Ashted Row, Birmingham, and the Beaumonts

This should be read after the piece on Richard Beaumont of Birmingham 1761-1828, who is known to have moved out of the town into the new suburb of Ashted before about 1810. He lived at No. 15 Ashted Row, one of the earliest of the houses.

Box-1-086

The reverse (address side) of an undated letter to Richard from his son George, from school at Castle Bromwich. Assuming George to be about ten to twelve years old, the date is between 1806 x 1809.

After 1828 Richard's widow Ann was living at Meriden, but she returned to Ashted Row by 1841 and lived at No. 89 until her death in 1864.

I have been digging around, so to speak, about this place, which is now largely lost near the "Ashted Circus" roundabout. Much has been written about Ashted, and what I say here is by no means definitive.

The spelling is very variable, with the old form of s sometimes used, so we need to look for Ashted, Afhted, Afhsted, Afhstead, and so on.

A lease of the estate had belonged from 1788 to a man named John Brooke about much has also been written. Brooke is said to have bought the lease from an eminent doctor called John Ash and to have converted the doctor's own house into a chapel. Brooke also leased off a large plot to H.M. Government for building barracks, and embarked on a programme of development of the area, supposedly - initially - as an upmarket suburb.

But John Brooke was made bankrupt in summer 1793, after which his assets were in the hands of "Assignees." These people (whose names I do not know) tried to sell what they could, including even the chapel! It was cynically described as generating £250 a year from the "kneelings," and with the expectation of larger income to come, as the population of the area was growing! (see eg Oxford Journal 19 October 1793). The chapel was being offered for an 80 year term, which would thus have run until about 1873. I don't know who (if anyone) bought it.

The earliest reference to Ashted Row I have found is in 1798. I suspect it marked the northern boundary of the Ash / Brooke estate. The street numbering in this road started from the Birmingham end. The numbers ran up the right hand side, reaching 101. Crossing the road there the numbers then ran back on the other side, reaching just over 200 back at the Birmingham end.

Thus, the oldest houses were on the south side, and the oldest of all were those at the Birmingham end. Perhaps the original Ashted Row was just a "row" of houses. Richard Beaumont lived at no.15 Ashted Row. It is hard to figure out exactly where that was. But very near the canal and the junction with Great Brook[e] Street.

The red circle is a guess. The road going to the NE is Ashted Row, and the one going ENE is Great Brooke Street. The problem is not knowing whether Ashted Row started at that junction, or (as I suspect) a few houses nearer Birmingham. It depends where Prospect Row ended.

The houses were sold by the "Assignees" on leases, sometimes it seems in "blocks" of several houses which were then presumably sub-leased one by one.

A sale in January 1800 was advertised in the local papers and the London Gazette, describing John Brooke as dealer and chapman. This sale was to comprise ground rents of £345-8-10 per annum payable by several people and two Building Societies, in respect of leases of plots at Ashted let on building leases which at that time had 75 years unexpired, and on which several valuable buildings had already been erected (London Gazette 5 Oct. 1799).

Notices of that 1800 sale show that houses numbered up to 47 in Ashted Row had been built by that time. That means, some way along the southern side of the road but not I think as far as Windsor Street.

1839 Map of Ashted (SDUK)

The Ashted Row area from Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge map of Birmingham, 1839. I would not have known about this but for Bill Dargue's Birmingham history website. The map shows that by 1839 houses had been built all along the southern side of the road.

The estate does not seem to have remained very upmarket, as the spread of Birmingham meant that within a few years, many of the houses were being used for business purposes, and/or were in multiple occupation. The canal passing underneath the west end entailed industrial activity nearby. And the available leases may have seemed rather too short. Also the prevailing winds meant that smoke and pollution were carried more this way than the other side of town.

Ashted in the early c20

Richard Beaumont died in 1828. Until very recently I thought that his widow Ann continued to live in the same house for a few years. However, she moved to Meriden (see the other piece). A directory dated 1835 shows Mrs Beaumont at no.15;  but I think it must have been out of date when it was printed.

By 1841 however Ann returned to Ashted Row, to a newer house, no. 89, where she lived until her death in 1864. Being further out of town, this was still fairly genteel, with houses used by school-teachers or doctors as well as shops, craftsmen, boarding-houses, private residences etc. I have seen it suggested that no. 89 was a big house on the corner of Willis Street, but actually I think that one was no. 90, known as Ashted House, which was a school in the mid nineteenth century, and later occupied by doctors.

A good drawing of the house in the above photo is on the Birmingham & Five Counties Architectural Association Trust website, saying there that it is no. 89; but I think it is no. 90, which means that we can see the front of no. 89 behind (we are looking from NE to SW across the junction with Willis Street).

(The notices of the 1800 sale expressly mention the house on the corner of Willis St & Ashted [Afhsted] Row which is occupied by Mrs Jarvis  - the one I think became No.90. At that date this house may have been all on its own - out in the country! During the c19 the housebuilding caught up with it. A comparison of the maps shows that by 1839 Willis Street between Great Brook Street and Ashted Row had been shifted a few yards to the east, giving no. 90 its front driveway)

Plan dated 1819. North is to the right. I got this from the
excellent mapping birmingham blog.

It seems a fair bet that when Ann Beaumont died in 1864 the lease of no. 89 had so few years to run that it was worth very little. George Beaumont being a Land Surveyor, albeit with a rural practice, will have understood the situation far better than I have been able to work out. By 1871 no. 89 was occupied by a doctor called Clement Hadley, and within a few more years he was in No.90 - Ashted House - as well.

