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| All Saints', Rudby-in-Cleveland |
5 February 2022: a revised version of this, slightly shorter with more illustrations is to be found here – I hope it's written in a more accessible, less formal style – and I hope it will be useful for families and visitors to the church!
On the walls of the church of All Saints there are plaques and tablets which require no explanation – the 1914-18 War Memorial, for example – but others commemorate people once well-known locally, often as generous benefactors to the church and village, who are now almost forgotten.
Most of them knew a church very different from the one we see today, which is the result of the major restoration that took place in 1923. Photographs of the building work, which took eight months to complete, are displayed on the north wall of the nave. The recreation of the Lady Chapel and the exposed stonework of the nave and south aisle both date from this restoration, and most of the stained glass windows were put in after this date.
In the years between 1860 and 1923 the inside of the church was plastered throughout and many of the pews, in the chancel as well as the nave, were of the “box” or square “family” type. John Walker Ord in his History of Cleveland of 1846 described them as
Major alterations were made in 1860. For nearly a century there had been a flat plaster ceiling above the nave, and for most of that time the ancient church windows were replaced by sash windows, like those used for houses. The ceiling was removed in 1860 and in the course of the alterations they found, under the layers of limewash covering the walls and pillars, the last remains of the mediaeval wall paintings, and rediscovered the fine marquetry of the Elizabethan pulpit under several layers of paint.
In the 16th century the church interior was radically altered by the religious turmoil of the years following Henry VIII’s split with Rome: “papist trappings” were replaced by bare walls, pulpit and pews. The mediaeval church’s candle-lit rood loft across the chancel arch, the painted angels between the arches, the battle-scene depicted around the South door, the images of the Virgin and the Saints, the altar of St Christopher and the chapel of St Cuthbert (referred to in Wills of 1483 and 1505), the chantry chapel: all were removed.
The Chancel
The tablets on the plastered walls of the chancel commemorate the owners of the Rudby and Skutterskelfe estates during the last three centuries; these families were the patrons of the living of Rudby-in-Cleveland.
Isabella Cary inherited the manor of Rudby, which had been acquired by her ancestor Sir Arthur Ingram in about 1634. He was a wealthy man with a dubious reputation, who had enriched himself by ruining other men. Isabella Ingram was born in the early years of the 18th century and died in 1799, having lived through the reigns of Georges I and II, the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. This affectionate tribute by her daughter Elizabeth describes a woman very different in character from her unsavoury ancestor: “meekly wise and innocently chearful, whose charity was the refuge of the poor, whose benignity was the delight of the good…” She was married to General the Hon. George Cary, and had two daughters. Her husband bought the adjoining estate of Skutterskelfe, and there they built their mansion house, Leven Grove.
[Monument in white marble, by Taylor: urn, flowers and foliage]
When George Cary died in 1792, Isabella put up a tablet in his memory. George was the younger son of the 6th Viscount Falkland, a Jacobite rewarded by the Old Pretender with the empty title of Earl of Falkland. George was an army officer who served his country during the many wars of the 18th century. Here Isabella describes her husband as “an honest and charitable man and a generous friend.”
[Circular tablet of white marble, below a funerary urn; the small painted shield below bears the General’s coat of arms. Superimposed on the three roses of the Cary arms can be seen the Ingram arms of his wife’s family]
After Isabella’s death, the estates came to her daughter Elizabeth, Lady Amherst, who was by then in her sixties. Her father had bought Skutterskelfe when she was sixteen years old, and she must have known the area well – apparently there was a hawthorn tree at Tame Bridge of which she was particularly fond, and which was accordingly protected by a railing. Her husband Jeffery 1st Lord Amherst commanded the army in the French & Indian Wars in North America, where he attracted some criticism – he is remembered for considering the introduction of smallpox as a way of controlling the natives – but his later career as commander in chief drew more disapproval. He was accused of refusing to give up his position until nearly senile, while abuses in the army multiplied.
[Tablet to Lady Amherst, erected by 10th Viscount Falkland. It is considerably plainer than the earlier monuments, and it can be seen that Lord Falkland’s title has been wrongly given, and subsequently altered. The alteration was made after 1846, as the transcription given by Ord in his history refers to the “9th Viscount”.]
Lady Amherst had two memorials erected: the lovely tribute to her mother; and a tablet, as a “friend and relative”, to the 9th Viscount Falkland, his wife and daughter. It is not known if the 9th Viscount had ever visited Hutton Rudby; the tablet was ordered by Lady Amherst from London.
It is in memory of Charles John Cary, who had inherited the title in 1796 from his childless and unmarried brother, who had died at the White Lion Inn in Bath aged thirty, having spent his adult life gambling, drinking, singing obscene songs and frequenting brothels. Charles John Cary was a naval captain, and a friend of the poet Byron. He died in 1809 at the age of forty in the house of the man who two days earlier had fatally wounded him in a duel at Chalk Farm, which arose from a quarrel when both men were, according to The Morning Chronicle, “tipsy”. His friend Lord Byron wrote, “He was a gallant and successful officer; his faults were the faults of a sailor, and as such Britons will forgive them.” He left a young widow and four children. Byron was Cary’s youngest son’s godfather, and soon found himself in difficulties with his friend’s widow. Christiana became obsessed with Lord Byron and harassed him with letters, until he was obliged to put the matter into the hands of his solicitors. This may explain why Lady Amherst concentrates on praising the daughter, Emma, who died at the age of twenty-one …
[White tablet by Holmes of 78 Edgware Road, London. It is clear that Charles Cary’s title was originally given as the 8th Viscount, and was altered at some point after Ord wrote his history in 1846.]
On the death of Viscount Captain Falkland his six-year-old son Lucius Bentinck Cary became the 10th Viscount. He inherited little money and a title famous for his ancestor the 2nd Viscount. Honourable, learned, a friend of Ben Jonson, Lucius Cary (1610-43) believed passionately in finding a compromise to avert the Civil War. Disillusioned by the bad faith of the king whom he served and the intransigence of both sides, he went willingly to his death in the Battle of Newbury.
Lucius Bentinck Cary, 10th Viscount Falkland, was for a time Captain in the 7th Foot. He lost his mother at the age of nineteen, and in the autumn of 1830 when he was twenty-seven he inherited Rudby and Skutterskelfe from his childless relative Lady Amherst. A month or two later, immediately after Christmas, he married Amelia Fitzclarence in the Brighton Pavilion, with her father the King in attendance.
