The Micheldever, Hampshire branch is one of the largest and most vigourous in the Whatmore tree. A direct line can be traced back to a John Watmore who married an Anne Holland at Micheldever on 5 September 1782, but there were Whatmores there much earlier. Some of the lines of the children of John and Anne have been researched, but not much was known about George, born about 1790, who married Sarah Lavington. I was thus very pleased when Yvonne Capt (nee Watmough) contacted me and offered to send me extracts from her history of George and Sarah and their descendants. I am most grateful to Yvonne for her permission to reproduce these extracts on this blog. 

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East Stratton  Photograph Copyright: Peter Facey   Source: Geograph website and reproduced here in accordance with the terms of the site licence which can be read at this link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Most of the Whatmores came from around Shropshire and Worcestershire but there was another branch of the family, in Hampshire, that goes way back to at least the 17th century.  At this time the name was spelt Wattmer and Wattmore and there were some people of this name who owned property.  Right up to the 1830s, the majority of people could not read or write, so they did not know how to spell their names.  The parish clerk or curate would write the name in the parish registers, as he heard it pronounced.  There were at least ten different ways of writing Whatmore, the most common being Watmore.

 In the parish registers of East Stratton and Micheldever, Hampshire, we can find births, marriages and deaths of our Watmore family.  Thomas, our great-grandfather, was born in 1820 in East Stratton, a village situated a few miles to the north of Winchester.  In those days there were about four hundred inhabitants, mainly agricultural labourers and their families.  His father, George, was born 1791 or 2, in Micheldever, and his mother, Sarah Lavington, was born 1794 in Hursley.  They married in Micheldever in 1817.  Unfortunately, either George was not baptised or they forgot to record his baptism, although in the census records they say he was born in Micheldever, the son of John and Anne  At that time, a John Watmore and his wife Anne at Micheldever were having a child every 2 or 3 years and it is recorded that they had two sons by the name of Charles.  There was no burial recorded for either of them, so that rules out one of them dying and the next son being given the same name.  One was born in the year 1792 when George is supposed to have been born, perhaps the parish clerk or curate wrote down the wrong name. 

The maiden name of John Watmore’s wife Anne was Holland, and the story that the Watmores had Dutch blood most likely was a misunderstanding.  There are still questions and mysteries concerning the Whatmore family that have not been solved.  I have had the professional help of Dolina Clarke, of the Hampshire Genealogical Society.  She has sifted through all the possible information available and discovered some very interesting details concerning our ancestors.  It seems to me that I have followed in Uncle Edgar’s footsteps, trying to find out who the Whatmores were and what sort of lives they led. 

This part of Hampshire, even today, is off the beaten track.  There is one bus, on Mondays, that passes near East Stratton and the train station called Micheldever is three miles from the village of that name.  It is charming and very peaceful countryside.  There are old cottages, lovingly restored, friendly pubs and quaint churches.  The land around the village of East Stratton, from 1801 onwards, belonged to the Baring family.  John Baring came to England from Bremen in Germany early in the 18th century and made a fortune manufacturing cloth at a place called Larkbear near Exeter.  Thereafter they became bankers and politicians and bought several thousand acres of land round Micheldever and East Stratton from the Russell family.  Some sources say the 16th-century church and some houses were destroyed by fire, others say the owners of the land pulled them down so as to extend the deer park.  The present church in the village was rebuilt 1873 in the style of the 15th century by the Baring family.  The area around the neighbouring hamlet of Woodmancote belonged to Winchester College, which leased the farmland to tenant farmers. Although the diarist William Cobbett, travelling through Hampshire in 1830, said that the children were being taught to read at that time by Lady Baring, it was only in 1850 that a school was built in East Stratton.

 From the years 1800 leading up to 1830, when Thomas was a ten-year-old, there was great hardship and discontent.  There are letters between members of the Baring family that indicate they were most upset about the way the agricultural labourers were behaving.  They felt they had been good employers and done a lot for the people who worked on their lands.  At that time, the dandy King George lV was spending enormous amounts of money on his palaces and other extravagances which showed that he was certainly not in contact with his people or interested in government.  There had been bad harvests, a massive population increase, the invention of threshing machines and other agricultural changes that were the main cause of the terrible poverty.  Led by articulate, literate and religious local tradesmen and yeoman farmers, and supported by smaller landowners like William Cobbett, the people decided to act. 

