RevHS
Also showing the MacAdam family
Map
of Ireland (southern section)
"November 13th, 84 years old, Rev. Henry Stannard, DD, Banhadlog, Llanidloes"
From the Welsh newspaper 'Y Drych' ('The mirror')
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"Lt. Col. Henry Stannard of the Grange, Ballyraggett and Ballydowell, Co. Kilkenny, died May 1st 1904 aged 58 "
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"Francis Edie Stannard Dowdall of The Grange, Ballyraggett"
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"Sir Lawrence Dowdall, C.B., .... 1936"
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"In loving memory of Major William Stannard, the dearly loved husband of Christina Jane Stannard, born 12th July 1850, died 14th March 1904"
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"In memory of Gladys, our dear mastiff, aged 14 years, died 18th April 1896"
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"In memory of Little Val, fox terrier, aged 4 years, died 29th July 1896"
St George Hanover Square Register Office, London 1886
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Henry was the youngest son of John Lanigan Stannard (see page on the Stannards of Kilkenny), probably born at the family home at The Grange, Ballyragget. Like his eldest brother William, Henry attended Trinity College Dublin, obtaining an MA in 1832.1 (There he almost certainly would have known James and Maurice Farrell, brothers of Sarah Farrell, who also took their MAs in 1832 and also became clergymen. See the page on the Farrell family.) Henry took holy orders in the Church of Ireland, and in 1833 is mentioned in a magazine as the Rev. Henry Stannard of Ballydowell.2 Ballydowell is a small townland in the parish of Ballinamara,3 near Freshford, Co. Kilkenny. Henry owned some land there,4 and may have held a clerical post at the church pictured above,5,6 but this is conjecture. Many of the locations mentioned here are shown on the map of Ireland (southern section).
Henry married Helena Maria Riddick, daughter of George Riddick of Drogheda, in 1845,7 and they had two sons Henry and William George (in the will of Eleanor Stannard,8 widow of Henry's brother William, these two nephews are referred to by name).
From 1845 to 1868 Henry lived in Dublin, at various addresses in the city centre and inner suburbs. It is not certain whether he held a clerical post at a church there.i The Irish Church Directory for 1868 lists him as living in Rathmines in the south-west suburbs,9 but he is probably listed because he was an Elector of Trinity College Dublin (see below), rather than a vicar or curate. His first son Henry was born in about 1846, probably while Henry and Helena lived at 61 Harcourt Street.10 They then moved to Wainsford House, Kimmage Road in Harold's Cross,11 where William George was born in 1850. (In the census for 1891 William gives his birthplace as 'Wainsford Vicarage', but that does not actually prove Henry was a vicar there.) After that (1858) the family lived in North Strand, north-east of the centre.12 Helena Maria died in 1865 and is buried at St Kevin's graveyard in Camden Row.i A year later Henry received the titles of Bachelor of Law and Doctor of Law from Trinity, according to page 40 of the Dublin University Calendar.13 Page 449 of the same publication lists him as living at 113 Leinster Road, and an Elector of the University, possibly by virtue of his doctoral status.13 Thom's Irish Almanac for the following year has him at 4 Bloomfield Avenue14 - and then there is a long gap where he is not to be found in any directories or records.
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Photo: Olwyn M. Jenkins
At some stage during the period between 1868 and 1890 he moved to Wales, where he lived in Montgomeryshire (part of the present-day county of Powys), at Banhadlog in the parish of Llandinam, near Newtown. Banhadlog (incorrectly spelt Bankadlog in the probate record) is a tiny hamlet15 with a group of buildings including a chapel (built in 1826 to serve the parishioners for whom the parish church at Llandinam was too far away),16 a graveyard and a few outlying farms and houses. Henry died there in 1890. His gravestone records the date of death as 10th November, and the burial record, dated 13th November, states that Henry lived at, and was buried at, Banhadlog. The burial notice from a local newspaper, recording that Henry was a Doctor of Divinity, is shown below left. (I am very grateful to Annie Owen of the Powys Family Historical Society for pointing me in the direction of much of this information.) The year after he died, the census for England and Wales records that his son William George and daughter-in-law Christina Jane (here just given as Jane) were living at Banhadlog, presumably to care for Henry in his last years, or handle funeral arrangements.
