Tag: Tonbridge

Births, Marriages and Deaths

Today I stumbled upon another birth in the Tunbridge Wells Belgian Community, that of Françoise Marie Isabelle Louise Madeleine Cornélie, daughter of Jean-Baptiste and Madeleine VAN DE PUT-MEEUS, on 30th April 1915.

The child’s parents had married in Wyneghem near Antwerp on 9th June 1914 – the bride was the daughter of the town’s Mayor, M. Hippolyte MEEUS, and the newspaper Le Courrier d’Anvers devoted a quarter of its front page on 19th June 1914 to coverage of the celebrations, describing how the marriage party made its way from the church to the MEEUS home, their way lined with a large and “sympathique” crowd of well-wishers.

As the young couple set off for their honeymoon in Biarritz and the Swiss Lakes, they couldn’t have known that only a few weeks later they would be fugitives from war.

MEEUS Madeleine_VAN DE PUT Jean_Marriage-Le_courrier_d'Anvers_1914 06 19
Jean Baptiste VAN DE PUT and Madeleine MEEUS in Le Courrier d’Anvers, 19th June 1914

The MEEUS family’s story I have not yet told on this blog, but you will find some of it in the Royal Tunbridge Wells Civic Society book The Shock of War (ed. John Cunningham), in the Chapter I contributed about the Belgian refugees in Tunbridge Wells.  The Mayor and his wife both died in Tunbridge Wells in 1915, six months apart.  Lavish funerals were held at St Augustine’s and their bodies laid to rest in the Cemetery Mortuary Chapel until the end of the war when they were repatriated and buried in the family vault.

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But I digress.  My intention today was simply to list the Births, Marriages and Deaths I have so far come across and for which I have the certificates, so here goes.

1915

  • January 2nd   Death at 3 Woodbury Park Road of widow Euthalie Amelie BAL-VAN VAERENBERGH, 78, of 112 avenue du Commerce, Antwerp  – she too was repatriated after the war and buried in Antwerp.
  • February 20th   Marriage of Prosper Leopold DEBERGH and Marie RAVIJTS, both from Termonde, at St Augustine’s Catholic Church
  • February 23rd    Marriage of Oscar Edouard GROVEN and Germaine Mathilde Therese TANGHE both from Ostend, and engaged to be married before they left Belgium, at St Paul’s Catholic Church in Dover
  • March 23rd   Death at Tunbridge Wells General Hospital of baby Helene BECKER, 7 months, from measles and broncho-pneumonia.  She lies in an unmarked grave in the cemetery at Hawkenbury.
  • April 30th   Birth of Francoise Marie Isabelle Louise Madeleine Cornélie, daughter of Jean-Baptiste and Madeleine VAN DE PUT-MEEUS, at 4 Nevill Park
  • May 25th   Birth of Jacques Albert Daniel, son of Leon and Laure COEN-CHRISTIAENS from Schaerbeek, Brussels, at “Belle Vue”, 54 Mount Ephraim
  • June 26th   Death of Isabelle Adolphine Marie Ferdinande Josephine MEEUS-de MEURS, 61, the wife of Hippolyte MEEUS, distiller and Mayor of Wyneghem, at 4 Nevill Park
  • October 17th   Birth of Rose Marie, daughter of Paul and Marie Francoise VAN NULAND-HANOCQ, from Antwerp, at 7 Calverley Park Crescent
  • October 26th   Death of Hippolyte Maria Ivo MEEUS, 64, Mayor of Wyneghem, at 4 Nevill Park
  • December 2nd   Birth of Gladys Marie Virginie, daughter of Oscar and Germaine GROVEN-TANGHE (the couple who had married in Dover earlier that year), at 11 Linden Park, Broadwater Down.

1916

  • February 26th   Death at Tonbridge Workhouse Informary of Rosalie GEBRUERS-de PAUW, 58, wife of telephone fitter Sebastien GEBRUERS, who were living at 43 Grosvenor Road
  • April 12th   Marriage of munitions worker Andre VAN DEN EYNDE of Yew Cottages, Powder Mills, Tonbridge, and Annie TAYLOR, spinster, of Maidstone Road, Paddock Wood, at Tonbridge Register Office – not Tunbridge Wells, but he does pop up in the occasional concert in the town (at least I think it’s him/he) so I thought I’d include them.
  • May 1st   Death at 11 Linden Park, Broadwater Down, of Wilhelmina Florentina VANHERCKE, 66, “spinster daughter of Jean VANHERCKE cabinet-maker”
  • September 1st   Death at 154b Upper Grosvenor Road, of Josef Marie Louis , 2, son of Paul and Marie VAN NULAND-HANOCQ, from tubercular meningitis
  • September 28th   Death at 3 East Cliff Road of Emma Caroline, 12, daughter of  Mechelen ‘carilloneur’ Josef  DENYN and his wife Helene DENYN-SCHUERMANS