Amelia was the youngest of the ten children of the actress Dora Jordan and the Duke of Clarence, later William IV.
Amelia was born at the end of their happiness together, and she never really knew the happy family life at Bushy Park. When she was born her older siblings were already of an age to feel their difficult position in society. Her brothers, in their early teens, were already on active service and her mother, in pressing financial need, had returned to the stage within a few months of Amelia’s birth.
By the time Amelia was five years old, her father was incurring a great deal of ridicule in his search for a wealthy bride, and her mother, who had supported the Duke so generously with her earnings, was touring the provinces much of the year. Ill-treated by the Duke and his advisers, worried about her daughters’ future, and financially ruined by members of her own family, Dora Jordan was finally obliged to live in France. She died there when Amelia was eleven years old.
The Royal princesses drew the girls in closer to court circles, and in the German princess Adelaide whom their father married they found a truly kind stepmother. From the age of thirteen Amelia lived with her sisters and a chaperone in Mayfair, not far from the burial place of the 9th Viscount.
She married Lucius Cary in the Brighton Pavilion at the beginning of her father’s reign, and shortly afterwards Lucius came north to mortgage his new estates and arrange for the old house at Skutterskelfe to be demolished and a new hall built to the design of Salvin. (Originally named Leven Grove, the house was subsequently known as Skutterskelfe Hall, and in recent years was renamed Rudby Hall.)
Lucius was made Lord of the Bedchamber by his father-in-law, who created him Baron Hunsdon of Skutterskelfe, but like many of his family Lucius had little money of his own and after William IV’s death he took up posts as Governor of Nova Scotia and then of Bombay. So he and Amelia spent many years away from their beautiful new house. Amelia published a lively and attractive account of her travels in the East, but she died in London in 1858 at the age of fifty-five, soon after they came home from India. She is buried in the Falkland vault, on the south side of the churchyard.
The tablet in her memory includes a quotation from the ‘Epitaph on the Countess Dowager of Pembroke’, which was ascribed to William Browne but is thought by many to have been written by Ben Jonson, old friend of the 2nd Viscount Falkland.
The epitaph is to be found in more than one version, and is frequently reproduced as
The following was written as a booklet to cast some light on the shadowy people behind the plaques.
Most of them knew a church very different from the one we see today, which is the result of the major restoration that took place in 1923. Photographs of the building work, which took eight months to complete, are displayed on the north wall of the nave. The recreation of the Lady Chapel and the exposed stonework of the nave and south aisle both date from this restoration, and most of the stained glass windows were put in after this date.
In the years between 1860 and 1923 the inside of the church was plastered throughout and many of the pews, in the chancel as well as the nave, were of the “box” or square “family” type. John Walker Ord in his History of Cleveland of 1846 described them as
“chiefly of oaken wood, in the old style, with pins fastened above for the convenience of hats.”The pews in the south aisle faced across the nave and there was a gallery across the west end of the church, erected in the 18th century and used by the small orchestra of church musicians; their instruments included a bassoon, oboe and strings. A harmonium was acquired at the end of the 1860s and replaced by an organ in 1895, which was housed in what is now the choir vestry.
Major alterations were made in 1860. For nearly a century there had been a flat plaster ceiling above the nave, and for most of that time the ancient church windows were replaced by sash windows, like those used for houses. The ceiling was removed in 1860 and in the course of the alterations they found, under the layers of limewash covering the walls and pillars, the last remains of the mediaeval wall paintings, and rediscovered the fine marquetry of the Elizabethan pulpit under several layers of paint.
In the 16th century the church interior was radically altered by the religious turmoil of the years following Henry VIII’s split with Rome: “papist trappings” were replaced by bare walls, pulpit and pews. The mediaeval church’s candle-lit rood loft across the chancel arch, the painted angels between the arches, the battle-scene depicted around the South door, the images of the Virgin and the Saints, the altar of St Christopher and the chapel of St Cuthbert (referred to in Wills of 1483 and 1505), the chantry chapel: all were removed.
The Chancel
The tablets on the plastered walls of the chancel commemorate the owners of the Rudby and Skutterskelfe estates during the last three centuries; these families were the patrons of the living of Rudby-in-Cleveland.
Isabella Cary inherited the manor of Rudby, which had been acquired by her ancestor Sir Arthur Ingram in about 1634. He was a wealthy man with a dubious reputation, who had enriched himself by ruining other men. Isabella Ingram was born in the early years of the 18th century and died in 1799, having lived through the reigns of Georges I and II, the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. This affectionate tribute by her daughter Elizabeth describes a woman very different in character from her unsavoury ancestor: “meekly wise and innocently chearful, whose charity was the refuge of the poor, whose benignity was the delight of the good…” She was married to General the Hon. George Cary, and had two daughters. Her husband bought the adjoining estate of Skutterskelfe, and there they built their mansion house, Leven Grove.
[Monument in white marble, by Taylor: urn, flowers and foliage]
When George Cary died in 1792, Isabella put up a tablet in his memory. George was the younger son of the 6th Viscount Falkland, a Jacobite rewarded by the Old Pretender with the empty title of Earl of Falkland. George was an army officer who served his country during the many wars of the 18th century. Here Isabella describes her husband as “an honest and charitable man and a generous friend.”
[Circular tablet of white marble, below a funerary urn; the small painted shield below bears the General’s coat of arms. Superimposed on the three roses of the Cary arms can be seen the Ingram arms of his wife’s family]
After Isabella’s death, the estates came to her daughter Elizabeth, Lady Amherst, who was by then in her sixties. Her father had bought Skutterskelfe when she was sixteen years old, and she must have known the area well – apparently there was a hawthorn tree at Tame Bridge of which she was particularly fond, and which was accordingly protected by a railing. Her husband Jeffery 1st Lord Amherst commanded the army in the French & Indian Wars in North America, where he attracted some criticism – he is remembered for considering the introduction of smallpox as a way of controlling the natives – but his later career as commander in chief drew more disapproval. He was accused of refusing to give up his position until nearly senile, while abuses in the army multiplied.
