London’s Cheyne Walk and Its Fames Residents

©By Cheryl Bolen

Cheyne Walk is a rarity in London: a street of lovely mansions practically on the banks of the River Thames. Located in Chelsea, the walk was originally constructed in the early 1700’s and over the centuries has been home to a Who’s Who of authors, painters, musicians, one Prime Minister, and in more recent decades, billionaires.

The street is named after Lord Cheyne who lived in the Chelsea mansion until 1712, at which time he sold it to Sir Hans Sloane. The new owner constructed individual mansions on the site. Each of the properties went all the way to the river until the Embankment was built in the nineteenth century. Since then, pedestrians can stroll in front of the houses, which still have grand views of the river. Since the stunning Albert Bridge was built of iron in 1873, the homes on Cheyne Walk also have a close-up view of the bridge.

Sloane built Numbers 19-26 between 1759 and 1765 on land that had once held a manor house belonging to Henry VIII. It’s said Elizabeth I planted trees on the site.

During the 19th century many artists and authors, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, George Eliot, JMW Turner, Bram Stoker, and Algernon Charles Swinburne, lived here.

Sir Mark Brunel (1769-1849), who designed the Thames Tunnel, lived on Cheyne Walk, as did his more famous son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859), an engineering giant of the nineteenth century.

In 1886 Carlyle Mansions, a block of flats, was built on Cheyne Walk. They were named after Thomas Carlyle, whose residence was just around the corner from Cheyne Walk. The author was a lifelong resident of Chelsea. Famed authors who’ve rented flats at Carlyle Mansions (sometimes called Writers’ Block) include Henry James, T.S. Eliot, William Somerset Maugham, and James Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming, who also lived briefly at Number 124. (Flats there now average around $2 million each but can go much higher.)

Prime Minister David Llyod George (1863-1945) lived at Number 10. In the 1930s Laurence Olivier lived on Cheyne Walk, and another actor, American John Barrymore, also made his home briefly at Cheyne Walk.

Three of the Rolling Stones have called Cheyne Walk home. In the 1960s Mick Jagger lived at Number 48 with Marianne Faithful, and fellow band mate Keith Richards lived at Number 3. A later addition to the band, Ronnie Wood, lived at Number 119.

Author Ken Follett has lived at Number 92.

The houses have fences around them for privacy and locked gates, but their view of the bustling river from the upper stories has not been obstructed.

A character in one of the BBC episodes of Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Britt lived on Cheyne Walk. One scene depicts the home’s great river views during Victorian times. (Unfortunately, this author does not remember which episode!)

London’s Cheyne Walk home of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Many of the homes have been turned into flats, but there are still a number of them which have remained multi-story homes. During the past forty years, billionaires have been buying these. John Paul Getty II lived in one. Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, who owns the Chelsea Football Club, owns Number 101. In 2015, American billionaire and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg paid $25 million for the house at Number 4.

The house which formerly stood at Number 128 has been demolished, and the World’s End Estate now stands on the site. The Clash front man Joe Strummer lived there.

Hopefully, no more of these historic houses will be demolished, and Cheyne Walk will remain largely as it was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. —Cheryl Bolen has strolled Cheyne Walk on one of her frequent trips to England. The author of more than 40 historical novels and novellas has been writing about Georgian England for a quarter of a century. Her articles can be found both on her website, https://www.cherylbolen.com,/ or her blog https://cherylsregencyramblings.wordpress.com/. Her latest series is The Beresford Adventures, the first title of which is Lady Mary’s Dangerous Encounter.

Consanguinity and Affinity

Cheryl Bolen’s Note: The following by guest blogger Janna MacGregor first appeared in The Regency Reader and is reprinted here with the author’s permission.

By Janna MacGregor  

In the first book of my Widow Rules series, A Duke in Time, a war hero duke falls in love with his stepbrother’s wife. Could he legally marry her? Under the Church of England’s rules of consanguinity and affinity, a brother couldn’t marry his brother’s widow. Nor could a sister marry her sister’s widower. Yet they could marry first cousins. 

Let’s take a look at a few brave couples who challenged the Church of England and the laws that stood in the way of their true love and happiness.

