Henry Tylston Hodgson of Welcombe

His ancestors and descendents

By Rosemary Ross

Henry Tylston Hodgson in 1882 - carte de visite

Courtesy of St Albans Museums

This account of the Hodgson family is drawn together from a number of sources:

• notes made by Eric Brandreth in the 1970s (LHS archives: RB Hodgson family);
• information from Tim Paine, curator of the Paine Family Tree – http://www.painefamily.co.uk/ (descendents of  Henry Tylston Hodgson’s daughter, Mabel Beatrice Tylston Hodgson);
• illustrations from the family archives owned by Jenny Smith (granddaughter of Victor Tylston Hodgson);
• information from the Midland Railway Society about Henry Tylston Hodgson’s directorships, including research by Tony Overton  - www.midlandrailwaystudycentre.org.uk 
• and information from Mel Skeet, who has researched Aubrey Hodgson's friendship with William Henderson Mackenzie at Achnacone House, Colchester - see Comment below.

We are grateful to all those who have given permission for the use of their research.

Ancestors

Henry Tylston Hodgson was born on 6 October 1843 at Kirby Frith in Leicestershire, and was educated at Harrow and Trinity College Cambridge.

His father, Isaac Hodgson (1783-1859), a banker and abolitionist, was the son of Thomas Hodgson (1738-1817) a cotton miller and slave trader of Caton, Lancashire. The story of Thomas Hodgson has been compiled by Tim Paine, and can be downloaded from the document appended at the foot of this page.

Thomas Hodgson (1738-1817) - sea captain, ship owner, trader in slaves and cotton

Dr Tim Paine, Hodgson-Paine family archives

Thomas Hodgson as an older man, married to Elizabeth Lightbody, 20 years his junior

Dr Tim Paine - Hodgson-Paine family archives

Elizabeth Hodgson, nee Lightbody (1758-1795) 1770s - before her marriage to Thomas Hodgson

Dr Tim Paine - Hodgson-Paine family archives

Elizabeth Lightbody nee Tylston (1735-1801)- Tylston c.1770s - Mother-in-law of Thomas Hodgson

Dr Tim Paine - Hodgson-Paine family archives

The name Tylston came through Elizabeth Lightbody (1758-1795), the wife of his grandfather Thomas Hodgson. Elizabeth was the daughter of Elizabeth Tylston (1735-1801), whose grandfather Dr John Tylston (1664-1699), was a physician in Chester, known for his charitable treatment of the poor, and for his contributions to medical experiments and medical ethics. The family held this distinguished ancestor in great esteem and this may explain why they revived the name Tylston.

Isaac Hodgson - father of Henry Tylston Hodgson

Dr Tim Paine - Hodgson-Paine family archives

Henry (with bow and Arrow) and sisters, 1840s

Dr Tim Paine - Hodgson-Paine family archives

Henry was Isaac Hodgson’s only surviving son; he had six sisters. His paternal uncle Adam (1789-1861) was also a  banker and abolitionist and one of his father’s sisters, Mary Tylston Hodgson (1791-1850) carried the Tylston name, as did his cousin, Adam’s infant daughter, Elizabeth Tylston Hodgson (b. 1830). Nearly all of Henry’s children had Tylston as a middle name. Had Henry inherited wealth from his slave-owning grandfather? Was he honouring his father’s and uncle’s work as Abolitionists? He certainly seems to have settled in Harpenden with inherited wealth.

Marriage

Henry married Charlotte Purefoy Lloyd Warde in Harpenden on 25 August 1865. Their first child, Aubrey, was born on 20 April 1866 in Frankfurt-am-Main, probably prematurely, during an extended honeymoon. On their return to Harpenden, Aubrey was christened on 21 May 1866.

