In the 1990s Peter Meadows was working on an article on the subject of a lost Cleveland house called Angrove (also Anngrove or Ann-grove) Hall, which once stood between Great Ayton and Stokesley. The results of his work were keenly anticipated but, as far as I can tell, it was never completed. His draft article was the basis of Dan O'Sullivan's piece on Angrove Hall on the Great Ayton History Society pages on wikidot and I was given sight of the draft article many years ago by Dr Geoffrey Stout, but I have not been able to discover whether the draft article itself survives. Finally I decided to investigate Angrove Hall myself and the account that follows is the result [1].
(The Great Ayton History Society's wikidot pages are no longer active, as the Society is in the process of creating its own website. I will alter my references to link to the new website when it is operational. In the meantime, my apologies.)
Richard Blakeborough's ghost story
On 11 August 1900 the Northern Weekly Gazette proudly announced that Mr Richard Blakeborough, "the well-known author of 'Yorkshire Wit, Character, Folklore, and Customs' and 'T'Hunt of Yatton Brigg'" would be contributing to the newspaper
a series of unique complete stories, into which he has woven in his own inimitable way a variety of remarkable
Old Legends, Folk Tales,andGhost Stories of North Yorkshireunder the title "Tales our Grandfathers Told"
On 25 August 1900, Richard Blakeborough's column began with a story of some 3,500 words entitled 'The Mystery of Ann Grove Hall' with the subtitle in brackets '(The Manor House, Stokesley)'.
Blakeborough's story was an exciting tale featuring in swift succession: a master of Angrove Hall who was enraged by the suspicion that his daughter planned to elope with the undercoachman; his allegation that the man had stolen valuables that he was entrusted to take to Stokesley; the disappearance of the coachman and his reappearance as a ghost; the hunt by the man's tenacious sister for the truth of her brother's fate with the aid of the witch Hannah Waugh and the Great Broughton blacksmith; and the exposure by means of magic charms of the master as a murderer. The man's body is at last discovered and the Hall decays, falling
into such ill-repute that no one could be prevailed upon to live in it, so it was closed, and never inhabited again, thus fulfilling the prophecy, which Hannah Waugh is reported to have made to the master of Anngrove, one day when she met him in Stokesley town, he being in company with several others at the time. Said she, brandishing her staff in his faceThoo'll a'e thi day,Bud lambs 'll plaay,An' loup on t'grund where Anngrov' stan's.Neea lahm (lime) s'll ho'dS'all hap up t'deed o'thi tweea han's
Indeed, Blakeborough wrote, Hannah Waugh's prediction had come true and "not a stone" was left of "the ill-fated Manor House, Anngrove Hall".
By the time he repeated the story in his column in the Whitby Gazette on 1 December 1905, he had made the tale still more exciting and lively with the addition of a great deal of the dialect speech for which he was famous. He also made a small change in the name he had given one of his characters. In his original version he had given the name Thomas Mease to a groom at the Hall. Possibly it had been pointed out to him that Thomas Mease (1792-1862) had been a well-known Stokesley business man as he has altered the name to Thomas Moses.
Three farms (Angrove East, Angrove West and Angrove North) preserve the name of Angrove today. Its gate pillars can still be seen, as they were moved to the entrance to Stokesley Manor House when Angrove Hall was demolished 2. (The date of the demolition is generally accepted to have been 1832, as given by Peter Meadows and as stated in Dan O'Sullivan's article.) Richard Blakeborough's ghost story is still retold, and versions can be found online.
So what was the history of Angrove Hall? And what relation does the ghost story bear to that history?
Richard Blakeborough informed his readers that details of the murder and Angrove Hall itself were hard to establish. Some old people believed that the murder happened in about 1840; some said it took place "quite a hundred years (say 1725) before the place was allowed to fall into ruin". Some said the body was soon discovered; in the version he favours, the action plays out over generations. Certainly Blakeborough knew little about the house, believing that it was an old manor house and referring to it as the Manor House of Stokesley.
In fact, Angrove Hall was only built in about 1760 and had a lifespan of barely 70 years. Its owner and builder was called Thomas Wayne.
The Wayne family of Stokesley
Thomas Wayne was a Stokesley man, baptised in the parish church on 20 April 1727. His father was Christopher Wayne (d 1770), surgeon, apothecary and shopkeeper in the town. This Christopher was the son of another Christopher, who was a grocer, Alderman and twice mayor of Ripon. Christopher the surgeon moved to Stokesley and in February 1719 he married Mary Richardson of Crayke [3]. His business in Stokesley evidently flourished as he was able to give their three sons an excellent start in life.
Christopher and Mary's son Christopher Wayne (c1720-91) was trained as a surgeon and apothecary like his father, and he set up his practice in Richmond where he became a significant figure, an Alderman and thrice Mayor. The obelisk which stands above the 12,000 gallon reservoir under Richmond Market Place, built to supply the town with water, was erected in 1771 during one of Christopher's mayoralties [4].
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| Obelisk and church, Richmond (N Yorks) by Paul Harrop |
Their son Francis Wayne (1728-85) must have been the most academically able of the three boys. He was sent to Edinburgh to train as a physician, passing his M.D in 1753 [5] and returning to Stokesley to establish a successful practice across Cleveland, travelling by horse as far as Whitby to see patients. He is often mentioned in the journals of landowner and man of business Ralph Jackson (1736-90) and was, Ralph Jackson wrote on 24 August 1785 on hearing of Francis's death, "one of my first Cleveland acquaintances" [6].
Thomas Wayne (1727-1806) did not have his brothers' ability at school. In 1809 during the first Chancery case after Thomas Wayne's death, his physician Dr Fotherley Pannell of Great Ayton, who knew him in the last five years of his life, said "that though Mr Wayne was not of very bright general capacity, he was a very shrewd man; and had a mind well stored with useful knowledge, though not so highly cultivated as most others in his sphere of life" [7].
A life of action was more suitable for a lad of his type and, according to counsel for his executors in the 1809 Chancery case, he "entered early" into the army when his father bought him an ensigncy. Possibly Thomas himself decided on the military life when he was eighteen in the excitement and alarm of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. He was unlikely to find that his father objected, as Christopher senior was in the large crowd that gathered at York Castle on 24 September 1745, a month after Bonny Prince Charlie had raised his standard at Glenfinnan, answering an appeal for funds to raise a militia against the Jacobites and for volunteers to bear arms [8].
Christopher Wayne evidently had the money to invest in Thomas's career, just as he had invested in his other sons, and Thomas was a captain by the time he left the army. By then his life had changed dramatically.
Perhaps Thomas had an attractive character, perhaps it was his dashing figure in his scarlet regimentals, or perhaps it was a meeting of true minds – one thing is certain, and that is that he found himself a very good marriage.
Thomas Wayne's "Scotch marriage"
On 6 August 1750, aged 23, he made a Marriage Allegation, applying for a licence to marry 29 year old Miss Barbara Ann Graham. He described himself in the application as a gentleman living in Petersfield in Hampshire, and Barbara Ann, whose age is given incorrectly as 25, as a spinster of the same town. Thomas's regiment was presumably stationed in the area – there were nearly always troops quartered there, in the hinterland of Portsmouth – and that was how they had met.
Some 17 miles north of Petersfield lay South Warnborough, where Barbara Ann's uncle Robert Graham had lived on his country estate. He had died in December 1749, only months before Thomas applied for the licence, and Barbara Ann was his heiress. She would take the rents and income from the South Warnborough estate for the rest of her life, and after her death the estate would be inherited by her children if she had any.
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| South Warnborough church, where Robert Graham was buried on 28 December 1749 |
One complication in her situation was that Robert Graham's widow was still alive. Born Lady Frances Ridgeway, she was the daughter of one Earl of Londonderry and the widow of another, as her father's extinct title had been revived for her husband Thomas Innes Pitt, an uncle of the politician William Pitt the Elder. In 1732, a couple of years after being widowed, the Dowager Countess had married Robert Graham. He was rather beneath her socially, but at least he had a pleasant Hampshire estate which he had inherited from his father (also Robert Graham), who had bought South Warnborough during the reign of Queen Anne at the beginning of the 18th century.
