Christina Elizabeth Frances Bevan

Last week a follower on twitter sent me an intriguing message – ‘here’s something to pass on to all your Bevan clan’ - he wrote with a link to a feature in a national daily newspaper.

The model in an enigmatic set of photographs taken by Mervyn O'Gorman, thought to be the earliest examples of colour photography, had been identified. Previously known only as Christina it was thought that the young girl in the red bathing suit was O'Gorman's daughter.

However, Christina's true identity came to light when Stephen Riddle, a retired technician, contacted Colin Harding, curator at the National Media Museum with a set of stereoscopic slides by O’Gorman.

The 16 year old model was revealed to be Christina Elizabeth Frances Bevan, the elder daughter of Edwyn Robert Bevan, a classical scholar, archaeologist and philosopher, and his wife, the Honourable Mary Waldegrave.

Mervyn O’Gorman trained first as an electrical engineer before becoming an aircraft engineer and Superintendent of the Royal Aircraft Factory but in his spare time he enjoyed taking photographs and was a pioneer of the Autochrome process.

At the time of the 1911 census, two years before these photographs were taken, Edwyn lived in a substantial property called Sun House on the Chelsea Embankment with his wife and two daughters employing a butler, housekeeper, lady's maid, cook, housemaid and a kitchenmaid.

It was a far cry from the lifestyle of Sylvanus Bevan, 80 and his wife Ann, 79, who had retired from farming and moved to The Sycamores, just a stones throw away from the home where Sylvanus grew up at Bay View Farm, Overton, Gower.

Yet the strawberry blonde 16 year old and the old man and his wife share a common ancestry, tracing their family lines back to Jenkin-ap-Evan and his wife Elizabeth After who lived in Rhossili on the Gower peninsula.

Jenkins' son William, known as William Bevan the Quaker, moved to Swanzey where he practiced his faith and spent two years in prison for his refusal to pay Church Rates and Tithes.Descendants of William founded the famous Plough Court Pharmacy, bought into Henry Thrales Anchor Brewery and married into the Barclay family of bankers.

Christina could trace her ancestry back through her grandfather Robert Cooper Lee Bevan to another Silvanus Bevan and his parents Timothy Bevan and Elizabeth Barclay, back to Jenkin-ap-Evan, the ancestor who Anglicised the Welsh name.

Back home in Gower, Jenkin's other son Francis married and moved into Oxwich Castle where the Bevan family farmed for more than two hundred years, travelling down numerous Francis's and Sylvanus's until another Sylvanus married his cousin Ann in 1855.

The photographs O'Gorman took in 1913 are the subject of an exhibition entitled Drawn by Light on show at the National Media Museum, Bradford until June 21, 2015.

When my twitter follower urged me to pass on the news of Christina's identity I little suspected I would find a link to the ethereal girl in red and the Bevan family from Gower.

Robert Polhill Bevan

Silvanus and Ann's family ancestry can be traced back to Jenkins Bevan and his wife Elizabeth After who married at St Mary's Church, Rhossili c1620. And so can founding member of the Camden Town Group of artists Robert Polhill Bevan.

Silvanus and Ann descend from Jenkins' son Francis Bevan who remained in Gower farming, albeit prosperously. Robert's ancestor was Francis' brother William Bevan who moved to Swansea where he refused to pay church rates and tithes and was imprisoned for two years for his Quaker beliefs.

From this line comes the descent of some very entrepreneurial Bevan family members including Silvanus, founder of the Plough Court Pharmacy. Robert Polhill Bevan's great great grandfather Timothy was partner and brother of Silvanus and it is Timothy who connects the Bevan family to new business opportunities with his two influential marriages. The first one was to Elizabeth, daughter of linendraper and banker David Barclay by whom he had three surviving children, Silvanus, Timothy and Priscilla. His second marriage was to Hannah Gurney, daughter of the philanthropic Gurney Quaker family from Norwich of whom the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry nee Gurney was a descendant.

