Loose ends...

(The search for Richard Rose’s father continued)

by Derrick Papworth

With an exercise involving so many people and probing into the distant past is inevitable that there will be loose ends.  Some of these can be tied up by dint of further research, but others defy resolution.  A few of the loose ends are mentioned below out of interest...

First, of course the fundamental question that we started with; who was Richard Rose's father, and was he a member of the Rose clan from Kilravock?  What has been achieved so far is to establish that in all likelihood Richard's father was a Scot and that makes it very likely he came from one or another of the many branches of the clan.  But how to solve it beyond reasonable doubt?

Short of spending several weeks in Scotland, the only solution is to commission an expert researcher in Scotland to start delving, using as his starting point the excellent history of Kilravock and the many Rose branches stemming from it which dear old Eric Rose has laboured over so patiently in recent years.  Also the limited amount of data regarding dates and family names thrown up by my own work.

In a letter from Kilravock in 1985, Miss Elizabeth Rose says

"There are a number of descendants of the 11^th Baron, whose fifth son became a Rose of Earlsmill, and quite a number them I believe went to England..."

One interesting point here concerns a mysterious very old photograph which came from Nurse Florrie Rose to Cathryn Woodhead of Bisley who had helped to look after Florrie in her declining years.  In a letter Cathryn explained "the photo is of an male, elderly, in uniform which is covered in braids and medals….   he has the look of our family around the eyes… this of course could be wishful thinking."  During a visit to Surrey I borrowed the photo, and thanks to my having just read a book about the Indian Mutiny, I guessed this might be Baron Strathnairn, who as General Sir Hugh Rose led the punitive British force which pursued the leaders of the Mutiny and defeated them in battle.  And guess which branch of the Rose clan Sir Hugh came from; why from Earlsmill   of course, he having descended from the 11^th Baron!  Why had Florrie obtained the photo?  We shall never know. I checked on Sir Hugh in Encyclopaedia Britannica and lo and behold, there was the identical photograph. Eric Rose ends the story with the news that the statue of Sir Hugh which was erected by a grateful nation is now in 'The Home for redundant London Statues', near Croydon.  Such is fame!

This business of a supposed family likeness cropped up again in Ed's letter from Australia... "Mother had told Mavis about Florrie’s visit to Kilravock Castle and her return with a picture of a Rose forebear.  Florrie had been very taken with likeness of the man in the picture to mother's brother Eddy, and on this point mother agreed.  This must have strengthened in some minds the though of a Scottish connection".

What other loose ends came up?  I had sent a copy of the first draft of my manuscript to several key people, and the response from my brother Ed in Australia included some interesting memories from his wife Mavis.  Ed and Mavis were still living in Bagshot when Florrie Rose became old, and out or respect for my mother, who had died, Mavis looked in on Florrie from time to time to see how she was faring.  Ed wrote… "on one occasion Florrie gave Mavis some papers for safe keeping.  On Florrie's death, Mavis made contact with a youngish fellow who was clearing the house and gave him the papers.  " We now know of course that the youngish fellow was Robert Jones, the son of Florrie's adopted daughter Edna, and unfortunately he has little recollection of the papers in question.

Ed also had memories of George Poulter..." He was generally thought to be an eccentric gentleman, whose family owned and lived in at one time, Hartdene House in Bagshot.  My earliest memory of him would be in the late 1920's when he lived near “The 'Jolly Farmer' but still had the use of a couple of rooms at Hartdene which he frequently visited to do ‘office work’.  He roamed the county, largely on foot, invariably dressed in a fawn raincoat with a haversack on his shoulder, hair always cut shortish and with a lean but fit-looking figure.”

Another item from Ed which adds to the family story...   "A couple arrived in Bagshot from around Gosport to confer with Florrie about the legality of the sale of Waterer's Nursery.  They spoke to as many family members as they could find, and after a few days returned home.  Mother's own version of the sale of the Nursery was that one of our forebears who owned part of it was lying seriously ill and not expected to live; he wanted to see his son and heir before passing on, but the young man was in the 'the Kings Arms' and refused to comply with his father's wishes, the upshot was that the father lived long enough to change his will, and ordered the Nursery to be sold. Poulter had mentioned this legal wrangle in one of his letters to Ken Rose, and it looks as though no more came of it.

An amusing memory from Cathryn Woodhead… "We used to call Aunt Florrie 'Auntie Woopie',  not from any connection with the demon drink but dating back to the way the children would bounce on the mattress on Florrie's bed, with her crying 'Woopie'."  Ken Rose has an interesting recollection too… "Florrie received the O.B.E. for her many years of local nursing".  I have not found any confirmation of this, but such things do happen.

Ken also wrote with his memories of George Poulter.  “His father was a solicitor and practised in Bagshot and Sunningdale.  George lived with his aunt, the widow of an architect while the aged father lived in a building in the garden.  As far as I can remember, George had no occupation at all, though tie initials after his name were because of his work in antiquities and genealogy.  He was a member of the Surrey Committee for ancient monuments and records, and was crack pistol shot at the annual Bisley competitions.  Long before the war I was roped in as a lad to do some archaeological ‘digging' with him, once at Caesar's Camp on Bagshot Common and also at some long barrows at West End”.

One of the most irritating of the loose ends concerns George Poulter's own notes other papers.  When it became clear that Florrie Rose’s letters from George Poulter had disappeared without trace, my next line of reasoning was to say that if we couldn't find Poulter's letters to Florrie, what about trying to find Florrie's letters to Poulter.   Surely a man as steeped in historical matters as Poulter was would have made arrangements on his death for his papers to be deposited in a safe and accessible place?  I checked with Camberley Museum, but no luck.  The curator knew they ought to have them because Poulter had himself been the first honorary curator and had left a note to say his papers would come to the museum.  But they didn't.