It must have been Robert Graham senior who built himself the modern house there, incorporating into the new building parts of the imposing Tudor mansion once visited by Queen Elizabeth I. The mid-18th century parkland in a fine 'Capability Brown' style is assumed to be the work of Lady Londonderry in her time there [9].
I cannot find out where Lady Londonderry was at the time of her husband's death on 17 December 1749, but she must have been away from home when, two days afterwards, a party descended on the house to look for a Will. This small group of concerned people were his steward, two clergymen, another local gentleman, and Barbara Ann and Margaret Graham, the two daughters of Robert Graham's dead brother William. Together they searched the house and finally found a Will which Mr Graham seems to have written himself. It was a couple of years old and they found it in a bureau [10].
Robert Graham, after leaving his wife £20 for mourning and the jewels which she used to wear, had written, "I hope she out of her goodness & generosity will not insist on the additional jointure I made on her out of my Estate as it will be of great consequence to my family and but a little addition to the very considerable jointure she is in possession of".
It was to turn out that she did object to forgoing her jointure of £400 and there were to be proceedings in the Chancery Court over this, but the most immediate problem for Thomas and Barbara Ann was that Barbara Ann's friends and relations strenuously objected to their marriage. For some reason they were unhappy about her marrying a fairly penniless young army officer from distant Yorkshire whom she cannot have known for very long. But both Thomas and Barbara Ann were over 21, and he obtained a licence on 6 August 1750 which was valid for Chawton, some 11 miles from Petersfield (later the home of Jane Austen for a while) and for Alton, which lay another mile further off. It took some weeks but they must have contrived to slip away at last, and they were married at Alton on 28 September. It was, said the counsel in the 1809 Chancery case, "a Scotch marriage". (This was then the generic term for a runaway marriage).
Leaving behind the disgruntled relatives and friends and the dowager Countess of Londonderry, Thomas and Barbara Ann went north and by 1752 they were living in Stokesley [11]. He must by then have either gone onto half pay or sold out, but unfortunately I have not been able to find any record of his army career. In Cleveland he was known, as can be seen from Ralph Jackson's diaries, as Captain Wayne. The descendants of the relative that inherited his estate remembered him as a Captain in the 10th Regiment of Foot [12].
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| Soldier of 10th Regiment of foot |
Life in Cleveland
So Thomas Wayne, after a very short career, had returned to Stokesley. At the age of only 23, while his brother Francis was still studying medicine and his brother Christopher was establishing himself in Richmond, Thomas was a married man and in possession – as this was long before the Married Women's Property Act 1882 – of his wife's inheritance. They lived first at Stokesley and by 1755 were living at Carlton-in-Cleveland.
At this time Ralph Jackson was still apprenticed to a Newcastle coal merchant but at the end of 1756, when his seven years' term was over, he went to live in Guisborough with his rich uncle Ralph Ward, learning his business and keeping the old man company. One of his earliest acquaintances in Cleveland was Dr Francis Wayne, whom he first mentions in his diary in January 1758 on "Thursday the Fifth, Old Xtmas day" in an episode which gives us a glimpse of Francis's life as a Cleveland physician. Mr Ralph Ward "by Mr Jno Jefferson's request, sent for Dr Waine Physician of Stokesley" to go to Staithes for 56 year old Mrs Eleanor Jefferson. When Dr Wayne set out for Staithes, Ralph Jackson rode with him. There they found Mrs Jefferson ill of an "Inflammation on her Lungs attended with a Fever"; she died four days later of a "Fever and the Gout at her Stomach", Francis Wayne remaining in Staithes with his patient all the while. Mr Ward advised that they should bury her at Hinderwell "as the Roads to Gisbr:o are so bad". Ralph returned for the funeral on 11 January, when Mrs Jefferson's body was carried on men's shoulders out of Staithes "and then by hands to Hinderwell Church", the apothecary Dr Thomas Proddy (1714-65) and Doctor Wayne walking before the coffin.
The condition of many roads must have made Francis's professional life more arduous, especially as he seems from Ralph's diaries to have suffered frequently from illness. In 1800 roads "passing through and along the dales, particularly of the Eastern Moorlands [North York Moors]" were remarked to be "very narrow and rough" [13] and severe weather was a further challenge. On 5 February 1757, for example, Ralph was told by John Johnson the Stockton carrier that "his Horses went over the Ice upon the Tees at Stockton yesterday".
Thomas Wayne's first appearance in the diaries is in the spring of that year, on 25 April 1758. That morning, "Mr Thos Wayne late of the Armey" went to Guisborough to pay Ralph Ward for property he had bought from Thomas Skottowe, which Mr Skottowe had mortgaged to Mr Ward.
Thomas Skottowe of Ayton Hall (1695-1771), the patron of Captain James Cook, had finally succumbed to his debts and was having to sell his encumbered property. By coincidence Skottowe had, like Thomas, made a "Scotch marriage". Unlike Thomas, his runaway match had ended sadly. After only two years his wife died, and he had been obliged to surrender their son to her unrelenting family a few years after his second marriage, being in no financial position to refuse. His brother-in-law and father-in-law had the whip hand over him and it seems that, by his elderly brother-in-law's Will, only if he relinquished the boy entirely would the child inherit anything from them [14].
Thomas Wayne bought land between Great Ayton and Stokesley from Mr Skottowe and created there a pleasant country estate of gardens, grounds, plantations and farms for himself and Barbara Ann. He built a neat mansion house there, probably calling it Ann-Grove as a tribute to his wife. It was a fashionable sort of name, as can be seen from the fact that a few miles away at ancient Skutterskelfe Hall near Hutton Rudby the Hon. General George Cary and his wife Isabella had given their new house the name Leven Grove.
Peter Meadows was able to track down a painting of Angrove Hall in the ownership of descendants of Thomas Wayne's heirs. It is described in Dan O'Sullivan's article on Angrove Hall as "a typical, modest Palladian house of two storeys with perhaps a semi-basement. The entrance front had two bays with sash windows on either side of a slightly protruding central bay which was probably pedimented". The drive to the Hall ran from the Stokesley to Great Ayton Road, over a bridge across the River Leven and through fields.
From 1758 Ralph Jackson's diaries give us many glimpses of Dr Francis Wayne. They are together at breakfasts, dinners and tea-drinkings. He stays with Ralph, borrows a horse from him, goes shooting with him and in 1763 Ralph records they climb Roseberry Topping together. He is Ralph's family doctor, treating Mr Ralph Ward in his last illness and walking before the coffin in the funeral procession to the church. He is with Ralph's wife in childbed and he delivers the babies. On 25 June 1764 they went to York together, stayed at the George in Coney Street, rose at four and "stept into the Machine called the flying Coatch, which by having 4 fresh horses at every Stage carried us to London in two days, it carries 6 Passengers".
There are far fewer glimpses of Thomas and Barbara Ann in Ralph Jackson's diaries – possibly a couple of dozen – but it can be seen that they are part of his neighbourhood. The Jacksons and Captain Wayne and his wife dine together. Thomas goes shooting with Ralph's brother-in-law Commodore William Wilson of Ayton Hall, late of the East India Company. He is on the Grand Jury with Ralph when the York Assizes open on 6 August 1764 and the Hon General George Cary of Leven Grove is their foreman. They both attend meetings in the late 1760s to press for the Guisborough to Thirsk road to be made into a turnpike.
