The Oldrini Family in Beeston - later generations

Thomas John Oldrini and his wife Maria Elizabeth had nine children between the years 1851 and 1867. Their lives illustrate the diversity and complexity that can occur amongst the members of a single family - all "Children of the Vicarage". but, in this case, most with early influances in Beeston :

Frederick John Oldrini : was one of twins, born towards the end of 1851 at Breaston where Thomas was curate. He was to live less than a year.

Jessie Elizabeth Oldrini : the other twin, in contrast, lived to the age of 86. She stayed at home in Beeston until after her mother's death in 1903, never married, and died in London in 1938.

Edith Maria Oldrini : stayed at home while her father was alive, then - now in her late thirties - she took a position in Hampshire as companion to Lucy Rawlings, a widow living on her own means. In 1900, at the age of 47, she married Frank Whitt, a lace manufacturer and merchant. Whitt had been living in Imperial Park, Beeston with his first wife and their five children. There, after first having to bare the sadness of losing a son in 1892, then had to face the tragedy of the death of his wife, in 1899 at the early age of 46. By the time of the marriage to Edith, he had moved to Radcliffe on Trent and it was here that the couple and his remaining four children continued to live.

Augustus Cyril Oldrini : was born at Beeston in 1854 and received a boarding school education at Hurstpierpoint, Sussex and at St Pauls School, Stoney Stratford, Buckinghamshire. After leaving school he worked for three years with Nottingham & Notts Bank but appears that his wish to see something of the world outside was such that, at the age of 23, he left for Australia on the Orient-Pacific liner "Chimborazo", which had only recently started carrying British passengers to Australia via the Cape.

In his obituary, published in the local newspaper serving the Narraburra area of New South Wales where he eventually settled, it states that the journey was interupted when the ship was wrecked off Point Perpendicular, as they approached south of Sydney and the journey was then completed in the paddle-steamer "Collaroy". This account is, however, difficult to reconcile with published histories of the vessel which do not mention the incident. In fact, the Chimborazo, which was being chartered in 1877 was purchased by Orient in the following year and after Oldrini's voyage was completed. It then continued in service for several years.

Whatever happened on the journey, Oldrini appears to have arrived in Sydney on 12th March 1878 and soon found work as a cattle drover, finding himself well placed when the gold rush started in the Temora region in 1879 and cattle were needed in that area. When he had arrived he had dropped his somewhat grand first name and was recorded as "Cyril" and soon went further, adopting the name "Charlie" in everyday usage.

In April 1884, he selected a block of land at Dinga Dinga where he farmed and, in 1895, he was appointed as a Justice of the Peace. In 1902 he moved to Temora and took up an appointment as Mining Warden's Bailiff and added the role of Guardian of Minora in 1905. When the Narraburra Shire Council was formed in 1906, Oldrini became its first Clerk, a position he held up to his retirement in 1933 by which time he had become the longest serving Clerk in New South Wales local government. He became a Fellow of the Local Government Clerk's Association of NSW in 1933.

Augustus married Mary Anne Chambers in Temora in 1893 (possibly after an earlier marriage to Mary Anne Stubbs) and, after her death in 1914, he married Mary A Cooke in Windsor. He had two children:

Thomas Augustus Gerard Oldrini, born 5 July 1892 in Sydney, who married Ethel Katie Pulman on 17 March 1912 in Sydney and died in 1917; his name appears on the Temora War Memorial to those who enlisted in World War 1.

Edith Oldrini, born 1894 in the St Peters District of NSW and who died shortly afterwards in the same year in Temora.

Augustus died on 4th March 1939 at Temora.

Basil Henry Montague Oldrini: was born at Beeston in 1856 and appears to have been educated locally. Like his brother Augustus, he took up a banking career and appears to have prospered in that vocation. In the absence of his father, and after his elder brother had left for Australia, it was Basil who took the lead in the family - and eventually acted as his father's executor. This responsibility, possibly more urgent as his father's health deteriorated, may have caused him to delay marriage as it was not until 1883, at the age of 32 and a few years after his father's death, that he married Emily Catherine Potter, then aged 23, the third surviving daughter of the late Reverend Alfred Potter, who had been Rector of Keyworth, Nottinghamshire from 1859 to 1878. Following their marriage, Basil took a bank posting to Worksop in Nottinghamshire, moved home to New Chilwell around 1893 and then to Elm Avenue, Beeston in around 1897. By this time, Basil was described as a Bank Cashier, possibly holding that more senior position at the Bank's Nottingham head office. The couple had seven children, all but one surviving into adulthood. Later, the family moved to the south of England and Basil died in Sussex in 1929 followed by his wife in the following year.

