Ovapedia search :

Occupants 1900-1910 

Mrs Georgina Porter appears to have occupied the house from1883 until 1905 (see OVApedia entry “Fairlynch: Occupiers of the house Part 1”) although she was living with her daughter and son-in-law in Teignmouth at the time of the 1901 census.  In October 1903 a Mrs H. J. A. Porter was advertising in the Western Times for a house parlour-maid and a cook for Fairlynch.  It is not clear whether this is Georgina using her late husband’s initials, or a new person.  At this time there was a Mr H. J. A. Porter in the Forestry Dept. in India and a man with the same initials was in the Devonshire Regiment in WW1. 

Fairlynch at this time was owned by William Henry Sellek it having been bequeathed to him in 1889 (1).  The voters’ list for 1911 (only one of two at the Devon Records Office that cover the period from 1902 to the present time) confirms that the owner of the house in 1911was William Henry Sellek which gave him the right to vote in Budleigh Salterton.  He wasn’t the occupier however because he farmed South Farm in Otterton.  The resident was not apparently eligible to vote as no name appears in the Voters’ List as being resident there.  However, Kelly’s Directory lists the occupier in 1906 as Mrs Bryan and in 1910 as “the Misses Bryan” that would be the reason because, as women, they would not have had the right to vote at that time.  

The Mrs Bryan mentioned above was Sarah Bryan (nee Tirrell).  She married Robert Peach Bryan in 1858 who was a bank manager in Grantham.  In the 1881 census of Grantham they were living in the High Street with their four daughters, Elizabeth, Jessie, Sarah and Annie.  At least three of the daughters were still single in 1901 when mother Sarah, by then widowed, and daughters Sarah and Jessie, were boarding in Great Malvern and Elizabeth was visiting Dawlish.  Sarah and probably the unmarried daughters moved to Fairlynch before 1906 and she was advertising in the Exeter & Plymouth Gazette for a cook in February 1907.   

However, tragedy struck in September because Sarah was in the front garden and ran after one of her daughters, who had just left, and she tripped and fell heavily.  She damaged internal organs and died of peritonitis shortly afterwards. An inquest held at Fairlynch by the District Coroner brought in a verdict of accidental death.  Her funeral at St. Peter’s Church was attended by her brother, a nephew and her four daughters.  At least two of the daughters continued to live at Fairlynch and in August 1907 they advertised for a general servant (“country girl preferred”).  The “Misses Bryan” appear in the 1910 Directory but by 1911 Elizabeth & Jessie were living in Notting Hill, so they may have been the pair at Fairlynch in 1907. 

A Mr Guy Bryant had been living with his first and second wife around the corner in Lion House on Fore Street Hill from 1883 till his death in 1914.  He had previously lived in Little Knowle in 1881 as had his father (also Guy), a retired cleric (3).  I have been unable to connect these two families and the fact that the name was similar may just be a coincidence, or there may have been a distant family connection. 

Gerard & Cicely Howell 

The 1911 census shows that Fairlynch was occupied by Mrs Cicely Howell aged 37 born in Hutton Essex, and her sons John Roderick (aged 9) and Hugh Warton (aged 6), plus three servants.  Both children were born in India (Punjab and NW Frontier respectively).  Cicely’s husband was Gerard Charles Lisle Howell, the eldest son of Lieutenant Colonel Horace Howell and in 1911 his father was living as a retired widower at 1, East Terrace. 

Gerard Howell was born in 1876 in the Punjab where his father was in the Punjab Frontier Force of the Indian Army.  He was sent back to be educated at Lancing College and went on to receive a B.A at Christ Church Oxford; he was then appointed to the Indian Civil Service after examination in 1898.  He was an Assistant Commissioner in the NW Frontier District in 1899 and was Assistant Commissioner in Kulu from 1907-1910.  He had married Cicely Johnson in Surat in February 1901(4).  

Gerard became Director of Fisheries in the Punjab and wrote extensively on historical and zoological topics, being elected a Fellow of the Zoological Society. He left the service in 1916 in order to volunteer for service in the First World War.  He did this by joining the Punjab Light Horse as a Lieutenant and was transferred from the Indian Army and appointed temporary 2nd Lieutenant in August 1916 in the Machine Gun Corps (Cavalry).  He rose to become an acting Captain in 1917.  After the war in 1921 he published a major book entitled “Ocean research and the great fisheries” while living in Essex.  He returned to Budleigh Salterton in the 1940s and was at “Red Chimneys” in East Terrace in 1942 and 1943 and at “Englefield” in Stoneborough Lane in 1946.  He died in 1949. 

