Essex Mortlocks
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Essex Mortlocks The earliest record for Mortlocks in Essex seems to be the 1503 will of William, kiddleman of Foulness, although there is no indication in it that he left issue [a kiddle is a stake fence, set in a stream for catching fish]. The recoverable story really starts in Birdbrook, which, in harness with the Suffolk Mortlocks of Haverhill, shows John and Lewis holding land in Birdbrook and Steeple Bumpstead in 1549. The name of Lewis attaches quite pointedly to just one branch of Suffolk Mortlocks so this Lewis must surely be related, or even ancestral to the Lewis in Clare who married there in 1588. The Birdbrook story continues consistently to the mid-seventeenth century at which point the line appears to die out; there are no Mortlock entries in the 1662 Hearth Tax. The oldest known Mortlock property lies in Haverhill, the ‘Anne of Cleves’1 house. This was built by John Mortlock in 1620, replacing ‘Wagg’s Farmhouse’ which at one time was known as the Manor House although there are no indications of any Mortlock manor lordship. John’s son Thomas, a brewer, made some improvements in 1656, marked by his initials on a fireplace, and there was some further improvement marked by his and his wife’s Anne’s initials on a fireplace - which can still be seen - the following year. After Thomas’ death Anne remarried well and gave the house to the church for a vicarage. It is now a physiotherapy centre. Samuel of Paglesham, Essex, who died in 1793, had land in Haverhill; and a Mortlock Coldham seems to have had an interest in Haverhill in the early eighteenth century. A Henham inheritance has been documented under Haverhill but this went to the distaff side on the death of a Mortlock widow. There are records in nearby parishes in the next century which bring us hiccuping along to Ridgewell where our most notorious Essex Mortlock, the transportee burglar Thomas, received his come-uppance in 1832. Ironically he was one of the most biologically successful Mortlocks and left a large progeny in New South Wales. Two other transportees seem to have been related to him so Ridgewell may have been glad to see the back of their Mortlocks. The Haverhill, and, it will be seen, Poslingford records are thus necessary to an understanding of the north-western branches of the Essex Mortlocks, and are therefore included at the start of this Essex table. The Essex Mortlocks mostly owe their origin to a very few progenitors, living in the county at the beginning of the nineteenth century, as will be seen below. For several the metropolis beckoned, particularly the docklands of the East End which offered the those whose country skills were now obsolete (for a farmhand is highly skilled and knowledgeable) an alternative to vanished agricultural work. 1The Flemish Mare, as far as is known, never came anywhere near Haverhill. Wagg’s Farm’s land was originally Church land, sequestrated by Henry VIII who gave its rents to Anne of Cleves as part of her divorce settlement. The modern naming of the house dates to an enterprising estate agent in 1975. Essex Mortlocks 1 RJHG 05.05.2019 Hempstead, Finchingfield and the Bardfields There was a “Mortlock’s Farm” at Radwinter near Hempstead (as there is also one just N of Haverhill). Thomas and his wife Margaret had land in Little Bardfield 1585; the Thomas who died in 1653 in Haverhill also had land in Little & Great Bardfield, and he or a forebear was clearly living in Little Bardfield in 1615. In 1672 Thomas Mortlock’s house in Finchingfield was a meeting place for non-conformists, which probably explains the sparseness of early records for this family. All the “modern” Hempstead Mortlocks appear to be descendants of the Arbour who died in 1811. Most were landless but Luke, 1803-89, got himself, by endeavour or marriage, a farm. His heir, Charles Luke, who farmed Charity Farm there for 57 years, celebrated his golden wedding in 1927. He was a staunch Conservative and served on the Board of Guardians and then on the Rural District Council, and was in demand as a judge of ploughing matches. In 1912 he had an unwelcome visit from a local horse thief. On his mother’s side he claimed descent from the notorious, cruel, psychopathic highwayman Dick Turpin. Three of the couple’s sons emigrated to South Africa, Thomas and Phillip both overstating their ages. Charles Luke himself lived to be nearly a hundred years old. Disaster hit in 1878. Mr Mortlock of Parish Farm, Braintree, shot a pigeon that was lurking on the roof of one of the farm buildings. A piece of wadding fired the thatch. The Great Bardfield fire brigade managed