This is how the site is structured:

1 - Home Page.  CLICK HERE

2 - Introduction.  CLICK HERE

3 - The Search for our Roots - i.e. this page

4 - The early Devon Blackmores, Part 1 - brief details of the very early family members.  CLICK HERE

5 - The early Devon Blackmores, Part 2 - later Devon Blackmores, in some detail.  CLICK HERE

6 - "An interesting Sideline".  CLICK HERE

7 - Newspaper items, Gravestones and Memorials.  CLICK HERE

8 - INFO EXCHANGE messages seeking or giving further information about Blackmore relations .  CLICK HERE

TWINYEO FARM

Click here TWINYEO for the latest info about Twinyeo Farm

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The Introduction (page 2) was written from what I already had in my possession or in my own head, and after my brief visits to Devon in 1989 and 1991. Since then I have been doing a bit of research in a not very scientific way and, as before, it is interesting to see how large a part luck has had to play.

I started to research our family history by finding out what I could from the Littleham and Exmouth records. Some entries one would expect to find there are missing - which suggests that some Blackmores, for the relevant period, did not live there. Experience and books on family history tell me that, nevertheless, they quite likely lived near-by as, in those days, people without landed estates tended not to move very far and that, for generations, most families would have lived within quite a small area. Their normal method of travelling would probably have been on foot; the miller's son, for example, in Thomas Hardy's "The Trumpet Major" would never have dreamed of asking his father if he could borrow his horse to meet his friends in a pub four miles away - he walked.

At one time the vicar of Buddleigh Salterton had to walk over to Littleham to take services every Sunday, winter and summer. It was only with the advent of the railways and the pull of the big towns in the industrial revolution (and this mainly affected unskilled workers looking for jobs) that wholesale migration of families took place.

Exmouth has been there for a long time, but really only hit the map when it became a fashionable "spa" town towards the end of the 18th century, many retired naval and military people living there. Mary Ann Clarke, the mistress of the Duke of York (the Prince Regent's brother) lived there on an annual income of �12,000, [1] quite apart from what she could pick up from selling army commissions and government posts!

Unfortunately, the town has changed beyond recognition since then. It used to consist of countless little courts and alleys, thatched roofs and cobble-stones. Most of these had to make way for the town improvements in the mid-1800s, the advent of the railway and modernisation since then and, of course, Exmouth received a pounding during the war, so most of the town that our Devon ancestors knew would hardly be recognizable to them now.

The church at Littleham, having Saxon origins, remains the "mother" church, and all burials still take place there, even though Exmouth has its own 19th century "daughter" church. It is important to realise that, although the records mostly refer to Littleham, because that is where the main church was and is, our ancestors almost certainly lived and worked in Exmouth.

I refer below to the IGI, the International Genealogical Index, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons. Astonishingly, it seems to be their belief that your soul can be saved if you are baptised into their church even long after you are dead! They have some 180 million names on their computer in Salt Lake City, and most big libraries have the microfiche cards for the UK section - they only fill a few cardboard boxes. Onto it they have laboriously transcribed as many parish records as they can get hold of, concentrating on births or c hristenings, with a few marriages and deaths, and one or two entries for census returns etc. It is a valuable secondary source of information, but there are huge gaps (Littleham and Exmouth do not feature, probably because the bishop did not allow them access) and there are frequent errors in transcription. The Mormons who go through parish registers are no more accurate than I apparently am in my research!

I have corresponded with various Blackmores who have all been most helpful but of little assistance in tracing our own family. However, by far the greatest piece of good fortune to come my way was a letter from a retired policeman in Taunton, Duncan Furner, who had been put on to me by Oliver Stewart-Liberty in 1991. He had inherited a photograph album with a picture of his great-grandmother and, next to it, a photo of "her cousin, Lady Emma Liberty". He wanted to trace the connection, but the list of family names he was able to give me, including Powell, Young and Wills, was something on which I could throw no lightwhatsoever and I was unable to help, apart from telling him what I then knew of our family history.

When I started to get to grips with my own research, following my retirement, and after getting only a short distance down the course myself, I renewed the contact and sent him a preliminary draft of these notes. By then he had already found out nearly all that I had myself unearthed, and awhole lot more besides.

After another six weeks, with little more than encouragement from me, he found out the rest of the story. He even found that a relation of his had a photo of Mary Ann Pinsent Blackmore's grave and a little thought showed it to be in Kensal Green Cemetery. His son has been to see it and, as expected, Henry was also buried there - and his son Harry too. Alas, the tombstone is now in pieces on the ground, and it is impossible to find it in the summer when the long grass has been cut.

