Project Purley

The Local History Society for Purley on Thames

The Storer Family

F0006 27/7/2019

The story of the Storer family is set out below but you might care to read some other articles about them:

The Storers of Purley Park by Jean Debney
The Wedding of the Century by Jean Debney
The trial of Ann Catherine Storer by Jean Debney
Inside Purley Park by Jean Debney
Behind the scenes of Purley Park by Jean Debney

The Storers were a family with naval connections engaged in the British conquest of Jamaica and settling there. A judicious marriage was arranged which brought the Storers favourable conditions to amass considerable plantation property and wealth. It was this wealth which financed the purchase of Purley Magna. The manor house of Purley Magna and its out buildings at that time were near the nver. A new fannhouse called Belle Isle, after the name of the Jamaican Sugar Plantation, was built further up the hill and the large barn from the original site was transferred to the new farm. It was later decided to build a new mansion which we now know as Purley Park. The old manor house and its buildings were demolished.

An article by Peter Fullerton

Summary.

The Storer family from which we are descended held the estate of Thrussington in Leicestershire in the 17th century. (See entry for Storer in Burke’s Landed Gentry of Great Britain 1900.) Our ancestor, Anthony Storer, went to Jamaica in about 1700. For three generations in the 18th century that branch of the Storer family lived on their estates there. With the fortune that they made from sugar, they came home and built Purley Park in Berkshire in 1800. The family name ended with the death in 1902 of my great grand father, Major Storer, who had no sons. His only daughter, Leila Storer, was the heiress of Purley Park, and married my grandfather, George Frederick Fullerton. There appear to be no living Storer relations as Leila’s father, Anthony Morris Storer, was himself the only surviving son. My Aunt, Ivy Evans, his eldest daughter, inherited Purley Park in 1918 from her mother, Leila Storer. She sold the whole property in 1920.

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Anthony Storer (1675-1719)

Anthony Storer was the younger son of Thomas Storer of Thrussington. It seems probable that, like many a younger son of a landed family in those days with no prospect of inheriting, he became an army officer. He went with his regiment to Jamaica. There he married Elizabeth Ann Morris, the daughter of Col. Sir Christopher Morris, who had been in the British expeditionary force sent by Oliver Cromwell to capture Jamaica from the Spanish. The island capitulated in 1670 and was formally ceded to England by the Treaty of Madrid. Colonel Morris had acquired land in Westmorland, the western county of the island, and settled there. It seems probable that Anthony Storer met the Colonel’s daughter whilst serving in Jamaica. He too acquired land in Westmorland and called the property “Belleisle”. He died, probably in Jamaica, in 1719 aged 44, leaving a son and heir, Thomas Storer.

Thomas Storer (1712-1793)

Thomas Storer is recorded as being “of Belleisle and Frome, Jamaica, and Golden Square London.” He was the founder of the Storer fortune, built on the two sugar estates which he owned. Sugar was at that time a valuable commodity, and commanded a price of over £100 a ton in London. (Equivalent today to perhaps £5000. Sugar in today’s markets trades at about £150 a ton.). He built a fine house at Belleisle in Westmorland at the western end of the island, in which three generations of Storers lived. There are illustrations of the house in a Storer sketch book containing many fine water colour sketches of houses in Jamaica. Most of these are unsigned, but are probably the work of Elizabeth Fanny Storer, a grand daughter of Thomas Storer. They were painted in the early 1800’s.

Thomas Storer had in turn married the daughter of an army Colonel who had also settled in Westmorland and owned the Strathboogie estates. Colonel James Guthrie (see photocopy of portrait at annex 8) was the commanding officer of the Westmorland militia and the “Custos” of the county of Westmorland, the equivalent of Lord Lieutenant, which carried the title of “the Honourable” in Jamaica. Thomas Storer and Helen Guthrie (1713-1770) were married at St. James church in Westmorland. The Rector of Kingston, a hundred miles east, officiated at the wedding. These British army families who acquired plantations in the West Indies were called planters, and became known as the plantocracy. There is a similarity between their history and that of the British who went to Ireland during the plantations there in the 17th century and became known as the Protestant Ascendancy. Thomas Storer maintained his English roots and used his new wealth to buy a town house in Golden Square, a fashionable new Georgian terrace in London off Regent Street. He sent both his sons to Eton.

The Storer estates in Jamaica.

Thomas Storer later acquired two other estates in Westmorland called Frome and Fontabelle. The main Storer residence continued to be at Belleisle although there were houses at each of the other two properties. These were all substantial family homes and were known in Jamaica as “the great house”. The three Storer properties together were known as the “Cabaritta Estates” after the River Cabaritta which flowed through them. There are watercolours of the great houses at Bellisle and Frome in the Storer sketch book (see annex 2) and of their interiors.

Each property would have been a self contained estate of up to a thousand acres geared to sugar production. There would have been several hundred acres of sugar cane but also grazing for cattle and horses to supply meat, milk and transport. Also banana, sorghum and sweet potato plantations to provide food for the slaves, and Pimento trees for spice production. Each estate would have had its own sugar mill driven in the early days by water wheels and later by steam engines. The mills produced cane juice which was then boiled and clarified into cane sugar or distilled into rum.

Each estate would also have had a compound for several hundred slaves and their families, housed in thatched mud and wattle huts. There is a sketch of a typical “negro house” in the sketch book Slave labour had been the basis for all the sugar estates in Jamaica under the Spanish and the British planters took over the slaves from their Spanish masters. The demand for slaves grew as the Planters’ estates expanded. A small estate had about 50 slaves while the larger ones had up to 500.

The abolition of the slave trade in British ships in 1807 initially had little effect on the running of the estates in Jamaica but the great slave rebellion there in 1831-32 was one of the factors which led in 1833 to abolition by Parliament of slavery itself in all British colonies. The Bill had been hotly contested by the West Indies lobby. As part of the package which led to the passage of the Bill a compensation scheme was drawn up under which all slave owners in the colonies would be compensated for their “loss of property”.

The government records of all compensation claims have recently been transcribed and are available on the web in a project run by the History faculty at University College, London. An abstract of the claims made by the Storer family are in the Storer archive. The awards made in 1836 to Ann Katherine Storer, widow of Anthony Gilbert Storer (see below) were as follows:

Belle Isle estate 88 slaves. £1,744
Frome estate 100 slaves £1,877
Haddo Pen estate 184 slaves £3608
Fontabelle estate 187 slaves £2567
Total 560 slaves £9815

The value of the slaves on each property varied slightly, perhaps because of age or sex, but the average compensation paid per slave was about £20. UCL have said that they estimate that to obtain today’s value of this compensation one should multiply by approx. 100. The compensation awarded to the Storers was therefore in the region of £1 million in today’s money.

The notes to these awards describe how the sums to be paid to Ann Katherine Storer were the subject of litigation by the creditors of her husband, Anthony Gilbert. It seems likely that a large part of this compensation money was swallowed up by his creditors and the cost of the litigation By that time the Storers were no longer living in Jamaica. Anthony Gilbert Storer was the last to live at Belleisle and had died in 1818. The estates were by then all managed by agents who were known in Jamaica as Planting Attorneys.

The Storer prayer book

The Storer family history is documented in a remarkable prayer book which has survived as an heirloom. Each and every birth, marriage and death from Thomas Storer onwards is recorded in manuscript on the fly sheets of the prayer book. There are more than 25 entries providing a complete record of the Storer family from 1743 up to the death of Major Anthony Morris Storer, the last to own Purley Park, in 1902. A tragic number died as children, many of them in Jamaica or on voyages to and from England.