Way back in the day of merry ol’ England, the Church of England had pretty strict rules of who could marry whom, particularly as it related to family. Let’s get some definitions out of the way to make this a little easier to understand. 

Consanguinity basically means two people are related by blood relation and that they share common ancestors. Affinity is a relationship by marriage.

When people married in violation of the Church of England’s prohibition of consanguinity or affinity, the marriages were either void or voidable. If a marriage is void, it’s invalid and illegal. End of story. Any children born of such union were illegitimate. 

If a marriage is voidable, then it’s valid. However, it could be annulled if an interested party successfully challenged the marriage while the husband and wife were still alive. 

 Let’s talk specifics. You could marry your cousin. In Pride and Prejudice, that was why Lady Catherine De Bourgh clearly circled the wagons around her nephew Fitzwilliam Darcy and encouraged him to marry her daughter, Darcy’s cousin, instead of Elizabeth Bennett. Darcy’s marriage to his cousin would have ensured that his lovely home and wealth would stay within the family. Heck, even King George IV, the former Prince Regent, married his first cousin, Queen Caroline. We all know how that turned out. They couldn’t stand one another. 

Do I hear any “ewws?” I can’t imagine marrying any of my cousins, but it happened all the time during the Regency. Marrying within the family was a way of keeping the hard-earned wealth intact. However, the laws were less lenient for other cases. For instance, a sister couldn’t marry a brother, and a brother couldn’t marry a sister because of incest. 

By now, you’re curling your lip. 

Incest is taboo and illegal in most countries. But what if a man wants to marry his brother’s widow or vice versa? That’s a problem for our Regency couple, but not an insurmountable one. Here’s a little background: in the Regency period when a woman married, she was considered to become “one flesh” with her husband. Legally, she lost practically all rights when she said, “I do.” Usually, her property belonged to her husband after the marriage (unless she and her family had been clever enough to put it in trust or had to some pretty airtight marriage settlements.) The “one flesh” language meant that her husband had the legal authority to decide all financial and moral decisions on her behalf. Under the law, she had to grin and bear it. 
But I digress. 

When a woman became “one with her husband” that meant she became sisters to her brother-in-law according to the church. If her spouse died, she could not marry her brother-in-law even though there was not a speck of blood or in some instances, common ancestry shared between them. These are the rules of affinity that the Church of England forbid. Here’s a detailed list.

A Table of Kindred and Affinity in The Book of Common Prayer (1662.) 
A Table of Kindred and Affinity,
Wherein Whosoever Are Related Are Forbidden
by the Church of England to Marry Together.

---

A Man may not marry his mother  daughter  adopted daughter  father’s mother  mother’s mother  son’s daughter  daughter’s daughter  sister  wife’s mother  wife’s daughter  father’s wife  son’s wife  father’s father’s wife  mother’s father’s wife  wife’s father’s mother  wife’s mother’s mother  wife’s daughter’s daughter  wife’s son’s daughter  son’s son’s wife  daughter’s son’s wife  father’s sister  mother’s sister  brother’s daughter  sister’s daughter

A Woman may not marry with her father  son  adopted son  father’s father  mother’s father  son’s son  daughter’s son  brother  husband’s father  husband’s son  mother’s husband  daughter’s husband  father’s mother’s husband  mother’s mother’s husband  husband’s father’s father  husband’s mother’s father  husband’s son’s son  husband’s daughter’s son  son’s daughter’s husband  daughter’s daughter’s husband  father’s brother  mother’s brother  brother’s son  sister’s son

In this Table the term ‘brother’ includes a brother of the half-blood, and the term ‘sister’ includes a sister of the half-blood.
 
Remember that scene in Jane Austen’s Emma where Mr. Knightley says, “Brother and Sister! No, indeed.” This exclamation comes after Emma Woodhouse’s comment that they are not so much “brother and sister” as to make a recent dance that they’d shared unseemly.

