The Lowthers in Retirement

AFTER IAN LOWTHER'S RETIREMENT from full-time Arbitration in 1999 Ann & Ian first undertook a world trip in 2001, visiting Canada, USA, Tahiti, New Zealand, and Singapore.  Our planned visit to Australia in 2002 was to see Brisbane, Sydney, Hobart, Melbourne, Ayers Rock and Perth, and then Cape Town on the way home, as part of this trip. Unfortunately this did not take place due to the excessive heat prevailing at that time.

At the same time we have increasingly become involved in Genealogical research. In consequence we have not only visited Family Record Centres in Yorkshire, Northampton, Cambridge, Norwich, Woking and London, but also visited New Zealand again in 2003/4 and 2006. Since then Ian's study of the genealogy of the Villars Lowther families has continued unabated. Much valuable information was in 2008 sourced through the Norwich Record Centre.  Moreover also in 2008 a correspondent through this website has furnished valuable information concerning a senior but parallel branch of the Lowther family in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, with common ancestors in the Gunton Lowther marriage in Cambridge early in the nineteenth century.  Recently, over Christmas 2008, 1911census.co.uk, through findmypast.com, invited Ian to take part in the Beta testing of its new 1911 Census of England site that was officially launched on 13th January 2009. Most counties are now online. Whilst testing this new site Ian elicited information more valuable than pearls, as they say, concerning his own father.  A previous gap filled happily, Ian is glad to report.

Ann's May family origins have been traced to the Bedale district in North Yorkshire in the late seventeenth Century.  For many years they farmed at Hope, near Burneston, just south of Bedale.  Great-Grandfather, Henry Benjamin May, was a stalwart member of the Royal Horticultural Society.   He was a Council Member for many years and was also one of the founders and early promoters of the RHS garden at Wisley in Surrey.   H B May and his sons operated horticultural Nurseries at Upper Edmonton, London; and Chingford, Essex. There were nearly 50 acres under glass.  Henry May's speciality was exotic fernery.  His son Robert emigrated to Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1908 and eventually created a successful nursery specialising in tomatoes.  His grandson Warwick, who died in 2005, became a large-scale potato farmer in Darfield, Canterbury, and west of Christchurch.  Ann's Paternal Family - the Villars - has proved difficult to trace earlier than the 1840s.  Their origin remains a mystery, although they are believed to have been Swiss.  A distant ancestor was Henry Spicer, an eminent portrait miniaturist and friend of Sir Joshua Reynolds.  Henry Spicer was born in Reepham, Norfolk.  Another ancestor of Ann was James Hardy, an early Victorian artist of some distinction.

Ian’s maternal family in New Zealand, the Bennetts, are descended from George Edward Bennett, an orphan, who sailed from London in 1851 aboard the barque “Victory” for Auckland.  From the late eighteenth century, his father and grandfather were gardeners in Middlesex. In late 2009 a Bennett correspondent through this website, a native of New Zealand living in Auckland at Titirangi, gave us valuable information concerning George Edward Bennett’s childhood and his second marriage to Annie Lymburn, from whom this correspondent is descended. Yet more gaps eliminated, thanks to the kindness of the Titirangi correspondent. George’s second son by his first wife Ann, Gomer Edwards Bennett, was a surgical bootmaker until, due to ill health, he retired to the then country outside Auckland and became a dairy farmer and milk roundsman around Mount Eden, from whence came his daughter Mary Ann Bennett Lowther, Ian's late Mother. 

Ian's paternal family, the Lowthers, have been traced to Oundle in Northamptonshire where, in the mid eighteenth century, the family were in business as Plumbers and Glaziers. In those days a plumber would be engaged to supply or repair a lead sheet roof to a church or to any building that required such material, together with lead gutters and downpipes. The plumber would also manufacture and install the universal lead-light windows. This was achieved by using lead cames holding together the diamond shaped glass panes. Internal plumbing was not adopted generally before the cholera epidemics in congested urban areas ruled out the use of wells as a water supply. Water was then pumped through the streets from designated reservoirs. Thus the community standpipe and internal home tap became established. From these early beginnings in roughly the mid nineteenth century grew the plumbing industry as we know it today.

Other interests of Ian remain reading, writing, more popular and tuneful classical music (latest enjoyment is André Rieu, the Dutch virtuoso violinist and his Johann Strauss Orchestra), surfing the web, genealogy, keeping in contact with our numerous relatives in New Zealand, whom we discovered during our 2001/2 tours of both North and South Islands, travel and serious cookery.  In this latter regard Ian is content to view and learn from the sidelines.  Cookery should be fun. So wipe that frown off your face, smile and get cooking!

My family tree is accessible through Ancestry.co.uk under the title “Lowther Family Tree - Northampton Branch 1750”. So there is ample opportunity for relatives to keep in contact and to delve into past family history. It is always worthwhile and certainly usually rewarding to discover something new and intriguing. If you do so, however, do, please, let me know of your interest by emailing me on ian.lowther@lowthergroup.co.uk. Thank you.

Lowther More about Lowther The Villars Lowther Family The Lonsdale Story  The Lowthers in Retirement

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