HEATHS, BLOMFIELDS and VLIELANDS: FAMILY RELATIONS in NORFOLK

 Heaths, Blomfields and Vlielands: family relations in Norfolk

What connection could Jerome Nicholas Vlieland the Elder, a refugee fleeing

famine and the Napoleonic Wars, have to William Heath and Charles James

Blomfield, a leading landowner and a distinguished cleric in late Georgian and

early Victorian England?

William Heath was born in 1762 in Hemblington, a small Norfolk parish 8 miles

from Norwich. The Heaths were an Anglo-Saxon family with a ‘topographical’

surname – the name showing the poor uncultivated scrubland on which they

first settled. Versions of the name are found in York (de Heth, 1279) and

Ringstead Parva in Norfolk (Atte-Heth, 1316) but by 1583, when Thomas Heath

flourished as a mathematician and fellow of All Souls, Oxford University, the

modern spelling was largely settled. By 1700, when Hemblington Hall was built,

the family were gentleman farmers of broad acres, with a crest and French

motto, once used as a war cry in battle, ‘espere mieux’ (‘hope/expect better’).

William became a leading voice in the county and Captain of the Blofield and

Swaffham troop of Yeomanry, charged with defence against a Napoleonic

invasion.

In March 1783, when he was 21, William married Ann Johnson, daughter of the

noted cleric and writer John Johnson of Ludham in the Norfolk Broads; they had

10 children, losing only the first-born Philip and the first-born Sarah to infant

death. The second-born Sarah, their seventh child, was tutored by Monsieur

Jerome Jansen de Vlieland; she eloped with him but they married in June 1824,

giving Jerome a secure foothold in Norfolk society.

Charles James Blomfield was a schoolmaster’s son from Bury St Edmunds in

Suffolk, who excelled at Trinity College in Cambridge and was Bishop of London

for 28 years. His was an ancient Norman-French family from Pont- l’Éveque in

Normandy; like the Heaths, their name was recorded as it sounded, so

‘Bloomefield’, ‘Blundeville’ and ‘Blumfield’ were all common until the 17 th

century. Thomas de Blundeville (d. 1236) was Bishop of Norwich, and Miles

Blomefield (b. 1525) a noted alchemist and family chronicler.

Charles James married William’s eldest daughter Anna Maria in 1810, so at his

own marriage Jerome acquired a brother-in-law who became godfather and

promoter of his own eldest son, Jerome the Younger. This patronage seems to

have ended with the Bishop’s death in August 1857: we know that Jerome was

demoted from his living in Turnham Green to the one in Stalisfield the following

year.

Anna Maria had six children in seven years, dying in February 1818, just after the

birth of her sixth son, Charles James, who did not survive the year, as had been

the case with her first son, also Charles James, her daughter Anna Maria and her

son Charles William; Edward died at six and only Maria lived into old age. Anna

Maria herself died at Hildersham near Cambridge, and was buried at Great

Chesterford in Essex, the parish that had been Charles James’ first curacy in 1810

and where he returned as vicar and rector of Great and Little Chesterford from

1812 to 1824.

In 1819, Charles James married Dorothy Fox, a lawyer’s widow with a son of her

own; of their 11 children only the first, named after his father, failed to live until

at least their 30s. In fact, only with the birth of their second Charles James, in

1831, did the Bishop have a long-lived son bearing his own name.

Hemblington Hall Farm, Gables Farm, Wood Farm and a cluster of cottages in

Pedham village all passed to the Burroughes family of the neighbouring

Burlingham estate in the mid-19 th century, and were held by them until 1919,

when all 3500 acres were sold off, possibly to help pay heavy death duties after

the First World War: one of the Burroughes’ family lost their elder son, Randall,

at Gallipoli in 1915 and their younger, Stephen, at the Sambre-Oise Canal in

1918, in the last week of the war, the battle in which the poet Wilfred Owen also

died.

The information in this post builds on what we already know on the blog about

the Blomfields (February 2010) and the Heaths (July 2012).

THE KENT VILLAGE THAT MOVED TO DEVON

 With lot of thanks to Barbara for her lovely article!

Otterden: the Kent village that moved to Devon

We know from our posts in 2021 that the village of Otterden, the next-door

parish to Stalisfield and in particular its vicar, William Paxton, became a place of

sanctuary for Jerome Nicholas Vlieland’s children after the death of their mother

Frances in August 1865. She left seven children, aged between 11 and 3, and we

know that the Millens of Syndale and the Shoves of Queen Court in Ospringe also

helped Jerome until he married Ann Johnson a year later.

All three families were important in the later Vlieland story: Charles James

Vlieland married Alice Edith Millen and her younger sister Bertha married

Herbert Samuel Shove.

But it was Otterden that seems to have had the biggest emotional impact: Charles

James and Alice Edith named their first married home in Exeter after the village,

as a cherished memorial, and the house name remained for many years even

after the family moved to 20 Southernhay, where Charles James set up his own

doctor’s practice.

What we know of Stalisfield could also be said of the village of scattered ‘meanly

built’ cottages originally known as Otterden-street. Another Domesday

settlement, it shared the barren, windswept location and red, flint-scarred soil,

and the beech, hazel and birch coppice wood. Being higher up the hill and a little

drier, the corn crop was supported better than at Stalisfield, so that its tithe

income was more productive, but daily life was still a struggle.

The crucial difference was that Otterden had a very big ‘big house’, Otterden

Place, home as we know to the Aucher, Lewin and Curteis’ families, with a

succession of wealthy owners who handsomely endowed St Lawrence Church on

the estate. In 1758, the living’s value was £62.17s.10d., with tithes of £13s.6d.

and further small income from the decayed villages of Bordfield and Monketon.

William Paxton did not marry until he was 53 and was childless, and his will in

1892 estimated his income at nearly £9,000 (£600,000 today), a painful

reflection on Jerome’s £796 a year from 1858 to 1870.

Some of the information in this post is taken from Edward Hasted, The History

and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, 1798. Cornhill Farm and

Longbeech Wood near St Mary’s Church in Stalisfield clearly took their name

from the topography the first farmers found, just as Syndale Bottom, where the

Millens farmed, is evocative of life in the valley at the foot of the hill.

