head is probably derived from Benedictine. The congregation at the lakeside church would have been a few humble souls who raised sheep for the Norman wool market, or hacked into the mountains for iron ore, and perhaps the occasional passing pack horsemen that walked their ponies along the treacherous mountain tracks.

 

In his Survey of the Lakes, written in 1787, James Clark (a native of Watermillock) wrote:

 

...About a mile further up is Old Church, so called from a church or chapelry formerly situated there. This seems to have been pretty large, for the present house stands upon part of the ruins of an old building. It is said, I think without reason, to have been standing in the reign of Edward III. I am in possession of an admission of the Anthony Rumney as tenant of two tenements at Gowbarrow Hall, and part of a tenement at Old Church: this admission further sets forth, that the parochial chapel and burying ground was then at Gowbarrow Hall; and as it is dated 1474, we must naturally conclude that the destruction of the church at this hamlet must have long preceded the reign of Edward III.

 

The chapel at Gowbarrow being destroyed by the Scots, this place was without any place of worship till some years afterwards, when a chapel was built a mile from the Water; this was consecrated in the year 1558 (as appears in a memorandum in the bible) by Bishop Oglethorpe when on his road to Crown Queen Elizabeth. There is a tradition that this chapel served both sides of the water, and that they passed over in boats....

 

Clark's paragraph concerning Edward III's reign is confusing. Edward III reigned from 1327 to 1377; the document Clark refers to is dated a hundred years later in 1474, so there seems no reason why the church should not have still been functional during that reign. The terminology concerning Anthony Rumney is also confusing but I take it to mean that Anthony Rumney was tenant of a place referred to as  'Old' Church in 1474, by which time the new Church had been established. Owen Oglethorpe, Bishop of Carlisle, who crowned Queen Elizabeth I was later imprisoned by her and died 31st December 1559, a religious martyr. (Five generations later, his descendant, General James Edward Oglethorpe, was to become the founder of Georgia USA).

 

It's easy to imagine that the isolated community of Watermillock remained uninvolved and possibly unaware of the Crusades and the Plantagenet wars with France. The wars of the Roses were still going on in 1474, by which time the tree was approaching its thousandth birthday.

 

The first mention of 'Old Church' in the Watermillock Parish register appears the year after Guy Fawkes and his gunpowder plot to assassinate King James I.

 

"Jaine Langhorne a poore woman whiche dwelt at a place called the Old Church buried 22 April 1607".

 

The fact that her dwelling is referred to as 'the Old Church', some hundred and fifty years after the building of the new one, suggests that some part of the old church building still stood. This would seem to be confirmed by Clark who in his survey refers to a house that 'stands upon part of the ruins of an old building'. There is architectural evidence that part of the house (now staff room, stores and preparation area) is much older than the front, but it's not thought to be as old 1607. It is possible that poor Jaine Langhorne was living in the derelict remains of the Church and that the house Clark referred to came later.

 

There are no further mentions of Old Church in the Parish register for another hundred and seventy four years. During that time the country went through Civil War, the Restoration of Charles II, the abdication of James II, the installation of William of Orange, the beginnings of the Hanoverian dynasty, the Jacobite rebellions and the eventual flight of Bonnie Prince Charlie through Penrith. (The last ever battle fought on English soil was fought at nearby Clifton Moor). During those years, Watermillock developed and prospered as is evident from the dates carved in stone above the doors of farmhouses in the area. Most of the farms would have been tenanted; the Lord of the Manor for Old Church and much of the neighbourhood was the Duke of Norfolk .

 

By 1780 King George III was on the throne and the American War of Independence was in full swing. In that year, the Watermillock Parish register shows that Isabella, daughter of Thomas Grisdale of Old Church and Elizabeth, his wife, was baptised.