The precise circumstances surrounding the Rev. Henry's move from Dublin to rural Wales still need to be established, but it seems that at some stage prior to 1882, he, in the words of a law report dealing with later ramifications of the case, "became a lunatic".17,ii At first his brother Robert Rogers Stannard was appointed the 'Committee' (presumably a kind of guardian) for poor Henry, working through solicitor Mr. W.H. Brownrigg. This gentleman died in 1882 and was replaced by Messrs. Hamilton and Craig as solicitors. They were retained when in 1889 Robert (then 84) was replaced as Committee by the Rev. Henry's son Henry. Where the Rev. Henry lived during that time is not clear, but it seems the land he owned (presumably in Co. Kilkenny - see below) was sold; the proceeds went to his sons, and Henry lived there as a tenant. Presumably his move to Wales was in some way connected with his affliction, but exactly when and why that took place is also not clear.
Henry had inherited a considerable amount of land (some 1,241 acres) from his father John Lanigan Stannard,18 including in Britain Street, Dublin, and at Ballydowell (mentioned in the memoirs of the Kilkenny Hunt19 as Stannard's farm, Stannard's plantations etc.). Full details are given by the Griffith's Valuations, a comprehensive land valuation survey carried out between 1847 and 1864 in order to determine liability to pay the Poor Law rate.4
Henry's first son Henry was born in 1846 in Dublin and became a surgeon in the Army Medical Service, reaching the rank of lieutenant-colonel in 1894.20 He retired in 1896 as a brigade surgeon.21 He lived for a time at St Patrick's Street in Kilkenny, but presumably travelled with his regiment - the BMJ notice of his retirement mentions he took part in the Zhob Valley Expedition (in the extreme north-east of what is now Pakistan) in 1884. In 1900, already in retirement, he married Elizabeth Frances Eyre (née Edie), but they had no children. (Elizabeth Frances's first husband was James Eyre, with whose family Ellen Stannard née Armit was also related by marriage.) It seems they lived at The Grange - various Kilkenny court reports mention him in connection with tenants' roofs, dog licences and so on.22 He died in 1904, six weeks after his brother William George, leaving The Grange to his wife Elizabeth Frances. She resided there for several decades afterwards, marrying for the third time in 1914, to Sir Lawrence C.E.D. Dowdall, and died in 1962 at the proud age of 101. Lieut.-Col. Henry, his widow Frances and Sir Lawrence are all buried in the Stannard burial plot behind the house, along with Clare Bancroft, the distant relative of Lady Frances who inherited the estate (see page on The Grange for further details).
The second son of the Rev. Henry Stannard was born in 1850 in Dublin, at Wainsford House (or 'Vicarage' - see above) where his father was living. He joined the Royal Irish Regiment, and is listed as Captain William Stannard of the Kilkenny Fusiliers in Hart's army list of 1879 and Bassett's directory for Kilkenny of 1884.23,24 In the latter the regiment is called the 'Auxiliary Police, Kilkenny Militia', and also includes a certain Lieut. George F. Stannard25 (from a wealthy Irish family, born Guernsey 1860, emigrated to Alberta, Canada and then Montana, USA, died Kalispell MT, 1937, possibly a distant relation of William). William was Hon. Sec. of the Kilkenny Hunt in 1886 (referred to as 'Captain Stannard' in the Hunt memoir19 and named as 'William Stannard, Hon. Sec.' in a Kilkenny court report22 of that year, also relating to unlicensed dogs). He possibly inherited some of his father's land at Ballydowell,22 but see also the note below regarding bankruptcy.