Marianne Warde nee Bennet-Lawes, 1813-1891

from reproduction in Vol V (Schools) of Wheathhampstead & Harpenden

Charles Warde (1813 - 1863)

Dr Tim Paine - Hodgson-Paine family archives

Charlotte was born on 9 February 1842 at Clopton, Stratford on Avon. Her parents were Charles Thomas Warde (1813-1865), of Welcombe, Warwickshire (of a family reputedly descended from Edward I) and Marianne (1813-1891), sister of Sir John Bennet Lawes, the founder of the Rothamsted Experimental Station. Charles and Marianne married in Harpenden parish church in 1834.

By 1847 Marianne Warde's marriage had failed, since Charles had led a roguish life with mistresses and further children. The Clopton Hercules by Duncan Sprott tells Charles Warde’s story in a very scurrilous style.

Charlotte Warde (1842-1910)

Dr Tim Paine - Hodgson-Paine family archives

Marianne returned with her children to Rothamsted Manor or more probably to Rothamsted Lodge where her widowed mother, Marianne Bennet Lawes lived until her death in 1876. According to John Bennet Lawes' diaries (in the Rothamsted archives), there were various court cases and it seems that by 1850 Marianne had obtained a ‘Lambeth’ or ecclesiastical divorce.

By the time of the 1851 census, Marianne had taken up residence at Bennetts, a house then belonging to the Rothamsted estate. In the 1861 census, Charlotte was living with her mother, two of her sisters and her brother at Bennetts. There is no record of how or where she met her future husband, who had no other ties with Harpenden.

Indeed, the first mention of Henry Tylston Hodgson in Harpenden local history records is when, in December 1866 at the aged of 23, he was elected to the Committee of the Harpenden Lecture Institute for 1867. In January 1868 he was made Vice-President in place of the Rector, Canon Vaughan (who took Henry’s place on the Committee) and he held this position until 1912 when the Institute (by then in premises he had provided in 1887) finally closed down.

Moving into Welcombe

An Indenture of Conveyance and Mortgage dated 24 December 1868 between Richard Oakley, Edward Manson and Adelaide Manson and Henry Tylston Hodgson deals with his purchase of Welcombe. Whether this was already the name of the property, or whether it was named after Charlotte’s father’s place of origin, Welcombe in Warwickshire is not known for certain. Documents and indentures refer to the “Mansion House messuages lands hereditaments and premises”.

In the 1871 Census, Henry was listed as the Head of Household at Welcombe, with his occupation described as landowner and MA of Cambridge. His sons Aubrey (4), Eustace Henry, born in 1870 and Gerald Augustus aged 3 months were listed along with a staff of seven, from Housekeeper to Kitchen maid and Footman (no mention of a butler).

A Director of the Midland Railway Company

Quite when and how Henry became associated with the Midland Railway Company, which opened the line through Harpenden to St Pancras in 1868, is not known, but by 1873, at the age of 30 he was elected a Director. The eastern border of the Welcombe estate ran alongside the railway. In 1904 he became Deputy Chairman, a post he still held when he died in 1918. Most probably he had invested in the company. By 1880 he was a member of the Carriage & Wagon, Finance, General Purposes, Locomotive, Parliamentary, St Pancras Hotel Matters, South Construction, Stores, Ashby & Nuneaton, North & Western Junction, Severn Bridge Board, and Tottenham & Hampstead Committees – enough to keep him busy with meetings in Derby. In 1885 he was a Midlands Railway representative at the International Railway Congress in Brussels.

In addition he was on the boards of several other railway companies. He was a director of the Midland and Great Northern Railway Company from 1891-1898 and again from 1914-1918. He represented the Midland Railway on the Board of the Glasgow and South Western Railway in 1892 until his death in 1918. In 1915 he was also a director of the Cheshire Lines Committee, the Somerset and Dorset Railway, The Great Central, Hull & Barnsley and Midland Joint Committee, The Great Central & Midland Joint Committee, The Whitechapel and Bow Railway and the Northern Counties Committee. In 1915 he was Chairman of the Mexican Eastern Railway and a director of the Inter Oceanic Railway of Mexico. No wonder that, at his death, his Harpenden physician, Dr Blake, thought “he was doing too much”.