The prayer book itself is folio size and was one of a special edition, embossed on the cover with the Royal Coat of Arms, and printed and published in London in 1739 during the reign of George II. It seems possible that Thomas Storer was one of the subscribers to this edition. On the last page of the prayer book Helen Storer has signed her name, and states that her husband gave it to her in 1761. It was probably kept at the family home in Belleisle until after the building of Purley in 1800. By a strange coincidence, my father acquired an almost identical volume, published in 1760, which was the official prayer book used in Westminster Abbey at the coronation of King George III.

Thomas Storer (cont)

Thomas Storer lived all his life at Belleisle and died there at the age of 76. His wife Helen died 23 years before him. They were both buried at St. James Church, Belleisle. They had six children. The first two, both girls, died in childhood. The third, Anthony Morris Storer, his elder son and heir, bought the manor of Purley Magna and planned the building of Purley Park but did not live to see it built. He did, however, before he died, commission a memorial to his father, Thomas Storer, in Purley parish church. The latin inscription on the marble plaque reads (in translation) “In memory of a revered father, Thomas Storer, ….this marble cannot honour him more than does his own fame….By his most pious son, A.M.S.”

There is a fine portrait of Thomas Storer by Nathanel Dance, RA. This portrait was at Purley Park and then at Chacombe House, when inherited by my Aunt Ivy Evans. When she sold the last of the Storer family paintings in 1964, her sister Myra Horsfall, rescued this portrait and presented it to Eton College. The College sold this portrait in 1988 without consulting the family.

Anthony Morris Storer (1746-1799).

Anthony Morris Storer was the elder son and heir of Thomas Storer. The family name of Morris appears to have been given to him after his grand father, Colonel Sir Christopher Morris (see above). He was born in Jamaica and was sent home to school at Eton. He became the only famous member of the Storer family as an MP and man of letters. The DNB entry for him records as follows:

“Collector and man of fashion….He was at Eton from about 1760-1764 with Charles James Fox and Earl Fitzwilliam, and some sets of Latin verse by him are in the “Musae Etonenses”. His “sense and good nature” while at school are lauded by the 5th Earl of Carlisle in “Verses on his Schoolfellows” 1792. About 1765 he proceeded to Cambridge, probably to Corpus Christi College, and was a close friend there and at Eton of Lord Carlisle, but left without taking a degree.

Storer then blossomed in the gay (Note the old fashioned meaning of the word) world of London, becoming a conspicuous dancer and skater of his time, and beating all his competitors at gymnastics. He excelled, too, as a musician and a conversationalist. Like most of his school friends, he was both a man of fashion and a Whig in politics. During 1778 and 1779 he was in America with Lord Carlisle and William Eden (afterwards first Lord Auckland). He visited Carlisle when lord-lieutenant of Ireland in 1781, and, through his interest, succeeded Benjamin L’Anglois as a Commissioner of the board of trade on 26 July 1781. Meanwhile he sat in the House of Commons as M.P. for Carlisle from 1774 to 1780, and subsequently – from 1780 to 1784 – for Morpeth. Much of his time was passed with the family of Lord North, and in August 1782 he was a medium of communication between that nobleman and Fox. He enlisted under the “coalition” and in September 1783, greatly to the indignation of Gibbon, who was an aspirant to the office, he was sent by Fox to Paris as Secretary of the legation. On 13 December 1783, when the ambassador, the Duke of Manchester, came home, he was nominated as minister plenipotentiary, but six days later his friends were ejected from office. (Note: This appointment was announced in the Court column of Say’s Weekly Journal, the predecessor of the Times. A copy of that edition, No.1260, for the week ending 20 December 1783, is preserved in the Storer deed box). His connection with politics then ceased. He had by that time quarrelled with Carlisle, to whom he revoked a bequest of all his property, and did not seek re-election for Carlisle’s borough of Morpeth after the dissolution of 1784.

In September 1781, according to Horace Walpole’s testimony, Storer was seized with a passion for collecting books and prints. These expensive tastes and the love of cards kept him in comparative poverty until his father’s death. (1792) In 1786 he was reading the Latin and Greek writers half the day with Dr Edward Harwood whose “View of the Classics” was greatly improved, in its fourth edition, from Storer’s library. He was desirous in December 1787 of of entering the diplomatic service, and in 1793 he languished for employment; but his father’s death in the last year brought him an ample fortune. He purchased Purley Park, between Pangbourne and Reading, and, with the advice of Humphrey Repton expended a considerable sum in improving and ornamenting the grounds. His health was bad; he had been very ill in the winter of 1787-88, and he did not live to complete the house for the estate. But the sum of £20,000 was set apart by his executors for that purpose, and the present mansion “a large square stone building” was erected from the designs of Wyatt (BRITTON AND BRAYLEY, Beauties of England and Wales, i, 175) He died “of a deep decline” at Bristol Hotwells on 28 June 1799, and was buried at Purley, a monument by Nollekens, with a Latin inscription, being erected to his memory in Purley church. (see annex 6) His fortune was left to his nephew, Anthony Gilbert, the only son of his brother Thomas James, who had married the Hon. Elizabeth Proby, daughter of the first Lord Carysfort. The only other legacy was to James Hare

Storer was elected F.S.A. (Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries) on 11 December 1777, and became a member of the Dilettante Society on 18 April 1790. His library was rich in old classics, rare books of history and travels, and antique bindings, and it contained two undoubted Caxtons and “Les fais du Jason” (Life of Caxton, 1863, ii. 19,88,94). Many of his books were illustrated with prints by himself and drawings by various artists, his copy of Granger being amplified into many large folio volumes. He left his complete library, with the exception of such works as they already possessed, to Eton College, and he also gave the College his beautiful collection of prints. Many sprightly letters by Storer are printed in Jesse’s “George Selwyn” (vols iii and iv) and in the “Correspondence of William Eden, Lord Auckland”. Mathias, among others, praising his literary attainments ( Pursuits of Lit. Dialogue iv) Storer’s portrait, a full length , with an engraving in his left hand, was painted by Sir Martin Archer Shee. It remains at Purley, the property of Major Storer. Another portrait of Storer hangs in the college library at Eton.

(Note. The sources and references for this article are listed in the DNB. This entry must have been written before 1902 when Major Storer died.)

The full length portrait of Anthony Morris Storer is now in the Prado Museum, Madrid. It was sold by Mrs Evans in 1946. The half length copy of that portrait which was at Eton was probably sold by the College in 2003. For details of the history of these two portraits see Anex 8. A very fine half length copy of the original portrait was commissioned in 2011 by Charles Horsfall and is now in his house. It is the only Storer portrait now in the family.

Anthony Morris’ life seems to have become sadder and lonelier as the years went by. His political career ended (as recorded by the DNB) with the fall of the Fox/North coalition at the end of 1783. He devoted the rest of his life to his library which became one of the finest and most valuable in the country.

The Storer Library.

There is a detailed account of the Storer collection, now part of the Old Library at Eton, written by Robert Birley when he was Headmaster. (see article published in “The Book Collector”, Vol 5, No.2, summer 1956, with an illustration of Anthony Storer from a contemporary print). Birley wrote:

“Anthony Storer’s gems, though many are mentioned in Thackeray’s Eton College Library…and they received ten lines in de Ricci’s English Collectors, have never been fully described and it seems time for some account to be written of this collection of some 2,700 volumes. “

He goes on to describe the two manuscript books (one a Book of Hours of about 1470, and an illuminated manuscript of the Arms of the Knights of the Garter between 1603-1619), and 34 incunabula (the earliest printed books) which included several Caxtons; a large collection of the earliest printed Greek and Latin Classics; 450 books written in Italian in the 16th century; and a collection of English plays, many of them written before 1643. He records that Anthony Morris was a patron of the binders of his day. At least a thousand of his books are in contemporary English bindings, nearly all of red or blue straight grained morocco. He concludes: “Above all, Storer’s library remains intact and so almost unique among the great collections of the 18th century.”