Why did she say that? Remember that her sister had married Knightley’s brother. Emma mistakenly believed that any relationship outside of friendship would be verboten with her Mr. Knightley. If her sister died, Emma couldn’t marry her brother-in-law. Same was true for Mr. George Knightley. He couldn’t marry Emma’s sister if his brother died. But there was no such relationship between Emma and Knightley. So Emma and her dear Mr. Knightley didn’t run afoul of the Church of England’s strict rules when they pledged their troths to one another.
Yet, it’s a telling tidbit about our dearly loved Jane Austen. Her own brother Charles John Austen married his deceased wife Fanny Palmer’s sister, Miss Harriett Palmer, making the marriage voidable. But his marriage survived. How, you ask?

Because under the Ecclesiastical Court, a voidable marriage could only be struck if someone. . .really, anyone complained. This usually happened when a greedy relative sought to ensure they weren’t cut from inheriting the husband’s property. In Charles’ case above, no one complained because he and Harriett were as poor as church mice.

In A Duke in Time, the male protagonist, Christian, the Duke of Randford, falls in love with his deceased half-brother’s wife, Katherine Vareck. If they married, then their voidable marriage could be declared void if a nasty relative complained. For that very reason, I purposely made certain that Christian had no heir presumptive in the woodwork who would have cause to complain about the marriage. A voided marriage between the couple would have instantly made any children born of the marriage declared bastards and incapable of inheriting from their father.  A definite stain on Christian and Katherine’s happily-ever-after.

English history is rife with these types of marriages. In 1835, the Seventh Duke of Beaufort’s marriage to his dead wife’s half sister was brought before Parliament to legitimize the marriage to ensure his heir inherited the dukedom. A parliamentary bill was hastily composed which resulted in the Marriage Act of 1835. It declared that any prior voidable marriages similar to the Duke of Beaufort’s would be declared legal if not already void. However, any English marriage that violated the rules of affinity after August 31, 1835 would be void. When you come across various plots with these twists, just remember that there’s more to a Regency marriage than meets the eye in our cherished romances.

Janna MacGregor is the author of the beloved Cavenshem heiresses series. Before she wrote romance, Janna practiced law in Missouri and Kansas. Her latest, A Duke in Time, the first in her new series from St. Martin’s Press, The Widow Rules, is out now.

May-December Marriages in the Regency

In my latest book (A Proposal of Marriage) some readers had a difficult time accepting the significant age difference in my 20-year-old heroine and the 43-year-old man she marries. I know when I was 20 I would have thought a man even just ten years my senior far too old. But let us not judge Regency-era characters by today’s standards.

Not just in England, the country in which I set my books, but also in the United States during the 1800s those May-December weddings were far more common. Some have speculated the reason for this may have to do with younger men in those days having fewer financial options and having to wait until they inherited before they were in a position to wed.

As a student of Regency England, I can point to several actual marriages among the upper classes in which there were significant age differences. All but one of them was a successful marriage.

Emma Hamilton (by Romney)

The one that was not as successful was that between the former Emma Hart and the English ambassador to Naples, Sir William Hamilton. The marriage between Lady Hamilton and Sir William was successful—until the naval hero Lord Horatio Nelson entered her sphere and became her lover. Sir William was 28 years older than his wife. Her lover was just seven years her senior. The two lovers carried on their affair right under the nose of her cuckold husband—even through her “secret” pregnancy of Lord Nelson’s illegitimate child.

Lady Harriett Cavendish, the daughter of the Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, married her aunt’s lover, Granville Leveson Gower, a man 12 years her senior. It was a solid marriage, during which Harriett adored her husband, who became the ambassador to France.

A similar age difference, a 13-year gap, distinguished the marriage of the 1^st Viscount Palmerson (father to the future Prime Minister) and his second wife and mother of his children. (His first wife had died on childbed, along with their only babe.)

Harriett Arbuthnot

Harriett Fane, one of 14 children born to a younger son of the Earl of Westmoreland, found security when she married Charles Arbuthnot, a man 26 years older than her. Her husband not only was a member of Parliament, but he was also close friends to the hero of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington, a man who was completely smitten over Mrs. Arbuthnot, though there’s no evidence of an actual affair between the two. She did serve as his hostess—and a buffer against the large number of women who threw themselves at this hero, who also served twice as Prime Minister. When Mrs. Arbuthnot died suddenly at age 40, both men (both easily old enough to be her father) grievously mourned her and lived together the rest of their lives.