He was also on the board of the London, Provincial and South Western Bank when it was formed out of the amalgamation of the London and Provincial Bank and the London and South Western Bank in December 1917. In 1918, presumably after his death, this bank was taken over by Barclays Bank. It seems likely that, in the steps of his father, he had banking interests throughout his career.

The family grew through the 1870s, with the birth of Ronald Tylston (1873-1901), Charles Victor Tylston on 3 July 1975, Mabel Beatrice Tylston on 15 April 1877, the twins Oswald Tylston and Hubert Mervyn on 1 January 1881 and Nigel Linnhe Tylston (1882-1909). At the 1881 Census, only Gerald and Ronald were listed at Welcome along with their governess and the staff including a butler, while Henry and Charlotte, Charles Victor, Mabel and the twins were registered in Eastbourne, along with nurses and a Swiss lady’s maid. Henry was described as a Magistrate on this Census.

A Lifetime of Public Service

Henry Tylston Hodgson JP, c.1900

LHS archives, cat.no HC 188

In fact Henry had become a Justice of the Peace in 1874 at the age of 31, and he sat regularly at the weekly courts held at St Albans. At the time of his death a tribute was paid to him, in which it was said that he was practically the senior member of the St Albans County Petty Sessions, only Mr H J Toulmin (living at Childwickbury from 1871-1883) having served longer.

At the age of 33, in 1876, he became a Churchwarden and served in this role for 28 years, until 1904. He was noted as a devoted son of the Church of England, and in his will he left various areas of land around the church to the church (St Nicholas). The Rector (presumably the Revd Pitt) was sure that one was intended for a meeting room, about which they had talked on occasions. Subsequently this land was used to provide a playground for St Nicholas Church of England Primary School.

Politics did not concern him greatly but he was a liberal of the Old School. After Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill he became a Liberal Unionist. In 1889, when Hertfordshire County Council was established, he was elected as Harpenden’s first County Councillor, and in 1903 he served as High Sherriff of the County. In November 1907, the County Council appointed him as their representative as a Foundation Manager for the Church of England schools in Harpenden (St Nicholas, St John’s and St Mary’s primary schools).

During the First World War he was a member of the Harpenden Military Service Tribunal when conscription was introduced in 1916. At his death in 1918, The Herts Advertiser reported that “his sagacity, wise counsel and judicial attitude will be greatly missed by that body.” 

As well as these formal roles, Henry and his wife were involved in many local societies and activities, including the annual exhibitions of flowers, fruit, vegetables and honey of the Harpenden Horticultural Society. The parish magazine report of the 8th show on 25 August 1886 says: “Magnificent display of flowers, those which gained the prizes coming from the conservatories of Mr C R Fenwick, Sir J B Lawes [Rothamsted], Mrs Warde [Bennetts], Mr H T Hodgson, Mr J B Maple [Childwickbury] and Mr R Matter.” Note that the gentry received the credit, rather than their gardeners!

8-13 Southdown Road, Hodgson's cottages, built 1870

LHS archives

Henry’s gifts of buildings to Harpenden included Hodgson’s cottages (8-11 Southdown Road), the Institute (1887, later to become The Friends Meeting House) in Southdown Road, The Welcombe Institute in Heath Road (premises used later by the Salvation Army and the Welcombe & Rovers Football Club, demolished in the late 1960s), St John’s Hall (now Harpenden Trust halls in Southdown Road), and the Rifle shooting range on his land behind 37 Southdown Road (later Harpenden 3rd Scout Hut). He was President of Harpenden Boy Scouts, Treasurer of the Horticultural Society, and was one of the Trustees of the Harpenden United Charities (in the Parish Magazine for January 1899 he gave an explanatory account of the charities).

