Archive for: Solicitor

The Bowles Family

The Bowles family was widespread in Berkshire and the branch centred in Longworth and Charney Basset seems to have been affluent. John Bowles, born there in 1700, married Mary Justice of Appleford in 1724. They lived at Charney, then moved to Long Wittenham near Mary’s family, and in around 1740 moved again to Abingdon. One incentive may have been Abingdon School, where two of the Bowles’ five sons were soon enrolled; another, the fact that Mary’s brother Thomas was a prominent citizen there – he would be mayor in 1753. Members of the three next generations of John Bowles’ family remained resident in Abingdon and were prominent in local affairs.

John died in 1754, and, following family tradition, was buried at Longworth. His will shows that he was active as a maltster and farmer, though it is not clear where he farmed. The two youngest sons, James and Thomas, made their careers as stationers in London with their elder brothers as shareholders. James died in 1782, Thomas in 1788, both unmarried. The three others, John, William and Richard, became prominent citizens of Abingdon in their turn.

The oldest, John jnr, became a lawyer and was Abingdon town clerk for a time. He did well financially and among his acquisitions was a 300-acre estate at Milton Hill, some five miles south of the town. The second, William, flourished as a maltster, brewer and farmer. He acquired, mostly on lease, the estates of Fitzharris and Lacies Court on the northern boundary, and resided at Fitzharris. He was mayor in 1786, and three times Master of Christ’s Hospital. Like his maternal uncle Thomas, he was an extreme Tory, and when the Corporation applied for a new charter that would effectively exclude Whigs from local influence, it was he who financed the project.

The third son, Richard, studied at Oxford and became vicar of Lechlade in Gloucestershire. When already middle-aged, he married a local lady, Kitty Bampton, no longer young, ‘but with a considerable fortune’. This enabled him to return to Abingdon about 1773 as rector of St Nicolas. It was nominally the vicar of St Helen’s who was responsible for St Nicolas and the rectory should have been a sinecure, but the system was not working well and he did have to support the church. In his will he endowed a ‘Sunday lectureship’ which would effectively provide the vicar that St Nicolas didn’t have. When he died in 1804, his wife returned to Lechlade and had him buried there, breaking with the Bowles family tradition.

As John and William approached their sixties, they must have worried about the lack of heirs for their considerable wealth. In 1786, William married Ann Woodley, a local woman half his age and of a lower social station. It seems to have been almost a clandestine affair; the marriage took place in London, not in Abingdon. William jnr was born a year later, and two daughters followed.

When William married, his housekeeper became redundant and moved over to John’s household. Their son Thomas was baptised at St Helen’s in 1789, bearing his father’s surname and identified as ‘born of the body of Martha Murrill’. John’s will regarded Thomas as a legitimate son and heir, and treated Martha generously. When ‘Martha Murrell, spinster’ died in 1834 she was a relatively wealthy woman.

Thus there were only two male Bowles in the third generation. Thomas preferred the life of a country gentleman to that of a townsman, and lived on the estate his father had bought, rebuilding Milton Hill House as a prestige residence. He married Hester Sophia, daughter of the lawyer Samuel Sellwood who had been one of his guardians after his father’s death. He divided his activities between the affairs of the county and of the town: he was high sheriff of Berkshire in 1830, and a prospective parliamentary candidate for the borough in 1832, but withdrew when it became plain he could not win the seat. He died in a flu epidemic in 1837, leaving a large and affluent family. His eldest son, John Samuel (1816-1884), remained active in town affairs, patronising local good causes and speaking for it in the county quarter sessions where, as a borough, it was not directly represented.

William junior’s life was less successful. In 1810, he bought an estate at West Malling, Kent, and went to live there. According to a Bowles family historian, he married a Miss Rowan and they had two daughters. There was a Rowan family with West Malling connections, but no trace has been found in the public records of this marriage or of its offspring. If there ever was such a marriage, the lady must have died young, for in 1819 William sold the estate and returned to Abingdon.

He continued in his father’s footsteps, being mayor in 1824 and becoming a governor of Christ’s Hospital. In 1824, he married Caroline Anne Stephenson of a legal family in London. There were seven children of whom six survived, but Caroline Anne does not seem to have taken to Abingdon. From 1828 the family was living elsewhere for much of the time, in Paris, Devon, and at various places in Hampshire. When in 1839 William sold up in Abingdon, including the leases and contents of Fitzharris and Lacies Court, it was probably no longer the family home.

