Ebenezer Hall: Grand Old Man of Abbeydale

Ebenezer Hall

Ebenezer Hall was born in Middleton by Wirksworth, Derbyshire, on 18 November 1820 and baptized at St. Mary's Church, Wirksworth on 11 May 1823. He was named after his great-grandfather, Ebenezer Hall (1735-1803) and was the third of twelve children born to Gilbert Hall, a lead miner, and his wife Elizabeth (nee Slack): Ann (b. 1816), John (b. 1818), Ebenezer (b. 1820), Joshua (b. 1823), Job (b. 1825), Joseph (b. 1827), Daniel (b. 1829), Stephen (b. 1832), Sarah (b. 1834), Benjamin (b. 1836), Samuel (b. 1839) and David (b. 1842). 

A very bright boy, he attended Cromford School and was recommended by the headmaster, William Shaw, to his friend John Roberts, a childless Sheffield silversmith who wished to adopt a promising young man to succeed to his silverplating business. So in 1836, at the age of 16, Ebenezer was apprenticed to the firm of Wilkinson & Roberts and he went to live with his employer, John Roberts and his wife Sarah at their home in Shrewsbury Road, in the Park district of Sheffield. During the next eleven years Ebenezer worked well becoming a manager for the firm and travelling on arduous stagecoach journies to London, Edinburgh and elsewhere. When his original partner Henry Wikinson retired in 1847, Roberts offered to take Ebenezer into partnership and the firm was renamed Roberts & Hall.

Roberts's contribution to the partnership of £2,750 greately exceded the £100 staked by Ebenezer Hall, who agreed to have his profits retained by the firm until they reached parity with his senior partner. Evidently, this arrangement gave Ebenezer further incentive to succeed. The firm prospered, exhibiting at the Great Exhibition of 1851 where they were awarded a Certificate of Merit. 

In 1852 Roberts & Hall amalgamated with Martin & Naylor of Fargate, Sheffield and became known as Martin, Hall & Co. Around this time several of Ebenezer's brothers John, Joshua and Job all joined the firm, becoming departmental managers. Joshua Hall became a partner in the firm around the year 1857 but he died on 12 June 1861, aged 38, after a protracted illness. Some of Ebenezer's nephews also joined the firm, prominent among whom was his namesake, the son of his elder brother John Hall.

Ebenezer Hall first went into land purchase in 1849, when he bought a plot near Mickley Lane. In 1851, John Roberts bought a house on Abbeydale Road called Abbeydale Villa - later to be known as Abbeydale Hall; he also bought a large amount of land on both sides of Baslow Road. Ebenezer moved into Abbeydale Hall with John Roberts and his wife. In 1867 Ebenezer made a large purchase of land in Totley including Greenoak House for £10,000. The following year he took up his first public appointment as a Trustee for Cherrytree Orphanage.

Both Roberts and Hall were regular church attenders and felt the need for a religious outlet in their area. The cornerstone of St John's Church was laid in 1873, Roberts giving the land and £5,000 for the building. The endowment fund for the church of £2,000 was made up of contributions of £1,150, £550 and £300 from Roberts, Hall and the Duke of Devonshire respectively. Ebenezer Hall also made a substantial contribution towards the erection of the Vicarage.

Ebenezer continued to live as a boarder at Abbeydale Hall after the death of Sarah Roberts on 9 November 1874 and on 17 February 1876 he married Sarah Wilkinson in London at St. Paul's, Covent Garden. Sarah was the daughter of the late George Wilkinson and had been living at Abbeydale Hall for some years as a companion to her aunt Sarah Roberts. The service was conducted by Rev. J. T .F. Aldred, the vicar of Dore, assisted by Rev. H. B. Wilkinson of Sharnbrook, Bedfordshire, brother to the bride. Their honeymoon was delayed until 1879 when the couple visited Australia but this was thought to be as much to do with business as with pleasure. The couple attended the Sydney Exhibition where Martin, Hall & Co. won the highest award of merit.

In 1880 Ebenezer bought the Abbeydale Park Estate from the aged John Roberts who continued to live there with Ebenezer and Sarah Hall until his death on 11 April 1888.

