Georgina Frances Verschoyle

On the perimeter of the cemetery in Section E is the grave of Georgina Frances Verschoyle.

Georgina was born in Dublin in about 1831, the second child and eldest daughter of Robert Verschoyle and his wife Catherine Curtis. Robert and Catherine were married by licence on August 20, 1824 at the parish church of Bathwick St. Mary, Somerset. By the time of the 1841 census they were living in Eaton Square that exclusive housing development once known as a ‘City of Palaces’ owned by the Grosvenor family and laid out by T & L Cubitt in 1827.

The Irish Verschoyle family were of Dutch origin. Some sources say they were Huguenots who fled to Ireland to escape religious persecution others that they had travelled to Ireland with William of Orange.

Georgina’s grandfather was the Rev James Verschoyle, Bishop of Killala, described as reforming and innovative and the last bishop to hold the title in that diocese. Her father Robert was a wealthy landowner with property in Ireland although he lived most of his adult life in England.

Transcription errors in the spelling of the unfamiliar Verschoyle name make it difficult to track Georgina through the online census returns, but by 1881 we find her living at 1 Victoria Cottages, Tormoham, Devon in a lodging house run by Jane Gardner.

In 1891 she was living with her youngest sister Augusta and her husband Alfred M. Drummond, a retired Army Captain, in Fitzjohns Avenue, Hampstead.

So how did Georgina come to be living in Swindon for the last years of her life? For a possible connection we have to turn to her brother, Henry William Verschoyle.

Captain Henry William Verschoyle served in the Grenadier Guards in the Eastern campaign of 1854-55, probably better known today as the Crimea War. Henry saw action in the battles of Alma, Balaklava and Inkermann where he carried the regimental colours. He fought at the siege and the fall of Sebastopol and was wounded in the trenches on September 5, 1855. Captain Verschoyle was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on January 15, 1861. He died on August 21, 1870.

But how does this explain Georgina’s presence in Swindon more than twenty years later?

In 1856 Henry William Verschoyle married Lucy Clarissa Goddard in Christ Church, Swindon. Lucy Clarissa was the daughter of Ambrose Goddard, Lord of the Manor, and his wife Jessie Dorothea Lethbridge. In 1851 Lucy Clarissa was living at The Lawn, the Goddard family home, with her father and three sisters, Emma, Julia and Adelaide.

Lucy Clarissa and Henry William Verschoyle went on to have a family of four daughters and a son and lived at 6 Wilton Crescent, Belgrave Square, so were near neighbours of Henry’s mother Catherine in Eaton Square.

But even this doesn’t answer the question of how Georgina spent the last years of her life in Swindon.

Perhaps Lucy Clarissa had returned to stay at the Goddard family home in the 1890s but would that have been encouragement enough for Georgina to move to Swindon, and if so why didn’t she stay in The Lawn, it would have been plenty big enough?

The Lawn, Swindon published courtesy of Local Studies, Swindon Central Library.

My research into the life and times of Georgina Frances Verschoyle continues, but for the time being this is all I can discover about her.

The facts …

Death announcement

Verschoyle On the 20th inst at New Swindon, Georgina Frances Verschoyle aged 64.

Reading Mercury Saturday December 30, 1893.

Radnor Street Cemetery Burial Registers

Verschoyle Georgina F. 64 years 6 Queen Ann Buildings burial 23rd December, 1893 plot E8474

Probate

Georgina Frances Verschoyle of 4 Queen Anne’s buildings, Farringdon Street, New Swindon Wilts Spinster died 20 December 1893 Probate London 19 November to Arthur Robert Verschoyle esquire Effects £6560 3s 2d

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