It was a varied social scene of landowners, clergymen, retired military men, men of business, professional men, established tradesmen and their wives. It was a convivial and sociable society, with a good deal of heavy drinking – the apothecary Dr Thomas Proddy died in 1765, Ralph Jackson noted, "of a lingering disorder brought on by a Series of hard drinking". At the same time, there was serious religious devotion. There were Quakers in Great Ayton and Presbyterians had a meeting house there. In Stokesley, Bradshaw Pierson of the Manor House had established a mass house for the Catholics, which was torn down by rioting boys in December 1746 in an anti-Catholic riot 15. The first of John Wesley's visits to Cleveland was in 1745 when he preached in Osmotherley, returning fifteen times 16. He found an audience in Stokesley and Guisborough, but not apparently in Great Ayton though he must often have passed through. In Hutton Rudby he found great success, writing in his diary for Thursday 10 July 1766 on one of his later visits, "Here is the largest Society in these parts, and the most alive to God". Meanwhile, over at Skelton Castle, Laurence Sterne's friend John Hall-Stevenson (1718-85) was enjoying a very much more riotous life at his "Crazy Castle", entertaining his friends in his Demoniacks Club and writing licentious verse. One of the circle was the local clergyman, the Revd Robert Lascelles. [17]
When Thomas and Francis began to appear in Ralph's diaries, Britain was engaged in the Seven Years' War (1756-63), a global conflict which has been called the first world war. On 17 February 1758, only weeks before Thomas bought his land, the government had appointed a General Fast Day, as Ralph wrote, "to implore Gods Protection and Assistance in this war w.th France". (He and his uncle drank "each a Bason of Balm Tea in the morning" and dined on "Salt Fish and Potatoes"). Thomas, now aged thirty, had been a peacetime soldier. He did not rejoin the colours and, reading news of his old comrades, he must have been very thankful for the day he met Barbara Ann.
A couple of months after the General Fast Day, Thomas's financial future was made secure. There had always been the possibility that he might have to go back to his profession because, if Barbara Ann had died without leaving any children, Thomas would have found himself a landless childless widower as the South Warnborough estate would have passed under Robert Graham's Will to Barbara Ann's younger sister Margaret. But Miss Margaret Graham died at Petersfield in May 1758 and on 17 September 1759 the legal position was settled when Barbara Ann made her Will. She left the South Warnborough estate to Thomas for his life, to pass by his Will to whomever he appointed.
In Cleveland, men like Francis and Ralph were looking to the new and scientific. Ralph Ward had a telescope and on 4 February 1758 (in the year of Halley's Comet) Thomas Atkinson, Master of Sir William Turner's Hospital at Kirkleatham, and the apothecary Thomas Proddy "came to examine" it. Ralph Jackson and Thomas Wayne were working to improve Cleveland's roads – to good effect, even if they did not achieve their turnpike, as the quality of the Cleveland roads was highly commended in John Tuke's report of 1800 ("Cleveland holds out an example highly worthy of being followed by every part of the nation"). Francis was carrying out inoculations from the 1760s, taking "matter" from children infected with smallpox to inoculate others, including Ralph's children, nephew and nieces.
At the same time, the staple of Francis's treatments as a physician was still blood-letting, blisters and medicines such as James's Powder. We can see this as we follow Francis's treatment in November 1779 of Ralph's pregnant and consumptive wife Mary Lewin, ill with "great pain in her left side & Shoulder". For several days she took James's Powder and on three occasions Francis "opened a vein", sometimes with difficulty, taking the blood eventually from her hand. Blisters were applied between her shoulders and to her side. Three weeks later Francis delivered the poor woman's third child. (James's Powder, believed to be a fever remedy, consisted of antimony and phosphate of lime and is now considered a prime example of quackery.)
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| Edward Jenner's lancets (as used for bloodletting & vaccination) |
While Francis was inoculating against smallpox and Mr Atkinson and Dr Proddy were examining the telescope, old beliefs continued unabated – in the power of charms, for example, the necessity to avert evil, and the abilities, for bad and for good, of witches. George Calvert in 1820 recorded the names of over twenty "witch hags" of the North York Moors including Nan Garbut o' Great Ayton ("held an evil eye"), Nanny Newgill o' Broughton ("was well up in the mystery of the Black Art, Evil Eye, and used the crystal") and Nanny Howe o' Kildale ("could turn herself into a hare") [18].
In 1815 David Naitby of Bedale heard from a carrier who had just brought a Mr Thomas Biggins to the town, that Mr Biggins was telling everyone that three witches "astride of beasoms" had recently been seen near Roseberry Topping by three men, Joe Ayre, John Simeson and Nick Lamb of Great Ayton. They had been out gathering bilberries at the time. David Naitby questioned Mr Biggins for information, recording that
These three did watch them circling ower a certain spot, making many oft repeated dolorous cries, as it were in deep distress. They in turns darting downward, lighted upon the ground and were busy at once on some black deed or other, the two mid-air at such times, circling with the swiftness of a coach wheel, did the while fill the air with their melancholy shrikes, this terrible adventure ending in their scampering off at hell's gallop towards Roseberry Mount. No mortal guesseth at their business.
In a final chilling detail, the men could identify two of the witches – they were "Nancy Newgill and Hester Mudd o' Rosedale, baith dead" [19].
Rituals at death and burial – the placing of corpse sigells on the eyes, for example – were matters of the utmost importance. The magic sigells (eye weights) were used "to give peace unto the dying and the dead", as George Calvert wrote, by warding off "demons of every sort and kind". A wake-wailer performed the lyke wakes every evening until the body was buried [20]. Witches were treated with fear and suspicion on the one hand, while on the other a witch might be quietly sought out in need of such trouble as difficulty conceiving. John Wrightson, the Wise Man of Stokesley, was still at the height of his power at the end of the Napoleonic Wars after all the Wayne brothers were dead [21].
Over in Richmond, Francis and Thomas's brother Christopher was deeply involved in civic life. His second mayoralty was occupied with the construction of the improved water system for the town. In his first mayoralty he found himself at the forefront of dealing with serious unrest. On 3 December 1757 a large body of angry miners from Wensleydale and Swaledale came into the town and proclaimed their intention to burn it down unless they were allowed to fix the price of foodstuffs. They were seizing the corn of anyone attempting to obstruct them when Christopher, supported by other local gentlemen, came into the Market Place and read the Riot Act. Christopher had evidently come in force as, when the crowd did not disperse, fourteen of the most active men together with the ringleader were arrested. This was a serious disturbance and more trouble was expected, so Christopher and the other gentlemen formed an association which would come "to attend the Mayor" when the "common bell" was rung. Two days later, the miners began to gather at Askrigg to rescue their comrades and the gentlemen and townsfolk of Richmond made ready to repel them. Magistrates and gentry marched into town at the head of their tenants and a force of 700 horse and 200 foot was mustered. The miners found that nobody in Wensleydale would come out in support of them, and went home [22].
Death of Christopher Wayne the elder, 1770
When old Christopher Wayne of Stokesley made his Will in early September 1770, he must have considered the different situations of his three sons. Both Thomas and Christopher were married – Christopher had married Jane Metcalfe of Richmond in 1756 – but, if there had been pregnancies, no child had survived. Financially, Thomas had been by far the luckiest of the brothers.
Old Christopher had prospered over the years and had still been working in 1763, when Ralph Jackson recorded that Doctor Wayne senior had called on his sister Etty who had not been well. He had bought property in Stokesley, Great Broughton and Hutton Rudby and it seems likely that he and his three sons had come to an understanding over how he divided his estate. His widow Mary was to move out of their house in Stokesley, having chosen two beds with their bedding and furniture (but not the bed in the Green Room), and taken her choice of the kitchen furniture that she thought would furnish "two Rooms withall". She would have the £40 a year that he had already settled on her, and the income from some property in Hutton Rudby that he had recently bought – this property would go to Francis on her death. She was to have his silver coffee pot and waiter tray with six silver teaspoons marked MW. Christopher was left a life interest in the manor of Hutton, Whacker Farm and the corn mill at Hutton. All the rest, together with the house, its contents, and the property in Stokesley and Great Broughton would go to Francis. Thomas was left a silver tankard which had belonged to his grandfather Thomas Richardson.
