Who were they? A guide to the memorials & stained glass of Hutton Rudby church

I'm revisiting The People behind the Plaques: memorials in All Saints', Hutton Rudby to add my most recent research.  This is a slightly shorter version, it's got more illustrations – 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!

This is a guide for anyone who has ever wondered about the people commemorated in the tablets, memorials and stained glass of All Saints', Hutton Rudby.

All Saints', Hutton Rudby

You've come into the church by the south door.  

If you turn to the right, you will see an alcove in the wall.  Under a trefoiled arch lies a stone slab on which is carved the figure of a mediaeval priest holding a chalice. 

Monument to a priest, Rudby-in-Cleveland 
from Church Monuments Gazetteer

This is the earliest memorial in the church, dating from between the 12th and early 14th centuries, and – tantalisingly – we don't know who the priest is.  Suggestions include Thomas de Werlington, rector of the parish in the first decades of the 14th century.  Or it could represent Walter de Kirkham, Bishop of Durham.  Or King Edward I's friend Peter of Chester – he was rector when the lord of nearby Whorlton Castle was accused of four murders and arson.  Or possibly the deeply unpleasant Hugh de Cressingham, King 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.

Another ancient survival can be seen to the left of the south door – a window with a border of fragments of mediaeval glass, in which can be seen a shield with the motto of a Garter Knight: "Honi soit qui mal y pense".  The arms on the shield are those of Sir John Conyers of Hornby.  Sir John acquired the manor of Hutton by marrying Margery, daughter and co-heiress of the last Lord Darcy and Meinell whose family had been given the manor by William the Conqueror.  

It was the Meynells and Darcys who built the first church on this site in the mid 12th century.  That was in the time of King Henry II, whose lands stretched across England, much of Wales, the east of Ireland and the west of France.  In about 1300, this early church was replaced by the present building.  The tower was added 100 years later.

Until the 1530s when Henry VIII split the church in England from the Church of Rome, the scene inside the church was very different to the one we see today.  There was a rood loft – a candle-lit wooden screen – separating the chancel, where the priests ministered at the main altar, from the nave where the people gathered.  On the walls all round the nave were paintings of angels, the Last Judgement and scenes from the Bible, and images and statues of the Virgin Mary and the saints.  All round the nave were side chapels – there was an altar to St Christopher, patron saint of travellers, and another to the great Anglo-Saxon saint of the North East, St Cuthbert.    

Sir John Conyers of Hornby was one of the great survivors of the Wars of the Roses (1455-1487).

Edward IV (1442-83)

After the Yorkist victory in 1461 at the Battle of Towton, the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil, Edward Duke of York made himself King Edward IV in the place of King Henry VI.  But Edward's marriage to the beautiful Elizabeth Woodville led to a rift between Edward and his powerful cousin the Earl of Warwick, who was known as Warwick the Kingmaker.  So Warwick plotted to put Henry VI, then in the Tower of London, back on the throne.  

In the spring of 1469, North Country rebels under a mysterious captain called "Robin Mend-All" or "Robin of Redesdale" rose against Edward IV.  Redesdale, in the Debatable Land of the Scottish Borders, was the hideout of Henry VI's supporters, but it was clear that the rebels' centre of operations was Richmondshire in Yorkshire – and it is said that Robin was in fact Sir John Conyers of Hornby, steward for the Earl of Warwick at his castle at Middleham.  Warwick was behind the rising and he and his allies went on to defeat Edward's men at the Battle of Edgcote Field in Northamptonshire.   

Frail and bemused, Henry VI was made king again.

Warwick the Kingmaker

Then Edward IV made a savage comeback, Warwick died in the Battle of Barnet, and Henry VI was quietly murdered in the Tower.  

But Sir John Conyers was able to make his peace with Edward IV. Twelve years later, Edward's sudden death was followed by his brother Richard taking the throne in 1483, becoming King Richard III.  Sir John was so much in the new king's favour, that Richard made him a Knight of the Garter.  Two years later, Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field and Henry Tudor took the throne as Henry VII.  Yet again Sir John managed to be greatly in favour at court.  He became a knight of the body to the new king and died, laden with honours, in 1490. 

At the base of the ancient font, you can see the arms of the Conyers family carved on a stone shield.  The wooden font cover is a much more recent gift to the church.  It was donated by the brothers and sisters of William Chapman, who farmed at Old Hall, Sexhow and was a churchwarden and Superintendent of the Sunday School for many years.  He died aged 66 in 1916.