A Postscript on the term of the leases:
Two properties on the south side of Ashted Row which were advertised for sale in 1865 - the Ashted Tavern, which I think was no 71, and No. 101 at the end of the street, were described as leasehold with eight and a half years to run (Birm. Daily Post 17 Aug. 1865). Presumably none of the leases could outlast the original lease that Dr Ash had had, which I suspect (I do not know) may have been 99 years, from the 1770s.

Date: February 2019
Revisions:

Richard Beaumont of Birmingham 1761-1828 (life & career)

Richard was born on February 21, 1761 when his father (George) was curate at Gedling near Nottingham, and was christened there just over a month later.

(He was the fifth child of his parents George and Betty. Soon afterwards he had a brother named Henry). 

There has been long-standing confusion, as to whether Henry was Richard's middle name. I have found no contemporary mentions of him having any middle name. As suggested in an earlier piece on errors in the family tree, the muddle is due to someone seeing a list of the brothers in birth order without realising that Henry was another person.

I mean to write up after this what I know of Henry Beaumont (1762-1784); his life was one of confusion, rebellion, and apparently unhappiness.

When Richard was about three the family moved to Bingham, where his father was a kind of temporary curate. The Rector of Gedling had been living at Bingham but now went to his own parish, and "booted out" Richard's father, who was sent to Bingham to stand in till a new Rector was appointed there. 

Bingham's new Rector was John Walter, a wealthy man originally from Birmingham who came to know the Beaumonts well, and who in due course married Richard's aunt, Susannah.

(See my note on John Walter. John and Susannah Walter were childless, and I have a number of clues that they treated Richard very kindly).

Richard's father, mother, and the rest of the family then moved to Nottingham, where (with the help of Abel Smith, the banker) George was appointed Rector of St. Nicholas. I think they lived in Castle-gate near the church.

I don't know where Richard went to school. He had an old great-uncle in Nottingham who died in 1771 leaving him £500 at age 21, and in 1773 when Richard was only twelve his father died also. It appears that Richard's mother Betty - who had several younger children to look after -  remained in Nottingham rather than (as I once thought) returning to her home town, Leeds.

Unlike his eldest brother Thomas, Richard did not go to University. He started to look in the direction of Derby and Birmingham, and I believe this happened through his uncle, John Walter, introducing him to people from there including his lawyer brother Richard Walter. The Walter family owned a house in a prestigious and elegant square in the best part of Birmingham.

The Walters' house was no.15, the low one on the right with tall chimneys
J.Hill and R.K.Dent, "Memorials of the Old Square."

(From the "Old Square" the Walters moved to Handsworth, outside Birmingham. Richard Walter's wife Anna Maria (nee Burnaby) was the daughter of Richard Beaumont's great-aunt, the Hannah Beaumont whose marriage Abel Smith (sr) had arranged in 1728 (see earlier notice in this blog)).

Other influential people included Girton and Sarah Peake, who had a house in Nottingham but many connections to Birmingham, where they moved in the same circles as the Walters.

(Mrs Peake was from a Birmingham family called Rann. Her husband Girton Peake, a lawyer and property speculator, was a trustee of the settlement in 1767 when John Walter and Susannah Beaumont married. When Sarah Peake died at the end of 1784 her finances and those of her late husband unravelled and their Nottingham house was sold. It was in Angel Row very near Bromley House, which had been built for Sir George Smith, whose second wife Catherine was the daughter of the Birmingham clergyman (William Vyse) in whose church the Peakes had married. A report of litigation in the early c.19 - Carver -v- Vyse - hints at the family and financial connexions. Another example is the case of Mark Huish, a Nottingham hosier, who married a Birmingham girl. Abigail Gawthern in her diary says that "Mrs Peak" - undoubtedly the same - was responsible for the match. There is a volume of circumstantial evidence to connect all these parties, indeed some of them were related to one another. The Walter family's Birmingham town house was in "Old Square," a development of sixteen houses, two of which had belonged to people called Pemberton, the same name as Richard Beaumont's first wife - see J.Hill & R.K.Dent, "Memorials of the Old Square" - passim for the Pembertons, and pp.110-115 for the Walters).

It seems that at one time Richard considered going to sea. This information emerges from a letter written from Nottingham in late 1779 by Mary Smith, wife of Abel Smith, to her son George. The Smiths and Beaumonts were closely related and in touch with one another. In the next sentence after saying that "Dick Beaumont wishes to go to sea," Mary tells her son that "Mrs Peak" has gone to Bath, for her health (Notts Archives DD/SMT/294).

A little later, perhaps a military career was considered. I know little about that side but I wonder if the £500 - hopefully not all of it - may have helped to get the Commission that was granted to Richard in 1782. This was in the Derby Militia.

(For this document dated 25 January 1782 - Box 1/121 in our Archives - see an earlier notice).

Almost immediately it seems Richard would have set off with his military unit to the south-west of England - Plymouth area - for much of 1782....

(Newspaper Reports in eg the Derby Mercury).

... but in 1783 the unit was disbanded (stood down) and this is when I think Richard must have gone to Birmingham to take up some employment. He soon married Ann Pemberton, at Aston parish church in October 1784. His witness was not a member of his own family but a woman called Sarah Hallen. 

Added this 16 July 2022:- I now know that Ann's father was called Abraham or Abram Pemberton. His will, proved in 1792, makes that clear. At about the time his daughter met Richard, Abram was running Vauxhall Gardens (Duddeston, NE of Birmingham centre, and near to the [future] Ashted suburb) as what might be called an entertainment venue.

