Hillside was a substantial house perched on a slope just off what is now Seymour Park Road in Marlow. It was said to have been built originally as two homes. Any joining together of the two must have happened very early because in all historic references to Hillside I find it mentioned as one single habitation only. The house was far from any other homes and enjoyed magnificent views of the town all the way to the River Thames.
In 1873 Reynold Alleyne Clement and his wife Louisa rented Hillside at a cost of £75 a year. He was an adjutant to the Bucks Volunteers and by 1876 a member of Queen Victoria's bodyguard. In 1877 just as Reynold's lease was about to expire the house was put up for sale along with various cottages in Marlow by the unknown owner of the lot. In the sale description Hillside was said to comprise 11 bedrooms and dressing rooms, a w.c, three reception rooms, a kitchen, housekeeper's room, butler's pantry, and cellars. Outside there was a garden, 2 coach houses, stabling for 3 horses, a harness room and a paddock. Later records suggest that the land adjoining the house came to a total of 9 acres.
After he left Hillside Reynold became clerk of the course at Ascot racecourse. The family lived then at Sunninghill.
The successful purchaser of Hillside was Mr Thomas Whalley Vowe. He had previously been a district magistrate in South Africa. Thomas would enjoy his new home for no more than a few months before he was killed in a hunting accident near his former home of Hallaton in Leicestershire. His executors emptied the house and sold up.
Next in was the Bedford family- John, Elizabeth, their children and a governess Ada Browne. They had moved from London. For some reason the house was then said to have one less bedroom than previously.
At the time of their residency some of the land next to the house was farmed by Marlow fishmonger /fruiterer Alfred Allam. Alfred dumped "night soil" (human waste) on his land. This was not an unusual thing to do in Victorian England as fertiliser and of course as a natural form of waste disposal. Instead of spreading out the night soil and digging it in, he had heaped it up near the boundary of his land and Hillside and left it in the open air. John Bedford feared that this was a health hazard for his children. He won an injunction from the High Court preventing Allum from adding to the waste already there. As concerning the heaps already present, John sought an order from the local council ordering their removal. This he failed to obtain on a legal technicality - despite him telling the court that his eight year old boy Bertie had been sick and feverish of late. This he believed was as a result of the contamination of the neighborhood air by Allum's waste. Feverish illness was common at the time so that isn't certain. No doctor presented medical evidence as to the cause of Bertie's illness in court, which is surprising as you would think the Bedford's would have used such testimony as a trump card in the case had it been available. This likely suggests that it was the Bedfords themselves rather than a doctor that had formed the theory of Bertie's troubles being as a result of the dung in a neighbouring field. No one who lived in the countryside was far from dung heaps, or dung in fields. The Bedfords themselves kept chickens, geese and pigs on their own property and may have farmed more widely in the area too. Nevertheless in an era when the belief that bad smells alone could cause sickness or death was near universal you would have every sympathy for a parent trying to protect their child. The Bedfords were at the time grieving from the loss of their five year old daughter Maggie earlier that year. The anxiety they must have felt at another child's illness in the family would have been very painful.
Alfred Allam was quite a "character". More about him including an apparent haunting by a poltergeist (!) and other brushes with the law can be found in my post here.
He died in 1888 which likely brought an end to the Bedford's difficulties with his use of the field. They chose to stay with their children at Hillside until 1895.
Another daughter of the family Eva at the age of 16-17 found herself caught up in one of the biggest scandals of the Victorian age. Hers was a walk on part but the courage it took to appear at the trial and the embarrassment she would have felt cannot be underestimated. In what became known as the Cleveland Street Scandal scores of the most powerful men in England including Prince Albert Victor second in line to the throne were found to have visited a male b*othel in the above street. All of those who worked at the establishment at night were boys who worked for the Post Office by day. Some may have been trafficked into this position. The clients of the house because of their privilege were given notice to leave the country so as to avoid arrest. Various witnesses were also paid to leave the country. Eva witnessed as far as I can gather simply the presence of a certain person at a certain time in the house of a lawyer later prosecuted for conspiracy for facilitating the removal of relevant witnesses to foreign lands. Eva had been taken to the house on a visit by a Mrs Samuelson. Any connection however slight to these events risked being socially disastrous for Eva. How her protective parents must have cringed to know that her name and address would appear in almost every local and national paper in the land plus plenty of foreign ones too. Their judgement on allowing their daughter to be placed in contact with anyone not above suspicion would also be called into question. There is no suggestion that Eva was aware of the goings on in Cleveland Street.
Lucy Wood lived at Hillside by 1905 until at least 1911. With her was her sisters Isabella (who died in 1909) and Susanna. All three elderly women were unmarried and of private means. Also living in the house (as opposed to in a separate lodge) was the sisters' coachman Alfred Hickman, his wife Emily and their three children. At the time the house was described as having 17 rooms not including any service rooms like pantries and sculleries. The sisters were described as very kind to all those around them. Isabella left a legacy in her will to Marlow hospital. They moved out by 1915 to Remnantz in West Street.
On the south side of the house was a pit used to dig out gravel for use by the local council amongst others. The council seems to have owned the pit. When supplies started to dry up in the early 1920s a new pit was dug also near Hillside. In 1924 geologists on a field trip to Marlow investigated both pits and found a Paleolithic worked flint flake in one of them.
In the late 1930s (at least) Estelle Devereux who described herself as an artist and writer made Hillside her home.
The house had disappeared by the 1960s, probably earlier.
Written and researched by Charlotte Day.
To find posts about other named houses in Marlow look at the "Specific Shops, Streets, Farms etc" option on the menu. For all mentions of any person on this blog see the A-Z Person Index.
©Marlow Ancestors. You are very welcome to use my research for family or local history purposes with credit to this blog.
Selected Sources:
Jubilee Celebration: Handbook to the Loan Exhibition Held in The Town Hall, Aylesbury, 5th and 6th, July, 1905. United Kingdom, n.p, 1905.
Proceedings of the Geologists' Association. Netherlands, Geologists' Association, London., 1924.
1881 census of England and Wales, transcribed from microfilm by me.
Kelly's Directory of Buckinghamshire etc. 1883, 1911, 1915 and 1920 editions. Published by Kelly's Directories Limited.
Bucks Herald 21 jul 1877. Bucks Herald mar 23 1878. Bucks Advertiser and Aylesbury News 3rd January 1884. Both newspapers held in the British Library Archives and accessed via the BNA.
Berkshire Chronicle 27th September 1884.
Theal, George McCall. History of South Africa from the Foundation of the European Settlement to Our Own Times 1834-1854. United Kingdom, S. Sonnenschein & Company, 1893.
Wikipedia article= Reynold Clement.
Rictor Norton (Ed) "The Cleveland Street Scandal" Homosexuality in Nineteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook, 28 July 2020, amended 10 Aug. 2020 <http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/1889clev.htm>
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