Miscellany Whistler’s Farm, Tangley, Hampshire John Whistler of Tangley and Bexhill John Whistler and Elizabeth Turner were married at St Mary Magdalen, Oxford, in 1738 (1). The marriage register gave their home address as Oakley, Buckinghamshire, where their son John Whistler was baptised later in the year on 16 November 1738 (2). Oakley is a few miles east of Beckley and Stowood in Oxfordshire. Webster Whistler, the son of John and Elizabeth Whistler of ‘Stow-wood’, was baptised on 1 June 1748 at nearby Stanton St John, Oxfordshire (3). In the 1740s John and Elizabeth Whistler resided in Tangley, Hampshire where their children Hugh, Mary and Elizabeth were baptised. The property John Whistler owned in Tangley, inherited from his father John Whistler, was sold in 1746 (4). The name was preserved – Whistler’s Farm is marked on modern day maps of the area. At some point, John and Elizabeth Whistler settled in the East Sussex town of Bexhill, west of Hastings. The will of John Whistler, who died in 1786, bequeathed: (5) To son John Whistler of Doncaster, Yorks., plummier [plumber], £1000. To son Hugh Whistler of Bexhill, £4000. To son Webster Whistler £100 in addition to £300 for which testator stood bound for said son. To daughter Mary Reeves of Clerkenwell, London, £500. . . . To children of eldest son John Whistler £900 after wife’s decease. Elizabeth Whistler was buried in the churchyard of St Peter’s Church, Bexhill, on 10 May 1793 (6). She was predeceased by her son John Whistler of Doncaster (7). John Whistler of Doncaster In 1755 the John Whistler baptised at Oakley would now be 16 years old, the right age to train for a profession. In this year a John Whistler was apprenticed to William Golden, a glazier of St James Westminster (8). The trade of a glazier was often combined with business as a plumber who worked with lead. A John Whistler, established as a plumber, glazier and painter in London ‘near the Angel, at Highgate’, sold his business in 1770 (9). It is not known if this was the same John Whistler who ended up in Doncaster. In 1772 John Whistler, in the trade of plumber and glazier, was living in the town of Mansfield Woodhouse in Nottinghamshire (10). John, the eldest son of John Whistler and his wife Jane, was baptised at Mansfield Woodhouse on 31 July 1774. The second son of John and Jane Whistler was named Hugh. Their younger children, baptised in Doncaster, were Elizabeth (4 March 1778), Thomas (20 June 1781), Henry (1 January 1787) and Jane (2 April 1790) (11). John Whistler, skilled as a plumber and glazier, was admitted a freeman of Doncaster on 21 May 1776 with the payment of a fee of 5 guineas (12). A 1791 trade directory for Doncaster listed John Whistler, plumber and glazier. The address of his home and shop was the Market Place, Doncaster (13). Whistler’s Farm, Tangley In 2013 Whistlers Farm at Tangley, six miles from Andover, was advertised for sale for the first time in 43 years. The sale information, from the Country Life website, 29 August 2013, and the Carter Jonas estate agents website, described the house as a period farmhouse built of mellow red brick and flint elevations under a tiled roof. In Victorian times the estate of more than 100 acres became the home of the Poore family, and then part of the Merceron estate. After the First World War, the house and its adjoining farm were acquired by the Sturt family, who remained there until 1969, when the land was sold to the neighbouring farmer, and new owners bought the farmhouse with four acres of gardens, grounds and paddock. Some time after, the Old Coach House, built of brick and flint elevations under a slate roof, a short distance from the farmhouse, was converted to a separate house. Whistler’s Farm, Tangley, photograph 2013 Carter Jonas, Winchester estate agents Map: Whistler’s Farm, Tangley from streetmap. Life at Whistler’s Farm, Tangley Life at Whistler’s Farm, Tangley, from the viewpoint of a schoolchild, was documented in 1986 as part of a BBC project "to record a snapshot of everyday life across the UK for future generations". The extract below is from the Domesday Reloaded webpage: What life is like in Tangley. The farm land around Tangley is clay and chalk. There are a lot of crops grown in Tangley e.g. wheat, barley, oats and maize. Tangley is on top of a hill, there is a lot of wind and in winter I get snowed in for days at a time. I live at Whistler's Farm on the top of a ridge. Whistler's Farm can be a wild and wind swept place. When I ride my bike it is down hill all from my house and uphill all the way back to my house. The roads are narrow and windy. There is some woodland around my