(Sarah was the widow of John Clay Hallen and mother of John Boylston Hallen, both lawyers in Birmingham).

Within a short time it would appear that Richard was working as a druggist or chemist at New Street in the centre of Birmingham.

(Pye's Directory, and a report in the Derby Mercury that his warehouse was broken into and robbed).

However Richard's military career had not ended for he was promoted from ensign to lieutenant in 1789. 

From Derby Mercury 25 June 1789.  Also of
course in the London Gazette.

Richard and his wife lived at Great Charles Street in the town. A son was born in October 1792 but died at the age of four days. Another child was conceived but, in October 1793, Ann herself died "in childe-bede."

(Aston Parish Register. Both apparently buried "north side" or "north corner."  I think this means the old church of Aston, where they had married).

Whether, or when, Richard remarried is one of the mysteries. His son George (our ancestor) was born in February 1796. George's mother might well have been Ann Walford, who Richard actually married many years later!! 

Richard became involved in the affairs of Anna Maria Walter, at Handsworth, attending at her deathbed on behalf of the extended family. This was at the end of 1796. After the funeral he was asked to read the Will.

(Letter from Thomas Beaumont Burnaby to John Walter at Bingham, 18/309 in this Archive).

Richard must have sometimes gone back to Nottingham. I am thinking of family occasions such as the deaths of his brother Henry (late 1784), the death of his mother (1792), the death of his brother Thomas' daughter (1786), and the weddings of his sisters Frances (Fanny) (1788) and Charlotte (1784).

St.Nicholas' Church, Nottingham, from Deering. Mid c18 and so, much as Richard will have known it.

(Abigail Gawthern's note of Betty's death, and the announcement of it in the Derby Mercury, show that she still lived in Castle-gate, the street leading past her late husband's church and towards the castle. Betty was buried in that church, with her husband. I am sure that Richard would also likely have gone to Bingham for the funerals of his aunt (1804) and uncle (1810), the Walters - he received a very substantial legacy - £3,000 - from John Walter).

Richard still worked in Birmingham - being noted as a wholesale dealer in Porter at Snow Hill and a little later as a woollen draper at 44 High Street.

(Pye, New Birmingham, and Chapman Directories 1797-1801, and 1808. Being a woollen draper may fit with his brothers George and Walter in Yorkshire, about whom I have written a special piece).

Richard's connexions with the Derby Militia appear to have ended and in 1803 he was made a Captain in the Loyal Birmingham Infantry, a role which I feel sure must have been "part-time." This may coincide with his move to Ashted, where there was a barracks. There is another Commission issued to him in 1808, again as Captain, this time in the Second Regiment of the Warwickshire Militia.

(Commissions: 1803 - newspapers; 1808 - Box 1/123. The old idea that he was a Captain in the 84th Regiment is wrong, confusing him with his brother, who was connected with that Regiment as chaplain - not captain)

Richard now had another son, named Henry (born in March 1801), and very soon after this moved to a new suburb, at that time a genteel and upmarket one, where he would live for the rest of his life. I intend to put up a piece shortly after this about Ashted. The house was in Ashted Row. Numbers were rarely used but later evidence is that it was No.15.

The elder boy George was sent to a school owned by a Mr Townsend at Castle Bromwich from where he wrote what is to modern eyes a hilariously formal letter to his "Honoured Father" about the timing of the school holidays.

(Letter from Castle Bromwich - Box 1/86. The letter is not dated but must I think be of about 1808-1810. It is addressed to Ashted Row).

At Ashted, Richard helped to run a soup kitchen for the poor (remembered over 20 years after his death)... Here is his own recipe:-

Put into a boiler on the previous evening, and there to remain until the next morning, sixty gallons of soft water, 2 pecks of peas, 6 ounces of pearl ashes. On the following morning place the fire underneath the boiler, and then add, 36 pounds of beef, cut into pieces of not more than 3 ounces each; 6 ounces of ground black pepper; 6 ounces of celery seed; 1 peck of onions, 2 pecks of Swede turnips, cut into small pieces. The whole of the above to be boiled throughout the day and frequently stirred, until evening, when the fire should be removed from under the boiler. On the following morning let the furnace be again heated. When the ingredients above named are well-boiled, put in gradually four pounds of oatmeal and 4 pounds of salt, and continue stirring, without ceasing, full one hour after the last-named have been added. Particular care must be observed not to leave the boiler after oatmeal is put in, lest it should adhere to the bottom of the boiler, and spoil the flavour of the soup. The fire may be removed after the lapse of one hour from the oatmeal being mixed.

9 January 1854

The anonymous informant added that at the Ashted Soup Shop each adult had to pay a penny, for which they got a quart of the soup and piece of bread about four ounces in weight...."the late Captain Beaumont of Ashted-row".... “a most benevolent gentleman,” who “every day regulated and superintended the admixtures of the various ingredients, according to his own recipe.” 

Box 1/124 Toast List

And he was a Committee Member of the (Tory) Birmingham Pitt Club and attended its dinners. 

The Toast List above is from this Archive, and the details below are from the New Monthly Magazine (both dating from 1816).

In 1811 Richard arranged for his eldest son George to be articled to a land surveyor called Richard Court at Bewdley on the river Severn. After his training George returned to Ashted and had some sort of practice there for a short time before he married. 