And the largest age gap I’m going to write about today is the 32-year-old gap between the wealthy banker to the ton, Thomas Coutts, and the actress Harriett Melon. She seemed most fond of her husband and was close to his grown daughters by his deceased first wife.

Remember, in many cases young men in their twenties during the early part of the nineteenth century did not have the financial resources in which to offer for a wife. If she wanted home and family, she was often better off marrying an older man.

England’s Most Common Surnames

With England now being such an international country, names from many ethnicities can be found. But when Henry Brougham Guppy published his seminal work on British names in 1890 (Homes of Family Names in Great Britain), the names had been little affected by foreign influx.

At that time, he discovered a little more than a dozen English names that were in use throughout the land. To qualify for this distinction, a name had to be used in at least 40 of England’s old counties. Here’s the list:

Allen

Brown

Clarke

Cook

Cooke

Hall

Harris

Johnson

Martin

Robinson

Smith

Taylor

Turner

White

Wilson

Wright

Surnames for West Ridings, Yorkshire

Henry Braugham Guppy compiled a thorough study of British surnames in his 1890 book Homes of Family Names in Great Britain. Therefore, the names listed at that time, before modern mobility and communications, give a solid indication of the regionalism of British names.

In Yorkshire, a number of names could be found in two or three surrounding counties.  These include Bancroft, Baxter, Beaumont, Birkenshaw, Calvert, Crosland, Crossley, Crowther, Cundall, Driver, Duckett, Dugdale, Eastwood, England, Farrar, Frankland, Grayson, Hague, Handley, Hanley, Hardacre, Hargreaves, Hartley, Heaton, Hebden, Holgate, Harner, Hayle, Illingworth, Ingham, Jenkinson, Kaye, Leeming, Lockwood, Lofthouse, Lemley, Marsden, Marston, Morrell, Oddle, Oddy, Pickles, Priestley, Redman, Schofield, Senior, Shillitce, Shuttleworth, Slinger, Stead, Stones, Sutcliffe, Swales, Sykes, Thwaite, Waddington, Waite, Wolfenden.

The following names were only in West Ridings.

Names Peculiar to West Ridings, Yorkshire

Surnames A-B

Addy, Ambler, Appleyard, Armitage, Balmforth, Barraclough, Batty, Battye, Beaver, Beevers, Bentham, Binns, Blakey, Bottomley, Bramall, Brear, Brears, Broadbent, Broadhead, Broadfield.

Surnames C-F

Capstick, Clapham, Clough, Cockshott, Crapper, Crawshaw, Demain, Demaine, Denby, Denison, Dibb, Dyson, Earnshaw, Emmott, Feather, Firth.

Surnames G-I

Garside, Geldard, Gelder, Gledhill, Gott, Haigh, Hainsworth, Haley, Hampshire, Hanson, Hardcastle, Helliwell, Hepworth, Hey, Hinchcliff, Hinchcliffe, Hirst, Hobson, Holdsworth, Houldsworth, Holroyd, Horsfall, Houseman, Ingleby.

 

Surnames J-P

Jagger, Jowett, Jubb, Kenworthy, Laycock, Lodge, Longbottom, Lamb, Mallinson, Mawson, Midgley, Moorhouse, Murgatroyd, Myers, Newsholme, Newsome, Noble, Peel, Petty, Popplewell, Poskitt.

Surnames R-T

Ramsden, Redmayne, Rishworth, Rushworth, Robertshaw, Roebuck, Sedgwick, Sidgwick, Shackleton, Sheard, Stansfield, Sugden, Sunderland, Tatham, Teal, Teale, Thackery, Thachray, Thornber, Thwaites, Tinker, Townend.

Surnames U-Z

Umpleby, Uttley, Varley, Verity, Wadsworth, Watkinson, Weatherhead, Whiteley, Whitley, Widdop, Widdup, Woodhead, and Wrathall. –Cheryl Bolen, author of three dozen historical romances set in Regency England.

Yorkshire Surnames: North, East Ridings

The variance of language in Yorkshire in days gone by was described in the previous blog, so it will come as no surprise that even within Yorkshire, again in days gone by, surnames could be completely different, depending upon what part of Yorkshire one lived.