 

Some idea of what Old Church had become can be assessed from Thomas Grisdale's will which was written in 1819, some years after he had moved from Old Church to Ulcathrow, in which he left to his daughter, Isabella, wife of Thomas Herd of Berrier, the sum of fifty pounds. He also charged Hugh, his son, with... full powers to execute a trust appropriated to me by my late father mainly to effect in purchasing  of oatmeal yearly with the interest of sixty pounds and distributing the same amongst the  poor people of Matterdale... All the rest of my present estate and effects whatsoever wheresoever and of what nature kind and quality.... to my son Hugh Grisdale

 

Thomas Grisdale's effects amounted to £200 at a time when the average income for a labourer was £39 per year. £200 is the equivalent of £75,000 today. The £60 that his father had invested into a charitable trust translates to £22,500 today, yielding an interest at 3.75% of  £844 for the purchase of meal to be distributed to the poor. The charitable trust would suggest that Thomas Grisdale was a man of some means, if not a gentleman, at least a Yeoman. A Yeoman being a farmer the next grade below a gentleman, usually a man who owns and supervises the running of his farm, but not actually getting his hands dirty. His wife would be responsible for running her household, the dairy and kitchen with the assistance of one or two resident servants. The Grisdale's were obviously very comfortable, but not comfortable enough to run a house as large as Old Church is today. It is probable that by the late eighteenth century only the old part of the house had been built, probably with two principal rooms downstairs and two or three bedchambers above.

 

Eleven years after Isabella's baptism, the French Revolution was raging and Napoleon was poised to take advantage of European instability. These may have been factors in improved road conditions as locally produced wool and iron ore would have been essential commodities. The Land Tax documents for 1791 show the Duke of Norfolk (formerly Early of Surrey) as proprietor of Old Church; the occupier is Philip Abbot, Yeoman.

 

I came across a little cameo of the times in Clark's survey:

 

...The beauties of the lake can no otherwise be seen to perfection, we must here embark for the delightful expedition, this we may do either in one of the boats kept by Edward Richardson, at the sign of the Sun, or in that with which the Earl of Surrey politely gives leave to his keeper to accompany any gentleman who desires it. Richardson's boats are neat and in good repair, but his lordship's is truly worthy of its noble owner.

It is adapted for eight rowers (for whom there are likewise caps and shirts), and mounts twelve brass swivel guns, for the purpose of trying the echoes: pay for the rowers here is 2s a day for each man, and they are always provided with ammunition for the guns.

 

The Abbots remained at Old Church until 1801. The next occupant was Reverend John Hutchinson. Despite considerable research, much of his background remains a mystery, but he seems to have been 'a gentleman' and was possibly responsible for upgrading the house. The Church of England archives show that he had attended Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and although a Clerk in Holy Orders, he does not appear to have ever been responsible for a Parish. He originated from somewhere in Yorkshire and was married to Rebecca Davis.

 

He would have been in his early thirties when he arrived at Old Church with his young wife and possibly (but without evidence this is only supposition) two sisters and a brother. There are Parish register entries in 1805 and 1808 regarding the marriages of a Mary Hutchinson to Christopher Bowes, and a Martha Hutchinson to George Dent, one of which was witnessed by Ralph Hutchinson. The fact that both the bridegrooms came from Richmond in Yorkshire leads to the suspicion that the Hutchinsons might have originated from that area. What is more intriguing is that Richmond is only about ten miles from Brompton where another Hutchinson family lived at Gallows Hill Farm: the family of Mary Hutchinson who, in 1802, became Mrs William Wordsworth. Mary's brother, Tom, was resident at Park House Farm near Dalemain in 1804, only a few miles from Watermillock, which might suggest a family connection, but at present I have not been able to verify it.