On the man himself , Birley comments:

“There is something mysterious about Anthony Storer. He may be seen in the background of the political and literary society of the day, the friend of North, Horace Walpole, George Steevens and others. But he never moves to the front of the stage. His letters to Selwyn, Carlisle and William Eden are full of gossip, but it is all told from the periphery….And yet his Obituary in The Gentleman’s Magazine, as well as calling him “the Coryphaeus of fashion”, speaks of him as “a man whose singular felicity it was to excel in everything he set his heart and hand to, and who deserved, in a certain degree, if anyone ever did since the days of Crichton, the epithet of ‘Admirable’. He excelled as musician and a disputant and very early as Latin poet. In short, whatsoever he undertook he did it con amore, and as perfectly as if it were his only accomplishment.”

Birley notes with surprise that nothing written by Anthony Morris himself seems to have survived. The reason is that he expressed a wish in a codicil to his Will that on his death all his personal papers were to be destroyed. “All my pocket books containing writings of my own and all manuscripts by me of whatever sort may be burnt on my decease.”

Anthony Morris had earlier intended to leave his whole estate, including his library, to his friend Lord Carlisle. (There is an engraved print of a portrait of Carlisle by George Romney in the Storer deed box). But after they quarrelled he is said to have planned to leave everything to Downing College, Cambridge. He was a Cambridge man himself, but it is not clear why he would have preferred Downing College to his own, Corpus Christi. Downing College was at that time still unbuilt as Sir George Downing’s bequest was held up for many years in litigation (see Downing family history.) In the end, because he feared that Downing College might never be built, (the litigation continued until a year after his death) he decided to leave his library to his old school, Eton; and the rest of his estate to his young nephew, Anthony Gilbert Storer.

Anthony Morris Storer acquires Purley.

Until 1793 when his father, Thomas Storer, died in Jamaica aged 76, Anthony Morris depended financially on him. This enabled him as a young man to lead the social and political lifestyle of his choice in London. But at the age of 47 he became a rich man in his own right when he inherited his father’s Jamaica and London properties. His father’s younger brother, Thomas James Storer who lived in Jamaica (see below) had died the previous year, so Anthony Morris inherited the whole Storer estate. He wasted no time in acquiring a country seat, the ambition of every wealthy family in those days. The Manor of Purley Magna on the River Thames near Reading was on the market at that time, and had been advertised in The Reading Mercury in the autumn of 1792. Anthony Morris appears to have bought the whole property at a cost of £15,000 without even first visiting the place. There is also a story that he acquired the estate in payment of a gambling debt in London, but there is no written evidence of this intriguing story.

Anthony Morris Storer commissions Humphrey Repton to landscape Purley

Anthony Morris immediately commissioned Humphrey Repton, then in his early days as a landscape gardener, to draw up proposals for the landscaping of the property (which later became known as Purley Park), and the building of a new mansion in the grounds. He travelled to Purley and spent several days there in November 1793 with Repton looking at the property. Repton used to keep a manuscript record of the many clients that he met during his career as a landscape gardener and the following passage describes his meeting with Anthony Morris:

“At the time when I became acquainted with him he was advanced in years – had long secluded himself from the world – and having made the purchase of an estate without having seen it! – he expressed surprise at the beauty of its situation (on the banks of the Thames).
The first day we passed there together – I was amused by the novelty of his remarks, and his anecdotes of foreign countries, he had only come down to his new purchase for the sake of meeting me – he knew no one in the neighbourhood and brought with him no friend or acquaintance (except his French Cook) – but he had not forgotten to bring three volumes of the valuable and celebrated “Granger” for which he had been collecting portraits all his life (and at his death left them to a University where few know them to exist).

( Note: James Granger was the author of The Biographical History of England, published in 1769. These volumes contained blank pages which could be used to illustrate the biographies by sticking in portrait prints extracted from other books This hobby amongst book collectors was known as Grangerising.)

He told me that he had lost all the friends that he had ever had and the last of them was his Father. ‘Since his death, Mr Repton, I never go to rest without reflecting that there is not a single being in the Creation to whom I can relate any little occurrence of the day.’

I thought how must this man have lived to have no friend left to him? This question was partly answered when on the third day the survey of our improvements was finished and I found that the most acceptable thing I had suggested was – a very high palisade to exclude all views of his place from the public! He embraced the idea with fervour and delight – exclaiming – ‘Let it be done immediately! To hide me from day’s garish eye’…..

In the morning we again renewed our acquaintance with Granger and next day I took my leave.

Having delivered my report and having received the most flattering praise for all I had proposed or done – he immediately sent me the exact amount of my account – and I heard no more of him for some years – when we spoke to each other in the pit of the Opera. It so chanced that my sister sat on the seat immediately behind him where she could not help hearing the conversation between him and Lord C – who said ‘Pray who is that Gentleman? I know his face and see him often. ‘ ‘It is Mr. Repton’ ‘Oh! You must introduce him to me. I meant to ask his advice when I go into Yorkshire – what is your opinion of him?’ It was not in human nature for a sister to refrain from eagerly listening to the answer – which was – ‘Oh! He is certainly the honour of his profession! But he knows the value of his talents pretty well, he reckons his time at five guineas a day! But I have found a person who now comes to me for two whom I can recommend to your Lordship’

So ended my acquaintance with this gentleman who could have no plea for such parsimonious detractions, since from his own account he had no relation nor friends for whom it was necessary to hoard his wealth.”

The Repton “Red Book” on Purley.

Repton’s report to Storer after their visit to Purley was in the form of a “Repton Red Book” dated 1793. It has miraculously survived. (In the Storer deed box, a unique and valuable book) It is in Repton’s traditional style, a beautifully presented, leather bound book containing a detailed description, in Repton’s own copperplate handwriting, of the property, his plans for its improvement and watercolour sketches to illustrate the proposals. These are skilfully presented with “pull-out” slips of paper to show the landscapes before and after improvement. The survival of this Red Book had not been known to historians or students of Repton’s work until I showed it to the Purley Local History Society. A copy of it was then made by them for the Society and for the Bristol University Museum where other Repton records are kept. Repton worked on the landscaping of over 200 properties in his lifetime but only a few of his Red Books have survived. Although it was recorded that he had worked for Anthony Morris Storer at Purley nothing was known by biographers of Repton about the plans until the Purley Red Book came into the hands of Bristol University Library.

The proposals in the Red Book were detailed in every aspect. Repton proposed to sweep away the 17th century manor house and farm buildings that existed near Purley church and to build the new mansion on that site overlooking the river. The house depicted in his water colour sketch was in the Palladian style. He was in those years in a loose partnership with John Nash, whom he introduced to his clients, and it seems likely that the design of the mansion in the sketch was by Nash. It resembled Moulsford Manor, a house built a few years earlier on a similar riverside site on the Thames five miles upstream. Purley church tower, built mainly of brick was to be clad in ashlar of Portland Stone, similar to the new mansion. The farm was to be rebuilt some distance away with a model farm house and new purpose designed farm buildings. The carriage way approach to the house from the new Reading turnpike road was to be designed in a long sweep to give the best prospect of the house; and the hillside opposite was to be landscaped to provide a distant view of a classical folly or temple.

