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

Mrs Annabel Dott: additions and corrections

A minor point - just to inform readers that I have amended my text as regards the architect Walter Brierley's involvement in the Goathland scheme.  

It is known that he was involved in the conversion of the cottages for the disabled officers but it isn't clear whether he was involved in the original design stage.

3 March 2019:  Following correspondence with Lynne Dixon, I have made an amendment regarding the Amhurst Road house in which Annabel grew up.  Lynne has come to the conclusion that 13 & 323 Amhurst Road are one and the same.  Lynne informs me that Annabel gave up her membership of Women's Pioneer Housing Ltd after four months, probably because of pressure on her time, given her other projects and her parish work; I've made that alteration too.

23 October 2019:  Following correspondence with Martin Hulbert, a descendant of Patrick Dott's brother Hugh, I have added to 9. Annabel & Patrick Dott in Barnes, 1923 to 1937 an interesting piece of information from a notebook kept by Patrick.  A newspaper clipping from the Church Times of 16 June 1934 stated that Patrick had been "appointed chairman of the Capetown Diocesan Association", which suggests that he and Annabel had been planning a return to South Africa.  I think it likely that they changed their plans when they realised she had cancer.

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

Thorpe Underwood Hall: 1912

I can date this Knight, Frank & Rutley brochure from the final pages, because they advertise  auction sales due to take place in May and June 1912.

Amongst the landed estates and large country houses featured is Thorpe Underwood Hall, Ouseburn.  This had been built only a few years earlier and was designed for Frederick William Slingsby by the York architect Walter Henry Brierley.

Between 1885 and 1926 he was responsible for over 300 buildings, including schools, churches, houses and civic buildings across the North, amongst them Northallerton County Hall – and, in 1923-4, the restoration of All Saints’, Hutton Rudby.  The extensive work on the church took eight months, and during that time the congregation was ferried out by bus to services held at Drumrauch Hall.

Thorpe Underwood Hall stands close to the site of the old Thorpe Green Hall, which had been destroyed by fire at the end of the 19th century, and which is remembered now for its connection to the Bronte family.

Thorpe Underwood Hall 1912

Anne Bronte lived at Thorpe Green as governess to the Robinson family.  She was joined by her brother Branwell, but his time there was to precipitate the crisis that led to his death.

The Monk's House mentioned in the Particulars (where it is claimed to be C16 – it is actually C17) was the home of Branwell while he was tutor to the Robinsons’ son.  His ink drawing of the back of the house is well-known, cf p282 of The Art of the Brontës by Christine Anne Alexander.

Thorpe Underwood Hall 1912

By direction of W SLINGSBY, Esq.

YORKSHIRE
Within 2 1/2 miles Cattal Station, 5 miles Alne, 12 miles York and 11 miles Harrogate

A Fine Modern Mansion of Elizabethan Design
known as
"Thorpe Underwood Hall"
Ouseburn

Between Harrogate and York
Extending to about 178 Acres

The Hall is most conveniently arranged on 2 Floors
Oak-panelled, and fitted throughout with every
Modern Convenience.  Electric Light Installed.  Accom-
modation: Large Oak-panelled Hall measuring
36ft. by 20ft., Billiard Room 27ft. by 20ft.,
Drawing Room 29ft. by 18ft., Dining Room
29ft. by 18ft., Morning Room, Boudoir, Business
Room, 20 Bed and Dressing Rooms, 2 Bathrooms
Park of nearly 100 Acres
Stabling for 8 horses

Cottages
Attractive Pleasure Grounds

The Historic 16th Century Monk's House
is included

The Property is situated in the Middle of the York and Ainsty
Hunt and within reach of the Bramham Moor and Bedale Hunts

Illustrated Particulars on Application
Auctioneers & Land Agents Messrs Knight, Frank & Rutley,
10, Hanover Square, London, W.C.

Thorpe Underwood Hall is now a school.