 

Reverend John Hutchinson's education and apparent lack of gainful employment would suggest he was a man of independent means, a gentleman. If, as I suspect, he arrived with sisters and brother in tow, there would have been quite a house full of Hutchinsons, too many perhaps for the house of his Yeoman predecessors. It seems probable that during his occupation he added some, or all, of what is now the main kitchen, office and dining room. In 1787 Clark had said that the house occupied part of the ruins of the old church, whereas in Wordsworth's Guide to the Lake District, written just twenty-three years later, in 1810, he says there are no visible remains of the old Church, which would seem to indicate that at some time between the writing of the two guides the house had been enlarged to cover the remains of the old church.

 

The Parish register shows the baptisms of Mary Hutchinson on 24th April 1808, and Ann on 9th August 1812. Between these two daughters, there were two sons, John and James, who, according to a later census return, were born in Bolton, Lancashire in 1809 and 1810. In 1814 another daughter, Rebecca, was christened at Watermillock, but by then the family had moved to nearby Horrock Wood. Horrock Wood, is a substantial, elegant house but not as large as Old Church.

 

When John Hutchinson died on the 11th March 1846, he left an estate that amounted to about £3000. On the basis that a middle class person needed £200 per year to live comfortably in 1844, compared with average earnings of £20,000 per annum today, that computes to an estate of  £300,000 in today's terms.

A census document five years after his death, shows his second son, James, as joint householder and farmer with 122 acres, two labourers and two household servants. The elder unmarried son, John Robinson Hutchinson, was a scholar who also attended Cambridge university, took Holy Orders and, when he died in 1884, left £4000 to St John's College, Cambridge, for the promotion of study in the Natural Sciences, and in Indian and Semitic languages. The Hutchinsons remained at Horrock Wood for the rest of the nineteenth century.

 

Some time between the births of Ann Hutchinson in 1812 and her sister Rebecca in 1814 (the year of the battle of Waterloo), the Hutchinsons left Old Church and it became the residence of the Miss Pollards.

 

In the listing of country seats, the 1829 Parson and White Cumberland Directory refers to:  ... Old Church, the mansion of Misses Pollard.... This suggests that the Miss Pollards were responsible for extending the house to make it what it is today. Old Church is therefore a Regency House. This is the period so brilliantly recorded by Jane Austen and conjures wonderful pictures of elegance, gentility and close-knit families.

 

There were six Pollard sisters, the daughters of William Pollard (1719-1798), a woolstapler and linen merchant of Ovenden Hall, near Halifax in Yorkshire, and his wife, Anne Leach (1729-1808) of West Ribblesdale. Their great granddaughter, Janet Joy (1829-1913) wrote in her 'Scattered Memoirs'

 

...Anne Leach, of a West Ribblesdale family, whom William Pollard married, and who was my grandmother's mother, must have been a very clever, humorous and refined woman, to judge by a very charming miniature of her which I possess, painted by Johns of Halifax, said to be a pupil of Cosway. Those of her daughters whom I knew had much literary culture and taste. Three of them I never saw - Cordelia, who married Mr Jones, a cousin of Lord Overstone; Harriet and Catherine - were all dead before I can remember - the latter unmarried...

 

William Pollard had died in 1798, appointing his brother Thomas Pollard, Mr Jeremiah Marshall of Leeds, Linen draper, (daughter Jane's father-in-law) and Mr Joseph Priestley of Scott Hill Hall, Bradford, (Superintendent of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal Company from 1769), the survivors or survivor of them, their or his heirs, as Trustees and Executors of his will. Joseph Priestley, the only surviving executor, made a declaration to the effect that William Pollard's estate did not exceed £2000. (At about this time Wordsworth had been left a legacy of £900 that allowed him to live the life of a gentleman). John Marshall, the heir of Jeremiah, must then have become the trustee of William Pollard's estate and effectively responsible for his wife's unmarried sisters.

 

The three Misses Pollard who moved into Old Church were Ann (Miss Pollard), Catherine and Eleanor (known as Ellen). Their sister, Jane, had married John Marshall of Headingly, Yorkshire, in 1795. The Marshall's move to neighbouring Hallsteads brought the Pollard sisters to Old Church. At that time the sisters would have been aged between forty and fifty.