After Martin, Hall & Co. became a limited company, Ebenezer had more time to pursue other business interests by taking directorships of several other companies, including those of Sanderson Brothers & Newbould Ltd., Sheffield and Rotherham Joint Stock Banking Co. Ltd., Sheffield United Gas-Light Company and Eyam Mining Company. He was also appointed a Derbyshire Magistrate in April 1884 but doesn't appear to have been very active in that role for very long. Although a strong Conservative, he took no prominent part in politics and sought no municipal role. In his younger days he had been a well-known sportsman, regularly following hounds, and enjoying a day's fishing. He was one of the earliest members of the Sheffield Book Club and a frequenter of the Sheffield Club. He was also a knowledgeable collector of paintings and a member of the Council of the Sheffield School of Art for five years between 1877 and 1881.

In 1881 Ebenezer had paid £2,460 for the Totley Rolling Mills including 6 cottages and a little over 8 acres of land on both sides of Baslow Road at Totley Rise. From the price paid it would appear that he bought it as a going concern but it would seem that the business did not survive the economic downturn for very long as the mill ponds had been filled in before the 1896 Ordnance Survey was made. 

In 1883 his longstanding arguments with the Midland Railway Company began, over the passage of the new line through his estate. Ebenezer owned about 60 acres of land at Abbeydale Park, including nearby Brinkburn Grange and West View Cottage. After a legal wrangle lasting five years, the select committee declined to accede to Ebenezer's petition for a tunnel to mitigate the effects of the railway and on 18 June 1886 the Dore and Chinley Railway Bill finally became enacted and Ebenezer was obliged to sell about 30 acres of his estate to the railway company. Despite these aggravations, Ebenezer was on a committee to provide mission work among the labourers employed on the Dore & Chinley Railway and to assist the local schools, whose finances were being drained by the increased numbers of children from the huts of the navvies. 

His other charitable works included membership of the Management Committee of the Charity School for Poor Girls in Sheffield, for which both he and his wife gave £2 2s. 2d annually. In 1893 he gave £3,000 for Church rooms for St John's and further money for the improvement of the Church. When the foundation stone of the new chancel of Dore Church was laid he gave an inscribed silver trowel. Later he donated £50 towards a new organ for Dore Church and further money to augment the stipend of the Vicar of Dore. In 1895, when the Wesleyan Methodists of Totley Rise wanted to build a new church, Ebenezer gave them free of charge a plot of 1,500 square yards from the parcel of land he had bought at Totley Rolling Mill.

            Ebenezer Hall, portrait by Joseph Herbert Bentley R.B.A. Paid for by donations from the inhabitants of Dore & Totley and presented on 13                      November 1896.

Ebenezer remained in good health until shortly before his death on 28 June 1911 at the age of 91. He was buried in Sheffield General Cemetery in the same vault as John and Sarah Roberts. His widow Sarah continued to live at Abbeydale Hall until her own death in 1919.

Ebenezer Hall left an estate valued at £194,632 18s. 3d. After provision for his wife's relatives and friends, from his Residuary Fund he left money for the Sheffield Royal Infirmary (£300), Sheffield Royal Hospital (£500), Sheffield Children's Hospital (£250), Sheffield Jessop's Hospital (£250), Sheffield Nurses Home and Training Institution (£100), Sheffield Boy's Charity School (£200), Sheffield Girl's Charity School (£300), Totley Cherrytree Orphanage (£350) and Wirksworth Hospital (£250). He left money to the Vicar and Churchwardens of Middleton-by-Wirksworth, Totley, Dore and Holmsfield to buy governmental stock to produce a yearly sum for the benefit of the poor. St John's, Abbeydale benefited by £3,000 to be spent on the church as did to a lesser extent the Churches of Middleton in Wirksworth (£2,500) and St John's, Park (£300).

Ebenezer Hall in Public Records

Wills and Probate

Hall Ebenezer of Abbeydale Park Dronfield Derbyshire esquire died 28 June 1911 Probate Derby 10 August to Samuel Clark Shaw Hall silversmith Alfred Ernest Maxfield solicitor and Arnold Thomas Watson accountant and sharebroker. Effects £194632 18s. 3d,



Ebenezer's Gift

We are enormously grateful to a correspondent in Canada for sending us these images of a set of silver spoons that were bought in a small town in British Columbia. 