Repton’s proposals were never implemented. Although he had intended to raise the new mansion several feet above the surrounding meadows to avoid the risk of flooding, a disaster put paid to all these plans. In 1795 the Thames at Purley suffered the worst flood in living memory. From the end of November 1794 until the end of January 1795, Berkshire was in the grip of a hard frost. Rivers and canals were impassable and crops froze in the ground. The Reading Mercury carried reports of heavy rain following a sudden thaw at the end of January. By February Pangbourne, upstream of Purley, was under water. Harts Lock near Basildon “bulged” and the gates, with the adjoining eel bucks, were swept away. On 16 February, George Reynolds, the steward living on Purley farm, wrote an account to his master, Anthony Morris Storer in London. The letter is recorded in his estate book, which has survived, and describes vividly how the river rose:

“On Thursday last, the water rose very fast and at night it wanted about five inches upright of coming into the stable. I told the carter that I would venture the horses that night, for I did not think there could be more than five or six inches in water before the morning. But to my surprise the next morning, I found them almost up to their bellies in water as the flood had risen almost two feet perpendicular. I obtained leave of Mr Johnson to put the three cart horses and the colt in his stable, and for the two saddle horses and the cow I had a bit of ground hurdled off at the end of the kitchen garden, as that spot, and a small part of the church yard, with a few yards by the steps at the front door was all the dry ground on which we could put anything. The timber on the premises was floated but, by the help of the boat and the men, we saved every stick, nothing was lost. The flood continued rising till Thursday night and then the water was three feet high in the stable. Since that time, the water ha continued sinking as fast as it rose, and on Sunday it was out of the stable and this day I shall have the horses brought home. You have not received any damage by the flood.

Sir, I remain your dutiful servant , George Reynolds.

(Note:This description in the Reading Mercury of the flood being caused by a long hard frost followed by a sudden thaw and rain is similar to the great Thames flood of 1947, the highest flood recorded in that century. I remember the 1946/47 winter as the most severe in my lifetime, with snow on the ground from December to the end of February, followed by rain and the flood in mid-March.)

The Repton Red Book of Purley has been photocopied for the Purley Local History Society who have taken a close interest in the history of Purley Park. Jean Debney, one of the members of the society, has researched it extensively using our Storer archive. The existence of the Purley Red Book had been unknown to Repton biographers until she put a photocopy of it in the Bristol University Library. By chance, a few years later a Swiss research scholar, Andre Rogger, began his DPhil thesis on the Red Books of Humphrey Repton. He learned of the Red Book on Purley from the Bristol Library. He came to see me and took photographs of the watercolours and the text in the book. His thesis was published in hard back in 2007 under the title “Landscapes of Taste – the Art of Humphrey Repton’s Red Books”. It was priced at £60 but he sent me a complimentary copy. It is superbly illustrated with many photographs of Repton’s sketches taken from his Red Books. Eight pages are devoted to Purley.

Plans for the building of Purley Park.

Probably as a result of the flooding of Purley village in 1795, Anthony Morris decided to shelve Repton’s proposals in the Red Book to build the new mansion on the site of the old manor house near the river. He decided instead to site it up on the hill near the main road with a view overlooking the river. This had been one of the options put forward earlier by Repton but there is no record of whether he was retained to advise on the new site. His remarks in his diary above suggest that he was not. His plans for the removal and rebuilding of the farm were, however, later implemented and the new farmhouse, named Belleisle after the Jamaica property, was built about a quarter of a mile from the church, also on higher ground.

Anthony Morris did not live to see his mansion built, but “he expended a considerable sum in improving and ornamenting the grounds, preparatory to the erection of a superb mansion on a spot which he has chosen”. (Quoted from “Beauties of England and Wales by Brayley & Britton, published in 1801), Meanwhile he lived in the old Manor Farm House near the Church when ever he visited Purley. There is no record as to why the building of Purley Park was so long delayed. But Repton’s description of him suggest that he suffered from chronic depression or possibly some form of dementia. He is said to have gone into a “deep decline” in June 1799 and died at the age of 53 at Bristol Hotwells. In his Will, he bequeathed his whole estate, including Purley and the Jamaica properties, in trust for his nephew Anthony Gilbert Storer. In a codicil to the Will, dated 22 April 1799, he also directed:

“after my decease to employ James Wyatt of Queen Ann Street, architect to erect a mansion house and offices at an expence not exceeding £15,000 nor less, clear £12,000 – the house to be faced with stone similar to that of Francis Sykes of Basildon in sd. County of Berks.”

His executors in the event set aside £20,000 for this purpose. James Wyatt (1746-1813) was commissioned as architect; and building commenced, probably in 1800, the year after Anthony Morris’ death. It seems possible, from some of the wording in the codicil to his Will, that he was in too poor a state to take decisions on the building himself. Basildon Park, mentioned above in his Will, was built to the designs of John Carr for Sir Francis Sykes between 1776 and 1783, and is one of the largest mansions built in Oxfordshire in that century. It is only five miles from Purley, and Anthony Morris would have known it well. He perhaps wished to emulate the Portland stone facade of Basildon even if he could not equal its grandeur.

Anthony Morris was buried in Purley churchyard. There are two memorials to him in the church. The longer one, in marble, includes the words “He was motivated by the same spirit as the founders of the College of Henry VI and his own life carried on the tradition.” That college was Eton.

Thomas James Storer (1747-1792).

Thomas James Storer, was the younger son of Thomas Storer and brother of Anthony Morris Storer. He spent much of his life in Jamaica. He too was sent home to Eton at the age of 10 where he spent the years 1757-63. He married well. His wife was the Hon. Elizabeth Proby, daughter of 1st Lord Carysfort; her brother became the 1st Earl of Carysfort. (See annex 7 for a short history of the Proby family of Elton Hall) . Little has been recorded about Thomas James Storer. He helped his father to manage the family estates while his elder brother, Anthony Morris, lived it up in London. He is important to the family history because his elder brother, Anthony Morris, never married and the succession passed to Thomas James Storer’s eldest son, Anthony Gilbert, who inherited the estate from his uncle and built Purley Park.

Thomas James Storer died at Belleisle, aged 45, in 1792 (a year before his father), and was buried there at St James church. His wife Elizabeth, came home to her family, the Proby’s (or Carysfort) with her three young children, Anthony Gilbert, Frances and Julia. She later lived in a grace and favour apartment at Hampton Court where she died in 1808. She left her “fortune” (according to a note in a book on Purley church) to her son, Anthony Gilbert Storer. By that time Purley Park had been built and no doubt she visited the family there. Her portrait, late in life, was probably painted in the portico at Purley. (see history of this portrait at Annex 8) Her younger, daughter, Frances, was married in Purley church, under special licence, in September 1800 while the Mansion was still being built. The special licence, (signed by “John”, Archbishop of Canterbury, and in the Storer deed box) was necessary because neither she nor her fiancee, the Rev. Richard Whitelock,Vicar of Shillington in Lincolnshire, were resident at Purley. But the family perhaps wanted a “society” wedding in the parish of their new estate.

Richard Whitelock (1772-1873) was a descendant of the Bulstrode Whitelocks. The Whitelocks owned Fawley Court, the Queen Anne mansion which overlooks the Henley Regatta course; the Bulstrodes owned Bulstrode Park in Buckinghamshire. The son of Richard Whitelock and Frances Storer, Hugh Anthony Whitelock (1804-1869), went out to Jamaica in 1821 and was given a job as a bookkeeper on the Bellisle estate. He later became a prominent planter and politician in Jamaica and the owner of three plantations in Westmorland, Bulstrode Park, Glasgow and Moreland. The last of the Whitelock estates, Moreland, was finally sold by the family in 1987, but members of that family still live in Jamaica.

The elder daughter of Thomas James Storer, Julia (1777- ?) is a bit of a mystery. She lived a social life in London but was a naughty girl and kept bad company with a famous courtesan, Harriet Wilson. (see Annex 9 for her biography recently published by a descendant, Frances Wilson, which contains some references to Julia Storer.) Despite her misbehaviour, Julia Storer was next in line to inherit Purley under her uncle’s Will; and she was also named in her mother’s (the Hon. Elizabeth Storer)Will as the next in line to inherit her estate, so she cannot have been entirely in disgrace.