 

John Marshall (1765-1845), had, at the age of twenty-three inherited a house, a warehouse and £7,500 in cash. He became a pioneer in flax milling, built mills and invested in steam machines. By 1820 he was reckoned to be worth over £400,000 (£40 million in today's money). Employees at his mills, mostly young women, worked seventy-two hours a week, and under thirteens no more than sixty hours. For his time, he was an enlightened employer. His overseers were forbidden to use corporal punishment and fans were installed to regulate temperatures within the mills. From May 1825 he sent children from his mills to school, but "only those who were well-behaved and wanted to go". He was also involved in the founding of the Mechanics Institute, gave money to the Leeds Library and began a campaign for a university in Leeds. In 1826 he became MP for Leeds but retired due to failing health 1830.

 

His wife, Jane Pollard, whom he married on 5th August 1795, had been born the same year as Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855). Dorothy lived in Halifax for a time with her mother's cousin, Elizabeth Threlkeld (later Mrs William Rawson), another linen draper, and went to school there with Jane Pollard. They became intimate life-long friends. In published collections of the letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth there are many to Jane Pollard/Marshall. Many refer to Jane's family, and as the following extracts show, Dorothy was very much involved in the Marshall's move to the Lake District.

 

19th November 1809

... My dear Jane I wish I could find out a beautiful estate of two hundred acres and place you and your Husband and Children upon it in a good house - but alas! Such estates are rare even in our larger vales, and in the smaller there are none of that size. Brathay Hall is an excellent house and there is some land attached to it; but it is not to be sold. It was advertized to be lett; but only for a short time, and furnished. As to ourselves who only want a roomy house to shelter us with a few acres to feed a couple of cows, or without any land at all, we know not whither we shall turn, and, at all events, we must leave Grasmere for there are only two houses, besides our own, that would hold us, and of these only one that is large enough...

 

1st January 1810

...I thought that Ormathwaite had been sold, or I should have mentioned it to you. It is a most beautiful place - That is, the situation is exactly what it ought to be, upon an estate containing a great extent of beautifully varied grounds which command views over varying of the lovely vale of Keswick. I think I can give you a notion of the situation of the house, as you are well acquainted with the vicarage. ..... I am sorry to say that the house is not a good one. There are no large rooms and it is an old house, and I should think even out of repair. This I am sure of, that it would ill satisfy you, after New Grange, without considerable additions.... Brathay Hall I should think might suit you very well. It is to be lett and I believe furnished; but I shall see Mrs Lloyd and will inquire of her tomorrow, therefore I keep my letter open.

 

13th April 1810

I had indeed thought you long in writing but I concluded that you were waiting till you could inform me what was your final determination. I cannot say that I am not sorry that you have taken the house at Watermillock, unseen, because I am afraid you will be disappointed, and indeed I cannot help wondering that your prudent Husband should have trusted so implicitly to dear Mrs Rawson's recollections of a place where she only passed some of those days of her life which are not only the most delightful while they are passing; but leave behind them remembrances even more delightful than were the days themselves - besides at that time Mrs R was not accustomed to the luxuries and comforts which she now possesses, and which you too possess, and are accustomed to. When I saw the advertisement in the papers I thought of you; but instantly concluded that the house would not do. But I will endeavour to give you a notion of the place and the neighbourhood. The house looks very pretty from Poolley Bridge. It is a long range of white building with old fashioned gable ends. It fronts the bottom of the Lake, therefore, of course, the view from it is tame, and, compared with the views upwards, uninteresting - but - what is worse than this, you see nothing from any of the rooms of the house except perhaps up the stairs....

She goes on in this vein for pages...

There is only one sitting room and only one good one but it has no view...Another evil is here - that the road goes close past the house... the garden is on the other side of the road but not a private one.... The lodging-rooms are I believe small and inconvenient...

And finishes...

