The Cheshire Armitsteads
by Kenrick Armitstead
revised and edited by Nigel Watts

• Revd John Armitstead (1764-1814)
• The Children of Revd John Armitstead
• Lawrence Armitstead of Cranage Hall (1790-1874)
• Revd John Armitstead (1801-1865)
• The children of John and Susan Armitstead
• Revd John Richard Armitstead (1829-1919)
• Cecil, Geoffrey and the Canadian Branch
• Revd Lawrence Armitstead (1870-1938) and family
• Revd Sydney Henry Armitstead (1837-1912)
• Henry Armitstead (1877-1931) and family
• Willam Kenrick Armitstead (1878-1961) and family

Kenrick often used the first person in his writing. I have made no changes to these passages as I feel that personal reminiscences are an important part of family history. However, some observations may now be out of date, and the reader may be a little disconcerted when what at times appears to be a personal narrative goes on to describe events subsequent to the narrator's death, including his own obituary. I considered leaving Kenrick's narrative in an unedited state, but he had written fewer than half of the planned chapters of his book, and some of these were clearly not in a finished state. I also feel that he would have been the first to agree that family history can never stand still.

Revd John Armitstead

The Revd John Armitstead, baptised 30 March 1764 at Tatham, Lancashire, was the eldest of the eight children of Laurence Armitstead, who was born at Horton-in-Ribblesdale, Yorkshire, and descended from a long line of yeoman farmers who first occur in the Giggleswick poll tax returns of 1387. John was the officiating curate at Betley, Staffordshire, from 1784 to 1788. While there he married on 14 November 1787 Catherine Fenton, younger daughter and co-heiress of John Fenton of Betley Court. The elder daughter, Anne, who inherited Betley Court, was ancestress of the Fletcher-Twemlows of Betley and the Bougheys of Aqualate. In 1797 John matriculated his arms, which were also granted to the descendants of his grandfather, thus making him a third generation gentleman. No doubt this seemed more fitting for one who had married into a county family.

After his time at Betley, John was curate at Clitheroe, Hawarden, Bawtry and Middlewich, where his wife Catherine died on 20 February 1798, ten days after the birth of Maria, her seventh child. He inherited a considerable fortune from her, and purchased the advowson of Sandbach intending to become vicar there when the living became vacant. In 1809 he became curate of Goostrey, a living in the gift of the vicar of Sandbach, and not far from Cranage where, in 1814, shortly before his death, he purchased Cranage Hall, near property which had been left to him in the Newcastle-under-Lyme area. "The shire" said John Speed the cartographer in writing of his native Cheshire, "may well be said to be the seed plot of gentility", and it was certainly here that this branch of the Armitstead family made the transition from yeomen to gentlemen which has always been such a common occurrence in the fluid English system.

In 1799 he married Mary Simpson of Carlton, Yorkshire, and by her he seems to have had three more children. He died at the age of 50 in 1814, before Sandbach became vacant, but left the living to his son John. He was buried at Goostrey, and a paragraph in the Macclesfield Courier of 4 February 1815 reported that "On Sunday last Goostrey Church was robbed of a quantity of black broadcloth, of the value of £50 with which the church was hung on account of the death of the late Revd Mr Armitstead." Vandalism is by no means a modern phenomenon. Of his nine children, only six survived infancy.

John’s will, which was drawn up in 1811, sheds some light on his affairs at the time. He describes himself as being "of Bawtry", even though he was by then curate of Goostrey. Bawtry is on the Yorkshire side of the border with Nottinghamshire, to the south of Doncaster, and therefore some considerable distance from his Cheshire parish. This is perhaps because he owned substantial property there; he certainly owned a farm at Austerfield, a village adjacent to Bawtry, which he appears to have managed directly rather than tennanted, as he specifically bequeaths its stock and equipment to his son Lawrence. The will also refers to unspecified estates in Nottinghamshire, which could perhaps have been in the neighbourhood of Bawtry.

All the real estate, and the residue of the personal estate, was left to Lawrence, but he also made detailed arrangements for the support of his widow, daughters and son John. Although he no doubt employed a lawyer in its drafting, the impression gained from the will is of a man who knew how to manage his affairs and who wished to ensure fair and equitable treatment of his dependants.

