Whatmore Family History

Upper Willow Hall still retains the name of the manor of ‘The Wylleys’ or Willows in which it is situated which belonged to the Saville family. Some time previous to 1546, William Kinge, a local dyer took out a lease on ‘ The Wylleys’ and he seems likely that he demolished an existing house on the site and built himself a new timbered framed home, known at first as ‘Newhouse’. Members of the Kinge family continued to live at this new Willow Hall for many generations until the 1690s.

Upper Willow Hall, Cote Hill, Halifax    Source: ‘Ancient Halls in and about Halifax’  Arthur Comfort  Published by the ‘Halifax Courier’ about 1913

 The oldest portion of Upper Willow Hall is the work of James Kinge of about 1610. The house was later refronted, probably at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

In the 1690s the house was sold to the Wainwright family of Skircote, an Edward Wainwright residing there at the end of the century.

Elizabeth Wainwright, the daughter of John Wainwrightof Willow Hall, married Japhet Lister of Northgate House, Halifax in 1747 and Willow Hall passed, by this marriage, into the Lister family. Japhet Lister let Willow Hall to Thomas Aked who had married in 1751 to Dorothy Dyson, the daughter of Eli Dyson of Clay House.

The tenancy of Willow Hall passed to the son of Thomas and Dorothy Aked, another Thomas who in 1772, bought Willow Hall from Japhet Lister. This Thomas Aked, a merchant, married Barbara Fawcett.

Thomas and Barbara Aked had three sons – the Rev. William Aked who married Mary Fawcett, Joah and Tom.

Joah Waked became a Lieutenant in the 22^nd Regiment of Foot and  was sent to New York in 1780 during the War of American Independence. On returning to England Lt. Aked lived for some time at Willow Hall and in 1783 married a Miss Holdsworth. From letters sent between members of the Lister family in 1783 it appears that it was felt that Lt. Lister had made a mistake in marrying as his pay and means would be insufficient to maintain a wife. Later correspondance refers to probability of Lt. Joah having to go to the West Indies.

It would seem that that the above gloomy predictions were accurate as Willow Hall was sold, sometime before 1791, to a Jeremiah Dyson.

Jeremiah Dyson was a merchant who had lived for many years at Lisbon in Portugal where he was a member of the British Factory. He was not a member of the Clay House branch of the family and there seems to be confusion about his origins. The pedigree which appears in the Burke’s peerage makes no mention of Jeremiah. The first reference made to Willow Hall in this pedigree is in relation to a Thomas Dyson (died without issue in 1827) – of Upper Willow Hall and of Swifts Place. This Thomas is shown as the son of Henry Dyson of Lower Goat’s House. From Thomas, Willow Hall is supposed to have passed to his brother Daniel. This pedigree was based on one drawn up by Pym Yeatman which was published in ‘The Yorkshire Genealogist’. In an abstract of 1917 in  the Journal of the Halifax Antiquarian Society, Mr E W Crossley states in relation to this pedigree, ‘unfortunately it is a very indifferent production, and was inaccurate within living memory at the time of its production’.  Mr Crossley was quite correct in his assessment of this pedigree.

The clue to the true ancestors of Jeremiah Dyson of Willow Hall lies in the name given by his brother Daniel to one of his children:  Thomas Fournice or Founess Dyson. This is a strong indication that the mother of Daniel and Jeremiah was a Fourness and indeed we find the baptism of a Jeremiah Dyson on 4 July 1736 at Elland  and that that of a Daniel Dyson on 27 January 1743 at Elland to an Ely Dyson and a Barbara. We further find that an Eli Dyson married a Barbara Fourness on 26 July 1730 at Halifax. Their known children were Eli, Jeremiah 1736, David 1738, Daniel 1743 and Thomas 1745.  It seems likely that they also had a son called James born about 1748 (see later post).