Now my dear Jane after this, I shall be very glad if you are not disappointed. I thought it right, however, to prepare you for the worst....

Even without trees, Hallsteads cannot be seen from Pooley Bridge, but  Old Church, without the front part of the house, would present a gable end to view from Pooley Bridge. However, as Janet Joy's memoirs show, Dorothy is in fact describing Water-Millock house which the family rented while Hallsteads was being built.

Hallsteads was built ... on land purchased from the Duke of Norfolk, a promontory jutting out into Ullswater on the western side of the lake. I have been told by my grandmother that on a tour which she and my grandfather made on horseback in the Lake District soon after their marriage, they singled out for admiration that situation and built some day-dreams in connection with it. I do not fancy the property was acquired till about 1810, some fifteen or more years after their marriage. The house was built about the time of the birth of their youngest son, Uncle Arthur, and I have heard that some of the timber used in its construction was dragged across the frozen lake in the winter of 1812-13, the disastrous winter of the French campaign in Russia.

Whilst the house was being built, Water Millock House was hired for one or more summers, and it was in the little sunny strip of garden between that house and the Penrith road that Aunt Susan, born 1811, learned her letters. There was a time too when rooms at the farm of Gowbarrow Hall were hired by or for my great-aunts, Grandmama's sisters, the Misses Pollard, and I have some idea that some of the nephews and nieces stayed there with them. When Old Church was made fit for habitation - it had been a mere fishing lodge - the Misses Pollard, I know, spent several winters there as well as summers. Aunt Ellen Pollard has often told me how Uncle Henry used to model vases and other "fancy articles" of graceful shape in some clay which was dug up near at hand, and dry them in the oven or on the hobs and bars of the sitting-room fires, and how on one occasion my eldest great-aunt, "Aunt Pollard", as we always called her, whose sight was not very good, swept a whole row of "fancy articles" off the bars into the blaze, mistaking them for "coals in the wrong place", and with what extraordinary sweetness the brokenhearted little boy accepted the catastrophe.

Janet had opened her memoirs acknowledging that her memory of those early years is very fragmentary and all second hand. Obviously, Old Church was something better than a fishing hut because it had been home to Yeomen Grisedale and Abbot and the Reverend Gentleman Hutchinson before the Pollard sisters occupied it. I think it more likely that it was Hallsteads, which had not appeared on Clark's map in 1787, nor the Land tax document of 1791, that had been no more than a fisherman's house.

William and Dorothy Wordsworth were regular visitors to Hallsteads. Given the longstanding relationship between Dorothy and the Pollards it seems highly likely that whilst visiting Jane at Hallsteads, the Wordsworths will have visited Jane's sisters at Old Church and perhaps taken tea or dinner with them.

 

25th June 1817

My Dear Friend

When, on our way home, I viewed from the top of Helvellyn the fields of Skelly Nab and the dwellings of Hallsteads and Old Church I though I would, the very next day write you an account of our journey; but, finding Miss Joanna Hutchinson ill in the rheumatism, I was unwilling to begin with a dolorous tale, and put off for a day or two, and thus, because I had begun with a delay I went on, and it is now more than a fortnight since I was at Hallsteads....

...Pray make my best Respects to Mrs Askew and all the Family. With kind love to all at Hallsteads and Old Church.

William Wordsworth visited Hallsteads in October 1818 as is documented by his personal delivery of a letter from his sister Dorothy to Jane Marshall and gives some insight into the lifestyle of the people who lived at Old Church.

... Sir George and Lady Beaumont returned from Hallsteads inexpressibly delighted with the hospitality and kindness which they had met with under your Roof. They were never weary of talking of the kindness of one and all; and, as for you and Mr Marshall, they were sure they had tried you to the uttermost by having kept dinner waiting hour after hour.

They often said that they hoped at some time to have the pleasure of seeing you at Coleorton on your way to London or Bath...

