Dorset Council has recently bought the former St Mary’s School for £10.05 million. Though described as Jacobean in style, Coombe House is not regarded as an historic building. It was built in 1886 (architect E.T. White) about a mile to the east of Shaftesbury, just inside Wiltshire, for Mark Hanbury Beaufoy (1854-1922), a wealthy vinegar manufacturer whose factory and main residence were in South Lambeth, London. The Beaufoy company had been founded in the 18th century by his great-grandfather, another Mark, on a site later occupied by Waterloo Bridge. Until the advent of refrigeration, vinegar was much in demand for food preservation, and in 1881 the Beaufoy works employed 125, producing 790,096 gallons of vinegar in 1898.

M. H. Beaufoy was regarded as an enlightened employer, who supported the campaign for an 8 hour working day and introduced a 45 hour week. In 1881 he chaired a meeting which founded The Church of England Central Society for Providing Homes for Waifs and Strays, later to evolve into The Children’s Society. He sat as Liberal MP for Kennington in Lambeth from 1889 to 1895, and Hansard records that in July 1889 he asked the Home Secretary whether he was aware that “a man was charged at Leman Street Police Station with having assaulted a woman by dragging her to the ground by her hair and stabbing or attempting to stab her with a knife, but was subsequently discharged without any effort having been made to find the woman.” Clearly he was concerned that an opportunity had been missed in the hunt for Jack the Ripper.

The youthful Mark was a talented footballer. This was the heyday of amateur sportsmen of independent means. He played mainly as an outside right for Eton College, Cambridge University, and Surrey, and was the member of an FA Cup Final winning team in 1879, when Old Etonians beat Clapham Rovers 1-0.

Another of Mark’s favourite pastimes was game shooting. This was the attraction of Coombe House, surrounded by 1500 acres of land ideal for pheasant shooting, with a further 500 acres being rented in the vicinity of Ashmore. Some serious safety advice was addressed to his fifteen-year-old eldest son, Henry Mark Beaufoy:

If a sportsman true you’d be

Listen carefully to me

Never, never let your gun

Pointed be at anyone.

That it may unloaded be

Matters not the least to me.

Sixteen indoor servants were employed at Coombe House, and presumably at least as many on the estate. The Beaufoy Family’s private library, which included a Shakespeare First Folio bought in 1851 and Dr Samuel Johnson’s armchair acquired in 1859, was moved to Coombe House in 1909, though the First Folio was sold in 1912. The south wing was enlarged to create a ballroom to celebrate the marriage of daughter Margaret Hilda at much the same time.

Mark Hanbury Beaufoy was chairman of The Kennel Club from 1920 until his death in 1922. The estate was sold in 1930, with Coombe House turned into a luxury hotel, owned in 1935 by a Mr and Mrs Whitaker, and in 1939 by S. Wormald. In 1943 it became a USAAF Rest Home for American bomber crews based in the UK. The last of the Beaufoys involved in the vinegar business, George Maurice, was killed when a Luftwaffe bomb fell on the Lambeth works in 1941. The Beaufoy brand was phased out after 1961, while the factory was converted into upmarket housing. Its white cupola can still be seen from trains approaching Vauxhall Station from the south-west.

Most recently Coombe House has been part of the complex of St Mary’s independent school, which closed in 2020. The sisters of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary bought the house in 1945 and opened a school for boarding and day girls, gradually adding to the facilities. Dorset Council has acquired the site with a view to making better provision for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities, who might otherwise have to be accommodated much further afield. The views of Dorset residents and other interest groups were being sought until 18 March 2021 at dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/st-marys-survey

The photographs of Coombe House are from Gold Hill Museum’s Tyler Collection.