On joining the Devon Family History Society you are invited to have your interests listed in their news letter. When mine finally appeared I had a letter from Ronald Blackmore in London. Luck again - he, too, had been researching our family history and had joined the DFHS shortly after me. The timing of his letter could not have been more fortunate, as the main bones of our story had already been unearthed by Duncan Furner, but I was lacking the details. I was becoming more and more convinced that Henry had not gone to London on his own, but probably had the support of other members of the family already living there.

Ronald's story does, to some extent, substantiate my theory and fills in some of the blanks. Ronald turns out to be my fourth cousin, his family being descended from Henry's older brother William, who had left Devon before Henry, and had gone with their older brother James, not to London but to Putney in Surrey. Their brother John's daughter Eliza (Henry's niece) also ended up married to Sam Barret in London, backing up my theory that there may have been quite a nest of them already there - not just called 'Blackmore' but also, of course, married sisters, aunts,cousins and second cousins with other surnames who might be quite hard for us to trace.

Ronald's letter makes sad reading; Henry was fortunate and prospered, but his brother William's line did not have the same luck. It seems that Henry's older brothers William and James, both tailors, went to London and married two Swannel sisters. But William lived in Putney, (which was, of course, a Surrey village then, and not part of London at all) some four miles away from Henry and Mary Ann Pinsent Blackmore, who were at Clapham Rise. There is no evidence that they helped each other in any way, and it may be that they only gave each other moral support. James apparently returned to Devon later. William was a "master tailor" but had financial trouble and went bankrupt in 1829. [2] His son George (1833-?1901) became a conductor on one of the old horse-drawn omnibuses (you had to be able to read and write to get a job as a driver) and then a labourer, ending up in the dreaded workhouse.

Ronald suspects that the demon drink may well have been his undoing. George signed his name on his wedding certificate, but his wife Betsy signed with her mark. George had 11 children, including John Henry (1859-1923 - Ronald's grandfather) who could not write - probably because even if their father could write, their mother could not. Ronald's father William Joseph (1881-1959) had a hard life and ran away to sea before he was thirteen, but was taught to read and write in the Royal Navy and left when he was over 40 with a "good conduct" and a small pension. He put these to good use, opening a small shop in 1936, but the war came and they lost both the shop and two homes to the Blitz and a V1 "doodle-bug" flying bomb. Two of Ronald's brothers also died in the 1939-45 war, but Ronald survived four years in the Royal Navy as a Radio and Radar Mechanic. After the war he entered the Electrical Industry and ended up with the "Daily Express" and three children, who have all done well.

Henry left his unfortunate nephew George nothing in his will, [3] although we cannot be sure that he didn't give financial help during his lifetime. Is this evidence of a family feud? One should not judge Henry harshly for not helping his nephew; in the opinion of countless Victorians in similar circumstances, he had prospered by his own industry and effort and, if his brother did not, that would in his eyes have been due to lack of industry and effort on his part.

So far I have concentrated on Henry, but I wanted to find out more about his wife Mary Ann Pinsent Blackmore - we have photos of them both in Maggie Close's photo album - and was intrigued by the name "Teignyeo" that they gave to their Hampstead house. I had a hunch that I might find out more in Teigngrace, a tiny village south of Bovey Tracey, some four miles north of Newton Abbot. There are two other christenings in the IGI that could possibly relate to Mary Ann, but the baptism in Teigngrace (see below) seemed to be the most likely 'fit' and the name "Teignyeo" strongly suggested that I was on the right track.

So, in August 1994, having another couple of nights free, we went to Bovey Tracey, established ourselves in a bed-and breakfast, and went to see what we could see. In fact, not very much. Guide books explained that there was an interesting local history, as Teigngrace had been the junction point between the old Haytor tramway (running on rails made, not of iron, but of granite sets) and the short Stover Canal leading to Teignmouth and the open sea. The tramway brought granite blocks (from which the old London Bridge was constructed) down from Haytor some 10 miles away.

Twinyeo

A quick look around the churchyard produced a memorial to William Symons who died on 30 December 1933 aged 87. Could it just be that the John Symons who witnessed Henry and Mary Ann's wedding in London in 1837 was her brother, and that this William could have been that John's son? And had there been a farm called "Teignyeo"?

The purchase of a 2�" OS map showed a farm called, not "Teignyeo", but "Twinyeo" - obviously a corruption of the name - between the Rivers Teign and Bovey, at their confluence. Parking by a substantial stone bridge, "New Bridge", a mile or so north of Teigngrace, we walked along the wooded south bank of the River Teign. It was very quiet and peaceful, although there was just discernable a faint, distant noise of heavy machinery, kept from us by the high bank of earth about 50 yards back from the river bank. The river itself is about as beautiful and tranquil a river as you could anywhere hope to see, some 20 feet wide and a foot or two deep, with dense woods on that side and lush green meadows on the other.