In Victorian times Henry Brougham Guppy did an extensive study of surnames in Great Britain, and he divided Yorkshire’s into two groups. The first is North and East Ridings, and the second is West Ridings. We’ll discuss the first in this blog.

But first, here are some surnames that can be found in Yorkshire and in two or three surrounding counties: Alderson, Allinson, Appleton, Boyes, Calvert, Cockerill, Craven, Cundill, Dent, Featherstone, Flintoff, Hopper, Hornby, Horner, Lofthouse, Lowish, Lumley, Porritt, Sayer, Shipley, Dissall, Sleightholme, Speence, Swales, Thwaite, Tindall, Topham, Wise, Weatherill, and Yeoman.

Names Peculiar to North and East Ridings

Surnames A-D

Agar, Blenkin, Blenkiron, Bosomworth, Botterill, Bowes, Brigham, Codling, Coverdale, Creaser, Danby, Dinsdale, Duck, and Duggleby.

Surnames E-J

Elgey, Elgin, Ellerby, Foxton, Galloway, Garbutt, Goodwill, Grainger, Harker, Harland, Hawking, Hebron, Heseltine, Hick, Holliday, Holyday, Horsley, Hugill, Iveson, Jacques, Jordison, and Judson.

Surnames Surnames K-M

Kendrew, Kettlewell, Kilvington, Kipling, Knaggs, Lamplough, Lamplugh, Laverack, Laverick, Leak, Leake, Leaper, Lackenby, Matson, Matterson, Matison, Medforth, Megginson, Medforth, Meggison, Megson, and Monkman.

Surnames O-R

Outhwait, Parnaby, Petch, Pickersgill, Plews, Porret, Porritt, Precious, Prodham, Prudom, Pybus, Raw, Readman, Rennison, Rider, Rodmell, Rounthwaite, and Rowntree.

Surnames Beginning with S

Scarth, Sedman, Sellars, Sellers, Severs, Spenceley, Spensley, Stainthorpe, Stavely, Stockhill, Stockill, Stockill, Stokell, Stonehouse, Sturdy, Suddaby, Suggett, Suggitt, and Sunter.

Surnames T-Z

Tennison, Tweedy, Tyerman, Ventress, Ventris, Weighell, Weighill, Welburn, Wellburn, Welford, Whitwell, Wilberforce, Wilberfoss, Witty, Wray, and Wrighton.

Next blog: West Ridings (Yorkshire) Surnames

—Cheryl Bolen is the USA Today, New York Times bestselling author of more than three dozen novels set in Regency England. Her latest release is His Lady Deceived.

England’s North Country: Words Apart

Writing on the English North Country in 1985, Frank Entwisle wrote, “When we were lads and wore long shorts and wiped our noses on our jersey sleeves, we lived in Sunderland, a bleak northeast coast borough of 180,000 souls which called itself the greatest shipbuilding town on earth. . .

“Six miles north was another industrial river, the Tyne. The nearest Tyneside town was Shields. And between Sunderland and Shields, among the colliery winding towers and black pit villages, there was swamp to which we went with ha’penny fishing nets on bamboo sticks to dredge for sticklebacks and tadpoles.

“It was there we met the boys of Shields, who spoke with so different an accent that we pitched them in the ponds on the reasonable grounds that they must be Scotchies. . .

“The point of this joyful reminiscence is to show how two northern English populations, sharing the same industrial culture, the same everyday experiences—separated by but six grubby miles—could have different vowels and even a varying fund of words.

“A lane can be a lonnen in Northumberland, a snicket in Yorkshire, a vennel in Durham, and a loaning in Cumbria.”

One wonders today with the explosion of global media if such regionalism could still exist, if boys living a mere six miles apart could still speak so distinctly different. I think not.

Entwisle’s essay (in the National Geographic book Discovering Britain & Ireland) goes on to elaborate on what constitutes Norhumbria. Today, he says, it’s comprised of the old counties of Northumberland and Durham and the new metropolitan counties of Cleveland and Tyne & Wear. It is one of the largest English counties and one of the most sparsely populated.—Cheryl Bolen, whose last releases were the Christmas novellas His Lady Deceived and One Room at the Inn, both set in Regency England.