On 27 January 1921 Sir Merton Russell-Cotes died. In the course of a long and colourful life he had risen from humble beginnings to possess a fortune (most of which was given away to charitable causes), a flagship Bournemouth hotel, a significant art collection which filled a purpose-built clifftop villa, a knighthood, and a double-barrelled surname. In 1896 he had secured a lease on the elevated site for a new house, East Cliff Hall. In appearance this was an eccentric fusion, in his own words, of “Renaissance, Italian and old Scottish baronial styles.” Only the top storey was visible from the road and entrance level, while three storeys nestled into the cliff and commanded superb sea views. Visitors descended into the double-height Main Hall, which was overlooked on all four sides by a balcony. Statuary and a mosaic fountain caught the eye in the Hall, while the balcony walls were covered with paintings. Rooms off the balcony were dedicated to Japanese artworks – 100 packing cases of artefacts had been brought back from Japan in 1885 – and to memorabilia associated with the famous actor Sir Henry Irving. In 1907, at a civic lunch held to celebrate the opening of the undercliff promenade for which Merton had campaigned for 30 years, the sensational announcement was made that East Cliff Hall and its art collection would be gifted to the town of Bournemouth. Henceforth it would be known as The Russell Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, though Merton and his wife Annie would continue to reside there during their lifetimes. By the time Annie died in April 1920, she and her husband had funded three additional galleries and the salary of a curator.

Merton bought the lease of the Bath Hotel in 1876. He was the third son (born 1835) of a Wolverhampton wholesale ironmonger, Samuel Coates. Merton’s middle name was probably a tribute to Lord John Russell, something of a local Midlands hero for his championing of the 1832 Reform Act, and was never hyphenated during most of his lifetime. He seems to have been a commercial traveller in cotton goods, though one also interested in buying and selling contemporary British art. He acquired experience of the hotel trade in Glasgow, in partnership with his sister Clara, and renamed the Royal Hanover Hotel, off George Square, on the strength of a visit by a great-grandson of Charles X of France. In fact Merton’s great talents lay in marketing, networking, and self-promotion. The Bath became the Royal Bath Hotel because the Prince of Wales, aged 14, stayed for one night in 1856, and was virtually rebuilt in Loire Valley chateau style in 1877. Merton knew the power of celebrity and ensured that the Royal Bath could provide the luxury expected by an upmarket clientele. In the early 1890’s this included Prince Albert of Belgium, conductor Sir Charles Halle, Oscar Wilde before his fall from grace, and Henry Irving, whom Merton claimed as a special friend.

In 1894 Merton served as one of the early Mayors of the newly incorporated Borough of Bournemouth. He was not an elected Councillor and may have regretted accepting the honour after the Council reversed his attempt to block a right of way passing between the Royal Bath and three adjoining houses to which he held the leases. By 1908 this furore was long-forgotten when the Russell Cotes received the Freedom of the Borough, and few begrudged a knighthood for Merton in 1909. It may have been references in the press to “Sir Russell Cotes” which led to the adoption of the hyphen.

Merton Russell-Cotes was to have been the subject of The Shaftesbury & District Historical Society’s January 2021 lecture by David Beardsley. This has been postponed until Tuesday 04 January 2022.

This blog was inspired by a reading of ‘The Art of a Salesman: The Life of Sir Merton Russell-Cotes’ published by Paul Whittaker in 2019. Paul maintains a blog about Merton Russell-Cotes at Sketches of a Salesman.

A newly-minted blue plaque, the first to recognise the life and contribution of a Shaftesbury individual, has been delivered to Gold Hill Museum, the HQ of The Shaftesbury & District Historical Society. John Rutter, the subject of the plaque, was a doughty campaigner for the extension of democracy, the abolition of slavery, and the improvement of local education and living conditions during the first half of the nineteenth century. His bookseller’s, stationery and printing shop was at Number 2, The Commons, where the plaque will be installed in August 2021. The S&DHS project has been spearheaded by Honorary President Sir John Stuttard, whose book The Turbulent Quaker of Shaftesbury (2018), did much to raise awareness of John Rutter’s reformist pedigree. A generous grant towards half the cost has been pledged by Shaftesbury Town Council.

In the Winter 2020-21 Byzant, the occasional newsletter of The S&DHS, Sir John looks at the origins of Shaftesbury’s existing blue plaques as well as Rutter’s career as a reformer. Beatrice King offers Some Recollections of Shaftesbury Life 1937-59 as told to her by her late mother Rosemary and recalling the work of her grandmother Rita Edwards as Head of Cann School. Chris Stupples explains how he came to be involved in researching and inputting over a thousand Great War biographies into the Shaftesbury Remembers website (1103 by the beginning of December). Ian Kellett provides an account of life from November 1914 onwards for British internees In Ruhleben Camp, focussing on a Bristol seaman with a local connection, and footballer Steve Bloomer who was ‘the Lionel Messi of his day’. Dave Hardiman tells the salutary story of William Sims (1808-1852), a petty thief and housebreaker from Cann, whose death sentence at the age of 21 was commuted to transportation to Australia. This 34 page full-colour edition also includes Elaine Barratt’s Chairman’s Chat, the minutes of the September online AGM, a report of the BBC South Today visit to Gold Hill Museum in October, and an update on events at Shaftesbury Abbey Museum from Claire Ryley.