We have tried to find out more about their history and provenance using as a starting point the handwritten note inside the case. It reads:

Abbeydale Park

July 2nd 1889

Dear Maurice,

Accompanying this you will receive a Morocco case containing 12 Silver Teaspoons & a Pair of Sugar Tongs which be pleased to accept as a Present to yourself & Bride from Mrs Hall & myself with our best wishes for your Future Happiness, & the hope that a long, Happy and prosperous life may be your .... & with our united Kindest Regards
Believe me
Yours truly
Ebenezer Hall.

Envelope addressed to Maurice Housley

The spoons are hallmarked Sheffield 1888 by Martin Hall & Co. Ltd., Ebenezer's own silverware company. We have tried to verify the signature on the note but the only other signature that we have is from his marriage register entry and there does seem to be some deterioration in his handwriting between 1876 and 1889. The note was probably written in haste but we have no doubt whatever that it is authentic. The fact that it has been kept together with the spoons immediately suggests that they have remained in the same family for most of the time.

The recipients of the gift were Maurice Housley and his future wife Fanny Ada Pennington who married on 3 September 1889 at St. George's Church, Brook Hill. Sheffield. Maurice was born in Sheffield in 1864, the youngest of three sons of George Housley, the General Secretary of the Operative Bricklayers Society, and his wife Mary Ann Taylor who married on 24 December 1854, also at St George's. Fanny was born in 1860 in Sheffield, the second of three children of George Pennington, a joiner and builder, and his wife Mary Ann Cocking who married in 1856. 

We have not yet found a definite connection between Ebenezer and the Housleys. George Housley lived on Abbeydale Road during the 1880s, near what became the Beauchief Hotel. He and his family may have become known to Ebenezer through business, church or one of his many other social interests. The spoons are a superb gift, given by a man who was well known for his generosity, particularly to local causes and local people.

Maurice and Fanny had four children: Dorothy (1893), Winifred Pennington (1894), Laurence George (1898) and Eric (1900), all born whilst they were living at 74 Charlotte Street, Highfield in the heart of Sheffield's cutlery and edge tool quarter. Maurice was a steelmaker's correspondence clerk. From their children's school records we know that by 1905 the family had moved to 105 Melford Road, Thornton Heath, Surrey. It looks like Maurice was transferred to work in Croydon or London as he was still a steelmaker's clerk in the 1911 Census. Maurice and Fanny lived at that address for the rest of their lives. Maurice died on 7 January 1921, aged 56 and Fanny on 14 March 1922, aged 62. 

Daughter Dorothy became a school teacher in Brighton before marrying Francis James Gibbins in 1919. She lived in Surrey and Sussex all her married life and died in Chichester, West Sussex in 1954. Winifred never married and died in Worthing, West Sussex in 1956. Laurence became a bank clerk. He married Emma Thelma Dorothy Horne in Richmond, Surrey in 1934 and died in Ewell, Surrey in 1966. 

Eric Housley served in the army and later in the RAF towards the very end of World War One. After the death of his parents, he emigrated to Canada aboard the SS Montlaurier arriving at St. John's, New Brunswick on 15 March 1924. Accompanying him on his voyage were his future wife, Dorothy Edith, and her brother George Dudley. They were the only children of George Stephens, a wholesale warehouseman, and his wife Edith Eveline Smith who had married at Lambeth in 1898. Dorothy was born in 1901 in Kingston Upon Thames and George in 1903 in Tolworth, both in Surrey. 

Their Canadian immigration forms shows that they intended to join a Mr A. Tyrrell at 130 Joseph Street, Ross Bay, Victoria, British Columbia (B.C.). Alfred Tyrrell was Dorothy's uncle, having married Florence Rose Smith on 16 April 1897 at Holy Trinity, Tulse Hill, Surrey. Alfred and Florence had emigrated to Canada in 1921 together with their six children.  