Old Christopher died at the age of 74 on 7 December 1770, three months after the Will was made, and was buried in Stokesley. His widow Mary outlived him by eight years and died aged 80 in 1778.
As there is no sign of a Chancery case and the brothers continued on good terms, we can only assume that Thomas understood why his father had left him only the tankard. After all, he and Barbara Ann were expecting to be even more comfortably situated and indeed, two years after his father's death, they finally came into full possession of the South Warnborough inheritance. As the Salisbury and Winchester Journal of 1 June 1772 recorded
By the death of Lady Londonderry, all that very valuable estate at Southwarmbrough, in Hampshire, devolves to Thomas Wayne, Esq, near Stokesley, Yorkshire.
However, these were eventful times and taxes would soon be rising. War broke out again in 1775 with the revolution in America. Three years later Britain and France were at war, and once more there was fear of invasion. Discontent with the government grew. By late 1779 Ralph Jackson and his friends were at the heart of a movement for radical political reform and Francis Wayne was also involved. It seems very likely that Thomas and Christopher agreed with him.
On 23 November 1779 the Revd Christopher Wyvill of Burton Hall near Bedale was staying at Leven
Grove near Hutton Rudby with General George Cary. Together with William Chaloner of Guisborough and General Hale of Tocketts they decided to call a county meeting in York to protest against the government's inept conduct, the rising taxes and the waste of public money. Ralph Jackson was one of over 200 men who put their names to a newspaper advertisement calling a county meeting in York on 30 December 1780. On 28 December, when Mr Chaloner and General Hale had picked up Ralph and his brother-in-law Commodore Wilson, they collected Dr Francis Wayne from Stokesley and they all drove together in Mr Chaloner's coach to York.
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| Revd Christopher Wyvill (1740-1822) |
This was the beginning of the Yorkshire Association, which presented to parliament a petition of some 5,800 names calling for an end to the improvident squandering of money by government and to the sinecures and pensions it granted to individuals. It urged parliamentary reform and triennial parliaments so that MPs would be more responsive to their constituents' views [23]. Ralph gathered the signatures at Stokesley, Normanby, Yarm, Guisborough and Stockton, recording that he had collected the signatures of 480 freeholders in the wapentake. Thomas is hardly likely to have supported increased taxes – I think he probably signed the petition at Stokesley.
By February 1781 Thomas and Barbara Ann's attention was on the Hall, where they were spending some of their increased income on improvements. Ralph Jackson recorded on 22 February "I walked to Mr Wayne's, (at Angrove) who is about finishing his dining & Drawing Rooms &c". The result of their work is reflected in 'Roseberry Toppin', Thomas Pierson's poem of 1783. Perhaps the poet enjoyed their patronage, which would have been a spur to his praise:
Westward from Ayton Ann-grove's little seatApparent stands, place well designed, compact;Within a virtuous pair in peace reside,Humane, propitious both, contented live.
Death of Dr Francis Wayne, 1785
Unfortunately, the years were catching up with Thomas and Barbara Ann. In July 1785, Francis fell very ill. Ralph Jackson recorded on 22 July that he "sat an hour with Dr Wayne who is recovering from a dangerous illness". The recovery did not last. On 24 August Ralph wrote "my able Doctor, Wayne, who was one of my first Cleveland acquaintances died this forenoon (about ten o'clock) he has not been well some time of a stomach complaint which has of late been very uncommonly relaxed". He was 57 years old. The Leeds Intelligencer of 13 September 1785 carried a report
A few days ago died at Stokesley, Francis Wayne, M.D. He was distinguished by his eminent professional abilities, and extensive practice as a Physician; and his death is greatly and deservedly lamented by his friends and acquaintance, for his many other respectable qualities.
He had written his Will in 1779, leaving all the property he had inherited in Hutton Rudby to Christopher and everything else he owned to his brothers equally between them. In 1787 his brothers commemorated him, together with their parents, in a memorial tablet in Stokesley parish church.
Erected to the Memory of Mr CHRISTOPHER WAYNE. Son of Alderman Wayne of Ripon Eminent in this Town as a Surgeon & Apothecary who lies Intered in this Church yard, and died Decr 7th A.D. 1770. Aged 74.Also of MARY his Wife, Daughter of Thos Richardson Esqr of Craike, in the County of Durham [24], who died Decr 17th AD 1778. Aged 80.And also of their Youngest Son, Doctor FRANCIS WAYNE, a Physician Distinguished for an Extensive and Successful Practice, and many Social Virtues, who died Augt 24th A.D. 1785. Aged 57.This Monument was Erected from a Dutiful Regard to their Parents and affection for their Brother by CHRISr and THOs WAYNE, EsqrsAD MDCCLXXXVII
Death of Mrs Barbara Ann Wayne, 1788
The following year, on 28 January 1788, Barbara Ann died. Thomas had a second tablet placed in the parish church alongside the first. It features a funerary urn and a shield on which can still be made out the three gauntlets of the Wayne coat of arms:
In this churchyard are interred the remains of Barbara Ann, the wife of Thomas Wayne, of Anngrove Hall, in the Parish of Great Ayton,in this county Esq and eldest daughter of William Graham of Southwarnbrough, in the county of Southampton, EsqrShe departed this life the 28th of January 1788 aged 68 years. From a great and tender regard to her memory, and her many and amiable virtues, this monument was erected by her most affectionate husband A.D. MDCCXC
The last of the Waynes
In 1789 Christopher Wayne, widowed since 1781 and childless, was giving a good deal of thought to the question of his Will. It was a careful document.
He provided generously for his servant Elizabeth Allison, who was well provided for "in recompense of her great care honesty and attention in my family", leaving her money and household goods – linen, furniture, china, silver – to set her up in a house of her own. All are carefully described, bringing to life his house in Richmond, its feather beds, the clock on the back stairs, the wood press in the kitchen and the round oak tea table, with the blue and white English china, the pewter plates and brass kettles and pans. He paid attention to the division of his clothes – his laced ruffles, neckcloths, handkerchiefs, best silk stockings, coats, waistcoats, breeches, wigs and shoes. He gave thought to his watches, leaving the one which he usually wore in his pocket – it had an outer case of gold – to his godson in London, another "which goes on diamonds" to his cousin Mrs Sarah Rockliffe's daughter, and his third to his servant man. He remembered his godchildren, his late wife's family, his servants.
He gave particular thought, now that he and Thomas were the last of their particular line, to the house and lands he owned in the township of Copt Hewick outside Ripon, where their family had lived for generations. He was anxious that it should be owned by a Wayne, which left him only his brother Thomas and the children of their cousin Sarah. She was the daughter of their aunt Ann, their father's younger sister who had married Cornelius Craven of Ripon when in her thirties. The old lady was now a great age – he left her £50 – and her daughter Sarah, some 15 years younger than Thomas, had married John Rockliffe of Asenby near Topcliffe. In 1790 they had four children, with three boys under the age of nine.
Thomas promised Christopher that if he was left the Copt Hewick property he would, as soon as he could, make and publish his Will by which, if he left no children, the property would go to the second son of John and Sarah Rockliffe. By publishing it, John Rockliffe would know that the promise was being kept. His eldest boy would remain a Rockliffe while the boy who inherited Copt Hewick was to take the surname Wayne, with provisions that if he died without children, it would pass to one of his brothers. On this basis, Christopher's Will was drawn up and executed on 13 February 1790. Over the following months he added to it, with clauses that were to be considered part of the Will.
By April 1791 as he neared his end, he began to have serious doubts about Thomas's intention to keep the promise. On 3 April – he was buried only three days later – he made a codicil to his Will. Thomas would not inherit the Copt Hewick property outright, but instead he would have a life interest. If he left children "lawfully begotten" it would go to them, otherwise it would go to John and Sarah Rockliffe's son as planned. The word "lawfully" is missing from the original Will; its insertion might mean that Christopher had learned something about matters at Angrove that made him hesitate.