[Tablet to Lady Amherst, erected by 10th Viscount Falkland. It is considerably plainer than the earlier monuments, and it can be seen that Lord Falkland’s title has been wrongly given, and subsequently altered. The alteration was made after 1846, as the transcription given by Ord in his history refers to the “9th Viscount”.]
Lady Amherst had two memorials erected: the lovely tribute to her mother; and a tablet, as a “friend and relative”, to the 9th Viscount Falkland, his wife and daughter. It is not known if the 9th Viscount had ever visited Hutton Rudby; the tablet was ordered by Lady Amherst from London.
It is in memory of Charles John Cary, who had inherited the title in 1796 from his childless and unmarried brother, who had died at the White Lion Inn in Bath aged thirty, having spent his adult life gambling, drinking, singing obscene songs and frequenting brothels. Charles John Cary was a naval captain, and a friend of the poet Byron. He died in 1809 at the age of forty in the house of the man who two days earlier had fatally wounded him in a duel at Chalk Farm, which arose from a quarrel when both men were, according to The Morning Chronicle, “tipsy”. His friend Lord Byron wrote, “He was a gallant and successful officer; his faults were the faults of a sailor, and as such Britons will forgive them.” He left a young widow and four children. Byron was Cary’s youngest son’s godfather, and soon found himself in difficulties with his friend’s widow. Christiana became obsessed with Lord Byron and harassed him with letters, until he was obliged to put the matter into the hands of his solicitors. This may explain why Lady Amherst concentrates on praising the daughter, Emma, who died at the age of twenty-one …
[White tablet by Holmes of 78 Edgware Road, London. It is clear that Charles Cary’s title was originally given as the 8th Viscount, and was altered at some point after Ord wrote his history in 1846.]
On the death of Viscount Captain Falkland his six-year-old son Lucius Bentinck Cary became the 10th Viscount. He inherited little money and a title famous for his ancestor the 2nd Viscount. Honourable, learned, a friend of Ben Jonson, Lucius Cary (1610-43) believed passionately in finding a compromise to avert the Civil War. Disillusioned by the bad faith of the king whom he served and the intransigence of both sides, he went willingly to his death in the Battle of Newbury.
Lucius Bentinck Cary, 10th Viscount Falkland, was for a time Captain in the 7th Foot. He lost his mother at the age of nineteen, and in the autumn of 1830 when he was twenty-seven he inherited Rudby and Skutterskelfe from his childless relative Lady Amherst. A month or two later, immediately after Christmas, he married Amelia Fitzclarence in the Brighton Pavilion, with her father the King in attendance.
Amelia was the youngest of the ten children of the actress Dora Jordan and the Duke of Clarence, later William IV.
Amelia was born at the end of their happiness together, and she never really knew the happy family life at Bushy Park. When she was born her older siblings were already of an age to feel their difficult position in society. Her brothers, in their early teens, were already on active service and her mother, in pressing financial need, had returned to the stage within a few months of Amelia’s birth.
By the time Amelia was five years old, her father was incurring a great deal of ridicule in his search for a wealthy bride, and her mother, who had supported the Duke so generously with her earnings, was touring the provinces much of the year. Ill-treated by the Duke and his advisers, worried about her daughters’ future, and financially ruined by members of her own family, Dora Jordan was finally obliged to live in France. She died there when Amelia was eleven years old.
The Royal princesses drew the girls in closer to court circles, and in the German princess Adelaide whom their father married they found a truly kind stepmother. From the age of thirteen Amelia lived with her sisters and a chaperone in Mayfair, not far from the burial place of the 9th Viscount.
She married Lucius Cary in the Brighton Pavilion at the beginning of her father’s reign, and shortly afterwards Lucius came north to mortgage his new estates and arrange for the old house at Skutterskelfe to be demolished and a new hall built to the design of Salvin. (Originally named Leven Grove, the house was subsequently known as Skutterskelfe Hall, and in recent years was renamed Rudby Hall.)
Lucius was made Lord of the Bedchamber by his father-in-law, who created him Baron Hunsdon of Skutterskelfe, but like many of his family Lucius had little money of his own and after William IV’s death he took up posts as Governor of Nova Scotia and then of Bombay. So he and Amelia spent many years away from their beautiful new house. Amelia published a lively and attractive account of her travels in the East, but she died in London in 1858 at the age of fifty-five, soon after they came home from India. She is buried in the Falkland vault, on the south side of the churchyard.
The tablet in her memory includes a quotation from the ‘Epitaph on the Countess Dowager of Pembroke’, which was ascribed to William Browne but is thought by many to have been written by Ben Jonson, old friend of the 2nd Viscount Falkland.
The epitaph is to be found in more than one version, and is frequently reproduced as
Underneath this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all verse
Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother
Death, ere thou hast slain another
Wise and fair and good as she
Time shall throw a dart at thee
It was written in memory of Mary Herbert, the learned and beloved sister of the poet Sir Philip Sidney. Quoting this, the tablet reminds us not only of Lucius Cary’s friendship with Ben Jonson, but also hints at another much closer connection. Amelia’s oldest sister Sophia had married Sidney’s descendant, Sir Philip Sidney of Penshurst, created Baron De L’Isle and Dudley by his royal father-in-law. Sophia died in childbirth twenty years before Amelia’s death, but it seems the families remained close, as Amelia’s only child Lucius was buried at Penshurst in 1871. Moreover, the De L’Isle & Dudley family owned property in this area, inheriting land in Sexhow in the 1850s, through marriage with a Foulis heiress.
[Tablet to Amelia Cary by W. Bulmer of Stockton: an urn and a crown, with her initials A.F. Plain tablet to Lucius Cary by J. Bowron of Stockton, originally giving an incorrect version of Lord Falkland’s title, altered after 1846.]
The 10th Viscount and his second wife lived in the south of France, possibly because it was cheaper, and he died there in 1884, at the age of eighty. His only son having predeceased him, he was succeeded by his brother Plantagenet Pierrepont Cary, himself already an old man. He had entered the navy at the age of fourteen and served in the Burmese war, becoming a rear admiral on the reserved list in 1858 and ultimately rising to Admiral in 1870. Prize money may have come his way, and his wife was very wealthy; he left a substantial estate and a careful, thoughtful Will, which not only left his successor in title with much-needed funds but also left a legacy to his butler which far exceeded the estate left by the 10th Viscount.