Charlotte Hodgson towards the end of her life

Dr Tim Paine - Hodgson-Paine family archives

Mrs Hodgson founded the Harpenden Nursing Association, of which Henry was President. In July 1907 she laid the foundation stone of the new St John’s Church, which opened in March 1908. She had hosted many groups at Welcombe, including, on 12 July 1888, when the parish magazine reported “members of the Mothers’ Meeting for Cravells Road and Bowling Alley (conducted by Mrs Paterson and Mrs Warington) were entertained with tea and music at Mrs Hodgson’s own house. The large party was amused by Mrs Hodgson, her children and friends, with songs and dramatic performances to their great delight.”

The Hodgson family of eight boys and one girl were also known for their Saturday hockey matches at Welcombe, about 30 people joining in, with Mr Hodgson keeping goal at one end. Tea was “bounteous” – hot scones, potato cakes, chocolate cake etc. The family entertained generously, according to reminiscences in the Free Press (1964) by Philip Bentley, son of Harry Bentley, the Hodgson’s butler from 1890 to 1918. Philip’s mother had been a housemaid, and the Bentleys appear to have lived in one of the Hodgson cottages (Kelly' directories from 1901-1922).

There is evidence of loyalty to and by servants. Mary Lakin, the Housekeeper in the 1871 Census, is described as “Old Domestic Servant” in the 1881 Census. The inscriptions on two monuments in the churchyard (as recorded in the 1970s) celebrate life-long service: Marie Lenaiaebi, born in Canton Bern, Switzerland on 28 February 1840 who died at Welcombe on 7 October 1912 “in grateful remembrance of 41 years’ faithful service” (in the 1881 census she was described as Maria Lebi, ladies maid, with the family in Eastbourne); and William Bracey, born at Kings Walden on 13 January 1827, who died at Welcombe on 25 February 1917 “in grateful remembrance of 42 years faithful service”. A more detailed search of the census records would probably help identify gardeners and other servants living in some of Hodgson’s cottages or as part of the household over long periods.

Deaths in the family

Charlotte Hodgson died on 16 December 1910, having been ill for some time and no longer able to visit the family’s home in the North West Highlands.

The Hodgson's Scottish holiday home from the early 1900s

www.cuilcheanna.co.uk

Henry and his family had started to holiday in the Highlands in the 1880s, following the example of the Lawes family, their cousins.  After renting a number of houses in Argyllshire (including Achnacone - see Comment below), in the early 20C Henry rented, and then bought, Cuilcheanna in Onich, which was inherited by Victor. For the past fifty years this has been a guest house. http://www.cuilcheanna.co.uk/.

She had a deep love for Scotland, shared in particular by her son (Charles) Victor. It was said that the tragic death of her youngest son, Nigel Linnhe Tylston, a curate at Leeds Parish Church accidentally shot while watching manoeuvres of Leeds Rifles in 1909, had affected her deeply. In 1908 Henry had built a substantial house for her use, designed by Victor, known as ‘Rosemary’, in Milton Road, but she never lived there. At the outbreak of war in 1914, he made this house available as a military hospital/nursing home which was in use on and off during the war years. The Institute was likewise used as a nursing centre.

Henry’s death on 22 May 1918 was sudden and tragic. His daughter Mabel Paine found him at 3.10 pm in the lavatory at Welcombe, having shot himself. He had had bad sciatica for the previous three weeks, and had been in dreadful pain. Dr Blake was called, but Mr Hodgson was dead when he arrived. At the inquest Dr Lovell Drage was the district coroner and Captain Arthur Lydekker JP was the foreman of the Jury. Mrs Paine said that she had been staying with her father for some weeks. She last saw him at 3 pm when she had gone upstairs to rest. He had been getting up for a few hours for the past few days, and seemed to be getting better. He had had no worries except the worries everyone had – the strain of the war. “We all thought he was doing too much”. Dr Blake said this too. Dr Drage refused to allow a verdict of temporary insanity. He said it would reflect on the family for many years, mentioning insurances. So the jury returned a verdict of “shot by persons unknown” instead.