'"The Dutch ones on the windy hill

 

I hope you will enjoy reading this lovely article from our dear Barbara. Its with a lot of plesure to I may publish it here!

‘The Dutch ones on the windy hill’: Jerome Nicholas Vlieland the Younger in Stalisfield ‘The Dutch ones’, the locals called their new vicar when he arrived on the North Downs with his wife and children in 1858. With his strong Norfolk accent and broad Dutch face, he must have seemed like something from another planet, but by his death was so beloved that the parish erected two memorial windows in St Mary’s Church. We know that Jerome arrived in Stalisfield a disappointed and unhappy man. After a stellar university career, he had expected to do well in the Anglican Church. His first curacy was in the Essex village of Great Ilford, 8 miles from London, notable only for its fishing fleet and the Roman remains found in Uphall Camp. Then, in 1854, he was appointed to the coveted vicarage of Christ Church, Turnham Green, on the River Thames. The suburb was part of the fashionable expansion of west London after 1830, and its middle-class residents demanded a young, charismatic and eloquent priest. Jerome was in his 20s, but he was bereft by the stillborn death of his eldest son and offered slow, pedantic oratory, and the Church Commissioners decided after only four years that he would not do. What they found for him instead was a humiliation: a parsonage on a ‘windy hill’ 650 feet above sea level in an ‘unfrequented and obscure’ corner of north east Kent, with 94 acres of land and 9 of coppice wood, and an impoverished flock of 378 people, 35 of whom were dependent on parish relief. Stalisfield was called ‘Stanefelt’ (stone field) in the Domesday Book, and the flinty soil and high rainfall meant that ‘stiff tillage’ was the best that could be achieved from the harvest. The fields were over-worked and there was no money for fertilisers or improved drainage so yields, and their income, fell. John Elvy Chambers, a farmer aged 67 with 11 children, ‘having had a great deal of trouble with his stock and crops, more than he could bear’ and having ‘lost a horse and thirty sheep this year, and the wet harvest’, hanged himself on a beam in the granary, and this cannot have been an isolated case. ‘Small tithes’, one-tenth of the village produce – grain, lambs, hay, wood and milk – were meant to be paid to support the parish, valued in 1858 at £362 a year, with £174 a year from the glebe (‘parson’s pasture’) land. Jerome’s stipend (salary) from the Canterbury diocese was £240 a year, from which he had to support his wife, educate his surviving children and maintain the church, whose tiled roof required constant repair, quickly slipping into dereliction. By 1870, even the Church Commissioners recognised the gulf between Jerome’s income and his needs, and made a capital payment of £51 16s. 10p. (£7,000 today), backdated to 1869, from the fund for the ‘augmentation and maintenance of the Poor Clergy’, and a new tithe for repair and upkeep of the church. On 20 August 1865, Jerome’s wife Frances died aged 38, the same day as her stillborn daughter, leaving 7 children aged between 11 and 3; after his remarriage to his cousin Ann Johnson a year later he began to suffer from depression, though everyone said he remained assiduous in tending to the sick and indigent among his flock until he died in 1877, aged only 51. Some of the information in this post is from the History and Topographical Survey of Kent, vol. 6 (1798) and the Topographical Dictionary of England, ed. Samuel Lewis, 7th edition (1858). The report of John Elvy Chambers’ inquest is from the Kentish Gazette, 23 October 1860

‘Duty before honour’: HMS Hood at Oran, Wednesday 3 July 1940

‘Duty before honour’: HMS Hood at Oran, Wednesday 3 July 1940

We have seen from our evocative post on 5 September that one of HMS Hood’s

last assignments before her loss in May 1941 was to destroy the French Fleet at

Oran in French Algeria. Despite Admiral François Darlan’s assurances that the

Axis* powers would never seize the Fleet, the British government were certain

that it would be deployed against the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean.

On 2 July James Somerville, commander of Taskforce H, was ordered to sail from

Gibraltar to the port of Mers-el-Kébir, with the flagship Hood, the battleships

Resolution and Valiant, the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, and an escort of cruisers

and destroyers.

The French commander Marcel-Bruno Gensoul refused to disarm or scuttle** the

Fleet, so Somerville opened fire at 5.55pm. Attacking from open water while the

French ships were trapped in the harbour, the taskforce fired 55 rounds; Hood

received two hits, causing minor shrapnel injuries.

The Swordfish*** aircraft launched from Ark Royal saw a ‘heavy and accurate’

French response, met with ‘steady and deliberate’ fire. The action ‘lasted for less

than 15 minutes, ... and the destruction ... was terrible’. The battleship Bretagne’s

magazine exploded, Gensoul’s flagship Dunkerque was hit four times, the

battleship Provence sank, and the destroyer Mogador had its stern blown off.

1297 French servicemen were killed and 350 injured; the taskforce lost two

crewmen and five aircraft. The battleship Strasbourg escaped to Toulon, but was

scuttled in November 1942.

An action against men and ships who were technically neutral and had worked

closely with Hood and her crew, though imperative, was felt to be contentious.

Somerville called it a ‘tragedy ... [of which] we all feel thoroughly ashamed’; he

wrote to his wife: ‘my heart wasn’t in it and you’re not allowed a heart in war.’

*The Axis powers allied against the UK were Germany, Italy and Japan.

**To scuttle a ship is to deliberately sink it.

***The Fairey Swordfish was a fabric-covered torpedo bomber biplane, looking

like a fragile dragon-fly but a key actor in the loss of Bismarck on 27 May 1941.

Thanks are due to The Daily Chronicles of World War II, ‘British Justify

Destruction of French Fleet at Mers-el-Kébir’, https://ww2days.com/royal-navy-

destroys-french-fleet.html; to the HMS Hood Association, for Sub-Lieutenant R.G.

Phillips’ account of the battle and Appendix No. 1 to Hood Report No. 0130, 5 July

1940, http://www.hmshood.org.uk/history/forceh/oran.htm; and to Thomas

Parker, ‘When Winston Churchill Bombed France: The Battle of Mers-el-Kébir’,

The National Interest 13 August 2016. Ronald Phillips was Paymaster on Hood

and died with Keith Peel when the ship was lost.