[The plain tablets to the 10th and 11th Viscounts are identical to the tablet to the 10th Viscount’s son Lucius; all are by J. Bowron of Stockton.]
Plantagenet being childless, the title passed to his nephew Byron Plantagenet Cary, the son of the third and youngest of the brothers.
Byron had entered the army at eighteen and served twenty years, chiefly with the 35th Foot, before retiring in 1883 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He married a petite and energetic American heiress in 1879, and for a few years in the 1890s he and his young family took up residence in Skutterskelfe Hall. There is no memorial to him in the church, although he was a churchwarden here for a while, because the financial difficulties caused by the business failure of his Chicago father-in-law obliged him to sell his northern estates in about 1895.
The estates were bought by Sir Robert Ropner, whose family lived here from the last years of Victoria’s reign until after the Second World War. The land had passed from old impoverished Scottish nobility to the new rich, who were very anxious to play their part as country gentry and loyal Britons. Emil Hugo Oscar Robert Ropner had been born the son of John Henry Ropner and Emilie Bessel of Magdeburg in Prussia, and was one of the many Germans to take part in the great expansion of industry on the Tees. Ropner had started with a coal shipping business, had bought Pearse Lockwood shipyard in Stockton, and had built up a huge personal fortune. He bought Preston Hall and Park in 1882 for a family home, conveniently near to his businesses and the railway station, and the country estates of Skutterskelfe and Rudby a dozen years later. He was very active in public life: MP for Stockton from 1900 to 1910, colonel in the Stockton Loyal Volunteers, knighted in 1902 and finally made a baronet in 1904. He left Preston Hall to his youngest son Leonard and Skutterskelfe to his oldest son, John Henry Ropner, the 2nd Baronet.
The family were generous benefactors of Stockton and Hutton Rudby, and particularly of this church; Sir Robert Ropner and John Ropner each gave £1,000 to the restoration of the church in 1923; the family donated four stained glass windows, including the large east window; and there are several commemorative tablets.
More details of the family may be found in the Preston Park Museum, including a life-sized enlargement of a family photograph in which may be seen those commemorated here: Sir Robert Ropner, the 1st Baronet; his wife Mary Anne Craik of Newton Stewart; their daughter Elsa; their son John Henry, the 2nd Baronet; his wife Margaret; and their daughters Margaret, wife of John R A Stroyan, and Mary, wife of Ronald S Stroyan.
[Tablets to Sir Robert & Mary Anne Ropner, Elsa Ropner and Sir John & Margaret Ropner; the coat of arms chosen by Sir Robert may be seen on his tablet and the east window, and that of Sir John may be seen on the tablet in his memory.]
Window above the Lady Chapel altar to the memory of Margaret Stroyan, by H. Pain: the Blessed Virgin Mary with the Christ Child, St Catherine of Alexandria and John the Baptist; below, the Annunciation by the Angel to Mary, and John in the desert, with the Ropner coat of arms.
Window on the south wall of the Lady Chapel in memory of Margaret Ropner, by H. Pain: Faith, Charity and Hope.
Window in the west wall near the font to the memory of Sir John Ropner, presented by his daughter Mary: St Nicholas, the archangel Michael and St Francis of Assisi.]
Pulpit & Stone Tablet on the north wall
The Elizabethan pulpit was given to the church in about 1594, not many years after pulpits had become obligatory under the edicts by which Elizabeth I established a middle way between the extreme Protestantism of her brother, and her sister’s Catholicism. Until 1960 the pulpit stood on the other side of the nave beneath the stone memorial recording the burial and genealogy of the donor, Thomas Milner, who on 13 May 1588 had given £25 to the country’s defence against the Spanish Armada. His name appears on the front panel of the pulpit.
The inscription begins with his grandparents, Thomas Linley of Skutterskelfe and his wife Margery Newport, whose daughter Elizabeth Linley married Joseph Sorthwaitsale Milner. Their son Thomas Milner (the donor) married Frances Bates; his only daughter and heiress Mary married Charles Layton of Sexhow. The genealogy ends with Milner’s grandson, Thomas Layton of Sexhow Hall, who was born in 1597. He married Mary, the daughter of Sir Thomas Fairfax and with his daughter’s father-in-law Sir David Foulis of Ingleby was among the leaders of the northern opposition to Charles I and his advisor the Earl of Strafford.
[On the pulpit may be seen the arms of the Layton family: including three griffin heads, in silver on black, and three talbot dogs]
The Lectern
The lectern was carved by Alexander Park, a gentleman farmer who retired to live at Leven House (across the river from the church) with his elderly spinster sisters in the late 19th century. Mr Park was for years the honorary secretary of the Hurworth Hunt, and was said not to have made a single enemy during all his time in office. On his last day out with the hounds he and his old black horse had a combined age of ninety-nine. He and his sisters were very generous and active in village and church life: the choir stalls and altar rails were given to the church by the family.
[Brass plaque on a pillar in the nave records the names of the Park family.]
The Nave
[Mease details updated 29 February 2020]
Leven House was built by John Mease on the site of the old mill house, some time in the middle of the 19th century. John Mease was born in Stokesley in 1799, the younger son of the Wesleyan Methodist grocer John Mease & his wife Isabella Turnbull. John was initially in partnership with his charismatic elder brother Thomas and together they set up a steam-powered flax-spinning mill behind Stokesley High Street. When the partnership ended, he bought land in Hutton Rudby beside the bridge and installed water-powered flax-spinning machinery in the disused buildings of the old paper mill. The business failed and in 1843 he went bankrupt. However, by then he had set up in London as a merchant and he made his living there as a hop factor. His two children were born and brought up in London and it was there that his wife Hannah Maria Geldart died. The family seems to have come to Hutton Rudby as a country retreat, and it was at Leven House that John's two-year-old granddaughter Ethel Geldart Kidd died in 1869. John returned to Leven House after his retirement was followed by the sudden and disastrous bankruptcy and abscondment of his son. He died at Leven House in 1876 and was buried in the churchyard.