My Brother will give you a good report of the health of all our Family and I hope, my dear Friend, that he will find your poor little Ellen quite recovered. It concerned us much to hear of her being suffering under one of her distressing attacks when Mr Monkhouse and his Friend called at Hallsteads.

By your letter from Allonby I first heard the full extent of your poor Sister Catharine's misfortune, and Lady Beaumont has since given me many particulars. Lady B seemed to hope with you that she would gradually be restored to the use of her leg - she told us that you were all going to Bath early in the spring. Perhaps if the visit to Bath does not produce the wished-for benefit your Sister may be induced to put herself under Mr Grosvenor's care at Oxford. It seems to be one of those cases in which Mr G's mode of treatment is likely to be serviceable. Lady B spoke much, and feelingly, of your Sister's chearfulness and patience, and of the tender attentions paid to her by every member of your Family. My Brother was very glad to meet with your Son John at Leeds, but was not so fortunate as to see Miss Pollards and Mary Anne. They had passed through Kendal....

I hope to hear a good account of your Sisters, and that their journey has been of use to Miss Catharine. Lady Beaumont tells me that you have yet some trouble from your lame foot. It was indeed a grievous accident but, as you observe, compared with your Sister's it was as nothing, though it must have been a serious draw-back from your summer enjoyments; the weather has however been so very warm, that it has often been more delightful to sit and feel and enjoy than to make any exertion of limbs, and this has for you and her been a great blessing.

Remember me kindly to Mr Marshall and all of your Family who are at home.

The letter speaks glibly of travels between Leeds and Bath and Watermillock, but these people were around before the advent of railways and their journeys would have been quite an undertaking. People of the Marshall's wealth almost certainly had their own carriage, which would have travelled at an average seven miles per hour with a change of horses every ten miles or so. Their journey to Leeds, approximately one hundred miles, would probably have been via Kendal, Kirby Stephen and Skipton and involved at least one overnight stop, probably with friends or possibly in an hotel. The three hundred mile journey to Bath would probably have been accomplished over a week or two, taking the opportunity to spend a few days at a time with friends along the way.

While the ladies were away, the house was not unoccupied. In 1819, the Watermillock Parish register refers to the death of Peter Halfey of Old Church aged 22, and in 1829 another Peter Halfey of Old Church died aged 66. It is probable that the Halfeys were resident household and garden staff. The 1841 census shows two Elizabeth Halfeys (aged 75 and 55) in residence, and ten years later one of them is recorded in the Parish register as having died. Her effects, valued at under £100 were left to her brother, Thomas, a gardener of Union Street, Carlisle.

Janet Joy in her memoirs tells us more about the lives of the families whilst in residence at Hallsteads and Old Church.

I have heard much of expeditions up Helvellyn to see the sun rise, of walks traced by my grandfather, with the Duk of Norfolk's permission, up Yew Craig, to the Deer's Cave, and from Burke Craig to Yew Craig along the curve of Gowbarrow, my grandfather himself with the help of Aunt Susan and Uncle Arthur making the ascents and descents and tracing out the whole course of the paths. Also of rides to Haweswater where my grandfather had property; of many others in various directions; very frequent expeditions to Rydal - Mr and Mrs Wordsworth were frequent visitors at Hallsteads - I can recall Mr Wordsworth's grey head and the sound of his voice as long as I can remember anything. His sister Dorothy and my grandmother had been at school together...

My grandfather's bust, must, I think, to every intelligent eye, show what the gentleness and serenity were which tempered his strength. I should imagine no one had ever heard his voice raised, but I am very sure no one ever failed to heed what he said. My grandmother was of a warmer and more emotional temperament, but a dignified presence too was hers, with great tenderness. She had a sweet singing voice. I still remember the songs she sang to us as little children. None of her daughters inherited that gift, but her love of poetry was passed on to all. I think her early friendship with Dorothy Wordsworth had probably cultivated and confirmed it.