Mabel Agnes Oldrini was born in 1858 at Beeston and, like her eldest sister, she never married. Mabel stayed at home until after her father's death, when she was about 27, but then took a position as a lady nurse in the household of the Rector of Chaldon, Surrey. By 1901 however, she had chosen to branch out in a life of her own and was then employed as a shorthand typist in London and occupied three rooms in an address in Kensington with a friend, another shorthand typist. In 1944 she was killed, along with about six others, apparently in an air-raid, while living at an address in Muswell Hill in North London. She is buried in the nearby Hornsea Municipal Cemetery.

Eleanor Constance Oldrini was born at Beeston in 1859 and died in 1872, aged 13. Her memorial survives in Beeston Churchyard.

Blanche Mary Oldrini was born at Beeston in 1866, In 1888, at the age of 22, she married the Reverend Francis Samuel Pyemont Pyemont, then aged 42 - almost twice her age. Francis was the eldest son (out of nine children) of Reverend Samuel and Frances Ann Pyemont. Samuel's family seems quite remarkable today but, it was perhaps not untypical of a wealthy clergy family of that age - when livings were bought and sold, patronage favoured a closed network of families and the Church was considered an appropriate career for younger sons in particular whose family had been able to afford the required education for him - more often than not, at Cambridge. Although, in this case, Francis was the eldest son, many of these factors can be seen within the Pyemont family.

The living at Whitwick in Leicestershire, where Samuel was the Vicar - said to have been worth £400 a year - meant that the family was financially comfortable - all generations of the family were surrounded by large numbers of domestic assistance, all had the benefit of private education, usually at boarding school and University and sometimes by resident governess - despite large families, they prospered and led relatively genteel lives. Samuel's family had another characteristic not unknown amongst the families of that social standing - it changed its name. Samuel, born Samuel Smith, first used his mother's maiden name of Pyemont as a middle name for each of his children - Francis, for example was originally Francis Samuel Pyemont Smith - but then caused the whole family to adopt the Pyemont name sometime around 1860. Although not yet proven, it may be that this change was a response to the terms of an inheritance as this is not an unknown condition in a will.

Unusually, Samuel married young - he was only about twenty when he married Frances Ann Oxley, who was about four years older. By his late twenties - certainly by 1848 - he had become the curate at Whitwick in Leicestershire after serving in Parishes in his native Yorkshire. By 1851 he was well settled there, with his own family - five at that stage - who he appears to be educating at home with two other pupils and the assistance of a governess. By 1857, he appears to have left for Germany where he and his family lived for several years - two of the children were born there - before returning to Whitwick to take up the living, probably after the death of the former incumbent in 1864. He died on 14th March 1875 at Pau, Basses Pyrenees, France, a resort then popular as a destination for the British.

Samuel's eldest daughter became the wife of a Canadian-born clergyman who together brought up their family, in various English parishes in much the same style as her father. His three other daughters appear to have remained unmarried, first living with their mother after their father's death in the early 1870s and then remaining together in her Leicestershire home, maintaining the genteel life which they had known. Of the sons, two became Clergy, one entered the Colonial Civil Service in Ceylon and another earned a good-living trading with the Colonies. All appear to have married well - some exceptionally - and all continued to live in style.

After Samuel became the incumbent at Whitwick, his son Francis became his Curate but appears to have the calling - or yearning - to take his ministry abroad. By March 1879 he is found as a locum priest at the Church of St Johns, Buenos Aires where he served for eight and a half months while the incumbent, Rev Francis Smith - possible a relative - took a break. By 1885 he had become Curate at Beeston and is known to have delivered Rev Oldrini's last sermon in June of that year when the latter was unable to do so. It would be at that time or shortly after that he began to court Oldrini's youngest daughter, Blanche and they married at Beeston in April 1888. Although the couple set up home in fashionable Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, where Blanche Audrey Frances, the first of their four children - all daughters - was born in 1889, it does appear that Francis spent much of his time furthering his overseas ministry. By the time of the the 1891 UK census the family was living in Taiping in Perak, Malaysia - then part of what was the Crown colony known as Straits Settlements - where Francis was the Chaplain and where their second child (Iris Mary) in August 1892. In the next year, Blanche returned from Malaysia on the Ixion, out of Penang, arriving in London on 19 June 1893. She travelled with her daughters, Audrey, aged 3 and Iris, aged 1 with a Malay nurse. About 3 months later, on 22 September 1893, she gave birth to twins, Enid & Aimee, in Woodhall Spa - where she continued to live with her daughters with adequate domestic assistance, including a governess for the children. Francis died on 19th May 1906 at Taiping Persk, Straits Settlements, probably having not seen his family after they left Malaysia in 1893. He was buried in All Saints Church Cemetery, Taiping, Perak where his memorial (right - click to enlarge), erected by his widow and children, survives

