Turtle Bunbury

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HISTORY

FAMILY HISTORY
The Delbridges of Cornwall

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John Delbridge's father-in-law
the Rev. Alfred Ruddall,
Vicar of St. Agnes, Conrwall

My wife Ally's great-grandfather was John Delbridge, a gold-miner from the parish of St. Agnes in Cornwall. In 1902, he married Elfrida Rudall, eldest daughter of the Rev. Alfred Rudall, Vicar of St. Agnes in Cornwall. It would seem the marriage was to the Vicar's disapproval. This essay is a history in motion, an ever-evolving project designed to convince my ever-loving wife of the great marvels of genealogical research. If you should spot any errors or omissions or simply wish to pass comment, please drop me a line.

John Delbridge I and II

There have been Delbridges in Cornwall and Devon since at least the 1500s. To establish a direct line between these Delbridges and John Delbridge the miner is rather more difficult. The farthest back we can go is to John Delbridge I and Elizabeth his wife who had a son John Delbridge II baptized on the 24th January 1803. John II became a Master Mason and lived in Mithian, some 2 miles from St. Agnes, in Cornwall. His wife was Elizabeth Keast, baptized on the 11th October 1807 in St. Agnes. The couple appear to have had only one child, Richard James Delbridge, born on 31st August 1838. He also became a mason. In 1861 John, Elizabeth and Richard Delbridge were living in Peterville, St. Agnes.

Richard Delbridge, Master Mason (1838 – 1895)

On 12th September 1865, 27-year-old Richard Delbridge married 21-year-old Caroline Roberts at the Wesleyan Chapel in Truro. She was born in Ireland in 1844. Her father, Edward Roberts, was deceased at the time of the wedding and is described as a miner. By 1871, Richard, Caroline and three children were living in Gooninis. By 1881, Richard and Caroline had 6 children - Emma baptized 1866, Edwin baptized 1867, Herbert baptized 1869, John Delbridge III baptized 1875, Alfred baptized 1878, and Willie baptized 1880. Edwin, now 14 years old, was working as a tin dresser. Herbert, Richard and John III were Scholars. By 1891, two more children had been added to the family - Charles and Ethel - and the five eldest children were working as tin dressers. Richard Delbridge, Master Mason, died on the 26th October 1895 at the age of 51 at Goonown, St. Agnes. The cause of his death was emphysema, a common place ailment for miners. In the 1901 Census, Caroline and five of the children were still living in Goonown. Young Richard (26), John III aged 25, William (18), and Charles (16) were described as tin and gold miners, while Ethel (13), was still at home.

The Tinners of Cornwall

St. Agnes is sited in the heart of tin mining country and both town and parish were dependant on the industry. The "Tinners" had been mining Cornwall since the Bronze Age, long before Tristan and Iseult, or Arthur and Guinivere, or the arrival of the Normans. To quote Daphne de Maurier: "Those first explorers from the Mediterranean lands who settled around the River Hayle and in West Penwith discovered the secret or brought it with them - the secret being that the mixture of sand and stone washed down in the streams from the granite hills was a precious ore, tin, which blended with the copper ore that they found in Ireland, turned into bronze". First they created weapons, then came domestic pots, pans and bells.

Cornwall was the greatest source for this natural ore in all Europe - the Romans knew it, the Saxons knew it, and they all sent men to work amongst the Cornish rocks and furze to increase their wealth. In the 12th century, a code of laws - the first Charter for the Stannaries - was drawn up to give the tinners their official rights. They were officially entitled to search for tin and work it in any waste land. The lord who owned the land would receive a toll payment but had no right to interfere. Thus the tinner was his own master, a free artisan whose only fee was to pay a tax on the tin itself. By 1914, the only mines still operating were the homely sounding West Kitty Mine, employing about 250 persons, and the Wheal Kitty Mine, employing about 220 persons. The Delbridges were presumably based in one or more of these mines.