In 1827 a meeting of the Vestry, with Sir Thomas Baring as chairman, decided ‘that allowances paid hitherto should be reduced’.  Henceforward the poor would be relieved in a poorhouse managed by a salaried governor.  As a consequence, Issac Hill the elder, who featured very prominently in the disturbances around Micheldever, had his allowance withdrawn and the number of those receiving relief was halved. It was decided at a meeting of Dever Valley labourers and tradesmen, on 29th September 1830, to compose a petition to the King.  They attributed their hunger, misery and distress to the people’s lack of representation in a Parliament that was filled with men ‘in whom the people have no confidence’.  The petitioners had an unambiguous perception of the purpose and duties of the King and Government.  The petition, a lengthy, sophisticated piece of writing, was uncompromising in its social and political radicalism.  James Mason of Bellington carried the petition, on foot, a distance of 60 miles, to Brighton, in the belief that it was every man’s right to petition the sovereign for a redress of grievances. Unfortunately King William IV, who had only been on the throne for three months, did not get to read the petition or was not interested. 

 On 19th November 1830 after a lot of discussions between workers, farmers and landowners, the riots began.  The main target was to destroy the threshing machines but there were also fires and demands for immediate financial assistance.  The whole protest was relatively orderly with the leaders doing their best to keep things under control.  The disturbances had alarmed the ruling landowners, many of whom genuinely feared a revolution and social upheaval. So the inevitable happened and there were a few men hung and over fifty sent as convicts to Australia. From Micheldever, David Champ was transported and Henry Cook was hanged.  That was in Hampshire alone.  In Kent, where the ‘Swing’ riots began, and in other counties, there were a lot more people punished. 

There is written evidence to prove that there were Watmores who also took part in the disturbances.  It would seem that George Watmore was one of them:                        

Information from the Calendar of Prisoners from the Quarter Sessions. ‘George Watmore, aged 37, was convicted at Michaelmas Session, 20th October 1829 for 8 calendar months’ imprisonment to hard labour and the last 14 days in solitary confinement’.

 Seventeen years later, perhaps because his family was hungry, he was caught out again: 

‘George Watmore, age 54.  Committed 20th September 1845, by W.W.Bulpett esq. charged with having on this 20th day of September, at the parish of Micheldever, feloniously stolen one gallon and a half of oats, the property of Sir Thomas Baring.  3 calendar months’ imprisonment to hard labour at the Bridewell’. 

The original Bridewell prison, in Devizes, was closed in 1836 but they started calling other prisons Bridewells. 

So how did his family get on when he was in prison?  Well, we can see from the burial register that son David, born 1828, died when he was four years old and Samuel, born in 1830, died in the same year.  His wife Sarah was probably a strong and enterprising woman because, in spite of giving birth twelve times, she lived to be eighty-nine.  In the census returns we learn that she had an annuity in her old age.  This may mean she had had a regular job as a servant and was appreciated enough to be given a pension.  In spite of being poor and living through times of great hardship, this family does not appear on the lists of parishioners who received parish relief. 

Their three daughters Harriet, Jane and Elizabeth seem to have married quite well.  From the census returns we learn that Harriet married Richard Myrtle, who was working as an agricultural labourer in East Stratton but later became a self-employed woodman in Steventon (Jane Austin’s birthplace).  After 1871, mother Sarah went to live with Harriet’s family till she died.  Jane married William Gibson of High Wycombe.  At the time of marriage he was a gardener but later became a cattle dealer and finally a farm bailiff.  Elizabeth had an illegitimate son, called Frederick, when she was twenty-two.  But a few years later she married a plumber from Sussex called George Restell, and lived in Petersfield.  All three daughters had only about five children each.