According to the map, that was Twinyeo Farm, comprising about 50 acres. So we crossed the bridge, dodging huge lorries rushing over it with horns blaring, and went to find the farm. Walking up an incline the full force of the dreadful din hit us. There far down below us in a huge, really enormous hole - it musthave been all of 200 feet deep (difficult to say - it might have been twice that)and at least half a mile across - was a scene from the inferno. The noise was indescribable. Tiny lorries, 200 feet or more below us, were worming their way up steep inclines in what looked just like a Kimberly diamond mine.

English China Clay have dug up just about the whole length of the River Bovey for white china clay and, not surprisingly, they are very careful indeed about the environment. So the river itself, and the wooded walk along it, are fully protected from the deafening noise and filth by high banks, as are the lush meadows of what used to be Twinyeo, but the farm buildings were demolished some 20 years ago. All that is left is the orchard and half a dozen mighty granite gate-posts that have been salvaged.

UPDATE - 2008

I have just, by accident, found out how close to destruction this oasis of tranquility came to extinction. The river was to be diverted so that more china clay could be extracted. It was only thanks to Swampy and his eco-warriors that it was saved - see ECO-WARRIORS SAVE RIVER

MORE ABOUT TWINYEO FARM - May 2008

What an amazing thing the web/internet is!
Richard Harris emailed this URL to me KREAG which I have read with great interest. It features this picture and tells us:-

"Twinyeo Farm, one of the four manors in Kingsteignton mentioned in the Domesday Book was purchased in 1989 by WBB [The quarry company, Watts Blake Bearne] and immediately flattened. No attempt was made to carry out any archaeological survey in an attempt to record one of the most important sites in the history of the parish."

The article adds that WBB has been an integral part of Kingsteignton since1861. Predecessor companies can be traced back to 1710. Over the years it has employed many local people and as a local company has done much good in the area. The company became part of the international group SCR Sibelco SA of Belgium in1999.

The article also pointed to this from 'Earth First', an organisation apparently deeply concerned about such matters:-

"400 people, including David Bellamy and therefore the TV cameras, turned out in the rain for the Teigngrace National Rally, to walk through (?) rivers. Latest development there was when the quarry company who wants to dig up the place, realised that the upcoming public inquiry may get them in trouble for bulldozing Twinyeo Farm, which, as the home of a Saxon lord, is mentioned in the Domesday Book. So they returned to the scene of the crime to dig up the foundations in the hope of destroying its historical significance once and for all. Luckily they were spotted and an injuction was taken out to stop their sneaky vandalism."

I really am most grateful to Richard Harris for sending me this.

If you come across more photos or anything else about TWINYEO FARM, do please pass it on to me.

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I came upon a quotation once (was it from Malory?) to the effect that the height of a man's ambition ought to be that he should be able to sleep in his own orchard. With the Devon hills all around, Haytor as a back-drop and a clear Devon sky, there can have been few orchards more worth sleeping in than that one, 200 years ago, so I took a small stone from the wall as a memento. Mary Ann and Henry must be turning in their grave at the thought of the rape of their dream farmstead.

I rang Mr McPherson, the previous owner of Teign Manor, who has spent a lifetime studying the Teigngrace history. He has confirmed this fragment of our family tree. The Pinsents of Bovey Tracey were a well-known family who owned land in Teigngrace. Their daughter Mary (ie Mary Ann) Pinsent married William Symons, of Teigngrace, and had two children - John Symons, who was baptised at St Peter and St Paul, Teigngrace, on 30 June 1811, and Mary Ann Pinsent Symons who was baptised on 26 September 1811, but no dates of birth are given.

There were also a William Symons who was buried there on 7 February 1751 and a John Symons who paid land tax in 1780, but there is no means of knowing if they were of the same family. Apart from my hunch about the "Teignyeo" name for the Hampstead house, I still have no actual cast-iron proof that Twinyeo was where Mary Ann Pinsent Blackmore was born, but the circumstantial evidence seems pretty strong.

Twinyeo, as it was called on maps published both in 1765 and in 1887, was owned by the Templer family as part of the Stover Estate, so if Mary Ann Pinsent Blackmore's father and mother lived there, they would have been tenants and not freeholders. As luck would have it, Mr McPherson had been the Environmental Health Officer for the old Rural District Council and, in that capacity, had visited the farm some 20 years previously. His recollection is that it looked as though it was a late 17th century structure and was, by then, in a very neglected condition.

The farm had a flint mill in 1830, occupied by Messrs Buller and Divitt. This would have been on the river-side to make use of water power. Having read about this only the day before, I was able to tell Mr McPherson that Divitt was one of the owners of the Bovey Pottery which existed at Bovey Tracey for a while in the 1800s, and the flint mill would have been used in connection with this.