Interior of Hutton Rudby church & the window to Sir John Henry Ropner

The nearby window on the west wall shows St Nicholas, patron saint of sailors and children, and St Francis of Assisi, patron saint of ecology and the environment.  It's the only window in the church to commemorate a man – all the others are dedicated to women – and it was the last window to be created.  When it was cut into the wall in 1937, the church looked much as it does today.  The last major alterations, outside and inside, were carried out in 1923.

The window was given to the church in memory of Sir John Henry Ropner (1860-1936) of Skutterskelfe Hall by his surviving daughter, Mrs Mary Enid Stroyan.  She and her sister Margaret had married brothers, the sons of Scottish industrialist and businessman John Stroyan.

Sir John Henry Ropner's father Robert (1838-1924) was one of the many Germans who took part in the great expansion of industry on the River Tees.  He was a shipbuilder, shipowner and Conservative MP for Stockton.  In 1882 he bought Preston Hall and Park in Eaglescliffe for a family home conveniently near to his businesses and the railway station, and he bought the country estates of Skutterskelfe and Rudby a dozen years later.  Sir Robert was knighted in 1902 and made a baronet in 1904.  He was very active in public life and he and his family were generous benefactors of Stockton and Hutton Rudby and generous donors to this church.  

When Sir Robert died in 1924, he left Preston Hall to his youngest son Leonard and Skutterskelfe Hall (nowadays called Rudby Hall) to his eldest son John, who inherited the title of baronet.  Preston Hall is now the Preston Park Museum and much more information about the family can be found there.

Facing the window to Sir John is the window above the altar of the Lady Chapel.  It was given in memory of a young mother – Sir John's elder daughter Margaret.  It shows the Blessed Virgin Mary with Jesus in her arms, the martyr St Catherine of Alexandria, and St John the Baptist.  Margaret Ropner was married to a young barrister, Captain John Stroyan.  In 1927 Margaret and John were staying with his father at Lanrick Castle in Perthshire, when their car left the road and went over an embankment into Loch Lubnaig.  Captain Stroyan escaped with minor injuries but Margaret was killed.  She was 32 years old and left two young children.  

In the south wall nearby is a window to the memory of Margaret's mother, Lady Ropner.  Born Margaret MacGregor, she married John Henry Ropner in 1888 and died in 1932 aged 69.  The window shows Faith, Hope, and Charity.  Charity is in the centre, with a child in her arms and children at her feet.  Faith has a lamp, the light of faith, and Hope is blindfolded, with only one string to her harp.

The best way of examining these windows and seeing all the tiny details – especially in the east window – is to go to Dave Webster's flickr page and zoom in to the pictures 

East window, Hutton Rudby church

At the east end of the church behind the main altar can be seen the fourth window given to the church by the Ropner family.  It is the largest and finest of all – the east window by J C Bewsey.  His design expresses the worship of Christ by the whole company of saints, apostles, prophets and teachers of the church and it is filled with figures, from tiny angels at the very top of the window to the saints gathered on either side of the Cross.  You can see St George with his banner on the left and St Joan of Arc with her banner on the right.  St Oswald, King of Northumbria, is on the far right with his sword.  Beside him kneels St Cuthbert, carrying St Oswald's head.  This is because the king's head is buried with St Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral.  

The window commemorates Sir Robert Ropner's wife Mary Anne Craik of Newton Stewart, who died at Preston Hall in 1921.  She and Sir Robert had been married for 65 years and had nine children. 

Elsewhere on the walls, you will find memorial tablets to Sir Robert and Mary Anne, to their youngest daughter Elsa, who had lived quietly at home with her parents and died aged 22, and to their son Sir John Henry and his wife Margaret.  The Ropner family vault can be found in the churchyard.  The family sold their estates at Skutterskelfe and Rudby after the Second World War.

On 14 May 1933, the vicar dedicated both the new east window in memory of Lady Ropner and the newly-built lych gate given by Allan Bowes Wilson.  It is hard now to imagine the church without them.  

Allan Bowes Wilson and his brother Thomas were the sons of George Wilson (1810-76), who founded the Hutton Sailcloth Mill, which stood on the Hutton side of the river.  On the photograph below, you can see the Hutton Sailcloth Mill on the other side of the bridge.