The Town of Truro

The Stannary law demanded that all tin, once smelted, be taken to the nearest coinage town. For the miners of St. Agnes, this town was Truro. Here the tin was weighed and taxed before the officers of the Crown, then stamped with the Duchy arms. It was then sold to foreign traders. All profit went to the tinners. These gatherings took place four times a year in the coinage towns - Truro was one of four, the others being Helston, Lostwithiel and Liskeard - and were accompanied by long and lively festivals, sometimes running for twelve days, the longest being the Midsummer Coinage. The tinners still worked in the open, picking their way along river banks, shovelling up the tin the moors between the granite. He generally worked an area with members of his own family, employing other men if he was on a lucky break. The tin was washed and sent back down on a pack-horse to be smelted at the nearest blowing house. The Delbridge boys must have been hardened souls, well used to sleeping rough in the sparse moor-houses with their solitary turf hearths and heather or straw bedding spread on the floor. The winters were particularly bitter with ice cold rain driving across the moors and pitch darkness setting in by half past four. They trapped rabbits and shot wild-fowl, plover, woodcock and duck that came to feed amid the pools and marshes of the Cornish scrub. By night they sat around fires exchanging stories, legends, ballads and such like. As they slept they could hear the wail of long dead tinners, the ancient and gnarly underworld fairies (called knackers) whose mining tools lay scattered amid the rocks.

Evolution of Tin Mining

Tin-mining beneath the surface began in the 15th century. In Richard Delbridge's day, shafts had been sunk deep into the earth and tunnels ploughed deep and long. His daily concerns would have been rope, timber, candles, the sinking of shafts, the shoring up of earth, the risk to his life. He may have handed over his tin to a middle-man, a merchant or money-lender, or he may have sought a deal with the local landlord. Sir William Godolphin of Godolphin Hall formed his own company and secured the richest tin land in all Cornwall. The price of tin was prone to major fluctuation so the tinner's career was never that secure. There were riots in the 18th century which earned them a reputation as violent and ignorant men who stole chickens and lured passing ships to their doom so they might plunder their goods. They were in fact a proud people, individual and bold.
Cornish tin boomed with the industrial revolution with the improvement of roads, the construction of new foundries and engineering works, the introduction of steam engines and a resurgence of interest in tin from "foreigners from up-country". The tinners tried to resist the capitalist takeover of their industry. "Each individual mine became the centre of the community, men, women, children all taking part in the work; but while fortunes came to the adventurers and the lucky landowners, the miners themselves had small share now in any profits, working long hours for low wages".[1]

Collapse of Cornish Tin Mining

By 1880 two-thirds of Cornish miners had emigrated to the mines of the Americas, Australia and South Africa. Certainly, in the later 1890s, mining failure and emigration were uppermost in the minds of contemporary observers. Their despair was articulated by Cornwall's leading man of letters, Quiller-Couch, writing of Cornwall in the dying years of the nineteenth century, when the price of tin had sunk to its lowest level for a hundred years: 'her population diminishing and her able-bodied sons forced to emigrate by the thousands, the ruined engine-house, the roofless cottage ... the presence of destitution and actual famine'. An equally famous literary giant of the times, the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, shared these sentiments, although he was more critical of the part that Cornishmen themselves had played in their own downfall: 'The Cornish miner has gone abroad, his industry ruined by too much dishonesty, which in the end discredited Cornish mining altogether'. Perhaps somewhere amid the collapse of the Cornish mines one learns to sympathise with an out-of-work John Delbridge falling for the Vicar's daughter.

John Delbridge III and Elfrida Rudall

John Delbridge and Mary Elfrida Catherine Rudall, were married in the Parish Church of St Agnes in 1902. She was the eldest daughter of the Rev. Alfred Rudall, Vicar of St. Agnes. On his Marriage Certificate, John stated that he was a gold miner. The newlyweds then went to live in Fowey, a small town and cargo port at the mouth of the River Fowey in south Cornwall. Popular legend has it that Jesus visited Fowey as a child, along with Joseph of Arimathea who was a merchant visiting local tin mines in which he had a commercial interest. This is where John Barwis Delbridge was born on the 18th February 1905. He was followed by Phyllis on the 25th November 1907. On the 6th March 1920, John Delbridge III sailed on the s.s. Mauretania from Southampton to New York en route for Globe, Arizona, to look for work. He left his wife Mary Elfrida Catherine and their two children at her parents home, the Vicarage in St Agnes.[2] There might have been a further trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA (Lake Michigan) which still has to be traced. One story ran that he had joined the Merchant Navy and was killed when German U-boats attacked the British fleet at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. In any event, he was not seen again until 1945 when John Barwis Delbridge briefly met him in England and he was still very much alive.