Skinner in Noordwijk

 

Jaren na de eerste bijdragen  over de leerlingen van de  in Noordwijk gevestigde Kostschool van de Jozeph de Veer in deze Blog Zijn er fondsen vrijgekomen om een gedegen onderzoek in te stellen naar de tijd dat hij als leerling zijn in  Noordwijk  genoten opleiding in zijn dagboek beschreef.

Years after the first contributions about the students of the Jozeph de Veer Boarding School in Noordwijk in this Blog, funds have been released to conduct a thorough investigation into the time when he described his education in Noordwijk in his diary. 

Violet Mona and Reginald Peel: An Indian Life and Afterwards

 Violet Mona and Reginald Peel: An Indian Life and Afterwards

We know Violet Peel as the second wife of Reginald Peel; their story exemplifies

the English families who lived, worked, and died under the British Raj (colonial

rule).

Violet’s expression on the blog* is resolute:, ready to cope with the climate, the

wildlife and the daily fear of malignant disease. Raj officers’ wives are now

parodied as ‘memsahibs’, flaunting their ‘white privilege’ but that, even if true,

was no defence against the privations of a posting to India, Malaya or some other

outpost of the empire.

Violet and her twin sister Flossy (Florence) May were born in October 1897 to

George Grant, an Army accountant, in the cantonment (barracks) in Coloba, one

of the seven islands in the Bombay Presidency.** Her other siblings were born

wherever her father was stationed – George, Gibralter (1893); Arthur,

Ahmednager in Maharashtra (1895); twins Henry and Albert, Ajmer in Rajasthan

(1903). Ajmer Junction was also an important railway hub, where Reginald Peel

worked and where his eldest son died.

Reginald’s life typified how India could both give and take away. He married

Frances Maude Vlieland in June 1906; his first son Francis was born in March

1907, and died in Ajmer that November at nine months old. Frances died of

malignant malaria, a condition of pregnancy, in Wellington Mansions, Fort

Bombay, in February 1914, aged just 29. There was no birth in 1912 or 1913, so

there may have been an unrecorded stillbirth or miscarriage.

Reginald’s was an ‘old’ Indian family. He was born in 1873 in Moradabad in

Bengal and (like his father Nathaniel) was a comptroller (auditor/accountant) on

the BB&CI.*** Headquartered in Churchgate in Bombay (now Mumbai), his work

could take him 500 miles away to Ajmer and Sirwi (now Sirui), where Barbara,

his third child, was born in November 1911. Reginald’s second son, Clifford, born

in December 1908 and never in India, was named after Reginald’s own younger

brother, who lived for only a month after his birth in Bengal in 1874.

Reginald would have shared social and professional circles with George Grant

and his family in Ajmer and Bombay. In June 1916, he came home to announce

his engagement to his parents-in-law, Charles and Alice Vlieland. Whether it

was a conciliatory or a bitter interview, while the marriage took place in Naini

Tal, Bengal, in September, Clifford and Barbara did not go with him.****

Reginald had five sons in his ‘second family’: Keith (b. 1917, who we have just

met on the blog), Clarence (b. 1919), John (b. 1923), Laurence (b. 1927) and

Michael (b. 1929). The eldest three sons were born in Bengal, so Reginald must

have been posted to the ABR or the EBR network; ***** the gap in births between

Clarence and John and John and Laurence may again mean infant deaths

Now the picture becomes less clear, and if any descendant families can help to

complete it, please contact the blog.

Violet and Reginald left India some time after John’s birth in 1923, settling in a

rural village in West Sussex, where Laurence and Michael were born. In 1937,

Violet took a lease on 19A Eaton Place, a beautiful John Nash-built terrace

running down to the sea in the ‘old India hand’ quarter of Brighton around

Eastern Road. Reginald died there aged 64 in January 1938, and Keith was

probably married from the flat later in the year.

Violet died in 1992 aged 94. She married Horace George Wood in 1945; he died

in 1957, so Violet was widowed again after 12 years of marriage. Her brothers

Henry died in 1964 and George in 1970, her sons Keith in 1941, John in 1985

and Clarence in 1986. John deserted from the Army and was imprisoned for

stealing when on the run in 1948, aged only 25, possibly triggered by Keith’s

death. We are still investigating the Surrey Assizes’ records, so may know more

later.

*14 August 2013.

**Violet and Flossy were born into a city suffering the worst outbreak of plague

in Mumbai’s history. We shall make a separate post on how the outbreak

changed the city and the lives of everyone who lived there.

***BB&CI = Bombay, Baroda and Central Indian Railway.

****One explanation is that Reginald did not want to burden the 19-year-old

Violet with a 4- and 7-year old stepchild and was happy to leave them with their

grandparents. The other is that Charles and Alice were totally opposed to

abandoning their grandchildren, and especially Clifford, to Violet’s care in India,

and Reginald acceded.

***** ABR = Assam Bengal Railway; EBR = Eastern Bengal Railway.

Death in Bombay

 Death in Bombay, 1897

We have seen that Violet and Flossy Grant were born in the army cantonments

in Coloba, one of the seven islands of the Bombay Presidency, at the height of one

of the worst outbreaks of bubonic plague known in the city.

The British Raj (colonial) government wanted Bombay to be the first city of

India, second only to London, with its Gothic architecture and historic

monuments such as the Victoria Railway Terminus and St Thomas Cathedral in

the centre of the city.

But this was a façade, a showcase city built on a tiny cluster of low-lying islands

facing the sea. There was a small elite overclass and an impoverished working

population in the mills and the docks living in chawls (tenenents) built on badly

drained unpaved ground, often with stagnant water standing in the streets. The

plague infection, spread by flea-carrying rats in grain and other goods traded

from Hong Kong, arrived in Mandvi and Coloba in September 1896 and quickly

took hold throughout the city, with a death rate estimated at 61% by 1898.

George Grant, Reginald Peel’s father-in-law, would have been at the forefront

of the Army response, quarantining. disinfecting and segregating the lower-class

population, removing them to temporary hospitals and ‘plague camps’ and

razing the chawls to the ground in an attempt to cut off the rats’ breeding

grounds. This was in most cases an overkill response to an environmental

‘enemy’ that could not be beaten without an upgraded drainage and sewage

infrastructure, and since similar draconian measures were not applied in the

European districts, there was strong social discontent.