The newly-installed lych gate at Hutton Rudby church

From the mid 19th century until after the Second World War, the Wilsons were influential in the village as employers and property owners and were active in village celebrations and organisations.  Thomas Bowes Wilson, his wife and their three children lived at Enterpen Hall; Allan Bowes Wilson, who never married, lived at Hutton House with his unmarried sister.  Allan was very generous to All Saints', giving not only the lych gate but also a large donation towards the 1923 restoration and the panelling round the east end of the church.  He died in 1932 aged 93.

In the south wall of the Lady Chapel is a window showing Christ's Ascension.  It was given in memory of Maria Hutton, wife of Thomas Bowes Wilson.  She died in 1904 aged 55.  In the photograph below, which shows the south side of the church before the altar was restored to the Lady Chapel, you can see the window to Maria has been installed but the other windows are plain glass. 

Interior of Hutton Rudby church, early C20

Nearby are brass tablets to her husband Thomas, who died in 1929 aged 84, and their two sons.  

George Hutton Bowes-Wilson was a Middlesbrough solicitor who was also a Captain in the Territorials when the First World War broke out in 1914.  He died aged 38 from a sniper's bullet in 1915.  His two year old son had died only months earlier.  His younger brother John had joined the regular army and served in the Boer War.  He was a Lieutenant Colonel of 37, a married man with two little daughters, when he was killed in action in 1917. 

On the other side of the church, on the north wall, you will find a memorial to the other young men of the village who died in the war.  They came from all walks of life – stonemason, farm worker, teacher, railway porter, bank clerk … Brief biographies can be found in Fallen Leaves, a Millennium Project by the parish, on the Hutton Rudby History Society Facebook page.  

Among the young men was 21 year old George Young Blair, the only son of Mrs Mary Young Blair of Linden Grove.  

The west window, whose clear glass lights the church, commemorates Mrs Blair, a generous donor to the church and village, who donated the land on which to build the Village Hall in 1927.  She died in 1935.  She was the daughter of the Stockton industrialist George Young Blair (1826-94), who built Drumrauch Hall on Belbrough Lane as his country house.  In 1895 his family gave the church an organ in his memory – he was a man with a passion for music – which will have made a great change from the harmonium music of the previous 35 years.  (Before the harmonium was installed in 1860, a small orchestra of bassoon, oboe and strings used to play from a gallery built against the west wall in the 18th century).  The Blairs were generous donors to the village and church.  During the church restoration in 1923, the villagers were taken by bus to Drumrauch Hall where services were held in the music room.  

Nearby on the north wall is a plain white marble tablet to the memory of John Mease and his wife Hannah Geldart.  

It was John Mease who built the mill which was later developed by George Wilson and his sons into the Hutton Sailcloth Mill.  John Mease and his brother Thomas were entrepreneurs in the chancy world of the newly industrialising textile business of the early 19th century.  Together they set up a steam-powered flax-spinning mill behind Stokesley High Street, and Thomas built the New Mill (now Millbry Hill country store) beside the packhorse bridge on the River Leven.  

Hutton Rudby church and the Hutton Sailcloth Mill

In the mid-1830s, John set up his own water-powered flax-spinning mill in the field beside the Hutton Rudby bridge.  When the business didn't prosper, he moved his family to London where he was a hop factor, buying hops for the huge London brewery market, and he leased the mill buildings to George Wilson.  He kept Leven House, his home in the village, as a country escape.  It stands not far from the church, at the bottom of Hutton Bank.  His wife Hannah died in London in 1851, when their two children were aged 12 and 14.  John died at Leven House in 1876 at the age of 77.

Pulpit, Hutton Rudby church

The pulpit is a particular treasure of the church.  It was the gift of Thomas Milner of Skutterskelfe, a man who lived through the turbulent Tudor period.  He was born in 1525, the year in which King Henry VIII began to fall for the charms of Anne Boleyn.  He was 11 when Henry VIII began the dissolution of the monasteries and the religious houses of England were disbanded, and he was 14 when the monks had to leave nearby Mount Grace Priory.  At the age of 21 he inherited a one-third share in the manor of Skutterskelfe from his mother Elizabeth Lindley, and it was in Skutterskelfe that he spent his life.  He died on 7 November 1594, six years after donating the large sum of £25 to the defence of the country against the Spanish Armada.  

