Lord Nelson The Westcountry legacy of a national hero
Tomorrow, October 21, is Trafalgar Day, the annual commemoration of the great sea battle at which Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets during the Napoleonic Wars. Jonathan Rowe here looks at Nelson’s connections to Bristo
TOMORROW is the 215th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, in which more than 500 men from Bristol fought. Probably the most famous naval victory of the Napoleonic wars, it is forever associated with Britain’s greatest naval hero Lord Horatio Nelson (1758–1805), who was killed on board his ship HMS Victory by a French sniper during the battle.
Born the son of a country parson in Norfolk, Horatio Nelson was one of 11 children, three of whom died in infancy.
Nelson was a national hero even before his death, and all over the country streets and pubs are named after him.
In Bristol, we have Nelson Street in the centre of the city and there were once three Lord Nelson pubs and a Nelson’s Arms. The house Nelson’s Glory, at 87 School Road, Brislington, also perpetuates his name and has the famous message ‘Let Every Englishman Do His Duty’, which Nelson had signalled before the battle of Trafalgar, on the front of the house.
London, of course, has Trafalgar Square and the famous statue and column standing nearly 170ft high. It was constructed between 1840 and 1843, the statue at the top being sculpted by Downend-born Edward Hodges Baily (1788-1867).
Romantic poet Robert Southey (1774-1843), born in Wine Street, Bristol, wrote an early biography of Nelson, The Life of Horatio, Lord Viscount Nelson, in 1813. Captain (later Vice Admiral) Thomas Hardy (1769-1839), to whom Nelson’s famous dying words – “Kiss me, Hardy” – were addressed, was a former pupil of Crewkerne Grammar School, Somerset.
Nelson joined the Navy in 1771, aged 12, serving under his maternal uncle, Captain Maurice Suckling. While in Nicaragua in 1780, he succumbed to malaria and returned to England, and in 1781 he visited Bath for a cure with his father.
Rev Edmund Nelson (1722-1802) lodged at 9 Pierrepoint Street, with Nelson staying with apothecary Dr Joseph Spry at Number 2, where a plaque was put up in 1900. Nelson’s treatment consisted of massage, bathing and ‘taking the waters’ under the guidance of Dr Francis Woodward, of 8 Gay Street.
This was the first of several visits by Nelson to Bath, but two of his sisters had lived in the city earlier. Aged 18 in 1773, Susanna Nelson (1755-1813) was an apprentice at Watson’s milliners, where she worked as a shop assistant until her marriage to Thomas Bolton in 1780.
Ann Nelson (1760-1783) sadly died, aged 23, in Bath at lodgings in New King Street and is buried in St Swithin’s churchyard .
Nelson wrote to a friend: “She died at Bath after a nine days illness, occasioned by coming out of a ballroom immediately after dancing.”
Another sister, Kate (Catherine) Nelson (1767–1842), married explorer and former employee of the East India Company, George Matcham, at St Swithin’s, Walcot, Bath, in February 1787.
Nelson made further visits to Bath in 1784 and 1788, again staying at 2 Pierrepoint Street, and two more in 1797 and 1798. After this last visit in January 1798, Nelson described Bath women as “the handsomest ladies” in a letter to a friend written shortly after he had lost his right arm at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
“Was I a bachelor,” he continued, “I would not answer for being tempted, but as I am possessed of everything which is valuable in a wife, I have no occasion to think beyond a pretty face.”
Nelson visited the old Bath Theatre Royal in Orchard Street and the Assembly Rooms, and was made a
Freeman of Bath in 1799. During his 1798 visit, he lived at 10-11 Abbey Green, now The Crystal Palace pub.
While in Nevis in the West Indies, Nelson met Frances (Fanny) Nisbet (1761-1831), his future wife, the widowed niece of the president of Nevis, John Richardson Herbert. Fanny Nisbet’s late father, William Woolward, had been chief justice of the island. The couple were married on March 11, 1787, at Montpelier, her uncle’s estate on Nevis, with the Duke of Clarence (the future King William IV) giving the bride away.
The only relative of the groom present was Nelson’s cousin, Midshipman Maurice Suckling. Nelson and Fanny returned to England in early 1788 and stayed in Bath and also visited Fanny’s Bristol relations, the Tobins, a Redland family who were involved in the slave trade.
James Tobin (1736-1817) owned a sugar plantation on the island of Nevis and in 1784 came to Bristol, where he died in 1817 and was buried in St Andrew’s churchyard, Clifton.
He was a member of Bristol West India Association and an advocate and apologist for slavery and wrote pro-slavery pamphlets.
James’ son, George Tobin (17681838), was a naval officer who served with Captain William Bligh of Mutiny on the Bounty fame. George’s brother, John Tobin (17701804), was a playwright and former pupil of Bristol Grammar School.
Fanny was also a friend of John Pretor Pinney (1740-1818), another well-known slave owner and merchant, who built what is now The Georgian House at 7 Great George Street. From 1781 to 1783, Fanny was guardian to Pinney’s children while he was living in Nevis and she was living with her first husband, Dr Josiah Nisbet, in the village of Stratford-sub-Castle, now a suburb of Salisbury. At the time of Pinney’s death, he was one of the richest Bristolians of his day with a fortune worth £17 million in today’s money.
