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Henry Remington (1797-1866)

Henry Remington

Written by Tim Cockerill

Occupation: Solicitor

Family Background

The Remington family settled at Melling-in-Lunesdale in the 16th century and the name of Matthew Remington appears in the parish register for the first time in 1551. Three generations later, Reginald Remington (1770-1854) JP built The Crow Trees at Melling, a substantial but plain late-Georgian house of three bays, with a long wing at the back and tripartite windows at the front flanking a Tuscan porch. This house remained in the family until sold in the early 20th century.

Henry Remington was born at Melling and christened there on 27 July1797.  He was the eldest son of Reginald Remington who had married Catherine (1774-1857), the youngest daughter of Thomas Machell of Aynsome, Broughton, near Cartmel (qv) in 1796. In the 1851 census for Melling his father is described as a ‘landed proprietor’ and in 1873 the estate comprised 530 acres. In addition, in 1855, Henry succeeded to the Aynsome estate on the death of his younger brother the Revd Thomas Remington (b. 1801), the bachelor vicar of Cartmel, who was the builder of the Hospice on Hampsfell. The house is now known as the Aynsome Manor Hotel.  Henry Remington was also the grandfather of John Stewart Remington (1872-1960) (qv).

Education and Career

Young Henry’s schooling has not been discovered but thereafter he did not attend a university but instead was articled to a solicitor for five years from 1815, the usual method of entry into the profession for regional candidates. His principal was Thomas Thompson of Lancaster, but once he was admitted a solicitor in 1820, he decided to set up in practice on his own in Ulverston, perhaps because of his mother's local family connections.

The 1829 Law List shows that there were at that date another ten solicitors and attorneys practicing in Ulverston, which in 1821 had a rapidly increasing population across its ten townships. By then Henry Remington had already made his mark, as he was the clerk to the deputy lieutenants, clerk to the magistrates and also clerk to the commissioners of taxes, in addition to which he had a private practice.

Three decades later the 1861 census still described him as a solicitor living at Aynsome, so he was presumably still practicing. The 1856 Law List confirms that he was then in partnership with his son George, who was admitted two years earlier and that he was still clerk to the deputy lieutenants and to the magistrates in Ulverston. He probably never did officially retire from practice, just gradually passed on an ever increasing burden to his son, who still appears in the 1892 Law List, together with another twenty-two other Ulverston solicitors. This doubling of the number of solicitors in the town between 1829 and 1892 is a useful index of the growth of business in Furness.

Marriage and Family

On 7 September 1826, at Great Urswick, Henry Remington married Mary Ashburner (b.1796), the only child of George Ashburner of Holm Bank, Great Urswick. George was a yeoman, whose wife Agnes (always known as Aggy) was a Cragg of Lowscales, Millom and the sister of Mrs Eleanor Lewthwaite, the wife of William Lewthwaite (1766-1845) JP of Broadgate, Thwaites, Millom.

According to their grandson John Stewart Remington the young couple began married life in a house in Benson Street,Ulverston but in 1830 a larger house in Queen Street came on the market. This property had been the town house of the Rawlinsons of Duddon Hall (qv) and Henry Remington bought it. The 1851 census indicates that the house was 4 Queen Street and shows that Henry and his wife Mary, both 54, were living there, with their son George, an unmarried articled clerk aged 22, together with three female house servants.

Apart from George they had three other sons, Reginald, Henry and Thomas Machell Remington and two daughters, Agnes (b.1831) and Catherine (b. 1834). Agnes married in 1852 the Revd Thomas Edmund Petty (1825-1854), the first incumbent of Bardsea, son of Thomas Petty (1786-1849) of Wellhouse, Bardsea and Preston, where he was a partner in German and Petty, cotton spinners. His uncles Edmund Petty (1876-1816) and George Shaw Petty (1790-1872) were wine and spirit merchants, shipbulders, timber merchants and founders of the Ulverston bank of Petty and Postlethwaite, in partnership with William Postlethwaite (1790-1876). Catherine, her sister, (d.1914) married in 1860 the Revd Canon James Allen Wilson (1827-1917) JP, rector of Bolton-by-Bowland, Lancashire and were the parents of the Revd Henry Remington Allen Wilson (1869-1928), vicar of Mansergh, Cumbria.

The eldest son of Henry and Mary Remington was the Revd Reginald Remington (1827-1909), of The Crow Trees, Melling, patron of Melling and vicar and patron of Fritwell, 1876-1882, a village between Bicester and Banbury in Oxfordshire. Here he lived in the Manor House, which was built in 1616 and had a private chapel. In 1860, at Cartmel Priory, he married Frances (Fanny) Binyon (1829-1890), eldest daughter of Alfred Binyon (1800-1856), of Merlewood, Grange-over-Sands, a house which he built, a partner in Messrs Thomas Hoyle and Sons, calico printers in Manchester and also a banker in Kendal. Her nephew was the poet Lawrence Binyon (1869-1943; ODNB), whose three daughters are all in the DCB. Her sister Emily Binyon (1830-1904) married in 1858 the Revd John Henry Ransome (1828-1992), vicar of Kirkoswald 1877-1892, whose grandson was the author Arthur Ransome (1884-1967). They had one son and five daughters.