Upper Willow Hall  Photograph Copyright: David Dyson and reproduced here by his kind permission

Why weren’t the Willow Hall branch of the Dyson family clear about their origins? The truth is probably that they were clear and were embarrassed by them. The explanation for this is provided by the research undertaken by a descendant who lives in America which is included in the excellent website of Malcolm Bull – ‘Calderdale Companion’  which can accessed at this link:

http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~calderdalecompanion/

In an abstract by C Webster published in 1966 in the  Journal  of the Halifax Antiquarian Society  in 1966 it is stated that:

 ‘Eli Dyson Snr. became insolvent in 1766 and was forced to assign his paper  mills in Halifax and all his other properties to his chief creditor, John Edwards of Northowram Hall. Not satisfied with this, Edwards had the old man imprisoned in York Castle for debt. Daniel Dyson, the fifth son, temporarily saved the situation by eloping with Edward’s only daughter, Sarah, and marrying her in Scotland.’ We cannot be sure who was the father of Ely, the owner of the Paper Mills, but it may well have been an Edmund Dyson, born about 1660 at Longwood, who married a Mary Gledhill on 29 January 1690 at Huddersfield. Their son Ely Dyson was baptised on 23 August 1701 at Huddersfield. Edmund’s ancestry is unknown but it probably goes back to the family at Swifts Place.   

We will return later to Daniel Dyson, Ely’s son, shortly but first we need to consider his brothers.

Of Ely Junior we only know that he was of ‘Gatehead’.

Jeremiah, as already mentioned, lived for many years in Lisbon and there is no evidence that he had any children. It was probably his return to England that rescued the fortunes of his family at Halifax. He died at Willow Hall on 20 February 1791 leaving the property to his brother Daniel. (Some accounts state that Daniel was his son – but this clearly impossible given that Daniel married in 1764).

David born 1738 may also have been to Lisbon but lived later at Barnsley.   He married a Martha Hanson on 15 June 1761 at Elland.  About 1800 he purchased Barkisland Hall, at Halifax and also bought land at Abbots Royd. The children of David and Martha Dyson were Samuel 1762 and Barbara 1776 who built a house at Abbots Royd. David Dyson died in 1818 at Barkisland Hall.

Barkisland Hall    Photograph Copyright: John Illingworth 

Thomas Dyson born 1745 had  lived in Lisbon but nothing further is known of him.

James Dyson, born about 1748, seems likely to have been another of Ely Dyson’s sons, but he is not mentioned in the will of his brother Jeremiah Dyson. This James became a brass founder in Hoxton, London and will be described in a later section.

Returning to Daniel  born 1743 who married Sarah Edwards on 19 July 1764 at Haddington in East Lothian, it is not known how he fared financially in later years. It was not until the death of his brother Jeremiah in 1791 that he inherited Willow Hall. From the baptismal records of their children, Daniel and Sarah lived at Soyland and Ripponden. Their known children were:

Thomas Fournice Dyson 1767 – 1843

Nanny Dyson 1773 – 1848 who never married

Maria Dyson 1775 – 1855 who never married

John Dyson 1777 – 1818

Harriet Dyson 1787 – 1851

Daniel Dyson and  his wife Sarah passed away in 1810.  Under the terms of Daniel’s will of 1799 – Thomas and John, his sons, were to become joint tenants of Willow Hall with Thomas having the power to take the whole estate on payment of £2500 to John. The two brothers, who were merchants,  traded from Willow Hall as Dyson Bros.

Thomas Fournice Dyson had married at Lisbon an Irish girl – Anne Baldwin Sealy on 15 May 1800. At least two of their seven children were born in Lisbon – William Brutton Dyson about 1801 and Elizabeth Baldwin Dyson about 1802. Their other known children were Baldwin Sealy Dyson 1808, John Edwards Dyson 1810,  Richard Daniel Dyson  1814, Sarah Harriet Dyson 1815 who married Sir James Bourne of Hackinsall Hall, Fleetwood, and George William Dyson 1820.  After living for some time  at Willow Hall, Thomas and his family went to live  at Everton in Lancashire.

Harriet Dyson born 1787 married William Moore in 1810 in Halifax. It is ironic that William Moore was the heir to Northowram Hall which had been the home of the John Edwards who had been the cause of the bankruptcy of Harriet’s grandfather.

 After Thomas and his family went to Everton, and Sarah had married William Moore, John Dyson born 1777 continued to live at Willow Hall with his own family and his two unmarried sisters – Maria and Nanny. John had married a Harriet Edwards on 26 June 1804 at Halifax. Their children were:

 Thomas Edwards Dyson 1805 – 1841. He was a Justice of the Peace. 