Towards the end of 1906, Blanche married Edward Whitaker Moss-Blundell, in London. Edward, was born in Hull in 1871, the son of a successful colour manunufacturer, Edward Hugh Moss and his wife Ellen (née Whitaker). Both Edward and his brother (Stanley Whitaker Moss) later adopted the additional name of Blundell from their paternal grandmother, Eliza Charlotte Blundell (c1817-1888, the wife of William Henry Moss, c1814-1874, a lawyer) whose substantial estate probably ensured that her two grandsons received a sound education and start in life. He had a career in the Civil Service becoming an Inspector with the Board of Agriculture & Fisheries. Later, he was the author or editor of 'The House of Commons Book of Remembrance 1914-1918' (published by Elkin Mathews & Marrot. 1931).

The couple lived in the Highgate district of London and, it appears that Blanche developed an interest in show dogs as, in February 1921, she was encountered by another dog owner, Sir Edward Elgar, at the Cruft's Dog Show. He recorded in his diary that Mrs Blundell and her daughter - probably Iris - was showing a beautiful Aberdeen terrior, Kirkstead Jock, which was 'not for sale'. Details of the dog appear on page 121 of the Crufts catalogue for 1921 which can be accessed here. (I am indebted to Martin Bird, Editor of the Elgar Society journal, for this interesting insight.)

Blanche died in 1932, aged 66, followed, in January 1940, by Edward, aged 69.

We can also record something of the lives of Francis' and Blanche's four daughters:

Blanche Audrey Frances Pyemont was born 3 February 1889 in Wooodhall Spa, Lincolnshire. On 12 Jun 1913, she married Charles Hubert Reed (1881-1957), a son of the Reverend Charles Edward Baines Reed (b.1845) who was, by 1871, the Congregational Minister of Common Close Congregational Chapel, Warminster, Wiltshire and, from 1874, the Secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, until his early death in 1884, killed by a fall while on a walking holiday in Pontresina, Switzerland. Charles Hubert's grandfather, Sir Charles Reed (1819-1881) was the founder of the type-founding firm, Sir Charles Reed & Sons Limited, which was joined by Charles Hubert and became the basis of his own steel plate printing company, Intaglis Patents Ltd. Sir Charles interested himself in education from early in his life, devoting his public life to the affairs of the London school board, of which he was Chairman, 1870-81; he was Knighted in 1874 and became M.P. for St Ives in 1880. He was also an antiquarian of some note. His father (Charles Hubert's great-grandfather), Andrew Read (1787-1862) was a philanthropist and independant minister, pastor of the New Road Chapel, London, 1811-1831. and of Wycliffe Chapel, London, 1831-1861, In 1841, he founded the London Orphan Asylum, and, in 1865, the Hospital for Incurables, Blanche died in 1975.

Iris Mary Pyemont was born in Taiping, Perak, Malasia on 12 August 1892. She did not marry and died in London in February 1984, aged 91.

Enid Pyemont one of twins, was born in Woodhall Spa in 1893 and educated at St Margaret's Convent School in East Grinstead, Sussex. In 1920, she married Andre Korobeinikoff (c1883-1953, who, in 1938, changed the family name to Korbey). During the Grear War, he had been part of the Stobart Hospital Unit, consisting mainly of women led by Mrs Mabel Anne St Clair Stobart (1862-1954), which set up a tented hospital and a mobile hospital in Serbia in 1915 (see http://www3.northumberland.gov.uk/catalogue/Quicksearch.htm and search for ZCE/F/4/1/1/174). The couple had four children one of whom died in infancy. Enid died in 1979.

Aimee Pyemont one of twins, was born in Woodhall Spa in 1893 and educated at St Margaret's Convent School in East Grinstead, Nothing of her later life is currently known

Gerard Douglas Louis Oldrini was born at Beeston in 1867. After an education at a private boarding school, he left for London where he married and found work as a domestic caretaker - possibly working at the Almonds Hotel in Westminster. Possibly encouraged by his brother's success there, the couple left for Australia where they settled. He died in 1915 in Sydney at the age of 48; his widow survived him until her death in New South Wales in 1939.

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