The Davies of Hoole: Difference between revisions

 

 

John Henry’s sons built other properties in the neighbourhood. Directly north of Hamilton Street across Hoole Road in Newton Lane is where his third son, the Architect, Arthur Frederick Davies (1865 – 1928) was to build his home in 1900. He named it ‘Harlestone’. It still stands today, but the tennis courts have gone, and other houses have been built in the garden, which once stretched almost to Hoole Road. Parallel to Hamilton Street, to the east, was Vicarage Road. Here, John Henry’s second son Richard Cecil Davies (1861-1917), built his own home and named it after the family’s historical property in Shropshire – ‘Yorton Lodge’.

 

<u>Corn Merchant & Hoole Resident</u>

 

He had two great interests. First was the Chester Volunteer Rifles, where he served as a colour sergeant and gained his Long Service Medal for 20 years’ service. The other was Free Masonry. He was made a Freeman of the City of Chester in 1880, aged 21, whilst working as a Clerk at Old Dee Mills. He moved out of Hoole to Seller Street with his father in 1862, but later returned with his family to Hoole, to live at 3 Hamilton Street in 1925, when his brother Charles moved to Oaklands. His funeral service was held at All Saints Church, Hoole.

 

<u>Architect, Politician & Fire Chief, Hoole Resident</u>

 

He served in the Volunteers, reaching the rank of Major, being the last commanding officer of the 1st Flintshire Volunteer Engineers, and in the Great War was given a temporary regular army commission serving in the North West Army region. He died at home in Hoole in May 1917 and was given a full military funeral through the streets of Hoole, from All Saints Church to the new Cemetery, with shuttered shop fronts and rows of mourners lining the route.

 

<u>Architect & Hoole Resident</u>

 

Arthur passed away aged 62 in 1926, leaving his brothers, Alfred and Charles as the family representatives in Hoole.

 

<u>Retailor, Hoole Resident & national figure in Apiculture</u>

 

He also was one of the first active genealogists, having a strong family history interest, as well as time and money, which he used to understand the history of the Davies family. In 1939 he privately published an account, as he saw it, of the Davies family history. Charles never married. Instead, his sister Martha Emily, served as his constant companion, up to his death in 1952. His funeral service was held in All Saint’s Church Hoole, conducted by his nephew the Reverend Harry Roberts.

 

<u>Hoole Resident & Companion</u>

 

Martha lived a full life, growing up with her brothers and sisters in Seller Street and moving with her mother and father and other members of the family, including her brother Charles, to Hamilton Street, Hoole, in 1895. Some thirty years later she and her sister Edith Leet (1875 – 1950) moved to Charles’s house at Oaklands where Martha lived until Charles died in 1952. She was her brother’s companion and housekeeper, managing all the domestic affairs as well as engaging in the Hoole community. She was left Oaklands, and all of Charles’s effects when he died and could have chosen to live almost anywhere. She took the decision to leave Hoole in 1953 and move to Alsager, where her younger sister Georgie (Annie Georgina) lived with family. She passed away in 1963, aged ninety-two, in Buxton.

 

<u>Hoole Resident & Teacher</u>

 

With her husband’s death, Edith was left needing to provide for her family and so went to work as a teacher in 1918, taking a position at the British School, Victoria Road, Chester. She was to become the headmistress before she retired in 1930, Charles and Martha stepped in to support the upbringing of her children during this difficult period. Her children moved to Oaklands, with Charles and Martha, and Edith was still living there in 1935/6. It seems she only left there in 1947, when she and her daughter, Muriel, and granddaughter Jennifer, went to live in Ashbourne, in Derbyshire and it was there that Edith died in February 1950, aged seventy-four.

 

<u>Architect, Public Official & Hoole Resident</u>