Members of The S&DHS should have received their printed issue by post or hand delivery. If not, please contact us at Gold Hill Museum. We have a few spare copies available for sale to non-members at cost price (£1.50 per copy).

In 1933 Edla Marian Norton (nee Eklund) became the first woman Mayor of Shaftesbury. Historian Dr. Jaime Reynolds is writing a book about the first women Mayors in Britain and contacted Gold Hill Museum in search of information about Edla and the Norton family into which she married. Edla’s grandparents were Swedish though she was born in London in 1879. In 1917 she married John Archibald Norton in Brighton. In 1918 some women were given the vote but it was not until 1928 that all women were enfranchised, on the same terms as men.

The Nortons were prominent figures in local politics and Methodism in Shaftesbury. Edla’s husband was Mayor in 1928 and again in 1945. George Edmund Norton was Mayor in 1937, according to the illuminated list in Shaftesbury Town Hall. (Thanks To Town Clerk Claire Commons for images of this list and of Edla Norton.) The Nortons lived at 2 Ivy Cross until John died in 1956 and Edla in 1957. (Thanks to Chris Stupples for these details.) If anyone has any further information of interest to Dr. Reynolds, please email enquiries@goldhillmuseum.org.uk. and we will be pleased to forward it.

The second woman Mayor of Shaftesbury was Kathleen Olive Cole in 1952. The first woman Mayor in England was Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, best known for her campaigns to enable women to practise medicine and exercise the right to vote. She became Mayor of Aldeburgh in 1908.

Shaftesbury has just lost one of its noblest citizens in former Mayor Ray Humphries MBE. In common with many other voluntary organisations in the town, Gold Hill Museum benefited from strong practical support from Ray, in our case as a regular steward and occasional handyman. He cleared gutters, shaved the bottom off a swollen door, fitted a new extractor fan, helped fix the Shaftesbury locomotive name-plate to a very uneven wall, made an elegant plinth to make the donations box more noticeable, and drove his van to Sparkford so that we could recycle an unwanted display case from the Haynes Motor Museum. The display case is now in the centre of Room 8. Everything was done with immense patience and good humour. Not so much a hard act to follow as utterly impossible. Lockdown permitting, the cortege will pause outside the Town Hall at noon approximately on Tuesday 10 November when the Town Band, for which Ray was a talented percussionist, will play. Our sincere condolences to Ray’s family.

BBC South’s regional news programme at 6.30p.m. on Tuesday 13 October featured a report from Gold Hill Museum, as part of the BBC’s “Culture in Quarantine” strand. The South Today team of producer/director Simon Marks, cameraman Trevor Adamson, and reporter Sarah Farmer deliberately chose a “smaller, quirkier museum” to illustrate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the role of museums in the community. Social Distancing was observed throughout.

Shaftesbury & District Historical Society Chairperson Elaine Barratt was quizzed about the financial impact of the lockdown and the organisational difficulties posed by reopening during a pandemic. As Gold Hill Museum is run entirely by volunteers, there was no need to furlough any staff, but the requirement to find 9 stewards a day rather than the usual 6 eventually became an insuperable problem. The Museum closed for the season on 29 August. For once the size of the Museum’s business rates bill was advantageous, in terms of the government grant available. This will pay this year’s utilities, insurance and maintenance bills, but in the long term the free-to-enter Museum, with its historic buildings and unpredictable repair costs, needs to open its doors for visitors to make vital donations and shop purchases.

The “quirky” aspect of Gold Hill Museum was illustrated in a whirlwind tour of the more striking exhibits led by S&DHS Secretary Ian Kellett. The 1744 Newsham Fire Pump was a perfect symbol for the metaphorical firefighting of recent months. There were stops at the Byzant, the Squint, and, inevitably, at the mummified Dorset cat, with a nod to the Hovis bike and Ridley Scott’s 1973 advert. Whether anything coherent was said about the role of museums in the community and their importance to society in general may hinge on the editing skills of the director!