John Fenton, Thomas Fenton and Frances all died in infancy, aged between four weeks and five months. Catherine, born 25 May 1792 at Hawarden, Alice, born 30 December 1793 at Middlewich, and Maria born 10 February 1798 at Middlewich, all died unmarried. These three sisters appear to have at moved to Sculcoates, just to the north of Hull, perhaps to be near their sister Anastasia and her family. Maria’s sisters were given legacies of £1,000 each, but of Maria their father’s will states "taking into consideration the unfortunate state of mind of my youngest daughter by my said late wife, I do think it more advisable to secure to her an annuity of one hundred pounds per ann. than to bequeath her a like legacy with her sisters." He appointed her step-mother and her sister Anastasia to be her guardians "in whom I place implicit confidence, not doubting but they will do every thing in their power for her comfort and happiness." Pehaps the difficult birth which resulted in her mother’s death also afflicted Maria. She died shortly before reaching her 22^nd birthday, and was buried in Sculcoates on 20 January 1820. "Miss Catherine Armistead" is shown as living at Wellington Lodge, Beverley Road, Sculcoates in Hull directories for 1826 and 1835, and the death of Alice Armitstead was registered in Sculcoates in 1839.

John Armistead’s will of 1811 refers to his "youngest daughter Harriet", but I have as yet found no other reference to her.

Anastasia, born 2 November 1789 at Clitheroe, was married on 17 September 1812 at Bawtry, Yorkshire, to Marmaduke Thomas Prickett, a solicitor of Kingston-upon-Hull. They were living at 13 North Street in 1823 and 1835 and at 22 Dock Street in 1846. Anastasia was the only female in the Cheshire branch of the family to produce children until the present generation, over a hundred years later. There would appear to have been a tendency to infertility in the female line. She had six children:

Anastasia (ii) was born 28 February 1815. She married in August 1839 Revd William Jepson Newman, Rector of Bradsworth, Yorkshire. She died 13 December 1856, leaving issue (still to be confirmed/identified).

George (iv), born 8 March 1820, educated at Rugby, married Anna Maria, daughter of Sir Charles Smith-Dodsworth of Thornton Hall, 3^rd Bart. He was a JP and Lt Colonel in the West York Militia. He lived at Boreas Hill in the village of Paull on the river Humber downstream from Hull. White’s 1883 Directory of Hull lists him as one of the principal landowners of the parish and describes Boreas Hill as "an old brick residence, pleasantly situated on rising ground". The house survives today. Pevsner describes it in the following terms:

George and Anna had no children. Josiah (iii) born 27 April 1817, educated at Rugby under Dr Arnold and Trinity College Cambridge, was vicar of Markington near Harrogate. He married on 14 August 1841 Eliza, daughter of John Cowham Parker of Hull, and died 27 February 1849 leaving three children:

Thomas William (v), FSA, FRGS, educated Kingston College, Hull and Trinity College Cambridge. On leaving Cambridge he spent 16 months making the Grand Tour, and was then ordained and served as a curate at Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, York from 1848 to 1851 before he was obliged to retire through bad sight. He married on 4 February 1863 Anna, daughter of Humphrey Sandwith, MD, of Hull. He subsequently moved to Cheltenham—he was living at 4 Sandford Place while his sons attended Cheltenham College as day boys—and then to Worthing, where he died on 26 November 1902 leaving two children:

There are no living descendants of Anastasia Prickett.

Agnes (i), born 8 October 1831, died unmarried on 27 February 1877. As Lawrence had died intestate, and she was the only surviving daughter, she was his sole heiress. Only four days after her father’s death, she made her own will. Apart from a few small personal bequests, including £50 to her maid and £200 and a hair bracelet set in diamonds to her cousin Susan Armitstead, she devised all her property to her cousin John Richard, of whom later. Catherine (ii), born 26 February 1833, died unmarried at Teignmouth on 30 December 1873, in her father’s lifetime. Both daughters were buried at Goostrey. In 1854 Mary Royds wrote to her son Tom in Australia:

Those who left no children will be dealt with first. Willy (ii) was born on 22 March 1833 and educated at Westminster (Queen’s scholar 1847, Captain of the School 1851.) In 1851 he won the Slade prize, a leather-bound edition of the works of the Greek dramatists, now in my possession. In 1852 he was the school’s head election to Christ Church Oxford, and he played cricket against Cambridge four years running. He was ordained in 1859, and served as curate in his father’s parish for three years before becoming vicar of Goostrey in 1862. He remained there for the rest of his life.