house. There are alot of sheep in the fields and some cattle. In the winter there is hunting and shooting. Where I live some of the summers are hot and some of the summers are wet. There is a coach service to take me to school. Supplementary Notes Laurence Whistler (The Laughter and the Urn, The Life of Rex Whistler, p. 303) suggested that John Whistler of Doncaster, who is shown on the Rose Fuller Whistler family tree, may be the father of John Whistler, plumber of Aldermaston, Berkshire. However, research has established that John Whistler of Aldermaston was born in Eversley, Hampshire. Notes (1) Transcribed parish register of St Mary Magdalen, Oxford at the SoG. (2) IGI. (3) Rose Fuller Whistler family tree and the transcribed parish register of Stanton St John, Oxfordshire, at the SoG. Webster Whistler was the grandfather of the family historian Rose Fuller Whistler. (4) Hampshire Record Office online catalogue FindingNo 46M84/C12/54, Title: Mortgages and related deeds of the Whistler family's property in Tangley. (5) The A2A website: East Sussex Record Office, Archive of Frere and Co of London, solicitors, Catalogue Ref. SAS–F/543. (6) Sussex Family History Group contribution to the National Burial Index accessed at Family History Online. This service closed in March 2009. Selected databases were transferred to the website: FindMyPast. (7) Whistler v. Webster, 1794, gives family information described in the summary given in Francis Vesey, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of Chancery, Vol. II, 1844 (accessed at Google Books online). Documents in the National Archives online catalogue are: C 12/201/21 Whistler v. Webster, 1793 and C 12/479/22 Whistler v Webster, 1795. (8) Apprentices of Great Britain 1710–1774, Society of Genealogists, London. (9) A notice was printed in the Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, London, on 30 March 1770 (17th and 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers, from the British Library newspapers online): To be sold by auction, by John Young, On Wednesday next, the 4th of April, on the premises; for the benefit of the creditors, All the entire household furniture, stock in trade, &c., of Mr John Whistler, plumber, glazier, and painter, at his dwelling-house near the Angel, at Highgate; consisting of several bedsteads and furnitures, feather-beds, an eight-day clock, by Chater, kitchen furniture, &c., together with all the stock and implements in the aforesaid businesses, a large mould for casting of lead, an iron melting-pan, some lead pipe, a lead pump, casement and other lead, old lead, &c., a white-lead mill compleat, colours, paints, three painters machines, &c., crown and green glass, sixteen cucumber-lights, new and old casements, old iron, all the work-benches, working-tools in the said businesses, &c. To be viewed on Wednesday morning till the sale, which will begin at eleven o’clock. Catalogues may be had on the premises, and at John Young’s, Sworn-broker, in Old Street. Any person choosing to purchase the whole by appraisement, may have immediate possession of the house and premises, which has been in the said businesses upwards of 40 years, by applying to Mr Young aforesaid, who will treat for the same. (10) The Apprentices’ Indentures online database at the Ancestry website has a record for John Whistler as a master taking on an apprentice. (11) IGI. The four sons of John Whistler were named in his will. In 1791 Hugh Whistler started an apprenticeship with Edward Fisher, a tallow-chandler of East Retford, Nottinghamshire (Apprentices of Great Britain, online database of the Society of Genealogists, London). On 28 August 1803 a Hugh Whistler was buried at St Mary and St Martin’s Church in Blyth, Nottinghamshire (National Burial Index, Nottinghamshire Family History Society). (12) Freemen of the Borough of Doncaster, Vol. 2, J–Z, edited by Pamela Lindley, Doncaster and District Family History Society, 1998 (available at the British Library). A fee was required to become a freeman for anyone who was not a time-served apprentice. (13) A list of principal inhabitants for Doncaster, Yorkshire in The Universal British Directory of Trade, Commerce, and Manufacture 1791, Vol. 2 transcribed at the website: Parishmouse. Market Place as the address of Whistler’s business was stated in the will of John Whistler, plumber and glazier of Doncaster, dated 31 October 1792 and proved on 27 June 1797 in the Prerogative & Exchequer Courts of York (a copy of the will was ordered from the Borthwick Institute for Archives, York). Copyright © Diana Whistler All Rights Reserved. Disclaimer   Revision date: November 2013