[Large plain white marble tablet to Mr and Mrs Mease on the north side of the nave]
The Lady Chapel
We do not know the identity of the original patron of this chantry chapel, nor to which saint it was dedicated; it was known for many years as the Layton Chapel. Here we can see under a trefoiled arch the figure of a mediaeval priest in eucharistic robes holding a chalice.
There have been various suggestions for the identity of the priest. The early 19th century historian, the Revd John Graves, thought it was Christopher Conyers, Rector of Rudby and Archdeacon of Carlisle, who died in 1483 and was buried in this church between the High Altar and the image of All Saints. Directories from 1872 to 1929 suggested it depicted Robert de Wycliffe who was, amongst other appointments, Constable of Durham Castle and who died in 1423. Arthur Eddowes in 1923 pointed out that the “figure is surrounded with carved foliage of the natural oak-leaf mingled with the conventional trefoil which is characteristic of the geometrical period of architecture, i.e., 1250 to 1290”. He suggested Thomas de Werlington, who was then thought to have been rector in the late 13th century, but is now known to have been in office from about 1300 to his death in 1329. De Werlington was rector here in 1308 when a commission was appointed to investigate the churchyard, which had been polluted by the shedding of blood.
The uncertainty in dating the figure – suggestions range from the 12th to the early 14th centuries – offers several possibilities, for example: Walter de Kirkham, who became a Royal Clerk and Bishop of Durham, where he was buried in 1260; Peter of Chester, a friend of Edward I, who was Rector when Nicholas de Meynell of Whorlton Castle was accused of four murders and arson; or the deeply unpleasant Hugh de Cressingham, Edward I’s Treasurer of Scotland, who was killed in 1297 at the Battle of Cambuskenneth. He was so loathed by the Scots that they stripped the skin from his body – accounts say his body was fat and his skin fair – and it is said that William Wallace asked for a piece large enough to be made into a sword belt.
A window and several tablets in the Lady Chapel commemorate the family of George Wilson of the Hutton Sailcloth Mill. Influential as employers and property owners from around 1850 until after the Second World War, they were generous donors to the church and active in village life. George’s son Allan Bowes Wilson gave £1,000 to the 1923 church restoration; the lych gate was erected in his memory. His brother Thomas Bowes Wilson, who built Enterpen Hall, was married to Maria Hutton, whose father donated a window in the south wall to her memory. Below are the brass plaques commemorating their two sons: George was a solicitor; John was a professional soldier who had fought in the Boer War, where his life was saved by a sergeant later awarded the Victoria Cross.
Thomas retired to St Leonards, to join his daughter and her family.
[Three brass plaques to Thomas, George and John Bowes Wilson
Window on south wall of the Lady Chapel in memory of Mrs Maria Bowes Wilson: the Ascension]
The West Window
This clear window, which lights the church, is in memory of Mary Blair of Linden Grove. She was the daughter of George Young Blair, a wealthy Stockton industrialist who built Drumrauch Hall as his country house, naming it after his father’s farm near Dundee. He was married three times: his first wife and their children died, his second wife and their only son predeceased him, and he was survived by his much younger third wife. Devoted to his work, he was a strongly Calvinist Presbyterian with a passion for music. He did not attend this church – if he found himself in Hutton Rudby on a Sunday he would often drive over to Stockton to attend his usual service – but his third wife and daughters were very generous to the village and to the parish church. His widow spent the rest of her life at Drumrauch Hall, which was built in the 1880s on a grand scale, with glasshouses, possibly a winter garden, polo fields, formal gardens, and smooth lawns cut by a pony-drawn mower, the pony wearing canvas boots so as not to damage the grass. During the 1923 restoration the music room was used for church services, the villagers being taken there by bus, and in memory of George and his son the family presented an organ to the church that was in use from 1895 until 1974. Mary Blair is now remembered principally for her donation of the site of the Village Hall. She and her husband Percy Sadler took her maiden name after death of her only brother, but the name was fated to die out – their only son was killed in the First War.
[West window, largely clear glass, in memory of Mary Young Blair.
Brass tablet beneath the window, commemorating George Young Blair.]
The Font
The font cover was given in memory of William Chapman. Chapman family graves are to be found just by the lych gate; there were Chapmans farming at Enterpen and at Sexhow for many years.
On the base of the font can be seen four shields: two are blank; one bears a plain cross, most probably representing the cross of St George; and the fourth bears the arms of the Conyers family, which can also be seen in the window nearby.
The Conyers’ window
The south-west window contains what the Revd Graves described as a “shield in painted glass”. His history of 1808 indicates that the shield was then to be found in the east window of the Lady Chapel, where it remained until the 20th century. Its original position in the church is unknown; it must have been moved on more than one occasion. It is bordered by fragments of mediaeval glass – a few can also be seen in a roundel in one of the chancel windows – but we cannot now tell what these originally depicted. Ord in 1846 was probably the first to state that the arms were those of Sir John Conyers the younger; however, the motto is that of a Knight of the Garter, and authorities generally agree that this honour was given to his father, Sir John Conyers of Hornby.
Sir John Conyers the elder married Margery, daughter and co-heiress of the last Lord Darcy and Meinell. The Meynells and Darcys had owned these manors and many others ever since they had been given them by William the Conqueror, after the Harrying of the North, and it was they who built this church. Sir John, as patron of the living of Rudby, chose his brother Christopher (see p.9) to be Rector.
On the shield can be seen the Conyers’ ‘azure, a maunche or’, the maunche being a stylised depiction of the sleeve with a long flowing cuff worn by women in the 12th century, shown in yellow on a blue background. The Darcy cinquefoils resemble three white flowers, and the blue and yellow stripes are the Meynell ‘azure, three bars gemel and a chief or’. The Conyers motto was One God One King, usually given as Un Dieu Un Roi, but here the motto is Honi soit qui mal y pense, that of a Knight of the Garter.
Sir John Conyers and his son Sir John are remembered in history with their cousin Sir William of Marske because of the rising of “Robin of Redesdale” during the Wars of the Roses.
The long struggle for the crown between the Yorkist and Lancastrian factions had led to the deposition of Henry VI and the rise to power of the young Yorkist leader who made himself Edward IV. His marriage to the beautiful and arrogant Elizabeth Woodville and the promotion of her greedy family led to a rift between Edward and his powerful and influential cousin the Earl of Warwick. Warwick “the Kingmaker” accordingly plotted to replace Edward with Henry VI, then held in the Tower of London.