He could have heard from John Rockliffe himself that relations between him and Thomas were difficult, or he could have learned about Thomas's intentions and life at Angrove from an inside source. Living at Angrove Hall at the time of the Codicil was a relation on their mother's side whom Christopher knew well.
Christopher and Thomas had a cousin Catherine, the daughter of their mother's sister Catherine Richardson and her husband Henry Swale of Copmanthorpe. Catherine Swale, who was a few years older than Thomas, had married the Revd Robert Harrison, master of Hipperholme Grammar School and curate of Hartshead in the West Riding. They had three sons, Richardson, Henry and Thomas.
In his Will, Christopher left £500 to 39 year old Henry Harrison, who was then secretary to the Bishop of Winchester, and he left to 33 year old Thomas, who was a surgeon and apothecary at Kirkby Stephen, "all my physical and chirurgical books and manuscripts and my chirurgical instruments". A year later, when Christopher made his Codicil, Henry was at Angrove Hall as secretary or steward to Thomas [25]. Perhaps Henry had ridden over to Richmond to see his older cousin at the last and had then let him know Thomas's views on John Rockliffe. So Christopher changed the bequest of the Copt Hewick lands and Thomas would have to be content with the income from Copt Hewick instead of owning it outright.
By 1798 Henry Harrison was dead. The revolutionary government in France had declared war on Britain in 1793, and Thomas was old and ailing. He had outlived family, friends and neighbours and he was hardly in the best position to cope with the worry and demands of a farmer in wartime, the new and increasing taxes, the loss of men to the militia, the army and the press gang.
Thomas Wayne's last years
In about 1802, during the short-lived peace with Napoleon, matters took a turn for the worse for Thomas. He had always been in the habit of walking the couple of miles across to Stokesley every day but now the arthritis in his knees was excruciating and he could no longer walk. He frequently took laudanum for the pain. Between the pain and the laudanum, his distressing condition made him, said counsel for the executors at the 1809 Chancery case, "disagreeable both to himself and others. He was consequently unable to go into society, and particularly into that of the fair sex".
So, disagreeable and difficult, he was cut off from society and came to depend on his coachman Mark Barker, a local man in his early thirties. Thomas was lonely. He pressed his gamekeeper Matthew Milburn to come and keep him company. He wanted Milburn to dine with him but the gamekeeper, imagining how uncomfortable he would feel, not knowing how to sit at dinner with Mr Wayne or use his knife and fork correctly, was very reluctant to go. Instead he used to say, "I have no objection, sir, to drink a glass of wine with you" as he thought he could manage that. And so he would go in after Mr Wayne had finished dinner on a Sunday and they would share a bottle of wine.
By 1805 Angrove Hall was a distinctly ramshackle household, run by Mark Barker and a 16 year old housekeeper Esther Frazer. An incident in 1805 on the day that Thomas signed his Will gives us a glimpse of life at Angrove. It was described by James Davison, a master mariner in his early fifties who lived nearby and had come to witness the Will. After the Will was signed, Davison and another witness, 44 year old Thomas Neasham, a brewer in Great Ayton, stayed on with Mr Wayne –
Late in the afternoon, some cattle having broke into his field, he rang for Joseph Ramsdale [26], his footman, who not coming immediately, he rang again violently; and on his entrance called him a drunken rascal, and threatened to discharge him for not keeping the cattle out of that field, as he had been repeatedly ordered. Mr Neasham interceded for Ramsdale, saying he had a small family, and Mr Wayne had spoiled him for any other place but his own. Mr Wayne said he kept him entirely out of charity, on account of his having a small family.
It was during the short-lived peace after the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, while the well-to-do were rushing off to Europe to see the sights again and trade was reviving, that Thomas fell out with his solicitor.
He had been in the habit for some time of instructing John Russell Rowntree of Stockton (c1761-1831), a well regarded solicitor and later conveyancing barrister, in his affairs – he was fond of buying up land, and he had the leases of farms to be managed. Mr Rowntree had drawn up a Will for Thomas in 1800 and a codicil in December 1802, but by early 1803 Thomas had turned against him.
Comments made by counsel in the 1809 Chancery case suggest that Mr Rowntree had possibly begun to be alarmed at the coachman Mark Barker's growing influence over the old gentleman. It must have been common knowledge locally, as servants were ready to give evidence about it in 1809, that Mark Barker handled the money, hired the servants and ran the household. Perhaps Mr Rowntree attempted to speak to Thomas about this; perhaps he even mentioned it to John Rockliffe of Asenby. At any rate, Thomas took strong offence. He sent Mark Barker to John Wardell, a forty year old solicitor in Guisborough, desiring him to call at Angrove Hall to take instructions for a lease.
This lease, John Wardell told the court in 1809, was to Mark Barker and it was of an Ayton farm "on which Barker's father resided". Such was Thomas's anxiety to keep Mark Barker happy that, three years later he gave him the lease of another farm at the old rent, saving Barker nearly £100 on the market price.
In April 1803 Thomas instructed John Wardell to draw him up a new Will, which benefitted Mark Barker considerably [27]. The months went by and, outside Angrove, war began again, invasion became a serious prospect, the warning beacon was set up on Roseberry Topping and men were rushing to join the Volunteers, with even William Wordsworth drilling with the men of Grasmere a couple of times a week [28]. With great alarm widespread in the country, Thomas continued to consider his Will.
In August 1804 he made a new Will and at Christmas 1804 he gave John Wardell instructions for another. On 2 April 1805 he made his last Will. The great question was his choice of heir – who would have the good fortune to inherit the Hampshire estate, the Angrove estate, the farm, houses, land and cornmill in Hutton Rudby, his property in Kirkby in Cleveland and High Worsall. As to family, he had the brothers Richardson and Thomas Harrison on his mother's side while on his father's there were the Rockliffes of Asenby. Christopher Wayne had feared Thomas would cut out the Rockliffes. In 1809 John Wardell told the court that Thomas Wayne often spoke of his cousins, with affection and regard of the Richardson Harrisons, but "not so of the others latterly". As young Thomas Rockliffe, the boy who inherited the Copt Hewick estate, was still only seventeen, this probably means that Thomas had fallen out with the father, John Rockliffe Esq of Asenby. Possibly he felt they were presuming too much on inheriting his property.
In his Will, Thomas left legacies of £500 to each of John Rockliffe's three children, to Thomas Harrison of Kirkby Stephen (but not to his children), to Richardson Harrison, and to each of Richardson Harrison's children. He chose his heir the sons of Richardson's second marriage. He passed over Richardson's three eldest sons, now men in their twenties – Richardson the younger was a surgeon, John was an army officer and James was in the Royal Marines. James served with Admiral Nelson, the nation's hero who would soon die saving the country from invasion at the Battle of Trafalgar [29]. Instead Thomas chose to entail the estates upon the third son of Richardson's second marriage, a ten year old boy called Thomas Moore Harrison. He was to take the surname Wayne. There would be another Thomas Wayne of Angrove Hall, and he would come into the estates, the family pictures and paintings and Thomas's iron chest.
Richardson Harrison was a fortunate man and had done well in life. Born in 1749, he had trained as a surgeon and married young. In 1769 he had been appointed a surgeon in the East India Company and he and his wife Ann Grant and their little boy had sailed for India. They came back to England in January 1789 with their four surviving children, the youngest a little girl of five [30]. Richardson was widowed soon afterwards but in 1791 he remarried and began a second family with his wife Mary Moore. They lived in Taunton in Somerset and between 1792 and 1807 they were to have eight children. Richardson evidently had money, either from his marriage or from his years with the East India Company, because in 1798 he became Remembrancer of First Fruits and Tenths of the Clergy. This meant he was the official in charge of the department of the Exchequer which administered the taxation of clergy and related matters. This position was not an appointment, but a freehold which was bought and sold. Richardson Harrison paid £3,000 [31].