(Articles of Agreement - Box 1/105)

Then at the very end of 1815 or beginning of 1815 Richard and his wife - identified as called Ann - had another son, a poor little one who lived only a month and five days.

Another Parish Register entry is that in 1817 that Richard, described as widower, married Ann Walford, described as spinster. Recall that his first wife Ann (Pemberton) died way back in 1793. Now, either (a) he and Ann (Walford) have been together since the mid 1790s and he is now making her an "honest woman," or (b) there was an unknown second wife called Ann who has died and he is now marrying for the third time. I suppose (a) to be more likely!

(Usually books assign only one wife - Ann Walford - to Richard. His son George (1796-1882) had some correspondence with the editor of "County Families" - who was called Edward Walford. Perhaps George was hoping to get his family into this book. "County Families" appeared annually from 1860 for about 50 years. I have looked at several (but not all) editions. The editions I have seen do not mention Richard's wife but they do contain some muddle and error about him (eg the middle name, and his being in the 84th Regiment). I am afraid this is down to George. The statement that Richard married Ann Walford, and that she was the daughter of William Walford of Penn Bank, Staffordshire, first appears in print in a Family Tree which (from its own internal evidence) was produced in about 1873, and which accordingly must also have had input from George himself. Here also it is stated that they married in 1795. From the Family Tree it has been picked up in E.T. Beaumont's book, in Burke's Peerage, and in other derivative works. If George Beaumont did not think that Ann (Walford) was his actual mother it would not have been necessary for him to say that she had married his father the year before his own birth).

Richard was an active investor in canals. A canal that still exists, in a tunnel close to the Ashted Circus roundabout, was very near to his house!

Looking NNW to where the tunnel goes under the A47 Jennens Road,
very near (formerly) the west end of Ashted Row.

Aris's Birmingham Gazette, 31 October 1825 contains a notice by the Proprietors of the Birmingham Canal Navigations calling a meeting to elect a new clerk. The notice was signed by "Rd. Beaumont" and others.

His eldest son's wedding took place in July 1821 at Redmile, Leicestershire. A couple of years later George brought his own family to Ashted where Richard's grandson was christened. 

(This was the eldest grandson, another Richard, who did have the middle name Henry. He had already been christened at Winthorpe.)

Here is the address side of something sent to Richard perhaps by his son George. The date on the postmark is hard to read but looks like ?6FE26.

Box 1/122

The younger son Henry married Elizabeth, nee Taylor, in 1823 in Birmingham. I plan to write something about him too. It seems that the Taylors ran a timber and boat-building yard in Birmingham, and that Henry was (briefly) in that business.

We don't have a portrait of Richard Beaumont of Birmingham (see discussion elsewhere), but there are one or two things that we do have that must have belonged to him and been in his hands, and we have one or two scraps of his handwriting.

Part of the note in Richard's writing about the baptisms
of his sons George (1796) and Henry (1801) from Box 1/126

Describing himself as "Richard Beaumont of Ashted," he made his will 28 April 1828…. his wife Ann to receive dividends on Old Birmingham Canal shares and to have the right to live in house and have use of furniture, plate, linen, china…. wine in “my house” to be divided between her and his sons George (of Winthorpe, Notts., Land Surveyor) and Henry (of Birmingham, Timber Merchant)….legacy to “faithful servant” Phoebe Walford…. residue to George and Henry….witnesses John Arnall, Samuel Hobday, Joseph Stedman… proved by George and Henry in September 1828…

Richard died in July 1828 aged 67 and was buried at Ashted. Ann survived him for many years. She went first, I think, to live with Henry and his wife at Meriden, between Birmingham and Coventry. 

The move to Meriden came to light in a curious way. I knew that Ann was a shareholder or partner in the Coventry Union Banking Company, as various publications listed her in that context, giving her address as 89 Ashted Row. But I noticed that Marchant, List of Country Banks (1838) gives her address as Meriden. I then found that Henry Beaumont lived there in the 1830s. Henry's wife Elizabeth became ill and I suppose they all returned to Birmingham more or less at the same time, late 1830s.


Anyway by 1841 Ann had returned to Ashted Row, now in No.89 where she would remain for the rest of her life. Her niece Phoebe Walford lived with her. 

Evidently the Nottinghamshire family came to visit sometimes. George and his son were staying in the Ashted Row house on census night in 1851.

When Ann died in 1864, her age stated on the death certificate was 91.

Her will was proved by her son Henry Beaumont now of Frederick Street, Edgbaston, here referred to as Gentleman. Power was reserved to George. The will had been made in 1855, and a codicil shows that George and Henry had later made provision for Phoebe, so a legacy to her was revoked. The will shows that Ann had another niece called Harriet Walker, of Wolverhampton.

(All of which together tends to make it look very likely that Ann's parents were William Walford and Phoebe Clark, who had married at Wombourne near Wolverhampton in 1761, Ann being baptised at Penn on 14 October 1772 (from Family Search site)).

Ann's death was registered by a neighbour, Mary Parker, referring to her as "widow of Richard Beaumont, proprietor of houses." Her will likewise speaks of "real property" but I do not know what property this means, if any. 

As I will explain, I think that some of the Ashted houses were on leases which by the 1860s had very little time left to run, and so must have been almost valueless.

Date: February 2019
Revisions on: 22 July 2022

J.T.Becher, the Workhouse, and Southwell Minster

I put up a piece some years ago in which I touched on this portrait, displayed by the National Trust at The Workhouse, Southwell, Nottinghamshire. Here is the great man:

Portrait of Rev. J.T. Becher (from Wikipedia)

I will call him JTB for short. He was born about 1770* and died in early 1848, at Southwell. The portrait is usually said to be by Thomas Barber, and this seems likely.

