Henry Staines Wilton, (bap. 27 Sep 1840 at
St Giles, Mountnessing), son of
Henry Wilton and Sarah Staines, Harness Maker, married
Amelia Palmer, daughter of
William Palmer and Henrietta Crabb of
Bridge Street, Bishop's Stortford at
St Michael, Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, on
4 Aug 1868. Witnesses were the bride's father, William Palmer, the bridegroom's parents, Henry and Sarah Wilton and Martha Palmer, the bride's older sister.
Henry Staines Wilton was my 1st cousin, four times removed.
Henry Staines Wilton and Amelia Palmer had five children:
- William Palmer Wilton b. 19 Sep 1869, bap. 28 Nov 1869 at St Michael's, Bishop's Stortford
- Mary Henrietta Wilton, bap. 30 Apr 1871 in Bishop's Stortford
- Olive Martha Wilton b. 25 Dec 1872, bap. 28 Feb 1873 in Bishop's Stortford. (Olive Martha Wilton, artist, died, aged 45, on 14 Apr 1918 in Ringwood, Hampshire. She is not buried with the family.)
- John Staines Wilton bap. 24 Apr 1874 in Bishop's Stortford. (John Staines Wilton didn't marry either. He died on 6 May 1936.)
- Margaret Staines Wilton b. 1877 in the district of St. George Hanover Square. (Margaret also remained single. She was buried, on 31 Dec 1957, in Hampstead Cemetery, with her parents and brothers.)
By 1871, Henry Staines Wilton (30), Saddler and Harness Maker, Employing 2 men, 2 apprentices and 1 boy in Bridge Street, Bishop's Stortford; Amelia Wilton (29), William P Wilton (1), Mary H Wilton (0). The household was completed with William Thorman (15) Saddler Apprentice; Martha Cornell (24) General Servant and Elizabeth Kitchener (16) Nurse.
As you can see from the location of the birth of their fifth child in 1877 (the same year that Amelia's father died in Bishop's Stortford), they had moved into London. This was because, in 1875, Henry Staines Wilton had bought into an established saddlery company in
Oxford Street and became associated with Henry Champion, and from the merger of the names of its two owners, the
Champion & Wilton brand officially appeared. [
Source]
"Champion and Wilton [its predecessors, clearly] were founded in 1780 and had premises in Oxford Street, opposite Selfridges, in London’s West End. At one time they employed over one hundred saddlers making saddles, harness and other saddlery items and became, as holders of the Royal Warrant, the most highly respected firm in the country and I don’t doubt that many a stately home will still have a Champion and Wilton saddle tucked away somewhere in their tack room." -
Keith Jenkin, SMSQF of Minster Saddlery
In
The London Gazette of 4 January 1878, there was a notice regarding a Patent application: Henry Staines Wilton, of Bishop's Stortford, in the county of Herts, Saddler, for an invention of "improvements in the construction of saddles and saddle girths."—Dated 24th December, 1874. Then in 1879:
|
In addition to the quality of the product, the main peculiarity that distinguished the saddles of this brand, owed much to the invention made in 1879 by Henry Wilton, who patented the well-known safety system, still in use and much appreciated today, which represented a technical revolution. |
In their time, it is said that Champion & Wilton held Royal Warrants to Queen Victoria, King Edward VII, King George V, King George VI, Queen Elizabeth II, and the Duke of Edinburgh, as well as to the German Emperor, Queen Maud of Norway and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands.
A neighbouring firm of saddlers, Samuel Blackwell, also long-established, was taken over by Champion & Wilton in the 1880s.
At the time of daughter, Mary Henrietta Wilton's marriage to Augustus Percival Bartley (of the equally top-notch Bartley & Sons, Military and Hunting Bootmakers, of 493, Oxford Street), on 11 Aug 1894, at St Michael's Church, Bray, Berkshire, the Wilton family resided at the rather stately Stafferton Lodge, Braywick Road, Maidenhead.
