8. Annabel & Patrick Dott in Croydon: 1919 to 1923

Patrick had family ties to Croydon – his mother had lived there and he had sisters and brothers still in the area, though not actually living in his parish.  

St Luke's was quite a new parish – Patrick was only its 5th vicar and it had its 50th jubilee in April 1922 while he was there.  His income will have risen noticeably, as directory entries show that the stipend for St Luke's in 1891 was £365 a year net, including residence, while at Dringhouses in 1890 it was £160.

The church building itself was still unfinished and Patrick announced on his arrival that the work would continue as already planned at a cost of £3,000.  Sadly, some time after he had left the parish and the church had indeed been completed by the strenuous efforts of the parish and vicar, it was very badly damaged in a fire in June 1929 and work had to begin again.  

In 1919, Patrick was coming into a rather challenging situation.  St Luke's had been without a vicar for some time and the Rural Dean, the Rev Patrick McCormick, spoke to the congregation at Patrick's induction about the need for parishioners to trust their new vicar.  He said he was sure that Patrick, with the knowledge of men that he had gained in the military camp where he had done such good work, would not ride roughshod over people's feelings.  Unfortunately, Patrick and two long-standing churchwardens did indeed fall out badly in 1921.  There was a difference of opinion over the expense of the planned War Memorial and the argument played out messily in the pages of the Norwood News.  However, it was all finally settled when a new solution was suggested and the memorial cross that can be seen today was erected.  

The report of the induction service in the Norwood News of 3 October 1919 gives us a glimpse of Patrick and his new church.  There was a "ladies' choir in their gowns and mortar-boards," a lay reader and a curate.  Patrick announced the compromise arrangement he had already agreed with factions in the congregation that the service of Matins would alternate on Sunday mornings with that of Choral Eucharist.  He was a High Churchman, so more frequent Eucharists will have been very much his aim.  A report in the West Sussex Gazette on his appointment to Barnes in 1923 mentioned that he introduced vestments to Woodside and that the congregation had given him a cope.  Unsurprisingly given his background in mission work, he told his new congregation that he would probably introduce extra services of a mission nature, sometimes in the open air.  He was enthusiastic about the possibilities.  

While Patrick was very actively making changes at the church and being involved in the civic life of the area, Annabel was particularly busy.  The Rural Dean had introduced her to the congregation, rather dauntingly, not only as an architect (mentioning the donation of The Orchard and saying – according to the report in the Norwood News – that "the cost must have run into something approaching ten thousand pounds, judging from the comments in the Press at the time," which seems a rather exaggerated figure) but also as "a brilliant writer, articles from her pen appearing in the Nineteenth Century and the Architectural Review, the latter on the technical subject of fitments – labour-saving devices."

She was certainly active in the normal run of parish activities – suggesting a parish fête to raise money, arranging a tea & entertainment for 350 to 400 children of the unemployed of Woodside, with a Christmas tree, innumerable bags of sweets and a parting gift to each child of a bun and an orange in 1921 – but we can be sure there would have been a lot of muttering and uncertainty about a vicar's wife whose past achievements were as unusual as Annabel's – especially as, at the same time, she was very active outside the normal run of parish duties.  

She began with a parish building project.  On 27 February 1920, the Norwood News announced that

The Rev Patrick Dott will soon be in a position to welcome parishioners to the new "vicar's room."  The idea is to have a rendezvous where men and women alike may call informally at any time, meet others on parish business, see the vicar, or sit and read or smoke while they wait.  Mrs Dott has designed the whole thing.  She is directing the building operations, and has laid out the furnishing scheme.

From this use of the room in December, I would think Annabel had a hand in suggesting the speaker:

Norwood News, 17 December 1920

Dr Sophia Jevons on Citizenship

In the vicar's room, St Luke's, Woodside, Dr Sophia Jevons, L.C.C. [London County Council], gave a address on Citizenship to about fifty women and girls on Thursday of last week.

Now that women have the vote they ought to realise their responsibilities and duties, said Dr Jevons.  Women should attend the meetings of candidates before deciding for whom they should vote, and remember that much of their daily life was influenced by the power of the local authorities, a power for which they as voters were responsible.  The speaker gave many useful hints relative to children's health and education.

In the spring of 1921, various pieces about Annabel appeared in the newspapers, which must have caused a good deal of interest in the parish.  In March, newspapers across the country syndicated a story about Mrs Dott and a "gossip seat."  The Yorkshire Evening Post reported

One of Mrs Dott's original ideas is a gossip seat between the kitchen doors of semi-detached houses. 

"I know maids are bound to gossip so I thought they might as well do it comfortably, so I made the two kitchen doors face each other and put a seat in between."

I think this must relate to the Goathland cottages, which were the only semi-detached houses that Annabel had built; why it became a newspaper story in 1921, I don't know.

The Daily News in Perth, Australia, ran the same piece with the additional information (there's no way of knowing if this is an accurate report):

As soon as the first house of any group is built she lives in it herself for a fortnight in order to find out what alterations should be made.  Then she embodies them in the rest.

These articles prompted a piece in the Norwood News.  I am not sure how to interpret its tone.  What can the writer mean by "quaint"?  And "designing of flats for gentlewomen" sounds rather dismissive; in the interview in The Vote Annabel refers to flats for "bona-fide professional women workers":

Norwood News, 25 March 1921

A "Discovery"

From time to time references have been made in these columns to Mrs Dott, the Vicarage, Woodside, and her work as an architect.  The quaint parish parlour at Woodside is evidence of her resourcefulness.  The daily press have this week discovered Mrs Dott in relation to her building, especially in relation to the designing of flats for gentlewomen so that there shall be a saving of labour.  Before coming to Norwood Mrs Dott designed houses in Yorkshire.

On 22 April 1921, the much more substantial interview in The Vote appeared.  It ended with a resumé of Mrs Dott's work since coming to Croydon and shows how swiftly she had moved on from the creation of the vicar's room.  I'm afraid I haven't been able to check how accurate it is, but it's clear that, as well as being a founder member of Women's Pioneer Housing Ltd, Annabel had decided to provide housing for women herself:-

"So much for my work in the past," Mrs Dott continued.  "Since coming down to South London I have undertaken other building, such as the practical reconstruction and modernizing of an old manor house, the addition of a parish room to the vicarage, and the conversion of a big house into flats.  Another project in the same locality is the conversion of an old-fashioned house into self-contained flats for professional women workers, which I have furnished with really old and valuable furniture.  These are now ready for occupation at reasonable rentals, and, if any of your readers, who are bona-fide professional women workers, would care to write me, to the address of THE VOTE, I would consider their applications. 

"Reconstruction and conversion I find quite interesting," Mrs Dott finally concluded, "but building is really my bent, and you may be interested to learn I am now constructing several thatched houses in a wood in Sussex, of which I shall have more to say when the project is further advanced."

The article mentions the conversion of a big house into flats and the conversion of an old-fashioned house into self-contained flats; it is possible, of course, that the report is mentioning the same project twice.  Annabel certainly had just such a project in hand in South Norwood.

In February 1920 she heard that 14 Lancaster Road was to be sold, and she decided that it would be ideal to convert into flats for single working women.  She approached Sidney Woodcock and his wife, who held the underlease, and they agreed together that she should buy the leasehold term from the superior landlord, that the Woodcocks should stay in the house but that Annabel would have a lease on the rest and would sub-let it.  

The Sussex scheme mentioned in the article was much more ambitious.  Annabel had bought 50 acres of woodland and intended to build a little self-sufficient community of houses there.  In March 1920 she advertised in the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette for a builder with knowledge of Cob building who was prepared to erect a cottage; she also required a thatcher.  And this piece appeared in a Sussex newspaper:

Sussex Agricultural Express, 14 May 1920

Mrs Dott deposited plans of some cottages to be erected at Grey Wood, East Hoathly, in Cope or Pisa work, no block plan showing drainage and water supply was included, damp course was not shown.  The plans were ordered to be returned for amendment.

The following year, on 2 July 1921, this very enthusiastic piece appeared in the Worthing Herald:

A Sussex Dream Spot

Arcadian Delights at East Hoathly 

It is very refreshing in these days of stern realities to meet an idealist, but this was my experience the other day (writes a 'Herald' representative) when I went to see the Rev W P Dott at Gray's Wood, near East Hoathly.  Mr Dott, who is the vicar of Woodside, a large and populous parish near Croydon, is something more than an idealist – he is that rara avis a practical idealist and yet modest withal.  It was my misfortune that I did not see Mrs Dott (she was in town the day I called), for to her Mr Dott gives all the credit for the undertaking on which they have embarked. 

Jacobean Residences 

The idea is to build sylvan homes of rest and quiet for gentle people.  About a year ago Grays Wood, a beautiful piece of typical English woodland about 50 acres in extent, was in the market and Mrs Dott, whose scheme was already formulated, purchased it.  It previously belonged to Lord Chichester and was one of his most favourite pieces of covert and abounds with game.  Part of the wood near the road was cleared and in that space, amid the birch, ash and oak trees, nine houses of the type one dreams about – with stone encased mullioned windows, wide fireplaces, oak floors, beams and panelling, all the delights of Jacobean residences with all modern conveniences – are being built.  The dwellings are being erected there on each of three sides of a square. 

Woodland Fruits and Flowers 

An ornamental lake and old-fashioned courtyard and garden are to be made in the square.  Behind the houses the virgin woods are to be unspoiled and yet made even more delightful.  Mrs Dott, who has been energetically engaged on the scheme for some months, has planted bulbs all through the woods, and where she has sown seeds foxgloves have sprung up in rich and beautiful profusion.  The Ministry of Agriculture, always ready to encourage the reclaiming of the land, has given 1,000 fruit trees, and these are to be planted here and there in the woods where the atmosphere is always warm and the soil favourable for their growth.  An enclosed orchard is also being formed.  

Such a haven as this will indeed be a place of rest and quiet.  In three months' time it is hoped that the scheme will be completed and then I am to go and see Mrs Dott.  It is in such a place that I should wish to live when my ship comes home.

Three months for completion sounds a little hopeful, given this report regarding planning approval (though perhaps it was granted retrospectively) – and the Worthing Herald article mentions nine houses, while this report from the Uckfield Urban Council mentions seven:-

Sussex Agricultural Express, 8 July 1921

East Hoathly
THATCHED COTTAGES. - The Surveyor of the Uckfield Urban Council has reported that the plans of seven cottages at Gray Wood, East Hoathly, for Mrs A Dott, had been approved.  Thatched roofs had been specially allowed by the Ministry of Health.  The Housing Committee resolved to grant certificates for subsidy

I think Patrick was available for interview with the Worthing Herald because – presumably worn out after the months fraught with arguments over the War Memorial, which had ended with a newspaper report of the resignation of one of the churchwardens under the headline "Pathetic Vestry Incidents" – he had had to take time away from work.  The Norwood News in mid-July reported that he was returning, having been away for some time.

One of Annabel's projects had run into difficulty.  The conversion of 14 Lancasater Road, South Norwood, had not gone according to plan.  The episode sheds interesting light on Annabel's lack of method and her slightly slapdash approach, as well as her other activities at the time.

Annabel had spent £2,000 on buying the lease and repairing and furnishing the house.  Unfortunately her agreement with Mr Woodcock had fallen apart, and at the beginning of April 1922 Annabel sued him in the King's Bench Division for possession of the top floor, second floor and basement floor, and rent of premises in arrears, and damages for waste.  Mr Woodcock told the court that he had suggested a solicitor should draw up the agreement made between them originally, but Mrs Dott refused, saying she was quite satisfied that they could arrange matters amicably.  This had not worked out.  The case was reported in the Norwood News on 7 April 1922.

A letter from Annabel, written to Mr Woodcock from East Hoathly, Sussex, was read out in court.  It  gives us a vivid picture of her life

You said I am an elusive lady, and no wonder.

What with fruit-tree planting and building in Sussex and parish work at Woodside, I have scarcely time to eat or sleep.

To make matters worse, I have been ill, so will you forgive the long delay in sending agreement? ...

The judge, Mr Justice Lush, said that "it seemed a terrible thing that all this money should have been spent and that the scheme had not been allowed to fructify".  He suggested that the parties should try to come to an arrangement.  Fortunately they succeeded, Mr Woodcock recognising that Annabel had acted purely from philanthropic motives.

Mr Justice Lush, in expressing his approval of the course adopted, said it was eminently a case for settlement.  Mrs Dott had done what she had over this house from philanthropic reasons, but, through want of business habits on the part of the parties, he thought it would have been almost impossible to arrive at a solution.

This time it was Annabel's health that gave way:-

Norwood News, 22 Sept 1922

The Vicar and Mrs Dott left on Thursday for a stay on the Continent, the medical adviser insisting on Mrs Dott having a thorough change

In February 1923 she was back at work, and applying for planning approval to convert a house in Lancaster Road (the same one? another one?) into four flats.  She was still newsworthy – the West Sussex Gazette even reported this:

West Sussex Gazette, 26 April 1923

Overhanging Trees: A Motor-Bus Mishap 

The danger of overhanging trees to the occupants of motor-'buses and chars-à-bancs was shown on Tuesday of last week, when several passengers travelling on the outside of the afternoon 'bus between Chichester and Selsey were struck by a branch.  Mrs Patrick Dott was struck full in the face, and received an injury to one eye, and two women sitting behind were also struck, and one had her spectacles broken.  Happily the glass did not penetrate the eye.  Mrs Dott was not so fortunate in escaping injury.  The bough struck the eye, causing intense pain, and she had to be taken to London to consult a specialist.  Much sympathy has been expressed both in Chichester and at Woodside, Croydon, where the Rev Patrick Dott is vicar.

But before many weeks were past, she and Patrick were to leave Croydon.  The Norwood News on 6 April 1923 reported that at the evening service on Easter Day, Patrick spoke to the large congregation from the chancel steps: 

They had had, he said, a splendid Easter festival, and it was a great joy to him to know that notwithstanding so many were away, 590 had presented themselves that day at the altar of that church.

But it would be his last Easter as their vicar, because the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's had preferred him to the rectory of Barnes in place of Canon Kitson.  The Dean and Chapter must have been looking for a vicar who would not be afraid to make changes, as Canon Kitson had been at Barnes, an important post, for thirty years.  Patrick, said the Norwood News (with an unspoken look back at the War Memorial episode, presumably), had been 

a "live" vicar in every sense of the word, and a vast amount of organising and progressiveness has been manifested in all departments of church work. 

A vicar of such a temperament is naturally faced here and there with differences of opinion, but differences of opinion are evidence of vitality.  Where they do not exist it too often means indolence and sloth.

The Norwood News of 22 June 1923 reported Patrick's warm farewell to his parishioners:

he referred to the large amount of social work which goes on at Woodside, commending it warmly as a part of Christian life.  He paid a heartfelt tribute also to the Church Council and to the large body of Sunday school teachers with their superintendents.  Of the choir and organist and the Guild of Servers at St Luke's, he spoke with earnestness and gratitude, and a special word of heartfelt thanks was offered to the churchwardens, Messrs G T Tobitt and J Holden for their loyal co-operation in the work of the parish.

Note: the name Grey Wood appears in several forms – Gray's Wood, Gray Wood, Greywood etc.

Next:  9. Annabel & Patrick Dott in Barnes: 1923 to 1937

7. Annabel & Patrick Dott, WWI & the Cottage Colony: 1917 to 1919

On 19 June 1917, the Rev William Patrick Dott was appointed one of the temporary chaplains to the Forces, a post he held for the rest of the War; he seems to have been an honorary chaplain for a year or two after the War ended.  He and his wife Annabel moved to his new post at the military camp at Blandford in Dorset.

The Rural Dean, in his address to the congregation at Patrick's induction to the living of Woodside, Croydon, said that the camp frequently consisted of 18,000 men and

The drafts from the Royal Naval Division, Crystal Palace, usually went to this camp on leaving the Palace, as did the men of the RAF.  Mr Dott had a hut in camp, and considered his duties a glorious opportunity for good work.  His experience and knowledge of men won him the confidence of the lads, and they would come to him almost at all hours of the day and night with their troubles and difficulties, and ever found him sympathetic and practical.  He received the special thanks and recognition of the Chaplain-General, Bishop Taylor Smith, for his services at this camp.  [Norwood News, 3 October 1919]

Annabel was clearly shocked and dismayed at the rural poverty in Dorset.  She wrote of it with great feeling in her article for The Nineteenth Century and After in February 1919, in which she was describing the scheme that was being set up in Goathland for a cottage colony for disabled officers.  She advocated the involvement of ex-officers to improve rural life:

There are so many ways in which country life could be made happier: the use of machinery to save drudgery, better lighting to lessen the dullness and darkness, electricity harnessed for both purposes, larger returns won by intensive culture, the organisation of better transport, a higher standard of living, more amusements, sports, and above all a reformation of the housing system ... 

Monotony is the bane of country life; it causes the seven devils of gossip and spite, envy and slander, narrowness (one of the meanest of the devils) and hopelessness; and emptiness, the mother of them all ... 

It is in the winter that the dullness is most deadly.  The long, dark evenings must be filled ... 

Have I dwelt too long on mere amusement?  The dullness of the country has been like a miasma sapping at rural life.  One has actually to live among the agricultural labourers in one of their small inconvenient cottages, as the writer has done for nearly a year, near a great Camp, to realise how little of recreation they have.  The fields are fenced with hedges, there are not many open spaces for all comers, hence the great need of a village green.  In the narrow, overcrowded living-room of the average cottage there is no privacy, there is not even much room for a guest and a stranger.  In many villages there is no resident squire, and often the vicar, handicapped by the anxieties of a small living, and the depressing isolation from the society of his equals, sinks into an apathy that has not the energy to start fresh schemes outside his special duties ... 

Here she speaks of the measures she considers necessary to improve rural life:

every house should if possible have water laid on (even if the supply is an adjacent well, a hand pump will raise the water to a cistern in the roof) and that a kitchen sink is essential.  Very few, scarcely any, gentlefolks realise what it means on a rainy, muddy day to draw every drop and carry it to the house, and afterwards empty the dirty water outside the cottage; small wonder if it is thrown close to the door until the fouled ground becomes a fertile breeding place for germs.  Cupboards in each bedroom, so that the Sunday clothes may last longer by being carefully stored; cupboards in the living-room to hold a supply of groceries and enable more economical buying; damp-courses and double walls in exposed situations to give dry and healthy dwellings ...

... no special technical training is needed to know that proper space in the living-room and three bedrooms in a family cottage are essential for bare decency

Transport, she felt, was of great importance:

a motor-'bus service ... would be a great advantage to the women of a district.  It would lessen the hardships of distant shopping, and it would bring chances of social life and the opportunities of seeing relations and friends to those who now lead needlessly drab and narrow lives ... 

Lighting is another important rural matter.  The dark roads make traffic difficult if not impossible after sunset, and during long evenings when there is no moon it is not an easy matter for old people, women, or delicate folk to get about.  One of the attractions of the town is the brightly lit streets ...

But Annabel and Patrick's most immediate and pressing concern was their feeling – which they shared with very many people – that something must be done for servicemen disabled in the War.

These three webpages – Historic England's overview of Domestic Housing for Disabled Veterans 1900-2014, an interview on the Digging In website with Louise Bell, First World War Diverse Histories researcher at the National Archives, and an account of the history of the Enham Trust – are just a selection of websites to give an idea of the efforts being made and the thought being put into the problem before and after 1918.  

Annabel and Patrick felt they must – and could – do something themselves.  They decided to donate the nine cottages of The Orchard in Goathland to be a "cottage colony" for disabled officers and the nucleus of a County scheme.

Annabel and Patrick devised a threefold scheme, which they laid before the Lord-Lieutenant Sir Hugh Bell (father of the celebrated Gertrude Bell) in January 1917.  It comprised housing, occupations and education. 

As regards housing, officers and their families were to be able to live comfortably in a suitable house at a nominal rent – 5 shillings per week was suggested – to cover repairs.  

As regards occupations, they wanted the disabled officer to have a choice.  Suggestions included poultry rearing, fruit growing, bee-keeping (for heather honey) and small cultures including medicinal herbs.  The North-Eastern Railway Company had granted a lease at a peppercorn rent of a piece of ground near to The Orchard, upon which foxgloves and other herbs could grow in the semi-wild.  High hopes were entertained of weaving, which it was thought might become a village industry (this was a cherished dream in the Arts and Crafts Movement at the time).  The Dotts had enlisted the help of Professor Aldred Farrar Barker (1868-1964), Professor of Textile Industries at Leeds University, who had offered the guidance and help of his department. 

As regards education, the Dotts hoped that the county would raise a small fund that would supplement other grants available to disabled officers to educate their sons.  They felt it was very important that a boy should be able to go to his father's school and that "a girl should receive such an education as may qualify her to earn her livelihood professionally."  This part of the scheme remained in abeyance.

Their scheme was announced in October 1918.  The Yorkshire Post of 19 October carried a piece under the headline "Provision for Disabled Officers – A Model Scheme at Goathland."

The thoughts behind the scheme can be found in a long piece by Annabel published in the February 1919 edition of the monthly review The Nineteenth Century and After.  In it we can see Annabel the reformer and campaigner, with a deep concern for the working men of Britain and the men disabled in the War.

She began with a rallying cry, a quotation from the King: "We have to create a better Britain."  She paid tribute to the working men of the country who fought in the War, in typically vivid and blunt language:

It is so easy to point to the profiteers, to the shirkers and skulkers in every class.  The scum always rises to the top but a good housewife knows that it is when the pot is boiling furiously that the scum can be skimmed off and thrown away ... 

If we want to fight alike Revolutionists and Reactionaries, we shall do it by forgetting class and our own self-interest, and remembering that we are all English together

She spoke of the need for leadership and that it is to the young returning Officers that the country must look for the same qualities in peacetime that made them successful leaders of their men in the War – but she envisaged a changed society:

The leader who will gain followers is the leader who brings hope ... The privileges of wealth, position, education, influence never carried a heavier responsibility than today ... 

... money-making is important, but the money made must be shared more equally in future ... 

... Such an opportunity to strengthen and build up the country and the Empire has never come before, and may never come again.  The Government realised this when Sir Richard Winfrey, the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture, brought in his Small Holdings Colonies Bill, asking for 80,000 acres as a start to provide land for the discharged and disabled soldiers; this 80,000 acres will be only a beginning of what is needed ...

Her suggestion was that it is in the countryside that the disabled Officer can find a way of using the leadership skills he had learned and shown in the War to help build up a better Britain. "Rural reconstruction" would give an opportunity for men who could not bear the stress of town life to recover some strength and vigour and also to benefit the countryside. 

It is here that she describes the ways in which country life could be so much improved – and it is noticeable from the quotations I gave earlier that Annabel does not have a nostalgic view of the possibilities for rural life.  She looks to the use of machinery, electricity and motor transport and her view of farming is prescient:

the future prosperity of agriculture in England lies in the big farms worked on scientific principles ... and in small holdings and intensive culture.  The medium-sized farm worked in a somewhat rule-of-thumb fashion without sufficient capital must be eliminated, it will not be able to hold its own in the coming competition.

And in these comments we can find a foreshadowing of the work of rural development programmes:

Hitherto small cultures and village industries have been largely in the hands either of cranks or of uneducated people; no one has quite realised the possibilities that may lie before them.  Organisation, the use of better materials, good transport, and business ability brought to bear on securing the right markets might open a very different future

She goes into detail on the subject of the possible occupations – and she is blunt on the need for a new mindset.  She suggests that an officer with an orchard on the edge of a town could buy one of the numerous camp huts that would soon be for sale, set up a storehouse, and jam-boiling room, and a shop – "the War has killed snobbery."

She deals with poultry farming ("urged almost ad nauseam" but success is possible with the right business choices); with fruit growing; bee-keeping; fish-breeding; rabbits; a nursery of saplings, ideal for officers who cannot give constant attention; handicrafts; basket-making – she advises growing one's own osiers; and glove-making.

She is passionate on the subject of entertainment in country life.  She speaks of the need for villages to have the equivalent of a village green where the children can play – a field should be bought, or donated "but it must be close to the largest group of cottages or in an easily accessible spot."  Country sport, she felt, was too much for the rich:

Fishing, not poaching, must be made easier for lovers of the rod, and why should not many of the golf links be open to all on payment of a small fee, at any rate in the evening?

The long, dark evenings could be filled with dances, whist drives, lectures and classes, all of which could do with the support of officers and their wives.  

Another pastime too much neglected in the country save in the great houses is acting.  We all love it.

An open air stage can easily be created – pageants for children and adults can be staged.  In Pickering 

a delightful small pageant was given by the townsfolk in the grounds of their ruined and historic castle.

Where there is a village hall, plays could be arranged in the winter, "a time when they are still more needed."  "Morris dancing is sometimes smiled at as the fad of a few enthusiasts" but why should not children 

in the National Schools be taught to dance three days a week instead of the usual daily drill and Swedish exercises?

It was with these thoughts in mind that Annabel and Patrick offered The Orchard as the nucleus of a County scheme.

Their gift was accepted.  Sir Hugh Bell made his own financial contribution to the scheme and the celebrated York architect Walter Brierley was involved in the conversion of the cottages to fit the needs of the disabled officers.

Annabel gives a short description of the cottages – with the footnote referring readers who wished for more details to her illustrated article on the subject in the Architectural Review of April 1918 (I have not obtained a copy of this article so I can give no further information) – and she remarks of the furniture

The furniture is largely old oak collected from the countryside, the gathering of years, and towards this the Lord-Lieutenant provided £1,000, the rest is the gift of the donors of the houses. 

 She describes the garden in some detail:

The garden is immature yet, for trees and clipt hedges grow slowly in these windy spaces, but within a few years the foundations now laid will develop into a beautiful and dignified garden.  There are paved walks, and two flagged courtyards between the blocks of houses; one has a sundial with a motto copied from an old Dales farm house; in the other is a well-head after the Venetian fashion, on one side of which it is proposed to inscribe the names of the naval battles, on another side – France and Flanders – on a third side the far-flung battle line – Africa, Egypt, Gallipoli, Italy, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Salonika – on the fourth side facing the road 'Te Deum Laudamus'; while cut deep with the rim is the dedication 'God gave them a great thing to do, and they did it.'

Save one Officer, who being blind came from St Dunstan's [now called Blind Veterans UK], all the Officers now settled at the Orchard were sent by Mr Don Wauchope, through the Ministry of Pensions.  Any disabled Officer wishing for further information is asked to apply to Mr Don Wauchope, Imperial Association for Disabled Officers, Columbia House, Regent Street, W1 

We who have not fought must not shirk when it comes to giving – and the best we can do is not good enough.  We must remember the trust our dead have left us – to stand by their maimed comrades and "to build a better Britain."

By early February 1919, the Sheffield Daily Telegraph was reporting that six officers were in residence.  By 27 March, the Yorkshire Post said that the settlement is now "practically complete":

All cottages have been allotted, and eight officers with their wives and families are now, or shortly will be, in residence, and a start has already been made towards achieving the three-fold object which the generous promoters of the settlement had before them – the housing and occupation of the officers and the education of their children.  

Some degree of training had been given to the "settlers" through the Ministry of Pensions before they entered into residence, and lectures and demonstrations now being given on the spot in gardening and poultry rearing mark the beginning of instructional courses, ultimately to embrace a useful range of village industries, of which, it is hoped, the residents of the Goathland officers' settlement will be the pioneers, and the source of inspiration and example for the surrounding countryside ... 

The North-Eastern Railway Company have given land by which an extension will be possible of the existing Orchard, and so meet the needs of an officer who desires to specialise in fruit growing.  A further extension is now urgently wanted for another purpose.  One of the officers, blinded in action, wishes to take up sheep-farming on scientific lines.  A small piece of land, about 27 acres, adjoining The Orchard, could be acquired for £600.  The land has been used for sheep.  This is an opportunity for a generous Yorkshire man or woman to assist in an interesting Yorkshire experiment in the care of our disabled officers.  The land would, of course, be held by the trustees.  Mr Don Wauchope, Colombia House, Regent Street, London, W.1, would be glad to furnish particulars.  Mr Wauchope is an old football "blue" and international player, and is nephew of General Wauchope, who fell at Maggersfontein in the South African War. 

The Ministry of Pensions and the Executive of the King's Fund are also much interested in the Goathland scheme ... It is thought that big landlords and small, would be willing to assist in the patriotic movement by giving land on a longish lease, say 14 or 20 years, where the freehold cannot be given, preferably with buildings on it that could be adapted to small houses.  Another suggestion is that owners of great country houses for which they have no pressing use might consecrate them to a humane mission ...

Andrew Ramsay Don Wauchope (1861-1948) was Secretary of the Imperial Association for Assisting Disabled Naval and Military Officers, so it was apparently this organisation that was initially co-ordinating the foundation of the cottage colony.  Subsequently, a trust must have been set up, as when the houses were finally sold it was on the instructions of the Trustees of the Goathland Homes for Officers.  (Not, as Percy Ward thought, the Red Cross.)

This stone tablet commemorates the Dotts' gift.  

By May 1919, Annabel and Patrick had returned to Dringhouses vicarage – but they were not to remain there long.  At the end of September, Patrick was in his new parish of St Luke's, Woodside, a rapidly growing suburb of Croydon.

Very many thanks to 
Elsie Smith, a Trustee of Goathland Village Hall, who supplied me with the Percy Ward article
Dr Elizabeth McKellar for information on Walter Brierley.  The papers relating to Walter Brierley's involvement in the project in 1917/18 can be found in the Borthwick Institute Atkinson-Brierley papers

Next:  8. Annabel & Patrick Dott in Croydon: 1919 to 1923

6. Annabel & Patrick Dott in Yorkshire: from 1909 to 1917

On 7 June 1909 Patrick was inducted Vicar of Dringhouses, York, by the Bishop of Beverley.  

Dringhouses lies just outside York, near the Racecourse.  By 1909 the once agricultural village had become a favourite place for the merchants of the city and was described ten years later at Patrick's induction in Croydon as a "fashionable suburb of York".  This was a great change from Woodstock, but Patrick's time at Dringhouses was very much taken up with mission work outside his parish.  

In the announcement of his appointment, he was described as the temporary secretary for the medical missions department of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.  While at Dringhouses, he was joint honorary secretary to the newly-formed Diocesan Board of Missions, and was active as a speaker – for example, at the Hull Missionary Exhibition in 1909 and at the York Diocesan Conference in Middlesbrough in 1910 – and as an organiser.  He took the evening service at St Ninian's, Whitby, at the first S.P.G. Summer School for 300 to 400 clergy, who were coming together "to spend the week in prayer and study on behalf of Foreign Missions, and also for social intercourse".  

His work in Whitby, and the affection that he and Annabel evidently had for the area, must have played a part in his donation of a sanctuary lamp "of antique design" to the chapel in St Michael's Church Institute.  (St Michael's church was demolished in 1977.  The Institute was, according to the Whitby Gazette of 8 November 1912, in Grape Lane, in a 

commodious and substantial structure in Grape Lane, formerly occupied by Messrs Frankland, Thornton and Simpson, solicitors, and adjoining the Whitby Cottage Hospital

He took part in the full majesty of services in the Minster – he was among the surpliced clergy at the Memorial Service for the late Archbishop of York, Dr William Maclagan, in September 1910 – but he also went out into the moors, preaching at the Glaisdale Harvest Thanksgiving in 1913 (Choral Evensong, Free Tea, Concert & Dramatic Entertainment, and a Dance with a Supper provided).  

He was Chaplain for two years running to the Sheriff of York – first to Mr F Cammidge in 1911, and then in 1912 to the prominent businessman Henry Ernest Leetham, who lived at Dringhouses.  (Photographs of his house, 'Aldersyde', can be seen here on flickr.)  In this way, said the Rural Dean in Croydon in 1919, Patrick

became interested in municipal affairs, educational work, and served in important capacities on the Charity Organisation Society.

However, Patrick and Annabel suffered a great loss in the early months of their time at Dringhouses.  Like her mother, who had been 39 when Annabel was born, Annabel had become pregnant late in life.  Annabel was delivered of the baby a few weeks after her 41st birthday – and, sadly, this announcement, intended for their friends back in South Africa, was placed in the births column of the weekly magazine called South Africa on 23 October 1909:

On the 18th inst at Scarborough, the wife of the Rev W P Dott, Vicar of Dringhouses, York, a daughter (prematurely stillborn)

Annabel was not in good health after this – perhaps she was not in good health during the pregnancy and that was why she was by the sea in Scarborough rather than in York when she went into labour – and she must have needed time away from parish duties to recover from the loss of her only child.  She spent the time in the North York Moors.

Perhaps she had visited Goathland with Patrick at the very beginning of their time at Dringhouses – the Summer School at Whitby had included, according to the Whitby Gazette of 18 June 1909, a trip to Goathland for the participants "so that they could see the moorland scenery".  It is clear that she took a great liking for the Goathland area.

Bulmer's Directory of 1890 described it as a sort of secret Eden, opened to the outsider by the railway in the middle of the 19th century:

The beautiful and secluded vale of Goathland was, previous to the construction of the Whitby and Pickering railway, a terra incognita to the outer world

By 1890 the village housed hotels as well as the old rural industries, and a "few scattered, well-built, modern houses" had been built by well-to-do people looking for a country retreat.  The village had continued to grow in the twenty years that followed.  The 1911 census shows a population of farmers, a gamekeeper, local trades, lodging houses, hotels, and the comfortable middle class.  Then as now, it attracted tourism, as did the railway line – Bradshaw's Railway Handbook of 1896 speaks of the railway from Pickering to Whitby passing 

through the most picturesque scenery ... the vales of Newton and Goathland present a wild country, with bold ranges of rock on either side.  These glens add much to the interest of the trip along the railway.  

Whitby was a major resort and Goathland took its share of the visitors.  Its golf course – "the most original golf course in the world," according to the vicar in 1913 – was an attraction.  (This fascinating webpage with its description of the course – the broken windows, the flying golf balls – is not to be missed)

It was while Annabel was convalescing that she had the idea of building in Goathland.  It is not clear whether she began with a plan to build a country house for herself and Patrick, or whether her first idea was to build a little group of cottages intended to be let.  In the event, she built nine cottages and a house and most of them were completed during the year 1912.

The article in The Vote of 22 April 1922 quotes her as saying,

At that time it was almost impossible to buy land in Goathland, practically the whole of it being in the hands of the Duchy of Lancaster and one or two big landlords.  I at last discovered a small building plot where I built my own house, and later I obtained a field which was converted into an orchard and garden, and on which nine houses were built.

However, according to Percy Ward, a local photographer who lived in one of the houses she built and who wrote in an article on the subject for the Goathland News in October 1976, she began with the nine cottages and built her own house later on.

And how could she afford it?  Where did she and Patrick find the capital?  This is a question that recurs throughout the story, when it is clear that they had large sums to spend on buying, building or renovating property.  I can't claim to have any answer.  

Of course, Patrick always had his stipend.  At Dringhouses (assuming the value of the living had not changed since Bulmer's Directory of 1890) Patrick's income was £160 a year, plus residence.  They did not, sadly, have the expense of children.  They probably had savings.  They will have inherited money when their surviving parent died.  Annabel had inherited some money when her mother died in 1903 – the gross value of Mrs Hall's estate is given (in the National Probate Calendar index) as £521-8s.  (The annual average earnings in 1908 were £70).  Mrs Betsey Dott's Probate value – she died on 1 June 1911 – was substantially more than Mrs Hall's, at £3,227-3s-6d, gross.  I don't know the terms of her Will, but her estate was probably divided between her nine surviving children.  

Perhaps Patrick and Annabel were personally frugal; perhaps there were other inheritances; perhaps they borrowed money on mortgage when necessary.  As to how they spent their money on themselves, we know that they had at least one holiday "on the Continent" and that they kept a car and employed a chauffeur to drive them in the 1920s and 1930s.   (In 1922 the local newspaper reported that the chauffeur had been in a minor traffic accident in Uckfield, and in the spring of 1937 the Rectory chauffeur witnessed Annabel's Will).  Annabel and Patrick did not leave large estates – Annabel left just over £3,000 in 1937 and Patrick just over £1,000 a year later.

(I will leave the reader to play around with possible modern equivalents for these sums, perhaps using a website like the Bank of England's inflation calculator.)  

Annabel had decided to take on the building project in Goathland herself and so set herself to master the subject.  Agnes M Miall's interview describes how Annabel studied to achieve this – and also reveals Annabel's views on women's abilities and on treating workmen as human beings:-

She read technical books on cottage-building, plumbing, drainage, brickmaking and joinery, and worked at the examination papers set for clerks of works until she began to feel that she had the subject at her fingers' ends.  She also acquired what she considers the essential art of giving directions to workmen in technical terms. 

"It is no harder than learning a new language or the violin," she assured me, "and I can say from my own experience that it is fascinating,  The great thing is to master the subject so thoroughly, both theoretically and practically, that you can test the workmanship of your labourers and know whether it is well done.  The only other qualification is to be able to handle men.  Labour troubles?"  She smiled when I hinted that builders' workmen have an inconvenient habit of striking.  "I have never had any labour troubles.  Pull with your workers, treat them not as hands but as men, and they will respond by giving you good service. 

The great thing is to try with all your might to be just.  The men appreciate this very keenly.  And always,"  Mrs Dott emphasised more than once, "always abide by their trade customs, even when they tell against you.  If there is any dispute, call up three or four men, find out the usual practice in the trade regarding the contested point, and adhere strictly to it.  In addition pay Trades Union rates (and a little more), with a half-penny an hour above for specially good work, and you ought not to have any difficulties whatever with your men."

Agnes M Miall's interview appeared under the headline "The Work of a Woman Builder" and does not explicitly state that Mrs Dott was the sole architect of the house and cottages.  In fact, I understand it has recently been discovered that Annabel may have consulted the celebrated York architect Walter Brierley at some point.  He was certainly involved in 1917/18 in the conversion of the cottages for occupation by the disabled officers.  We know for certain that Annabel drew up plans for herself – the plans received by the Council on 20 December 1912 were "for a dwelling-house at Goathland, for Mrs Dott, the plans having been prepared by that lady".

In 1904 Walter Brierley (1862-1926), known as the Lutyens of the North, had been the architect of the school in Patrick's parish of Dringhouses.  He also designed, among many other projects, County Hall, at Northallerton, the extension to Acklam Hall, Middlesbrough, and Thorpe Underwood Hall near Great Ouseburn.  

It has to be said that it seems that Annabel was rather unorthodox and eccentric in her methods – or perhaps nowadays viewers of Channel 4's 'Grand Designs' would say thorough in her methods – as we can see from a piece in the Yorkshire Evening Post of 21 March 1921, which reports her as saying

In order to choose where the windows should be placed in one room I had all the four sides shut off from the daylight when it was under construction, and I used to go there at dawn, noon, and twilight and make openings here and there so that I could tell in which position I could get the best light.

According to Percy Ward, the builders

had a frustrating time, as Mrs Dott changed her mind every time she paid a visit from her home in York ... Later on, Mrs Dott built a house in the village but by this time the builders were fed up with her constant changes of plan and did not bother to inform her that no arrangement had been made for a staircase leading to the second floor.  This problem Mrs Dott solved by obtaining some old railway sleepers and had a staircase built outside.

It certainly must have taken the men some time to get used to working to plans drawn up by a woman – or it would be more accurate to say, in the terms of the time, a lady – and to find that she was also in charge of day-to-day operations must have been fairly startling.  Annabel was without doubt unconventional and later events show that she could be rather slapdash in her approach.  However, I notice that Percy Ward seems to be unaware that Annabel herself had drawn up the plans for approval by the planning authorities, and was also unaware of Annabel's preparatory work to train herself up to be able to do this.  I do wonder how much the village stories about Annabel had taken on a life of their own over the years and how much they were affected by the press portrayal of her in the 1920s as an eccentric, perhaps even silly, woman, who was an anomaly in a man's world.  

The plot that Annabel found for the house for herself and Patrick was on the road up to the church – it is the house after the Fairhaven Guest House, which in 1911 was the home of Captain Richard Smailes, a steamship manager.

The Yorkshire Evening Post article says that the house (the photograph above shows it today) had ten bedrooms and four sitting-rooms.  I don't know if this is correct.  By 1921 Annabel had become somebody that the press considered good copy, and I have found stories about her repeated in newspapers across Britain and even Australia.  It's impossible to say how accurate they are.  I think The Woman's Leader interview (16 July 1920) with Agnes M Miall is likely to be fairly accurate because she knew the interviewer, and I think that is also probably true of the piece in The Vote on 22 April 1921.  

Certainly Annabel must have achieved quite a saving by being her own builder, and she apparently later made a profit on the house, which must be the one that Agnes M Miall refers to when she says

one house was sold as a country cottage to a rich York manufacturer for the high price of £2,000

The land Annabel bought for her little development of holiday or rental cottages is referred to in reports of Whitby Rural District Council meetings as "the Mortar Pit estate", on the northern side of the village beyond the Vicarage.  

[This 1888-1913 O.S. map is reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland from their excellent Map Images website.  It shows the Mortar Pit estate (top left corner) before Annabel's cottages were built]

Here is Agnes M Miall's account in The Woman's Leader.  In the interview, she does not mention the house built next to Fairhaven, but seems to conflate the house with the cottages:

Then Mrs Dott had the opportunity of buying a piece of ground at Goathland, and in 1910 undertook the great adventure of building a group of cottages on it.  She made her own plans for the houses, intending to get a builder to carry them out, but this plan fell through because the man refused to employ local labour. 

"And I wanted my Goathland houses to be built by Goathland men," said Mrs Dott.  "Well, there remained only one thing to do, and that was to put them up myself.  So I gathered together the bricklayers, masons, and joiners round about and explained to them what I wanted to do.  I said frankly that I wasn't an expert builder, and that they could cheat me in a hundred ways if they chose.  But I'm glad to say that only two did – out of thirty-eight."

I've been able to track Annabel's progress through reports in the Whitby Gazette.

At the time of the census on 2 April 1911 she had been living at The Hunt Hall, a house on the open moorland south of Goathland above Wheeldale Beck, which she and Patrick (who was that night staying in a hotel in York) had evidently taken as a country retreat.  At the beginning of September, Whitby Gazette's list of visitors to the town shows that Annabel was staying at the Station Hotel in Sleights.

1911 must have been the year of preparation.  1912 was a busy year.  On 19 January 1912, the Whitby Gazette reported that Mrs Dott's plans for eight cottages at Goathland had been approved ("Mrs Dott's house windows to be made to comply with the law").  According to Percy Ward's article, the conveyance of the Mortar Pit estate to Annabel and Patrick was dated 26 March 1912.  On 10 May 1912, the Whitby Gazette reported that at the meeting of the Whitby Rural District Council a letter from Mrs Dott was read out – she was asking for the sewerage arrangements to be improved by the Council.  On 20 December, the Rural District Council was told that plans had been received "for a dwelling-house at Goathland, for Mrs Dott, the plans having been prepared by that lady".  (They were approved and passed).  On the 27 December, in a list of building works completed or approved in the area during that year ("In the rural district, building has gone on apace"), the Gazette recorded that five of Mrs Dott's eight houses had been finished and three were in the course of construction, a cottage was to be built for Mrs Dott on the Mortar Pit estate, Goathland, and that a stone house at Goathland, for Mrs Dott, had been completed.

In the spring of 1913, Annabel's contact with the Council was on the subject of sewerage.  On 11 April, the Gazette reported that the Inspector of Nuisances (Mr F Lawson) had told the Council that 

The sewer on the Mortar Pit estate was extended some two hundred yards, through Mrs Dott's property.  I propose to extend this sewer some 70 yards further, and treat the sewage with a settling-tank and automatic filter (Fiddian).  This section takes the sewage from that part of Goathland bounded by the Wesleyan Chapel, Mrs Dott's, J Sleightholme's [Rose Cottage], and the Vicarage ... The sewer has been extended to Mrs Dott's house (above Captain Smailes' house [Fairhaven]) 183 yards, under my supervision.  Mrs Dott paid for this extension

But on 2 May 1913, the Gazette's report shows that the sewage problem was not quite yet resolved – Mrs Dott had written to the Council 

complaining of the discharge from drains near her house at Goathland.  The inspector ... said the drain had been extended to Mrs Dott's property, and he asked the Council's permission to continue the drain, which would do away with the complaint ...

And now the work was finished.

Whitby Gazette, 4 July 1913

Goathland
Supper – On Thursday night, last week, a supper to celebrate the completion of the erection of some new property for Mrs Dott, wife of the Rev W P Dott, Dringhouses, was held at Goathland.  There was a good gathering of workmen, and an enjoyable time was spent.  The principal toast of the evening was given by Mr Randolph Jowsey, who proposed the health of Mrs and the Rev Mr Dott.  At a convenient moment, occasion was taken to present a silver watch to Mr George Harland, the youngest member of the firm of Harland Brothers, Glaisdale, who had charge of the masons' and joiners' work in the new buildings.  The plastering work was done by Mr R Jowsey, Whitby

Randolph Jowsey advertised in the Whitby Gazette as a Plain & Ornamental Plasterer.  At the time of the supper party he was nearly 62 years old; the 1911 census records him living at 9 Well Close, Whitby with his wife and daughters.  I think the Harland Brothers of Glaisdale must have been George and Thomas Harland and that George Harland was the respected figure, immensely knowledgeable about local history and dialect, who was often quoted as a source in historical and architectural matters in later years.  His memoirs The Queen of the Dales: Anecdotes of an Octagenarian were published in 1970.  Percy Ward states that 

some of the joinery was the work of two local men, Messrs Sleightholme and Dowson; the latter living at Prudom House.

Agnes M Miall wrote (with some exaggeration, as there were Whitby and Glaisdale men working on the cottages)

So the cottages were built, ten of them, entirely by Goathland men, and both the men and the bold woman builder were justified by the fact that when the houses were completed people came from twenty miles round to see them.  A further compliment was that one house was sold as a country cottage to a rich York manufacturer for the high price of £2,000 ...

Annabel gave the cottages the name The Orchard.  Nowadays it is known as The Orchards.

What were Annabel's intentions when she built The Orchard?  She intended to let them, presumably to people wanting to spend a holiday in Goathland and perhaps also to people rather like herself, who wanted a country retreat or who needed to live for a time in the country air.  They were furnished (Percy Ward: "Mrs Dott then furnished the Orchard houses with old furniture from 'sales', etc.  I expect she called her purchases antiques!!") and had a shared garden of some two acres.  She had an advertising brochure printed – when Percy Ward wrote his article in 1976 there was still a copy of the brochure to be seen in the village.

I have found two advertisements for the cottages in 1915 in the To Let columns of the feminist periodical, The Common Cause (predecessor to The Women's Leader).  We don't know when Annabel's commitment to the cause of women's equality began, but she was evidently a reader of The Common Cause in 1915:-

Common Cause, 27 August 1915 

GOATHLAND, on the Yorkshire Moors.  Houses furnished with old oak.  5 bedrooms, 2 reception, Bath.  Attendance if wished.  Garden.  Golf - Mrs Dott, Orchard, Goathland 

WELL-FURNISHED SMALL HOUSE on Yorkshire Moors to Let for nine months.  Warm, well built, sanitary certificate; S. aspect, 5 bedrooms, 2 sitting.  Bath.  Near station, shops, and golf links.  Low rent to careful tenant. – Owner, Dringhouses Vicarage, York

Annabel designed the cottages to be as labour-saving as possible.  They would have appealed to middle-class people who could not afford much domestic help at a time when work in the house was very demanding of time and labour.  She laid particular emphasis on "fitment furniture", that is, built-in or fitted furniture:-

Great care was taken with the planning to save labour, a point in these servantless days; and most of the rooms have fitment furniture, some of oak, others of teak and fine old mahogany, 

she wrote in an article in the journal The Nineteenth Century and After in February 1919, and she was quoted in The Vote as saying

My first aim all through has been labour-saving, and many of the bedrooms are arranged with fitment furniture, wardrobe cupboards with oak or mahogany doors, chests of drawers built in to form dressing-tables and washstands, and the rooms arranged to save stairs.  

(Percy Ward: "Also fitted in were an assortment of items which had taken her fancy such as old bed posts")

Agnes M Miall in The Woman's Leader commented that Annabel, 

like every woman who knows how much work a house can make, believes in designing homes so that they do not exhaust an unnecessary ounce of the housewife's energy and temper; and from this standpoint particularly she believes that there is a future awaiting the woman builder. 

The Yorkshire Post on 19 October 1918 reported – and the words sound very like those of Annabel herself – that

The houses are built in pairs, but no two are alike.  They have thick stone walls, wide mullion diamond-paned windows, red roofs of old hand-made tiles.  They are of the best type of the old-fashioned cottage farmhouse.  Most have five bedrooms, each a big living-room, and nearly all a second small sitting-room, well-appointed kitchens and bathrooms, with a plentiful supply of hot water and hot linen cupboards.  

As with the house she built for herself and Patrick, light was an important consideration and she paid attention to the aspect of the rooms.  The Vote reports her as saying that 

Each house contains a big living-room, a chief bedroom, both of which face south, whilst the kitchen, larder, coal-cellar, guest-chamber, and bathroom face north

Annabel made good use of recycled timber in the cottages' construction.  They were built with 

heavy oak beams; several tons were procured when a bridge built a century ago on the Egton road needed repair, and they are massive and black and the pride of the cottages [Annabel's article in the Nineteenth Century and After, February 1919]

The "fitment furniture of oak or mahogany" had "a touch of the sea, for some of the wood was taken from the late King of Portugal's yacht, after it fell into the hands of the big ship-breaking firm at Vauxhall, and other timbers of oak and mahogany came from a disused whaling yard at Whitby." [The Vote]

According to Percy Ward, "some of the timber came from a Church in York which was being demolished, beams, panelling, and carved timber."

Agnes M Miall was enthusiastic on the subject of the fitment furniture – a feature which would have created a great deal more space in the rooms, saved dusting and polishing, and presumably made for a more airy, modern feel:  

[Mrs Dott's] description of these furnishings makes any woman's mouth water for one of her Goathland homes.  Imagine window-seats, inglenooks, screens and cupboards fitted into the most convenient places ... In the bedrooms, dressing-tables with drawers of all sizes built in underneath and washstands with boot cupboards fitted below, awaited the lucky families who took possession, and there are polished floors, doing away with the necessity for carpets.  If the day ever comes when all homes are built on the Goathland plan furniture removers will be forced to go out of business.

This photograph shows The Orchards today.  Anyone curious to see more can easily find the online advertisements for Sundial Cottage B&B and Curlew Cottage (holiday rental), which give views of the rear of those properties and of their interiors.  There have been many alterations to the nine cottages over the years and the shared garden established by Annabel was eventually divided between them. 

Very many thanks to 
Elsie Smith, a Trustee of Goathland Village Hall, who supplied me with the Percy Ward article
Past and present occupants of The Orchards for their kind help
Dr Elizabeth McKellar for information on Walter Brierley.  The papers relating to Walter Brierley's involvement in the project in 1917/18 and possibly before can be found in the Borthwick Institute Atkinson-Brierley papers

Next:  7. Annabel & Patrick Dott, WWI & the Cottage Colony: 1917 to 1919

5. Annabel & Patrick Dott in South Africa: from 1906 to 1909

The Vote, 22 April 1921

Mrs Dott has been interested in building since her girlhood, and, if difficulties had not barred the way, there is no doubt she would have developed into a woman architect.  This avenue having been closed to her, she became a master builder instead, and, practically single-handed, has seized some unusual opportunities

Patrick's new parish of Woodstock, Cape Town was in flux.  In the 1890s it had been a peaceful country village in open farmland, but immigration was rapidly changing its character and in 1904 a quarter of its population was British-born.  It was not an affluent community – some years later, when Patrick was inducted into a Croydon parish, the Rural Dean described Woodstock as "the workmen's suburb of Capetown" – and the population of about 16,000 was constantly changing.  In the Woodstock Parish Magazine of April 1907 Mr Dott commented on the 

perpetual going and coming of the people ... The net of the Church must ever be cast wide; and, with our large population, it is especially true of Woodstock.

[from Rediscovering Woodstock by Andrea Badham] 

Patrick's background in mission work must have made him a natural choice for the parish, where he would find plenty of work and challenges to deal with.  He and Annabel set themselves to the task.

Annabel turned her attention to the rectory.  It had gone, she said, "literally to pieces" during the time of the previous vicar, who was "a scholarly recluse".

On the first 15 years of Annabel's building projects, we have two valuable sources – interviews given by her in 1920 and 1921.  The first appeared on 16 July 1920 in The Woman's Leader & Common Cause (the aim of which was "to advocate a real equality of liberties, status and opportunities between men and women") under the headline "The Work of a Woman Builder: Mrs Dott, who is an Expert in the Erection of Cottages, Interviewed by Agnes M Miall".  

Agnes Mackenzie Miall (1892-1977) was a writer and broadcaster who began her career in 1916 with The Bachelor Girl's Guide to Everything (1916), a practical, clearly-written handbook for young single women leaving home to work – it was reissued in facsimile in 2007.

A few months after the interview was printed, Women's Pioneer Housing Ltd was set up by a group of suffrage campaigners.  Its founding members included Agnes and Annabel.  It was a housing association established to supply an urgent need.  After the War, many women stayed in the workforce.  So many men had died – there was the "problem" of the so-called surplus women – and women were entering the professions in Britain at last.  Unfortunately, finding accommodation was difficult because landlords were reluctant to rent to women – couples or men paid more.  But a working woman of course needed a safe, private place to call home, and at an affordable rent.  

An Irish suffragist Etheldred Browning, who ran the women's section of the Garden Cities & Town Planning Association, saw that a housing association specifically for women was the answer.  She and her colleagues – the group included suffragettes (who believed in breaking the law to get the vote) and suffragists (who did not) – had to form a limited company, because women on their own could not get mortgages.  The founding members – including Annabel Dott – bought shares in the company and the scheme was underway.  For more on the founding of the Company and its early tenants (many were nurses, continuing their profession after the War) see this page on the blog of Jess McCabe.  Annabel resigned her membership after four months, presumably because she was so busy with her other projects and with parish work.

The interview with Agnes M Miall took place a few months before the first meeting of Women's Pioneer Housing Ltd, but given the amount of time it takes for such an enterprise to get under way, I think Agnes will have become acquainted with Annabel before the interview.  So I think we can assume that Annabel is fairly accurately reported, by a writer who is sympathetic to her viewpoint and shares her political and social attitudes. 

The second article appeared under the headline "A Master Woman Builder: Interview with Mrs Annabel Dott" on 22 April 1921 in The Vote : The Organ of the Women's Freedom League, a periodical which was actually concerned more with social than political feminist issues, such as sexual oppression and restrictions on employment.  We can see from the natures of both the journals where Annabel's sympathies lay. 

(See the website Women's Print Media in Interwar Britain for more details on these feminist periodicals)

This is Annabel's vivid account of refurbishing the Rectory, from The Vote:

A big rather dark room was made into a study.  A long window cut close under the ceiling, almost in the form of a frieze, added some very necessary light, and also gave a view of Table Mountain in the distance.  The existing fireplace was scrapped, and a roomy hearth built in its place, faced with deep blue tiles obtained specially from Holland.  The plain white plastered walls, the glimpse of the cloud-capped mountain, the dull blue of tiles, and hangings, made a beautiful room.   It was furnished with a few really good pieces of old Dutch furniture picked up in odd places, plenty of easy chairs, and a huge divan converted out of packing-cases, which a coloured woman upholstered quite skilfully.  Glass doors led out on to a wide stoep or verandah with the garden beyond.  A big bedroom and a bathroom were built on, and two rooms added to the servants' compound.

After the Rectory, another opportunity arose.  One of Patrick's duties was

to be responsible for certain Church property out there.  Among these was one of South Africa's very few historical buildings, the house where the treaty by which the Dutch ceded Cape Colony to England was signed.  It had fallen into considerable disrepair.  There were difficulties in the way of getting it put in order, and I had the inspiration of undertaking the job myself.  I knew nothing of building; the native men whom I hired almost as little.  We had to learn by doing things wrong and then doing them over again.  But in the end we saved the house. [The Woman's Leader]  

[The Treaty House] is a low thatched building close to the sea, and under the shadow of Table Mountain.  It had been so neglected that it was in parlous state.  But a Battle of Flowers was organised, and the funds thus provided enabled it to be properly restored, and now it is saved, we hope, for many years. [The Vote]  

A little later there was a question of the schools attached to the Church being condemned by the Government inspectors.  Emboldened by my previous success I undertook to put them right, and did so, with such success that the Government not only leased the school from us at a rental above the average, because the fabric was in such good condition, but allowed my husband special concessions in the way of visiting the classes. [The Woman's Leader]

In 1908 the Dotts left Woodstock for Patrick to become Acting Warden of St Paul's Hostel, the recently-established theological college in Grahamstown, more than 500 miles away.  

In the early summer of 1909, Patrick and Annabel sailed for England.

Next:  6. Annabel & Patrick Dott in Yorkshire: from 1909 to 1917

4. Patrick Dott, the first 38 years: from 1867 to 1906

Patrick was a few months short of his ninth birthday when his father died.

Between 1871, when Patrick was three, and May 1889, when he matriculated at St Mary Hall, Oxford, I can find no mention of Patrick in the official records.  In the 1881 census his sisters are visiting friends and family, but I have not been able to find his mother or any of her sons.  I don't know whether the family remained at 120 Stepney Green between 1871 and 1890 (by which time Mrs Dott owned 96 Lauriston Road, Hackney) though it is clear that the family were in Hackney in the 1880s when Patrick's youngest sisters attended Lady Holles' Middle Class School in Mare Street and it seems most likely that they never left the area.  I don't know where Patrick went to school, nor what he did between leaving school and entering St Mary's Hall, Oxford at the age of 21.

Patrick had clearly found that his vocation was to become a minister in the Church of England.  Nobody in his family had done such a thing before – they were, after all, Scottish – though it is clear that they attended the Anglican church in London.  His mother and sisters went to St John's in Croydon and were clearly much involved in parish affairs, and one of his brothers was an organist.  But it seems clear that Patrick did not come from the background usually associated with Anglican clergymen.  When he made his decision, he was not a graduate and it is striking that he did not train at, for example, St Aidan's in Birkenhead – on its opening in 1856, the principal said 

they did not wish for mere educated gentlemen, but for earnest, laborious, pious men, who would speak from their own hearts to the hearts of others.  

Patrick's aptitude and inclinations were evidently for academic study.  He went to read theology at Oxford – not one of the colleges, but St Mary's Hall which was an academic hall associated for centuries with Oriel College and formally incorporated into Oriel in 1902.  This was more suitable for an older man, and living there would be cheaper.

He clearly made the most of his time there – a report in Sporting Life in 21 May 1890 names him as playing cricket for his Hall against a team from Exeter College, the "Exeter Busters" – but from the beginning, we can see that Patrick was in training for the priesthood.  There are several mentions in the Oxford press of Patrick's activities as lay reader for Hempton, near Banbury – for example, the Oxford Journal on 9 January 1892 reported,

Through the exertions of Mr W P Dott, the lay reader in charge of Hempton, a capital concert was given in the School room on Tuesday last, and was an unqualified success.

I wonder if Patrick's abilities and obvious potential attracted the attention of

Rev W P Dott (1867-1938)

someone, probably a clergyman, who encouraged him to go to Oxford and follow his vocation.

On coming down from St Mary Hall in 1893, he was a curate at St Saviour's in Croydon.  This was a new church, built in 1867.  He was priested in 1894 at the age of 27 and left Croydon in 1896, licensed by the Bishop of London to be a "West London Missionary".  This meant that he had become a member of the Mission College attached to All Hallows', Barking.  It was quite a recent venture, set up in 1884 on the initiative of Archbishop Edward White Benson, with the aim of serving All Hallows' and the wider church.  Patrick and three other clergymen can be found in the 1901 census at the Mission College's house at 7 Trinity Square, where they were cared for by a housekeeper, a cook and two housemaids.

Patrick was in charge of the parish work at All Hallows' for nearly eight years, as well as taking his share of the work of the college of mission preachers.  Then in July 1904 he set sail for South Africa.  At the age of nearly 37 he had been given his first parish and was to be Rector of Woodstock, Cape Town.

In January 1906, Patrick Dott and Annabel Hall were married in South Africa.

Very many thanks to Catherine Brown for the photograph

Next:  5. Annabel & Patrick Dott in South Africa: from 1906 to 1909

3. Patrick Dott (1867-1938): his family

It seems to me to be clear from the history of their married life, that Annabel and

Patrick were a mutually supportive couple, united in their views.  Patrick's career determined the pattern of their lives, and it seems appropriate to give a proper account of his background and family.

Did Annabel know Patrick Dott before she went out to South Africa?  I don't know.  There is a possibility that they had known each other for a long while, because they grew up not far apart and their early lives ran in parallel.  

Their fathers were both Customs officers in the East End of London.  They died within five years of each other, leaving widows in their early forties with very young children.  Patrick and his siblings were all born in Stepney or in Mile End, where Annabel was born.  The widows and their children lived in Hackney, a couple of miles apart.  Annabel may have gone to the same school as Patrick's sisters.  It seems to me very possible that the families knew each other.

Patrick was born in Stepney on 26 September 1867, the eighth child.  He had a younger brother who died at the age of six months when Patrick was two, and two younger sisters.  He was named William Patrick, but seems always to have been known as Patrick.  

His parents came from Scotland – his father James was born in Kinross and his mother Betsey Forfar in nearby Milnathort.  It seems that James was already working in London when he and Betsey married and she joined him there; all their eleven children were born there.  James was 15 years older than his wife.  She was 23 when her first child was born, and nearly 42 at the birth of her last.

By January 1870, when James and Betsey's baby son died on a visit to relatives in Scotland, the family was living at 120 Stepney Green.  The 1871 census finds James and Betsey at that address, together with eight children and a 14 year old general servant.  James Dott died there five years later on 21 April 1876 at the age of 59.  His eldest child, James, was nearly 20 and his youngest, Bessie, was not yet 2 years old.  Patrick wrote in his private notebook years later that his father's funeral at Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington was attended by some 300 people; there had been an "order issued by Inspector General that all H M C officers who wished to attend were to have leave."

On James's death, Betsey was left to bring up six sons and four daughters.  One would expect that, with such a large family, money must have been more of a problem to the widowed Mrs Dott than it was to the widowed Mrs Hall.  However, Mrs Dott was to leave a much larger estate.  She was clearly a very good manager of her finances, will have been financially assisted by her unmarried sons, and may, of course, have inherited some money.  

By 1887 the family had moved to 96 Lauriston Road, Hackney, and the Electoral Register records that Alexander, Hugh, John and James were all registered there as tenant voters, paying rent to their mother for their furnished rooms.  The Registers give us a glimpse of the living arrangements.  For example, in 1888 Alexander paid Mrs Dott £50 a year for a bedroom and use of a sitting room; Hugh had a bedroom on the third floor at 8s 6d a week; John a room on the first floor (8s 6d); and James a bedroom on the second floor (8s.)  In 1890 John had a room on the first floor and Patrick a room on the third, both at 8s 6d.  At this time Lauriston Road, as seen in Charles Booth's poverty map, bordered on "Middle class. Well-to-do" streets but was itself rather more mixed ("Some comfortable, others poor").

By 1901 the family had left London for 'Wycombe', 78 Auckland Road, Upper Norwood.  This was a neighbourhood of senior clerks and women of independent means.  It was a desirable place to live, built on high ground in attractive woodland.  Mrs Dott's new home was a medium-sized detached house on the east of the road; it was demolished in 1967 and a block of flats stands in its place (see Auckland Road on the Croydon Database website)

Mrs Dott lived there in comfort with her unmarried children, keeping a cook and a housemaid.  It appears from the censuses that her sons John and Thomas were inhabitants of the house, not visitors, and doubtless made a financial contribution.  Mrs Dott died there on 1 June 1911.

Mrs Betsey Dott and her children

John – James – Christina – Hugh – Patrick – Janet – Alexander

Hilda – Thomas – Mrs Betsy Dott – Bessie

Patrick was not quite 21 when his elder brother Hugh (1859-1907) married Eliza Baylis in 1888; Hugh was a lithographer (the 1891 census description), and stationer & printer (the 1901 census description).  In 1890, the eldest brother James (1856-1933) married Emily Williams; James was a wood hoop importer and Emily ran a millinery business.  Both James and Hugh had families.  

John and Thomas Dott were twins, born in 1861.  Neither married.  John died in 1922 and Thomas in 1945.  John was an insurance broker; Thomas seems to have been a more flamboyant character, and something of a rogue.  He began his working life as a clerk to a firm of wharfingers, before being employed by the Union Bank of London and then in Australia by the Union Bank of Australia.  He came back to Britain in 1894 and went into business on his own account, selling Australian properties while the Australian boom lasted.  After that he bought the Woorgreen Colliery in the Forest of Dean for £8,000 on a lease from the Crown.  In 1916 he registered as a money lender, but two court cases established that he had been carrying on the business before registration.  At much the same time he set up as a theatre proprietor.  In early 1918 a Captain Levy took him to court over an agreement made in 1916 for profits accruing from the lease of the Strand Theatre.  Levy wanted the agreement set aside as unconscionable, extorted from him at a time when he was in financial difficulties.  (The biographical details I have set out above were given by Thomas under cross-examination.)  The judge set aside the agreement.  

Alexander (1863-1943) was a jute merchant who lived in India.  On his return, he and his surviving sisters Christina, Hilda and Bessie made a home together.

Patrick's sisters were Christina (1857-1940), Janet (1865-1906), Hilda (1872-1957) and Bessie (1874-1957).  The censuses indicate that they remained at home with Mrs Dott.  Christina described herself in the census of 1881, when she was staying with friends in Milton in Gravesend, as "supported by her mother".  Janet was a talented artist, describing herself as an art student in the 1891 census.   I wonder if she taught art afterwards.  She died at the age of 40.  Bessie studied at the Guildhall School of Music and was much praised in a report of a students' concert in The Era on 1 December 1894:

Miss Bessie Margaret Dott, a promising pupil of Herr Pauer, proved her command of the keyboard and a graceful style in Moszkowski's 'Caprice Espagnol,' which Miss Dott gave with requisite vivacity and brilliancy, her playing evoking hearty applause

In her later career as a concert pianist, the Croydon Advertiser and the Norwood News carried frequent reports of Bessie playing locally.  I have found reviews of her concerts in the Chelmsford Chronicle in 1896, the East Anglian Daily Times in 1908, and in the Evening Star (Ipswich) in the same year.  I would expect she also taught the piano.

Bessie was not the only musical member of the family.  There are several newspaper reports of parish concerts organised by Patrick, and it's clear that his singing was much appreciated.  One of his brothers was the organist at the St George's Mission Church at South Norwood and the sisters, according to the newspaper report of Patrick's induction as vicar of Woodside, Croydon, were "well known as brilliant musicians".

Of the ten children, only Patrick, James and Hugh married.  Alexander, Christina, Hilda and Bessie lived together until their deaths.  Christina and Alexander died during the War; Hilda and Bessie died within months of each other in 1957.

Very many thanks to Catherine Brown for the photograph of the Dott family and to Martin Hulbert for the information from Patrick's private notebook

January 2020:  I'm indebted to Debra Arif for passing me the information on the Dotts' occupation of 96 Lauriston Road from 1887. 

Next: 4. Patrick Dott, the first 38 years: from 1867 to 1906

2. Annabel Dott, the first 37 years: from 1868 to 1906

Sarah Frances Annabel – who seems always to have been known as Annabel – grew up in Amhurst Road, Hackney.  In 1871 her parents had just moved to 13 Amhurst Road, but by the time of the 1881 census she and her mother are at Number 323, where they are to be found on census night together with a 45 year old general servant – Mrs Hall describing her source of income as "House Property."   I thought this must indicate a house move, but Lynne Dixon, another Annabel researcher who is based in London, tells me that she thinks it is the same house, which stood in an isolated terrace before the rest of Amherst Road was built.  I assume the street was then renumbered.  The Halls were absent for the 1891 census and only the cook and her nephew were in the house.  Annabel and her mother lived at Number 323 until towards the end of the century when they moved to Bournemouth.

The ancient village of Hackney had become urbanised after the first railway station opened in 1850, nearly 20 years before Annabel was born, and during her early years market gardens and orchards were giving way to shops and flats and terraces of houses, while industries and manufacturies were proliferating.  Hackney parish was well-known for its charitable institutions including, interestingly in light of Annabel's later career, such Model Dwellings Companies 

as the Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes and the London Labourers' Dwellings Co (these companies provided social housing with a return on the investors' capital), while housing in the parish was leased to the London Labourers' Association, a political society founded by an Owenite radical in 1837.

Amhurst Road had been not long built up when Mrs Hall and Annabel moved into Number 13/323.  These are terraces of tall houses, with three floors above the basement, and steep flights of a dozen steps up to the front doors.  The Halls' neighbours were upper clerks and respectable tradesmen; the Charles Booth poverty map classified the road in 1889 as "Middle class.  Well to do".  Unlike her sister Margaret, who was left a widow with eight children aged between 3 and 23, Mrs Hall had only herself and her daughter to keep and so she could live a good deal more comfortably.

By 1901 Annabel and her mother had moved to Bournemouth.  The census that year finds them, with a 28 year old general servant, living at Hylton House on Surrey Road, a road of comfortable villas and large private hotels and guest houses.  (Photographs of these can be seen on Alwyn Ladell's flickr set; I think Hylton House has been replaced by flats.)  It was there that her mother died on 20 October 1903 having had a stroke.

I have been able to find no information about Annabel's childhood.  I think it is possible that she attended Lady Holles's Middle Class School, in Mare Street, Hackney, a mile and a half from her home, because, judging from its advertisement, the school must have looked very attractive to parents such as Mrs Hall.  Opened in September 1878, it was designed to take 250 girls and had 

a spacious assembly-room, eight class-rooms, three music-rooms, with all other conveniences and requisites ... The instruction afforded by the school will be of a sound, practical character, while the higher branches of education and suitable accomplishments will be efficiently taught.  

Entry was after a "preliminary examination of candidates" and the fees were between £1 6s 8d and £2 per term.  This included instruction in Latin, French, Drawing, and Vocal Music.  The head mistress was assisted "by a very efficient staff of 20 Assistant Mistresses", according to an advertisement in August 1879, which announced that there were only 50 vacancies.  This was the school attended by the younger sisters of Annabel's future husband Patrick Dott.  These girls were a few years younger than Annabel; I have found their names in a newspaper report of prize giving day at the school.

I can find no information about Annabel's life after school and before her marriage at the age of 37, but we can see from her life after marriage that she was resourceful, adaptable and forthright and had no problem in exercising authority, organising a work force or assimilating new information.  She was evidently well educated and in one interview is quoted as saying that she would have liked to have become an architect "if difficulties had not barred the way" [The Vote, 22 April 1922].  She does not say whether the difficulties were financial or came from her mother's expectations or needs.  

So what did she do in those first 37 years?  What were her expectations?  We don't know how much income her mother had, or how much of it she expected to be able to pass on to Annabel.  Annabel would be on her own after her mother's death, with no brother to help her out financially and quite probably no close family to assist her.  Given her talents and her character, I think this makes it more than likely that she followed a course of study after leaving school – one of her future sisters-in-law studied art and another studied music – and quite possibly earned a living, perhaps as a teacher, before her marriage.  The only census in which she appears as an adult is that of 1901 (I can't find her in the 1891 census) in which no occupation is mentioned – but women's occupations are notoriously under-represented in censuses, and so this is not conclusive.

However, everything was about to change for Annabel, and in the remaining 31 years of her life she would encounter opportunities and challenges that she can never have imagined.

On 30 December 1905, a little more than two years after Mrs Hall's death, a notice appeared in the Hampshire Chronicle:

A marriage has been arranged, and will take place at the Cape in January between the Rev W P Dott, rector of Woodstock, Cape Town, and Annabel, only daughter of the late Robert Hall and Mrs Hall, of Hylton-house, Bournemouth

Very many thanks to Lynne Dixon for the information on Amhurst Road

Next: 3. Patrick Dott (1867-1938): his family