and summer house, large orangery, and capital walled kitchen gardens.”12 Fortunately, Lovelace did not have to look far for the “good tenant” which his mother-in-law had advised him to find. It was ideally suited for Lady Byron’s old trusted friend and confidante Lushington.
Lushington moved into Ockham Park in 1846 with his children and sister-in-law, who being freed from her responsibilities for Ada Byron, transferred them to the management and care of her brother-in-law’s household. The financial arrangements for Lushington’s tenancy are not known, but it was probably viewed as something akin to a “grace and favour” residence for services rendered. Of course, it was also advantageous to the Lovelaces to have the family lawyer close at hand.
Though deep in the heart of rural Surrey, Ockham Park was conveniently placed for easy access to London. It adjoined the village of Ripley where the Talbot Inn was a staging post on the Portsmouth Road, from which the run to London took just three hours. In 1838, the London and South-Western Railway Company opened its station at nearby Woking providing a quicker and more efficient means of reaching the capital. Shortly after the Lushingtons came to Ockham, the house was described as being entered from Ripley “through a pair of beautiful iron gates . . . [it] is of the Italian style of architecture, and consists of a centre and wings encompassed on three sides by beautiful terraces.”13 The original house had been built in the 1620s but was extensively altered by the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor sometime after 1724, and then refashioned in the Italian style in the 1830s. Sadly, most of the house was destroyed by fire in 1948. However, a nineteenth-century engraving, together with family photographs and paintings, show the house during the tenure of the Lushingtons. At about the same time as his move to Ockham, Lushington gave up his Westminster house and moved to 18 Eaton Place in fashionable Belgravia.
Shortly after settling in Lushington wrote, “Ockham is really in perfection; many of the Rhododendrons are out & quantities to come; how I wish you were all here to enjoy this lovely house & a concert given gratis by the Thrushes & Nightingales.”14 That peace was temporarily shattered one day in 1847 by a near tragic accident. One of the servants was “engaged in winding up the large clock” at the house when “the chain broke and the weight (about 7 cwt) fell, going clean through three floors into the hall, where it broke in pieces three large flag stones, all but going through into the cellar.”15 A child of Lushington’s coachman who was passing through the hall, narrowly escaped serious injury, but was so frightened that he was rendered speechless for some time.
The Ockham Industrial Schools
In addition to the more obvious and usual benefits of a large country house, Ockham Park held a unique attraction for anyone with a passion for social reform. This was an “Industrial School” that had been opened by Lord Lovelace and run by him on the same principles of a similar school opened in Ealing by his mother-in-law (figure 10).
After separating from her husband, Lady Byron took up an interest in a number of the social issues of the day. Cynics might question the motives that lay behind her growing philanthropic pursuits, but they were of the “kind that wealthy English ladies of the period, endowed with spare time, money, and useful connections, frequently undertook.”16 Although Lady Byron possessed all these assets, her desire to engage in the reforming of society was genuine. In addition to education, she also took an interest in the emerging cooperative movement as well as joining forces with Lushington and his colleagues in the fight against slavery.
Lady Lovelace, concerned about the education of the poor, consulted with old friends Maria and Richard Edgeworth, Samuel Frend, and, in particular, the Swiss reformer Emmanuel de Fellenberg.17 The latter’s educational theory was primarily a social one in which he believed that the full development of the individual was related to his probable future role in society. De Fellenburg envisaged an agricultural community where people could pursue an unsophisticated, pastoral, and religious existence. In 1834, Lady Byron took a house at Hanger Hill, Ealing, where she opened a school using De Fellenberg’s principles.
Lord Lovelace was a model landowner whose actions at Ockham would have received the applause of Dorethea Brooke in George Eliot’s Middlemarch. The school was not the only practical expression of his social concern. After acquiring the Horsley estate, he demolished many of the old insanitary and overcrowded timber-framed cottages inhabited by his tenants. These were replaced by the well-designed brick and flint-built dwellings, which remain such a feature of the village today. Writing from Ockham in 1839, Lady Lovelace praised her son-on-law’s work:
I see an Infant-School rising up, and the Garden School quite established – both affording models which will no doubt be followed. I observe too, with great pleasure, how judiciously Lord Lovelace improves his Farm-houses & Cottages – & in which he indulges his taste for building, contributes essentially to the health, comfort, & moral habits of his dependants. He shows me what a Land-Owner may do in these respects, & what I have not done.18
In addition to providing “a plain yet sound elementary and religious education,” the pupils of the Ockham schools were to gain knowledge of “the rudimentary principles of grammar, English composition, simple mathematics, linear drawing, history, geography and the theory of music; together with some instruction in natural philosophy.” The Garden School consisted of “Three and a half acres of land . . . set aside for agricultural work and two acres of [which are] devoted to a small experimental forest where curious specimens of forest trees [are] grown in order to discover varieties that would best be suited to English conditions.” The Schools also provided a gymnasium “for the development of muscular power,” a printing press and small workshops fitted with carpenters,’ turners,’ basket makers’ and other tools.”
In 1857, one of Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools visited Ockham. He was impressed by what he saw and wrote a glowing report but added:
It is, however, important not to disguise the fact that the success of this institution is due more to the hearty and genuine spirit of supervision which presides over the arrangements, than to the adjustment of technical arrangement. Dr Lushington’s family watch over the interests of the institution with such devotion and energy as in any circumstances could not but work real wonders.19
The feminist, artist and educationalist Barbara Bodichon, a distnt relation of the Lushingtons, took a close interest in the school.20 A friend reported back to Bodichon after visiting the school saying how pleased she was with it, “and also with Miss Alice Lushington whom most fortunately we found there—She is indeed a charming person.”21
Escaped Slaves
In the middle years of the nineteenth century, the Ockham Schools became the setting for an episode related to Lushington’s antislavery concerns. William and Ellen Craft were slaves who had fled Macon, Georgia in a daring, novel, very public—and celebrated escape in December 1848. Ellen Craft was the daughter of an African-American woman and her white master. As a result, she looked white and was easily able to disguise herself in men’s clothes to aid her escape. Her husband accompanied her dressed as her attentive slave valet. The couple crossed the Mason-Dixon line and eventually made their way to Boston which had an established free black community. There they settled and participated in antislavery lectures through New England where their accounts of their remarkable escape quickly won the hearts of audiences.
In 1850, Congress ratified the Fugitive Slave Act making it a crime for residents of free states to harbor, or aid, fugitive slaves like the Crafts. Two bounty hunters from Macon took advantage of this legislation to travel to Boston to take the Crafts. However, the couple found sanctuary in the home of the Bostonian antislavery activist Lewis Hayden who threatened to blow up not only himself but also his adversaries if they came to his door. After this, the Crafts no longer felt safe in Boston, and they crossed to Canada from where they