Warwick was the hidden power behind the rising in the spring of 1469, when a band of north country rebels, saying they were led by “Robin of Redesdale” or “Robin Amend-all” marched south with great success and defeated Edward IV’s men at the Battle of Edgcote Field.
The mysterious Robin is said to have been none other than old Sir John Conyers, who with his son Sir John played a prominent part in the rebellion – in fact, young Sir John “died in his stirrups” on Edgcote Field.
For a short while Henry VI was back on his throne, until Edward IV made a savage comeback, Warwick died in the Battle of Barnet and Henry VI was quietly murdered in the Tower. Sir John Conyers, however, (One God One King) successfully made his peace with Edward IV. After Edward’s premature death in 1483, when his brother the Duke of Gloucester staged his unexpected coup and became Richard III, Sir John again managed his affairs so well that he was made a Knight of the Garter by the new King. Two years later, an alliance of Yorkists and Lancastrians had produced a better candidate for kingship, Richard III had fallen at Bosworth Field and Henry Tudor had come to the throne as Henry VII. Once more Sir John Conyers was to be seen greatly in favour at court, as a knight of the body to Henry VII, and so he remained, laden with honours, until his death in 1490. In his remarkable career he had managed to serve Henry VI, Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII.
Lies the subject of all verse
Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother
Death, ere thou hast slain another
Wise and fair and good as she
Time shall throw a dart at thee
It was written in memory of Mary Herbert, the learned and beloved sister of the poet Sir Philip Sidney. Quoting this, the tablet reminds us not only of Lucius Cary’s friendship with Ben Jonson, but also hints at another much closer connection. Amelia’s oldest sister Sophia had married Sidney’s descendant, Sir Philip Sidney of Penshurst, created Baron De L’Isle and Dudley by his royal father-in-law. Sophia died in childbirth twenty years before Amelia’s death, but it seems the families remained close, as Amelia’s only child Lucius was buried at Penshurst in 1871. Moreover, the De L’Isle & Dudley family owned property in this area, inheriting land in Sexhow in the 1850s, through marriage with a Foulis heiress.
[Tablet to Amelia Cary by W. Bulmer of Stockton: an urn and a crown, with her initials A.F. Plain tablet to Lucius Cary by J. Bowron of Stockton, originally giving an incorrect version of Lord Falkland’s title, altered after 1846.]
The 10th Viscount and his second wife lived in the south of France, possibly because it was cheaper, and he died there in 1884, at the age of eighty. His only son having predeceased him, he was succeeded by his brother Plantagenet Pierrepont Cary, himself already an old man. He had entered the navy at the age of fourteen and served in the Burmese war, becoming a rear admiral on the reserved list in 1858 and ultimately rising to Admiral in 1870. Prize money may have come his way, and his wife was very wealthy; he left a substantial estate and a careful, thoughtful Will, which not only left his successor in title with much-needed funds but also left a legacy to his butler which far exceeded the estate left by the 10th Viscount.
[The plain tablets to the 10th and 11th Viscounts are identical to the tablet to the 10th Viscount’s son Lucius; all are by J. Bowron of Stockton.]
Plantagenet being childless, the title passed to his nephew Byron Plantagenet Cary, the son of the third and youngest of the brothers.
Byron had entered the army at eighteen and served twenty years, chiefly with the 35th Foot, before retiring in 1883 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He married a petite and energetic American heiress in 1879, and for a few years in the 1890s he and his young family took up residence in Skutterskelfe Hall. There is no memorial to him in the church, although he was a churchwarden here for a while, because the financial difficulties caused by the business failure of his Chicago father-in-law obliged him to sell his northern estates in about 1895.
The estates were bought by Sir Robert Ropner, whose family lived here from the last years of Victoria’s reign until after the Second World War. The land had passed from old impoverished Scottish nobility to the new rich, who were very anxious to play their part as country gentry and loyal Britons. Emil Hugo Oscar Robert Ropner had been born the son of John Henry Ropner and Emilie Bessel of Magdeburg in Prussia, and was one of the many Germans to take part in the great expansion of industry on the Tees. Ropner had started with a coal shipping business, had bought Pearse Lockwood shipyard in Stockton, and had built up a huge personal fortune. He bought Preston Hall and Park in 1882 for a family home, conveniently near to his businesses and the railway station, and the country estates of Skutterskelfe and Rudby a dozen years later. He was very active in public life: MP for Stockton from 1900 to 1910, colonel in the Stockton Loyal Volunteers, knighted in 1902 and finally made a baronet in 1904. He left Preston Hall to his youngest son Leonard and Skutterskelfe to his oldest son, John Henry Ropner, the 2nd Baronet.
The family were generous benefactors of Stockton and Hutton Rudby, and particularly of this church; Sir Robert Ropner and John Ropner each gave £1,000 to the restoration of the church in 1923; the family donated four stained glass windows, including the large east window; and there are several commemorative tablets.
More details of the family may be found in the Preston Park Museum, including a life-sized enlargement of a family photograph in which may be seen those commemorated here: Sir Robert Ropner, the 1st Baronet; his wife Mary Anne Craik of Newton Stewart; their daughter Elsa; their son John Henry, the 2nd Baronet; his wife Margaret; and their daughters Margaret, wife of John R A Stroyan, and Mary, wife of Ronald S Stroyan.
[Tablets to Sir Robert & Mary Anne Ropner, Elsa Ropner and Sir John & Margaret Ropner; the coat of arms chosen by Sir Robert may be seen on his tablet and the east window, and that of Sir John may be seen on the tablet in his memory.]
[East Window to the memory of Mary Anne Ropner: by T.C.N. Bewsey of St John’s Wood, London, it depicts “the worship of the Incarnate Word by the whole company of Saints, Angels, Evangelists, Apostles, Martyrs, Prophets, Doctors of the Church, Virgins, Confessors and Penitents.” Bewsey’s full description may be found in Eddowes’ Church and Parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland of 1924 and, abridged, in David Lickess’ History and Guide to the Church.
Window above the Lady Chapel altar to the memory of Margaret Stroyan, by H. Pain: the Blessed Virgin Mary with the Christ Child, St Catherine of Alexandria and John the Baptist; below, the Annunciation by the Angel to Mary, and John in the desert, with the Ropner coat of arms.