The funeral was on Saturday, 25 May at 3.30 pm. It was the largest funeral in Harpenden for many years past. Business premises were closed, and blinds drawn everywhere in a general manifestation of sorrow. “He was a man of sterling integrity and character who will be most missed of any man who has died in Harpenden” as a leading resident put it. The Herts Advertiser also described it as a “real personal and general loss” on all hands. Hundreds of people unable to obtain admission to the church were assembled for the closing scene. By special request of the family there were no wreaths.

Memorial to Henry & Charlotte Tylston Hodgson in St Nicholas churchyard, Harpenden

Rosemary Ross - April 2014

At Mr Hodgson’s wish, his remains were conveyed to Golders Green in the morning and cremated, and the ashes were brought back to Harpenden pending the service in St Nicholas Church and interment in the graveyard. The local press reported that the following members of the Household were present: Messrs Bentley, C Sibley, Dellar and House, Misses Emily Day (see Comment below) and Friend and Mrs Dellar. Of the family, three were unable to attend: Aubrey (of Hemel Hempstead) was in America, Gerald (of Bennetts) was indisposed and Hubert, Captain in the Royal Engineers, was serving in France. Eustace (of London), Victor (Lt. RNR), Oswald (Commander RN) and Mrs Mabel Paine of Great Melton, Norfolk were there.

So were colleagues from the Midland Railway in Derby. Mr Murray Smith, Sir Ernest Paget and Mr Behrens, together with the General Manager of The Glasgow & South Western Railway, Mr D Cooper, arrived at 2.36 pm in a special saloon, the mid-day fast train from Derby pulling up at Harpenden to enable them to alight. They left again in the same special saloon attached to the 4.05 pm train from London, which stopped at Harpenden station for the purpose.

Henry and Charlotte’s descendants

Theodora Wilson in the Journals (TJ) she kept from 1885 to 1927 mentioned various members of the Hodgson family, but neither Aubrey (1868 -1932), the eldest, nor Ronald (1873-1901) were mentioned by her at all, nor do they feature in Parish Magazine reports or press cuttings in our archives. In fact Aubrey is only present in the 1871 census and Ronald in the 1881 census, when, together with Gerald, he was left at Welcombe with the servants, while their parents and young siblings were recorded in Eastbourne. By 1891 Aubrey had presumably left home. He married Emma Evelyn Kirby in 1897, a widow with children, had lived in Hemel Hempstead and died in Sussex in 1932. * See Comment below, with information from Mel Skeet.

Old Kensington

Dr Tim Paine - Hodgson-Paine family archives

Ronald, who remained unmarried, died in British Columbia, Canada in 1901. Family legend has it that he ran away to sea on The Old Kensington, and a painting of this ship remains in family ownership.

Eustace (1870-1943) married Lillian Creyke (1873-1916) in 1896 and had five children – two of whom died aged 2 and 3 of an epidemic of dysentery in Harpenden in 1900, despite having been sent away to the seaside. This epidemic also caused the death of their maternal great-grandfather, Sir John Bennet Lawes (TJ, p.93). Eustace died in about 1943. He was a convert to Christian Science and re-married after his wife died.

Gerald Augustus Tylston Hodgson (1871-1938) was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1908 he became Assistant District Superintendent on the Midland Railway at St Pancras until his retirement in 1928. In 1897 he had married Kate (Kitty) Livingstone, a grand-daughter of David Livingstone the explorer. They lived for a year in Bachelor’s Row, Church Green before settling for a while in Liverpool, and then returning to live at Blantyre in Arden Grove around 1906. They moved to Bennetts towards the end of the war – they were noted for having made “an even prettier show of coloured lights than ours” (TJ p.159) when armistice was declared on 11 November 1918. Mrs Gerald Hodgson carried on her mother-in-law’s involvement in the Nursing Association Committee and worked with the Nursing Centre committee – which established 40 Luton Road as part of Harpenden’s memorial for the 1914-1918 war. 

