Family and life at Fir Hill

 

His first wife was from a notable Hambledon family. She is not named in his autobiography, nor does he note the date of their marriage. He does tell us that he met his future wife a couple of years after the premature death of his father in 1811 and that she was the widow of a Master of Foxhounds and was living in East Meon. He moved in with her after they married and they lived in East Meon for several years. They then moved to Hill Place in Hambledon. Shortly after 1823 Tom and his wife moved to Swanmore House where he lived

 

‘most happily for some time, until he was so unfortunate as to lose his beloved wife. Her death was sudden and the supposed cause is one too mournful to be dwelt on. Her funeral took place in Hambledon, in which church there are monuments for several of her family. This sad event made Swanmore distasteful to him and he therefore removed to Exton House.’

 

After two years at Exton House he gave up the mastership of the Hambledon Hounds and joined the Craven hunt in 1828.

 

The only entry for burials in Hambledon in the 1820s that fits the dates and likely age of Tom Smith’s first wife is the burial of Mary Smith on 13 June 1825 aged 39. The only entry of a baptism of a Mary in Hambledon 39 years earlier is for Mary Page, daughter of James and Charlotte Page, baptised on 4 December 1785. There are many tombstones for members of the Page family in Hambledon churchyard, which accords with Tom Smith’s comments in his autobiography. Sadly there is no record of their marriage in either the East Meon and Hambledon records.

 

Tom Smith remarried in 1833, to Anna Matilda Denison (1792-1867). The Denison family had large landed estates at Ossington in Northamptonshire. Anna Matilda was one of sixteen children. One of her half-brothers was an MP in Northamptonshire, another half-brother the Speaker of the House of Commons (the presiding officer in the lower house of the UK Parliament), a third the Bishop of Salisbury and a fourth the Archdeacon of Taunton. It seems that she did not have children.

 

In 1851, Thomas and Anna Matilda were living together at Fir Hill, when Tom Smith is described in the census of that year as ‘Possessor of Fir Hill and hounds’. In addition, there were three servants (Anne Budford, Thomas Wild, Thomas Poulder) and a lady’s maid (Elizabeth Forks). 

 

Anna Matilda died at Fir Hill on 30 January 1867. Her will of 6 June 1844 received probate on 6 July 1867 and her estate was valued at £8,000 (£581,000/£4,450,000/£13,300,000). She left Tom Smith a life interest in £7,503 of 3% stock.

 

By 1870, he had married a third time: to Penelope, from County Tyrone, Ireland. The 1871 census describes Tom Smith as ‘Independent Gent’. As well as Penelope Smith, there are Ellen Blakeley, a visitor, Robert Wells, a footman, Jane Bunday, a cook, and Hannah Tuckland, a housemaid. Tom Smith does not seem to have had any children from any of his three marriages.

 

In the 1871 census, the two previous lines refer to a groom and a stableman: John Harrodine and George Thomas. As these two are shown by the two sets of double oblique lines to have been sharing accommodation that is separate from both Fir Hill and Halfway House, the earlier detailed dwelling, they are likely to have been living on the first floor of the stable block. The 1861 census, however, shows that there was a groom living as a boarder at Halfway House. The 1851 census shows an uninhabited house next to Fir Hill, which might be the stable block.