Anthony Gilbert Storer. 1782-1818.

Anthony Gilbert Storer, nephew and heir of Anthony Morris, was 17 when his uncle died. He was at that time serving in the Royal Navy. His father, Thomas James Storer, had died in Jamaica when he was only 10, and it seems likely that he came back to England with his mother, the Hon. Elizabeth Storer when she was widowed. It is not known why he joined the Navy. The Storers had been an army family and had married into other army families in Jamaica; but Anthony Gilbert’s mother was a Proby, a family with a distinguished naval record which had produced several Admirals.(See annex 7) That may have led him to join the navy at a young age. He inherited his uncle’s estate of Purley Park and also his house in London, as well as the estates in Jamaica at Belleisle and Frome. It is said in my father’s notes on the Storer family that as a young man Anthony Gilbert received an income of £8,000 a year from this inheritance.

The building of Purley Park.

The building of Purley Park was commissioned, with James Wyatt as architect, probably by Lord Carysfort, one of the executors of Anthony Morris’s Will, soon after his death. No records have survived about its construction or the landscaping of the area around the house. It is said to have been completed by in1801. The earliest picture of the house is a small water colour sketch. It shows the house in gleaming white from the Portland stone façade, as directed by Anthony Morris. The sketch also shows what appears to be a young cedar planted on the lawn. This helps to date the sketch. It is probably Cedrus Libani, a popular specimen tree for the landscaping of Georgian mansions.

That sketch is one of the few known paintings of Purley Park. There are, however, some good full plate photographs taken in about 1910 in the Storer album. (See annex 10) The house is a typical mansion in the rather severe, square and symmetrical classical style of Wyatt. The spacious main rooms on the ground floor had high ceilings of fine plasterwork. The marble fire places and mantel pieces are in Adam style. The doors are nine feet tall and of solid red mahogany. The main staircase has a curving mahogany balustrade. Everywhere the workmanship was superb but the design not extravagant. The quality of the outside masonry is exceptionally fine. The ashlar blocks of dressed Portland Stone are so close fitting that the pointing is almost invisible. There were seven main bedrooms on the first floor and a larger number of bedrooms on the second floor for staff or nursery. All the offices, kitchen, pantry, buttery, larder, laundry, etc were in the basement.

The building of a separate wing for servants quarters on the east side of the house soon after its completion has been a puzzle to architectural historians. How could Wyatt have designed such a grand building with a front of fine proportions and then allow the building alongside it of an ugly single storey annexe? The answer may lie in the number of black servants which Anthony Gilbert brought home from Jamaica to staff the house. It is possible that he could not, or did not want to house them all in the mansion, and commissioned the annexe as additional servants quarters.

Anthony Gilbert Storer (continued)

Anthony Gilbert married in 1806 when he was just 24. His bride was Ann Katherine Hill, the daughter of Thomas Hill of Shropshire and the Invala estate in Westmorland. He thus continued the family tradition of marrying into a Plantocracy family in Jamaica. His father’s two sisters, Helen Storer and Elizabeth Storer had also both married owners of estates in Jamaica. Helen Storer had married John Campbell, owner of the New Hope estate in Westmoreland. He had inherited this estate from his father, Colin Campbell whose wife, Mary Tomlin, had been heiress of that property. Anthony Gilbert’s grandfather, Thomas Storer, had married Helen Guthrie, the daughter of Colonel John Guthrie, Commanding Officer of the Westmorland Militia and owner of the Strathboogie estates there. And his great grandfather had married the daughter of Colonel Morris, one of the original British planters in Jamaica, at the time of the conquest. The Plantocracy thus continued the tradition of the landed gentry in England of marrying within their circle. Anthony Gilbert’s wife’s family, the Hills, owned the neighbouring estate.

He and Ann Katherine Hill were married at the house of the Hon John Lewis by the Revd. James Stewart. (Detail in Storer prayer book, see annex 3). Ann Katherine was the eldest daughter of a family of nine children. Four of her younger brothers and sisters died as children; and her mother, also named Ann Katherine, died at the age of 35 when she herself was just 11 – a grim childhood, but there was worse to come. She had her first two children in Jamaica soon after she married Anthony Gilbert, but they both died as infants. Her first child, Elizabeth, died in Jamaica, aged 22 months and was buried in the family mausoleum; her second, Anthony Morris (named after his grandfather, the MP) died aged seven months on the voyage back to England with his parents.

Anthony Gilbert wrote in a letter to his agent in Jamaica: “I lost my poor little boy about a month after we sailed”. He wrote again three months later that his son’s body, pickled in rum, would soon be arriving back in Jamaica. The servants were to dress him and place him in a cedar and lead lined coffin at the wharf when 10 guns were to be fired. After a day in Belleisle house, prayers were to be read as the baby was placed in the family vault next to his sister. At the same time, all the plantation “negroes” were to have a holiday and wearing “scalves and hat bands” to attend the ceremony at the vault. (Quoted from one of Anthony Gilbert’s letters which have survived in a copy book of his manuscript letters written at Purley between 31 July 1809 and 3 April 1810. Bound in red leather, it is in the Storer deed box)

Katherine Ann Storer then stayed in England and had six more children in nine years. All except the last were born at Purley, and lived to adulthood. The last, a boy, was born in Jamaica and died aged four on a voyage for his health to America. I have recounted these details to show how tough life was for the planter families in Jamaica; particularly the mothers, and what a tragic death toll there was amongst their children.

Anthony Gilbert spent part of his married life in Jamaica and part at Purley. We know from his letters that he was in Jamaica from the time of his wedding there in 1806 until 1808 when he came home with his young son; “one year sooner than I intended but Mrs Storer’s health being so bad that I could not defer it any longer”. He went there again in 1816 with his wife who gave birth there to their last son in 1817. He was at that time a member of the Assembly for the Parish of Westmorland. He himself died in June 1818 “after he had been attacked with a fever and went to Havana, and on his return to Jamaica he was taken ill, the vessel, a King’s Troop of War, put in at New Providence (the Bahamas), where he expired.” His earlier service with the Royal Navy perhaps accounted for this voyage. His body was brought back to Belleisle and interred in the family vault. He was only 36.

His widow, Katherine, came home to Purley with her five surviving children, then aged 4 to 9, and lived there for 36 years as a widow until she died aged 69 in 1854. She at least achieved a normal life span, and Purley at last became a family home for the Storer children. Katherine put up a memorial to her husband in Purley church on which there is this fond inscription:

“What tho’ in distant climes thy body lies
thou’rt here, embalmed in all our memories.
Thy widow, children, friends the loss deplore
which fell on all when Storer was no more.
Prized for that justice, interest could not bend
That firmness, freedom, ever gives her friend.
What’er alloy thy gen’rous nature knew,
Like dross that makes gold hard and current too
Served but to fit thee for this coil of earth
And into human sink superior worth.”

The marble tablet in the church depicts Katherine with her five children gazing up affectionately at their father, whose head is shown in relief on a pedestal.

My father’s visit to Jamaica.

My father, Major R.A.D.Fullerton, visited Jamaica in 1955 and went to Belleisle to see what was left of the property. Unfortunately, I can find no record of his visit, other than one pencilled note on the back of a piece of hotel notepaper. From this, he appears to have found the Storer mausoleum at Bellisle but describes it as being “in the jungle”. He noted down three inscriptions on it, one in memory of Anthony Gilbert, and two others in memory of two of his children, Elizabeth Ann (his first daughter) and Thomas Carysfort (his last son). There is no mention of my father’s visit in his account of the Storers which he probably wrote before he went to Jamaica.