I have, however, still not really answered the question I set out to answer - how did Henry raise the finance necessary to set himself up in business? It certainly wasn't slavery! Was it that he, the youngest son had, in Sarah Blackmore, a doting mother? Quite possibly; there is no evidence that John, the plumber, was wealthy, but the Devon Blackmores seem to have been interested in property and Henry's sister Elizabeth died comparatively wealthy, leaving an estate of �600 which was quite a lot for a spinster.

Was it a wealthy wife? I doubt it; Mary Ann's father William Symons was a tenant farmer, not a freeholder, and was probably not wealthy. But the Pinsent family were property owners in and around Bovey Tracey, and I believe the Gales were too. The Gales were rich enough, in the 1820s, to have not just the odd piece of silver, but a full set of table silver, hall-marked 1826-27, some of which found its way to me via Aunt Lois, as did one or two small items of Pinsent jewellery.

My firm, Simpson Curtis in Leeds, [4] and the well-known solicitors in Birmingham, Pinsents , have been on close terms for many years and, learning that the Devon Pinsents had gone on to be well-known lawyers, I contacted their former senior partner's brother Sir Christopher Pinsent to see if there was any connection. His family did, indeed, come from South Devon, around Bovey, Teignmouth, Bishop Teignton and Chudleigh, and had shipping interests between Teignmouth and Newfoundland as well as small farms and property in the area, with a history going back to the 1100s.

One of the Pinsents, Sir William, an eccentric Somerset squire, made a will leaving his entire fortune to William Pitt - later the Earl of Chatham - with whom he had no connection whatsoever. Pitt was unaware of the bequest until Sir William died, but on being elevated to the peerage he took the name of Viscount Pitt of Burton Pynsent in recognition of this.

The story is that when Sir William went to call on Pitt to tell him of what he had done the butler showed him the door. Sir William returned home, intending to revoke his will forthwith, but he had a stroke (no doubt brought on by the realisation of his folly) and died before he could do so. The family disputed the will, but to no avail. The second Lord Chatham sold the Burton Pynsent estate to pay his gambling debts. It is also said that a Pinson (the same family) was printer to Henry VIII.

There is no proof in the papers Sir Christopher Pinsent kindly sent me that his family and ours were directly connected, but they confirm the Pinsent connection in and around that part of Devon for centuries back. I'm sure enough that the Pinsent connection is where we should be looking for proof of how our Henry was financed. As there did not seem to be much wealth around elsewhere in the family at the end of the 1820s or early 1830s, when Henry probably went to London to seek his fortune, we must assume that some of the Pinsent wealth may have come his way at that time - enough, at least, to get him going. I think it may also explain how and why Henry, later, invested such a substantial amount in his future son-in-law Arthur Liberty - he was repeating the process by helping another bright but struggling young man to get his foot firmly on the first rung of the ladder, just as his wife's family had with him.

That Henry subsequently prospered as a tailor in fashionable London was certainly due to his own efforts. So let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say that, in large measure at least, the finance to set himself up in business came from his own efforts and frugality - qualities we know from Arthur Liberty that Henry Blackmore greatly admired.

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FOOTNOTES

1.  In contrast, the parish accounts show 'to William Blackmore, salary, �1' for 1771 and, for 1811, 'to John Blackmore clerk to Exmouth Chapel from Christmas 1804 to Christmas 1809 at 2 guineas [�2.10], �10.10s' [�10.50] BACK TO TEXT

2.  The London Gazette for 18 June 1829 p1153 says the hearing was to take place in Exmouth on 11 July 1829 where, according to Trewman's Exeter Flying Post for 16 July 1829, he gained his discharge. Perhaps the hearing was transferred to Exeter because the debt that brought him down was a Devon and not a Surrey debt. Subsequent research by Ronald Blackmore shows that he continued in business as a Master Tailor, employing 2 men, at 3 Church Street, Fulham. He was widowed, and remarried a woman 20 or more years his junior when he was 58, dying of 'nervous exhaustion' 10 years later! BACK TO TEXT

3.  George Blackmore (Henry's brother in Devon) did leave �200 to his nephew 'George Blackmore', but this has been proved by Ronald Blackmore to have been a different George, a tailor from Devon living at Ponsonby Place, Vauxhall. BACK TO TEXT

4.  Simpson Curtis (formerly called Simpson, Curtis & Co.) and Pinsent & Co. have now amalgamated under the name Pinsent Curtis. This makes them the 15th largest firm in the country. It is a shame that, for reasons of alliteration, the Simpson name has gone, and that of Frank Curtis, a useless lawyer but one who brought in a few good clients from York Races, is to be perpetuated.
[Since this was written, further amalgamations have resulted in the total loss of the Simpson name, but I am assured that the same old spirit lives on in the Leeds office - said to be the most successful sector of their empire - of what is now, in 2008, called Pinsent Mason.] BACK TO TEXT