The change from Devonshire to Sussex does not appear to have done Mr Harrod the good he hoped it would. As a matter of fact his health became worse after leaving Devon, and he passed peacefully away on Tuesday at the Grosvenor Hotel, London …
We understand that Mr Harrod had taken a house in the Minehead district for September and October, and was looking forward to a pleasant reunion of the members of his family.
Once again, confirmation of the family’s visits to north Devon and Somerset after they had left Morebath, and many further accounts repeat the same respect and opinion.
So, that was the end of my maternal great-grandfather; Charles Digby Harrod was a remarkable man.
Rather surprisingly, Charles Digby seemed to be as rich at his death as he was when he retired. He left an estate valued at £147,494 gross, net £103,117 (about £9 million in today’s spending power). His will, dated 7 December 1904, appointed wife Caroline, and children, Henry Herbert and Emily Maud, as executors. All the personal and household effects were left to Caroline, together with £1,000, (about £90,000 today). To Henry Herbert, he left £2,000. To his five unmarried daughters, Emily, Amy, Beatrice, Olive and Eva, he left £1,000 on the day of their respective marriages during Caroline’s life, or at Caroline’s death if they were still not married at that date.
The income from the residuary trust estate was to be divided as two-fifths to Caroline, and the remaining three-fifths divided equally between the eight children. The net residuary estate would have been £95,000, so the income would have been substantial. To try to make some sense of this in today’s value apparently 6 per cent was a reasonable expected return on an investment in 1900, and inflation was a staggering zero per cent, so it is possible to calculate how much this would be today. Caroline would have had an annual income in excess of £200,000 and the children would each have had an annual income of about £40,000.
After Caroline’s death, the residuary trust was then to be divided into eight equal shares. All eight children were alive in 1922 when Caroline died, so would have received about £12,000 each (about £600,000 today). Caroline Harrod decided to sell up and leave Culverwood sometime fairly soon after Charles Digby’s death, although the date is not known exactly. She moved to Tunbridge Wells.
On 21 October 1905, there was a report of the Waldron Parish Council meeting: ‘Note of condolence was sent to the widow of Mr C.D. Harrod who had served for a considerable time on the council.’ On 18 August 1906 it was noted in the parish records, under Cross in Hand, that ‘The death of Mr C.D. Harrod has deprived the children of their annual treat.’ I think it is certain, therefore, that the remaining Harrod family had moved from the area by that date, a year after Charles’s death, as I suspect Caroline would have otherwise honoured the school tradition started by her husband and held the annual garden party.
I think that Caroline probably moved to the Red House, Bishops Down, Tunbridge Wells, sometime in the early months of 1906, a few months after she was widowed. Tunbridge Wells is about 12 miles to the north of Cross in Hand, on the A267. The valuation records for the Red House show that Caroline took the house on a twenty-one-year lease starting in 1908. The rent was £230 per year. She may have rented temporarily before that.
In 2011, Mobbs Pitcher, the then occupier of Culverwood, responded to my appeal for information and sent me a copy of the conveyance document for the sale of Culverwood to ‘Arthur William Ranken Esquire’. It was dated 8 January 1906, and signed by Caroline, Henry Herbert and Emily Maud, the other executors. The witness was Ethel Lungley, a housemaid at the Red House.
The Conveyance shows that the sale price for Culverwood was £13,500 (£775,000 today). The estate consisted of ‘76 acres, 2 roods and 12 perches, with 2 acres, 2 roods and 29 perches on the west side of the Tunbridge–Hailsham road containing a public right of way’. For Caroline it would have been a good move, it was just a little closer to London, and to her two married daughters who were living in Croydon and Penge. Henry Herbert had been living independently in central London since the turn of the century, so Caroline would have moved to Tunbridge with her five as yet unmarried daughters.
Caroline Harrod died in 1922 in a nursing home in Tunbridge Wells. She was aged 81. Her cause of death was given as ‘Cerebral Thrombosis 6 months, Cardiac Failure 2 months’. So, six months before her death she had had a stroke, and two months before her death she had developed heart failure and, one presumes, died of this.
