Some Tombs at Combe
| A version of this article was published in the Berkshire Family Historian, the journal of the Berkshire Family History Society, December 2012, pp. 22–23. |
In 1441 King Henry VI granted the manor of Combe to King’s College Cambridge who retained ownership until February 1894 when it was sold to Alfred Clayton Cole, governor of the Bank of England from 1911 to 1913. Alfred Clayton Cole was the son of William Henry Cole who was the owner of the nearby manor of West Woodhay in Berkshire close to the border with Hampshire (1). In 1895 the county border was changed so that Combe was switched from Hampshire to Berkshire. A note about Combe at the website of the Berkshire Family History Society states: ‘it is said that the Cole family arranged for its transfer into Berkshire for convenience, because that was the county of their other landholdings’.
Documents at the King’s College Archive Centre reveal that in the early 1600s Combe manor was leased to Robert Boswell.
In the late seventeenth century the leaseholder of the manor was Gabriel Whistler, appointed sheriff of Hampshire by King Charles II in November 1681. Born at the Hampshire village of Faccombe in about 1630, Gabriel was one of the seven sons and three daughters of Hugh Whistler, the Faccombe parish rector. There is some evidence that Hugh Whistler was the ancestor of the famous artist James McNeill Whistler; but finding the records to confirm this is elusive.
Gabriel Whistler built two castles in Londonderry, at Magherafelt and Salterstown, on the Irish estates granted to the Salters’ Company of London. A window with the Whistler coat of arms was installed in St Swithin’s Church, Magherafelt. Gabriel was a donor to King’s College Chapel, Cambridge and, in recognition, his arms were included in a row of shields mounted in the carved oak-work of the choir. This panelling was removed and placed in storage during renovations in the 1960s.
At a wedding in Combe in 1658 Gabriel married his cousin Ann, the only surviving child of Ralph Whistler and his wife Elizabeth. Ralph Whistler, an older brother of Gabriel’s father Hugh, was a cavalry officer on the side of parliament at the first major battle of the Civil War fought at Edgehill, near Banbury, Warwickshire in 1642.
Gabriel Whistler was buried at St Swithun’s Church, Combe on 14 August 1710. He was predeceased by his wife; they had no children. A stone tomb with a side panel inscribed to Gabriel Whistler is in the churchyard. His wife Ann, who died in 1681, was commemorated with a black marble gravestone in the chancel floor of the church at Combe (2).
Another tomb in the Combe churchyard is dedicated to Gabriel’s mother-in-law Elizabeth Whistler, buried on a winter’s day 25 January 1700/1 (3).
| Tombs in the churchyard of St Swithun’s Church, Combe |
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Tomb, 20 metres south of south door to chancel. Side panel inscribed
to Gabriel Whistler in oval surrounded by cherubs. Photograph by John Rendle, 18 December 2003. National Heritage List for England, number 1221129  |
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Tomb, one metre south of south door to chancel. Side panel inscribed
to Elizabeth Whistler died 1700, in oval surrounded by cherubs. Photograph by John Rendle, 18 December 2003. National Heritage List for England, number 1221130
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After 1710 a lease for the Combe manor farm was granted to an Edward Basse. In September 1714 the lease was transferred to Gabriel Whistler’s nephew, John Rawlinson, who was the son of Gabriel’s sister Eleanor and her first husband John Rawlinson, a haberdasher of London (4). The chancel floor of the church at Combe has memorial stones inscribed to John Rawlinson died 1680, and his son John died 1724 (5). Eleanor remarried the London merchant Peter Joye at St Swithun’s Church, Combe on 5 October 1685 (6).
The longevity of their lives is notable. Gabriel Whistler lived to aged 80. His sister Eleanor Joye, buried at Combe in January 1728/9, lived into her eighties, as did their brother Henry Whistler, a London merchant known to Samuel Pepys. A surmise is that a long life in this past era may reflect an affluent lifestyle of comfortably furnished homes, fine clothes, and good food supplied by the manor farm.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth century the Rawlinson family continued their connection to Combe (7). John Rawlinson, the grandson of Hugh Whistler of Faccombe, was buried at Combe on 23 February 1724/5. His will mentioned no children; he named an heir as his "kinsman" John Rawlinson, eldest son of Christopher Rawlinson deceased, but formerly of Ingram Grange in North Yorkshire. A Rawlinson family tomb is in the churchyard at Combe. (8).
