THE LONGE FAMILY of SPIXWORTH

Although it is possible to trace the Longe family back to a John Longe, who was born in the South Norfolk village of Hingham in 1525, I will begin this examination of the family with Robert Longe of Reymerston, (a  small village south of Dereham). Robert Longe was born in 1619, and was four times married. His first wife was Anne Milner, daughter of Thomas Milner of Kings Lynn, who died in 1653; his daughter Anne also died in that year. She had two daughters with Robert, both of whom died young, and a son, also called Robert (b. 1647), who became heir to his father’s Reymerston estate. To distinguish him from his father he was known as Robert Longe of Foulden, another of his estates. Robert Longe of Reymerston married secondly (in 1656) Elizabeth Bacon, who was born in 1625;  she died within three years of her marriage, but not before she had given birth to one child, a son Francis (b. 1658). Robert Longe of Reymerston went on to have two more wives and a daughter before he died in 1688.

His second wife Elizabeth was the younger daughter of Francis Bacon. He was born in 1587 in Suffolk, but he became established as a grand figure in Norwich. A lawyer, he rose to become a Judge of the Kings Bench in 1642,and was knighted on his appointment to this position. When King Charles I was executed seven years later, he declined the opportunity to take the new oath of allegiance to the people, and retired to Norwich. Francis Bacon died in 1657, and the fine Bacon tomb in St Gregory’s church in Norwich gives some idea of his eminence.

Francis Longe, the son of the union between Robert Longe of Reymerston and Elizabeth Bacon, acquired the Spixworth estate in 1693. It is unclear quite how he was able to afford so substantial an estate, because as his father’s younger son, he did not inherit his father’s estate, but the money must have come via his Bacon relations. We hear no more of Robert Longe of Foulden; the family must have died out, because in the late 18th century the Longes of Spixworth owned property in Reymerston aswell. Perhaps he had already died with out a direct heir before 1693.

SPIXWORTH HALL

Francis Longe had purchased the Spixworth estate from James Peck, whose grandfather William had built the hall in the early 17th century. Francis proceeded to modernise the house, leaving the date 1693 and his initials on the wall, which also recorded William Peck’s original structure. Francis had already married Susan Frere of Harleston, some time before 1685. The family moved to Spixworth with their son (another Francis) who had been born in 1689. In 1723, when he was no longer a young man (he was 33), the son himself married; his bride, Elizabeth Godfrey of Risby in Suffolk, was 24 years old. His father was over 60 at the time of his eldest son’s marriage. His father (who as you recall had purchased the Spixworth estate in 1693) died eleven years later in 1734 at the age of 76. His son only enjoyed the Lordship of the Manor of Spixworth for a year before he too died, at the relatively young age of 46. He had been married for 13 years. His widow brought up her young family and died in 1752 at the age of 53.

ST PETER’S CHURCH, SPIXWORTH

Francis Longe (1689- 1735) had a son who was just nine years of age when he inherited the title of Lord of the Manor. He was an undergraduate at St Catherine’s Hall in Cambridge in 1743, where he was befriended by Richard Gardiner. Gardiner wrote the scandalous novella The History of Pudica. It includes an account of life at Spixworth Park. Francis Longe (b. 1726), the young squire of Spixworth, married Tabitha Howes soon after coming down from Cambridge. Francis and Tabitha had a son (yet another Francis) who was born in 1748. Both father and son held what was then the influential position of High Sheriff of Norfolk during the second half of the 18th century.

The son inherited the title of squire on the death of his father in 1776. He had married one Catherine Jackson (1752-1828) four years earlier. Catherine Jackson’s father had an important position in the Admiralty, and sponsored Captain James Cook’s voyage of discovery to Australia. Sydney was originally called Port Jackson after him. Francis and Catherine Longe had no issue; Francis died in 1812 and the title passed to a cousin, although his widow remained living in the Hall until her death in 1828. The estate at Spixworth became mired in debt in the hands of Catherine; she tried to sell or mortgage parts of the property, but having only a lifetime’s interest was unable to do so. She was reduced to cutting down a grand avenue of oak trees that lined the drive up to the Hall, to produce an income. The succession to Spixworth Park had devolved onto a relative, a great-grandson of the Francis Longe who had died aged 46 in 1735.  It was through his second son, called John (b.1731), that the title passed down the generations. John was, as a young man, chaplain to King George III, and he became the Rector Spixworth in 1806.