In 1914 the Fairlynch Booklet mentions two names at the house.  One is “C.M.L. Howell”  recorded in the Inland Revenue Field Book for Budleigh Salterton (5), and I assume this is Cicely, the second is Colonel Unwin. 

Colonel Garton Bouverie Unwin (6) 

He first appears in a Directory entry for Fairlynch in 1914.  He was the son of Henry Unwin and Margaret Louisa Forbes and was born in July 1859.  His father Henry Unwin was in the Bengal Civil Service and had married his wife at Malta when they were both en route back from India in December 1840.  Garton Unwin attended Wellington College (1871-5), and from there he went to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, as a Queen’s India cadet.  

Preference was given to candidates for these cadetships who were sons of “deserving fathers who had served the East India Company or the Crown in India – preference being given to those whose fathers had seen long service or had been killed in action”.  If they passed their examinations cadets had the right of appointment to the Indian Army.  It was usual for the cadet to have a probationary period and in May 1878 Garton joined the Regiment of 8th Foot as a Second Lieutenant and transferred to the 13th Foot, Somerset Light Infantry, the next month.  In the Army List of 1879 he was in the 2nd Battalion Somerset Light Infantry stationed in Madras. He joined the Bengal Staff Corp as a Lieutenant in April 1881.  

In India he was appointed to the 1st Punjab Cavalry where he was the commander of a squadron and promoted to Captain in 1889 and Major in 1898. He served in the Zhob Valley expedition in 1890 and one of his minor exploits was: -  

“On the 30th October, a cavalry party under Captain Unwin1st Punjab Cavalry, sent from Daraban to reconnoitre the mouth ot the Drazand Zam, was fired on by a Shirani picquet, which then withdrew to a sangar on the hill above.  The enemy consisted of some twenty or thirty men from the Uba Khel village of Maidan.  The cavalry were ordered to dismount and dislodge the enemy from their position, which they did, killing two and wounding three without any loss to themselves.  Captain Unwin proceeded some way up the pass, meeting with no further opposition, and then returned to camp at Daraban” (7).  

Further campaigns followed; in 1894-5 he was again in Waziristan (Medal with Clasp), in 1897-8 on the NW Frontier (Medal with Clasp), and again in Waziristan 1901-2 (Clasp), and he compiled a history of actions in 1900-1 in Waziristan (8). 

His final campaign was the Mohmund Expedition in 1908 and below are parts of a dispatch (9) from Major-General Sir James Willcocks published in the London Gazette showing some of Unwin’s involvement in those actions and the conditions they encountered: 

“On the operations of the Mohmand Field Force, and also of the columns which proceeded up the Khyber to disperse the Sufi Sahib's lashkar.”.... “In accordance with orders which I had issued late the previous evening, two columns composed of all the troops at Mutta and Shabkadr, after leaving guards over the camps, marched out at daybreak on 24th April, and after a gallant fight before Mutta and an advance up the Gundab Valley opposite Shabkadr, totally defeated the enemy and drove them headlong over the border and back into the hills from which they never again emerged. 

The left column consisting of one squadron, 8 guns and 650 infantry under command of Colonel Unwin, 21st Cavalry, cleared the enemy from their sangars and followed them up to the vicinity of the village of Hafiz Kor. As the tribesmen, who were in considerable numbers, kept retreating up the broad Gundab Valley with the object of drawing the column into the hills, Colonel Unwin in accordance with his orders, having ascertained the dispositions of the lashkars, retired slowly to Shabkadr. The Seaforth Highlanders, with 250 men of the Warwicks and 28th Punjabis warded off all attacks during this retirement”....“Two squadrons of the 21st Cavalry did excellent work this day; covering the advance and protecting the flanks”... 

“The reconnaissance and general work done by the 21st Cavalry was of a high order, and proved of the greatest value to the Force. The various squadrons were always well handled.”....“the hardships and privations were borne with a cheerfulness which could not be exceeded. The incessant marching under a fiery sun, with only a very limited amount of indifferent water, the choking dust and plagues of flies were all a severe test of endurance by day, whilst at night the men were generally kept awake and at their posts for hours together, owing to the constant fire kept up by the enemy; and which would have proved even more costly than it did but for the labour expended on the entrenchments and which added considerably to the daily work they were called on to perform. I can unhesitatingly say that no troops could have rendered better service in the field.”...“the outbreak of cholera on the Mohmand border, necessitating further readjustments”. 