Men who have made their own fortunes are often hastily and erroneously supposed to have had very humble origins. In my grandparents' case this was far from being the case. Both came of cultivated, well-educated families - conversation, taste, manners, all showed this - the absence of ostentation as much as anything would have proved the household different from that of the ordinary "nouveau riche". Of course politics must have always been of great interest. My grandfather and Mr Duncombe, afterwards Lord Feversham, were the two last members who sat in the House of Commons for an undivided Yorkshire.

..I have only found amongst old letters and some diaries the list of Hallsteads' summer guests for one summer - that of 1840. It includes over twenty-two different groups, and it shows how much "on the road" it was to friends who visited the Lakes.

There were political friends, Lord Morpeth, Lord John Russell...Poets, including the Wordsworth,s Henry Taylors, Aubrey de Vere, Lord and Lady Adars from Ireland...

...The cordial relations preserved during more than half a century between the two families are all the more striking, because, nothwithstanding the somewhat revolutionary sympathies of Mr Wordsworth's youth, his politics, in later life, were strongly Tory, and I believe if he found an Edinburgh Review article being read aloud in the drawing-room to my grandfather he was wont to withdraw in displeasure, or more possibly the reader at once stopped reading.

Later in her memoirs Janet Joy recalls:

...We were not at Hallsteads again until 1843... The two Aunts Pollard were spending the summer at Old Church. I think they always at that time spent the winter at Bath - Aunt Pollard, the elder of the two and the eldest of the sisters, I never saw again. She died I think soon after.

She is referring to Ann. Catherine had died on the 12th January 1834, aged 70. Her remains are buried in the large tomb that stands alongside the door to Watermillock church. It's a sad reflection on life that for all their wealth, the grandeur of the tomb and the house, two hundred years later, it has taken considerable research to find out who the Pollards were.

William Wordsworth wrote to his brother Christopher on 10th September 1844 during a five day visit to Hallsteads and says that he ...found the old people in dejected spirits - Mr Marshall afflicted by blindness, Mrs Marshall not well. The Whewells were there enjoying themselves as much as the sad circumstances could permit.

John Marshall died in 1845. Jane died in January 1847. Their estate passed to their eldest son William of Patterdale Hall. By then the Marshalls owned vast areas of the Lake District around Ullswater, Derwentwater and Windermere, much of which remained in the family until the 1930's. Within their lifetime, the Pollard sisters and the Marshalls gave much to the community, as Janet Joy recorded:

...The churches of St John's in Keswick, and St John's Holbeck, were, built, the first by my father with some assistance after his death by his brothers, the latter by the brothers. All the parochial buildings at Keswick were contributed by the family - the Parsonage by Aunt Pollard and Aunt Marianne; the school by Aunt Cordelia and Aunt Susan, chiefly the Aunts Pollard and no doubt all the family helping more or less with these objects and with the endowment, to which also some friends and neighbours contributed. In later days the endowment received a considerable addition from a bequest of my grandmother's, I believe.

.John Marshall also built a girl's school near the Church in Watermillock in 1832. It was further endowed with £500 by Jane in 1847 and with £155 by Miss Pollard (Ellen) of Old Church in 1858.

 There is no record of Ann or Ellen's burials in the Watermillock Parish register. Dorothy's letter made reference to William not seeing the Miss Pollards in Leeds, which suggests they may have retained a home there, and there is also reference to them regularly over-wintering in Bath, so it seems probable that they ended their days in either Leeds or Bath. Ellen was the last of the sisters to die (1858), but she had apparently already left Old Church because the 1851 census reveals that a Mr and Mrs Watson and their four young sons and daughter are in residence. Who they were is yet to be discovered.

Jane and John Marshall had twelve children:

William 1796-1872 lived at Patterdale Hall, was MP for Carlisle, Petersfield Beverley & East Cumberland and Married Georgiana Hibbert

John 1797-1838 lived at Headingley and Keswick, was MP for Leeds (he was the father of Janet whose memoirs have been quoted), married Mary Ballantine Dykes.