By the time he made his Will on 28 June 1589, the candles, images and chapels were long gone from All Saints', destroyed or removed following Henry VIII's split from the Church in Rome.  But Thomas Milner was a stout Protestant and had no regrets for the past.  He now planned to make his mark on the bare walls of the church.  His tomb was to be built into the stonework of the wall at the end of the stall where he usually sat.  It was to match the trefoiled arch in the south wall with the slab depicting the priest holding a chalice.  There was to be an inscription in copper or brass above it 

"with my grandfather’s name, my father, and mother, wife and daughter with my own name declaring the day of my death and year, and more as shall be thought good by my executors (whom I do in God’s behalf require to perform this my request)"  

The tomb is hidden now behind the organ installed in 1974, but you can see the inscription on the wall.  The family tree begins with his grandfather Thomas Lindley and ends with his grandson Sir Thomas Layton of Sexhow.  It must have taken the family some time to install it – Thomas Layton wasn't knighted until 1614.  This is the text:

"Thomas Lynley esquier married Margery the second daughter of Sr Thomas Newport knight and had issu Elizabeth marryed to Joseph Sorthwait ale [alias] Mylner esquier who had issu Thomas Mylner who marryed Frances the daughter of Willyam Baytes esquier who had issu Mary who was marryed to Charles Layton esquier and had issu Sr Thomas Laiton knight Here lyeth the body of Thomas Mylner deceased the 8oe November 1594"

Thomas Milner's surscription, Hutton Rudby church

Having dealt with his tomb, Thomas Milner left a legacy of 20 shillings (£1) to the church for the building of "a comely new pulpit for the preaching of God's word".  A pity, he said, that for the past 40 years there hadn't been better doctrine preached in the church.

In the 18th century, when the church interior was plain and white, and a flat ceiling had been installed and the arched windows replaced by sash windows such as you would have in a house, the pulpit was whitewashed as well.  It must have looked very unimpressive.  It was only during the restoration work done in 1860 that they found once more the beautiful marquetry and the name Thomas Milner underneath five coats of paint.  

Thomas, unlike his grandfather Thomas Lindley, wasn't entitled to a coat of arms of his own, so the shield bears the three griffin heads of the Lindleys and the three talbot dogs of the Gowers.  The Lindleys had acquired their lands in Cleveland through the marriage of a Lindley in the 15th century with one of the daughters of John Gower of Sexhow and Skutterskelfe, whose family had held these lands for 200 years.

The lectern, in the shape of an eagle, was carved by Alexander Park, a gentleman farmer who lived at Leven House with his elderly spinster sisters at the end of the 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 99.  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.

View to the chancel, Hutton Rudby church

The chancel lies beyond the pulpit and the organ.  While the plaster was stripped from the walls of the nave in the restoration of 1923, the walls of the chancel are still plastered and on them you can see the memorials to the people who owned the manors of Rudby and Skutterskelfe before the Ropner family.

Isabella Ingram inherited the manor of Rudby, which her forebear Sir Arthur Ingram had acquired in about 1634, and her husband then bought the adjoining estate of Skutterskelfe.  She was born in the early 18th century and died in 1799, so she saw the reigns of George I, George II and George III, the American War of Independence and the French Revolution.  She was married to General the Hon. George Cary, the younger son of the 6th Viscount Falkland, and they had two daughters.  George and Isabella replaced the old manorial hall at Skutterskelfe with a new mansion house, which they called Leven Grove.  

George Cary died in 1792 and Isabella put up a tablet in his memory – "an honest and charitable man and a generous friend."  On Isabella's death seven years later, her daughter Elizabeth added a marble tablet with a tribute to her mother: "meekly wise and innocently chearful."

Elizabeth, Lady Amherst
by Reynolds, 1767

The estates of Rudby and Skutterskelfe came to Elizabeth after her mother's death.  She was by then about sixty years old.  In 1767 when she was 27, she was married to a 50 year old widower, Jeffery Amherst.  He was made a peer in 1776, becoming 1st Baron Amherst.  While commander of the army during the Seven Years' War (1756-63), he wanted to exterminate the Native American tribes that opposed the British and supported the policy of infecting them with smallpox.  In his later years, he was commander-in-chief of the army and was criticised for allowing it to go into decline and for refusing to give up his position until nearly senile.  He had no children, so on his death in 1797 at the age of 80 it was his great-nephew who inherited his title.  

Elizabeth, Lady Amherst died in London in 1830 aged 90, and was buried at Sevenoaks where she and her husband had lived.  Her father had bought Skutterskelfe when she was 16 years old and she must have known the area well.  She was particularly fond of a hawthorn tree at Tame Bridge on the road to Stokesley and had it protected by a railing, while the size of her legacy to her gardener shows how keen she was on her gardens and hothouses.  She left her estates to a young relative, Lucius Bentinck Cary.