Willy and his brothers John and Henry were very keen cricketers, known as Big Jack, Middle Jack and Little Jack. With the families of Garnett and Bedford they founded the Free Foresters Cricket Club, and it was Willie who introduced the custom of umpires wearing a white coat. During a match between the United England eleven and a team of 15 Free Foresters at Manchester in 1861, he stopped the game, complaining that he could not see the ball against the drab figure of the umpire. The complaint was upheld, and in the words of the day "the umpire was vested in a nightshirt." Ever since, umpires have worn white. The Free Foresters won the match by four wickets, Goodrich, their underhand bowler, taking seven wickets in each innings. Bell, a Cambridge pro, invented a fancy stroke to Goodrich, running out and trying to lift the ball over the wicket, but he missed and the ball took his bails. In 1862 he married Mary Currie, daughter of Revd William Currie of Boughton Hall, who died three years later. He out-lived her by 42 years, and died without issue on 12 March 1907.

Robert (v) born 25 March 1840 was educated at Westminster from 1853-1857, and made a Queen’s scholar in 1855. He obtained a cadetship in the East India Company’s Service in Bombay and was commissioned in the 103^rd regiment (1^st Bombay European Volunteers) on 13 June 1857. He was promoted Lieutenant on 3 November 1859 and Captain on 1 July 1860. He served in the Indian Mutiny and gained a Mutiny Medal. He was retired on half pay on 8 February 1868, presumably on grounds of ill-health, and died three years later on 31 July 1871, aged 31.

Hamon (vi), Robert’s twin brother, remains a mystery. The only reference to him which I can find is in a letter of Mary Royds to Tom in Australia saying on & June 1854 "Hamon has quite outgrown his twin brother Robert and seems an obliging good boy." My father, his nephew, knew nothing about him. Mary (vi) was married to WF Currie, the brother of Will’s wife Mary, and died without issue. Susan Hester (ii) was married to Revd TM Dix, chaplain of the Macclesfield asylum. She died without issue in 1865 and was buried at Sandbach Heath.

Jessie (viii) was married to John Fletcher-Twemlow of The Hill, Sandbach, who died without issue three years later. They were married on 2 August 1871, and Jesse continued to live at The Hill for 19 years after her husband’s death, and then was married again, to Lt Colonel John Kennedy of Brookside, Arclid. In those days ladies did not often have careers, but they had hobbies, and Jessie’s was wood carving. Her outstanding piece of work is the reredos in Sandbach Heath church with its very realistic bulrushes, foxgloves and horse chestnuts. She was also a very keen gardener, and the shrubs and bulbs which she planted at The Hill (now a Leonard Cheshire Home) and Brookside still give pleasure every spring.

Jessie always wore a double locket round her neck, the contents of which caused much speculation in the family. It was thought to contain pictures of her two husbands. Older people still talk of her hospitality, and of the children’s party she always gave on Empire Day in particular. This continued for many years after her death as a parish function, and in 1961 I was invited to it as representative of the family at the centenary celebrations of the parish of which my grandfather was the first vicar. Jessie died on 5 September 1918, five years after her second husband.

Mary (1), known as May, was presumably the eldest child as my Aunt Agnes always referred to her as the head of the family. Records of that time are very coy about giving the age of female members of a family. I called on her during the war and was given an excellent tea and regaled with some of her amusing family reminiscences. Referred to by her father as m’daughter, she kept house for him after her mother’s death, and subsequently lived in a little house near Cranage where she kept up a regular correspondence with the various branches of the family. "God helps those who help themselves" she used to say, perhaps intentionally translating the Massie motto "Aide-toi, the ciel t’aidera". May died on 18 December 1952, the last Armitstead left living in Cheshire after the family’s arrival in the county over a century and a half before.

