BEDFORDSHIRE LOCAL HISTORY ASSOCIATION HISTORY IN BEDFORDSHIRE VOLUME 8, NO 1, W INTER 2017–2018 www.bedfordshire -lha.org.uk Contents Notes and news page 2 Did the Willington peasants revolt? page 2 The Bedfordshire Bibliography page 2 A Place in the Country page 2 An American at Wrest: Wrest Park in Edwardian Times: WREST HISTORY VOLUNTEERS page 3 The Rise and Fall of Hall of Crosshall: H U G H G A U L T page 9 Luton Red Cross Band: T E D M A R T I N page 13 Publication received: Bedfordshire Local History Magazine page 16 History in Bedfordshire is published by the BEDFORDSHIRE LOCAL HISTORY ASSO CIATION www.bedfordshire-lha.org.uk For HIB: Editor: Ted Martin, 2A The Leys, Langford, Beds SG18 9RS Telephone: 01462 701096. E-mail: [email protected] For BLHA: Secretary: Clive Makin, 32 Grange Road, Barton Le Clay, Bedford MK45 4RE Telephone: 01582 655785 Contributions are very welcome and needed: please telephone or e-mail the Editor before sending any material. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017–2018 Bedfordshire Local History Association and contributors ISSN 0968–9761 1 Notes and news Did the Willington peasants revolt? It’s all a bit of a mystery. Did the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 have any effect in Bedfordshire? Joyce Godber wrote that ‘the Bedfordshire villages were surprisingly quiet’ but for one reason or another there appears to be only one surviving manor court roll for 1381 held by Bedfordshire Archives and Records Service. Historians tell us that during the ‘Revolt’ many manorial documents were destroyed and the Willington records begin the next year, in 1382 with a series of bailiff’s accounts and in 1394 with the manor court rolls. Something definitely happened in Willington because the lord let out his demesne lands to some of his tenants and they refused to pay the full rent for 10 years from 1382. Was there a riot or simply a relatively peaceful, determined programme of obstructive behaviour? Dorothy Jamieson has spent almost 20 years translating and studying the Willington manorial documents dating from 1382 to 1522. Her new book for Bedfordshire Historical Records Society, Willington after the Peasants’ Revolt is due out early in 2018, but why not go along to her talk ‘Did Willington Peasant’s Revolt?’ at Willington Local History Group’s meeting at 7.30 pm on Tuesday, 20 February 2018 in Willington Methodist Church, to hear what she has to say about it? The Bedfordshire Bibliography. Bedfordshire Historical Record Society has completed its pilot digitisation project of The Bedfordshire Bibliography. The Bibliography and its three supplements, long out of print, are now available to view on the Society’s website at: http://www.bedfordshirehrs.org.uk/content/publication/bedfordshire-bibliography The Bibliography was an initiative of the Society in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.The main volume and two supplements were compiled by L R Conisbee and the third supplement by A R Threadgill. Mr Conisbee searched locally held collections of Bedfordshire material, including grey literature, identifying items on Bedfordshire in general publications, hunted for obscure items and gained access to private collections. It became an in-depth bibliography of publications on Bedfordshire history and remains a starting point for anyone working on the county’s history. A Place in the Country. The University of Hertfordshire Press has published A Place in the Country, by Judith Pettigrew, Rory Reynolds and Sandra Rouse, the history of the Three Counties Asylum from 1860 to 1999, opened as a result of the Lunacy Act 1845 with the intention of providing humane treatment to replace the harsh regimes of private madhouses, prisons and workhouses. The book gives a detailed account of the buildings, staff and patients down to its closure as the Fairfield Hospital in 1999. The book is priced at £12.99 and further information is available from: www.UHPress.co.uk or [email protected] or tel: 01707 284654. 2 An American at Wrest: Wrest Park in Edwardian times Over the past five years the Wrest Park history research team has been unearthing new aspects of the history of this wonderful house and garden. One hitherto relatively unknown period is the first decade of the last century. For a short period Wrest flourished with a different emphasis after many years first as a quiet dower house in Victorian times, and later in the shadow of the other houses of its owner Francis, 7th Earl Cowper. On the death of the Earl at the age of 71 in July 1905, Wrest Park passed to his nephew, Auberon Herbert, grandson of the 3rd Earl of Carnarvon. Although a keen countryman, farmer and bird-watcher, the busy young Auberon (‘Bron’) also had particularly strong