The Rev John Longe (d. 1834)

His son, also called John (1765-1834), was his father’s curate at Spixworth until he moved to take up a curacy in Coddenham in Suffolk. He became the Vicar of Coddenham, and there he married the heiress to the estate, Charlotte Browne (1762-1812). He kept a diary which reveals many fascinating facts, but only a few volumes now exist. His eldest son Francis died while an undergraduate at Cambridge, and it was his second son John (1799-1873) who became the new Lord of the Manor at Spixworth, when Catherine Longe died. When he moved in at Spixworth Park he found the estate encumbered with debt. His younger brother Robert  took over the position of Rector of Coddenham on his father’s death in 1834.

To return to his great-grandfather, in spite of his relatively early death, Francis Longe (1689-1735) had a daughter as well as the two sons already mentioned. One of her offspring, Francis Howes, has the distinction of having a mention in the Dictionary of National Biography, but first we must have a word about the Howes family. Thomas Howes had moved to Morningthorpe Hall in South Norfolk following the death of his father-in-law John Roope. John Rooper died without a male heir in 1686. Thereafter, for several generations, the Howes family were all born in Morningthorpe. The Hall was still in the family’s possession in 1883; thereafter it passed by marriage to Commander Thomas Holmes. By 1920 it had passed out of the family altogether. Susan Longe (1732-1822), the daughter of Francis (1689-1735), married Thomas Howes, a grandson of the Thomas who had acquired Morningthorpe Hall; her elder brother had already married a sister Tabitha Howes (qv above) at Spixworth church in 1747. One of the sons of Thomas and Susan Howes became a clergyman in Norfolk, and this was Francis. He ended his days as the Rector of Framingham Pigot, a small village about four miles south of Norwich. He produced several books of poetry from 1806, and after his death in 1846 his son brought out an edition of his collected works. His poems were translations from the Latin of Horace and other classical authors, and were regarded as excellent compositions at the time. This Francis Howes it was who merited an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography. Another of the Howes family became Rector of Spixworth in the 19th century.

The owner of Spixworth Park, John Longe, had married Caroline Warneford in 1829, but the marriage foundered after a few years; apparently she was highly strung and he was unsympathetic. Caroline returned to her family home, Warneford Place in Wiltshire; there were no children of this union.

The story of Betty Ridge & her family

Caroline Warneford was the granddaughter of William Flower, 2nd Viscount Ashbrook, and Betty Ridge, a weir keeper’s daughter. The young aristocrat had met the pretty girl of a humble background while on a fishing trip from Christchurch College in Oxford, where he was an undergraduate. The romantic story of the Viscount and his wife is told in the book Water Gyspsy by Julie Anne Godson. The Viscountess was widowed after 14 years of apparently happy marriage, and then had to bring up a young family of aristocrats on her own. It is a credit to her ability that her son became a close friend of  King William IV. She had grown up as an illiterate girl, gutting fish and serving ale to bargees on the river Thames.

When the Squire of Spixworth, John Longe, died in 1873, the estate passed to his brother Robert Longe. He was many years established as Rector of Coddenham, and had no inclination to leave Suffolk.  He did not reside at the Hall, which was instead let. However, before this latest owner of Spixworth Park died in 1890, his eldest son Robert Bacon Longe (1830-1911) had set up house with his family at the Hall. The Bacon name was acquired not from Judge Francis Bacon, whose wealth may have led to the purchase of Spixworth Park, but from the  Bacon family of Coddenham who were distantly related to the judge. The Bacons of Coddenham had left their substantial estate to the vicar John Longe in the last years of the 18th century.)

Robert Bacon Longe was the Squire of Spixworth for twenty years from 1890 until January 1911, but the property had never recovered its prosperity after the depredations of Catherine Longe. During the last decade of the 19th century the family were running short of money, and the estate was mortgaged for £25,000. Robert Bacon Longe’s youngest daughter Henrietta married into the Bignold family, the founders of Norwich Union Insurance (now known as Aviva),  and her son Robert Bignold became Chairman of the Society in 1943. Robert Bacon Longe’s eldest son and heir was Francis Bacon Longe, and he was the Chief Military Surveyor in India. He was the first to map the Himalayas. In India he had met an English woman who had been born in Bengal. This lady (with the suitably descriptive maiden name of Meane) had already been married to a Mr Sankey as a young 18-year-old; she divorced him, but not before having a family of two sons. She and Francis Bacon Longe could then marry, which they did almost immediately after the decree absolute came through. They were already ‘in love’, and this places the alleged cruelty of her first husband in context. This union with Francis Bacon Longe produced no further children. On inheriting the estate at Spixworth Francis retired from the Army and moved back to England, but only briefly to Spixworth. I get the impression there was a family rift; divorce was a scandalous thing in the early 20th century, and the other Longes felt this keenly. Anyway all his relatives who had been happily living in Spixworth Hall were turned out. It was usual for a new squire to move into the ancestral home, but he sold all the contents in a two-day auction in 1911. He had no intention of living there and the Hall was then let to a member of the Gurney family, who had previously lived at Earlham Hall.  Francis Bacon Longe did not live in Norfolk, and died in London in 1922; the bulk of his assets passed to his widow, and through her to the Sankey children of her first marriage. The house at Spixworth passed to his brother, the Revd John Charles Longe.

John was Rector of Yelverton and Alpington in Norfolk by the time of his inheritance, and had no reason to move from the comfortable Rectory in Yelverton to the Hall in Spixworth. It had lost all its historic contents and was more of a liability than an asset. He died in 1939, when Spixworth Park was sold, thus bringing to an end nearly three centuries of family involvement with Spixworth. The Hall was used as a furniture repository by the Norwich firm of Wallace King during the Second World War, but became increasingly derelict; there were gaping holes in the roof by the end of the conflict, and by 1952 it had been demolished.

Desmond Longe

The Revd John Charles Longe had been the clergyman at Pocklington in Yorkshire before returning to Norfolk to be Rector of Yelverton.  One of the Revd John Longe’s younger children was born in Yorkshire in 1914. This son, Desmond Longe, had eventful service in the Second World War, participating in Operation Postmaster in 1942. As secret agent W30 he was involved in the successful attempt to hijack enemy shipping from the then Spanish island of Fernando Po, off the coast of West Africa. His exploits were said to have provided Ian Fleming with the genesis of James Bond. Desmond’s aunt was the mother of Robert Bignold, and no doubt it was through the family connection that he went on to a successful career in insurance. Robert Bignold died without children and, with the failing Bignold dynasty, by the late 1970s Desmond had become Chairman of Norwich Union, the organisation that had been created by the Bignold family nearly 200 years earlier.

The book includes a genealogy of the Longes. It is available from Spixworth church.

My sister Christine was born in the village of Alpington in 1936. The village of Alpington has no church of its own, and she was christened in Yelverton church by the Revd John Longe. Following the publication of my book on Spixworth in 1998 I was lucky enough to be invited to meet an elderly member of the Longe family at her modest home in Stoke Holy Cross. There she told me many interesting family details which have been invaluable in compiling the recent history of the Longes.

Even in the 21st century the connection of the Longes with Spixworth has not been entirely broken. No members of the family have lived there for over a hundred years, but some still return to the family plot in Spixworth churchyard to be buried. We of the lower orders tend to move around the country in search of husbands or work, but the Longes were the family in Spixworth for hundreds of years, from 1693 until 1911.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The History of PUDICA, Richard Gardiner, (London. 1754)

Francis Howes, DNB, (Oxford)

SPIXWORTH, History and Landscape, Joseph Mason,  (Taverham, 1998)

The Diary of John Longe,  Vicar of Coddenham, Ed. Michael Stone,(Woodbridge, 2008)

The Water Gypsy, Julie Ann Godson, (FeedARead.com, 2014)

James Grigor, Eastern arboretum: or, Register of remarkable trees, seats, gardens, &c. in the county of Norfolk : with popular delineations of the British Sylva, (Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1841)

JOSEPH MASON

joemasonspage@gmail.com

THE HISTORY OF EAST ANGLIA