Window on the south wall of the Lady Chapel in memory of Margaret Ropner, by H. Pain: Faith, Charity and Hope.
Window in the west wall near the font to the memory of Sir John Ropner, presented by his daughter Mary: St Nicholas, the archangel Michael and St Francis of Assisi.]
Pulpit & Stone Tablet on the north wall
The Elizabethan pulpit was given to the church in about 1594, not many years after pulpits had become obligatory under the edicts by which Elizabeth I established a middle way between the extreme Protestantism of her brother, and her sister’s Catholicism. Until 1960 the pulpit stood on the other side of the nave beneath the stone memorial recording the burial and genealogy of the donor, Thomas Milner, who on 13 May 1588 had given £25 to the country’s defence against the Spanish Armada. His name appears on the front panel of the pulpit.
The inscription begins with his grandparents, Thomas Linley of Skutterskelfe and his wife Margery Newport, whose daughter Elizabeth Linley married Joseph Sorthwaitsale Milner. Their son Thomas Milner (the donor) married Frances Bates; his only daughter and heiress Mary married Charles Layton of Sexhow. The genealogy ends with Milner’s grandson, Thomas Layton of Sexhow Hall, who was born in 1597. He married Mary, the daughter of Sir Thomas Fairfax and with his daughter’s father-in-law Sir David Foulis of Ingleby was among the leaders of the northern opposition to Charles I and his advisor the Earl of Strafford.
[On the pulpit may be seen the arms of the Layton family: including three griffin heads, in silver on black, and three talbot dogs]
The Lectern
The lectern was carved by Alexander Park, a gentleman farmer who retired to live at Leven House (across the river from the church) with his elderly spinster sisters in the late 19th century. Mr Park was for years the honorary secretary of the Hurworth Hunt, and was said not to have made a single enemy during all his time in office. On his last day out with the hounds he and his old black horse had a combined age of ninety-nine. He and his sisters were very generous and active in village and church life: the choir stalls and altar rails were given to the church by the family.
[Brass plaque on a pillar in the nave records the names of the Park family.]
The Nave
[Mease details updated 29 February 2020]
Leven House was built by John Mease on the site of the old mill house, some time in the middle of the 19th century. John Mease was born in Stokesley in 1799, the younger son of the Wesleyan Methodist grocer John Mease & his wife Isabella Turnbull. John was initially in partnership with his charismatic elder brother Thomas and together they set up a steam-powered flax-spinning mill behind Stokesley High Street. When the partnership ended, he bought land in Hutton Rudby beside the bridge and installed water-powered flax-spinning machinery in the disused buildings of the old paper mill. The business failed and in 1843 he went bankrupt. However, by then he had set up in London as a merchant and he made his living there as a hop factor. His two children were born and brought up in London and it was there that his wife Hannah Maria Geldart died. The family seems to have come to Hutton Rudby as a country retreat, and it was at Leven House that John's two-year-old granddaughter Ethel Geldart Kidd died in 1869. John returned to Leven House after his retirement was followed by the sudden and disastrous bankruptcy and abscondment of his son. He died at Leven House in 1876 and was buried in the churchyard.
[Large plain white marble tablet to Mr and Mrs Mease on the north side of the nave]
The Lady Chapel
We do not know the identity of the original patron of this chantry chapel, nor to which saint it was dedicated; it was known for many years as the Layton Chapel. Here we can see under a trefoiled arch the figure of a mediaeval priest in eucharistic robes holding a chalice.
There have been various suggestions for the identity of the priest. The early 19th century historian, the Revd John Graves, thought it was Christopher Conyers, Rector of Rudby and Archdeacon of Carlisle, who died in 1483 and was buried in this church between the High Altar and the image of All Saints. Directories from 1872 to 1929 suggested it depicted Robert de Wycliffe who was, amongst other appointments, Constable of Durham Castle and who died in 1423. Arthur Eddowes in 1923 pointed out that the “figure is surrounded with carved foliage of the natural oak-leaf mingled with the conventional trefoil which is characteristic of the geometrical period of architecture, i.e., 1250 to 1290”. He suggested Thomas de Werlington, who was then thought to have been rector in the late 13th century, but is now known to have been in office from about 1300 to his death in 1329. De Werlington was rector here in 1308 when a commission was appointed to investigate the churchyard, which had been polluted by the shedding of blood.
The uncertainty in dating the figure – suggestions range from the 12th to the early 14th centuries – offers several possibilities, for example: Walter de Kirkham, who became a Royal Clerk and Bishop of Durham, where he was buried in 1260; Peter of Chester, a friend of Edward I, who was Rector when Nicholas de Meynell of Whorlton Castle was accused of four murders and arson; or the deeply unpleasant Hugh de Cressingham, Edward I’s Treasurer of Scotland, who was killed in 1297 at the Battle of Cambuskenneth. He was so loathed by the Scots that they stripped the skin from his body – accounts say his body was fat and his skin fair – and it is said that William Wallace asked for a piece large enough to be made into a sword belt.
A window and several tablets in the Lady Chapel commemorate the family of George Wilson of the Hutton Sailcloth Mill. Influential as employers and property owners from around 1850 until after the Second World War, they were generous donors to the church and active in village life. George’s son Allan Bowes Wilson gave £1,000 to the 1923 church restoration; the lych gate was erected in his memory. His brother Thomas Bowes Wilson, who built Enterpen Hall, was married to Maria Hutton, whose father donated a window in the south wall to her memory. Below are the brass plaques commemorating their two sons: George was a solicitor; John was a professional soldier who had fought in the Boer War, where his life was saved by a sergeant later awarded the Victoria Cross.
Thomas retired to St Leonards, to join his daughter and her family.