Sadly, the money ran out and the marriage broke down. Evidence given in an 1829 lawsuit shows William to have ignored financial advice and made imprudent investments. He built a substantial house on his land at Lacies Court which he sold at a loss to the vicar of St Helen’s, Nathaniel Dodson. Rumour had it that this was to pay off a gambling debt. The 1841 census shows the wife and children in Clapham – they later moved to Ryde in the Isle of Wight – and those of 1851 and 1861 have William living alone as a lodger in London. He died in Tottenham in 1870.

Some of the descendants of Thomas Bowles remain in the Abingdon area, but the status of the Bowles family as members of Abingdon’s financial and social elite lasted only three generations.

The authors thank Caroline Cannon-Brookes for helpful discussions and for access to the Bowles family history notes made by Major-Gen H. Bowles in 1925.

Bromley Challenor

Bromley Challenor was born in 1821 in Teddington, Middlesex. He arrived in Abingdon sometime in the late 1840s having worked as a solicitor’s clerk in Newbury, and by 1848 was established enough to be the cash secretary to the Abingdon Literary and Scientific Institution.

In 1850, aged 29 and a solicitor’s clerk, he married Mary Anne Gregory, a local girl whose parents lived in East St Helen Street, and over the years they had twelve children, ten of whom survived to adulthood. Twin girls born in 1854, lived for only a few months.

Bromley qualified as a solicitor early in 1851 and set up his practice in East St Helen Street, later moving to the High Street and finally to Stert Street. During the next forty years, after rapidly establishing himself and becoming well known in the town, he became a mainstay of many local organisations and founded a firm of solicitors that exists to this day.

Bromley was an ambitious man; as well as representing clients in court, he managed to hold a number of posts simultaneously. One example is the post of clerkship to the Petty Sessional Division of the County and another, clerkship to the Commissioners of Taxes for Borough and County. In 1855 Bromley was appointed Solicitor to the Abingdon Building Society by a unanimous decision of the Directors and in 1858 became Honorary Secretary to the Wool Fair. 1860 he was appointed Clerk to the Board of Guardians and held that post until his death. He also, amongst other positions, served as the district registrar and on the audit committee of the St Helen’s Vestry.

As if all this was not enough, he was a town councillor between 1855 and 1874, serving as Mayor in 1863-1864. He was interested enough in identifying with the Conservative party to act as the district agent, which seems to have made him unpopular with some voters; he lost his council seat in the local election of 1874 perhaps as a result. From then on, he appears to have taken something of a back seat in the town.

In 1874, his eldest son, Bromley junior, joined the firm and, by 1875, the name had changed from Challenor to Challenor & Son, which it still holds today. A few years later, a younger son, Edward Marchant, also joined. Having two sons working with him allowed the caseload and extent of the work to increase to include, for example, organising property auctions.

Throughout his life in Abingdon, Bromley was heavily involved in work that impacted on other people’s lives via the Town Council, Workhouse, almshouses and Littlemore asylum, as well as with ordinary everyday legal problems and events such as the Wool Fair. He socialised and associated with many other local prominent dignitaries as a councillor with his membership of the Abingdon Rifles, Masons and Oddfellows; the many newspaper articles of the time about the various dinners and formal occasions that took place make clear these were not necessarily onerous or even decorous.

Bromley Challenor died on 20 August 1888 aged 67 at his home, The Firs, Marcham Road, Abingdon after the “long and painful illness” which had been affecting him for over four and a half years, and is buried in Abingdon Cemetery. He was survived by his wife and ten of their twelve children.

© AAAHS and contributors 2021

Bromley Challenor junior

Bromley Challenor junior was born on 14 March 1851 in Abingdon, the eldest child of Bromley Challenor senior and Mary Anne Gregory. He attended the Old Grammar School (Roysse’s, later to become Abingdon School) and was then articled to his father as a trainee solicitor. When he qualified in the spring of 1874, within a few weeks of his twenty-third birthday, the name of his father’s practice was changed to Challenor & Son, a name that has continued in Abingdon to the present day; the current offices are located at Stratton House.

His first public appointment was as Borough Coroner in 1876, and then, in 1877, he was appointed Town Clerk, Clerk to the Urban Sanitary Authority, and Clerk of the Peace to the borough magistrates when these posts fell vacant. This was the same year as George Winship was appointed Borough Surveyor and Inspector of Nuisances. The two men worked very closely together throughout their long and distinguished tenures, as the borough minutes reveal.