The portrait was hanging in Mrs G.V. Becher's house in Southwell when she died in early 1970 (Note 1). As she was the widow of JTB's direct descendant (Note 2), the picture had in all likelihood been passed down the generations of this distinguished Southwell family.

A few months after Mrs Becher's death the Minster owned the portrait. They had sent it to be hung at Hill House in Southwell (Note 3). Hill House, which had been JTB's own home, was at that time a boarding house for the Minster [Grammar] School. (Note 4).

There can be very little doubt that the portrait was given to Southwell Minster by Mrs Becher's daughters (Note 5), the last representatives of that family, very shortly after their mother's death, i.e. between March and June 1970.

Subsequently the National Trust has opened the Workhouse, and the portrait is displayed there. The Bechers would be pleased.

The (now excellent) National Trust collections catalogue, available online, includes a number of Becher items (Note 6) but I think not the portrait itself, and I think this is because it still belongs to Southwell Minster and is merely on loan to the National Trust. That is how the portrait is referenced on Artuk today.

.........................

* In Ireland, I think. The timing is based on his being 18 when he matriculated in 1788, and being admitted to Lincoln's Inn that year, whilst still a student. I think he had been brought up in England.

Note 1. "An oil painting of Reverend John Thomas Becher" 30 x 24 inches. Probate Valuation by Walker, Walton & Hanson dated 17 March 1970 (Notts Archives). The house was called Popely's Piece. It was hard by the Minster, in Bishop's Drive. Mrs Becher had moved there from a house in Church Street, called Minster Lodge.

Note 2. Major John Pickard Becher 1880-1916. He died on 1 Jan. 1916, from wounds received.

Note 3. Letter of 19 June 1970 from the Headmaster to Mrs Beaumont (Notts Archives). 

Note 4. Also in the 1920s and 1930s the home of Archdeacon & Mrs Hacking, my great-grandparents!

Note 5. Mary Veronica Becher (Mrs Beaumont - she died in 1997 and I was her executor), and Joan (Margaret Joan) Becher who died in 1995. Their only brother Squadron Leader John Henry Becher was killed in Yemen in 1940. Neither Mary nor Joan had children. Mary's husband was my uncle.

Wedding of R.M. Beaumont and Miss Mary V. Becher
(inter alia) - the Groom and Bride (standing, centre),
Miss Joan Becher (standing, right side as viewed),
Mrs Gertrude V. Becher (seated, right side as viewed)
Mrs Edith Beaumont (nee Hacking) (seated, left side)
EMB (seated on ground)
In the garden of Minster Lodge, Church Street, Southwell
30 May 1960

Note 6. As Mary's executor I gave a number of items to the National Trust in about 1998 for the Workhouse, and those are the items in its catalogue today, some with numbers beginning NT151515. Further Becher papers are held by Nottinghamshire Archives as Accession No. 8454. I deposited those there in 2013. I looked at them there in August 2018. Even in 2024 those items seem not yet to have been put into the Notts Archives online catalogue

EMB

30 January 2019 & 11 September 2024

R.H. Beaumont of Whitley FSA 1749-1810

I said something about the portrait of this eccentric and interesting man and it is now time to say something about him and his life.

RHB was the eldest son of Richard Beaumont and Elizabeth (nee Holt). He was christened at Kirkheaton in March 1749. I don't know where he went to school but he was at Oxford (Brasenose) in the late 1760s.

Old print of Brasenose, given to me by Margaret Shepherd

His father is said to have been a Jacobite, and to have invited Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745 to stay at Whitley. I don't know if there is any truth in that, and I am fairly sure such a visit never happened. However a plaid-covered bed was seen in the house many years later!

RHB's father died in 1764, in his forties. His mother would live for many years. She had an estate at Little Mitton in Lancashire, and was the heiress of the Holt family, of that place. But she spent some time in London, where it has been said that the family had a house in Brownlow Street. Hard evidence for this house is lacking. There were two streets of that name, and this would be the one in the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn.

Certainly, members of this old Yorkshire family were spending a good deal of time in London. All was not sweetness and light. RHB's youngest brother John had a son born there - before marriage, whilst the second brother Charles died (he was training to be a barrister), stating in his will that he wished to be buried anywhere but Yorkshire!  RHB's wilful sister Elizabeth married the Anglo-Irish officer George Bernard as soon as she was 21. The old lady commissioned George Romney to paint a picture that would show them all as more united than they really were. I wrote a piece recently about that episode.

RHB was in charge of the Whitley estate by now, and Capability Brown visited in 1778. Some proposals were drawn up. Landscaping work was done and trees planted.

(I borrowed the above picture of Whitley from the "country house reader" blog, which had it from the Huddersfield Examiner by courtesy of Stephen Beaumont. I hope they don't mind. The artist is said to be J.T. Taite circa 1858.  J.T. Tuite (husband of one of RHB's nieces) was a painter, and I think, earlier than 1858. I'd be very happy to discuss this with someone who knows about the picture).

The death of RHB's third brother Thomas in 1782 (I wrote recently about the portrait of him) and the fact that RHB was not going to marry, meant that the estates would devolve to John, and John's children. But I don't think John and RHB liked one another much.

RHB set off for Italy in 1787 and was away for about a year. In regard to this trip, certain writers have confused him with his younger brother. He went as far as Naples and wrote various letters to Walter Spencer-Stanhope at Cannon Hall (see note).