Charles Horsfall, my cousin, went to Jamaica in 2008. He spent a day visiting the former Storer properties of Belleisle, Frome and Carysfort. These are all now owned and managed by a Jamaica Government enterprise “Sugar Company of Jamaica”. He found the great house at Fontabelle but no trace of the house at Belleisle. The Storer Mausoleum had been totally wrecked and plundered for its stone.

Storer finances.

The Storer finances had deteriorated during Anthony Gilbert’s lifetime as can be seen from the letters he wrote in 1809 and 1810 from Purley to his agents in London and Jamaica about the management of his estates. During the late 18th century many fortunes had been made from sugar and rum but by 1809 sugar planters in the West Indies were going through difficult times. The early 19th century saw a fall in sugar prices after the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. By the time that slavery was ended in the sugar plantations in 1833 many West Indian estates were run down and unprofitable. Anthony Gilbert’s letters indicate that by 1809 he was in a state of near bankruptcy. Many letters contain plausible excuses as to why he cannot pay off his debts just at the moment, but that he will do so very soon. There are no figures to show by how much the income from Jamaica had fallen but there are indications that by 1809 the Storer estates were already heavily mortgaged.. In a letter to Messrs C & Wm Armstrong of Clements Lane, London, he appears to be in debt to them for £6,000, which was said to be the total value of his Jamaica estates. As result, they controlled the income available for his living expenses. The income from his uncle’s estate was also slow in reaching him, possibly because the Executor, Lord Carysfort, (his mother’s brother) was in Ireland at the time, serving as Lord Lieutenant.

The extent of Anthony Gilbert’s indebtedness is also evident from the notes on the slavery compensation awards made in 1836. That was 18 years after his death, when the awards were made to his widow, Ann Katherine. (see paragraph above on Storer estates). The awards, totalling £9815, were the subject of lengthy litigation by Messers Armstrong which was still running in 1846. (The Court actions listed in the notes to the compensation awards would probably reveal how much in the end Ann Katherine received).

Another creditor mentioned in these notes was Evelyn Bazalgette. Bazalgette’s was a London sugar broker and finance house. Anthony Gilbert was one of their client’s. In his letter book there are references to the amounts owed to Bazalgette’s. (A descendant of that name is writing up the firm’s history and has asked for a transcript of those letters. See Storer archive).

The furnishing of Purley Park.

The new mansion, Purley Park, had been elegantly furnished in Georgian style by Anthony Gilbert and his wife Ann Katherine during the brief period when they were there together. Some impression of this can be gained from photographs of the interiors of the main rooms in the house taken at the end of the nineteenth century. (See Storer album No 2). There is also a good description of the rooms in an article by Jean Debney in the series of articles in her “History Notebook”. (See Storer archive). In his Will, Anthony Morris had directed that his “household goods, furniture, plate, china, glass and all the books in or about the capital messuage at Purley” and from his house in Devonshire Street in London should “go with the estate at Purley as heirlooms”. This suggests that he had been living in the old Manor House there some of the time after he had bought the Purley estate, and that he had furnished it himself. It seems likely that Purley Park was furnished by Anthony Gilbert partly from the Manor and partly from his uncles’s London house, but given the size of the rooms in the new mansion a good deal of new furniture must have been required as well. Some of this furniture was taken by Mrs Evans to Chacombe House when she sold Purley Park in 1920. The sale catalogue of Chacombe in1946 gives some idea of the quality of the furniture and pictures which Purley Park contained. (See annex 4 on the later history of Purley, and sale catalogue of Chacombe in Storer deed box.).

The Storer portraits

Anthony Gilbert also commissioned most of the family portraits which hung in Purley. During the short time that he was in England with his wife and children, he commissioned Sir Martin Archer Shee to paint his full length portrait. He is depicted standing in the portico of Purley Park in baronial style, and looking out over the fine view of the river from the house. Archer Shee also painted a most attractive picture of Anthony Gilbert’s three young children playing together, and an earlier picture of his eldest daughter Elizabeth Fanny aged two with her pet spaniel. He also commissioned the portrait of his elderly mother, Lady Elizabeth Storer (nee Proby), by Sir Thomas Lawrence, shortly before she died. The earlier family portraits, painted before Purley was built, of Thomas Storer (Anthony Gilbert’s grandfather) and Anthony Morris Storer (his uncle) were probably brought to Purley from his uncle’s house in London. Some of these portraits can be seen in the photos of Purley Park interior taken by my father in 1910.

Upstairs Downstairs at Purley Park.

Jean Debny has also given in her History Notebook a lively description of the way in which the house was staffed at Purley. “The world of Upstairs-Downstairs was a reality when Purley Park was built”. A generation later in 1871, when Major and Mrs Storer were living there with their daughter Leila and three other relatives, they had nine servants, all living in, including a Prussian nurse, and several maids and other staff who came in from the village on a daily basis.

When Anthony Gilbert and his wife Ann Katherine were living there in the early 1800’s, some of the servants were black, brought over from their Jamaica estates. This was not unusual in those days amongst families who had lived in the West Indies and retired to England, as can be seen in some of the family pictures of that period by painters such as Romney, Reynolds and Gainsborough. Some of these servants were still slaves when they were brought to England, but after 1772 slaves became free immediately they set foot on British soil. There is a harrowing account of the plight of one such black servant in Jean Debny’s History Notebook. In 1824 he ran away from Purley to Reading, where he learned that he was a free man. The following was taken from an account in the Reading Mercury of the court case subsequently brought against Mrs Storer (widow of Anthony Gilbert) for maltreatment:

“Born in the West Indies, Philip Thompson was bought as a slave for the Storer’s house at Belleisle. (Note: He was probably brought to England as a young boy with Mrs Storer when she came back to Purley after her husband Anthony Gilbert died.) He was placed under the charge of Robert Stewart, the butler, who was also black and from Jamaica. His duties included cleaning and waiting at table. He had been taught to read but had never been to church in Jamaica and only twice in England. He said that Mrs Storer looked after him “as she was bound to” and saw that he took his medicine when he was ill, but that flogging was the usual punishment for any misdemeanour and he was often ill treated. One day in July 1824 Mrs Storer was already up when Philip rose at 6 am. Finding that he had not been up in time to clean the lobby she ordered him to be taken to the “whipping place”. After removing his coat, waistcoat and shirt, he then received about a dozen lashes from a hunting whip wielded by the butler so that the blood ran down his back. He dared not cry out in case he received double blows, and claimed that although no other servant witnessed the incident, Ely was seeing to the horses in the nearby stables and would have heard. Mrs Storer was said to have been present and said “Well done, Robert, give him more”. Philip claimed he gave his blood-stained shirt to Mrs Pope, the laundress, which she later denied.

Mrs Storer, who did not appear in Court, was described by her lawyer as “a lady of high rank and large fortune” and he thought it “utterly unlikely that a delicate and amiable English lady …should not only order such a cruel infliction, but also be an eye-witness. Several servants were called to testify to her kindness as a mistress. The laundress, Mrs Pope denied seeing the flogging; John May, the postillon, also denied all knowledge and said that Ely, the only potential witness, had left his job before this event. Mrs Stevens, the housekeeper, and Miss Mary Ann Jones, governess to the four Storer daughters, gave their mistress an ‘excellent character for humanity’. Only the former coachman, George Downham, said that Mrs Pope had witnessed the flogging and expressed concern at the boy’s treatment.