The two men also shared in the fun when the town custom of beating the bounds was revived in 1880. The mayor and aldermen and others of the town council arrived, eventually, at the Boxhill Ditch: “…the whole, with the exception of a few, found it necessary to wade through the water, someone having managed to tear up the wooden bridge. This caused a good deal of amusement and ended in the Town Clerk (Mr B. Challenor, jnr.) being thrown bodily into the somewhat deep brook.” Later “several immersions occurred” including the two policemen who were present, as the whole riotous party continued their circuit. The day ended with the mayor “giving an excellent and costly spread” later that evening.

Bromley junior entered the legal profession at a time when public works were becoming more high profile – new roads were being built, and a municipal water supply and sanitation were being installed as required by the new Public Health Acts. The first Medical Office of Health for Berkshire was appointed in 1873. Bromley junior first became familiar with the legal aspects of these developments as well as with the administration of the Poor Law through acting as deputy clerk to his father, a knowledge and interest that grew during his long professional career.

One of his brothers was also prominent in Abingdon affairs – Harry Septimus was a local doctor who served as mayor in 1908 and 1918. He was sometimes required to give the medical evidence when Bromley junior was holding inquests in his role as borough coroner. One particularly sad example of this occurred in 1892, at an inquest on a girl of 3 who died of burns when her nightclothes caught fire.

By 1898, Bromley junior was also holding the salaried office of clerk to the local gas board. There is a letter from William Barrett junior to the Local Government Board asking if it would be compatible to hold this office while also being the Town Clerk. “He would have to write to himself as Town Clerk regarding contracts and disputes and then reply to himself with the Corporation’s response”. The actual reply is, sadly, missing, but it was noted on the letter that they declined to advise.

When Rural Districts were established in 1894, Bromley junior became joint clerk to the Abingdon Rural District Council with another brother, Edward Marchant, who had been clerk to the old District Highways Board. Bromley junior also became clerk to the Culham Rural District Council.

While he had a local high-profile career in the law, it wasn’t always plain sailing – there was eventually a fallout with Edward Marchant, who also worked at Challenor and Son, and family legend has it that they never afterwards spoke to one another. Eventually Edward started his own solicitor’s practice in Oxford, which later became Challenor & Gardiner.

When Bromley senior died in 1888, Bromley junior was appointed to most of the positions his father had held. These included acting as clerk to both the Board of Guardians of the Abingdon Union which ran the Workhouse and to the Union Assessment Committee, and clerk to the county magistrates for the Abingdon division. He was later instrumental in the founding of the Joint Isolation Hospital, to whose board he acted as clerk, as well as clerking for the trustees of the Lyford Almshouses. He was also clerk to the Trustees of the Municipal Charities and, from 1895, to the Governors of Royse’s School, two appointments that occasionally involved much correspondence with the Charity Commission during negotiations for new schemes.

Bromley junior’s regard for the Council is clear from the donation he made to the town plate – a silver six-branched candelabrum 2 feet and five inches (74 cm) tall. It is still amongst the town treasures and bears an inscription that reads “Presented to the Corporation of Abingdon on the 28^th Oct. 1909 by Bromley Challenor Town Clerk”. He had bought it from the Graham estate. In 1846 William Graham, an Abingdon solicitor, had been the election agent for Frederick Thesiger when he was elected MP for Abingdon and Thesiger had given it to his agent as a gift. It remained in the Graham family until 1909.

The Candelabrum.
(The image is from The Abingdon Corporation plate ed. A C Baker, author A E Preston, Abingdon, 1958, pp. 56-58).

As Town Clerk, he and George Winship, the Borough Surveyor, both attended the International Road Congress in London in 1913, which covered all aspects of roads and road maintenance, and he contributed a paper on the qualifications of engineers and surveyors in charge of the construction and maintenance of roads.

In 1898, he published a volume of selections from the borough records from its incorporation under Philip and Mary until 1897. This is still a really useful source for local historians and the choice of extracts shows an instinct for which aspects of the Council’s work would prove of future interest.

The title page of Selections from the Municipal Chronicles of the Borough of Abingdon and, attached on the left, a letter from Bromley junior dated 23 December 1904 to the recently elected new mayor, E L Shepherd, sending him a copy of the book.
(© Photographed from a privately owned copy by the owner.)

His obituary lists the main offices he held that became vacant on his death and they do make quite a list: Town Clerk and clerk to the Sanitary Authority; Clerk of the Peace to the Borough; Clerk to the Trustees of Municipal Charities; Clerk to the Governors of Roysse’s School; Abingdon District Coroner; Clerk to the County Bench; Clerk to the Board of Guardians; Clerk to the Assessment Committee; Clerk to the Rural District Council; Clerk to the Joint Hospital Board. His total annual income from all this was £1314 which equates very roughly to ten times that for a skilled tradesman and was, of course, on top of the fees for his private legal work.