The government response was also hampered by religious tensions: the Jain

merchants and Muslim traders around the Mandvi port were opposed on

religious grounds to the killing of any animal, including rats, and eradication was

almost impossible in these districts.

George Grant’s wife Mary was pregnant from February to October 1897, while

also caring for the 4-year-old George, Jr and 2-year-old Arthur; although they and

Violet survived there is still a question mark over Flossy, who does not appear in

the photographs of the Grant family on the blog of 24 August 2013.

Acknowledgements are due to Cynthia Desmukh, Proceedings of the Indian

History Congress, 49, 1988, and Nadia Nooreyezdan, Atlas Obscura, 14 May 2020,

for some of the material in this post.

Hood and Resolution in Oran

6 juli 1940 | Nieuwe Leidsche Courant | pagina 2 Uit Algeciras wordt aan het D. N. B. ge meld, dat aan den overval op de Fransche oorlogsschepen in Oran hebben deelgenomen de Engelsche slagschepen Hood en Resolution, benevens .nog een linieschip en ... . Achter de Scharnhorst* en de Gneisenau waren de dreigende silhouetten van de Bismarck en Von Tirpitz verrezen.

July 6, 1940 | Nieuwe Leidsche Courant | page 2 From Algeciras it is reported to the D.N.B. that the English battleships Hood and Resolution took part in the raid on the French warships in Oran, in addition to another ship of the line and ... . Behind the Scharnhorst* and the Gneisenau the menacing silhouettes of the Bismarck and Von Tirpitz had risen.

the relationship between Jerome Nicholas Hollander and a Noordwijk skipper Jeroen Klaaszoon Vlieland

Al vele jaren gaat ons onderzoek naar de relatie tussen Jerome Nicholas Hollander en een Noordwijkse Schipper Jeroen Klaaszoon Vlieland, schipper op een bomschuit, die de veerdienst onderhield en zo in een regelmatige lijndienst, post en passagiers overbracht naar het aan overkant van de Noordzee liggende plaatsje Topsham (Verenigd Koninkrijk). Wie helpt ons aan de oplossing van dit vraagstuk. Duik in de Blog. Is het misschien uiteindelijk de uitgave van de rijke kostschool Puber John Skinner ........Wordt het een zaak voor "Opsporing Verzocht" of.......de (leef)tijd dringt. Help mee het onderzoek na meer dan 12 decennia definitief op te lossen.

For many years now, our research has been on the relationship between Jerome Nicholas Hollander and a Noordwijk skipper Jeroen Klaaszoon Vlieland, skipper on a bomb barge, who maintained the ferry service and thus transferred mail and passengers to the town on the other side of the North Sea in a regular service. Topsham (United Kingdom). Who will help us to solve this problem. Dives into the Blog. Is it perhaps ultimately the publication of the rich boarding school Adolescent John Skinner ........ Will it be a case for "Opsporing Verzocht" or ....... the (age) time is running out. Help solve the research after more than 12 decades.......

The Old Ship Hotel, HMS Hood and the Battle of the Denmark Strait

Thanks to Barbara for this contribution. The Old Ship Hotel, HMS Hood and the Battle of the Denmark Strait What connection could there be between the oldest hotel in Brighton, the British battlecruiser HMS Hood, and a naval engagement in May 1941? The connection is Reginald Keith Peel, who has deep family links in our Vlieland story. Named after his father but always called ‘Keith’, he was the eldest son of Reginald Peel by his second marriage, his first being to Frances Maude, eldest daughter of Charles James and Alice Edith Vlieland. HMS Hood was launched at John Brown & Co.’s shipyard on the river Clyde in Scotland on 22 August 1918. The largest in the world at the time, she was built for speed, but this sacrificed the protection of her armaments. In July 1940, she helped to destroy the French ships in the harbour of Mers-El-Kébir, to deny Germany the use of the fleet. She next deployed in Scapa Flow, off the Orkney Islands, escorting British merchant convoys bringing in vital supplies from America under German U-boat attack. By then over 20 years old, a refit to strengthen her decks and protect her vulnerable magazine (ammunition store) had to be cancelled in 1939. On 24 May 1941, she engaged with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and the battleship Bismarck in the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland. A 15- inch shell from Bismarck hit Hood’s magazine containing 100 tons of cordite explosive: she blew up, split in half and sank in 3 minutes, with the loss of 1418 crew, including Keith, Assistant Steward on the ship. Keith enlisted in October 1940 and joined Hood in February 1941. He is named on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial and in the Hood Chapel in St John the Baptist Church at Boldre in the New Forest, the family church of Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland, who was also lost: Ted Briggs, one of only three of the crew to survive, had a last sight of Holland sitting in his chair in stunned dejection as his ship disintegrated around him The Old Ship Hotel on Brighton seafront was first recorded as The Shippe as early as 1559, and by the 1760s was the most fashionable venue in the town. Archie Graham (husband of Barbara Vlieland Peel), always took a room when he was playing the Theatre Royal. Keith joined the hotel at 18 in 1935, and learned the etiquette of the sommelier’s trade (how to choose wine and glasses and present them at the table), bringing up bottles from the cavernous cellars with their smugglers’ passages leading to the sea. On Hood, he would have been assigned to serve at table in the messroom or officers’ quarters and maintain ‘discipline’ in his onboard ‘hotel’. Although it is now lost, a brass plaque in the Old Ship’s foyer honoured all the hotel staff killed in the two World Wars, so Keith was remembered there as well. Some of the material in this post draws on that by Barbara Smith (Keith’s daughter) on 25 August 2013. Ted Briggs’ memories come from David Mearns and Rob White, Hood and Bismarck(2002)

The Bridge Inn in Topsham

Did Jeroen Aldertsz Vlieland and his crew drink in The Bridge Inn in Topsham. 

The Bridge Inn in Topsham, the port where we know that Jeroen Aldertsz Vlieland traded as a master mariner, has just had its heritage listing upgraded by Historic England because of its remarkable interior, including a stonefireplace, a salt cupboard, a hatch through which ale was served and a malthouseat the back to brew its own beer, with a large brewing chimney and the remainsof the stone floor where the hops were spread out to dry, just like William Millenwould have had at Syndale Farm. Standing on Bridge Hill, the building was mentioned in the Domesday Book, butflourished as public house especially after 1797, and Jeroen would certainly haveknown it. Built of local stone and cob (compacted clay and straw), it had its ownquay and salt refinery (see below). 