Thomas Wayne was by now an old hand at making a Will and John Wardell clearly took care to make sure that the execution of the Will could not be challenged. The three witnesses were unimpeachable and were chosen by Thomas Wayne himself. The Revd Henry Taylerson (1748-1814) was born in Stokesley, was curate of the parish and had known Thomas Wayne for most of his life. The master mariner James Davison (born c1752) was a near neighbour and knew him well. The brewer Thomas Neasham (1761-1821) had known Thomas Wayne for twenty years. On that Tuesday morning in April 1805, James Davison went over at about 11 o'clock and walked in the garden while John Wardell read the Will over to Thomas. The three of them had dinner together, Thomas talking freely and cheerfully. The Revd Taylerson and Thomas Neasham joined them as they sat over the wine at the table. After a couple of glasses Thomas said to his solicitor, "We might as well get this business settled." Mr Wardell took the will from a desk. Thomas took out his spectacles and signed where indicated. Mr Wardell said to him, "You have heard this will read over, do you approve of the same?" He said, "I do." Mr Wardell said, "Do you publish and declare this as your last will and testament?" He replied, "I do."
Thomas died a year later when, as Dr Fotherley Pannell explained to the court in 1809, his "complaint increased and there was a transition of the disease to some neighbouring organs of great importance in the animal economy". He was buried on 22 April 1806, having directed in his will that he was to be "interred in the family vault at Stokesley in a decent and genteel manner".
Thomas Wayne's Will & the Court of Chancery
Thomas had named three executors – his solicitor John Wardell, his neighbour Major General Robert Tipping, a half-pay officer of the 80th Foot, and his old friend William Marwood of Busby Hall. Mr Marwood did not take up the task of executor and he died in 1809. The other two gentlemen may have regretted their willingness to act, as they were to find themselves involved in years of complications.
The first problem was the reaction of the Rockliffe family. Young Thomas Rockliffe would turn 21 on 22 April 1807, so it seems very likely that it was his father acting on his behalf who opened hostilities by entering caveats against the will to prevent the executors from carrying out its terms while its validity was in dispute. The Rockliffes wanted to return to the last Will that Mr Rowntree had drawn up and to the days when the estates came to them.
On 22 July 1809, by order of the Court of Chancery, both sides appeared before Mr Justice Chambre and a Special Jury at the York Midsummer Assizes. The action was by Mr Wardell and Maj Gen Tipping against young Thomas Rockliffe (now Thomas Wayne after coming into the Copt Hewick property). It was reported at length in the Hull Advertiser of 23 September 1809.
There were two points to the Rockliffe family's case: was Thomas's will properly executed, and was Thomas capable of making a Will at that moment – was he of "sound and disposing mind"? They hoped to show that he was so often rendered incapable by laudanum and that he was so much under the influence of Mark Barker (as evidenced by the terms of the Will) that he "had not mind enough to be capable of managing his own concerns".
The evidence of the witnesses to the Will swiftly disposed of the idea that it was improperly executed. Their accounts of the events of that day showed that Thomas knew very well what he was doing. His "intellect remained intire", said Dr Fotherley Pannell. The Stokesley apothecary Thomas Williamson had frequently treated Thomas over thirty years and told the court that "except when in agony from pain, or under the influence of opiates, which his situation often rendered necessary, [he] never knew him incapable of making a will". The Rockliffes' attempt failed and their counsel Sergeant Cockell admitted that in spite of his witnesses waiting to give evidence about Mark Barker, "I acknowledge, however, that it is impossible to sustain my case, and that my learned friend must have a verdict".
The terms of the Will were indeed startling and must have caused a most enjoyable storm of gossip across the neighbourhood.
Much of it was unsurprising – Matthew Milburn the gamekeeper was left £20 and Thomas's single barrelled gun. The servants were left mourning clothes. There were small charitable donations. Major General Tipping was left the wine and spirits and there were legacies for his daughter Amelia and Mr Wardell's son John. But Mark Barker the coachman was left a considerable amount. He was to receive: a legacy of £200; Thomas's double barrelled gun; the farm stocks of corn and hay; the horses and their gear; Mr Wayne's clothing; two closes of land in Stokesley; and half the contents of the house – prints, paintings, plate and household goods. The other half share of the contents was to go to Esther Frazer the housekeeper.
Esther was 17 years old when Thomas died. Carefully described at the York hearing by the Revd Henry Taylerson as the "natural child of some person in the village", she was left: an annuity of £60; a legacy of £500 when she reached 21 and another £500 when she reached 26; Thomas's saddle mare, the side saddle and bridle; mourning for herself and her mother Mrs Mary Nattrass and husband George Nattrass; and a half share with the solicitor John Wardell in Thomas's library of books. Thomas took a great interest in Esther Frazer – if he was not her father, he certainly had a fatherly concern for her. In his Will he laid it down that if she married the Great Ayton butcher Joseph Donaldson then she was not to receive the second legacy of £500 and the annuity of £60 was to stop. Some months later he had been persuaded to relent. He made a codicil on 16 January 1806 revoking the provisions about Joseph Donaldson, and left Esther two closes of land besides.
Thomas had been very attached to the mansion house which he had built and he clearly set great store by the thought of another Thomas Wayne living there. He directed his executors to appoint some proper person to take care of the house, its gardens, grounds and plantations until his heir came into possession. This proper person was to be Mark Barker. For as long as he chose, Mark Barker was to live in and take care of the house together with the farms that Thomas had in hand, rent-free and with his wages paid, taking the produce of the gardens, and given 600 bushels of coal a year to keep the house aired.
There will have been a good deal of local comment about Mark Barker's chance, in the years until young Thomas Harrison reached 21, to build himself a tidy nest egg. Soon after the Will was signed and he knew he would be inheriting half the contents, he had ordered £70 or £80 worth of furniture for the house. If he decided to stay in the Hall, he would have the full enjoyment of it until 1810 when Esther Frazer would reach 21 and the contents would be divided.
The next problem for the executors arose in the uncertain economic times after the wars finally ended in 1815. At issue was the scale of Thomas's legacies and outstanding debts. The estate, according to counsel for the executors in 1809, was "of the value of upwards of £120,000". He had left legacies amounting to more than £12,500, of which half would fall due immediately while the rest would be become payable as the children to whom they were given reached the age of 21. In the meantime, interest at 5% on those legacies was to be paid to the parents for their maintenance and education.
There was some concern about how the trustees were administering the estate and there were those who wanted to be certain they would receive their money in the end. Two men who held promissory notes signed by Thomas, together with Richardson Harrison on behalf of his two youngest children, began a Chancery case (Garbutt v Tipping [32]) in the matter. Depositions were taken in May 1819 and the surviving witnesses to Thomas's Will were once more asked to describe the signing of the Will. James Davison, the master mariner, was at the hamlet of Cleveland Port at the mouth of the Tees when the Chancery Court commissioners came to take his evidence.
The result was that, in order to pay the legacies and the mortgages, the Chancery Court decreed that Angrove Hall was to be sold. Notices went into the newspapers that on Friday 20 October 1820 at the Black Swan Inn at Stokesley, the Hall with its farms and lands amounting to upwards of 574 acres were to be sold. The buyer was the Revd Henry Hildyard (1752-1832), a clergyman who had no parish but lived the life of a gentleman at the Manor House in Stokesley.
Angrove Hall continued to stand for another dozen years or so. Then, after the Revd Henry Hildyard died, his son Robert must have had no use for it and he had the hall taken down. It was presumably quarried for materials; its stone and brick must now be scattered among the houses, barns and walls around Great Ayton and Stokesley. The gateposts were preserved and set up at the entrance to Mr Hildyard's Stokesley Manor, where they still stand. Angrove Hall disappeared.