Next Blog: Surnames Found in Yorkshire

Photo caption: I visited Northumbria in 2017, the village of Haworth, home of the Bronte sisters on the Yorkshire Moors.

 

Authentic Cornish Surnames

What I love about the Guppy book (discussed in the previous blog) is that by virtue of having been written in 1890, many of the British still lived near the place of their birth. This date is important in the study of Cornwall because it was around this time that the tin mining industry pretty much came to a halt in England’s westernmost country, which had led the world in the production of tin. The Cornish had always made their living from the sea (fishing) and mining. Once the tin mines closed, many in Cornwall left—many even leaving for foreign parts like the United States.

At the writing of Guppy’s book, there were some 300 family names that were peculiar only to Cornwall. Regardless of locale, some of these are still awfully unique—and often humorous, like Cobbledick or Kneebone. How would you fancy being Mr. and Mrs. Pedler?

Read on for those unique Cornish names.

Cornish names starting with “B” 

Benny, Berriman, Berryman, Bice, Biddick, Blamey, Boaden, Boase, Bolitho, Borlase, Brendon, Budge, Bullmore, Bunt, and Burnard.

Cornish names starting with “C”

Cardell, Carlyon, Carne, Carveth, Cawrse, Chenoweth, Clemow, Clyma, Clymo, Clymo, Coad, Cobbledick, Cobeldick,  Congdon, Couch, Cowling, Crago,  Cragoe, Craze, Cowle, Cundy, and Curnow.

Cornish names starting with D-G 

Dingle, Dunstan, Dunstone, Eddy, Eva, Freethy, Galty, Geach, Geake, Gerry, Gillbard, Glasson,  Goldsworthy, Grigg, Grose, and Gynn.

Cornish names H-J 

Hambly, Hawke, Hawken, Hawkey, Hayne, Hearle, Henwood, Higman, Hodge, Hollow, Hotten, Ivey, Jane, Jasper, Jelbart, Jelbert, Jenkin, Jose, and Julian, and Julyan.

Cornish names K,L 

Keast, Kerkin, Kestle, Kevern, Kitto, Kittow, Kneebone, Laity, Lander, Lanyon, Lawry, Lean, Liddicoat, Littlejohn, Littleton, Lobb, Lory, Lugg, and Lyle.

Cornish names M-O 

Mably, Maddaford, Maddiver, Magor, Mayne, Morcom, Morkam, Moyle, Mutton, Nance, Oats, Oates, Odger, Odgers, Old, Olver, Opie, and Oppy.

Cornish Names Starting with “P” 

Pascoe, Paynter, Pearn, Pedlar, Pedler, Pender, Pengilly, Penna, Penrose, Peter, Pethick, Philp, Pinch, Polkinghorne, and Prisk.

Cornish names beginning with R-S

Raddall, Raddle, Rapson, Retallack, Retallick, Rickard, Rodda, Roose, Rosevcare, Rosewarne, Roskelly, Roskilly, Rouse, Rowse, Rundle, and Runnalls. Sandercrock, Sandry, Scantlebury, Seccombe, Skewes, and Spargo.

Cornish names beginning with “T” 

Tamblin, Tinney, Tippett, Toll, Tom, Tonkin, Trebilcock, Tregear, Tregellas, Tregelles, Tregoning, Treleaven, Treloar, Tremain, Tremayne, Trembath, Trerise, Tresidder, Trethewey, Trevail, Treweeke, Trewhella, Trewin, Tripcony, Trounson, Trudgen, Trudgeon, Trudgian, Truscott, Tyack, and Tyacke.

Cornish Names beginning with U-Y 

Uren, Vellenoweth, Venning, Verran, Vivian, Vosper, Wearne, Wellington, Whetter, Wickett, Woodley, Woolcock, and Yelland.

–Cheryl Bolen is the NY Times and USA Today bestselling author of three dozen historical romances set in Regency England. Watch for her Deceived Series, with His Lady Deceived releasing Sept. 3, 2019. More information is available at http://www.CherylBolen.com.

Authentic Highland Names

I have a friend born in the Scottish Highlands during World War II who still vividly remembers the first time she ever saw a black person. She was in college. I would say that until the mid-twentieth century many of those in the British Isles had rarely ventured far from their home county.