We know how important Topsham was in the wool and cloth trade, but the ships that brought back cod fish to the port fromNewfoundland from the 1640s until the early 1700s supported local work for carpenters, rope-makers, coopers (barrel-makers) and chandlers (candle-makers), all of which was lost during the conflicts with Spain and Holland and then the Napoleonic Wars.

Salt was vital to preserve the Newfoundland catch while it was being transportedback to Devon in the ship’s hold and then to cure it before it, and local-caughtsalmon, were transported to up-country buyers. The marshlands around Topsham had been mined for salt from medieval times: in 1836, the town’s Saltworks was auctioned as a going concern at the Salutation Inn, along with 2 acres of land, the quay and ’two neat dwellings’.

 

The salty sea-water from themarsh land was collected in massive shallow iron pans and the liquid evaporated above a furnace so that the crystals were left as sediment, shovelled into woodenblocks by a ‘lumpman’, and then dried and raised to the first-floor warehouse bya ‘loftman’ for sale. Even as late as the 1950s in England you could go to agrocer’s shop and buy a slice off a salt block and grate it into grains at home. Salt was also a valuable trade item, taxed heavily by the government Board of Excise. For domestic use, it was so expensive that it was kept in a stone salt cupboard or hand-made wooden salt-box, often with a lock and key, and hung by the fire so the grains could be kept dry and free from mould, and just a tiny spoonful used for cooking or at meals. In wealthier households, the salt-spoons themselves were part of the family silver, made by firms such as Thomas Eustace of Exeter, with a scallop-shaped bowl and an engraved handle In New England states such as Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, the settlers from England in the 1630s built ‘salt-box houses’, mimicking the shape of their salt-box from home, with one slope of the roof much lower than the other to protect the house from snow or extreme heat.

Thanks to Barbara for her lovely contribution 

A BIG VLIELAND CONNECTION

Ospringe: a small village in Kent with a big Vlieland connection Ospringe – originally known as ‘Ospringes’ because of the ‘water lane’ of springs that ran through it, was a hamlet named in The Domesday Book that, although both rural and remote, had surprisingly many connections to our Vlieland story. The next door-parish was Syndale, the estate farmed by William Millen and where Alice Edith Millen and her younger sister Bertha, grew up. Alice Edith, as we know, married Charles James Vlieland of Stalisfield, two miles away; Bertha married Herbert Samuel Shove of Queen’s Court, the mansion originally owned by Margaret, the wife of King Edward I, and the ‘big house’ in Ospringe. Until his early death at 35, in 1889, Herbert Samuel and William Millen were in partnership to work farms in nearby Plumford and Luddenham. In 1877, though still in his early 20s, Herbert helped to support the Vlieland children when Jerome Nicholas Vlieland died and his children and second wife Ann literally ‘lost their living’, as the vicarage passed to the new incumbent and they were turned out on the street. Bertha was born in 1865, married to the 31-year old Herbert in June 1885, and widowed four years later, a month after her mother Phoebe Millen’s own death. Alice Edith’ third daughter Phoebe was born at Queen’s Court in January 1888, and christened at St Peter and St Paul’s Church in the village. Why Phoebe was not born in Exeter, like her elder sisters Frances and Dorothy, is not clear, but maybe Alice came to help with Bertha’s young family – Herbert William b. July 1886 and Gerald Frank b. November 1887 – when Bertha was only 21 and 22. Her third son, Ralph Samuel, was born in May 1889, only a month before Herbert Samuel’s death. Herbert William Shove, Bertha’s eldest son, was the best man at the wedding of Frances Vlieland in Exeter in April 1906; we know from the blog that he was a decorated naval officer and later prominent in the ‘Flee to the Fields’ movement in 1918–39 that lobbied the government to create a land reform to give every smallholder farmer his own plot of land, not tied to a landowner as a ‘tenant slave’. Bertha and Herbert Samuel are both buried in the beautiful 13th-century church in Water Lane; in Victorian times a ‘hop garden’ lined the path to the church. Hop flowers (known as ‘cones’) are crucial for brewing beer. The hop plants climb 19- foot high chestnut-wood poles on strings of twine, trained on the frame by ‘monkeys’, men walking on stilts, as has been done since the 15th century. The harvest is picked by hand, and the hops added to the boiling process to add bitterness, flavour and stability to the brew. We know all about William Millen as a sheep farmer, but the family now farming at Syndale have records going back to his time as a hop-grower as well, so we may have a whole new story to tell. Thanks to BARBARA,

WHAT JOHN GREENE HALL DID NEXT

What John Greene Hall did next:

 We know that in 1867 John designed Aucher Villas, the almshouses where Sarah Ann Vlieland spent the last 25 years of her life. It was his first big commission, as he had become Canterbury city surveyor the year before, aged only 31. John was born in Hampshire in 1835 and apprenticed to his father Thomas as a cabinet maker. He studied for his RIBA1 examinations and rose to be managing clerk of Colsons, architects of the major restoration of Winchester Cathedral in the early 1860s: the influence of the Cathedral’s turrets and flat-faced gables is all over hislater work on Hammond’s Bank (see below). In his 20 years in Canterbury, he transformed the city streetscape and, in 1882, built a narrow, brick-banded office for himself at no. 4 St Margaret’s Street. In 1887, he was commissioned to rebuild no. 51, Hammond & Co., the Canterbury Bank, founded in 1788 (now Lloyds Bank). Although he died before it was finished, it is his finest work, and if you know Aucher Villas you can clearly see his ‘hand’, even if the bank is more ‘civic’ and less Art & Crafts-inspired. The bank’s red ‘Bracknell’ brick2 and pale stone frontage has the same oriel windows, quatrefoil cutouts on the lintels and a whole course of ‘gothic’ gables, and the ‘AD’ and ‘1887’ date stones are entwined with stylisedfruit and foliage. The turreted chimney stacks also reference St Alban’s Court in Nonington, the nearby ancestral home of the Hammond family, directors of the bank since the 1800s, but they make the frontage look cramped and cluttered compared to the simple outlines of Aucher Villas. St Alban’s Court was originally a convent dedicated to the first English martyr, killed under Roman rule and buried in St Albans Abbey outside London. One can see its ‘Romanesque’ features in The London and County Bank (now NatWest Bank) that John built in 1885 at no. 11 The Parade, a beautiful rag3 and Bath stone ‘palazzo’ with broad flat window lintels and heavy rounded ‘aedicule’ columns.4 Was this a quiet doffing of the cap to his patron that got him the Hammond’s Bank commission 2 years’ later? 1 Royal Institute of British Architects. 2 The ‘TLB’ trademark stamped on the high-end bricks John used stood for ‘Thomas Lawrence of Bracknell’, whose bricks were also used in Westminster Cathedral and the Royal Albert Hall, machine-made for standard walls and hand-pressed (with their own number in the brick) for an individual design. In Hammond’s they were laid in the ‘English Bond’ pattern, with one course or row of bricks laid on their side (stretchers) and the one below end-on (headers). 3 Rag stone is a blue-grey limestone, quarried in Maidstone, 30 miles from Canterbury. 4 ‘Romanesque’ architecture flourished between 900 and 1200, using massive stone arches and arcades. An ‘aedicule’ was originally a niche in a wall holding a saint’s statue; at no. 11 they are small top-floor windows,sharing the fashion after the 1860s for commercial premises to look like an Italian ‘palace’. Thanks are due to The Victorian Web for their post on the restoration of Winchester Cathedral under John Colson (2009); the Canterbury Historical and Archeological Society for information on Hall’s background and work in Canterbury (2015); John Harrison for his information on Thomas Lawrence; and particularly Martyn Fretwellhttps://ukbricks.blogspot.com for the ‘Bracknell’ brick and other help. I am also indebted to SherbanCantacuzino’s Canterbury (Studio Vista, 1970). Very many thanks are also due for the picture of Hammond’s Bank to the two friends of the blog who photographed the graves of Jerome Nicholas and Sarah Vlieland in 2010. Sent from my iPad

 Thanks to Barbara 

intriguing suggestion  we like to learn more about :

 Another ship called L’Espérance

We know that Jeroen Aldertz Vlieland ran the Rotterdam to Topsham and Rotterdam to Perth trips on his ship, L’Espérance (Hope), but an even more famous ship bore that name before her.

This was a French scow (fully rigged wide-beamed sailing dinghy) of the Rhône class of the French navy, launched in August 1781 and reclassified as a frigate (noted for speed and quick movement) 10 years later. Built in Toulon in 1780, her original name was Durance (Durability), and she served as a troop ship in the squadron of the Compte de Grasse until, in December 1782, she  joined a convoy to the West Indies, part of an unsuccessful plan to capture Jamaica and the British colony of the Windward Islands.

L’Espérance is next heard of  in September 1791 when, under Captain Huon de Kermadec, she sailed from Brest to New Caledonia  to search for Jean-François de la Pérouse, an explorer sponsored by King Louis XVI to emulate (and outdo) Captain Cook’s voyages of discovery. Pérouse’s two ships were last seen in the area of Botany Bay in Sydney, Australia, but then vanished without trace, although some wreckage was found in 1826.

In October 1793, L’Espérance was anchored off Surabaya in Indonesia when she was captured by the Dutch. She was returned to France in February 1794; in September, she was sold to Holland and in October decommissioned and broken up for scrap.

Did Jeroen name his ship after this famous ancestor?

Thanks are due to Military Wiki for some of the information in this post.

In search of L’Espérance (Hope) that failed to reach Jamaica

Thanks to Barbara 

intriguing suggestion  we like to learn more about :

 Another ship called L’Espérance

We know that Jeroen Aldertz Vlieland ran the Rotterdam to Topsham and Rotterdam to Perth trips on his ship, L’Espérance (Hope), but an even more famous ship bore that name before her.

This was a French scow (fully rigged wide-beamed sailing dinghy) of the Rhône class of the French navy, launched in August 1781 and reclassified as a frigate (noted for speed and quick movement) 10 years later. Built in Toulon in 1780, her original name was Durance (Durability), and she served as a troop ship in the squadron of the Compte de Grasse until, in December 1782, she  joined a convoy to the West Indies, part of an unsuccessful plan to capture Jamaica and the British colony of the Windward Islands.

L’Espérance is next heard of  in September 1791 when, under Captain Huon de Kermadec, she sailed from Brest to New Caledonia  to search for Jean-François de la Pérouse, an explorer sponsored by King Louis XVI to emulate (and outdo) Captain Cook’s voyages of discovery. Pérouse’s two ships were last seen in the area of Botany Bay in Sydney, Australia, but then vanished without trace, although some wreckage was found in 1826.

In October 1793, L’Espérance was anchored off Surabaya in Indonesia when she was captured by the Dutch. She was returned to France in February 1794; in September, she was sold to Holland and in October decommissioned and broken up for scrap.

Did Jeroen name his ship after this famous ancestor?

Thanks are due to Military Wiki for some of the information in this post.

AN EARLY ROOF TILES CONNECTION

It is an article recently published in "Het Leidsche Dagblad" and the lovely shape of the roof tiles  showed  that intriges .

#VVDW: rare Oegstgeester roof tiles

Rare scale-shaped roof tiles found during the demolition of a cafe in Oud Ade. These are so-called Oegstgeester roof tiles from ca. 1868. A machine product made between 1852 and 1907 by a roof tile factory from Oegstgeest. The archives of both Oegstgeest and Leiden contain documents about this roof tile factory along the Rhine.

The text NIJVERHEID OEGSTGEEST is stamped on one of the roof tiles, a reference to the manufacturer. Roof tile factory 'De Nijverheid'  ( * "The Industry)  made such roof tiles between 1852 and 1907, on the current Wernink site on the Rhine. At the time, that was still part of Oegstgeest. The archives of both Oegstgeest and Leiden contain documents about this roof tile factory, including some hitherto unknown photos. The Oegstgeest archive has been with Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken since 1 January

 #VVDW: zeldzame Oegstgeester dakpannen

Zeldzame schubvormige dakpannen gevonden bij sloop van een café in Oud Ade. Het gaat om zogenaamde Oegstgeester dakpannen uit ca. 1868. Een machinaal product gemaakt tussen 1852 en 1907 door een dakpannenfabriek uit Oegstgeest. De archieven van zowel Oegstgeest als Leiden bevatten stukken over deze dakpannenfabriek langs de Rijn.