ELFRIDA DELBRIDGE

Mary Elfrida Catherine had a talent for playing the piano and at the age of 14 was put forward to take the L.R.A.M. music exam. She was far too young and unfortunately failed. One wonders from whom she could have had lessons in Cornwall? Did she have to travel the 5 miles to Truro to find a piano teacher, perhaps? She played the organ in Church for many years and taught dancing and no doubt gave piano lessons as well. One of her favourite pieces was the Nocturne in D flat Major Op. 27 No. 2 by Chopin, so John Barwis Delbridge told his niece Eldrith. In 1914, Miss Rudall, presumably Elfrida, was listed as Hon. Sec of the St Agnes District Nursing Association, with John Williams as Hon. Treasurer. Elfrida was stricken with breast cancer and passed away in 1928 at the age of 54 at Rosemundy in St. Agnes. The present Rosemundy Hotel was previously a Nursing Home. Rosemundy is also a district of St. Agnes.

BAR DELBRIDGE

Elfrida’s son, John Barwis Delbridge, known as 'Bar', went out to Assam, North-East frontier of India, as a tea planter at the age of 21. Fortunately, for the family, he became a Manager just as war was declared. All Assistant Managers were called up to fight in Burma. By the time he retired at the age of 55 years, he was Manager of three Tea Gardens. He retired to Bulawayo in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) where he worked with Coca Cola. He was married in 1937 to Norah Martin, elder daughter of Charles Martin, M.A. Astronomer at Dunsink Observatory. Norah’s sister Edith worked for Guinness. Bar was Miriam Moore's godfather, a gentle giant with dark hair. Bar and Norah had a daughter Eldrith Janet Delbridge, who grew up in India, was educated at Hillcourt School (now Rathdown) in Glenageary and today lives near Portsmouth. In March 1962 she married Captain Patrick Erskine Ward, a decorated naval officer and son of Major James Palmer Ward and Yvonne Lockington Flood (both James and Yvonne spent their young lives in Assam and were married out there). James was a grandson of Sir William Erskine Ward, the last Viceroy of Assam. Yvonne's father, Cedric Lockington Flood, was also in tea in Assam and latterly became Superintendant of the Zoological Gardens in Phoenix Park, Dublin. Patrick and Eldrith had two daughters, Julia Helen Yvonne Ward (married to John Moulton) and Janette Elizabeth Barwis Ward (married to Andy Britton) and a son, Richard John Rudall Bangor Ward (married to Elizabeth). The Wards were divorced in 1971.

PHYLLIS & ERIC CRAIGIE

Phyllis, aged 16, nursed her mother through the final stages in the Vicarage at St. Agnes. She subsequently went to live with her mother's only sibling, Ada Rudall, known as "Aunt" at 4 Glanville Terrace, St. Agnes. In January 1929, the St Agnes Parish Magazine reported that P. Delbridge (aka Phyllis) had the role of the Baroness (or Stepmother) in a performance of Cinderella with a special orchestra conducted by Mr. W. Donald Behenna. While attending her brother’s wedding to Norah Martin in 1937, Phyllis met Eric Craigie of the Merville Dairy clan in Finglas, North Dublin. Another version holds that they met on a visit to Aintree one April. Either way, they were married on 12th July 1940. Phyllis sailed to Ireland for the wedding on her own, armed with a wedding dress and the cake. She reputedly spent the honeymoon locked away in her bedroom while Eric and his six brothers consulted a crate of whiskey bottles at their fishing lodge in County Mayo. Phyllis's excellent Cornish pasties, passionate Royalism and penchant for wrapping every single Christmas stocking item in newspaper are among many legacies she bequeathed to her descendents. Eric and Phyllis Craigie had a son, Ramor, and three daughters, Virginia, Miriam and Susan. Eric became well known in Ireland as an industrialist, farmer, inventor and former Master of the Ward Union Hunt. His life story is recalled in two colourful books published by Lilliput Press – ‘ An Irish Sporting Life’ and ‘Telling Tales’. His second daughter Miriam married Archie Moore and is grandmother to my daughter Jemima.

[1] On the 3rd February, 1830, a fearful accident occurred at the United Hills Mine in St. Agnes parish when an engine boiler burst killing nine of thirteen persons on the premises at the time.

[2] It is worth noting that in 1914, a Thomas John Delbridge was listed as a Boot dealer with an address at Vicarage Road in St. Agnes. TJ Delbridge later set up a successful garage in the town.

With many kind thanks to Eldrith Ward, Miriam Moore, Virginia and Julia Moran.

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