ancestry | Life in the English Cotswolds

Eighteen months ago I was contacted by a gallery in Cheltenham about their researching an artist for they had acquired four watercolours of London street scenes painted during a ten-year period from 1885. They were by Edward Angell Roberts who had lived with Mary Ann Shortland, an ancestral cousin of mine. Although they described themselves as husband and wife in official documents, Edward was already married to the exotically named Josephine Bartolozzi Vestry Anderson.

*New* *Street, Spring Gardens*
Edward Angell Roberts, 1885

Edward was born in Kennington in the English county of Surrey in1836. His father was a tea merchant and aspiring gentleman which presumably he became for by the age of fifteen, Edward was being educated at Christ Church Hospital, a school for sons of clergy and gentlemen. It was a good springboard for Edward for in 1855 he was promoted to Deputy-assistant to the Commissary of the Inland Revenue before proceeding to becoming Clerk to the War Office. In his spare time, he painted.

*Old Wooden Houses, The Strand*
Edward Angell Roberts, 1887

The four watercolours show great artistic detail of places within a stone’s throw of the War Office, in London’s Pall Mall. They are New Street, Spring Gardens (1885), Old Wooden Houses, The Strand (1887), Garden House, Clements Inn (1895) and Pump Court, Temple (1895). They have since been sold at auction to a buyer in the United States.

*Garden House, Clements Inn*
Edward Angell Roberts, 1897

Edward had married Josephine in 1858 and the census, three years later shows them living apart. Whether that was a temporary separation is not known for shortly after they had two children, a girl in 1864 who died in infancy and a boy in 1866. However, by 1871 he was living with Mary Ann and Josephine and the son disappear from record. It is thought that they may have moved to Ireland for the son reappears in the English 1901 census return and claimed to have spent time there. As for Edward and Mary Ann, they never married (or had children) for in his will, Edward leaves his estate to Mary Ann Shortland, spinster.

*Pump Court, Temple*
Edward Angell Roberts, 1897

I began to wonder if we had other artists in the family for several of my cousins, my sister and my father were all artistic, I always felt that the skill had passed me by until some kind person exclaimed that through my career as a garden designer, I paint with flowers, a description I rather hold onto. It is true that there are some similarities for a new garden is a blank canvas waiting to be given a backwash of green and then daubed with the colour shapes and textures of flowers. Below is a rather poor quality photo of one of my early designs inspired by a Japanese Imari plate which was, I suppose, quite any arty approach to take!!

*Garden design inspired by Japanese Imari Plate*
John Shortland, 1999

Another ancestral cousin painted and illustrated books on the town of Rye. Marian Eleanor Granville Bradley was the granddaughter of the Dean of Westminster Abbey, George Granville Bradley. Mostly remembered for her line drawings, occasionally they or paintings of hers are available for sale at auction. An only child, born in the United States, she returned to England sometime during the 1880s. She never married and died in 1951. Her pencil sketches of Rye appear very simple at first sight and, like Edward Angell Roberts, belie the attention to detail that is executed. Interestingly, a couple of her close relatives are described as ‘oil and colour merchants’ so it seems that art provided a living for my family in more ways than one…

*Ship and Anchor, Rye*
Marion Eleanor Granville Bradley,1920

And finally, there is Uncle Les – not my uncle at all but (yet another) cousin of my father and, in the convention of the time, known to me as Uncle. I only met Les the once for he died quite suddenly when I was young. However, I did get to know his widow well, so it came as rather a surprise when I was sent this little pen and ink drawing of (I think) a house in Kingston-upon-Thames many years after her death.

*Edwardian House*
Arthur Leslie Shortland, 1935

A few lines on Josephine. With a name like hers, curiosity got the better of me and so enquiries were made and she turned out, as hoped, to be ‘interesting’. She was a close relative of Madame Vestris, a famous, if not infamous actress, contralto opera singer and theatre manager. Madame Vestris probably deserves a full article of her own!

Family history research is always uncovering something fascinating, puzzling or new – I wonder what it will turn up next?