In 1891, the family were living at
Braywick, High Town Road, Bray, Cookham, Berkshire with Henry S Wilton (50) Sadler & Harness Maker; Amelia Wilton (49), Olive Martha Wilton (18), John S Wilton (17) Saddlers Apprentice; Margaret Wilton (14), along with Sarah Asbridge (28) Cook from Margaret Roding and Kate Maydwell (23) Housemaid from Hornchurch, Essex. William P Wilton (21) Sadler, was that year [so far unaccountably] a Visitor in a household in Wanstead, Essex, along with three female servants.
Fake news is not a new thing: Apparently, according to
this document (PDF), in Vol IV No 5 of '
Saddlery and Harness' November 1894, a spurious claim appears, "p.101
Notable Members of the Trade: Mr H S Wilton (Champion and Wilton)
Owner of Champion and Wilton. At 457/459 Oxford Street. One of the leading West
End saddlery firms. Made Queen Victoria's first saddle when HSW was only 19
years old, some 63 years ago." [i.e. 1831] Complete and utter horse poop, of course, like so many family stories, and you have to laugh, as he wasn't even born until 1840! My feeling is the Oxford Street company that later
became Champion & Wilton probably
did make Queen Victoria's first saddle. It was Henry Staines Wilton's personal involvement that got tacked (pun intended) on as an embellishment to aggrandize himself.
In 1901, the family had moved back into town to
29, St Johns Wood Park, in the affluent community of
Hampstead, where we find Henry S Wilton (60) Sadler & Harness Maker; Amelia Wilton (59), William P Wilton (31) Sadler & Harness Maker; Olive M Wilton (28), John S Wilton (27) Sadler & Harness Maker; Margaret S Wilton (24), along with Mary J Howlett (23) Cook from Norfolk and Annie Fosbury (21) Housemaid, from Maidenhead.
In 1911, still at 29, St Johns Wood Park, Hampstead, were Henry Staines Wilton (70) Sadler & Harness Maker; Amelia Wilton (69), Olive Martha Wilton (37) Artist; John Staines Wilton (36) Sadler & Harness Maker; Margaret Wilton (33) attended by three servants: Emma Fosbury (61) Widow, Cook Housekeeper; Ellen Gorey (37) Parlourmaid and Alice Fordham (24) Housemaid. The original census schedule also confirms that the couple had been married for 43 years and had five children, all then still living.
The Rebuilding of Oxford Street
"
Nos. 453–459 (odd) Oxford Street and Nos. 22 and 23 North Audley Street, a small but elegant set of shops with flats over, were designed by Herbert Read and Robert Falconer Macdonald and built by
Holloway Brothers in 1900–2 (
Plate 46b). The client was E. H. Wilton of Champion and Wilton, saddlers, of Nos. 457 and 459 Oxford Street. (There was nobody with the initials E. H. Wilton, so I assume this is H. S. Wilton and an error.) The building had three storeys towards
North Audley Street and five on to Oxford Street. The ground floor was of Doulting stone, the upper storeys of red brick with stone dressings, and the style a picturesque and effective Arts and Crafts treatment." This tells us where the Champion and Wilton premises were, on the diagonally opposite corner to where
Selfridges was later built. The building is long gone and replaced, with
currently, a branch of Zara on that corner.
Henry Staines Wilton died on 31 May 1915 and his funeral took place on Thursday 3 Jun 1915. He is interred in
Hampstead Cemetery (Camden) grave reference WE/222. He left his fortune to his two sons, William Palmer Wilton and John Staines Wilton, saddlers, and his son-in-law, Augustus Percival Bartley, bootmaker. The Probate record shows that he left £57,256 11s 4d, which is worth just shy of six million pounds today (
£5,925,591 in 2020).
Amelia Wilton died four years later, aged 77 and was buried, on 17 Dec 1919, in
Hampstead Cemetery, along with her late husband.