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| Stokesley Manor House by Graham Hogg |
By 1840 nearly all the people involved had died. One executor was still alive – John Wardell, now in Bridlington and aged 75. Lieut Gen. Robert Tipping died in Paris in January 1823 aged 73, outlived by the Chancery case. Garbutt v Tipping was still appearing in the court lists for further directions and costs in 1825.
Esther Frazer had died in 1836. She had married the butcher Joseph Donaldson two years after Thomas's death and they had a large family. Her inheritance from Thomas gave them a head start in the world and in the 1820s they were living at Winley Hill farm on the old Angrove lands, and Joseph was both butcher and farmer. But it ended badly. Joseph went bankrupt and was gaoled for debt in London. After his release from the prison of King's Bench, he died in Southwark at the age of 52 in 1830 and was buried at the church of St George the Martyr [33]. Perhaps Thomas Wayne had been right about the wisdom of the marriage. Esther died in Middlesbrough at the age of 47 and was buried at Great Ayton.
The two new Thomas Waynes were still alive in 1840. Thomas Wayne of Asenby and Copt Hewick died in 1850 aged 66 leaving only an illegitimate daughter. Thomas Moore Wayne of South Warnborough died in 1868 and, as he had no sons, the property passed under the entail to his brother William's son [34].
Who was the Angrove ghost?
Sixty years later, when Richard Blakeborough wrote his 'Mystery of Angrove Hall', there was nobody left in the area who remembered the Waynes or could tell him anything about the house. That hardly mattered, as his interest was entirely on the ghost story. He was told of an Angrove Hall coachman who was believed to be on the run after a robbery until, some time later, what remained of his body was discovered among the hay. His ghost still walked.
Into this tale of a haunted place, best avoided by people crossing Angrove land, Richard Blakeborough wove a love story, with a vengeful father, a devoted sister, an eerie witch and uncanny magic. He added incidental characters – a miller, a farmworker in the Stokesley inn – and he gave his characters names. Best of all, he added the sinister prophetic rhyme. Possibly this is based on folk tradition; possibly he wrote it himself. He explained, when the story was published in the Northern Weekly Gazette on 9 January 1906:
The reader will have observed, not only in the accounts given weekly in this pages, but also in the works of other writers telling of witches and their doings, how very often the utterances of these old dames are given in rhyme, and the reader is left with the understanding that so the witch did actually pronounce her threat, or forecast, which, though the said rhymes are often very poor and crude, is crediting them all with a gift possessed by very few mortals – that is, the ability to utter one's ideas without a moment's preparation in an impromptu rhyme.
His son Major Jack Fairfax-Blakeborough made further additions to the tale. His 'The Tragedy of Angrove Hall: A Northern Ghost Story', which appeared in the Northern Weekly Gazette on 4 December 1937, is a lively and melodramatic piece with an arresting opening:
Some beautifully-carved oaken doors which now adorn a farmhouses in Cleveland are the last relics of once Stokesley's manor house, Angrove Hall
In his version, the handsome young under-coachman was "harshly" ordered to walk to Stokesley over the fields to take from the squire's hands at the drive gates a box of valuables which he was to deliver to a passenger for the London coach. The coachman is never seen again, the squire goes to London himself and lingers there, guiltily, for a year. He returns and as his horses come to the drive gates, they refuse to go a step further. And so on, excitingly, to the end when the murdered coachman was "only a memory to be spoken of in hushed whispers even yet by old Cleveland folk."
This version was a great success and was told by Jack Fairfax-Blakeborough on the radio more than once in the 1930s [35], fixing it firmly in people's minds and memories and subsuming the original ghost story, so sparse in its details.
But it had preserved a true story and the ghost can be named.
In 1818 Thomas Wayne's executors were renting Angrove Hall to a Kentish gentleman in his late forties called William Hugessen Hugesson (1772-1861) [36], whose wife Sarah Lambert had Yorkshire connections; they were married in 1802 at Eryholme on the south bank of the Tees. They were childless and seem to have been in Angrove only a short while, as they were living in Ripon by 1821.
Mr Hugesson often sent his coachman into Stokesley with notes to be delivered to the offices of John Gillson (c1756-1820), who had come to Stokesley as an excise officer in the 1780s and stayed there when ordered to move to the Skipton office. Aided by the fact that his wife was "an amiable young lady possessed of a fortune of £7,000" [37] he had been able to establish himself in the town where the 1811 London and Country Directory listed him as a woolstapler.
As a result of being sent on these messages, the coachman came to know Mr Gillson's house and office and he conceived a bold plan of robbery. During the night of Friday 2 October 1818, he came to the house, climbed onto the roof and down one of the chimneys with a pistol and a lamp or lantern in his hand. He broke open several locks and bolts and, leaving marks of soot wherever he went, he got into the office. But then he was interrupted. They thought afterwards that he was probably alarmed by the sound of the maid servant whose bedroom was directly above. He took to his heels, forcing open the door of the back-kitchen to get out. His sooty trail showed that he had been near to the money and the silver plate, but he had left them behind.
There was no trace of him. An attempted burglary – a missing coachman. Everyone must have assumed that he had gone on the run. Some ten or eleven days later, some unfortunate person had cause to go to a hay shade near Angrove Hall – an open-sided barn, protecting the hay – and found there his remains. As the report headed "Daring Burglary and Suicide" in the York Herald and General Advertiser on Saturday 24 October 1818 explained:
Struck with remorse of conscience, or influenced by a fit of insanity, the robber soon after laid violent hands upon himself, apparently with the very pistol he had prepared for carrying into effect his midnight enterprise. Having returned to a hay shade, near his master’s house, he shot himself, and left a wife and three children to lament their hapless fate. His remains were found in the shade a few days ago, the body being from the length of time in a state of putrefaction, and his clothes covered with soot
This succinctly written report of some 350 words was picked up by newspapers across the country over the following days. It corresponds neatly with the date of an inquest opened in Great Ayton on Wednesday 14 October 1818 into the death of one William Pitcher [38]. It is quite possible that the account was written by the coroner himself, 28 year old George Brigham of Windy Hill in Rudby [39] but it could easily have been by his friend, the young solicitor John Harker, whose letters show that he was something of a writer [40].
Once George Brigham received the message about the discovery of the body, he will have summoned a jury and opened the inquest as soon as he could because jurors had to inspect the remains, which in this case were in "a state of putrefaction". The verdict was recorded as "Shot himself". The next day, Thursday 15 October, William Pitcher's body was buried at Great Ayton by the Revd William Deason. He left blank in the register the space for the age of the deceased. Pitcher was not a local man and there is no record of the children's baptisms in this area. It seems that his widow and three children were already gone from Ayton. Perhaps Mrs Pitcher had left to join her family when her husband disappeared and the failed robbery was discovered; perhaps she had expected him to join them.
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| All Saints', Great Ayton by Simon Armitage |
Notes
[1] Dan O'Sullivan's article on Angrove Hall can be found in the Great Ayton History Society wikidot pages here.
I think Peter Meadows may have consulted the records in the Hampshire and Somerset archives relating to the Harrison Wayne family, but unfortunately I have not been able to do so. I think, however, that the digitisation of newspapers and records has compensated a good deal for that deficiency.
[2] Details of Stokesley Manor House, which stands near the parish church, can be found on the Stokesley Heritage wikidot pages here
[3] Genealogical details are taken from the memorial tablet to Christopher and Mary Wayne in Stokesley parish church, parish registers, and Probates.
[4] For the Richmond obelisk, cf Christopher Clarkson, The History & Antiquities of Richmond, (1821), p.125
[5] For Dr Francis Wayne's medical qualifications, cf The Medical Register, 1783
[6] I have used the transcription of Ralph Jackson's diaries to be found here
[7] The Chancery case of 1809, Tipping and another v Wayne, heard at the York Midsummer Assizes 22 July 1809, is reported at length in the Hull Advertiser of 23 September 1809. Details of Thomas's life and the execution of his Will in 1805 are taken from this report
[8] For the 1745 meeting at York Castle, cf London Gazette, Number 8471, 28 September 1745
[9] The Hampshire Gardens Trust website describes the house and parkland of South Warnborough manor and park, here
[10] The search for Robert Graham's Will is described in his Probate papers
[11] Thomas & Barbara Ann Wayne's places of residence can be found in the Chancery cases as listed in the National Archives index: in 1752 Wayne v Newland, Thomas was "esq of Stokesley"; in 1755 Wayne v Wilson he was "gentleman late of Stokesley and now of Carlton in Cleveland".