William George possibly met his future wife Christina Jane Wilson through her father, who was also an army surgeon (see below). They had a son, William Lanagan, born in Kilkenny in 1875 when Christina was only 15, and they married 11 years later in London. (The marriage certificate is the only time that William's middle name of George appears.) During this time William and Christina probably lived at The Grange, as evidenced by a Kilkenny court report22 of 1884 relating to unlicenced dogs. Their young son however went to live in England with Christina's sister Margaret (see the page on William Lanagan Stannard).
Probably in the late 1880s William and Christina went to Wales to care for William's father, or to sort out funeral arrangements, or dispose of property - at any rate, they are both listed in the census for 1891 as living at Banhadlog near Llandinam, where Henry last lived and was buried. They returned to Ireland soon afterwards: in 1893 William appeared in court with his brother Henry to evict a tenant from a property in Rathmoyle. (At that time William was living at 99 Upper Rathmines [Road] in Dublin, near where his late father had lived.) His last Kilkenny court appearance was 1901, to apply for a dog license(!), at which time he was living in Rathvinden Cottage, Leighlinbridge, Co. Carlow, with Christina Jane. He died in Leighlinbridge three years later, and is buried in the Stannard family graveyard behind The Grange, his gravestone confirming the year of his birth as 1850. Also in the garden of The Grange are the graves of two dogs, Gladys and Little Val (photos left), who died within a few weeks of each other in 1896, and who probably belonged to William.
It would seem that at some stage (in the 1890s?) William went bankrupt, as this is mentioned in the Irish law reports dealing with the estate and condition of his father.17,ii Further details are not yet known.
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The wife of William George Stannard, Christina Jane, was born in Edinburgh in 1860, the eighth child of Thomas Wilson. Thomas was from Fife and worked as a 'medical botanist' (effectively an apothecary?) in Candlemaker Row,26 where he and his wife Mary (née Ostler, also from Fife) brought up four sons and six daughters, as shown in the census reports of 1851 and 1861. Thomas later worked as an army surgeon (helpfully mentioned on the marriage certificate - shown left - of his daughter), which possibly brought him into the orbit of William G. Stannard of the Kilkenny Militia, and William's brother Henry, also an army surgeon. Thomas probably died in the late 1880s: the marriage certificate describes him as 'retired' (rather than 'deceased'), but in 1891 his wife Mary is listed as a widow.
The census reports of Thomas's eldest daughter Margaret help to piece together the Wilson family: she lived first in Edinburgh with her husband George Hart, her sister [Christina] Jane and their mother Mary. Then by 1881, Margaret was living with Arthur Edwin Ganderton, who was in the paint business (they married much later, in 1901). The census report for that year has them living in Cottington near Hull, with young son Arthur, Margaret's mother Mary - and Christina Jane's son William Lanagan Stannard, then aged six. Some time after that William Lanagan went to live in St Helens, and Margaret and family moved to Hornsea on the coast, joined briefly by her brother Thomas, and next door to their sister Mary Parker Wilson, who worked as a nurse and masseuse. Margaret and her husband both died in 1915.
Apart from Margaret, Mary and Christina Jane, very little is known about the children of Thomas Wilson. The name is common enough in Scotland to make it difficult to trace people through the censuses or other registers.
As suggested above, Christina Jane, my great-great-grandmother, perhaps met William George Stannard through her army surgeon father. And perhaps Christina's age at the time their son William Lanagan was born (only 15) was the reason he was sent to England to live with her sister. Christina and William eventually married in London in 1886 and lived in Leighlinbridge, Ireland. After William's death in 1904, Christina Jane moved first to Norfolk and then to Brighton, where her sister Mary also lived. Mary died in 1937 (leaving her estate to Christina), Christina Jane in 1946.
Somewhat oddly, Christina's will makes no mention of any of the Stannard family: her estate of some £4,000 goes to a niece Mary in London (presumably the daughter of John or Thomas Wilson), rather than to any of her Stannard grandchildren. The reasons for this will probably never be known - a certain air of mystery seems to belong to the Stannard family.