In his summing up, the judge told the jury not to make skin colour a test of truth, but to consider that the character of the witnesses, several of whom would not believe the lad, was important. Although the evidence was not corroborated, the jury had to decide if it was true: did Mrs Storer – an accomplished lady with four daughters – order the flogging and then stand by and approve such a ‘ horrible affliction’? It took the jury only a quarter of an hour to reach their verdict: NOT GUILTY.”

Then followed the trial of Robert, the butler, for assault. The description given in court of the flogging of Philip and his incarceration by Robert is more harrowing still, even allowing for some exaggeration by the prosecution witnesses. The judge commented in his summing up that the imprisonment and tying up could not be justified. The jury found Robert guilty, and he got a prison sentence. The contrast between the acquittal of Mrs Storer, lady of the house, and the conviction of Robert the black butler is a social commentary on the justice of those times.

Anthony Morris Storer II (1813-1902)

Anthony Morris Storer II (known later as Major Storer) was the only surviving son and heir of Anthony Gilbert. He grew up at Purley with his widowed mother and his three sisters. He was only five when his father died. He went to Eton at the age of 15 but was there for only a year. He did not join the army but later held a commission as Major in the Oxford Militia. He was also a J.P. and a Governor of Christ’s Hospital.

Little is known about his early life. We do not know how often he visited the family estates in Jamaica. There is evidence from the sketch book of Jamaica scenes done by his sister Elizabeth Fanny that they were in Jamaica together some time before 1848 when his sister died. (See annex 2 on Storer sketch books). But there is no record that he ever lived on the Belleisle property in Jamaica. He is recorded as having lived for two years from about 1853 in the new farm house also known as “Belleisle”. This was built on the Purley estate after the old manor house and farm buildings near Purley church, described by Repton, had been demolished. He was at that time still unmarried, and he perhaps moved out of Purley Park to be independent of his domineering mother, who continued to live in the house as a widow until she died in 1854, aged 68. He then moved back into Purley Park and took over the estate. He served as Churchwarden of Purley and was Chairman of the Parish Meeting, the forerunner of the Parish Council.

He married late, in 1860, when he was 47 and his future wife was 32. She was Cicely Barr (see photo of her in annex 8), the sixth daughter of Sir John Pollard Willoughby, 4th Bart, of Baldon House, Oxfordshire, MP for Leominster and a member of the Council of India. Their only child, Leila Storer, (1862-1918) inherited Purley and married my grandfather, George Frederick Fullerton. Anthony Morris II (known as Major Storer) died in 1902, aged 88 but his wife Cicely lived on alone at Purley Park until she died in 1908, aged 75. My father remembered old “Granny Storer” well, and said that she was an invalid in the latter years of her life. There is a fine photograph taken of her sitting in the big conservatory at Purley, surrounded by Arum lilies and with her pet dog on her lap.

Major Storer’s personal estate on his death was valued for probate at £43,000. Estate duty was payable at 5%. But the Purley Park property had been put into the trust created by Major Storer and would have been exempt from estate duty. In his Will he made his wife, Ciceley, life tenant of the trust, followed by his daughter Leila, and then his granddaughter Ivy.

The coming of the Great Western Railway

The most momentous event at Purley in the life of Major Storer was the building of the Great Western Railway. The GWR line was driven through Purley Park like a gigantic ditch, only forty years after the house had been built and the grounds landscaped. It would be described today as an environmental disaster but in Victorian times was perhaps seen as unstoppable progress. The GWR was conceived in 1824 as a link between Bristol and London. With the advent of railways, the merchants of Bristol saw the opportunity of fast access to London for their port and their trade with the Americas. Until then, their link for cargo to London had been the canal system, the Kennet and Avon canal which joined the Thames at Reading, and the Thames Severn canal which came in at Lechlade. A railway would cut the journey time from weeks to a single day.

Brunel was commissioned by the GWR directors in 1833 to survey the line. His vision was to build a railway with minimal gradients all the way from London to Bristol. The route chosen was up the Thames valley to Reading, and then along the Thames to Didcot and thence over the Berkshire Downs. It took two years to get the required Private Act through Parliament, and it received the Royal Assent on 31 August 1835. Negotiations with landowners for the wayleaves were then begun along the route approved in the Act. Purley Park was directly on the route between Reading and Pangbourne, following the Thames closely to avoid the hills in Oxfordshire and Berkshire on either side. Anthony Morris was only 22 when the Act was passed, but is said to have resisted the proposed route strenuously. Like other landowners, his objections were overruled by Private Act of Parliament, the equivalent in those days of a public enquiry. Brunel himself came to Purley to negotiate the wayleave with Anthony Morris. Agreement was eventually reached on compensation of £10,000.

Brunel had initially planned a tunnel over a mile in length between Tilehurst and Pangbourne, which would have put the line under Purley Park and avoided the need for a wayleave. But the chalk formation of the hillside would have made the tunnelling extremely difficult and costly. Brunel calculated the cost, including the brick lining of the tunnel, at £34 per yard, to be £65,076. He decided against the tunnel in favour of a cutting into the hillside, running just below Purley Park, between the house and the river. This deep cutting through the grounds cut the house off from the gardens below and from the church and the village down by the river. The GWR were required under the wayleave to build an access tunnel under the railway line to allow horse drawn vehicles to go from the house to the village. The tunnel is still in use as a footpath today. The deed detailing the wayleave runs to many pages of manuscript. (transcription in Storer archive made by John Chapman of the Purley History Society to whom I owe all this information. His two articles in the Society’s Newsletter “The GWR comes to Purley” are excellent reading.)

The compensation of £10,000 for the wayleave compares with the £20,000 cost of building Purley Park just over 30 years earlier. It seems to have been a far more generous settlement per yard than that achieved by other landowners to the east of Purley Park. Whether this was due to Major Storer’s influence, or because the damage done to the property was considered to be much greater than that to neighbouring farmland, is not clear. The GWR are said to have offered to build a station on his property, but he angrily rejected any such proposal. He is also said to have been given a gold medallion entitling him to travel free on any GWR train for life, but that too he did not use. My father recorded that he had been told that Major Storer, his grandfather, never travelled on a train, even though he saw them pass his house for more than fifty years.

The GWR line from Paddington to Reading was opened in March 1840, and the next section of the line from Reading through Purley to Steventon near Didcot in June later that year. The station used by Purley residents was initially Pangbourne, but one was later built at Tilehurst, just outside the grounds of Purley Park on the Reading side. The timetable in 1840 showed five passenger trains a day from Paddington to Pangbourne. The cost of a first class fare was 9/6d, second class 6/6d, and 3/6d to ride on a goods train. (9/6d was probably about £15 today). The journey time was an hour and a half, compared to the best part of a day by stage coach on the turnpike road. To anyone but Major Storer, that must have seemed like progress. John Chapman records the story that when he died his funeral cortege was crossing the New Hill bridge over the railway on the way to Purley church. The horses were startled by a train passing beneath them. One old timer remarked “that was a faster run than the old bugger ever managed in his lifetime”.

THE WEDDING OF LEILA STORER.

The other great event recorded in the life of Major Storer was the wedding of his daughter Leila (1862-1918. See miniature portrait, annex 8). She was born and brought up at Purley as an only child, the future heiress of the Storer estate. She became engaged to George Frederick Fullerton, my grandfather, then an officer in the Royal Irish Rifles. It is not known how they came to meet but my father told me that from the very beginning Anthony Morris did not approve of his future son-in-law. He had no doubt been hoping that his daughter would marry a rich aristocrat and restore the Storer family fortunes which in his lifetime he had done nothing to improve. But George Frederick at that time had no money. His father, David Fullerton, was a younger son and had not inherited any of the Fullerton property in Ireland or Gloucestershire. So Major Storer regarded him as a loser who had no money and no prospect of making any.