The executors to her will were her son, Henry Herbert Harrod; her son-in-law Herbert James Martin, a solicitor; and another son-in-law, Arthur James Weightman. Her personal estate was not huge – it was £10,944 11s 9d, or about £450,000 in today’s value. The trust money would not form any part of her estate.
Caroline’s death was the end of any generation of Harrods who were involved with the store. They had built a great foundation for some very competent people who continued to create the magnificent store we know today.
Any story about Charles Digby would not be complete without some details of his children. It is remarkable that there was no one in the family who was keen to take on and continue the family business. Having seven daughters and a single son who had no interest in the business must have been one of the reasons that led Charles Digby to make the decision to retire.
I have collected a large amount of information about Charles and Caroline’s children, their families and descendants. I have tried to pick out some of the more interesting parts of it below. Sadly, there are very few photographs remaining in family hands. The Harrods Photographers’ Archives seem to have disappeared. I will list his children in their birth order.
FANNY ELIZABETH HARROD AND THE CONDER FAMILY
Fanny Elizabeth was born in 1865, above the shop at 105 Brompton Road. The sign of a true Harrod she, like her father before her, was born within the sound of the cash registers! Fanny was the eldest of the seven daughters.
She married Eustace Reynolds Conder at the Congregational Church, Upper Norwood, in 1887. She was 22 years old, and he was 29. The marriage was celebrated by the Reverend George Martin, who was to become her sister Grace’s father-in-law two years later. It is not known whether the family ever worshipped at this church, but Fanny and Eustace Reynolds may have met at church, and the Conders were staunchly Nonconformist.
The Conder family lived in Forest Hill in South London, about a mile away as the crow flies from Armitage Lodge in Sydenham, making a church meeting possible. It also suggests, as seen earlier, that at times Charles Digby hedged his bets and worshipped in both Nonconformist and Church of England churches.
The more prominent Conders are Josiah Conder, a bookseller, publisher and author; Francis Roubiliac Conder, the first son of Josiah, who was a civil engineer and railway contractor in Britain, Ireland, France and Italy; the Reverend Eustace Rogers Conder, the second son of Josiah, one of a number of Nonconformist preachers who contributed to the Leeds Congregational Hymn Book; Josiah Conder, a grandson of Josiah, who was an Anglo-Japanese landscape architect; Major Claude Reignier Conder, the son of Francis Roubiliac, an explorer, mapmaker and biblical and Altaic scholar; Charles Conder, the British/Australian artist, who was born in India, worked in Australia and then France, where he was a contemporary of Lautrec – he died in an asylum in England from tertiary syphilis; and, more recently, Peter Conder, the naturalist and president of the RSPB; and Neville Conder, his brother, an architect.
In total numbers they are small family – there were 264 in the 1881 census, mostly in Northumbria, Lancashire, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, and still only 318 in 1998.
The Conders have been very well researched by various members of the family. I have contacted many descendants: firstly Peter and Neville Conder, who were the grandsons of Eustace and Fanny, then later Jay Conder, who organised a reunion of all the branches of the Conder family in 2000. He told me:
Neville and I are descendants of different branches of the family. We have to go 11 generations back to get to our
common ancestors. Neville’s line stems from an Adam Conder, born around 1520, who lived in a farmhouse near Kendal, on Westmoreland, and my line stems from his brother Richard. [The father of Richard and Adam was an Edward Conder, born about 1486. He was a Yeoman from Kirby Lonsdale in Westmoreland, and fought at Flodden Field in 1513 under Stanley. He lived for many years after and died aged 56.] Neville’s Conders moved to Leeds and thence to Essex and London. My line remained northerners, continuing to live in the house named Terry Bank for 500 years. For a few generations my lot farmed in Dentdale, but when the primogeniture line of Terry Bank Conders faded out, it was passed to my father.
