On 16 September I gave a talk for Battersea Society in St Mary's Church, the old parish church of Battersea, by the Thames, the first time the Society had been able to hold a live meeting since the COVID lockdown started in March last year. I talked about people like the St.John family, William Blake,and various vicars. The text is set out in 2 parts on this blog site.
Introduction
I am delighted to be able to give this talk because this historic church opens a window into the complex history of the development of Battersea, people who lived, and the way it illuminates local, regional, national and international events, including Britain’s involvement in slavery. It is one of the few churches that has a very large collection of monuments and memorials which tell us about many of the people who were associated with it particularly through burial. It is not my intention to describe these as you can read about them in:
- Bob Speel’s website St Mary's Church, Battersea and its
Monuments,
- Taylor’s Our Lady of Battersea.
- Church Monuments Gazetteer website
- Survey of Battersea
- Internet, espec. Google Books
The purpose of this talk is to discuss some:
·
of the context about the
development of Battersea
·
aspects of the history of the
Church as a building and its role
·
of the people buried here and
outside in the graveyard
·
of the clergy associated with the
Church
Some of the detail comes from the wide range of resources that are now on the internet, which were not available to Simmons and Taylor, and which are constantly being added to. There is of course not enough time to talk about all the people buried or memorialised here.
The Development of Battersea
Historically Battersea Village developed around the Square, along the High St and Church Rd to this Church and the Manor House next door. Well into the 19th Century Battersea was a rural and market garden area. Developed near the Thames the Village was a backwater for centuries. The riverfront became far more important than the Village because industries that set up there could be serviced from boats and barges.
When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in 1540 the Manor of Battersea passed from Westminster Abbey to the Crown, which let it. In 1625 Sir Oliver St John became the lord of the manor. The St Johns remained as such until 1763 when the rights were sold to the trustees of Charles, who became Earl Spencer.
Battersea Bridge
In the second half of the 18thC Battersea parish’'s population remained steady at between 2,000 and 2,100, living in about 350 homes. The Village had about 123 homes. In 1777 it was estimated that 19% of the Battersea ratepayers were poor. The construction of Battersea Bridge in 1771, funded by a group of investors led by John Spencer began to make it easier to get into Battersea. But even by 1801 the population had not risen much above 2,350.
We do not know that much about the lives of the rural and industrial workers, apart from a suggestion that they were paid lower than elsewhere and were in poverty, and that this is reflected in an estimate that even those who had to pay rates were poor.
The main process of industrialisation and urbanisation of Battersea parish took five decades from 1840, partly stimulated by the development of the railway system through the area from 1838, accompanied by massive building development and increase in population.
With
more and more people in the parish the number needing to be buried increased and
the church yard became full. The last burial here was in 1853. The St.Mary’s
Burial Ground on the corner of Battersea Rise and Bolingbroke Grove was opened
in in 1860 as the parish’s new burial ground and it continued to be used until
the 1960s. As Battersea's population continued to grow a large new cemetery was
opened in Morden.
Battersea saw further major development from the 1920s with the building of the Power Station and Council estates like St. John’s Estate, and the charitable Peabody Estate off Battersea Rise. The late 1950s and 1960s saw the sweeping away of rows of terraced housing due to bomb damage and slum clearance and their replacement by Council estates, especially high-rise ones.
Village Area Redevelopment
After the War the churchyard passed into the control of Battersea Borough Council, becoming public open space with rights reserved to the church. A revised layout was made in 1964. Then in 1971 the Greater London Council proposed a ‘facelift’ in connection with flood defence works.
The GLC also proposed major redevelopment of part of the area including the top end of the High St with Battersea Square. After lobbying by the then Battersea Society it agreed that there were sufficient buildings worth conserving, and excluded them from its plans. This enabled the then Labour controlled Wandsworth Council to designate the Battersea Square Conversation Area in 1972, and has meant that an important part of the historic village remains.
A further new plan by Wandsworth in 1974 was linked with the idea of a riverside walk. Then the site of the old flour mills next to the Church were developed by Richard Rogers & Partners to create the Montevetro Apartments, which physically over dominate the Church.
The OId Church
The original church from the medieval period was replaced in 1777. Many memorials and monuments were saved and installed in the new Church. Let’s look at some of the people involved.