Gerald and Kitty moved to Penvrane, St Austell,Cornwall, around 1930, though it seems that Gerald maintained business interests in London. On 11 May 1938 he died at the age of 67, presumably suddenly, at the Cumberland Hotel near Marble Arch, of "bronchopneumonia & heart failure". Kitty died nine days later, on 20 May, at the Allington House Nursing Home in East Ipswich from "acute Streptococcal Pneumonia & Myocarditis". She was 60. Just three days after her mother's death, Marjorie Lawes-Wittewronge died on 23 May at The Old Vicarage, Farnham, East Suffolk, from "Phthisis pulmonalis" (i.e.TB). She was aged 34 and was the "wife of Sir John Claud Bennet Lawes-Wittewronge Bart." Her brother Charles Hodgson, who lived with his parents at St Austell, registered all these deaths on the date of death - it must have been a most distressing time for him. It seems likely that he arranged for the memorial to them in St Nicholas Parish church, beneath the plaque to Sir Charles Lawes-Wittewronge on the north wall of the nave. So far we have not traced any newspaper reports.  

Victor Hodgson

LHS archives - cat.no. LHS 005281

Charles Victor Tylston Hodgson (1875-1929) – later known just as Victor – was educated at Harrow, and according to the Dictionary of Scottish Architects, “ entered the office of Charles Trubshaw of Derby, the Midland Railway's hotel architect, in 1894, but transferred to Alfred Waterhouse and Son to serve his apprenticeship from 1895-98, remaining as assistant from 1898-1900, during which period he attended the Architectural Association. Thereafter he was assistant in the more arts-and-crafts office of Dawber and Whitwell, 1900-1901, before commencing practice in London in 1902 in partnership with Percy Benjamin French Freeman and Francis Charles Eden.”

In 1900 he designed the library and vestibule added to the existing laboratory buildings at Rothamsted, and he also made a careful study of the wall-paintings discovered in 1901 in the panelled dining room at Rothamsted Manor when Sir Charles Lawes-Wittewronge started to undertake refurbishment. He wrote a paper on the wall paintings for the St Albans & Herts Architectural and Archaeologist Society journal, vol.1.pt.4, 1901-2 - http://www.stalbanshistory.org/documents/1901_02_08_.pdf .

According to Theodora’s Journals, Victor was at home at the time news came of the end of the Boer War. She reports him racing around the village with the news. It seems that Henry Tylston Hodgson received news of major events through telegrams despatched from the Midland Railway in Derby (TJ pp95-96). He designed Rosemary (28 Milton Road, Harpenden) in 1908, and made drawings of a number of buildings around central Harpenden.

Sketch by Victor T Hodgson of the back of cottages next to the Leather Bottle pub, 1904 (all since demolished)

LHS archives

Sketch by Victor T Hodgson of cottages next to the Red Cow pub, Coldharbour, 1909

LHS archives

Victor served as a Lieutenant in the RNR during WWI, and in 1917 married Sibyl Muriel Gilzean Reid, daughter of Sir Hugh Gilzean Reid, a Scottish journalist and Liberal MP. Victor had shared his mother’s love of North West Scotland, where the family had a house. By 1919 he and Sibyl were living in Cuilcheanna, Onich http://www.cuilcheanna.co.uk/. Having been active in antiquarian circles in St Albans, and having made a collection of paintings and artefacts ‘for a future museum for Harpenden, he later devoted many years to a detailed study of the history and archaeology of the Western Highlands. In 1922 he founded the West Highland Museum at Fort William of which he was secretary. It collected croft house furniture and other artifacts. http://www.westhighlandmuseum.org.uk/about/victor-hodgson/ . In 1926-28 he drew plans for a remarkable blue granite heather-thatched house at Sanna, Ardnamurchan, for Miss M E M Donaldson, photographer of the West Highlands, but died soon after its completion, on 3 January 1929 at Cuilcheanna, Onich.