 Unwin received a D.S.O as well as his campaign medal and clasp after this campaign. 

One of his leisure activities in India was fishing, as evidenced by an article in North Punjab Fishing Club anglers' handbook for 1895 “Fishing near Rajanpur”, by Captain GB Unwin. 

Garton married Katherine Elinor Fanshawe in Christ Church Simla on the 12 Jan 1898.  She had been born in Nagpur in 1875 and her father Arthur Fanshawe was in the Bengal Civil Service. A daughter Louie Joan Unwin was born in Bengal in May 1899 who subsequently married Eric Marten in Amritsar in 1924.  There was a second daughter Nancy Margaret Unwin who married William Mure C.B.E in the St. George’s, Hanover Square, London Registration District in 1921, (she died in 1944). 

Garton retired as a Brevet Colonel and after returning from India he and his wife were living at Fairlynch from 1914.  When war broke out in 1914, Garton joined the Royal First Devon Yeomanry as a temporary Major.  His cavalry experience also made him ideal for use in the Remount Establishment.  In January 1916 he was seconded for duty with a Provisional Brigade Yeomanry Squadron before relinquishing his Territorial Army commission to be posted into the Indian Army Establishment in April.  He was subsequently used in the Headquarters Administrative Department on the Area Quartering Committee from May 1917 to March 1919. 

It is likely that the couple left Fairlynch in 1919 because in April that year the contents of the house, and the house itself, were put up for sale by Whitton & Laing at the Feathers Hotel.  The advertisements in the Exeter & Plymouth Gazette give some valuable insights into it and adjacent properties at that time. It was described as a freehold property in The Parade that was for sale as a whole or in three separate lots. This seems to suggest that all three lots had originally been bought and sold together. The three lots were: 

1.Fairlynch, which was at the time of the sale let to Colonel Unwin for £50. This sold for £875 to Mr P. Wolton (sic) of London.

2.The adjacent dwelling house called “The Glen”, let at the time to Mr J Mears for £25, which achieved a price of £500.

3.An adjoining business premises “Bridge House” on the corner of The Parade and Fore-street Hill which went for £400 but was withdrawn as this was below its reserve price. 

NB. The Glen is now called Glen Cottage, and Bridge House is named Round Corner. 

The Unwins moved from the house some time before 1923 when they were listed at Pin Close, Mansfield Terrace.   Colonel Unwin died on the 4th July 1928 and Katherine continued to live at Pin Close till at least 1947 but that house had changed hands by the next available Directory in 1957.  

Percival Walton 

The Fairlynch Booklet lists Percival Woolton as recorded on a Conveyance for Fairlynch in 1919 and the purchaser is called P. Wolton in the newspaper advert mentioned above.  Margaret Brett has provided me with a photocopy of part of a brochure produced when the house was auctioned in 1966 which mentions a Conveyance on Sale dated 7th March 1921 between Percival Walton and Percy and Emmie Bull.  Which of these spellings of his name is correct is unclear. Whether Percival ever lived in the house, or Colonel Unwin continued to rent it till 1921, is also not known.  

Percy Andrew Bull 

The Fairlynch booklet lists him as living in Fairlynch from 1921-1935 and cites a conveyance and Kelly’s Directories however I believe he was there till December 1943 and his wife possibly longer (see later). 

Percy Bull was born in Brighton in 1857 the son of James Bull who was an Assistant Clerk in the House of Commons and later became Clerk of the Journals.   James Bull and his wife Charlotte Martha Matthews had a large family and Percy grew up in Richmond, Surrey.  He entered the Civil Service and in the 1881 census is recorded as being a Clerk of the Probate Registry.  In 1882 he married Emma Maude Marchant who was from Adelaide, South Australia, and they took up residence in Wimbledon.  In 1886 he followed his father into a job at the House of Commons, becoming a Clerk.  

There were thirty-seven Clerks in 1885 and they were all appointed by Sir Erskine May.  That year there was a report complaining about the cost of these clerks and it was suggested they shouldn’t be appointed but be subjected to open examination.  The London Gazette entry for Percy Bull’s appointment the following year however states that it was “without examination” so presumably the policy hadn’t been implemented or his father had pulled strings! 