John Hornby (2), born 31 August 1868, went to Westminster, but was superannuated after two years. He went up to Christ Church, and was ordained in 1892. After being a curate to his father at Sandbach from 1892 to 1899, he became vicar of Holmes Chapel. In 1919 he succeeded his father as vicar of Sandbach, where he was the third and last Armitstead vicar. He was at once confronted with many problems. His father had stayed on as vicar until his death at the age of ninety, and had latterly become less capable. The fabric of the church was in a dilapidated condition, and needed a thorough overhaul. Money had to be raised, and quickly, and this required a business-like organisation and full cooperation from the parishioners. "It was in this respect" says John Minshull in his guide "that his active mind, remarkable energy and determination to succeed, prominent traits of the Armitsteads, were demonstrated. The right type of workers were gathered, resulting in remarkable achievements, including the raising of a large sum of money, in which a hundred and one improvements were carried out. While he cemented the good faith of everyone, including the non-conformists, he created a happy relationship throughout the Congleton Rural Deanery of which he was the Rural Dean." He was an honorary Canon of Chester, a member of the Cheshire Education Committee, and later Archdeacon of Macclesfield. In 1928 he presented the church with an electric light installation to mark the centenary of the tenure of the living by the family.

Bishop Lancelot Fleming spent a summer vacation in his parish gaining experience as an ordinand at Cambridge, and he described him to me as one of the best of the old squarsons, an autocrat who ran the village despite the mayor, but who was loved by his parishioners and worked selflessly on their behalf.

My cousin Dick Royds told me that he wrote to him before his own ordination asking for the regulation character reference. The day of his ordination approaching, and having received no reply, he called on him and asked whether he had received the letter.

"Did you send it in a business envelope?" asked John.

"Yes" said Dick.

"Oh well, my secretary is on holiday and I never open business letters myself. Is it in that pile over there?" And it was!

An old parishioner told me that the stream at the bottom of the vicarage garden was always available for them to bathe in during the summer. "It was our Lido" she said.

John never married, but was devoted to one of the Carver daughters who married Dick Sheppard, the famous vicar of St Martin’s in the Fields. After his death, she went to keep house for John. She was very possessive, and when my father went to John’s funeral after his death on 21 October 1941, which was attended by many members of the family, she refused, to their amazement and distress, to have them back to the vicarage. She is referred to in Andrew Harrow’s "The flesh is weak", a history of the Church of England clergy: "On October 21 1937 Revd Dick Sheppard died in unhappy circumstances, deserted by his wife and alone in a canon’s house nears St Paul’s Cathedral."

Edward (4), born 10 September 1872, was educated at Oswestry. As his elder brother John had been superannuated from Westminster School after two years his father in a fit of pique decided to send his other sons to Oswestry Grammar School, for which, my father said, they never forgave him. He went up to Magdalen College, Oxford, and then succeeded his uncle Willy as vicar of Goostrey in 1907, remaining there until 1923.

In 1918 he married Cecilia Mary, daughter and heiress of John Kirkland Glazebrook of Twemlow Hall, and they moved into Jodrell Hall, as the vicarage was considered too small for them! In 1923 he became vicar of Barthomley where he made a great impression. A keen sportsman, he retired in 1936 to Richards Castle. His wife died there without issue in 1938 and he died on 15 October 1950.

Margaret (7), known as Peggy, married in 1917 Revd Alfred George Edwards, who became bishop of St Asaph’s and who was referred to by her as the Bish. When the Church of Wales was disestablished he became the first archbishop of Wales, and thenceforward was known as the Arch. Although we did not know her well, she remembered most of her cousins in her will, saying that she likes to give people surprises. Peggy had difficulty in pronouncing her r’s, and it was a family joke that she used to talk of "a fewwy that wuns on a stwing". She died childless on 8 May 1949.

Cecil (5), born 11 January 1874, emigrated to Canada in 1892 at the age of eighteen. He initially worked on a farm in Fort Saskatchewan, and for several years he freighted in the Fraser Valley in British Columbia. On 31 August 1898 he married Louise Jane, daugher of Thomas Taylor of Lac Ste Anne, Alberta. Thomas was an accomplished trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company in which capacity he acquired an unparalleled knowledge of local Indian languages and customs. Cecil and his wife were one of a small number of pioneering families to settle in Northern Alberta before the area was surveyed in 1899. The community where they established their homestead was subsequently named Onoway, and it remains the home of many of Cecil’s descendants. In the words of his daughter Doris:

Cecil died in 1957 having had eight children of whom two, Freddie and Violet, died in infancy.