George (1829-1898) Henry's second son, was a solicitor with his father in Ulverston, married Mary Ann Stewart and were the parents of John Stewart Remington (qv). He also owned Longlands, Cartmel.  The third son, Henry Remington (1833-1901) was of Trinkeld, near Swarthmoor Hall, Ulverston, whose occupation is unknown and who was unmarried.

Henry and Mary's fourth son was the Revd Thomas Machell Remington (1836-1900), of Aynsome , who was vicar of Arkholme,near Carnforth from 1866-1873 and then rector of Claughton, near Lancaster from 1873-1885. He married in 1867 his sister-in-law Alice Maud Binyon (1833-1884), the sister of Fanny, the wife of his brother Reginald Remington (see above).  They had two sons, George Frederick who died young and Thomas Machell Remington, (b.1874), who married Eleanor Wearing of Cartmel but died in New Zealand without issue. In addition they had four daughters, one died young, one died unmarried, Lucy Maud married Norman Paice and Margaret Emily married in 1898 her first cousin, John Stewart Remington (see above).

The Later Years

By 1861 Henry Remington was living at Aynsome with his wife Mary and her mother Mrs Ashburner, a widow aged 93, and three female servants. Presumably the family moved there from Ulverston after Henry was left the property by his brother Thomas in 1855, but, according to his grandson, he retained his town house in Queen Street, Ulverston.  In addition, he was then the owner of the family's ancestral home , The Crow Trees, Melling, as well as Longlands a large Georgian country house in Cartmel Vale, which he had purchased from his friend Thomas Sunderland (qv). He may also have owned an estate at Pennington called Row Head , which was owned by his son Henry in 1870. It was once said by his friend Dr Bernard Gilpin of Ulverston (qv) that he had ‘as many seats as a hare’. All this was partly fortuitous but also due to the large fortune that he had made as a county lawyer.

Henry Remington's main residence for the last few years of his life seems to have been Aynsome, described by his grandson John Stewart Remington as ‘one of the ancient residences of Cartmel parish made still more beautiful by Henry Remington, the gardens much admired with their sheet of water and old yew hedges.........the interior a perfect treasure house, containing many old family deeds, papers and family portraits’. James Stockdale called Aynsome ‘a much-admired place and one of the gems of the far-famed vale of Cartmel’, again emphasizing Henry's improvements.

Henry Remington died on 17 February 1866, aged 69, and was buried in the churchyard of Cartmel Priory. Letters of administration with the will annexed were granted to his solicitor son George at Lancaster on 28 April 1866, with his effects sworn at under £35,000 (now about £1.7 million) and this excluded his land and estates. His mother-in-law Mrs Ashburner outlived him by a year, dying in February 1867 in her 100th year.  Seventeen years after Henry's death his widow Mary died on 20 October 1883, aged 87. Her will and two codicils were proved at the Principal Probate Registry in London by three of her four sons, the Revd Reginald Remington of Fritwell Manor, Oxfordshire, George Remington of Ulverston, solicitor and the Revd Thomas Machell Remington of Claughton, Lancashire, her effects being sworn at £9,690..10s..1d (now about £514,000).

The Aynsome estate was sold by the family in the early 1920s to Sir Evan MacGregor GCB, a former Permanent Secretary to the Admiralty, whose daughter re-sold the property on Sir Evan's death in 1926.

Sources

  • Ancestry.com
  • Barrow-in-Furness Record Office, Timothy Cockerill Remington archive BDX 339; H Remington will BDHJ/189/5/50; estate plan of Row Head, Pennington, Cumbria, BD HJ Plan/30
  • Beckett, John, Notes relating to Merlewood, Grange-over-Sands 1850-1930, privately printed by the author, 2003
  • Boumphrey, R.S., Hudleston, C.Roy, and Hughes, J., An Armorial for Westmorland and Lonsdale, pp.246-347, Gateshead, 1975
  • Bulmer, J. (editor), T. Bulmer and Co, The History, Topography and Directory of Furness and Cartmel, undated but c.1910, Preston
  • Cockerill, Timothy, The Machell and Remington Families of Aynsome, Cartmel, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, Volume LXXX1X, 1989, pp.263-268, Kendal, 1989
  • Law Lists, 1829, 1856 and 1892
  • Parson and White, The History, Directory and Gazetteer of Cumberland and Westmorland with Furness and Cartmel 1829, pp.701 and 704, Leeds, 1829
  • Pine, L.G., (editor), Burke's Landed Gentry 1952, 17th edition, p. 2124, London, 1952
  • Remington, John Stewart, A Peep into the Past, Kendal, 1935, (the author has his annotated copy given to him by his daughter)
  • Return of Owners of Land 1873 (Lancashire), HMSO, London, 1875
  • Robinson, John Martin, A Guide to the Country Houses of the North-West, p.155 (for Aynsome Manor), p.176 (for The Crow Trees, Melling) and p. 217 (for Longlands), London, 1991
  • Stockdale, James, The Annals of Cartmel, pp. 511-515, ( originally published as Annales Caermoelenses in 1872), re-printed by Michael Moon, Ilkley, 1978
  • White, Rod, his website Furness Stories Behind the Stones