1917

  • February 1st   Death at 63 Grosvenor Park of Theodore VAN BENEDEN, 66, from Blaseveldt near Antwerp.  He was in Tunbridge Wells with his brother and several cousins.
  • June 13th   Birth of Genevieve Marie Josephe Julie Christiane Ghislaine, daughter of Professor Joseph WILLEMS and his wife Marguerite WILLEMS-BESME – by this time they were living in Folkestone, at 83 Bouverie Road West, where the Professor was an Adjutant in the Belgian Intelligence Service
  • June 22nd   Birth of John Emile Polidore, son of Oscar and Germaine GROVEN-TANGHE and a brother to Gladys, at 55 Culverden Park Road.  Father Oscar is now a munitions worker.
  • July 4th   Birth of Joseph Marie Odilon, son of Paul and Marie VAN NULAND-HANOCQ, at 154b Upper Grosvenor Road
  • September 23rd   Death at 3 East Cliff Road of Helene Theodore Hubertine SCHUERMANS, 55, wife of Mechelen Bellmaster Josef DENYN
  • October 20th   Marriage of Jeanne DEMEURISSE and Louis TANGHE at St Augustine’s Catholic Church

 

 

Cintra House, 32 Upper Grosvenor Road

This house was lent to the Belgian Refugees’ Committee in October 1914 by Canon KEATINGE of St Augustine’s Roman Catholic Church, and I have been wondering what the connection might be.

After my talk last month, the answer was given to me by a member of the audience :  it had been owned by Mrs Mary Hannah FENWICK, a generous benefactor, who left it to the parish in her will.

To find out more, I turned first to John Cunningham’s 2013 monograph 175 Years of St. Augustine’s Parish Tunbridge Wells 1838-2013.

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There I learnt that Mrs FENWICK, her husband and son (born 1864, and suffering from some sort of disability) were originally from Yorkshire, had lived first in Tonbridge, and then, from about 1887, at Cintra House.

She and her son converted to Catholicism, and in 1899, after the deaths of both her son and her husband, Mrs FENWICK made generous donations to St Augustine’s Church, and to the Roman Catholic community in Tonbridge for the establishment of Corpus Christi Church, in return for which she would receive an annuity and also have Masses said for her and her family in perpetuity.

“Her offer was quickly accepted” writes John Cunningham, “since no one thought for one moment that she would live for another 16 years.  Her unexpected longevity would largely wipe out any benefit from her offer……In all, Mrs Fenwick gave £8,500 and received back about £7,450 in annuities, as well as at least 2,475 Masses for the repose of her soul and those of her family.”

A mixed blessing indeed!

The parish sold Cintra House in 1918 for £763-8s-0d.

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Cintra House, 32 Upper Grosvenor Road (2016)

Further research in the British Newspaper Archive and on Ancestry fleshed out the picture a little more.

Mrs Fenwick was born Mary Hannah HALLEWELL the oldest of 8 children (6 girls, 2 boys) born to Wine Merchant Benjamin HALLEWELL and his wife Hannah of Leeds, Yorkshire, non-Conformists.  She was 38 when she married Yorkshire farmer William FENWICK, 7 years her junior, in 1862.  Their son Walter was born in Kirkby Moorside 2 years later.

In 1871 the family was still in Yorkshire, but by 1881 they had moved to Dry Hill Park, Tonbridge, to a house called Heather Bank. Walter died at the age of 22 in early 1886, and it was perhaps after that that his parents moved from Tonbridge to Tunbridge Wells.  In 1887 they paid for a classroom to be made in the crypt of St Augustine’s Church in his memory (Kent and Sussex Courier 15 July 1887).

William FENWICK died on 19 September 1890 and was buried in the FENWICK family grave at All Saints Church, Kirkby Moorside. His widow lived on at Cintra House for another 15 years or so, moving in around 1905 to Gensing Lodge Convent in St Leonards on Sea, a home for elderly Catholic ladies run by Augustinian Sisters from France (1).

There she lived until her death on 5 September 1915.  Canon James KEATINGE, parish priest of St Augustine’s, was executor of her will.

However, that was in 1915.  She must already have left Cintra House in the care of Canon KEATINGE when she moved to St Leonards, as it was in October 1914 that the Belgian refugee families moved in.

In the 1911 Census the house was the home of widow Charlotte Georgiana MORRIS from London, but in Kelly’s Directory for 1914, 32 Upper Grosvenor Road has no entry – presumably it was by then one of the many empty houses in Tunbridge Wells.

Among the Belgians who lived there was Prosper DEBERGH from Dendermonde, the subject of an earlier blog post, and also Miss Adele VAN OBBERGEN from Louvain who escaped a fine under the Lighting Order in early 1916, the Mayor reminding her when she appeared before the bench that she was “living in a house which was being kept up by people in the town” and asking her “and the other guests to see that the lights were properly shaded” (Kent & Sussex Courier, 14 January 1916 (2)).

So there it is, some of the story of Cintra House.

Thank you to Caroline Auckland for the photos of the house as it is today.

Notes

(1) I think I am right in saying that the building on Upper Maze Hill is now part of St Michael’s Hospice – please correct me if I’m wrong.

(2) Note : Date corrected from 14 February 1916 on 10/09/2021

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