[Three brass plaques to Thomas, George and John Bowes Wilson
Window on south wall of the Lady Chapel in memory of Mrs Maria Bowes Wilson: the Ascension]
The West Window
This clear window, which lights the church, is in memory of Mary Blair of Linden Grove. She was the daughter of George Young Blair, a wealthy Stockton industrialist who built Drumrauch Hall as his country house, naming it after his father’s farm near Dundee. He was married three times: his first wife and their children died, his second wife and their only son predeceased him, and he was survived by his much younger third wife. Devoted to his work, he was a strongly Calvinist Presbyterian with a passion for music. He did not attend this church – if he found himself in Hutton Rudby on a Sunday he would often drive over to Stockton to attend his usual service – but his third wife and daughters were very generous to the village and to the parish church. His widow spent the rest of her life at Drumrauch Hall, which was built in the 1880s on a grand scale, with glasshouses, possibly a winter garden, polo fields, formal gardens, and smooth lawns cut by a pony-drawn mower, the pony wearing canvas boots so as not to damage the grass. During the 1923 restoration the music room was used for church services, the villagers being taken there by bus, and in memory of George and his son the family presented an organ to the church that was in use from 1895 until 1974. Mary Blair is now remembered principally for her donation of the site of the Village Hall. She and her husband Percy Sadler took her maiden name after death of her only brother, but the name was fated to die out – their only son was killed in the First War.
[West window, largely clear glass, in memory of Mary Young Blair.
Brass tablet beneath the window, commemorating George Young Blair.]
The Font
The font cover was given in memory of William Chapman. Chapman family graves are to be found just by the lych gate; there were Chapmans farming at Enterpen and at Sexhow for many years.
On the base of the font can be seen four shields: two are blank; one bears a plain cross, most probably representing the cross of St George; and the fourth bears the arms of the Conyers family, which can also be seen in the window nearby.
The Conyers’ window
The south-west window contains what the Revd Graves described as a “shield in painted glass”. His history of 1808 indicates that the shield was then to be found in the east window of the Lady Chapel, where it remained until the 20th century. Its original position in the church is unknown; it must have been moved on more than one occasion. It is bordered by fragments of mediaeval glass – a few can also be seen in a roundel in one of the chancel windows – but we cannot now tell what these originally depicted. Ord in 1846 was probably the first to state that the arms were those of Sir John Conyers the younger; however, the motto is that of a Knight of the Garter, and authorities generally agree that this honour was given to his father, Sir John Conyers of Hornby.
Sir John Conyers the elder married Margery, daughter and co-heiress of the last Lord Darcy and Meinell. The Meynells and Darcys had owned these manors and many others ever since they had been given them by William the Conqueror, after the Harrying of the North, and it was they who built this church. Sir John, as patron of the living of Rudby, chose his brother Christopher (see p.9) to be Rector.
On the shield can be seen the Conyers’ ‘azure, a maunche or’, the maunche being a stylised depiction of the sleeve with a long flowing cuff worn by women in the 12th century, shown in yellow on a blue background. The Darcy cinquefoils resemble three white flowers, and the blue and yellow stripes are the Meynell ‘azure, three bars gemel and a chief or’. The Conyers motto was One God One King, usually given as Un Dieu Un Roi, but here the motto is Honi soit qui mal y pense, that of a Knight of the Garter.
Sir John Conyers and his son Sir John are remembered in history with their cousin Sir William of Marske because of the rising of “Robin of Redesdale” during the Wars of the Roses.
The long struggle for the crown between the Yorkist and Lancastrian factions had led to the deposition of Henry VI and the rise to power of the young Yorkist leader who made himself Edward IV. His marriage to the beautiful and arrogant Elizabeth Woodville and the promotion of her greedy family led to a rift between Edward and his powerful and influential cousin the Earl of Warwick. Warwick “the Kingmaker” accordingly plotted to replace Edward with Henry VI, then held in the Tower of London.
Warwick was the hidden power behind the rising in the spring of 1469, when a band of north country rebels, saying they were led by “Robin of Redesdale” or “Robin Amend-all” marched south with great success and defeated Edward IV’s men at the Battle of Edgcote Field.
The mysterious Robin is said to have been none other than old Sir John Conyers, who with his son Sir John played a prominent part in the rebellion – in fact, young Sir John “died in his stirrups” on Edgcote Field.
For a short while Henry VI was back on his throne, until Edward IV made a savage comeback, Warwick died in the Battle of Barnet and Henry VI was quietly murdered in the Tower. Sir John Conyers, however, (One God One King) successfully made his peace with Edward IV. After Edward’s premature death in 1483, when his brother the Duke of Gloucester staged his unexpected coup and became Richard III, Sir John again managed his affairs so well that he was made a Knight of the Garter by the new King. Two years later, an alliance of Yorkists and Lancastrians had produced a better candidate for kingship, Richard III had fallen at Bosworth Field and Henry Tudor had come to the throne as Henry VII. Once more Sir John Conyers was to be seen greatly in favour at court, as a knight of the body to Henry VII, and so he remained, laden with honours, until his death in 1490. In his remarkable career he had managed to serve Henry VI, Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII.
Further reading and more details:
Stately Homes of Hutton Rudby by Alice Barrigan
History & Guide of All Saints’ Church, Rudby-in-Cleveland by David Lickess 2003
Clergymen of Cleveland: Hutton Rudby, All Saints’ by Alan and Josephine Marchant
The Church & Parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland by Arthur Eddowes 1924
Hutton Rudby Church History by Alan and Josephine Marchant
Mrs Jordan’s Profession by Claire Tomalin
Who was Lord Conyers? by Geoff Nuttall
Stately Homes of Hutton Rudby by Alice Barrigan
History & Guide of All Saints’ Church, Rudby-in-Cleveland by David Lickess 2003
Clergymen of Cleveland: Hutton Rudby, All Saints’ by Alan and Josephine Marchant
The Church & Parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland by Arthur Eddowes 1924
Hutton Rudby Church History by Alan and Josephine Marchant
Mrs Jordan’s Profession by Claire Tomalin
Who was Lord Conyers? by Geoff Nuttall
© Alice Barrigan April 2004
Note:
I've changed my mind about the coat of arms on the pulpit - my sources in 2004 said it was that of the Laytons but I think now it shows the Linley griffins and the Gower talbots ... more to follow, eventually.
And I've just discovered a beautiful set of photographs of the church interior here on flickr
Alice
30 July 2013
Note:
I've changed my mind about the coat of arms on the pulpit - my sources in 2004 said it was that of the Laytons but I think now it shows the Linley griffins and the Gower talbots ... more to follow, eventually.
And I've just discovered a beautiful set of photographs of the church interior here on flickr
Alice
30 July 2013
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