 Son George, born 1826, was in Winchester in 1861 but moved to New Arlesford.  In 1891 he was an agricultural labourer but also helped his wife run a public house.  We find John, born 1831, living with his sister Jane twenty years later, but after that he disappears from the records until the Census of 1901 where there is a John, of the right age, working as a gardener in East Stratton. 

William, born 1833, was ‘at home’ in the Census of 1851, which probably meant unemployed.  After that, there has been no record found as to what happened to him. Many young men at this time were encouraged to emigrate to the colonies.  

Daughter Mary, born 1824, married William Godwin of Twyford at Winchester in 1844.  Her cousin Rebecca Steele (daughter of Sarah Watmore, born 1789, who was probably George’s sister) married William Hall on the same day.  Perhaps it was a joint wedding.  After the marriage Rebecca had a traditional family life but Mary had what is now called a ‘patchwork family’.  What happened we can follow in the census returns:      

 1851  Mary and William are living in Twyford.  They have a son called William, aged  six and born in East Stratton, and they are looking after William’s nephew,                       born on the Isle of Wight.  Father William is a pauper.          

1861   Son William is a ‘plough boy’.  Father William is an ‘almsman’.  They have a  three-year-old daughter called Jane, the nephew has gone and there is a      lodger  called  John Carter, a bricklayer, who is living with them.           

1871   Father William died in 1864 of carditis (a chronic heart condition that he had  suffered from for 18 years) attended by Sarah Gardener.  There is a Henry                       Carter living with them, perhaps the father of John Carter who is still in  residence.          

1881   Henry Carter has gone.  Jane, who is unmarried, has a son called Lloyd W. Godwin.  John Carter is still with them and Mary is working as a housekeeper.          

1891   Mary died in 1888.  Jane has married Thomas Hammerton, a painter, and lives elsewhere in Twyford with her family and brother William, who is a gardener.                     John Carter is still living in the old home with Lloyd, who he says, is his  nephew. 

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 Turning now to my great grandfather Thomas, he was born on the 29th October 1820.  George and Sarah’s first child was also called Thomas but he died aged eighteen months, so the second son was given the same name.  Altogether there were twelve children but four of the boys died in infancy.  Thomas grew up to be strong and healthy.  He did an apprenticeship as an organ builder, which was unusual for a young man from a farming community.  On his son Thomas’s marriage certificate, it says his father was an ‘organ metal pipe maker’. Sometime before the 1851 Census, he had forsaken the beautiful Hampshire countryside for a life in the city. 

London was growing rapidly and the building of the railways and the magnificent stations was in progress.  In the census returns, taken every ten years, Thomas is described as an excavator, a railway labourer, a general labourer and, in the last year of his life, a watchman.  In 1865, the Metropolitan Board of Works specified that common labourers should earn 3s. to 3s.6d. a day and excavators wearing their own ‘long water boots’ should earn  4s. 6d. for a ten-hour day.  He settled in Somers Town, in the parish of St. Pancras, and stayed there till the end of his life.  Maybe his priority was to be in a place where he could be sure of not being without work, perhaps having seen hopeless poverty, caused by unemployment.  He was also very proud to be part of a workforce that constructed such magnificent works of architecture and invention. 

During Queen Victoria’s reign, London was the hub of the Empire and 1851 was the year that the Great Exhibition took place.  The Crystal Palace was erected in Hyde Park and in spite of the noise, dirt and working class poverty, London was an exciting place to be. 

In the area where Thomas and his family lived were St. Pancras, Kings Cross and Euston railway stations.  The steam locomotives all burnt enormous quantities of coal.  In addition, it was used to heat the buildings and produce energy for machines of all kinds.  This meant that the air was extremely polluted and caused many people to suffer from respiratory problems. 