Eric and Dorothy were married on 20 September 1925 at Christ Church Cathedral, Victoria. The witnesses were Dorothy's brother George and her cousin Florence Hilda Tyrrell. It seems safe to assume that the set of silver spoons had been given to the couple by the Housley family as a wedding present and a memory of home. They would be small and light and easily carried with them on their passage to Canada.

Eric Housley died on 10 June 1957 at Saanich, B.C. aged 57. Dorothy appears to have been living in Victoria City in 1972 but we have not been able to trace her death or whether there were children from the marriage. Her brother George married Florence Lilian Thompson on 15 September 1928 at Oak Bay, B.C. He died on 13 May 1972, aged 69, and Florence on 27 March 2006, aged 99, both in Victoria, B.C. Again, we do not know whether they had any children. It seems fair to conclude that the set of spoons have spent 96 of their 132 years of existence in Canada and the vast majority of that time they have been in the hands of the same family. 

August 2020 

Ebenezer's Pictures

We are extremely grateful to Anton Rodgers for sending us photographs of three water-colour paintings which his grandfather bought at a sale of the contents of Abbeydale Hall following the death of Ebenezer Hall's widow, Sarah Ann (née Wilkinson) on 30 July 1919. 

The sale took place on 4 December 1919 at the auction rooms of Bush & Co., Church Street, Sheffield. There was a large attendance and competition for some of the works was keen although the prices were not uniformly high. Every lot was sold. The highest prices were paid for works by Henri Fantin-Latour (460 guineas) and Thomas Sidney Cooper (360 guineas).

Anton was quick to say his grandfather's pictures were not in that league but the two that we have chosen to show here are certainly attractive. The painting below is called Lake Como and is signed by Ainslie Bean. It was bought with its existing gilt frame.

Lake Como by Ainsley Bean (photographed through glass)

Ainslie Bean was born at Gosden Cottage, Westbourne, West Sussex on 10 July 1851, the youngest of eleven children of Felix Freeman Frederick Bean, a landowner of independent means, and his wife Frances Walker, who married on 14 August 1828 at St. Nicholas, Brighton. He was baptised Ainsley Hodson Bean at St. John the Baptist, Westbourne on 27 August 1851. 

Felix Bean came from a military family. He had purchased a commission as an Ensign in the Sussex Regiment of Militia on 2nd May 1820 and on 22 August 1825 he had been elevated to the rank of Captain. Felix died when Ainsley was only five years old in tragic circumstances. Whilst visiting a married daughter who lived in Egglescliffe, Durham, he took his own life with a razor.

By the time of the 1861 Census Ainslie was the only child left at home with his mother who was now living at 6 Chichester Villas, Paddington. He was educated at Gibraltar College in Monmouth. On 2 April 1864 the baptism register of St. Cenedlon, Rockfield, Monmouthshire shows that Ainslie was admitted to the Church under the name Ainslie Hodson Willard Bean. After leaving college, Ainslie and his mother appear to have spent most of their time together travelling in Europe, particularly in the Riviera and in North Italy. 

Ainslie converted to Catholicism and on 5 May 1880 was baptised for a third time at the Church of Our Lady of Victories, Kensington under the name Wilfred Ainslie Hodson Willard Bean. Frances and Ainslie sometimes spent two or three months together in British seaside hotels. Frances Bean died on 1 January 1891 in Florence aged 81 although before that she and Ainslie had been living in Vevey on Lake Geneva. 

Ainslie's paintings first came to the attention of the national press in November 1894 at an exhibition at the Japanese Gallery in New Bond Street. It was widely advertised under the title of Riviera and North Italy: 97 Water-Colour Drawings by Ainslie Bean. Admission was a shilling including programme. His work was described as bold, bright and pleasing and received favourable reviews by most newspaper art critics. The subject matter held a fascination for many people. Some were becoming familiar with the Italian Lakes and Riviera. Many more wished they were. 

A second London exhibition was held at St. George's Gallery, Grafton Street in April 1897 showing new paintings which were again chiefly of Italian scenery and included a work catalogued as View from San Giovanni, Lake Como. Again the reviews were predominantly favourable although the art critic of The Pall Mall Gazette remarked that "one might get a better impression of Mr. Ainslie Bean's work if the show were weeded and reduced by a third."