Sir Edward Wynter
The
East India merchant Edward Wynter who settled in Battersea in 1673 buying York
House, the former palace of the Archbishops of York, died in 1685. Over 42
years in the East Indies he had built up a large fortune including when acting
as agent for the East India Company. The Legacies of British Slave ownership
database tells us that Wynter left an unnamed plantation and enslaved people on
Jamaica to his son Edward. This would have made him an early investor in the
slavery business in Jamaica which had only be captured by Oliver Cromwell’s
expeditionary force in 1655. Wynter’s plantation was probably the Hampshire
estate.
His descendent William Wynter owned three lots of land totalling 1,328 acres in 1754. When he died in 1773 he owned 307 enslaved people. His estate was valued at £20,648.72 in Jamaican currency. In his will of 1772 he freed a group of enslaved women and left them some land. He left the rest of his real and personal estate to his son Edward Hampson Wynter. Edward was a signatory of the 1782 address to George III asking for increased military and naval protection of the West Indies.
The St.Johns
One of the early member of the St. John family Sir John was buried here in 1648 with ‘unusual pomp’ involving heralds with one of them saying that he had never seen so many people except at the funeral of one of the blood royal.
Sir Walter St. John, who was born about 1622, was buried here in July 1708. He was a supporter of Parliament in the English Civil War, and related to Oliver Cromwell through marriage. He inherited land in Wiltshire in 1656 becoming the 3rd Baronet St. John of Lidiard Tregoze. He was Wiltshire’s MP from 1656 and then from 1660 to 1700 for Wootton Bassett.
A later St. John married Lady Diana Spencer, a daughter of the third Duke of Marlborough, and sold the manor of Battersea to the trustees of Lord Charles Spencer, who became the first Earl Spencer.
Given the close link with Cromwell can we assume that Sir Walter supported the capture of Jamaica? Members of the family may have already been in the West Indies on Barbados. These included Judge Henry (1687-1719) and three generations of Charles St. John in the 18th/19thCs.
Whether there was a link between them and Sir Walter is not clear. From about 1660 there was a sugar refinery in Battersea processing sugar from Barbados. A sugar house, where molasses were refined, is mentioned in 1670. John Smy(i)th, who had lived on Barbados is mentioned in 1671 as a 'Sugar Refyner’ having been in operation for several years importing sugar from the island. Could he have been processing sugar shipped by the island’s St.Johns. The Survey of Battersea tells us that Smyth’s sons, Allyn and Joshua, carried on the business into the 18thC most likely refining sugar for brewing.
Taylor's Our Lady of Battersea shows no link with St Johns in Barbados. The Legacies British Slave-ownership database tells us that Charles senior was owner of the Content plantation between 1823 and but had sold it. His son Charles junior purchased the Bagatelle estate in 1832 £5,953 from the Chancery. He received £1,359 7s 1d in compensation for 68 enslaved people in 1836. While there was no link between the family and Battersea at the time, it is worth noting that one of the Commissioners deciding on the compensation claims lived in the Village.
Henry St John
Walter’s son Henry was born in October 1652, and succeeded his father as 4th Baronet in 1708, later in July 1716 being created a peer as 1st Viscount St John, elevating him to the House of Lords. He died in 1751 leaving £300 to be buried ‘decently but not splendidly’ here. He left money to a number of servants and £50 each to the Free Church of the Savoy and to Walter St. John’s School founded by his father. He set aside £10,000 in trust, for the use of his daughter and son John.
Henry was a controversial politician during the reigns of Queen Ann. George 1 and II. He was baptised at the Church in 1678. He became a leading politician serving as Secretary of War and Secretary of State. He was one of the architects of the establishment of the South Sea Company to take over the National Debt, and the Peace Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 and then the Assiento Treaty with Spain in 1715 which awarded the contract to the Crown to supply the Spanish colonies with. It was then sub-contracted by the Crown to the South Sea Company which sub-contracted it to the Royal Africa Company. The Crown was entitled to 25% of the profits and in a secret deal 7% of the profits were to go to a financier friend of Henry’s Manual Gillighan.
In a major political disagreement he was exiled to France. After being forgiven he came back in 1743 living in Battersea until his death. A very elderly lady recalled in 1816 that Bolingbroke 'used to rise out every day in his chariot, and had a place patch on his cheek, with a large wart over one of his eyebrows.'
The leading sculptor of his day Roubillac made a monument to him and his wife which is in the Church. The epitaphs on himself and his wife were both written by Bolingbroke, and includes the statement:
‘His
attachment to Queen Anne exposed him to a long and severe persecution; he bore
it with firmness of mind, he passed the latter part of his life at home, the
enemy of no national party, the friend of no faction , distinguished under the
cloud of proscription, which had not been entirely taken off by zeal to
maintain the liberty and to restore the ancient prosperity of Great Britain.’
