The Brightons of Stow Bardolph

I’ve now mentioned twice (here and here) that John Hoys Chamberlain married sisters Elizabeth and Priscilla Brighton: this is the story of their family, the Brightons of Stow Bardolph, Norfolk.

It’s not a huge story.  I’m not about to head back into the Dark Ages.  I know the names of Elizabeth’s and Priscilla’s parents, but not their grandparents.

Robert Brighton was born circa 1761 in Norfolk and died 26 January 1842 at Stow Bardolph, aged 81 or, as is written on his grave, “in the 82 Year of his Age”.  (As I mentioned in my entry of minutes ago, we were in Stow earlier this week and I did look around the churchyard for this grave but had not been able to find it, and assumed that it was probably too old to be legible.  We nosed around inside the church for a while, and as we turned to go, I happened to glance down at the floor and saw that I was standing on the very grave I sought.  Weird, that.)  On 26 October 1787 at St Gregory in Norwich he married Sarah Annis of Norwich.  She was born circa 1755 and died at Stow on 24 December 1844, and is also remembered on the same monument as her husband just inside the door of Holy Trinity Church.  Their marriage record says that Robert was ‘of Stow’, so I know that he was living in that parish as early as 1787.

Grave of Robert Brighton and Sarah Annis, Holy Trinity Church, Stow Bardolph

The grave of is immediately in front of the door and the damage to the centre of more than 150 years' worth of people walking over it is visible.  Fortunately, the only part of the inscription rendered nearly illegible appears to have been a tribute to Robert's employer, Sir Thomas Hare, Baronet.

The grave also says that he was for 55 years the gamekeeper and steward of the Stow Hall Estate, which was owned by the Hare family of baronets.  (As an aside, a previous gamekeeper and steward on this estate was Robert Coe of Marham, who later removed to Bath, and whose great-nephew married Robert Brighton’s granddaughter in 1844.)  Robert died intestate, so either he was rather careless about setting his affairs in order or was greatly optimistic about having plenty of time ahead of him after he turned 81 to sort out such matters.  His widow renounced her rights to administer his estate, likely because she was ~87 at the time, turning over the rights to their eldest son Robert Jr.  A Charles Brighton, gamekeeper of Tottenhill, witnessed this transaction.

I’ve been able to find baptisms for five of the children of Robert Brighton Sr and Sarah Annis:

•           Robert Jr, on 29 January 1788 at Stow Bardolph, married firstly Mary Poulter on 7 May 1811 at Bottisham, Cambridgeshire and secondly to Elizabeth Acres (née Southgate) at Shouldham, Norfolk on 23 November 1836.  He was working as a gamekeeper at Wallington-cum-Thorpland, Norfolk by July 1817 and farming in Shouldham at least by 1819 until his death there on 18 January 1863.
•           George on 9 October 1794 at Stow Bardolph (buried there on 7 November the same year)
•           Elizabeth on 19 September 1795 at Stow Bardolph; died there on 25 May 1842.  She was ‘of the parish of Wallington’ when she married John Hoys Chamberlain on 23 February 1815.
•           Priscilla at 7 February 1798 at Stow Bardolph, the baptismal record noting that her parents were of nearby Wallington-cum-Thorpland; died at Stow on 16 February 1863.  Although she had been living with her parents in Stow at the time of the 1841 census in June of that year, by the following June she said that she was of ‘East field, Wisbech St Peter’ when she and John Hoys Chamberlain married there by surrogate licence.
•           Lydia on 10 June 1803 at Runcton Holme, her baptismal record also saying that she had been born at her parents’ residence of Wallington-cum-Thorpland.  She married Samuel Levy at Runcton Holme on 19 January 1826 and lived in King’s Lynn, then in her widowhood moved to Teversall, Nottinghamshire where she died in 1876.

The original parish registers for Stow, Wallington and Runcton Holme (or Holme next Runcton) are not easily accessible to me, but the Archdeacon’s Transcripts (AT) for various Norfolk parishes, these included, are on-line.  This was like an annual record of baptisms, marriages and burials which each local parish had to return to the respective archdeacon, so its accuracy depends upon the care taken by the clerk both in recording the original record legibly enough and in making a true copy of it at the end of the year.  There are gaps in the AT for Stow Bardolph between 14 May 1789 and 27 June 1791, and again between 22 May 1792 and 14 July 1794, and it seems quite likely that one, possibly two, further children of Robert and Sarah were born during these periods.

The first was Charles, likely born around 1790 according to his death record in 1870 which said that he was 80, although the age he gave on censuses suggests as late as 1798-1800 (making him aged about 15 when he first married and became a father).  This is almost certainly the Charles Brighton who witnessed the transfer of administration of Robert Brighton’s estate from Sarah Brighton to Robert Jr.  He described himself as a gamekeeper and farmer from as early as 1815 (again, making it rather unlikely that he was born in 1800), and in 1841 and 1851 he was living at Watlington, the parish adjacent to Tottenhill, the residence given for the Charles Brighton who signed the letters of administration in 1842.  There was no other Charles Brighton living in or near Tottenhill in 1841 or 1851.  Charles married on 15 June 1815 at Stow Bardolph to Elizabeth Norman, and the register said that he was from Wallignton-cum-Thorpland, which is where Robert and Sarah Brighton were living with their children; the wedding was witnessed by John Hoys Chamberlain who had married Elizabeth Brighton of Wallington-cum-Thorpland on 23 February the same year.  Charles remarried four years later, also at Stow, to Hannah Wood, and the marriage record again said that he was from Wallington.

The other possible child was John.  He, too, might have been born around 1790 – there were two sets of twins born to Robert Brighton Jr, so there were twins in the family – or he might have been born around 1794.  John is a less certain fit in the family tree because unlike his siblings Robert Jr, Charles, Elizabeth, Priscilla and Lydia, all of whom were able to sign their own names, he signed his name with an ‘X’ on both his marriage records.  His first wedding was at St Mary, Great Massingham on 17 October 1821 to Maria Chamberlain (discussed here), witnessed by her sister Mary Ann Chamberlain and also by Lydia Brighton.  If John were the son of the Brightons of Stow Bardolph and Wallington, Lydia would be his younger sister.  The marriage record also says that he was from the parish of Wallington, which is where Robert and Sarah and their family were living.  His second marriage was at Shouldham on 23 March 1837, just over three months before the start of civil registration which would have provided me with a marriage certificate bearing his father’s name.  The bride was Anne Malby or Maltby of Shouldham and the witnesses were Thomas Brighton (relationship unknown) and Elizabeth Bennett.  Both witnesses signed their own names, but the bride and groom marked with an ‘X’.  John was ‘of the Parish of Stow’ at the time of this marriage, and could be found living there in 1841, 1851 and 1861.  He was in nearby Wimbotsham in 1871, lodging with the Hill family – Martha Hill, aged 67, was born in Stow, and could be a connection worth investigating.

Looking for information about John also turned up the name Thomas Brighton, and there certainly was a Thomas Brighton who was a solicitor at Downham Market, the market town nearest to Stow, Wallington and Runcton Holme.  He also had some connections in Terrington St John near Wisbech where a Brighton married a Cammack and their grandson was named Brighton Cammack, and his sister Frances married Stephen Walker whose uncle John married Catherine Chamberlain, daughter of John Hoys Chamberlain and Elizabeth Brighton and…sometimes I get the feeling this part of my family tree doesn’t branch as much as some of the others.