RHB was not much interested in managing his estates, though they gave him an income of between £5,000 and £7,000 a year. Naturally he was in Yorkshire a good deal, held various offices there, and was party to numerous leases and other deeds. Amongst the documents are some showing that he leased property at Crosland (a place redolent of family history, or legend anyway) to his cousins George and Walter Beaumont who set up there (unsuccessfully, in the end) as manufacturers. George and Walter were sons of George, the clergyman of Nottingham who died in 1773, and brothers of Rev. Thomas (d.1835) and Richard (d.1828) of Birmingham.

RHB's real interest lay in history, and genealogy. He was accurate, painstaking, and relatively detached. For example, of his own father's actions in moving the remains of ancestors out into the rain and snow, he wrote:

Richard Beaumont deceased 1764 made a Vault in the Choir at Kirkheaton in consequence of which 

the Bones and Dust of Knts Esqs & Gents repose in ye Churchyard except Adam son of Sir Thomas B 

and Richard and Susanna abovementioned.

(at the end of transcripts of deeds sent to his cousin - this Archive, Box 1/18, a puzzling entry)

I suppose RHB spent some more time at Oxford researching documents. But many of the documents that he used were actually in Whitley Hall, including I think the originals of some that Roger Dodsworth (1585-1654) had seen. RHB made his own transcripts, some of which are in this archive (Box 1/18). Fortunately many documents from Whitley have survived, now in West Yorkshire Archives and elsewhere.

RHB realised the value of what he had and wanted to preserve it. He gave some important manuscripts to the Bodleian, whose librarian John Price was his (distant, perhaps) friend. He also sent pictures from Whitley to Oxford, including "Susannah and the Elders" and (in 1802) one that was thought to be of Queen Elizabeth, which had come from Little Mitton.

Many pictures of Beaumonts and their relations were hanging in Whitley Hall in RHB's time. Several that have survived are marked on the back of the frame or stretcher in his handwriting. I have written about this elsewhere, and would say that, where this is found, it is a very strong pointer to the provenance. I confess to being suspicious about some pictures, and would simply urge their present custodians to look on the back, and send me a picture of what they see written there.

RHB had other scholarly acquaintances such as Brasenose contemporaries Richard Williams (1747-1811), of Fron (near Mold) and [Sir] Christopher Sykes (1749-1801) of Sledmere - and of course Thomas Dunham Whitaker (1759-1821).

Another friend was James Paine (1745-1829), his cousin, and the son of the well-known architect. James Paine senior might well have designed the "temple" at Whitley. If it still stands, it must be in a sorry state by now.

Temple at Whitley - in happier days

- and in 1959 (Yours Truly in red jumper, with my mother and brother).

It is known locally as Black Dick's temple, but that is (of course) just guff!

RHB visited his cousin Rev. Thomas Beaumont at Chapelthorpe in the 1790s. He provided pedigrees and evidence to prove how they were related, and thus demonstrated pointedly that he was the rightful proprietor of Whitley (lest there be any doubt). RHB was nothing if not a snob. The letters are polite - I had an unpleasant ride home. Comps to your Brother, two Mrs B's and Miss H - but suggest acquaintance rather than close friendship, and yet my side of the family often mentioned its Whitley connections in a wistful tone. Certainly, my forebears retained what RHB had sent them, now an important element in our collection!

RHBs mother died at her house in York in 1791; this was perhaps on the Mount outside Micklegate Bar. As her second & third sons (who might have been intended to inherit Mitton) had died, RHB was now the owner of that estate as well, which he sometimes visited with great pleasure, according to his friend T.D. Whitaker. Mitton is near Whalley, so Whitaker would in due course cover it in his book on that parish.

In 1793 RHB served as High Sheriff of Yorkshire; this meant visiting York and involvement in matters to do with the 84th Regiment that was raised by his brother-in-law George Bernard that year. The Bernards had a house in York. Nearer Whitley, RHB had given them a site by the river Calder where they had built a house called Heaton Lodge, where I think there was a portrait of RHB, the one which I wrote about quite recently. The Bernards had no children of their own. George however had a lady friend, and a daughter!

By the early 1800s RHB's eccentricity had reached its peak; a visitor in November 1808 noted:
The master of Whitley is a strange creature, half-mad. He leads the life of a hermit, and has not had a brush, painter, or carpenter in his house since he came into possession many, many years ago.
It is more like a haunted house in a romance than anything I ever saw. He is now an old man, and has never bought a morsel of furniture; half the house never was finished; one of the staircases has got no banisters..... The rooms he lives in have not been put to rights for many years - a description of the things they contain would not be easy - hats, wigs, coats, piles of newspapers, magazines, and letters, draughts, bottles, wash-hand basins, pictures without frames, apples, tallow-candles, and broken tea-cups.
The whole house looks like a place for lumber. There are some fine rooms, but so damp and mouldy it is quite shocking. There is a chapel completely filled with old rubbish and a plaid bed which was put up for the Pretender. 
In the room Mr Beaumont sleeps in I saw his coffin, made of cedar wood. He scarcely ever sees a living creature, and quite dislikes the sight of a woman. He does everything in the room, which no housemaid ever enters, nor indeed any part of the house (see note below).

Whitley Hall. The oldest portion at left, ivy-covered. I don't think the third storey had been added in RHB's day.