Fanny’s husband, known as Rennie, was the first child and only son of the Reverend George William Conder. George Conder was born in his father’s shop in Hitchin in 1821. His biographer, Edward Miall described a setback in early life:
He must have been endowed with a strong natural constitution, seeing that a course of medical treatment, probably to a great extent unnecessary, certainly injudicious and severe, during the greater part of his childhood, although it left behind it deep and indelible traces in after life, did not prevent the development of a fairly manly and vigorous frame.
Photographs of him, albeit in later life, confirm the ‘manly and vigorous frame’. Like us all in later life, it was not quite as ‘manly and vigorous’ as it had once been.
His father George had a thriving drapery business in Hitchin. Nearing retirement he was persuaded by his future son-in-law, Wilhelm Bremer, a shipbroker’s merchant, to move to Hull and put his money into shipping. His grandson Rennie recorded that he lost all his money in this enterprise as a result of the Crimean War. By 1871, widowed and living on a small annuity, he moved further south to live with his son.
George’s only son, George William Conder, attended the grammar school in Hitchin and did well enough for the principal to urge his parents, backed by an offer of liberal assistance, to educate him for holy orders. His biography describes his attributes, ‘The extraordinary quickness with which he mastered the rudimentary knowledge usually accessible in such institutions etc … ’, and his reaction, ‘The advice was in accord with neither their judgement nor his own tastes.’
George and his parents initially ignored this advice and determined that he would follow his father into the drapery trade. It was whilst George was apprenticed to a firm of silk merchants, Morrisons in the City of London, that he attended the Kings Weigh House, a local Congregational church. Originally a seventeenth-century weighing house for taxation purposes, it was rebuilt after the Great Fire. The last site of the church is now occupied by the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral.
George was an active worker in its school, the pupils of which were from some of the poorest areas. Under the influence of its famous minister, the Reverend Thomas Binney, who was not slow to discern George’s capabilities, he decided to enter the ministry. Quoting again from the biography:
His heart began to yearn after the ministry of the Word. His desire became so urgent, and was so persistently expressed, that his father’s not unnatural reluctance to assent to so great a change in the direction of his son’s future career was at length overcome.
Whilst working at Highbury College in 1845, George was invited to become the assistant to Reverend Judson at the Independent Chapel, High Wycombe. It was there that he met his wife, Maria Swallow. George William and Maria married in 1847 and ‘went forth and multiplied’ – eight times altogether.
After another post in the Isle of Wight, he was asked in 1849 if he would take up a post at the Belgrave Chapel, Leeds, to succeed the Reverend William Winter Hamilton, a noted preacher of those days. This was a huge compliment for a man of his comparative youth and inexperience. He remained there for thirteen years and became a legend. His teaching was evangelical and used rich illustrations and analogies. He wrote a great deal, published sermons, collated religious literature and was heavily involved in various charitable causes. In 1853, he assisted in compiling the Leeds Hymn Book, as it became known.
His preaching was fearless and renowned, a real fire and brimstone style. He wrote his sermons in shorthand which, as Edward Miall said, ‘he read with surprising facility, and with fervent and appropriate emphasis. Not that he needed to confine himself exclusively to what he had written. When the fire burned within him, his utterance at times soared above all trammels.’
In 1864, shortly after the birth of their last child, George was beginning to feel the strain – not surprising in view of his energetic and enthusiastic involvement in so many ventures. He moved to what he thought might be a less arduous position at Cheetham Hill Church, Manchester. During his stay here, his eldest daughter Lucy died, aged 13. This loss devastated him. He lost heart and ran out of steam.
At length, George felt he was not suited to the damp and pollution and in 1870 he moved south to a small church in Forest Hill, close to some family and friends. It was there that he was to see out his days, and it was there that his son Eustace Reynolds would meet Fanny Elizabeth Harrod.
Whilst living in Forest Hill, George had a second wind and continued travelling extensively to give religious lectures. In 1871, whilst in Malvern, he wrote a postcard-letter to his youngest daughter, Florence. It is in rhyme:
Wednesday Afternoon.