Because of more limited media and transportation options in those earlier days, regional dialects and surnames were apt to stay pretty pure. That is why I adore Henry Brougham Guppy’s 1890 work titled Homes of Family Names in Great Britain. (This book was recommended to me by fellow author and blogger Sarah Waldock. Check out her interesting blog at http://sarahs-history-place.blogspot.com/.) Writing his work 130 years ago, Guppy was able to methodically pinpoint which regions and counties various surnames were located.

For Scotland, he divided the country into four regions: Scottish Border Counties, the Lowlands south of the Forth, Central Scotland, and the Highlands north of Forfarshire, Perthshire, and Argyllshire.

Because a lot of romance readers love books set in Scotland, and particularly in the Highlands, I thought I’d share those Highland names he pinpointed more than a century ago.

Here’s the List

Cruickshank

Cumming

Duncan

Farquhar

Farquharson

Forbes

Geddes

Fordon

Grant

Innes

Low

Lumsden

McDonald

McIntosh

Mackintosh

McKay

MacKay

McKenzie

Mackenzie

McKie

Mackie

McLeod

Macleod

McPherson

Macpherson

McRae

Macrae

Middleton

Milne

Munroe

Rennie

Ross

Stephen

Strachan

Sutherland

Urquhart

Watt

Now that we live in such a global village, I’m betting you know many, many people with those surnames. – Cheryl Bolen, whose latest release is Last Duke Standing, Book 3 in the Lords of Eton.

Why Was Straw Laid in the Streets?

© Cheryl Bolen

Recently as I was reading some letters written by Sarah, the 1st Duchess of Marlborough, she wrote (pre Regency) that she was  going to have straw laid in her street:

The place [Scarborough] was so very dirty and so noisy I am going to lay straw in the street to hinder the intolerable noise of the horses that go by my window.

I hadn’t heard of that practice since a long, long ago reading of Thackeray’s classic 1848 novel Vanity Fair, when I first became acquainted with the practice of laying straw in the streets to muffle sound. Here’s how Thackeray used it:

She had the street laid knee deep with straw; and the knocker put by with Mr. Bowl’s plate. She insisted the Doctor should call twice a day; and a deluged her patient with draughts every two hours. When anybody entered the room, she uttered shshshsh so sibilent and ominous that it frightened the poor old lady [Mrs. Crawley] in her bed.

Apparently laying straw in the streets was a common occurrence in England’s cities.

Here’s what nineteenth century novelist Ellen Wood wrote on the subject in her serialized novel, The Shadow of Ashlydyat, that was published between 1861 and 1863:

For some distance on either side; ankle-deep down Crosse Street as far as you could see, lay masses of straw. As carriages came up to traverse it, their drivers checked their horses and drove them at a foot-pace, raising their own heads to look up at the windows of the dwelling; for they knew that one was lying there hovering between life and death.

The solemnity spread through the town, and Wood later wrote:

Knockers were muffled; bells were tied up; straw, as you hear, was laid in the streets; people passed in and out [of the bank], even at the swing doors, when they went to transact business, with a softened tread … and asked the clerks in a whisper whether Mr. George was yet alive.

Later, in 1889, English poet Amy Levy also used straw in the streets to impart imminent death in her poem, “Straw in the Street,” in her collection, A London Plane-Tree and Other Verse:

Straw in the street where I pass to-day

Dulls the sound of the wheels and feet.

’Tis for a failing life they lay

Straw in the street.

Here, where the pulses of London beat,

Someone strives with the Presence grey;

Ah, is it victory or defeat?

The hurrying people go their way,

Pause and jostle and pass and greet;

For life, for death, are they treading, say,

Straw in the street?

 

From what I gather, wealthy people regularly exercised such a practice during run-of-the-mill illnesses, not just for those terminally ill.  One assumes the practice came to a halt with the advent of . . . the rubber tire! 

Many thanks to English doctoral student Chloé Holland for her research on Wood and Levy. – Cheryl Bolen, whose final book in the Lords of Eton series, Last Duke Standing, can now be ordered, prior to its Jan. 15 release.