He was unduly anxious about his own health, and his friend James Paine told the diarist Joseph Farington that he had taken medicine prescribed by a Dr Latham, which made his last days rather uncomfortable. He died in November 1810 and was buried at Kirkheaton. I believe he is remembered now only by a brass plate, amongst the grander monuments of his relations.

An obituary or tribute by T.D.Whitaker is printed in the Introduction to the History of Craven (1812). Three phrases stand out. That RHB was "an excellent judge of forgeries," that when visiting Little Mitton he "contended with the owls for possession," and that he was by the end, a "hermit in a palace."

RHB was survived by his sister Elizabeth Bernard and his youngest brother John. John's son Charles Richard Beaumont had been to RHB's old college and was certainly seen as preferred ultimate successor. However John immediately took possession of Whitley and Mitton, and litigation quickly started, only to continue after Charles Richard himself died (which was in the lifetime of John).
............

Note on RHB's trip to Italy
It has been widely assumed that he went on this trip soon after, or even before, going to Oxford. But the only evidence I have seen for such a trip seems to be for 1787-1788 when RHB was nearly 40. Anna M.W. Stirling, the editor of the Spencer-Stanhope letters - in "Annals of a Yorkshire House" - assumed the writer to be John. See the second volume, pages 123-128. The only letter printed in full starts "Dear Stanhope," suggesting that the name at the end would just be "Beaumont." I think it is more likely RHB than John. I might be able to identify RHB's handwriting if these letters survive.

Whitaker in the obituary says that after his trip to Italy, RHB's understanding and memory were devoted principally to the study of history and antiquities. Whitaker does not give the date of the trip, but being several years younger, would not have had first-hand knowledge of what RHB did as a student.

Note on RHB's hermit-like life at Whitley
See The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Stanhope, ed. A.M.W. Stirling, vol. 1, p.123, footnote, and p.124. This is the same editor as before. It is also there said to be John, but in 1808 John had not yet "come into possession" of Whitley, let alone been there for many years.

Note on pictures
In Bodleian Picture Books, Portraits of the Sixteenth and early Seventeenth Centuries (1952), the Elizabethan Lady (not thought to be the Queen) is said to have been given to the Librarian by RHB in 1802 for the Library Gallery. The booklet adds that it came from "Little Milton" [must mean Mitton]. Today she is on artuk still as given by RHB in 1802. I have no useful information about Susanna & The Elders except that it was said to be by "Jordan" [Jordaens?] according to notes in my possession, and to have measured more than 8 ft x 7 ft.

American Adventures 1872-c.1890 - Allayne Beaumont Legard

Commander James Anlaby Legard came out of the Royal Navy in 1844 or 1845, was promoted to Captain, and married a young widow called Catherine Beaumont (nee Cayley). The Legards then lived for eight years at Lenton Hall, now part of Nottingham University's campus (see note 10).

The 1851 census shows the Legards at Lenton with their own two sons and three of Catherine's four children by her first husband Henry Ralph Beaumont. The Beaumont children were Emily (she was away), Henry Frederick, Mary Catherine, and Thomas Richard - whose names are recorded the wrong way round. Then four year old James Digby Legard and lastly Allayne Beaumont Legard, who was only three.

There was some land at Lenton Hall, and Captain Legard had ideas about agriculture. In due course he bought an estate at Kirby Misperton in North Yorkshire, so the family moved there.

Kirby Misperton Hall, perhaps early c20
(from kirbymisperton.org.uk)

But by about 1860, Captain Legard and Catherine separated. He went to Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, where he was a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron, the most prestigious yacht club in the country.  He died in 1869. Catherine lived in London until her death in 1887.

When his parents split up Allayne Beaumont Legard ("ABL") was in his teens. He joined the army (60th Foot), and was serving in Canada when his father died. A couple of years on, (now) Lieutenant ABL chucked in his commission and embarked on a three-month trip to Colorado.

ABL kept a Journal. When he first arrived in New York in March 1872 he expected to meet a person he identifies only as HPB (Note 1) at a well-known hotel. But he found only letters -

He then pursued HPB to St. John, New Brunswick, a train journey which was delayed due to snowy conditions. HPB (who had agreed to go with ABL), now declined. HPB was supposed to be looking after a young man called [Arthur] Ommaney, but handed him over to ABL.

ABL and Ommaney then went to Colorado. ABL met many people and considered various options for investment in sheep and cattle enterprises. He was interested in share-farming.

(But when a thing seems too good to be true, as a rule, it is .......)

Before leaving Colorado, ABL bought a 320 acre property with a small house in the Wet Mountain Valley in Custer County, near the town of Rosita. He left this in young Ommaney's hands, bought a prairie dog, returned to New York, and sailed for Southampton in June, on the "Weser."

This 1872 trip was only the start of ABL's American adventures. He must have gone straight to London to leave his Journal to be printed - and to see his mother. He returned to New York in October on the same ship. His interest was still large-scale sheep farming, but his interests quickly moved from Colorado in the direction of Texas, which he thought was better (Note 2).

Sometime during, I think, 1876, ABL's elder half-brother Thomas Richard Beaumont ("TRB") turned up in Colorado. Impliedly more land was bought, presumably with family money. TRB may have been motivated as much by the "silver rush" as by the prospects for sheep-ranching, though he was engaged in both. Prior to this, TRB had been in a cotton-spinning-mill partnership in Lancashire.

Wet Mountain Valley.... A.B. Legard, of the firm of Legard Bros., who has been down in New Mexico for six weeks past, looking after his immense herd of sheep, has returned. Messrs E. and T.R. Beaumont own one of the largest ranches in the valley, and are among our most honored and esteemed citizens (Colorado Daily Chieftain, May 25, 1876).