Dear little Miss Florence, I hope you are well,
This letter from Pa comes merely to tell
of his journey safe and arrival at Stroud,
Where the plaudits last night were both long and loud.
As you know, I’ve to lecture at Worcester tonight
Outed as Malvern is only a wee to the right
off the proper straight road I’ve just turned aside
Not more than an hour or two here to abide.
I’ve climbed up yon hill – today covered with snow
And had on the top a magnificent blow,
And the view! – I have hardly seen any so grand
And the wind was so strong that I hardly could stand.
And now I am sitting here waiting for dinner
For fear that my walk should have made me much thinner
Tell ma that at Worcester it isn’t the Bell
But the ‘Star’ is the name of the proper hotel.
But I’ll call in the morning and ask at the Post
Office – take care that the letters ain’t lost.
And have ’em sent on in the course of the day
To Cardiff – the next place whereat I must stay.
The salmon’s a broiling – the chops are a frying
I’m hungry and thirsty and time is a flying
So I beg you’ll accept these short lines from Papa –
My respects to the fleas, and my love to Ma.
GWC March 15 1871
Tragically, in 1874 George died suddenly of scarlet fever at the Hermitage, Forest Hill, aged 52 years. He had caught the disease from that same daughter, Florence, who was then aged 11. He had seemed to be making a good recovery, and then relapsed; Florence recovered. He had predeceased his father by three years. Edward Miall’s version of the event is worth quoting, ‘… to the inexpressible grief of his little flock, he received his Master’s call to the “everlasting rest”.’
Eustace Reynolds Conder, who married Fanny Harrod, was known as Rennie and spent most of his working life in a shipbrokers’ office, initially as a clerk, later as a manager. Rennie and Fanny had five children, all born in Croydon. Two of them died in childhood.
One grandson, Peter, the son of Rennie and Fanny’s eldest, Jack, had an interesting Second World War. He developed an interest in birdwatching at school in Cranleigh. After capture at Dunkirk, in captivity he spent most of his time birdwatching, a cover whilst tracking the movements of the German guards prior to escape attempts. After the war, he later went on to be director of the RSPB. Peter’s history has been well documented by his daughter, Sarah, and is available elsewhere.
Jack and Edna’s other two children also led intere
sting lives. Their daughter Natalie married Vic Oliver, the entertainer prominent during and after the Second World War, and their third child, Neville, became an outstanding and acclaimed architect.
Fanny died in a home in Surrey in 1949, aged 84. Her husband Rennie outlived her by four years, dying in 1953, aged 95.
GRACE MIRIAM HARROD AND THE MARTINS
Grace Miriam was the second daughter of Charles Digby and Caroline Harrod. She was born in 1866 in Brompton Road. The family moved to Hill Street when Grace was about 3 years old.
In 1881, aged 14, she was staying with her younger sister, Emily, at Hill View Lodge, Dartmouth Hill, at the home of her maternal grandmother, Caroline Jones (previously Godsmark, née Kibble). By 1889 when Grace got married, aged 22, the family were living at Evelyn Terrace.
She married Herbert James Martin, a solicitor. He was 26 years old and had been born in Deptford. The ceremony took place in the Congregational Kensington Chapel, Allen Street, just south of Kensington High Street, and the service was conducted by Herbert’s father, the Reverend George Martin. The two eldest daughters of Charles Digby Harrod had both married the sons of Nonconformist ministers.
Herbert Martin was the fourth son of the Reverend George Martin and Sophia Davis, both Londoners. He was known to the family as Bertie. There were eleven children altogether in the family. George Martin was the independent minister at Lewisham High Road Congregational Church.
I was helped with Martin family history by Deborah Martin, a descendant of William Carson Martin. He was one of Herbert Martin’s uncles, and had emigrated to Australia with his wife and children. Deborah has supplied many letters written by relatives in England to family in Australia between 1850 and 1903, which illuminate the family life in the 1800s.
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