The exercise of reconstructing the 1842 tithe map, described in this section of the site, has thrown up several strange details meriting further investigation. One irresistible puzzle concerned a narrow strip of land of about 65 acres in the north-west of the parish, which seemed to drive a wedge between two blocks of land, each owned by Robert Fane. Centred on Spitland, and divided into two blocks by Wincelow Hall Road, this strip was noted in the key as belonging to the ‘Whittlesford Charity’.
Going back 70 years, the 1770 survey of the Harvey lands (at page 63) also shows this area of land, described as ‘Westley’s Spitland Charity Farm to Whittlesford in Cambridgeshire’.
With the help of the headteacher of William Westley Primary School, Whittlesford and the Cambridgeshire Archives in Ely, I have pieced together the following story.
Lucy Biddulph was born in 1685 in Polesworth, Warwickshire. Her father Michael, a London merchant, was educated at St Catharine’s College Cambridge: he entered Parliament in 1690 as the member for Tamworth. More importantly for our story, Lucy’s mother was a Wale. The Wales were an old Radwinter family: Lucy’s great grandfather had bought New House Farm in 1565 and the farm stayed in Wale hands until 1768. It seems probable, therefore that at some point in the early 1700s, Lucy paid a visit to her Essex relatives and there met the young William Westley, who had been born in Whittlesford in 1684. Whatever the circumstances of their meeting, Lucy and William were married some time before 1711. .
The Spitlands farm clearly formed part of the dowry of Lucy’s grandmother. When Lucy’s grandfather died, the farm would have passed to her father and later it must have have formed part of Lucy’s dowry on her marriage to William: so that it passed, in just three generations, from the Wales to the Biddulphs to the Westleys.
The farm was let to tenants, generating an income for William. We have no record of who farmed the land during William’s lifetime but in 1770, the tenant was James Moore and, as an interesting aside, we know from the tithe map of 1842 that the farmer at this time was Joshua Brazier (also the landlord of Hempstead’s Royal Oak).
William Westley established himself in Cambridge as a grocer and seems to have prospered commercially. Life at home, however, was much less happy. Within eight years of their marriage, Lucy had borne at least five children, none of whom survived long enough to be baptised. Robert, the first born, died in 1711; followed by Elizabeth in 1714, twins Richard and William in 1715, Lucy in 1718 and Bridget in 1719. Another child, William, is entered in the parish baptism record for 2 September 1723 but this entry has been subsequently struck through. Whatever the reason for this, the child also died in infancy – on 24 September, two months after his father.
William’s memorial in Whittlesford Church differs in a couple of respects from this account. First, it lists another Lucy, who is not recorded in the parish register as being either baptised or buried; this may have been a confusion with William’s wife. Also, the memorial refers to a child ‘Biddulph’, which seems to be a simple misreading of ‘Bridget’, whose burial in 1719 is clearly recorded in the register.
William’s untimely death in 1723 at the age of 38 seems to have been foreseen, as he made a Will immediately before he died: the preamble says that he is “sick and weak in body but of sound and disposing mind and memory (God be praised)”. The Will is rambling and repetitive (it is included below together with a transcript and experienced trust lawyers are invited to review and comment: redrafting it would make a good exercise for their trainees!). It makes several references to “my loving Wife Lucy Westley and the decease of such child or children as she is now bigg withal”. This may just have been lawyers’ caution, but it seems very likely that the reference to “child or children” in the context of Lucy’s pregnancy was influenced by William’s experience of fathering twins eight years earlier. It also suggests that he was not alive to see the birth – nor the death two months later – of his final son, William.
In any event, the relevant provision of the Will is that the Spitland farm does not pass directly to Lucy but to three trustees (including a John Wale of Saffron Walden, possibly a relation. While Lucy benefits from the income during her lifetime, on her death everything is to be used to establish a charity school for the children of Whittlesford.
The Will is quite prescriptive about the school and gives us a good idea of the perceived importance of educating girls.
“I will that thirty boys and fifteen girls….. shall be admitted into the said charity school and….. that the managers of the said charity have the power of choosing and putting in all Schoolmaster and Schoolmistress to teach the said boys in writing and reading and casting accompts and to teach the said Girls in reading Sewing knitting….. and to allow the Master fifteen pounds per annum and the Mistress five pounds per annum……”
Following William’s death, the school and parish websites say that Lucy bitterly contested the Will until her death in 1737. I have found no evidence for this claim, which seems unlikely. First, we know that Lucy commissioned William’s monument to “preserve the memory of her deceased husband and of this excellent charity’. And secondly, since Lucy benefited from the lifetime income and had no surviving children, it is hard to see why she would have wanted to contest the will (although one could imagine a Wale trustee being keen to see the land revert to the family’s ownership).
Nevertheless, we do know that after William’s death the land was conveyed to trustees, who set up a school in the guildhall. According to a later trustee, Ebenezer Hollick, the trustees then set about embezzling the money, depleting the funds available until the school had to close. The villagers successfully took the matter to the Chancery Court and in 1771 a scheme was made which finally complied with William’s Will.
But it was not all plain sailing from there. From 1805, the schoolmaster was a ‘bad tempered ex marine’ who had lost his right arm at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1901, but who kept the other arm busy with his whip. At this time, the boys and girls were taught in separate rented cottages, and by 1854 the boys’ schoolroom was in a ‘ruinous shed’ that had formerly been a blacksmith’s shop. Eventually, in 1859, the Westley endowment was used to build a new schoolhouse on Whittlesford High Street.
Fast forward to 1972, when the school moved to new premises on Mill Road, where it survives to this day as William Westley C of E Primary School. The school still celebrates William Westley Day on the Friday nearest to the anniversary of William’s death, when the children go to church to hear the story of the man whose lands in Hempstead gave existence to their school.