With thanks to Andy Shield of Brave Fine Art , Cheltenham www.bravefineart.com }for sending me copies of the four paintings

A photograph came winging through the ether to me via email recently of a rather severe looking lady, taken in her later years. As is often the case when meeting an older person for the first time it is all too easy to forget that they had a past; that they were young once and, perhaps, hold a huge store of memories and tales. Sometimes, the stories they tell surprise you and seem more in keeping with today rather than decades before. It was (as it turned out) the same with this lady – Sophia Bradby.

Sophia Langston nee Bradby

I had never seen a photograph of Sophia before although I knew of her existence for she was my great-great grandmother. The only tale I knew was that she came ‘from a good family’, the friend of a great poet and the giver of a ‘middle’ name for succeeding generations. Numerous boys, although for some reason, neither my father or myself (for which I’ve always felt rather cheated), sported the name Bradby immediately before the surname. Now that this unexpected image had landed in my inbox I began to dig a bit deeper.

Sophia was born on Christmas Day 1828 in Theale, Berkshire, the third daughter of William Bradby and Mary Shepherd. William had been born in Derbyshire, his parents of Yorkshire origin. Why or when he came south is unknown but in 1814 he married Mary in Reading. We also know that by then he had changed his surname from Bradley to Bradby. The reason behind the name change is unclear for he remained on friendly terms with other members of the Bradley family. In their day, the Bradleys were well-known nationally and, later, internationally. Perhaps the name change was to give his own, immediate family a degree of anonymity. Whether the family were upset and/or disappointed by his decision is unrecorded but perhaps this is the first sign of a rebellious streak that would continue to run through the family to this day.

The date on this old image is wrong for he was baptised on 3rd September 1823

In 1849 it was Sophia’s turn to rebel. On the 29^th May she eloped to London to marry Charles Samuel Langston, a union disapproved of by her family. These days, the journey would take no longer than an hour but in the mid-1800s it would have been quite an undertaking. Her travel may have been by coach and horses although the new Great Western Railway line had opened in the early 1840s so she might have travelled by train. Whichever mode of travel she chose she would have been all too aware that her path crossed both an area that had been notorious for highwaymen and footpads and, in more recent times, the scene of a landslide that had derailed a train, killing ten passengers. Whether Sophia ever met her parents again is unknown.

1849 Langston Charles Samuel L18, Bradby Sophia B14

The marriage of Charles Samuel Langston to Sophia Bradby 1849, St Anne’s, Limehouse, London

St_Anne,_Limehouse, London - copyright Amanda Slater

St Anne’s, Limehouse, London (photo Wikipedia/Amanda Slater)

It turned out that Charles, too, had rebelled, leaving his parents’ home in Cranfield, Bedfordshire because of religious differences. Quite what these might have been is unrecorded. We know from old records that Charles had been baptised into the Church of England and he also married Sophia within the Church of England so there seems to be no conflict there. Whatever the reason, in 1843 he became an Excise Officer and his application papers are held by the National Archive in Kew, London. At a later date, this side of the family must have been reconciled for Charles’ father died when visiting Sophia in 1865.

The childhood home of Charles Samuel Langston

Sadly, Charles and Sophia’s marriage turned out to be fairly short-lived for Charles died aged 40 from cancer of the throat. Their 14 years of marriage produced eight known children, my great-grandfather William Bradby Langston was just twelve months old at the time of his father’s death and poor Sophia was some months pregnant with another daughter, Agnes. The photo below shows Sophia – wearing a crinoline – with one of her children, probably Christiana and taken in 1865. By 1871 she had established a drapery business with her eldest son, Ernest in Reading. By 1891 she had been successful enough to retire to the south coast where she died in 1916; the business that she had founded also prospered and became the largest department store in Reading before it finally closed its doors 120 years later.

LANGSTON (BRADBY) Sophia B14, probably Christiana abt 1865

Sophia with (probably) Christiana, 1865

Many thanks to Jo Liddement who, like me, is a great-great grandchild of Sophia. Not only did she send me the two photographs of Sophia which set me on the journey to find out more about the life of our remarkable ancestor, she also became a newly-discovered cousin.