Besides the tablet to her mother, Elizabeth had also erected a memorial to Lucius Bentinck Cary's parents and his sister Emma.  His father was Charles John Cary, 9th Viscount Falkland.  He was a Naval captain and a friend of the poet Lord Byron.  He died in 1809 aged 40, two days after he was fatally wounded in a duel, the result of a quarrel with another man while both were the worst for drink.  He left a young widow Christiana and four children – his heir, Lucius, was only 6 years old.  Unfortunately, Christiana became obsessed with Lord Byron and harassed him with letters until he had to put the matter into the hands of his solicitors.  

Christiana died when her son Lucius was 19 years old.  He served for a time as Captain in the 7th Foot Regiment but when he was 27 he inherited Rudby and Skutterskelfe from Elizabeth Lady Amherst.  This was a piece of great good fortune as his title had brought him little by way of money.  A month or two later, immediately after Christmas 1830, he married Amelia Fitzclarence in the Brighton Pavilion in the presence of her father the King.

Amelia Fitzclarence (1807-58)

Amelia was the youngest of the ten children of the actress Dorothy Jordan and William Duke of Clarence, son of King George III and brother of King George IV.  Amelia was too young to know the happy family life that Dora and William had once enjoyed.  Her mother was so short of money that she had to go back onto the stage when Amelia was a baby, and she died when Amelia was 11.  The Fitzclarence children were in a difficult position, socially.  Their mother, a fine actress, was illegitimate herself and had several illegitimate children before she became the Duke of Clarence's mistress and gave birth to Amelia, her brothers and sisters.

After King George IV's only child Princess Charlotte died in childbirth in 1817, a crisis in the monarchy loomed.  If one of his brothers couldn't produce an heir, the crown would pass to a distant relative.  The unmarried brothers had to find wives.  Amelia's father William made a marriage that was suitable for a Royal duke and married a German princess, Adelaide.  In her, his daughters found a truly kind stepmother but there was to be no heir to the throne – Adelaide's two daughters died within weeks of birth.  In 1830 George IV died, and William and Adelaide became king and queen.

Soon after Amelia's marriage to Lucius Cary, Lucius came north to mortgage his new estates and arrange for Leven Grove, Lady Amherst's house at Skutterskelfe, to be demolished and a new mansion house built to the design of the architect Anthony Salvin.  He and Amelia were not to live in their beautiful new house for long.  When her father died in 1837 and his niece Victoria became queen, Lucius Cary took up the posts of Governor of Nova Scotia and then of Bombay.  

Skutterskelfe Hall, designed by Salvin

In 1857 Amelia published Chow-chow: Being selections from a Journal Kept in India, Egypt and Syria.  It's a lively and attractive account of her travels in the East and it can be read online today.  On 2 July 1858, she died in London at the age of 55 after a short illness.  She had particularly wished to be buried in the churchyard in Hutton Rudby.  Her body was brought north by special train and on 10 July she was buried in a vault on the south side of the churchyard.  A great number of people attended the funeral.  The Rev Robert Joseph Barlow spoke her eulogy: 

"no one was too lowly for her to address, no one was too much despised by the world for her to stoop to and think of.  Her fervent charity, embracing the wants of all, was limited only by the extent of her ability."  

He was much moved himself and many of his listeners were in tears.

In November the following year, Viscount Falkland remarried.  His new wife Elizabeth was the daughter of General Joseph Gubbins and the widow of the Duke of St Albans.  They 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 died childless, so his brother Plantagenet Pierrepont Cary came into the title.  He was already an old man.  He had entered the navy at the age of fourteen and served in the Burmese war, rising finally to Admiral in 1870.  Naval prize money may have come his way and he married a very wealthy woman, so he left a substantial estate.  He died childless in 1886 and on his death his nephew Byron Plantagenet Cary became the 12th Viscount Falkland – and, by his uncle's Will, came into much-needed funds.

Byron Plantagenet Cary (1845-1922) 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 lived at Skutterskelfe Hall.  During that time they were generous and active in village affairs.  There is no memorial to the 12th Viscount in the church although he was a churchwarden here for a while, because the financial difficulties caused by the business failure of his father-in-law Robert Reade of New York obliged him to sell his northern estates in about 1895.  

Skutterskelfe and Rudby were bought by Sir Robert Ropner, whose descendants were benefactors of the church and village until after the Second World War.