Despite all that, the wedding came to pass. George Frederick and Leila were married in Purley parish church and a big splash it was. 900 invitations had been sent out. The little church was packed. It was known as the “Ivy Wedding” because ivy, much admired by the Victorians, was the theme of the church decorations. There was a full account of the wedding in The Lady, the equivalent of the Tatler in those days, and the Marriage Supplement of The Court Journal. (An original copy of The Lady of 24 January 1889, and of The Court Journal are with the Storer photograph albums.) The Lady contained a fine pen and ink sketch of the wedding in the church. (see reproduction on the card made by the Purley History Society). The descriptions of the ladies dresses takes up a whole column. “The bride carried a gigantic bouquet of orange blossom, tuberoses, gardenias, roses, lilies of the valley etc measuring eight feet in diameter” gives some idea of the scale of the procession. There is a full list of over 500 wedding presents and their donors in The Court Journal. It is an astonishing list of silver, jewellery, cut glass, and porcelain. All were displayed in the house for guests to see at the wedding breakfast (a formal lunch) held after the marriage service. Later that evening, Major & Mrs Storer “gave a large dinner, followed by music and dancing to the tenants and parishioners of Purley”. Major Storer had a reputation for meaness but on this occasion he really pushed the boat out.

LEILA STORER INHERITS PURLEY

George Frederick and Leila had to wait almost twenty years after their marriage before they were able to inherit Purley. Major Storer died aged 88 in 1902 but his wife Cicely (known as granny Storer) lived on alone in Purley until she died aged 75 in 1908. Only then were George Frederick and Leila able to move into Purley. By that time they had four teenage children, Ivy, Cecil, Richard and Myra. My father, Richard, then known in the family as Dick, was thirteen when the family moved into Purley.

The lives of George Frederick and Leila are written up in the Fullerton section of my family history. They only enjoyed Purley together for a few years but during that time the house became alive again as a family home. Their eldest daughter, Ivy, was married there in 1913. They modernised the house extensively with central heating and electricity. The first cars came into the Purley household in about 1906. Leila was an enthusiastic gardener and the Purley walled garden was replanted. But the war came in 1914, and Purley was never the same again. George Frederick died in 1916 aged 59, probably from prostate cancer. His wife Leila died in 1918 aged only 56.

IVY EVANS INHERITS AND THEN SELLS PURLEY PARK.

Major Storer had been vindictive to the end towards George Frederick, his son-in-law. In his Will he made sure that Purley would not be inherited by a Fullerton. He directed that the heir to Purley, after his daughter Leila, should be her firstborn daughter, Ivy, and not her eldest son Cecil. (He lived to see all Leila’s children). He also directed that Ivy should change her name to Storer when she married in the hope that the family name would be kept alive. Ivy later ignored that instruction when she married Archie Evans. She and Archie (by then a Major) moved into Purley Park when he returned from France at the end of the war in 1918.

In 1920, two years after inheriting Purley, Ivy sold the whole estate. The house was advertised for sale in The Times in February and auctioned in June 1920. Under the Settled Land Act 1882 the consent of the trustees of Purley Park appointed in Major Storer’s Will was required for the sale. The original trustees were the Major’s widow and son-in-law, George Frederick. New trustees who had been appointed in 1917 after the death of George Frederick seem to have resigned in 1920 after the sale of Purley Park was advertised but before the sale was completed. It seems possible that they resigned because they were not willing to consent to the sale. Alternatively, they may have resigned in protest when they discovered that earlier in the year (March) Ivy had sold 59 of the paintings at Purley Park (which were heirlooms) without their knowledge and without first obtaining a court order which they were required to do before selling the pictures. As the purchase money for the sale of Purley Park was required under the Act to be paid to the trustees of Major Storer’s will, Ivy had to apply to the High Court under the Act to appoint new trustees. She nominated her cousin, Captain (later Lt. General) John Fullerton Evetts and Major Macleod (a cousin of her grandmother, Cecily Storer) as the new trustees. My father and his brother Cecil filed an objection to the new appointments but the Court rejected it. The new trustees were not appointed by the Court until October 1920 and the sale of Purley Park was completed shortly afterwards. My father later claimed that Ivy never consulted him or his brother about the sale when he was in England in 1919. He had been posted to India again with his regiment in November 1919 and he was furious when he heard that Purley had been advertised for sale. He lodged his objection to the appointment of the new trustees, but to no avail.

Ivy’s reasons for selling Purley Park were probably justified. Death duties on the estate were payable and she had inherited very little money with the property. Maintaining a mansion the size of Purley in the 1920’s was no longer viable. Moreover she and Archie had no children despite having been married for seven years. Their main interest was horses and hunting. My father maintained that they moved to Chacombe House, near Banbury, because the hunting was better in the shires there. This may well have been the reason for their choice of location but I doubt if it was her main reason for selling Purley.

As mentioned above, when Purley Park was sold, an equally serious issue arose over the sale of the Storer family portraits and several other valuable pictures. Ivy sent these for auction at Sotheby’s in March 1920 but the consent of the Court was required for their sale under the Settled Land Act because they were heirlooms intended to pass with the land. When it was discovered that the pictures had been sold without a court order some of them appear to have been recovered or bought back. The Storer family portraits were then retained by Ivy and taken to her new home at Chacombe. A description of them is at annex 8. Most of the portraits and pictures that were recovered after the 1920 sale were sold again at Sotheby’s in 1946 when Ivy sold Chacombe House The remaining pictures were housed in Chacombe House Lodge where she lived until 1964 when she moved into the Tracey Nursing Home in Banbury. She died there in 1966.

The sale of Purley Park was probably inevitable, sooner or later. But the way Ivy went about it without consulting the family and with total disregard for all the family heirlooms was disgraceful. They never forgave her for the callous way in which she disposed of the Storer heritage.

A copy of Ivy’s Will is in the Storer archive. The probate value of her personal estate was £22,000. She left small legacies to her sister Myra and her niece Diana Goodhart, as well as many other legacies to friends and retainers. The remainder of her estate she left to her first cousin, Lt. General John Evetts, who had been her trustee of the Storer trust ever since 1920.

The Storer Trust is not mentioned in her Will as she was only a life tenant. Her next of kin due to inherit the trust was my cousin Derek. The trust on Ivy’s death should have contained the proceeds from the sale of Chacombe house and its contents in 1946.

After two owners, who sold off much of the estate, the house became from 1958 an institution for handicapped men under the management of a charitable trust. The house was then sold in 2003 to developers who spent over a million pounds on its restoration and conversion into three luxury flats. As a result, Purley Park, now renamed Purley Magna, has been restored to its former grandeur as a Georgian mansion but the estate has shrunk to become just a small garden surrounded by suburban Reading.

Extinction of the Storer family.

So ended the Storer family name. There are no known living Storer relations. They came home from Jamaica; they built Purley Park; and they lived in it for three generations only. Their fortune was based on sugar and slave labour, but also on great entrepreneurship and ambition. De mortuis nil nisi bonum. Nothing remains of the Storer fortune; and virtually nothing remains of the Purley heritage. We are left only with that remarkable prayer book, documenting the births, marriages and deaths of the many members of the family described in this memoir. All the Storer records, papers and letters were lost or destroyed when my Aunt Ivy sold Purley. This family history has been pieced together and gleaned from a wide variety of sources, including my father’s own account of the Storer family and of Purley where he grew up, and with the help of the Purley Local History Society and of art historian David Wilson.

The Storers are just one chapter in the family history of the Downings and Fullertons through the female line of my grandmother, Leila Fullerton, nee Storer. The male side of the family lives on and is recorded in the Fullerton chapter of our family history.

Peter Fullerton
December 2011..




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