Jeremiah Dyson 1806 – 1858.  He lived at Willow Edge and was a Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant of the West Riding.

Lt. Colonel John Daniel Dyson 1808 – 1875. He was Lieutenant Colonel of the 3^rd Dragoon Guards and served in that regiment for 28 years. He died in London in 1875 and was buried at St Mary’s Church, Wimbledon.

Lt. Edwards Dyson 1810 – 1886 also belonged to the 3^rd Dragoon Guards and had an estate at Denne Hill in Kent. He married Caroline Agnes Jerdan in 1857 in the Marylebone Registration District. They had four children:

Caroline Dyson born about 1857 in Edinburgh who married Marwood Shuttlewood Yeatman in 1881

Edwards Hopton Dyson born 23 January 1858 at Dumbarton in Scotland. He was educated in France, Germany and at Wimbledon School. He then attended Sandhurst and on passing out in 1878 was made 2^nd Lieutenant in the 1^st Battalion of the 24^th Regiment, joining his corps at King William’s Town He took part in the storming of Sihayo’s stronghold in the Barshe Valley  and was killed on 22 January 1879 in the Battle of Isandlwana, Zululand. Lt. Edwards Hopton Dyson is commemorated in a pair of memorial windows in the chancel of the church at Womensfold, Kent  and also the South Africa  Memorial in the Sandhurst Chapel.

Lt. Edwards Hopton Dyson    Photograph copyright:  John Young    Source: ‘They Fell Like Stones’ by John Young and reproduced here by kind permission of John Young and his publishers

The following is an extract from a letter written to the father of Lt. Edwards Hopton Dyson:

 ‘The last person who saw your son and escaped, that I can find, was Captain Essex, 75^th Regiment, Acting Transport Officer. He tells me that just before the Zulu horsa got round our flanks and the last overwhelming rush was made, Dyson was with one section of  his Company, which was in skirmishing order to the left-front of the camp. He gave orders to retire, and I believe, from another witness, that he and all his Company rejoined the main body without loss. The five Companies were then together in a line, giving volley after volley into dense masses of Zulus at only 150 yards range. The men were laughing and chatting, and thought they were giving the blacks an awful hammering, when suddenly the enemy came down in irresistible numbers from the rear; the left and right flanks came in with a rush, and in a few moments all was over.’ 

The Battle of  Isandlwana     Source: ‘The Illustrated London News’ 1879

Richard Godfrey Dyson born in 1863 at Denne Hill and who died in 1879

Rev. Francis Julian Dyson born 1864 at Rotherby Leicestershire who married Mabel Edith Lovell in 1892. The Reverend Francis died in 1935 on the Isle of Wight. His descendants can be traced down to the present day.

John Dyson born 1777 died at Willow Hall in 1818. His wife Harriet died in 1865. The ownership of Willow Hall now seem to have reverted to John’s brother – Thomas Fourness Dyson. When the latter died in 1840 he bequeathed Willow Hall to his son George William Dyson, his  daughter  Sarah Harriet Dyson  and to his married daughter Elizabeth Baldwin Hornby, in equal shares. George William Dyson got into debt and the house effectively became the possession of Joseph Hornby, the husband of his sister Elizabeth, and other Trustees. Eventually the house became the property of Lt. Colonel John Daniel Dyson and on his death it passed to his brother Lt Edwards Dyson.  In 1891 the house was sold by the trustees of the will of the latter, to John Rothery Swaine.

 Interior of Willow Hall   Photograph Copyright: David Dyson and reproduced here by his kind permission

Sources 

 ’The Two Willow Halls: Upper and Lower’  by H P Kendall

Abstract published in the Journal of the Halifax Antiquarian Society   1908

‘The Dyson Family Part One’ by E W Crossley

Abstract published in the Journal of the Halifax Antiquarian Society   1917

‘Robert Parker – Attorney: Part 1’  by C Webster

Abstract published in the Journal of the Halifax Antiquarian Society   1966

‘Calderdale Companion’ – the website of Malcolm Bull

 Burkes’ Peerage

‘The South Africa Campaign of 1878/79’

 Ian Knight and Dr. Adrian Greaves