(Note 3).

A painting of a property in Wet Mountain Valley has been handed down to TRB's descendants. I'm not sure if I have permission to show it.

A Google street view in Wet Mountain Valley!

ABL, who now preferred the Texas Panhandle, was venturing towards New Mexico with apparently even larger sheep enterprises (Note 4).

When ABL was in London in 1872 he had obtained money from his mother (Note 5). Other writers have observed how prices would rocket when English "capitalists" arrived in town (Note 6). The Beaumont brothers' late father had inherited £50,000 (Note 7), some of which may well still have been washing around.

In 1881 ABL married, in Detroit, Michigan. Whether or not he had sold up, he certainly returned, for many years later when completing a census form in England, he noted that his elder daughter was born in Colorado City, Texas, and the younger in a place read as "Watnons" (which I suspect means Watrous, New Mexico).

Catherine Legard died in London in March 1887. Her will (Note 8) shows that her lawyers knew that money left to ABL (or to TRB) outright might end up in the hands of creditors.  Indeed, in Colorado shortly after this there were hearings in the District Court in Silver Cliff (Note 9).

So apparently the eldest brother had participated in the American investments somehow (if only as his mother's executor). Since 1857 HFB had been the owner of the Whitley Hall estate near Huddersfield. He had been a Member of Parliament since 1865. In the autumn of 1887 he travelled out to Colorado; he and TRB went to see ABL in southern Texas.

Incidentally on his way back, HFB went via Washington and had a brief face to face meeting with President Grover Cleveland (Washington Critic, December 3, 1887).

Sometime about 1891, for whatever reason, ABL returned to England. After a few months he took up residence in a house at Lepton, on his half-brother's estate. Weekly meetings of a charitable "Old Folks" group were held there, but two years later ABL had moved on, and the house was offered for sale or letting.

That is the last thing I have noted about ABL except that he went next to live at Bexley in Kent. His death was registered in Suffolk as late as 1933.

Perhaps the demise of the Whitley Beaumont estate was hastened by involvement in American investments.  It is far, far too early to draw conclusions, but does begin to look as though more money went to America than came back.

Main sources:
Legard, A.B., "Colorado" (London, 1872)
Colorado Historic Newspapers (online)
Colorado State Archives (catalogue online)
British Newspaper Archive (online)

(Note 1: "HPB" is Sir Harry Paul Burrard. About two years older than ABL, and probably richer (also then or later a member of the RYS), he too had been an officer in the 60th Foot.  HPB had a romantic reason for being at St. John - he married there about a fortnight after ABL's visit. Despite not going to Colorado then, HPB must have had some financial involvement with ABL and the Beaumonts in Colorado, as shown by his being the plaintiff in the 1889 case.)

(Note 2: Google will find good articles on the Texas Historical Association website by H. Allen Anderson on the "Pastores" and the "New Zealand Sheep Company." These mention "A.B. Ledgard" and I strongly suppose this to be in fact ABL. Anderson says that "A.B. Ledgard" was one of three British partners who had tried sheep-ranching in New Zealand, who arrived at San Francisco in 1870, bought large numbers of sheep, and operated in New Mexico and the Panhandle of Texas. ABL did indeed make use of contacts with experience of New Zealand (starting in 1872 with a man called Bevan), and was involved in large-scale sheep operations in those states. But I doubt if he had been to New Zealand. He was only 25 in 1872, and had been in the army).

(Note 3: James D. Legard visited Colorado in 1873, so "Legard Bros" is explained; Mr E. Beaumont is not identified, and I wonder if the initial should be H. HFB and TRB however had an uncle called Edward Blackett Beaumont.... An article in 1896 called Wet Mountain Valley the "Valley of the Second Sons," and said that the inhabitants lived rough lives (they had to chop their own wood, milk their own cows, etc), had opportunities for speculation, and were generally happy (eg The Globe 25 February 1896)).

(Note 4. ABL was said to have 13,000 sheep at the Victoria Ranch, Panhandle, Texas in 1879 (Colorado Daily Chieftain); the articles by H. Allen Anderson place "A.B. Ledgard" at Alamocitos Creek in Oldham County, and say that he sold out in 1881.

(Note 5. Catherine Legard's will, made in 1884, states that she had already made such an advance, and also that she had personally lent him £200).

(Note 6. Clark C. Spence, in British Investments and the American Mining Frontier, 1860-1901, says this about "titled persons from London," who stayed in the "best rooms of the best hotels." Spence was talking about mining interests, but it makes little difference. He expressly mentions ABL's formula (ultimately, from "Colorado" p. 67) for negotiating with Yankees, which was that they would settle for a sixth of the asking price. But they would have wised up and asked twenty times!)

(Note 7. Middleton v. Losh. This case shows that HFB's and TRB's grandparents had left an enormous total of £200,000 between four younger sons, one of whom was their father).

(Note 8. Proved in London 29 June 1887 by HFB and Rev. Richard Cholmondeley, the husband of the elder Beaumont sister, Emily).

(Note 9. Only from newspaper reports - Silver Cliff Rustler, 1887 and 1889) [I know of no connexion with Allen J Beaumont, who is prominent in the Colorado papers at this period])

(Note 10. It was suggested - Frank Barnes, Priory Demesne to University Campus..., (1993) p.202 - that Capt. Legard had an earlier wife, who had died. There is some muddle there, resolving which is outside the scope of this note).