Mabel and her mother, Charlotte

Dr Tim Paine - Hodgson-Paine family archive

Mabel Beatrice Tylston Hodgson (1877-1964) must have had a remarkable childhood, with eight brothers. She was close to her grandmother, Marianne Warde. Theodora Wilson wrote of the period between the retirement of the Rector Canon Vaughan in the autumn of 1896 and the new Rector, Rev. Spencer R A Buller taking up residence in February 1897 – “when the parish was conducted first by Mr Barrett and when he left by Mr Paine, who was very young for such responsibility and was moreover in love with Mabel Hodgson.

Nigel and Mabel Paine

Dr Tim Paine - Hodgson-Paine family archives

"They were engaged for about a year and married in the spring of 1898. The Archdeacon married them. Mr Paine is now Vicar of a small parish near Stevenage. This spring [1899] a little Miss Paine was born.” (TJ, p76). They went on to have three sons and a daughter. Mabel came to stay and look after her father during the painful attack of sciatica which led to his death, of which she had difficulty in speaking to the family in later years. Her husband Nigel Wood Paine was born in 1870, came to Harpenden in 1895 as curate and died in 1946.

The twins Oswald Tylston (Bom) Hodgson and Hubert Mervyn Tylston (Bim) Hodgson were born on 1 January 1881. Hubert went to fight in the Boer War early in 1900 and Theodora Wilson records that he “was royally welcomed home by all his family last June [1901]”(TJ p.93). When referring to Linnhe’s death in 1909, she mentions that “his two brothers are out in the West [British Columbia]. Bom, the elder of the twins, has been for a long time in the Pacific squadron off Vancouver, and Bim has married and taken his wife there.”

Hubert married Eleanor Martin in 1908, but Oswald remained unmarried. Having joined the Royal Navy aged 14, he served as a Commander during WWI, when he was posted in 1914/15 to Great Yarmouth where he took charge of the fishing and mine-sweeping operations until the end of the war. Hubert was a Captain in the Royal Engineers, serving in France at the time of his father’s death. Oswald, along with Victor and Gerald was an executor of his father’s will in 1918.

After his retirement from the navy, Oswald volunteered for lay work in the North-West of Canada, and was ordained in 1924. For a time he was a curate at St Mary's, Bedford, but, returning to the North-West of Canada, he took charge of Telegraph Creek, where he worked under arduous conditions. During his many years' sojourn in Arctic surroundings, he built a wooden church, with a wooden hut for a vicarage.

Theodora Wilson records that Oswald had inherited the “old cottages near the Institute”, and when he died very suddenly at Alert Bay, British Columbia, in February 1937, these passed to the nominal ownership of Hubert (TJ p.247) who granted Power of Attorney to H R Wilson, a London solicitor, to sell the cottages, as he too was going to reside abroad again. Hubert died at Alberni, British Columbia on 16 January 1958.

Linnhe (Nigel) Tylston Hodgson

LHS archives -

Nigel Linnhe Tylston Hodgson (1882-1909) was the youngest of the family. Perhaps he fulfilled his mother’s dearest wish by becoming a priest. While serving as a curate at Leeds Parish church and acting chaplain to Leeds Rifles, he was accidentally shot dead during Territorial manoeuvres at Guisborough in 1909. As Theodora Wilson records “There must have been a stray bullet among the blank ammunition. It seems strange that this fatal shot should have lit upon this lad with all his fair promises for this world. … He had been curate in a slum parish and was hoping by a year’s medical work to go out to British Columbia to work among the scattered white population.” (TJ p.117)

There are living descendents from Aubrey, Eustace, Gerald, Mabel and Victor, but none have any association with Harpenden.

Downloads

The Business Interests of John and Thomas Hodgson (109k)
The story of Henry Tylston Hodgson's grandfather, Thomas