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St Swithun’s Church with flintstone wall
and churchyard at Combe, West Berkshire |
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At right, the Rawlinson family tomb enclosed by iron railings.
Photograph by Basher Eyre, 16 August 2013. Geograph Britain and Ireland photographic archive.
Description from National Heritage List for England, number
1221125 |
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has an entry for Sir Christopher Rawlinson, a judge in India, who was born at Combe on 10 July 1806. His youngest son, John Frederick Peel Rawlinson, who played football for England in 1882 and was MP for Cambridge University from 1906 until his death in 1926, left a bequest for the upkeep of the Rawlinson family graves and memorials at St Swithun’s Church, Combe, as well as for general repairs and maintenance of the church and churchyard (9).
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John Frederick Peel Rawlinson (21 December 1860 – 14 January 1926) As caricatured by Spy in Vanity Fair, January 1908. From Wikipedia . |
Reports have been made that the Combe manor house is haunted. Local people have told stories about seeing ladies and gentlemen dressed in the style of the seventeenth century, a reminder of the time when the Whistler family had a presence in the community (10).
The Vicarage
A description of Combe at the Berkshire Family History Society website states that the vicarage has been long demolished.
The advowson of the vicarage at Combe belonged to the Dean and canons of St George’s Chapel, Windsor. On 13 May 1697 Richard Westmacott was appointed the vicar of Combe (11). Richard, the son of Richard Westmacott of Northleach, Gloucestershire, entered St Mary Hall Oxford 1689, aged 15 and graduated B.A. from Hart Hall 23 February 1693 (12).
On 16 February 1698 the Combe parish register recorded the marriage of Richard Westmacott to Elizabeth, who was the daughter of Valentine Blake and his wife, the daughter of Gabriel’s brother Raphael Whistler (13). Elizabeth Westmacott worked as the faithful housekeeper for her great-uncle Gabriel Whistler. She was buried at Combe on 21 January 1708/9; leaving behind her husband Richard and six children (14).
A Folk Tale
There is a dramatic story about a Colonel Rawlinson, completely unconfirmed, that comes from a folk memory of the Civil War. Rawlinson was a supporter of King Charles I. A marble hearth-stone in one of the rooms of Combe manor house is said to be stained with his blood from when he was killed there after fleeing from the second battle of Newbury in 1644:
[Colonel Rawlinson] hid inside one of the huge chimneys of the house, suspending himself in the cavity by clutching the rim of the chimney pot at the top with his fingertips. But the Roundheads discovered him, one of the troopers clambered on to the roof, and with a swing of his blade severed Rawlinson’s fingers. The wounded man slithered down the chimney to the hearth where the waiting soldiers killed him
(Wendy Boase, The Folklore of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, 1976, p. 54).
| Memorials in St Swithun’s Church, Combe, West Berkshire A row of three black marble ledger stones, commemorating the Whistler
Photographs at Find A Grave | ||
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Memorial with the
The inscription states: Here lieth the body of Mrs | |
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John Rawlinson Esq
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Here lieth the body of Mr
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General References
Appendix: Transcribed Will of John Rawlinson of Combe
Appendix: Documents: Whistler / Joye / Rawlinson
Notes
(1) ‘Combe’, V.C.H. Hampshire, Vol. 4, p. 310; ‘West Woodhay’, V.C.H. Berkshire, Vol. 4. A brief biographical note about Alfred Clayton Cole (1854–1920) is in Youssef Cassis, City Bankers, 1890–1914, Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 89. He was elected a director of the Bank of England in 1895.
(2) ‘Combe’, V.C.H. Hampshire, Vol. 4, p. 311.
(3)
Two other Whistler tombs, in the churchyard at Combe, do not seem to be recorded in the surviving records of the Combe burial register:
tomb, three metres south of south door to chancel,
side panel inscribed to Whistler died 1708, in oval surrounded by cherubs
(National Heritage List for England, number
1221131 ); and
tomb, five metres south of south door to chancel,
side panel inscribed to Richard Whistler, date illegible
(National Heritage List for England, number
1221124 ).
(4)
H. G. Rawlinson, Oxoniensia, 1942, pp. 93–4
(this source states that John Rawlinson was deputy sheriff of Hampshire,
this needs to be confirmed);
Memorandum of Eleanor Joye as executrix of her brother Gabriel
Whistler’s estate, dated 27 September 1714, in the archives of King’s
College, Cambridge: estate records for the manor of Combe,
reference: KCAR/6/2/39/17 COM/62.
