The Story of an English Manor

On our holiday last week we stayed at historic Gurney Manor — sometimes called Gurney Street Manor — in Cannington, Somerset.

It is a very special place.

Rescued by the Landmark Trust in the 1980s, much of the fabric dates to before 1400, with substantial additions in the mid-to-late fifteenth century.

Because it largely came down in the world after the seventeenth century, many of its ancient features, including the fifteenth century covered passage across the inner courtyard linking the old kitchen to the hall, have survived.

Unsurprisingly, it proved quite a good hunting ground for names, which are almost text-book examples of the typical names through the centuries, demonstrating fluctuations in fashion both generally, and across the social spectrum.

The original owners — and the family who gave their name to the manor — were a branch of the baronial family of Gurney, the founder of which came to England with William the Conqueror. Only a few names are known from this earliest period, emerging from the fog of remote history; a RICHARD de Gurney, flourished in 1243, when he put in a claim on the mill, then in possession of his “kinsman” WILLIAM, son of PHILIP.

Richard had a son called ROBERT.

By the end of the thirteenth century, the property appears to have been owned by JOHN de Gurney, who was alive in 1327.

The last of the line at Gurney Manor, and probably the one responsible for much of the parts of the hall dating to the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century, was HUGH, who succeeded to the estate in 1358. Either he, or a son of the same name, was there in 1401, with a wife called BEATRICE.

He had no son, and so the manor passed to his daughter JANE — an unusual name at the time, when the usually feminine form of John was Joan. She married ROGER Dodesham.

Responsible for most of the fifteenth century additions was their son, another WILLIAM, who was a lawyer as well as a landowner.

William had sisters called JOAN and ELEANOR, and on his death in 1480, the Gurney Street Manor passed in trust to Joan’s daughter, AGNES, wife of WALTER Michell, who died in 1487. Agnes and Walter had three sons, who each succeeded in turn, WILLIAM, JOHN, and THOMAS.

Thomas, whose wife was called MARGARET, died in 1503, when the manor passed to his son, another THOMAS. He also had a daughter called ISABEL.

Thomas made a number of improvements and refinements to the house, adding fine windows and new chimneys — but it all came to an abrupt end on December 13, 1539, when he murdered his wife JOAN and sister-in-law ELEANOR, seemingly at Gurney Manor, before killing himself.

He had two known children, another JANE, and another RICHARD.

Richard, who married an ELIZABETH, died in 1563, leaving the manor to his son, TRISTRAM.

Tristram, meanwhile, died in 1574, when the manor passed to his brother, Sir BARTHOLOMEW.

On Bartholomew’s death in 1616, his lands were split between his daughters, JANE and FRANCES. Gurney passed to Jane, wife of WILLIAM Hockmore.

William had considerable property elsewhere, and Gurney’s owners no longer lived there; the house and its acres was let to tenants, so that by the late nineteenth century, it was regarded as just a (large) farmhouse.

The names of most of these tenants is lost, but we still know the names of the house’s owners, and their families.

Jane and William Hockmore, for instance, had six children, SUSANNAH, GREGORY, CHARLES, WILLIAM, FRANCES and RICHARD, not all of whom lived to adulthood.

Gregory, married to MARY, inherited in 1626, dying in 1653, when the estate passed to his son, also called GREGORY (he also had a daughter called JANE).

Gregory II, married to HONOR, also had two children, a son WILLIAM, and, quelle surprise, yet another JANE.

William, who inherted sometime between 1676 and 1680, married another MARY, and had three daughters, MARY, JANE and HONORA; only Honora survived to adulthood, becoming William’s heiress on his death in 1707-08.

She married DAVIDGE Gould (his mother’s maiden name was Davidge) around 1713, and had five children who survived to adulthood: Sir HENRY (d.1794), RICHARD (d.1793), HONORA (d.1802), WILLIAM (d.1799) and THOMAS (d.1808).

Henry, married ELIZABETH, and had two daughters, another ELIZABETH, and HONORA MARGARETTA. Elizabeth married TEMPLE Luttrell; Honora Margaretta, who died in 1813, married General RICHARD Lambart, 7th Earl of Cavan.

And Gurney passed through her to the Earls of Cavan.

(Temple Luttrell was an interesting character; an MP, he was reputedly also a smuggler, and built a folly, called Luttrell’s Tower, at Eaglehurst near Southampton. On his death in Paris in 1803, Luttrell’s Tower passed to the Earl of Cavan too. By pure coincidence, Luttrell’s Tower is also now owned by the Landmark Trust.)