political aspirations. His first foray was in 1903 as the prospective Liberal candidate for South Huntingdonshire. Following his inheritance, and taking the title of Baron Lucas, he was not eligible for the Commons so he successfully sought a seat in the Lords which he would achieve in 1907. Needing to be in London much of the time, and with a preference for his father’s New Forest property ‘Pickett Post’, Bron looked at ways of off-loading the running of his new Bedfordshire house and garden, (but not the farms or wider estate in which he kept an interest). In September 1905 he found a willing tenant, Mr Whitelaw Reid, the American Ambassador to the Court of St James. By early 1906, Whitelaw Reid and his wife Elizabeth had made Wrest the centre of their country activities. Career in America – the rise of the politician and diplomat Born on a farm in rural Ohio in 1837, Whitelaw Reid attended his local Academy at Xenia and then Miami University, Ohio, graduating with a science degree. His forefathers had emigrated from the British Isles, on his father’s side from Ulster and on his mother’s from Scotland, and he was proud of his Ulster-Scots heritage. With an avid interest in journalism, he started his career as editor and then owner of the Xenia News. After working as a noted war correspondent for the Cincinnati Gazette in the early years of the Civil War, he then moved to Washington and became Librarian to the House of Representatives from 1862 to 1865. His journalistic career advanced rapidly, reaching the heights of editor-in– chief of the strongly Republican New York Tribune in 1869 – one of the most powerful journalistic voices in the United States. He married Elizabeth Ogden, daughter of Darius Ogden Mills, a wealthy Californian, in 1881 and they had two children, a son Ogden and a daughter, Jean. Reid’s political interests dominated the next few years and in 1892 he was named as Republican Vice-Presidential nominee to President Benjamin Harrison, 3 but lost the election to the Democrats Grover Cleveland and Adlai Stevenson. But Reid was not a man to accept setbacks and turned his attention to other opportunities – a career as a diplomat. By 1897 he had been appointed Special Ambassador to Great Britain conveying the congratulations of his country to the Queen on her Jubilee, and subsequently attending King Edward’s coronation. After a spell in France as Ambassador from 1889–1902, he ended his travels in London as Ambassador to the Court of St. James in 1905. Reid as vice-presidential candidate (photo © Rookwood, 1982, Wikipedia) The Ambassador at Wrest The Reids arrived in England in June 1905, but shortly after moving into their newly rented London home, Dorchester House in Park Lane (since demolished), concerns that the winter in London would affect his health led them to look for retreat out of the city. In September they took the lease of Wrest Park for £1,500 per year. One biographer writes: ‘They were as often at Wrest as at Dorchester House. The serenity of the place made it an invaluable scene to which to turn from the busy life and the searching fogs of London.’ The Reids are said to have employed 44 servants. A mansion with such an historic past clearly held great appeal and although there was no electricity in the house this apparently did not matter to him. It offered the opportunity to ride and take part in many types of outdoor exercise and was ideal for lavish entertaining. It also had an excellent library, said to contain 4 many rare and first editions, and many paintings by world famous artists hung in the reception rooms. Guests invited from London could either drive (just under 2 hours) or arrive at Flitwick by train (2–3 hours) where they would be met by Reid’s car, painted blue with red coach lines and his monogram on the doors. He often held shooting parties, described in letters to their friends Edith and Theodore Roosevelt. In 1907 he wrote of the total number of pheasants shot on one day to be 1,294, an occasion when Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught was a guest. Ambassador Reid (Photo Beds Archives) ‘Noblesse oblige’ in Silsoe village Although clearly busy with affairs of state, the Reids frequently acted with generosity and apparently real interest in the affairs of Silsoe village and local people, entertaining the schoolchildren on several occasions. We have reports for September 1905 when ‘jugglers and clowns from London greatly amused the guests for more than an hour’ and in December 1905 Mrs Reid gave ‘a monster Christmas tree for the schoolchildren’. In July 1907 the Beds Mercury again reported a school treat, in which the children marched in procession from the school down to the mansion, led by the Luton Red Cross Band (see page 13).