Cecil (ii), born 2 April 1903, bought a farm in the Onoway area in 1924 and started farming with no more than a team of horses and a plough. In 1937 he and one hired help built a new two storied, five bedroom house where he lived for the rest of his life. In 1939 he bought ten Aberdeen Angus cows from which he developed a large and well-known herd. He retired in 1972 and sold the herd to a rancher in Mississippi. His interest in cattle breeding did not stop, however, and he subsequently developed a herd of "blues" by crossing white shorthorns with black Angus. He married on 1 March 1929 Millicent Emily Walker. She was born in Leicestershire but emigrated to Canada in 1920 when her parents acquired a farm in the Onoway area. She died in 1975 and Cecil died in 1982. They had six children:

Joan (1) trained as a nurse in Vancouver, returning to Alberta to work in Edmonton. She married in 1954 Al Swanson of Theodore, Saskatchewan. They lived in Edmonton until 1962 before settling in Calgary. They have four children: Patricia, Laurel, Jill and Drew. In 1974 Patricia married Brian Brideau.

Marguerite (2) married Felix Westerlund in 1952 and they farmed north of Onoway. They have five children: Larry, Dawn, Lyle, Shawn and Danny. Dawn married Garry Armitstead in 1972 and have a daughter, Wanda.

Ken (3) followed in his father’s footsteps and became a well-known breeder of fine Angus cattle and bought his grandfather’s farm. He married in 1961 Ruby Tomlinson of Onoway and has three children: Lorne, Shelly and Murray.

Lou (4) graduated from a business course after high school and worked in Edmonton for several years. In 1964 she married Charlie Parker of Heatherdown and they lived in Edmonton until 1968 when they bought Charlie’s father’s farm in the Heatherdown district. They have two children: Penny and David.

Lynn (5), Lou’s twin, developed a liking and knowledge of cattle at an early age and built up a herd of Angus which were popular at shows and sales. In 1965 he married Joyce Waters of Rich valley. They farmed near Onoway for several years, then Lynn accepted a position as herdsman for an Angus breeder near Victoria in British Columbia. They lived there for three years before buying a farm near Hardisty in Alberta. They have three children: Christine, Dale and Ricky.

Wendy (6) graduated as a nurse’s aide in Edmonton in 1965 and worked there until her marriage to Milton Breitkreutz in 1967. They bought a farm near Onoway and also operate the Gulf Oil Bulk Agency in the town. They have two children: Rhonda and Robin.

Reginald (iii), born 20 August 1909 was educated in Onoway and Calgary.

Geoffrey (6), was born 15 November 1875. He married and had four children, Richard, Geoffrey, Milton and Frances who married a Mr Ohr.

Lawrence was born on 20 February 1870 and educated at Oswestry Grammar School and Magdelen College Oxford. He became rector of Malpas, Cheshire in 1894 and remained there until he retired in 1936. He was an honorary canon, and later emeritus canon, of Chester. He married Mary Elizabeth, daughter of Lt Colonel John Kennedy, who later married his Aunt Jessie. He died on 19 July 1938 as a result of a road accident, leaving two sons:

William (i), born 1909 and educated at Malborough and Clare College Cambridge. He was the first Armitstead to go to Cambridge rather than Oxford. He was a Chartered Accountant and subsequently a stockbroker in Liverpool. In the second world war he was a major in the Shorpshire Yeomanry, and died of snakebite while on active service in India on 20 March 1944.

Bobby (ii), was born in 1913 and educated at Shrewsbury and Wadham College Oxford. He joined the KSLI and retired a Lieutenant Colonel. He was High Sheriff of South Salop (as it was then called) in 1976. He married on 15 June 1940 Kathleen Pamela Wilson of Montreal and has two children:

1. Helen Elizabeth, born 16 September 1943, married on 16 April 1966 Richard Nisbet Earle Raven, JP (Shropshire) who was educated at Shrewsbury, where he is now a housemaster, and Christ Church Oxford, and has two children.

2. Edward Bradley Lawrence, born 9 October 1946, was educated at Shrewsbury and RMA Sandhurst. Commissioned into the Coldstream Guards, where he is now Lieutenant Colonel, he married on 5 April 1973 Caroline Elizabeth Massie Birch, and has three children:

Henry was born at The Hermitage, Holmes Chapel, in 1837. He was educated at Charterhouse, still then in the City, having presumably failed to meet the entry requirements for Westminster, where his brothers went. He went up to Christ Church and then became the first vicar of Sandbach Heath, where he served from 1862 until his retirement in 1903. The church, sited where it could be seen from all parts of the parish, is now a lardmark for travellers on the northbound carriageway of the M6 motorway south of the Sandbach interchange, the motorway heading straight for it for a mile or so. The Latham family gave the site and in 1857 a Miss Sibson bequested the astonishing sum of £12,000, her own and her father’s savings, to build and endow a church there. Designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, the church was consecrated in 1861. Pevsner describes it as "a successful ensemble". The Faber Guide to Victorian Churches is more enthusiastic: "Everything is well detailed and beautifully proportioned. The interior, of brownish ashlar, has real grandeur despite its small scale, the well-lit crossing being especially impressive."