Nelson and Fanny often visited Bath and she was staying there at the time of the Battle of Trafalgar in October 1805.
In 1794, Fanny rented 17 New King Street, where Nelson stayed on his return from action at Tenerife to be nursed by his wife following the amputation of his arm. Their last visit as a couple was in 1798 when they stayed with Nelson’s father Rev Edmund Nelson at 9 Pierrepoint Street.
Frances continued to visit Bath with her invalid father-in-law and the two became very close. Rev Nelson had been spending winters in Bath since 1770, staying in Pierrepoint Street and also renting 17 New King Street. He wrote that Bath was his “favourite place of warmth, ease and quietude”. He died in the city in 1802, aged 80. Bath has three streets named in connection with Nelson – Nelson Place West, Nile Street (after the 1798 naval battle) and Norfolk Crescent.
Nelson is also remembered for his relationship with his mistress
Lady Emma Hamilton (1765-1815).
Born Amy Lyon in Cheshire, she changed her name to Hart and, aged 12, was a nursemaid to the children of tenor and musician, Thomas Linley (1733-1795) in London.
Linley had become became manager of Bath Assembly Rooms in 1766 and became musical director when the New Assembly Rooms opened in 1771. The family lived in Abbey Street, 1 Pierrepoint Place and 11 Royal Crescent.
In 1774, Thomas Linley became manager and a major shareholder in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London, later with his son-in-law, playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Mrs Linley became the theatre’s wardrobe mistress. As well as being a maid in the Linley household, Emma also worked as a maid and dresser at Drury Lane and is believed to have been a dresser for the first production of Sheridan’s The School for Scandal in 1777.
She was also maid to Bristolborn Mary ‘Perdita’ Robinson (1757–1800), celebrity actress and sometime mistress of the Prince of Wales (later George IV).
After time as a dancer at Dr James Graham’s Temple of Health in Westminster (a sort of 18th century sex clinic), dancing at a high-class Piccadilly brothel (she was still only 14), having an illegitimate daughter and becoming model and muse to the artist George Romney, Emma met and married diplomat Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803), having previously been his nephew’s mistress.
Sir William was British envoy to Naples and shortly before the marriage in London in 1791, the couple visited Bath. Nelson met Emma two years later in Naples and they soon began an affair. Returning to England, Sir William, Emma (now pregnant by Nelson) and Nelson spent Christmas 1800 at Fonthill Abbey, the Gothic folly at Fonthill Gifford, Wiltshire, home of the notorious bisexual novelist and collector William Beckford (17601844), who was related to Sir William.
Nelson and Emma were frequent visitors to Cricket House, Cricket St
Thomas, near Chard, Somerset, when it was the home of Admiral Alexander Hood. After his death, the estate passed to his great nephew Samuel Hood (1788-1869), who married Nelson’s niece, Charlotte Nelson (1787-1873), in 1810.
The house stayed in the family until 1898 and is well known as the filming location for the comedy TV series To The Manor Born, and the grounds became the Crinkly Bottom theme park for Noel Edmonds’ TV show Noel’s House Party in the early 1990s.
Emma Hamilton visited Bath in 1809 and 1814 and outlived Nelson by ten years. She became an alcoholic and died in poverty in Calais in 1815. After her death, her daughter by Nelson, Horatia Nelson (1801-1881), lived with Nelson’s brothers-in-law George Matcham for two years in Sussex, and then with widowed Thomas Bolton as his housekeeper until her marriage to Rev Philip Ward in 1822.
The eldest of their ten children was Rev Horatio Nelson Ward, who was rector of Radstock at St Nicholas church from 1857 until his death in 1888. Nelson Ward Drive in Radstock was named after him in 2014. Nelson’s great grandson, Hugh Herbert Edward Nelson Ward (1863-1953), is buried in Bath Abbey churchyard.
Even before his death Nelson was a national hero and many children were named after him. Horatio Nelson Mereweather was christened in St Luke’s church, Brislington in August 1800. He appears to have married in Bengal, India, in 1820; there is no record of death but it would seem likely he died in India. The family had lived in the Somerset village since the early 17th century and there was a Mereweathers field on the site of what is now the Flowers Hill area, off Bath Road. Merryweathers flats, in Glenarm Road, perpetuate the name.
Henry Horatio Giles (1798-1871) was born on board HMS Bellerophon on August 4, 1798, just three days after Nelson’s victory at the
Battle of the Nile at Aboukir Bay. His father, Henry Giles, was a coxswain on HMS Bellerophon and his mother Nellie Giles was a nurse and assistant surgeon on the ship. She received a naval pension of £17 a year for life and died in Portsea, Hampshire, in 1860, aged 89.
Surrounded by heaps of slain and wounded during the battle, she nursed the latter “tenderly, undismayed by the horrors of the scene” and gave birth supposedly three days later, although some records give Henry’s birth date as February 14, 1799.
Either way, Nelly was pregnant during the Battle of the Nile and reputedly Nelson was godfather to her son. Baby Henry Horatio grew up to be butler to Edward Hobson of Stoke Park, Stoke Gifford in the 1850s and was later proprietor for 20 years of The Saracen’s Head at Temple Gate, Bristol, opposite Temple Meads station where he died in 1871. The pub was lost in the Blitz.
Thanks to www. nelsonandhisworld.co.uk and Wayne Brine for help with research for this article.