to save the farmhouse, but the outbuildings and a quantity of grain and livestock were destroyed [Times, 30.4.78]. The Christian name Luke seems to be exclusive to this family, which idea I have rather leant on in order to recover missing members from Kent and elsewhere. With regard to Thomas William born 1855 in Tillingham, he seems to have absconded in early 1901, although the family had a cover story that he was leaning out of a window hanging bunting for Queen Victoria’s funeral when his bowler hat fell off and he fell to his death trying to grab it. Further he was said to have been buried in the very last grave that he dug in Nunhead cemetery, but there is no trace of this in the cemetery records. He seems to be the Thomas with a different reported birth year travelling with an American circus in 1911. Colchester In the 1553 Diocesan Visitation of Chichester a Robert Mortlock was recorded as ‘Prebendary of Hova Villa’, that is to say he was that canon of Chichester whose stipend was secured on revenues from the parish of Bolney in Sussex. In 1557 Queen Mary appointed a Robert Mortlock to a life wardenship of St Mary Magdelene hospital in Colchester Infirmary. For this role that Robert must have been literate so he was probably a priest, presumably conformant to the restored Papist regime. Was he the Robert who, parson of Martyr Worthy in Hampshire, left a will in 1561 which mentioned the church at Foxearth which lies on the Essex side of the Stour quite near Clare? He could well have been turned out after a year in the Colchester job, life tenure or no, when the Protestants got back in in 1558. However, he seems to have successfully blown with the wind (like the fictitious Vicar of Bray a century later) to get into another living. Apparently unmarried, he names a brother John and a brother (in law?) Samuel Pannell and other relations with surnames Lakes and Fowler whom I have been unable to place. Essex Mortlocks 2 RJHG 05.05.2019 The Colchester area next figures in Tudor times with a family at Aldham. There are then discontinuities until a more conventional genealogy presents itself at the end of the eighteenth century. Some members moved to Kent. Some skilled men are seen - bricklayers, bookbinder, a carpenter, a cabinet maker. So there must have been some money for apprenticeships. The 1861 census and others show several families of cousins growing up together in close propinquity. Some seem to have done well enough for themselves as tradesmen; but two ended up in the workhouse, one an old lady, the other barely 21. At Eight Ash Green just west of Colchester Ernest Mortlock started a garage business in 1928. His family came from Chevington in Suffolk and he had already tried his luck in Wandsworth. Weeley & St Osyth Lewis of Weeley, born in 1770 and probably son of a Lewis who died there in 1801, is interesting because of the name he bears, although he is only a labourer. His son Robert became a sadler and moved to Cambridge. Another Lewis, born in 1792, died near St Osyth over eighty years later. Further use of this Christian name so peculiar to Mortlocks can be seen in the St Osyth area later. Peldon & Wivenhoe Peldon presents a more consistent picture with six generations stemming from a Richard of Birdbrook whose father seems to have been born in Ridgewell (I am indebted to Jane King for these links). However this Richard seems to have migrated into Birdbrook from somewhere else, via his marriage. Most of the junior branches finished up as labourers; primogeniture rules. Some descendants ended up in Bromley by Bow alongside some of their Colchester “cousins”. A multiple birth gene seems to have come in, possibly from Deborah of Fingringhoe. Maybe she also brought some money or land; her father-in-law had two settlement examinations against his name so is unlikely to be the source of her sons’ inheritances - not that they all escaped from the lab-trap. In Peldon itself the Mortlocks must have formed a close-knit group - in 1861 John, Isaac and Elijah, with their families, were all living next door to each other. The senior branches prospered with William farming at Wivenhoe and Charles becoming a miller there. Essex Windmills, Millers and Millwrights by KG Faries, published by Charles Skilton in 1988, has Charles taking over milling there in 1874, “after which milling continued under the direction of the Mortlocks until the Second World War, the last of the millers of that name dying about 1950”. The mill with its tiles and plastered roundhouse was arguably erected about 1816. Wind milling there stopped in the early 1880s, following a disastrous fire (endemic to windmills) in November 1882.