In May 1842 the Chartist activist John Watkins who lived at Bolingbroke’s former home the Manor House next to the Church, had published in the Chartist newspaper The Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser a sonnet about Bolingbroke stating:
‘Awake, St. John! arise! we need thee now. Come forth ! thy country calls thee lead us on…’It refers to the Roubillac and that says that he was a ‘noble foe’ to ‘vile faction’.
Henry’s daughter Frances married the merchant of James Bull of Clapham to whom another plaque was erected after he died in 1713.
Holles St.John
The memorial to Henry’s youngest son Holles who died aged 28 in 1738, was put up by his sister the Hon. Henrietta Knight. Born in July 1699 she was married to Robert Knight, the 1st and last Earl of Catherlough.
His son John born about 1695 became the 2nd Viscount. He held the office of Comptroller of the Customs
of London in 1721 and 1740, and was MP
for Wootton Bassett between 1727 and 1734. He died in France
in November 1748 and was buried at Lydiard Tregoze.
SirJohn Fleet
On 6 July 1712 Sir John Fleet died in Battersea and was buried under a vault and with a monument by the leading sculptor Roubillac in the church. We know quite a lot about him because of articles in the October 1936 issue of The English Historical Review, and in the History of Parliament, and additional information on The Sugar Refiners and Sugar Bakers Database and found by Wandsworth’s late historian Patrick Loobey.
He may have lived in the parish from 1689, and in 1700 became a trustee of the newly founded Sir Walter St. John’s School. He had had four daughters and one son, who inherited his estate.
Born between July 1646 and July 1647, Fleet served his apprenticeship from December 1659 to become a freeman of the Cooper’s Livery in February 1666/7. He lived on Barbados for sometime as a young man, establishing a family business. Around 1662, he began importing sugar from Barbados. He became a general merchant trading to the American colonies and a sugar baker. He was part owner of a ship trading to the West Indies. In 1688 he became an alderman of the City and was knighted. In 1692 he was elected as City Lord Mayor and switched across to the Grocer’s Company, becoming its master 1693-5. In March 1693 he was elected one of the MPs for the City until 1705, apart two short periods in 1701 and 1702. He was active in the governance of the East India Company from 1691.
His partner in the sugar baking business appears to be that of the Smyths from the 1660s. Insurance records for 1713 and 1715 list two sugar-houses, one a substantial structure built of brick, six storeys high of 5,384 sq. ft. probably sited in York Place.
Baptisms
The parish registers kept in the old Church reveal baptisms of:
·
Mr
Ursel's Black in January 1704.We
do not know who Ursel was
·
Catherine
Collaton, an adult black in September 1753
·
George
Battersea, a black boy aged 16 in March 1756
and the burial of John Juba, described as a black aged 29.
Hugh Morgan
Born in 1530 Morgan was chief apothecary to Queen Elizabeth I from July 1583, dieng in 1613. According to the article Royal Apothecaries of the Tudor Period by Leslie G. Matthews he was a member of the Grocers' Livery Company. He was trusted to be one of those to inspect drugs sold by other apothecary members of the Company in 1564, finding that many drugs were found adulterated or not fit for use and were burnt. He also acted as the Company’s auditor. He was one of several members who had arguments with the Company over formulas for making treacle.
He made enough money to invest in property, a substantial
house and garden in Battersea, where his interest in herbs developed into the growing
of rare specimens, obtaining many specimens of new drugs from Virginia and
becoming the first collector of cacti. He left sums of money to the poor of
several parishes with which he or his wife had been connected, he insisted upon
a series of sermons being preached within a year of his death, and he provided
legacies for the purchase of rings for relatives and friends.
Edmund Burke
The records show that the later polemicist against the French Revolution attended the wedding of John Ridge and Catherine Sedley at St. Mary’s in October 1757. His modern biographers F. P. Lock and Elizabeth Labert have found that he was living in Battersea after his own marriage in March 1757. It is probably safe to assume that he helped arranged for Ridge’s marriage to take place here. Labert shows that they remained in correspondence until at least 1777.
In the 17th/18thCs collections were made nationally for causes of public concern in. Here at St Mary's:
·
nearly
£51 was raised in April 1699 for the persecuted Protestants of Vadois in the
Valley of Piedmont
·
in
1700 for the redemption of English who were slaves in Algiers,
·
nearly
£17 in July 1704 for widows of seamen killed in the great storm of November
1703.
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