[12] The 10th regiment of Foot was so named in 1751, when the regiments were first numbered. It should be noted that some of the details given by the family to the History of the County of Hampshire (Volume 3, London 1908) here [accessed 4 October 2024] are inaccurate, viz. Barbara Ann's relationship to Robert Graham, the correct name of Thomas Wayne, the place where the wedding took place, and the exact details of Thomas Wayne's Will. Nor can I find in Robert Graham's Will the information contained in footnote 24 of that webpage
[13] For Cleveland's roads, cf John Tuke, General View of the Agriculture of the North Riding of Yorkshire Drawn Up for the Consideration of the Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement, Board of Agriculture (Great Britain) 1800, p.299
[14] For Thomas Skottowe, cf Dan O'Sullivan, Thomas Skottowe, November 2011, Great Ayton History of the Village here
[15] For religious denominations in Great Ayton and area, see for example, Dan O'Sullivan, Great Ayton – A History of the Village, here
[16] For John Wesley in Osmotherley, see for example, George Jackson, Wesleyan Methodism in the Darlington Circuit (1850). A Dictionary of Methodism in England and Ireland (online)
[17] For John Hall-Stevenson, see Lewis Melville, Some Eccentrics and a Woman (1911), p.161; and the Dictionary of National Biography
[18] For George Calvert's list of witch hags, see Richard Blakeborough, Notes on North Riding Lore : What our Grandmothers believed, Northern Weekly Gazette (12 March 1904)
[19] For witches over Roseberry Topping, see David Kirby, Marvels, magic and witchcraft in the North Riding of Yorkshire: David Naitby's Bedale Treasury, (2005), p.69
[20] ibid, p.76
[21] For John Wrightson, see Owen Davies, Cunning-Folk in England and Wales during the 18th and 19th Centuries. Rural History (1997), 8, pp.91-107 doi:10.1017/S095679330000114X
[22] For the miners at Richmond, see Christopher Clarkson, The History & Antiquities of Richmond (1821), p.413
[23] For the Yorkshire Association, see Ian R Christie, The Yorkshire Association, 1780-4: A Study in Political Organization, The Historical Journal Vol. 3, No. 2 (1960), pp.144-161
[24] Crayke in the County of Durham: "The parish was until the 19th century part of the county of Durham. In 1832 it was united to Yorkshire for Parliamentary purposes, and in 1844 it became for all purposes part of that county." 'Parishes: Crayke', in A History of the County of York North Riding: Volume 2, ed. William Page (London, 1923), British History Online here [accessed 20 March 2025].
[25] Henry Harrison: in the Probate of Christopher's Will, "Henry Harrison of Angrove Hall in the County of York Esq made oath and swore that he knew and was well acquainted with Christopher Wayne and with the manner and character of handwriting".
His occupation at Angrove Hall can be seen in, for example, Angrove Hall: Henry Harrison of Angrove Hall, Yorkshire, on behalf of Thomas Wayne of Angrove Hall, esq. Articles of agreement for purchase of manor of High Worsal, Yorkshire (1 paper) 18 November 1794, Ref: D/St/D2/4/2 [Durham Archives, Strathmore Estate]
[26] Joseph Ramsdale: in the Hull Advertiser of 23 September 1809, the footman's name is given as Joseph Ramsden. This surname does not appear in the local parish registers and is undoubtedly a mishearing by the shorthand writer for Joseph Ramsdell/Ramsdale whose marriage at Great Ayton on 27 March 1798 was witnessed by Mark Barker
[27] After the Second World War, John Simpson, author of a history of South Warnborough, wrote to one of the Kitchings of Ayton Grange (Durham Archives suggests Henry Kitching) in an exchange of information about Thomas Wayne and Angrove Hall. He included extracts of "a cancelled Will of Thomas Wayne signed at Angrove Hall 1803", which show the 1803 Will had similar provisions to the 1805 Will as regards Mark Barker.
[Letter from John Simpson, Humbley Grove, South Warnborough, Basingstoke, Hampshire to [Henry Kitching ?] concerning will of Thomas Wayne of Angrove Hall, 1803, Durham Archives Ref: D/Ki 305]
[28] William Wordsworth drilling with the Volunteers: cf Dorothy Wordsworth to Catherine Clarkson 9 October 1803, Wordsworth Letters i 403, from Jenny Uglow, In These Times: Living in Britain through Napoleon's Wars 1793-1815
[29] James Hull Harrison, major Royal Marines (1783-1853) and Admiral Nelson: see Online auction particulars for Clarks Auction Rooms of Liskeard, Cornwall on New Years Day 2020: "Lot 146: An 18thC. carved pencil case, formerly the property of Major James Hall Harrison who served with Admiral Lord Nelson, ink inscription to verso C. J. Harrison 9.25in long £30-40"
[30] For Richardson Harrison in India, see Bengal: Past and Present, Vol 42, Part 1 p.56, Journal of the Calcutta Historical Society. Accessed online at archive.org
[31] For the Office of Remembrancer, see The British Magazine and Monthly Register of Religious and Ecclesiastical Information, Parochial History, and Documents Respecting the State of the Poor, Progress of Education, &c, Volume 12, 1837.
[32] Garbutt v Tipping, Two sets of Depositions C 13/2001/23 (1819), The National Archives
[33] For Joseph Donaldson, see Perry's Bankrupt Gazette (27 February 1830); London Gazette, Matter of the Petitions and Schedules to be heard 2 March 1830; and Southwark burial register, 16 February 1830
[34] Under Thomas Wayne's Will, if Thomas Moore Harrison died without male issue, the estate passed to his full brothers; his half-brothers were not included in the entail
[35] Major J Fairfax-Blakeborough's radio broadcasts:
On 6 November 1937 the Radio Correspondent of the Leeds Mercury:
"On November 26 … there will be a broadcast by J F Blakeborough in the “Haunted House” series. The scene of the story will be Angrove Hall, near Great Ayton, in North Yorkshire, which for years stood unoccupied owing to a ghost, and eventually was demolished".
On 12 January 1938, the Daily Herald's radio listings for the National Programme of the BBC show that it would be broadcast on 12 January 1938 at 10:45 am
[36] William Hugessen Hugesson was baptised William Hugessen Spratt in Canterbury in 1772. He changed his surname to Hugesson on becoming tenant for life of Stodmarsh Court in Kent, which had belonged to his family since 1727. Stodmarsh Manor – Stodmarsh Court here
[37] For Mr Gillson's marriage, see Leeds Intelligencer of Tues, 1 Nov 1785: "Yesterday se'nnight was married at Grantham, Mr. Gillson, officer of excise, to Miss Rappit, of the same place; an amiable young lady possessed of a fortune of 7000l."
[38] Inquest into William Pitcher's death: Abstract of coroner's inquests for the liberty of Langbaurgh: An abstract of inquisitions taken by George Brigham of Rudby coroner and given in at the Lent Assizes 1819 held at the Castle of York, NYCRO QSB 1819 2/16/1
[39] For an account of George Brigham and John Harker, see Alice Barrigan, Remarkable, but still True: the story of the Revd R J Barlow and Hutton Rudby in the time of the cholera (2007), Chapter 5, or online here
[40] My information on John Harker's letters and the Brigham family I owe to a very fruitful collaboration with Jacky Quarmby, who transcribed the Brigham and Harker letters (now held at Durham County Record Office) and the Chancery papers made available to her by Beryl Turner (who has since deposited them with Teesside Archives)
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