Richard and Honora Margaretta had five children:

• RICHARD HENRY ROBERT GILBERT (1783-85)
• HONORA ELIZABETH HESTER (1784-1856)
• ALICIA MARGARETTA HOCKMORE (1785-1818)
• SOPHIA AUGUSTA (1787-98)
• RICHARD HENRY (b. and d. 1788)
• GEORGE FREDERICK AUGUSTUS (1789-1828)
• EDWARD HENRY WENTWORTH VILLIERS (1791-1812)

George, who died before his father, married the simply named SARAH, and had five children:

• HENRIETTA AUGUSTA (d. 1874)
• ALICIA (d.1913)
• JULIA (d.1897)
• FREDERICK JOHN WILLIAM (1815-87)
• OLIVER GEORGE (1822-98)

Frederick John William’s wife was CAROLINE AUGUSTA, and they also had five children:

• MARY HYACINTHE (d.1933)
• SARAH SOPHIA (d.1914)
• FREDERICK EDWARD GOULD (1839-1900)
• OCTAVIUS HENRY (1855-1919)
• ARTHUR (1858-1937)

Frederick Edward Gould’s wife was MARY SNEADE (Sneade was her middle name — her surname was Olive), and their children:

• FREDERICK RUDOLPH (1865-1946)
• ELLEN OLIVE (1867-1945)
• MAUD EDITH GUNDREDA (1869-1940)
• LIONEL JOHN OLIVE (1873-1940)
• HORACE EDWARD SAMUEL SNEADE (1878-1950).

Frederick Rudolph had no children by his first wife CAROLINE INEZ; by his second wife, HESTER JOAN, he had two daughters; the first, ELIZABETH MARY was born in 1924.

The following year, Gurney was sold to its tenants of more than thirty years, the Bucknells, and with it an unbroken line of descent, if not of inhabitation, of at least eight hundred years, was finally severed.

The Bucknells were a thoroughly English Victorian middle class family; the father, a classic “gentleman farmer” was a solid and respectable JAMES, his wife an equally establishment MARY ANN. One daughter was ELIZA HARRIS, the other, OLIVE MARY (possibly named in honor of the Countess of Cavan), and they also had a son, BENJAMIN JOHN.

In 1901, there were also three servants living with them at the manor: FRANK, EMILY and MABEL.

Gurney’s time once more owned by its inhabitants was short-lived; the Bucknells sold in 1934, and by the 1940s it had been subdivided into flats. By the 1980s, it was in a sorry, neglected state, with most of the flats empty, but then the Landmark Trust bought it, and the rest is (more!) history…

No-one lives there for more than three weeks at a time anymore, but it has been fully restored to its medieval glory and I think the place rather likes the variety of ever changing faces coming and going, and basks in their rapt admiration.

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Nook of Names Pick of the Week — Aster

Yesterday’s Pagan Name of the Month Stella inspired todays Pick of the Week choice — Aster.

Aster is a direct adoption of the Greek astêr “star.”

Not only is it cognate with the Latin stella but also the word for star in most European languages, some of which are, of have been, used as given names, including the Welsh Seren, English Star — and Old English Steorra (which was also used as a name) — German Stern and Russian Zvezda.

In the early seventeenth century, “aster” was adopted into English as an alternative word for star, though this usage has since become obsolete.

The word is best-known now, however, as a flower name. It was first used as such in the early eighteenth century, as an alternative name for starworts, becoming the formal botanical name later for a genus of the daisy family, because of the star-like nature of the flowers. It includes the Michaelmas daisy.

As a given name, there are a couple of examples of Aster known from Antiquity, but it certainly wasn’t common.

In the English-speaking world, Aster is found in the records as early as the seventeenth century, although in many cases this may represent variant spellings of Esther, Hester and Easter (which also got thoroughly muddled), or of the surname Astor.

This surname itself is a variant of Easter — but mostly a different Easter to the festival. It derives from the Old English ēowestere “sheepfold,”  or Good and High Easter in Essex, which share the same source. Occasionally, however, it may be from Easter as a medieval girl’s name, which is the adoption of the name of the festival.

There are also a number of rather nice related names:

Asteria — feminine form of the Greek adjective asterios “starry.” Borne by more than one character in Greek mythology, and used for the name of a precious stone by the Romans, possibly an asteriated sapphire

Asterial — an English adjective meaning “star-like” derived from the Greek

Asterias — scientific name of a genus of star-fish

Asteridas — a rare Ancient Greek personal name. The –idas ending was originally used with the sense of “son of,” so Asteridas can be interpreted with the meaning of “son of a star/the stars.”

Asterion — asterios plus the name suffix –ion. The name of two sacred kings of Crete, one of whom was the father of King Minos. The other is often identified with the Minotaur himself, and is used as such in Jorge Luis Borges in his short story “The House of Asterion” (1949). In Antiquity, it was the name of the white campion, which the Greeks used to weave garlands for Hera. It is also an alternative name for the star Chara.

