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.

The inscription on the Abingdon Joint Hospital. It includes ‘B. Challenor. Clerk.’
(© Jackie Smith 2017)

 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.

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