Born in Hove on August 5, 1865 Robert Polhill Bevan was the son of Richard Alexander Bevan and Laura Maria Polhill. He studied art at the Westminster School of Art, later moving to the Academie Julian in Paris.

Described as a modest man, many of his works were unsold at the time of his death in 1925 and remained in the possession of his family. In 1961 his son and daughter presented a number of his paintings, drawings and lithographs and 27 of his sketchbooks to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Patrick Baty, British historical paint consultant, is Robert's great grandson.

A Small Southdown Farm

A Sale at Tattersalls

Back of the Granary, Poland.

Patrick Baty

So what was the rest of the family up to?

Take time out to read about another branch of the Bevan family.

The Anchor Brewery once stood on what is now the site of the reconstructed Globe Theatre. With its closure in 1981 a 365 year history of brewing was brought to an end. Courage, the then owners, transferred their operations to a new brewery at Worton Grange, Reading.

The brewery was established by James Monger the elder in 1616, and by 1666 his successor Josiah Child was supplying the navy with beer and had thus adopted the familiar sign of the Anchor as an early trade mark.

But it was under the ownership of Ralph Thrale, Member of Parliament for Southwark between 1741 and 1747 that the brewery expanded, producing 46,100 barrels in 1750 and with net assets of £72,000. Upon his death Ralph's son Henry inherited the brewery and continued its expansion and redevelopment. He built Borough House within the nine acre brewery site at Southwark with the less than salubrious address Deadman's Place. Samuel Johnson, the 17th century lexicographer and family friend of the Thrales, occupied an appartment at Borough House.

The Anchor Brewery survived declining fortunes during times of war and only narrowly avoided being burnt down by the anti-papists revolutionaries in the Gordon Riots of 1780 but with Henry Thrale's death in 1781 and no sons to follow him into the business his widow Hester had no option but to sell the brewery. Barclay Quaker family and former manager John Perkins, whose wife Amelia Bevan was the widow of Timothy Bevan, bought the business for £135,000. Silvanus (married to Louisa Kendall Bevan) became a sleeping partner in the firm, paying a quarter of the total purchase price. Samuel Johnson was the executor of his old friend Henry Thrale's will and upon the sale of the brewery to Barclay & Perkins, commented: "We are not to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dream of avarice."

Barclay, Perkins & Co., became something of a national institution. Dickens referred to the establishment in his novel David Copperfield first published in monthly instalments during 1849-50. The irrepressibly optimistic Micawber family consider the brewery trade to be ideal employment for Mr. Micawber - 'I will not conceal from you, my dear Mr. Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'that I have long felt the Brewing business to be particularly adapted to Mr. Micawber. Look at Barclay and Perkins! Look at Truman, Hanbury, and Buxton! It is on that extensive footing that Mr. Micawber, I know from my own knowledge of him, is calculated to shine; and the profits, I am told, are e-NOR-MOUS! But if Mr. Micawber cannot get into those firms - which decline to answer his letters, when he offers his services even in an inferior capacity - what is the use of dwelling upon that idea? None. I may have a conviction that Mr. Micawber's manners -'

Barclay, Perkins & Co., became the best known brewer of export stout with one of their regular customers being the Empress of Russia and at the beginning of the 19th century they were rated as one of the principle porter breweries, producing 264,405 barrels in 1810-11 and 270,259 in 1811-12.

By 1815 Barclay, Perkins & Co had become the leading brewery in London, receiving visitors from both home and abroad, including a German prince who in the summer of 1827 was recorded as saying about the building 'the vastness of its dimensions renders almost romantic' Peter Ackroyd - London - The Biography.


Image of the Anchor brewery dated 1850 http://www.thrale.com/image/anchor_brewery_1850

Silvanus Bevan 1743-1830, banker and brewer http://bevan.rth.org.uk/Family-history/pictures-gallery/S%20Bevan%20II%201.jpg/view