Op een van de dakpannen staat de tekst NIJVERHEID OEGSTGEEST gestempeld, een verwijzing naar de producent. Dakpannenfabriek ‘De Nijverheid’ maakte dergelijke dakpannen tussen 1852 en 1907, op het huidige Werninkterrein aan de Rijn. Dat hoorde destijds nog bij Oegstgeest. De archieven van zowel Oegstgeest als Leiden bevatten stukken over deze dakpannenfabriek, waaronder enkele tot nu toe onbekende foto’s. Het archief van Oegstgeest bevindt zich sinds 1 januari bij Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken.

Dutch bricks and Serge cloth, blue flax and cheese.

 Jeroen Aldertszoon Vlieland and the Rotterdam to Topsham trade

Dutch bricks and serge cloth, blue flax and cheese

Dear Barbara, a lot of thanks for inform the J.N.Vlieland BLOG  by inform us about this article as well"Thanks are due to David Cornforth for information on Exeter’s woollen industry, © Exeter Memories 24 January 2013.

We know that Jeroen Vlieland (stepfather of Jerome Nicholas Vlieland the elder) was one of the foremost sailing masters on the Rotterdam to Topsham crossing, until he was made a prisoner of war in 1811, when his ship L’Esperance was sold and his family settled in Great Yarmouth. But what drove such shipmasters to brave the trip from the delta of the  Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt rivers into the North Sea, through the Straits of Dover and a further 250 miles along the English Channel to South Devon and the sheltered harbour at Topsham?

 

The answer from the Devon end of the trade was woollen cloth. Originally, this was kersey, a coarse lower-grade material used to make clothing for servants and the poor, but after about 1615 a finer-quality serge cloth began to be produced from the long-fibre fleeces of Devon and Somerset sheep. The woollen merchants of Exeter, members of the Guild of Fullers, Tuckers and Shearmen, controlled the purchasing of fleeces at local markets, sending them for carding and combing, spinning into yarn and then weaving into cloth. We know that ‘rackfields’ were set up in the back alleys of the town, where the finished serge was hung out to dry on ‘tenterhooks’, reaching from attic to attic across the street. It was said that ‘mixed serges’ from both Exeter and Tiverton, 15 miles inland, ‘clothed the people of the Low Countries’ until the fashion for lighter cloth and the growth of textile-making in Holland itself caused the trade to fail.

 

When the French imposed punitive import tariffs in the 1680s, Devon merchants began shipping their goods by Rotterdam masters. What came back to Devon on  Jeroen’s ship, The Topsham Post, was common and fine cheese, scrap iron and wooden hoops, possibly for use in cooperage. A bill of lading from Alexander Paul’s wharf on the North Shore at Perth shows that he also carried the unspun fibres of the blue flax plant, in ’20 heads’ or bundles, so he clearly made another a regular run up the North Sea to the River Tay, where weaving fine-spun linen from flax was a centuries-old craft.  When L’Esperance was sold in Rotterdam in 1811, her cargo included French salt, cyder, brandy and aquafortis – nitric acid, used in explosives, dyes and inks.

 

Especially on the trip to Devon, when the cargo might be lightweight, Jeroen’s ship would have had ‘Dutch bricks’ as ballast to stop it keeling over in high winds. These were hard, light-coloured clay, dug from the banks of the Waal, Rhine and IJssel rivers, mixed with sand, and finally shaped into ‘raw stones’ that were then oven-fired. Several houses on the Strand in Topsham along the Exe estuary are made of these bricks, with shapely curved and hipped klokgevels (clock gables) on their roofs, showing how deep the ‘Dutch connection’ was.

 

We have now found more about Jeroen as a shipping master, since our original post on 19 October 2009; our post on the Exeter rackfields was on 21 June 2016.

Thanks are due to David Cornforth for information on Exeter’s woollen industry, © Exeter Memories 24 January 2013.

What has happened to the most respected Jerome Nicholas Vlieland?

It is a long story,  to long and sad to tell, so if you want to hear more about me and my soul-mate, contact me by email.

The information collect from old papers are here to keep the connection between blog and followers open.

please contact me  by email 

Vlieland Ancester Maija

LOVELY LADY

VertaalresultatenELLY VLIET VLIELAND

                      ELLY  VLIET VLIELAND

    thank you for all the inspiration  and love you brought into our lives

Leiden, 25-09-1954   Noordwijk, 19-07-2022

Aucher Villas, 41–46 London Road Canterbury

 Aucher Villas, 41–46 London Road Canterbury

When Sarah Ann Vlieland moved here on the death of her husband in 1877, the almshouses were 10 years’ old, but the new Hospital is as full of interest as John Cogan’s house, where the charity began. Clearly the upkeep of an 1860s’ newbuild would be a lot less than that of a dilapidated sixteenth-century town house but, as we can see from the pictures already posted, care and beauty were lavished on Aucher Villas, making them a worthy successor. The three semi-detached houses around a central courtyard were built by John Greene Hall, Canterbury’s surveyor, and are now part of the city’s most significant Grade II listed heritage.

 John’s academic architectural training would have been in the mid-Victorian ‘Gothic Revival’ style of Augustus Pugin (who designed the interior of the Houses of Parliament after they had burned down in 1834), referencing medieval craftsmanship and ornate decoration. But Aucher Villas show more modern influences as well, looking towards the Arts & Crafts movement later in the century. John would have known the Red House in Kent, built by Philip Webb for William Morris, using local materials and drawing on traditional farmhouse design and ‘honest’ craftsmanship. 

Aucher Villas are built of pale cream Kentish rubble* with stone facings round the windows, ‘gothic’ gables and a striking contrast of the red fishscale roof tiles with the dark bargeboards, decorated with a trefoil and quatrefoil cutout imitating leaves or rose petals, a standard motif in Arts & Crafts textiles and homeware. This was  almost certainly influenced by the work of Pugin’s contemporary William Butterfield, who pioneered what he called ‘structural polychromy’, contrasting the colours on the facing of a house, such as the bands of black brick on a red brick façade in his master work, Keble College in the University of Oxford.