Asterope (“as-TEH-roe-pee”) — one of the Pleiades; her name combines astêr with ôps “face.”

Astoria — an elaboration of the surname Astor (see above), originally used of the famous New York Hotel, the Waldorf Astoria.

Astra — the plural of the Latin astrum, a Latin cognate of the Greek.

Astraea — feminine form of the Greek adjective astraios “starry.” This is the name of Virgo — the “starry maiden.” Astrea is a variant.

Astral — another English adjective meaning “starry” or “relating to the stars,” perhaps best known through mystic and esoteric beliefs such as “astral spirits,”astral body,” “astral plane” and “astral projection.”

Astrantia — the botanical name for the masterwort, coined from astêr or the related Latin astrum.

Astrion — an obsolete English name of a type of precious stone, probably an asteriated sapphire

Astro — generally a prefix, as found in words such as “Astrophysics”; it was used of two investigative missions to Mars in the ’90s.

Astromancer — rare old English word meaning “diviner by the stars.”

Astron — Greek astron “star” — a variant of astêr.

Astronoe (“as-TROH-no-ee”) — Greek form of the name of a Phoenician Goddess — probably Astarte — remodelled to give it meaning in Greek, i.e. astêr plus nous “mind.”

Astrophel

Astrophora — feminine form of the Greek adjective astrophoros “bearing-stars.” Astropher would make an enticing alternative to Christopher…

In 2010, 16 girls were called Aster in the US; and 4 in the UK. It didn’t make it into the official records as a boy’s name at all. But it has been used for boys, and given how little used it still is, there’s no reason not to.

Aster is a rarity — but it’s definitely a magnificent little star…

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Sneak Peek Week – Estelle

This week is ‘Sneak Peek Week’ at Nook of Names. Each day, I shall be previewing the entry or entries for the names of five friends who first ‘put their hands up’ when I announced it on Facebook.

So, without further ado, allow me to introduce you to Estelle. It’s a good name to start with, as it demonstrates very well how one entry often leads to another — a name in capitals indicates that name has an entry of its own. And Estelle leads us on a journey that takes us to Rome and beyond…

Estelle ♀

A French name. It may be from an old form of French: étoile ‘star’ < STELLA. A comparative development of how the word étoile arose from stella can be seen in the development of Étienne from Stephen. However, another plausible option is that Estelle developed as a variant of ESTHER. The -er ending sits awkwardly in French, and the linguistics involved in a shift to -elle in French are slight. Certainly, the resemblance to the Latin stella, if not an archaic form of étoile (no coincidence, as stella and Esther are probably cognate anyway), may have encouraged the development. The name was rare in France before the 19^th Century, being found only in Les Charentes and Provence – another hint that its origins lie in Esther; Provence was where Isabella developed from Elizabeth. Although it had become more widespread by the 2^nd half of the 19^th Century, Estelle’s use in France still largely postdates the publication of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (1860-61), the heroine of which is Estella – which naturally became Estelle in the French version. Bearers: Estelle Masterson, a (shrewish mortal) character in the US film I Married a Witch (1942).

Stella ♀

Latin: stella ‘star’. Stella was used by Sir Philip Sidney in his Astrophel and Stella (1591). Stella Maris meaning ‘star of the sea’ is now considered a title of the Virgin Mary, but it is likely that the title was originally bestowed upon the Goddess Isis. 17^th Century. Bearers: Stella Mayfair, a character in Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches series (1990-94).

Esther ♀

In The Bible, Esther was the name given to Hadassah when she entered the harem of King Ahaseurus. It is widely believed to have derived from the Old Persian stāra ‘star’. However, it may actually be from ISHTAR. Esthêr was the Greek form used in The Bible; the Latin forms were Esthera and Hestera, with Esther deriving from the former and HESTER from the latter. Both came into use in the 16^th Century and quickly became confused with EASTER and each other. Variant: Esta (modern). Diminutive: ESSIE. Czech, Danish, Finnish, Italian, Portuguese: Ester, Finnish: Esteri, Dutch, French, German, Spanish: Esther, Hungarian: Eszter; Eszti (diminutive). Bearers: Esther Vanhomrigh (c.1688-1723), probably the inspiration for Jonathan Swift’s VANESSA; Esther Forbes (1891-1967), the US writer among whose works was A Mirror for Witches (1928) about the Salem Witch trials. Esther (1689) is a play by Racine.

As you can see, Estelle’s journey doesn’t end with Stella and Esther – but that’s quite enough for today :).

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