The Mapplebeck Family - Further Connections

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E-mail from Charles Tilbury 2018

What little I do know about them is based on what Valentine told me, namely that your Claye great-grandmother, Annie (1847-1882) - eldest sister of my greatgrandfather - married William Batty Mapplebeck, in about 1870. Their daughter was your grandmother (Agnes) Jane.

She had three siblings: 

- Her sister Ethel made an unfortunate marriage to one William Hobart Bird ("for some reason he was very proud of the Hobart"), by all accounts he gave her a pretty rough time, so much so that she threw herself onto a railway line in (I think) 1918. Valentine said that one of the few occasions he saw his mother cry was when she heard that news. Gallingly, they had no children, so Bird kept all Ethel's money, which I believe passed to his own children or stepchildren: somehow I believe there was a connection between them and Kim Philby.

- William Harold Mapplebeck, an accountant (?), who had several children, some of whom emigrated to Canada, as well as a son Tony, who was vicar of Mevagissey.
- There was also a brother George, who was put away on account of severe mental illness, and died in obscurity (I believe) in the late 1890s. 

E-mail from Andrew Rose January 2016

Your blog is great fun to read and most interesting. I note the many references to Stockbridge, such a delightful town. The splendid Victorian photo of a shooting party, including 'J Faithfull, keeper', exhibited in the bar of the Grosvenor Hotel, is etched in the memory.

I've been looking into links with my great-uncle's family. He was Gilbert Wilkes [1867-1948], younger son of a wealthy Birmingham manufacturer of the same name who had two brothers, John and Thomas Wilkes. Their company, John Wilkes & Sons, founded in 1824, produced high quality metal products, including the fine copper wire (3000 miles) required for various Atlantic telegraph cable projects in the 1850s and '60s. The firm prospered, but - as was so often the case - the younger generation preferred to lead lives of leisure, rather than enduring the hard graft of the rolling mill. Great-uncle Gil, as my father drily observed, was 'a stranger to any form of work', preferring to hunt, fish, shoot and sail, idle pursuits
encouraged by his sister's marriage into the Yorkshire gentry (her son, George Calverley-Rudston was a contemporary of Winston Churchill at Harrow).

This brings me to the Mapplebeck connection. Edward Mapplebeck [1845-1937], elder brother (I think) of William Batty and Howard, married Sarah, daughter of John Wilkes, the elder brother of Gilbert senior, and so joined the family business. Edward eventually became MD of 'John Wilkes, Sons & Mapplebeck', whose other directors included James Cartland, egregious grandfather of Barbara. Edward was a keen shot and for some years rented Croxall Manor in Staffordshire.

Edward and Sarah had three sons, of whom the youngest, Gordon Whitfield Mapplebeck, was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge (my alma mater, too). He became a stockbroker, was commissioned into the North Staffs Regiment, and attained the rank of Captain. Gordon was was killed in France on 30 July 1917 and his name is recorded on the war memorial in the college ante-chapel.

Howard Mapplebeck, as you will know, married Mary Wilkes, who was a daughter of Thomas Wilkes, youngest of the three Wilkes brothers. He died in 1867 and is buried at Packwood in Warwickshire, not far from Chadwick Manor - now in flats - the enormous neo-Jacobean confection built for Gilbert senior in 1875.

That's about it. I'm in touch with elderly cousins in BC and Australia, who prompted me to investigate these matters, and, after googling 'Mapplebeck', found your site. Incidentally, I'd love to have met Valentine Lawford, luminary from a period which has always fascinated me and is the backdrop to my own writing.

Yours sincerely
Andrew Rose
28 Trafalgar Court
Farnham, Surrey GU9 7QE


E-mail from Andrew Rose Jan 2016

Thank you so much for information about the Mapplebecks, not least the further possible connection with Kim Philby via Hobart Bird. The unusual Mapplebeck surname caught my eye when researching the Wilkes family (with whom my cousins in BC (Salt Spring Island) and Australia are connected), but I didn't know a huge amount about them. How splendid to have known Valentine. I'm currently researching a new book project, which will take me to the Churchill Archive later this year and I 'll certainly take the chance to see the diaries then. I've used Churchill several times - they're my favourite archive, with such helpful staff.

Herry, please forgive my unsolicited and rambling original email, but - as mentioned - I much enjoyed perusing your website, which is duly bookmarked for future reference.

E-mail from Charles Tilbury to Andrew Rose: April 2016

William Hobart Bird, prior to marrying Ethel Mapplebeck, was married to another lady (name not supplied), by whom he had a daughter Gladys (alias "Betty"!), who herself was twice married: first to Stuart Menteith, and then to Gen. Harry Duncan, who was a brother of the grandmother of Kim Philby. So it is so obscure as probably to be of no interest. Personally I am not sorry that there is no blood connection with Philby!


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