While at Oxford he had Lewis Carroll as a tutor, and thought him a very dull man. He lived first at Brick House, the oldest in the parish, until his vicarage, or parsonage as it was then called, had been completed. Today it is the Chimney House Hotel. A keen cricketer and fisherman, he hunted regularly with the Cheshire Hunt, and probably lived beyond his means as he was always trying out ways of adding to his stipend including training horses. He was a very successful country parson.

He married on 7 October 1875 Margaret Bourne Royds, daughter of Henry Royds of Wavertree and niece of Revd Edward Royds, rector of Brereton, the adjoining parish. On retirement he went to live at Glyn Garth, Anglesey, where he died on 29 January 1912. He was buried at Sandbach Heath. There were four children:

Agnes (1), born on 24 May 1876 , was a very knowledgeable botanist. I have her Bentham and Hokker flora , in which she noted where and when she found the various species, which she then hand-coloured. It shows her to have travelled quite widely in her time, visiting Germany, Italy and Egypt as well as keeping house for her brother in India for a time. Latterly she looked after her widowed mother in Beaumaris, and moved after her mother’s death to a small house on the front which she named Trefanal after the house her father had at Glyn Garth. She was a keen member of the church choir, and died in the choir gallery during evensong on 2 May 1945.

Hester (4), the youngest child, was born on 12 April 1885 and educated at Bury St Edmunds and Dresden. A keen games player, she served with the VAD in Salonika in the first world war. She ran both the scouts and the guides in Beaumaris for many years, and was Assistant Scout Commissioner for the County. She was married on 11 January 1922 to Bennet Von der Heyde, descended from a family of Counts of the Rhine. He died in 1928, and during the war she took in his two unmarried sisters and looked after then until they died. This undoubtedly shortened her own life considerably, and she died in September 1956 in the parish church hall after giving a talk to the Mothers’ Union.

Henry, born 1877 and educated at Rossall and Owen’s College Manchester, was a railway engineer. He fought in the Boer War, and on 1 November 1911 he married Annie Selina Webber, a nurse, who died of dysentery eleven months later. Later he moved to India where he married on 2 April 1918 Gladys Evelyn Edge (Sheila). Henry died in tragic circumstances on 13 September 1931, when the following obituaries appeared in the press.

Henry was due to retire the following year. Although nothing was ever proved, it was suspected that his death was due to foul play. He was at the time on his way to give evidence for the prosecution at an inquiry into fraudulent behaviour. His mother, who had learned to write again saw his photograph and read the announcement of his death in The Daily Telegraph and suffered a second stroke from which she never fully recovered. Henry had two children by his second wife:

Peter (ii), educated at Blundells, trained as an engineer and subsequently spent his life tea planting in India. John (i), educated at Blundells, trained and RAF College Cranwell, served in Coastal Command in the second world war (DFC), and retired a Group Captain. He married on 20 September 1941, at Llangefni, Iola Mary Withinshaw, and has two children:

Patricia (1), born 26 May 1943, served in the WRAF and married on 20 September 1969, at Haslington, David George Avrell, a computer engineer. They have two children.

Michael (2), born 14 December 1944, educated at Battisborough House and the City University, took a first class degree in Physics in 1966. After working for six months at the University of Nigeria he went to Sussex University where he gained a PhD in 1971. From then until 1974 he was a research physicist at the Atomic Warfare Establishment, Aldermaston, and then spent four years as Professor of Physics at the University of Zambia in Lusaka. He returned in 1978 to take up a post with Marconi Electronics. He married on 19 December 1971 at Brighton Marilyn Dewey, and has two children.