Boyd's Inhabitants of London (Society of Genealogists data online)
has a page for John Rawlinson, haberdasher, and wife Eleanor at the
London parish of St Edmund, King and Martyr, Lombard Street with their children
John (baptised 4 July 1673), Joseph (5 Sept 1675), Gabriel (18 Feb 1676/7),
Charles (2 June 1678) and Henry (15 Jan 1679).
(5) ‘Combe’, V.C.H. Hampshire, Vol. 4, p. 311.
(6)
Phillimores Hampshire marriages Volume 2.
Mrs Eleanor Joye was buried at Combe in January 1728/9
(Hampshire Genealogical Society, Hampshire Burial Index CD;
Rose Fuller Whistler family tree; and notice about Whistler v. Rawlinson
printed in the London Gazette, 20 December 1783).
The will of Eleanor Joy, widow was proved in the PCC on 13 January 1729.
(7)
In about 1750 the Combe manor house and lands were leased from King’s
College by John Rawlinson, Ann Morgan and Hugh Whistler
(archives of King’s College, Cambridge: estate records for the manor of
Combe, reference: KCAR/6/2/039/09 COM/63).
The name of Ann Morgan is on the Rose Fuller Whistler family tree.
Elizabeth, the daughter of John Whistler, rector of Clapham, Sussex,
married Jonas Knight. Their daughter Elizabeth Knight married
George Morgan. A Faculty Office marriage licence dated 29 November 1721
was issued for George Morgan and Elizabeth Knight
(British Origins online database).
Their daughter Ann Morgan died aged 87 in 1817.
(8)
Burials entered in the parish register for Combe:
Christopher Rawlinson, Esq., aged 72, buried 17 November 1775;
John Rawlinson, M.D., aged 55, died 19 November 1798, buried 25 November 1798; and
Christopher Rawlinson, aged 76, buried 22 April 1811
(Hampshire Burial Index prepared by the Hampshire Genealogical Society and the
Berkshire Burial Index prepared by the Berkshire Family History Society).
Some additional notes about the Rawlinsons:
Charles R. Dod, The Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage of Great
Britain and Ireland, 1848, p. 379 (Google Books online) mentions
‘Christopher Rawlinson, Esq., of Combe House, Hampshire’, whose
will was proved in the PCC in 1775.
The Rawlinsons also had a connection with the Hampshire village of
Upper Clatford, near Andover and south of Combe.
In 1681 the widow Eleanor Rawlinson, sister of Gabriel Whistler, took
possession of the manor of Upper Clatford, centered at Norman Court Farm,
together with Sackville’s Court in the village of Upper Clatford near
the church. These two manors remained in the Rawlinson family into
the nineteenth century (V.C.H. Hampshire, Vol. 4, p. 363).
The Salisbury and Winchester Journal, dated Monday 16 January
1826, printed a notice about the manor of Upper Clatford
(webpage of newspaper transcripts compiled by Richard Heaton):
The next general Court Baron or Customary Court of John Rawlinson, Esquire, Lord of the said Manor, will be held at the usual place in Upper Clatford aforesaid, on Friday the 20th day of January instant.
(9) Documents ordered from the Hampshire Record Office, online catalogue finding numbers: 44M68/F2/151 & 44M68/F3/45. A "Coombe [Combe] Rawlinson Trust Account" was set-up at Lloyds Bank, Newbury.
(10) ‘Combe’, V.C.H. Hampshire, Vol. 4; Wendy Boase, The Folklore of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, 1976, p. 84.
(11) V.C.H. Hampshire, Vol. 4, p. 311; Hampshire Record Office online catalogue, collection: Archdeaconry of Winchester, finding numbers 35M48/6/244 & 35M48/6/457. In 1730 John Lockton replaced Richard Westmacott as the vicar of Combe.
(12) Joseph Foster, editor, Alumni Oxonienses, (accessed at British History Online).
(13) Phillimores Hampshire marriages Volume 2; Rose Fuller Whistler, ‘The Annals of an English Family’, p. 75.
(14) PCC will of Gabriel Whistler; Hampshire Burial Index CD.
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Revision date: 2024 |