The quatrefoil pattern is repeated in Aucher Villas’ beautiful lead light mullioned windows, ‘mullions’ being the stone bars supporting the window frames. Large panes of plate glass only became possible when glass itself became less expensive early in the twentieth century, so small pieces of glass in a geometric pattern were held together by lead strips to make ‘leaded lights’, above all in the downstairs’ canted bay windows (‘canted’ because they opened on three sides, with the two side panels set at an angle to the centre one).

When one of the villas was recently for sale, it was marketed as ‘an enchanting ... house’, as Sarah Ann must have found it in her declining years.

*Also known as ragstone or Kentish rag, a stone still quarried today in nearby Maidstone. 

thanks Barbara !!!

Remembering the Cogan Hospital in Canterbury

 Remembering the Cogan Hospital in Canterbury

The reminiscences about the Hospital on the Historic Canterbury site give a fascinating insight into its work and history (see quote (1)), and show clearly how having to rely on bequests (money or the income from land left in a will) often put its finances under severe strain. 

The Aucher family ((2), (5), (6)), who we know from Otterden House and Aucher Villas (the new ‘handsome villa-like semi-detached houses on the London Road’, where Sarah Ann Vlieland lived from 1877 to 1902) were clearly important benefactors, but there were rarely enough funds to keep up the building itself, which was one reason for the move to London Road in 1870.

The Hospital was also left in a precarious position on John Cogan’s death in 1657 ((2)). Under the Puritan government following the execution of King Charles I in 1649, John had been in charge of sequestrating (forcibly repossessing) the lands of royalist gentry and clergy in East Kent. The estate in Littlebourn he bequeathed to endow the Hospital had belonged to the Archbishops of Canterbury, and when Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, all such sequestered lands had to be returned to their former owners. Their income was lost to the Hospital, which remained badly under-funded until the Barling, Lovejoy and Aucher bequests ((2), (3), (4)).

It is hard to tell how much income was derived from the marshland bequeathed by Aucher and Barling ((3), (6)). If it was land reclaimed from the sea, it would have been very fertile pasture, but it could also be land from which salt was mined, barrelled up and sold for premium prices as a very precious commodity for preserving meat, even after the government tax on it was paid. Burmarsh, in the Aucher bequest, was a centre of the Roman trade, from where salt was exported all over the Empire.

The Masters’ bequest ((7)) in fact became worthless in 1720, on the collapse of  the South Sea Company in which she was invested – caught up in the ‘bubble’ in its shares caused by frenzied buying of stock when there was no realistic prospect of any profit being made. Her heir and executor, Sir Harcourt Masters, a Director of the Company, had already contested her will in 1718, maintaining it was unclear which Canterbury hospital she had intended to endow, but his estates were forfeited when the Company went down, and it was not until 1737 that any monies were paid out.

(1) ‘Cogan’s Hospital ... was founded in 1199 for six poor widows of clergymen; within the old buildings are the remains of a dwelling belonging to the Grey or Franciscan Friars, who were settled here in 1224 by Henry III.’

(2) ‘Mr. Cogan, of the city of Canterbury, gave by his will, dated July 27, 1657, his mansion house in St. Peter’s ... in trust to the mayor and corporation, for the habitation of six poor widows of clergymen  ..., and endowed it with the lands of the late archbishop ... in Littlebourn:* but these being resumed at the restoration, the house ... remained unendowed ... [I]n 1696, [this was] in some measure compensated by the benefaction of Dr. [John] Aucher, a prebendary [administrator] of ... [Canterbury] Cathedral, who invested an estate ... for the payment of ten pounds a year.’

(3) ’Mr. [Walter] Barling, by his will proved in 1670, devised one annuity or yearly rent of three pounds to be paid ... for ever, on September 1 yearly: one moiety [half] to the six poor widows inhabiting this house, and the other moiety towards the repair of the house ... to be paid out of his lands in Dering March [Marsh].’

(4) ‘Mrs. Elizabeth Lovejoy, by her will in 1694, ... gave out of her personal estate, four pounds per annum, to be paid to Cogan’s hospital.’

(5) ‘Dr. John Aucher, Prebendary of Canterbury, who died March 12, 1701, left an Estate of abt. 90£ a year for 6 poor widows of Clergymen in the Diocese. Each hath constantly 10 Guineas a year  and commonly 2 [guineas] more and sometimes [an allowance] of Coals.’

(6) ’Dr. Aucher’s deed is dated [1701]. The revenues consist of the rent of a messuage or farm-house, with 55 acres in Worde, and 32 acres of marsh land in Burmarsh and Eastchurch, in Romney Marsh.’

(7) ‘[T]he poor in Cogan’s hospital are entitled to receive from Mrs. [Mary] Masters’s legacy, who died in 1716, the sixth part of the interest due from one hundred and sixty-three pounds sixteen shillings and three pence, old South-sea annuities.’

Some words in the original quotations have been edited, shown in [], to make their meaning clearer.

* The modern village is known as Littlebourne.

The dates and sources for the quotations can be found on the Historic Canterbury site: http://machadoink.com/Cogan’s%20Hospital.htm; thanks are due to Tina Machado for permission to use them. 

Thanks Barbara !

Tenterden

Probably you know the books of Lucinda Riley.

Easy books to read and a lot of pages .

Ideal to help you through the covid .

The first book is about Brazil and Rio .

5 years ago we were looking at the same Christo.

The second one about Grieg and Bergen where we were just for the covid.

And the third one about London and Kent where a great part of Jerome Nicholas Vlieland blogs have their origine.

So today I was looking for a possible connection between Jerome and  Flora MacNichol or other people  in this book which is fiction based on some historic persons or events.

And it is not Mrs Keppel or the king or the bookshops that connect.

But the only connection can be found in Tenterden.

Some children of the Benzies were born there.

Other chapters on the Benzies in the blog are on James Benzie and Robert Hammond Benzie

Of the other places mentioned in the book of Lucinda Riley is  Rye the only one we know ,as I think we must be the only tourists to get lost there and because of that nearly missed our bus and ship.