Mary Anne 1799-1841, married as his second wife Rt Hon Thomas Spring Rice (1790-1866), 1st Baron Monteagle of Brandon, Co. Kerry, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1835-1839 and Comptroller General from 1839 to 1865.

Catherine 1800-1801

James Garth 1802-1873, lived at Headingley, Monk Coniston, Ambleside, JP DL Co. York. High Sheriff 1860, MP Leeds 1837-52, married Hon Mary Alicia Pery Spring Rice, (his sister Mary Ann's oldest stepdaughter).

Cordelia 1803-1853 married Revd William Whewell DD, Master Trinity College Cambridge

Jane Dorothea 1804-1851 married John, 2nd son of Sir Grenville Temple Bt.

Ellen 1806-1854,unmarried.

Henry Cowper 1808-1884 of Westwood Hall, Yorkshire, married Hon Catherine Anne Lucy Spring Rice, another stepdaughter of sister Mary Ann

Julia Annie 1809-1841, married Revd Henry Venn Elliott, Incumbent of St Marys & Founder of St Marys Hall, Brighton, Sussex

Susan Harriet 1811-1842, married Rev. Frederick Myers, Perpetual Curate, St John's Keswick.

Arthur 1814-1890

William's daughter, Elizabeth (1830-1883), married Hon. Thomas Charles William Spring Rice, 1819-1870, 6th Son of 1st Baron Monteagle, and had eight children :

Stephen Edward 1856-1902

Agnes 1857-1928

Cecil Arthur 1859-1918

Margaret 1861-1930 married Aubrey Birch-Reynardson

Evelyn Mary 1862-1898 married Baron Farrer

Gerald 1864-1916 

Georgiana Ellen 1866-1942

Bernard Wilfred Charles 1869-1953

Agnes was twenty-six when her mother died; she took control of the family and moved into Old Church with her younger sisters and brothers. Brothers Stephen and Cecil were already embarked on careers.

Cecil was a career diplomat who held posts in America, Japan, Berlin, Persia and Russia, before serving as Ambassador in Washington from 1913 to 1918. He was a close friend of Theodore Roosevelt and was best man at his wedding in 1886. Cecil married Florence Lascelles in Russia in 1904. In 1918 he wrote the words to the hymn "I vow to thee, my Country" which was set to music by Holst. They hymn was chosen by Diana, Princess of Wales, to be sung at her wedding to Prince Charles, and was sung again at her funeral.

*Gerald was killed in action during the first world war and is commemorated on one of the Aira Force bridges.

*But between the Pollard sisters and their great great nieces and nephews there were other residents at Old Church, the Watsons and Herds, as are mentioned in Parish records and census documents.

 

1819 - Thomas Herd, widower of Greystoke married Isabella Grisedale (who is probably the same Isabella that had been born at Old Church)

1835 - Robert Herd married Julia Marshall (but not Jane and John's daughter, was she a cousin?)

1836 - John Watson married Susannah Castley, both of Watermillock

1851 census shows Susannah Watson, sons Joseph 14, John 11, Peter 9, William 3, Susannah 6, Margaret Easterly 1 (niece), Jonathan Watson 68 (lodger) in residence at Old Church.

1875 - John Herd of Old Church was buried at Watermillock, aged 72

1884 - Issac Herd of Hallsteads was buried, aged 57, and in 1884, Margaret his wife.

1884  A directory shows Arthur Marshall at Hallsteads and Gibson Sumner Esq at Old Church (married to Katharine, sister of Janet (Joy) and granddaughter of John and Jane),

1901 census Miss Spring-Rice at Old Church, Mrs Wedgewood at Hallsteads

1914 Kellys Directory shows Rev Canon Powell at Old Church, Franklin Thomasson Esq JP at Hallsteads

"Some may have been family members, some retained staff, some tenants. The research continues."