The couple were living at 15 Lauriston Road, Wimbledon in 1901 and 1911 and purchased Fairlynch in 1921.  They may however have retained ownership of their house in Wimbledon judging by their final probate records.  They celebrated their Diamond Wedding at Fairlynch in July 1942 but Percy died there in December 1943, and was described in the Probate Register as “of Cumnor, Lauriston Road, Wimbledon”.  Emma died in December 1950 at 28, Lingfield Road, Wimbledon (but was described as “of 15 Lauriston Road”).  Fairlynch had been sold in 1945 to Mrs Violet Cane. 

Colonel E.G.S. & Mrs Violet Cane 

Edward Geoffrey Stayner Cane and his wife occupied the house from 1945 to 1949.  Colonel Cane had been in the Royal Army Medical Corps.  He was born in Teignmouth in May 1886 the son of the Rev. A. G. Cane.  He went to Haileybury College before his medical training at Jesus College Cambridge and St. Bart’s Hospital in London (MRCS, LRCP 1910).  He received his Cambridge Degrees (MA, MB, BCh.) in 1913.  He joined the Army Medical Service in 1910 and was confirmed in the rank of Lieutenant in 1911. The same year he married Violet Irene Roe who had been born in 1885 in Plymouth the daughter of Captain Richard Roe RN.  

During WW1 Captain Cane was sent to Mesopotamia in July 1915 to the 3rd British Army General Hospital in Basra where he became an acting Major.  He was at the Siege of Kut in 1916.  It is not clear if he escaped from Kut; the largely Indian Army garrison was forced to surrender to the Ottoman army and were sent into captivity at Aleppo and, due to ill-treatment, the death rate was high during the confinement, particular for European soldiers.  He was mentioned in dispatches and received a DSO in October 1919 (10).  He retained the brevet of Major until 1921 while on unspecified “special duties”. 

After the war in 1923 he received his substantive promotion to Major, and he and his wife were living near Tidworth Barracks between 1928 and 1930 (11). He was in India from 1932-35 becoming Lieutenant Colonel in 1934.  He was promoted to Colonel in 1938 and was in India during WW2 from 1939 until 1944. During this period he went on retired pay but was re-employed in May 1942 as a Lieutenant Colonel “during the present emergency (12)”.  He finally retired on 12th May 1945 “on account of disability, and was restored to the rank of Colonel (12)”. 

The couple bought Fairlynch in 1945 but re-sold it in 1949 (1, 11).  Telephone records show that they moved to West Terrace (1951-2) before moving to Went House in Coastguard Road (1953-59).  He died at Went House in January 1959 and his wife died in 1972. 

Brigadier P.W. Bliss, C.B.E & Mrs Monica Bliss 

They bought the house in 1949 and lived there until 1964 when their son Phillip became the owner. 

Brigadier Philip Wheeler Bliss was born in Lincoln in 1887 the youngest son of Sir Henry Bliss K.C.I.E. and his first wife Edith.  Sir Henry was a British civil servant of the Indian civil service who served as a member of the Imperial Legislative Council of India from 1890 to 1892 and Madras Legislative Council from 1893 to 1898.  It is likely therefore that Philip spent his early life in India. His mother died at Ootacamund in May 1898 and his father retired from his appointment on the Madras Council the same year (4) and returned to England.  Philip was at Eton College in 1901as a boarder.  From Eton he went to the Royal Military Academy as a Gentleman Cadet then joined the Corp of Engineers as a Second Lieutenant in December 1905.  He was promoted to First Lieutenant in June 1908 (12). 

During WW1 Philip arrived in France in August 1914. As an engineer he was attached to number 177 Tunnelling Company who had the dangerous job of tunnelling under enemy lines to lay explosive charges. He was promoted to Captain in 1915 and Acting Major in 1916; the same year he was mentioned in dispatches, and was again mentioned in 1917 (12).  In June 1916 he was in the Terdeghem area of Northern France in charge of sinking two mine shafts jokingly called “Buckingham Palace” and “Windsor Castle” (13).  Due to the quality of the soil the latter eventually collapsed and had to be abandoned.  

