This pub and hotel on North Street has been closed and boarded up for some years, with signs of abandoned or postponed building work. It is grade II listed, the oldest parts from the 15th century. Conflicting reports suggest it has since been demolished or converted into flats. |
Wednesday 20 September 2023
Henry Wilton and Mary Barton
Wednesday 9 August 2023
Henry Wilton and Sarah Staines and Ann Staines
St Peter, Colchester, Essex - East end cc-by-sa/2.0 - © John Salmon - geograph.org.uk/p/1862874 |
- Henry Staines Wilton b. S Quarter in DUNMOW UNION Volume 12 Page 70, bap. 27 Sep 1840 at St Giles' Church, Mountnessing
- Stephen Thomas Wilton b. 1841 D Quarter in DUNMOW UNION Vol 12 Page 68, bap. 29 May 1842 at St Giles, Mountnessing
- Maria Wilton b. 19 Dec 1843 (reg. 1844 M Quarter in DUNMOW Vol 12 Page 76), bap. 24 Mar 1844 at St Giles', Mountnessing
- Mary Ann Wilton b. 1846 M Quarter in DUNMOW UNION Volume 12 Page 82, bap. 29 Oct 1848 at St Giles's Church, Mountnessing. Died at 27 in 1873 J Quarter in DUNMOW UNION Volume 04A Page 239.
- Still Born Child of Henry and Sarah Wilton buried 7 Jan 1850
- William Hankin Wilton b. 1851 M Quarter in DUNMOW UNION Volume 12 Page 93 (at home on 1871 Census, nothing since)
- Still Born buried 24 Jul 1854 (Dissenters)
- Sarah Wilton b. 1856 S Quarter in DUNMOW UNION Volume 04A Page 299. Died 1856 S Quarter in DUNMOW UNION Volume 04A Page 207. As 'Infant Wilton' buried 10 Jul 1856 (Dissenters)
In England the list of forbidden marriages was drawn up by the Church of England in 1560 and from then a marriage between a widower and his wife’s sister was valid but voidable - on the grounds of a passage in Leviticus, which suggested that such a relationship was incestuous (the same biblical extract Henry VIII had used to cast doubt on his marriage to Catherine of Aragon).
However, it was not explicitly illegal until the passing of the Marriage Act in 1835. The 1835 bill said that the marriages that had already happened could no longer be voided, but from then on, "such marriages could no longer take place in the United Kingdom and colonies at all". It went on to say that these marriages would have to take place abroad, a solution available only to the rich. Au contraire, Henry and Ann's marriage did take place in England, in 1873, and thus, was not lawful. When the vicar came to the bit about "any lawful impediment", either they didn't know, or everybody kept schtum.
Henry Wilton died on 9 May 1890, leaving £180 (£23,000 in 2020) to his son, Henry Staines Wilton.
Friday 4 August 2023
Champion & Wilton Saddlers and Harness Makers
Bridge Street, Bishop's Stortford cc-by-sa/2.0 - © Bill Boaden - geograph.org.uk/p/6410237 |
- 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.)
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.
Thursday 13 May 2021
William Palmer Wilton and Dorothy Agnes Dickins
Fitzjohn's Avenue, Hampstead cc-by-sa/2.0 - © Derek Harper - geograph.org.uk/p/1916588 |
William Palmer Wilton (b. 19 Sep 1869), son of Henry Staines Wilton and Amelia Palmer, married at 40 (in quite some style), to Dorothy Agnes Dickins, then 25, daughter of Henry Percy Tavener Dickins and Charlotte Rebecca Fase, at the church of St Paul, Hampstead, on Saturday, 30 Apr 1910.
- Frances Mary Wilton b. 31 Aug 1911 D Quarter Vol 01A Page 984
- Agnes Joan Wilton b. 1916 M Quarter Volume 01A Page 963
- Helen Margaret Wilton b. 1919 J Quarter Volume 01A Page 724
William Palmer Wilton died at the end of 1957 D Quarter in HAMMERSMITH Volume 05C Page 955, at the age of 88. He was buried, on 3 Jan 1958, in the family plot at Hampstead Cemetery, along with his parents, his brother John and sister Margaret. On his death, Major William Palmer Wilton left the company, Champion & Wilton, to his shop manager Reginald Arkell.
Amusing comment here: "In the early 1950s I met William Wilton who was pretty old then and died soon after. He told me his shop was on Oxford Street and that he lived in Hampstead. From the top floor of his shop he told me that he could see his home “until that man Selfridge built in the way”."
Dorothy Agnes Wilton died in 1965, aged 81.
William and Dorothy's Daughters
Records show that Frances Mary Wilton (42) and Agnes Joan Wilton (37), embarked in Southampton at the end of July 1953 and arrived in Quebec on 4 Aug 1953, aboard the T.S.S. Columbia and then crossed the border into the United States. They gave the address - presumably of where they were going to be staying - as 1725 Orrington Avenue, Evanston, IL.
Frances Mary Wilton died in August 1986, aged 75 and Agnes Joan Wilton died, in 2014 at the grand old age of 98, both in London. Neither married.
Helen Margaret Wilton, married in Hampstead, in 1954 to Kenneth Graeme Todd (b. 1909). Records suggest that they had two children (born in 1957 and 1960). Kenneth Graeme Todd died, in Surrey in 1994. Helen Margaret Todd died in 2017, in Exeter, Devon. Like her sister, she will have been 98.