After that it would appear that Ainslie's paintings were exhibited mainly at small art exhibitions in Sussex and Kent where he appears to have been a member of the Folkestone Art Club. That is until in April 1914 when an exhibition at the Graves Galleries, Pall Mall, entitled Venice and the Italian Lakes combined Ainslie's works with those of another water-colour artist, Pownoll Williams. In later life, Ainslie styled his name Ainsliè Hodson Bean. He died on 10 December 1918 at 8 Via San Basilio, Rome. He was aged 67 and unmarried. 

Cherries by Juey Russell, 1865. (photographed through glass).

This second picture is called Cherries and is dated 1865. It is signed "Juey Russell", believed to be a short form for Juliana Russell, a water-colour artist who was producing similar compositions at this time. 

Juliana Russell was born in Notting Hill, London on 4 January 1841 and baptised on 15 April at St. Mary Abbots Church, Kensington. She was the fourth of nine children of Henshaw Skinner Russell, and his wife Sarah Church who married on 29 October 1834 at St. Mary, Streatley in Berkshire. Henshaw's father, John Russell, had paid for him to become an solicitors clerk, articled to William Graham of Abingdon. Henshaw qualified as a solicitor the year after his marriage. 

Sarah and Henshaw's first five children were all girls: Anna (born in 1836), Eleanor (1838), Sarah Anne (1839), Juliana (1841) and Janette Catherine (1842). Three sons followed but they all died as infants. Daughter Rose Agatha was the ninth and youngest child in 1849. All the children were born in St. Marylebone, Middlesex except for Juliana and Janette who were born in Notting Hill when the family were living at Holland Park Terrace. Henshaw worked at 2 Mitre Chambers, Temple from 1843 and possibly earlier. By the time of the 1851 Census, the Russells had moved to The Priory, Victoria Road, Surbiton. It would remain the family home for the next seventy years. Anna, the eldest daughter, died there on 7 May 1852, aged 16.

From a very early age Juliana had shown a remarkable talent for art. At age 12 she had drawn 23 sacred subjects for the east window of St. Mark's Church in Surbiton and from their success was asked to do designs for other churches. She also drew three subjects on stone from which lithographs were produced and sold to raise funds for the pulpit at St. Mark's, Easton, Bristol.

Juliana and her younger sister Janette studied at Thomas Heatherley's School of Fine Art in Newman Street and later at the Bristol Fine Arts Academy. They had relatives in the Bristol area and in 1861 were living with their unmarried aunts Maria and Caroline Russell at 9 Guildford Villas, Clifton.

Juliana's paintings appeared regularly at the Bristol Academy's exhibitions between 1863 and 1870. The subjects were very largely taken from novels, plays, poems and songs and included Virginia's Hand (from a novel by Marguerite Agnes Power), Desdemona and Emilia (from Shakespeare's Othello), Annie (from Tennyson's Enoch Arden), The Lady of the Lea (from a popular song), Isabella and the Basil Pot (from Keats), and The Faire Christabelle (from a traditional folk song). Her pictures were described as full of vigorous vitality of style.

Juliana had returned to The Priory by 1871 but she never lost contact with Bristol. She was elected a member of its Fine Arts Academy in 1875 and donated several works to it throughout the rest of her life. Her mother died on 24 January 1885 aged 77 and father on 29 January 1891, aged 82. In the 1891 Census whilst her sisters Eleanor, Sarah, Janette and Rose were still living at The Priory in Surbiton, Juliana was living with a servant, at 53 Upper Belgrave Road, Clifton. She died at The Priory on 19 November 1898. She was aged 57 and, like her four surviving sisters, unmarried.

Juliana's paintings were well known in London where they were frequently exhibited at the Dudley Gallery of Water-colours, Piccadilly. They were also exhibited at the Royal Academy and at provincial art galleries. In the June following her death, an exhibition of her work took place at 1 Harewood Place, Hanover Square with paintings loaned by both private and public collectors. 

September 2020