On to the Surrey Records Office.  Again no luck though they would very much like to have the papers if I do find them!  They did however say that there was a possibly that Poulter had left them to a friend who lived at Shere, between Guilford and Dorking, but unfortunately no-one knew the name or address of the ‘friend'.  With help from Olive Ford we searched various Probate Offices for a Will, thinking this might say where the papers should go, but rather surprisingly it seems that Mr Poulter did not leave a Will, despite his father having been a solicitor.  It begun to look as though these important historical papers (to others not just to me) had disappeared.

In a final effort to find the missing papers I wrote to the Vicar of Shere explaining the problem and posing the slightly optimistic question as to whether any of his parishioners had knowledge of the ‘friend' of a man from Camberley who had died twenty years before!  To my delight the Vicar phoned me a couple of days later with the name and address of the friend’, a Mr D Ramsey of ’Collingwood Place’ at Peaslake, near Shere.   I rushed to check back on the letters which George Poulter had written to Ken Rose in the early nineteen-fifties and sure enough, his house was named Collingwood Place’!  Surely no coincidence?  I wrote to Mr Ramsey immediately but received no reply.  After four weeks had elapsed, I followed back the trail from the Vicar to his informant, a Mrs Poulter, a niece by marriage of George Poulter, and, when I phoned her to ask if she new why Mr Ramsey might not have replied to my letter, gave me at considerable length her views on Ramsey’s character and habits, together with details of an immensely complex legal battle had engaged him in over many years.  Despite all this, I felt it necessary to telephone Mr Ramsey to see if he actually was in possession of any of George Poulter's papers.

We talked for some time, and it became clear that be had held Poulter in both affection and esteem and he had indeed changed the name of his house to reflect this.  He rather doubted if the boxes contained anything of interest to us, but it was of course possible.  The only thing he knew for certain was that the notes which Poulter made when researching the family history of the sister of President Lyndon Johnson are in the boxes!  It seems that the boxes arrived soon after Mr Ramsey moved to this house, and were put in the attic.  As time passed by, more and more things were put in the attic, pushing the boxes further and further back.  The house is now for sale, so the boxes will have to be fetched out for that reason if for no other.  Mr Ramsey was just off on holiday when I spoke to him, but hoped to find time to look at the boxes before too long.

So fingers tightly crossed!  There might be a parcel tied up with pink ribbon with the words ‘Rose family history written' on it.  Or there might be nothing to interest us at all.  But at least the loose end of Poulter’s papers and his friend at Shere will have been tied off.

In the course of my worrying over the matter of old George Rose of Pirbright and what he said or didn't say about his Scottish forebears, I had found necessary to ask different people in Pirbright to check through Miss Cawthorn's book from time to tome.  This was obviously an imposition that could not continue, and with the help of one of my new-found friends in Pirbright I obtained a photocopy of the book for myself.  It makes fascinating reading, and must be a source of pride to the inhabitants of this lovely village.  One of the earliest entries in Miss Cawthorn's Diary intrigued me - dated January 1885 - she records her first walk in her new home village…."when we reached the highest point of Dawney Hill, a most lovely view was spread out before us; the Hog's Back, with Merrow Down and St Martha's'".

Well now… could this be the very same St Martha's where young Richard Rose wed Anne Russell in 1737?   Surely not - St Martha's Chapel was right away on the other side of Guildford, a dozen miles away.  Yet Miss C. also mentioned  before Merrow Down and the Hog’s Back both similar distances.   I pored over an Ordnance Survey map of the area and found Dawney Hill in Pirbright and the next time I was down that way I parked the car, took map in hand. and started to look for Dawney Hill.

You would think that the easy part of the task in hand would be to find the hill, but not so.  I covered a lot of ground looking for it before a couple of gardeners in the nearby military cemetery pointed it out to me, not a hundred yards from where I was standing!  Dawney Hill is in fact the very gentlest of slopes upward out of the village, and being covered now in houses and fir trees it made little impact as a possible vantage point.  Careful examination did however reveal that there was one spot which was higher than the surrounding area, and peering through the trees it was indeed possible to see across a wide valley to a distant range of hills.  And by orienting the map one could identify St Martha’s Hill on the horizon, confirming that Miss Cawthorn had indeed been referring to the place where the young couple were married.

A little later Ann and I were in Surrey for a wedding, and on the way home made a detour to actually climb St Martha’s Hill and see the chapel.  It really is the loveliest of places, far indeed from the madding crowd, and although the Chapel was extensively restored in 1875, it still gave us a sense of pilgrimage to visit the very spot where Richard and Anne tied the knot.  The views were outstanding, but I cannot pretend to have pinpointed Dawney Hill in Pirbright!  We took photographs to add to those of Pirbright Church, where the stone tower still standing was built from stones given by Anne Russell’s family all those years ago.

So the loose ends are all tied up, or nearly so.  I suppose I should mention the frontispiece of Eric Rose’s History of the Rose Clan of Kilravock, which traces the descent of our present Queen from a marriage in the Rose family. Eric extracted this from "The Lineage and Ancestry of H.R.H. Prince Charles, Prince of Wales" by a cousin of his, Gerald Baget.  This is of course copyright, and so isn't really a loose end at all...

Derrick Papworth
Kimbolton
Cambridgeshire
July 1992

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