He rose to become “Controller of Mines” with the rank of Acting Lieutenant Colonel.  At the end of the war he reverted to his rank of Captain but was then re-employed as an Acting Major to be an Assistant Director of Engineering Stores. 

In August 1919 he married Monica Hunt at St. Mark’s, Marylebone.  Philip was at Haslar Barracks, Gosport, in 1920.  He was promoted to Major in 1922.  His son Philip F H Bliss was born in 1923 in the Honiton Registration District.  Major Bliss was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1930 and in August of that year was involved in a peace-time exercise which was a practice for the air defence of London, and he commanded a Searchlight Battalion (14).  

After four years as a Regimental Lieutenant Colonel he was placed on the half pay list in June 1934.  A year later now a Colonel, Bliss was appointed to be Deputy Chief Engineer for Eastern Command and in October 1937 he became Assistant Director of Fortifications and Works at the War Office and was living in Chesham Place, London.  As a representative for the War Office he was involved with several committees, notably the Building Research Board when he seems to have been an expert on reinforced concrete amongst other things (15). 

He received the C.B.E prior to November 1942 when he was retained as supernumerary to the army establishment but left on retired pay in July 1943 and was granted the honorary rank of Brigadier.  In November 1945 “having attained the age limit of liability to recall” he ceased to be on the Reserve List (12). 

He and his wife bought Fairlynch in 1949 and owned the house until 1964 when it was conveyed to their son Captain Philip Bliss.  Judging by a letter he wrote to The Listener magazine in 1963 Bliss was a keen card player.  He was also an accomplished carpenter who converted the linhay into a workshop and made a front gate for the garden (since removed). 

Brigadier Bliss died in 1966 in a nursing home in Mere in Wiltshire; the same year, his son sold the house and it was converted to become the Fairlynch Museum which opened to the public in 1967.  Miss Joy Gawne informs me that Monica Bliss moved to Greengables in Westfield Close and became a steward at the newly opened museum.  She donated a fine shawl, her dress from when she was a five-year old, and a doll to the museum, which have subsequently been used in exhibitions.  She died in 1969 at the age of 84.  

Captain  Philip  F. H. Bliss & Mrs Enid J. T. Bliss (nee Davey) 

The couple married in the Westminster Registration District in late 1954. His wife Enid Davey had been born in the Farnham area in 1929.  Unfortunately Captain Bliss’ military career is at present unknown.   Miss Gawne remembers that they had two boys who migrated to Australia and that one became a pilot according to his daughter who visited the Museum more recently.  When Philip sold the house after his father’s death it was advertised in Country Life (16).  After the sale, the family appear to have moved to Clifton Hill in Exeter and then to Chapel Anthony in Tiverton in 1973 (11). 

For anyone interested, the story of the conversion of Fairlynch into a museum has been documented and is in a folder at the museum. 

Compiled & Researched by Roger Lendon, © 2012  

(1) From the booklet about Fairlynch on sale in the Fairlynch museum.

(2) St. Peter’s Church Budleigh Salterton Register.

(3) Directories & Censuses.

(4) Fibis.com

(5) Housed at the National Archives – not checked for accuracy.

(6) Information from: Wellington School Register, Army Lists, Who’s Who, Fibis.com, London Gazette.

(7) Frontier and overseas expeditions from India. Compiled in the intelligence branch division of the chief of the staff army head quarters India in six volumes.  vol. iii. Baluchistan and the first Afghan war. 1910 Calcutta   Superintendent Government Printing, India .

(8) History of the blockards of the Mahsud Waziris in 1900-1901, compiled under the orders of the Quarter Master General in India in the Intelligence Branch by Major G B Unwin. 1904

(9) India Office, August 13, 1908. Army Department Notification, dated 26th June, 1908, publishing a despatch from Major-General Sir James Willcocks, K.C.M.G., C.B., D.S.O., regarding the recent operations on the Mohmand Border, in the Khyber, and in the country of the Mohmands.

(10) Haileybury Roll of Honour

(11) BT telephone records

(12) London Gazette for those dates

(13) Tunnellers: the story of the tunnelling companies, Royal engineers, during the World War by W.       Grant Grieve & Bernard Newman

(14) Article in “Flight” magazine August 15, 1930, by Major F A de.V Robertson

(15) Department of Scientific and Industrial Research – various reports 1935-41

(16) Country Life Volume 139 1966

 

146 BS-B-00058  Biography any