Bromley junior also found time to be a serial volunteer and held honorary offices as well as his paid positions. He was a Governor of Christ’s Hospital (the major town charity) from 1 February 1889, a post he held until his death, as was the custom at that time, and was Master four times – in 1895, 1902, 1907 and 1914. He became a sergeant in the Abingdon Company of the 4^th Berks (Volunteer) Battalion, having served first in the rank and file as a private at a time when this included professional men and tradesmen. Other activities included active membership of the Volunteer Fire Brigade, serving as their honorary secretary in 1871, a fireman in 1877, 1884 and 1885, and acted as Assistant Superintendent in 1879. He was at one time an active Freemason and became Master of the Abbey Lodge. He was a churchwarden at St Helen’s, a position he relinquished only at the Easter before his death.

Membership of the Town Rowing Club was an important leisure activity for him. He had rowed at No. 3 in the four which won the Henley Town Challenge Cup in 1874. He got his first mention in the local press at the age of seventeen for joining in the rescue of a child who had fallen into the Abbey Mill Stream. A few years later he rescued another child from drowning in the Thames, jumping out of the boat he in which he was rowing, an act that was recognized by the award of a Royal Humane Society Testimonial.

In his private life, Bromley junior lived in the family home until his marriage. In July 1878 he married Martha Matilda Childs, literally the girl next door. The family home at the time was The Firs, Marcham Road, one of the new villas that had been built in about 1860 which was when Bromley senior and his family moved in. They are shown on the map below.

Extract from the OS 1874 1:500 town plan of Abingdon (published in about 1877) showing the housing immediately to the west of the Saw Mills on the corner of Spring Road and at the start of Marcham Road, the main road going west out of town. There are three villas followed by three pairs of semi-detached cottages. The central villa is a single dwelling while both its neighbours are divided into two dwellings.
(© National Library of Scotland. Used under a Creative Commons license: https://maps.nls.uk/copyright.html#noncommercial https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Assuming the census enumerator in 1881 listed the dwellings on Marcham Road sequentially from east to west, Bromley senior and his family lived in the central villa of the three shown in the map. Henry Childs, gentleman, with his wife, Ann Sophia, and an unmarried daughter were immediate neighbours to the west in a semi-detached villa. Bromley junior, three years after his marriage, occupied the final semi-detached villa with his wife, two infant children, and two live-in servants.

The 1851, 1861 and 1871 censuses have Martha Matilda’s father, Henry Childs, as a farmer in Sunningwell, Berkshire and then Beckly, Oxfordshire, so he and his family moved to Abingdon after 1871.

The Abingdon St Michael’s baptism registers have Bromley junior and Martha Matilda at Fernbank, Marcham Road, from 1879 until late 1890. Bromley senior died in 1888 but Bromley junior did not move his family to The Firs until his widowed mother had moved to Springfields on the Faringdon Road with three unmarried adult children. They made the move before the census in April 1891 and Bromley and Martha Matilda remained at The Firs for the rest of their lives.

Bromley junior and his family outside The Firs in 1912
From left to right: young Bromley, Mercy, Norman, Bromley junior and his wife Martha, Gladys, Ethel, Basil, Oscar. (Marion, his third daughter, had died of scarlet fever when she was 5 years old.)
(© With thanks to Marion Cox)

Bromley Challenor junior died at his home, The Firs, on 11 October 1918, after enduring a long illness following an operation for acute appendicitis in 1916 from which he never really recovered. He was buried in Abingdon cemetery after a quiet funeral attended by his many relatives and a representative gathering of those with whom he had been associated with in public life.

He was survived by his wife and six of his children – one daughter had died young, and a son, Norman, was killed serving in the army in the First World War. His eldest son, young Bromley Challenor, married Agnes Leonora Duncan, who also became well known in Abingdon and was the first woman to be elected mayor of the borough.

The Abingdon Herald commented, in its obituary “Although a somewhat stern disciplinarian in practice, nevertheless at all times he showed a sympathetic and kindly spirit in his private capacity”. An obituary in the Oxford Journal Illustrated speaks of the “promptness, energy, and devotion showed by Mr Challenor in the discharge of all the duties he undertook” and comments that the loss of his experience and knowledge will be felt by all the organisations he was associated with.

We thank Marion Cox (née Challenor) for information and photographs.