In the Census of 1851, we find Thomas living with Harriet, daughter Eleanor and baby son William.  Seems like a normal family but there are out-of-the-ordinary details that, so far, have not been explained.  Firstly, although on the census forms it says Harriet is Thomas’s wife, they only got married in 1854.  Secondly, Eleanor, it says, was born a British citizen, in France in 1841.  I found a birth entry for William George Whatmore about the time the 1851 Census was taken but found no death certificate for him, although he was no longer with his family 10 years later.  Harriet was born in 1812, in Rotherwick, a small village not far from Basingstoke.  She was the eldest of eleven children, born to Daniel Grace and Ann Cock.  Her father was an agricultural labourer but it is possible that as a young man he helped build the Basingstoke Canal, as he lived in North Warnborough, very near the canal.  The boys may have had some schooling but Harriet could not sign her name.  She ‘made her mark’ on her wedding certificate.

 By 1861, Eleanor had left home and was working as a servant, in the household of a clergyman and his family in Bloomsbury.  Thomas and Harriet had moved from Suffolk Street, which was right near the gas works and the railway station, to West Street and probably better accommodation.  Their marriage had taken place in St. Pancras Old Church, which is believed to be London’s oldest church, having foundations that go back to 314 A.D. Harriet’s brother George (who was doing very nicely as a hop and malt distributor for London) and his wife Sarah were the witnesses.  Maybe they were also instrumental in getting Thomas, finally, to marry Harriet.  Sadly, in 1864 Harriet died. 

A year later Thomas married Elizabeth Grace, Harriet’s younger sister.  She had been working as a housemaid, first in Eversley, Hampshire and then in Hove, Sussex.  She was eight years younger than Thomas, who at that time was forty-five.  However, there was a serious problem because, between 1835 and 1907, it was illegal for a man to marry his deceased wife’s sister.  The reason was that in the Old Testament it says: ‘If a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an impurity: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness, they shall be childless’ (Leviticus xx, 21).  The medieval church interpreted it to mean that people should not marry their deceased spouse’s sibling at all.  There were, even so, quite a lot of these marriages that took place.  The only problem was, if someone complained it could be annulled and that usually had to do with inheritance.

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Thomas and Elizabeth also got married in the parish church of St. Pancras.  Since Elizabeth was probably ‘in the family way’ at the time, the priest was of an understanding disposition and there was no likelihood of inheritance problems, everything went smoothly.  By 1871, they had four children: Thomas, four, Harriet, three, and Grace and Charles (probably twins), one year old.  Charles died as an infant but in 1875 Edgar, my grandfather, made his entry into the world.  They had by this time moved from West Street to Beale’s Place, Brill Row (‘the Brill’ was a market in the vicinity).  Perhaps it was more spacious. The children probably had the opportunity to get a reasonably good schooling. 

At fifteen, son Thomas was working as a type founder, which would have meant moulding the metal letter blocks, for printing.  After his parents died, he moved to Poplar, Wandsworth, where he worked as a packer.  In 1904, aged thirty-seven, he married Eliza Randall, who was a cook employed by Lionel Douglas, a hairdresser and perfumer (Census 1901). Harriet (who was known as Hetty) married another packer called Alfred Mackie, who worked for a printer.  They lived, at the time of the 1901 Census, with their two daughters at: 43, Block C, of the Polygon Buildings, St. Pancras, a very modern group of apartment blocks. 

Harriet’s sister Grace never married but worked in a cigarette factory, at first as a ‘tobacco stripper’ (Census 1901).  Uncle Ben has fond memories of being taken out by his aunt Grace in his pushchair and being bought nice clothes.  

 From what we have heard, Edgar had five years’ schooling and left home when he was thirteen years old, lived in ‘digs’ and worked on the railways.  Why he stopped living with his parents has not been explained.  His mother Elizabeth died of bronchitis in 1892, aged sixty-four and cared for by her husband at home. 

Thomas lived for another year with his son Thomas, in Cromer Street, Kentish Town, where he was watchman.  He died in the St. Pancras Infirmary, of the same illness as his wife.  We know quite a lot about the trials and tribulations of their lives.  It would seem to us that they suffered great hardships and lacked all the comforts that we are accustomed to.  They probably believed in God’s will and were thankful for what they had.  Maybe they had quite a lot of fun on the way, keeping up with all their relatives, whom they could visit, thanks to the railways.  Regents Park was quite near where they lived and there were all sorts of entertainments and wonderful things to see in that vibrant metropolis called London.