Kenrick (i), born 6 June 1921 was educated at Felsted and Hertford College, Oxford. After serving as a Major in the Royal Artillery in the Second World War (mentioned in despatches) , he became a teacher of modern languages and spent most of his career at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, where he was Head of Modern Languages and tutor to the Prince of Wales during his time there. Although he never married, he led a very active life and had many interests, particularly sailing and, latterly, family history. He was a co-founder, with Colonel Iain Swinnerton, of the Swinnerton Society, and was planning to work part-time as a professional genealogist after his retirement.

These plans were never realised, as he died of a heart attack on 24 August 1984, the year he was due to retire, while ashore in France in charge of one of the college’s yachts. The following obituary appeared in The Times a few days later:

Zoe (ii), born 12 May 1923, was educated at Wadhurst and served in the WRNS in Ceylon during the war. After the war she worked for Sekers of Bruton Street. She married on 10 September 1955, at St Mary’s church, Colchester, Thomas Rowland Watts (Tom), a Chartered Accountant, and partner in Price Waterhouse. As an honorary adviser to the Department of Trade, Tom led the UK’s negotiations on European company law harmonisation following the country’s entry into the EEC, and for five years was chairman of the Accounting Standards Committee. He was appointed CBE in 1978, and in 19?? received the accountancy profession’s Founding Societies’ Centenary Award "for excellence any field of endeavour".

Zoe has taken a very active part in the local community. She has been governor of the Colchester Royal Grammar School, and of Lexden Springs, a school for children with learning disability, chairman of the Colchester Flower Club, an active fund-raiser for the NSPCC, and she continues to play an important part in the local Conservative Association. She has three children:

Felicity (1), educated at Felixstowe College and University College, London read biochemistry and subsequently gained a PhD in 1981. She held research posts at Imperial College and Leicester University before moving to the University of Sussex where she is now a Reader. She lives in Brighton.

Claudia (3) was educated at Felixstowe College and Felsted, and then read a combination of Agriculture, Russian, Chemistry, History of Art and Chinese Civilisation at Edinburgh University. After working as a nanny in the UK and in Beijing (where she learned to speak Mandarin), she took up teaching English as a foreign language, and has since worked in Yugoslavia, Greece, France, Indonesia and the Ukraine. She currently works for the British Council in Hong Kong. She is a keen member of the Hash House Harriers, the expatriate running club and, following Kenrick’s example, has researched the family history on her father’s side.

Nigel (2), educated at Felsted and Trinity College Cambridge is a Chartered Accountant and a liveryman of the Chartered Accountants’ Company. He married on 13 December 1993 at Finsbury Town Hall Tanuja Pandit, daughter of Dr Premnath Srikant Pandit and Dr Indu Vasudev Pandit (née Zadoo) of Bombay, but originally from Srinagar in Kashmir. Tanuja was born in Wilmslow while her father, a Chemical Engineer, was working for ICI, and was brought up in Bombay, but settled in England after taking her MBA at London Business School. Nigel and Tanuja live in Islington and have a son:

Harry (iii), educated Felsted, served with the Gurkha Rifles in India in the war, and afterwards joined British American Tobacco Company working in Jamaica, Ethiopia and Nigeria before returning to the London Office. He married, on 9 February 1958 in Addis Ababa, Gillian Louise Bartley, daughter of Sir Charles Bartley, an Indian High Court Judge. Gillian died in , and Harry married again, on , Elizabeth (Leafy). Harry died on 1 January 1996, leaving two children by his first marriage:

Claire (1), educated Bedales and St Hilda’s College Oxford, worked as a journalist on the South Wales Argus, the Hampstead and Highgate Express and the Financial Times, before joining The Guardian, where she is now Arts Editor. She married, on 17 September 1983 at New College Chapel, Oxford, John Yandall. John subsequently gave up his fellowship of New College to teach English to children in the East end of London, and is an active member of the National Union of Teachers. Claire and John live in Stoke Newington and have two children:

Julian (2), educated Bedales (Head of School 1979) and Girton College Cambridge, where he read classics before going to drama school in Cardiff. He then took a job as an English master at Aylesbury Grammar School before moving to a teaching job in Hong Kong. He married, on 11 August 1989 at the Nederlands Hervormde Kerke, Abcoude, Holland, Magreet Sterk, daughter of Professor ? Sterk of ? and has two children:

Margie (iv), educated Wadhurst, married in June 1951 Graham Brown (marriage dissolved by divorce). She was administrator of Trelissick Gardens for the National Trust. She died on 27 March 1988 while on holiday in Malta leaving three children: