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

1. Mrs Annabel Dott (1868-1937): her family

I must start by saying that while Annabel's name appears as Annabelle in the baptismal register she is Annabel more or less everywhere else, including in her Will.  

Annabel was born on 3 September 1868 at 56 Beaumont Square, Stepney and was baptised Sarah Frances Annabelle at St Peter's in Cephas Street, about ten minutes' walk away from her home.  She was her parents' only – or only surviving – child.  

Her parents Robert Hall and Annabella Copland were both from the North East.  Robert was born c1827 in North Shields and was an Examining Officer of HM Customs – which is why they lived in the East End of London, usefully near to the docks.  Robert and Annabella were a respectable couple in their early thirties living in a middle-class area – Beaumont Square was a garden square with a private communal garden in the centre – but they were perhaps not particularly well-to-do.  The 1861 census shows that they shared No 56 with another couple and didn't employ a servant.

By the time of the census taken on 2 April 1871, their circumstances had changed and they were living at 13 Gloucester Terrace, Hackney in a neighbourhood of commercial clerks and ship brokers.  Their little daughter was two years old, and living with them was a 19 year old general servant, a girl from Poplar.  Perhaps Annabella needed the extra help because Robert was so very ill.  Within three weeks the little family had moved to 13 Amhurst Road, West Hackney and it was there, on 23 April, that Robert Hall died aged 44 of oesophageal cancer.  Annabella was left a widow at the age of 41, only months after the death of her mother in Newcastle.  I think she must have received a widow's pension and that this was supplemented by an inheritance from her parents. 

Annabel Dott's maternal grandparents

Annabella Hall's father was William Copland, born c1796 in Callaly near Alnwick, Northumberland.  Evidently an enterprising man, he was a grocer & general provision dealer in the rapidly expanding industrial area of Ouseburn in Newcastle and had premises on the corner of Buxton Street and Melbourne Street.  This was described in an advertisement of 1849, when it was to let, as a

Spacious and Commanding Shop, [to let] either with or without the Dwelling house above, containing Nine Rooms. 

The entry in the National Probate Calendar describes him as a Shipowner (from which I deduce that at the time of making his Will he owned, or part owned, a vessel) and a Yeoman.  Perhaps he may also have been the William Copland who, in the 1840s, had a business as a Wholesale chemist, druggist & drysalter (a dealer in salts, chemicals and dyes) at No. 20 Side, the mediaeval street that runs steeply down to Sandhill on the Newcastle Quayside.  This man escaped with his life from a terrible fire in his premises in 1847 from which two of his men died of their injuries.  I wonder if this was Annabella's father, looking to expand into another line of business – and, if so, I wonder if the fire had any part in the fact that when he witnessed his daughter's marriage in January 1856 he could only make his mark, instead of signing his name.  He is described on the marriage certificate as a gentleman and had evidently retired from trade.  

In his later years William Copland engaged in speculative housebuilding in the Ouseburn area.  Copland Terrace was clearly built by him and he died there in 1859 in his house at 2 Copland Terrace, Shieldfield not far from where his grocery shop had been and not far from the Ouseburn Viaduct and the mills and factories that employed so many in the neighbourhood.  Cotes Street, named after his sister-in-law's family, was evidently another of his ventures; a licensing application in the Newcastle Courant in 1866 shows that his widow Sarah was the owner of the Britannia Inn at 1 Cotes Street.  I think these ventures must have been profitable because later censuses show that his widow and adult children were living on income from property.

[This 1888-1913 O.S. map showing Copland Terrace is reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland from their invaluable Map Images Website]

William's wife Sarah Brewis was born in Morpeth, Northumberland in about 1803, the daughter of Thomas Brewis.  Her sister Margaret was married to John Cotes Esq (almost certainly a lawyer), son of the Rev Henry Cotes, vicar of Bedlington.  William and Sarah must have been proud of this connection – and keen to maintain it, as they gave the middle name Cotes to two of their children.  They spent time in Bedlington and can be found there in the 1841 census.  In 1838 their six year old daughter Sarah died at The Retreat, Bedlington, the house of her aunt and uncle Cotes.  I think this was probably the house that John Cotes' father had built, which was advertised for sale in 1838 as

A neat Freehold Residence, with coach-house, stable, and gardens, built by the late Rev Henry Cotes, of Bedlington, beautifully situated on the Banks of the River Blyth. 

In 1844, a year after John Cotes' untimely death in 1843, William Copland was assisting his sister-in-law in managing her affairs – a notice in the Newcastle Journal required anyone interested in renting The Retreat to contact him.

Sarah Brewis remarried nine years after William Copland's death but she herself died two years later, in November 1870.  Her gross personal estate (that is, not including land) is recorded in the National Probate Calendar index as falling into the tax band "under £3,000". 

Sarah and William had seven children, two of whom died in infancy.  Annabella was their second child – their eldest was Margaret, who married a builder called Thomas Russell Creigh, had a large family, and died in Hampstead in 1899.  Annabella's brothers remained in Newcastle.  William was initially a pawnbroker but after his parents' death described himself in the censuses as an "Owner of House Property"; he died at 48.  The younger sons John Cotes and Henry were in business together as wholesale grocers; John Cotes died aged 37 and Henry aged 27.  Mrs Annabella Hall and Mrs Margaret Creigh outlived their brothers by a good many years.

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

Mrs Annabel Dott & the Goathland Homes for Officers

I came across the story of Mrs Annabel Dott and the Goathland Homes for Officers quite by accident.

I was flicking through a volume of the old Harmsworth Encyclopaedia, published in the early 1920s, and I found to my surprise that there was an entry for the village of Goathland:

Goathland.  Parish and village of N.R. Yorkshire, England.  It is 8m S.W. of Whitby, on the N.E. Rly.  Here is a cottage colony for disabled officers.  Goathland Moor lies 2m S. of the village, and is noted for its cataracts.  Pop 519

I was intrigued – I had no idea there had been a "cottage colony for disabled officers" at Goathland.  I soon found that the houses were the work of a remarkable woman, Mrs Annabel Dott.

Annabel Dott is best described as a woman builder who, self-taught, designed (with a little help) and built the Goathland cottages herself.  It was her first major design & build project; others followed.  In 1917 she and her husband generously offered to give the Goathland cottages to the county to be homes for disabled officers returning from the First World War.  Their donation was gratefully accepted and the scheme ran from 1919 to 1931.

Born in 1868, she was a woman unafraid to operate in a man's world.  She was part of the campaign for women's suffrage and equal rights and a founder member of Women's Pioneer Housing Ltd, a London housing association formed to fill the urgent need for homes for the women who remained in the workforce after the end of the First World War, or who, in increasing numbers, entered the world of paid work after 1918. 

I also found that I was joining a band of Annabel researchers and admirers.  This is my contribution to the field of study.

I feel obliged to add here that readers from outside the county will probably know Goathland best as Heartbeat territory from the much-loved TV series, in which it appeared as Aidensfield.  (I see that Heartbeat location tours are offered these days.)  And of course Goathland station on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway featured in the first Harry Potter film too.

I will post this research in separate chapters, which I think will make it easier to follow, but I will place acknowledgements at the foot of each chapter, with my thanks to everyone concerned.

I have removed the photograph that previously illustrated this blogpost, as I am assured by a member of the family that it showed a Mrs Crebin, not Annabel Dott

The story of Annabel Dott begins with 1. Mrs Annabel Dott (1868-1937): her family

Otters on the frozen River Leven, February 1848

Reported in the Yorkshire Gazette 171 years ago today:-

This little piece of news was under the column heading SPORTING – I think we would today entitle it SPORTING?

Yorkshire Gazette, Saturday 5 February 1848

As a man of the name of Passman was last week proceeding to his work he had to pass a wood, near the river Leven, in the neighbourhood of Hutton Rudby, and to his astonishment observed five otters, in search of food, the river being frozen.  With the aid of a stick Passman captured two of the youngest.  The snow being on the ground enabled him to effect this, but the older animals escaped.  There are some otter hounds in Stockton, and the admirers of this old fashioned and manly sport did not thank this man for his pains, as they might hereafter have afforded gratification to the keen sportsman in pursuing them in their favourite element – water.