The Trollope family

AN AUSTRALIAN connection has emerged for one of our most eminent philanthropists, William Trollope, whose generosity marked a new and important phase in local education for Bourne as well as founding a hospital, or almshouses, for poor people.

The Trollope family settled in this area from County Durham in the mid-16th century by which time they were in prosperous circumstances, the most prominent of them being Thomas Trollope who is first mentioned as a landowner at Cawthorpe near Bourne in 1543 where he was steadily improving his position by trade as well as farming and giving him considerable lands, farms and houses in Bourne, Cawthorpe and Dyke.

William Trollope was born into this prosperous family in 1562, the son of Mathew Trollope, and once he reached adulthood began to run his family’s estates which had by then extended to Thurlby and Dyke. He became one of the Adventurers, the name given to those wealthy men who were prepared to invest capital in helping to drain the large tracts of swampy land in the area and thus grew even richer on the proceeds from the arable farmland this produced.

By the time of his death in 1637, the family fortune had considerably increased and this was reflected in the terms of his will. William had married three times and fathered eight children, a daughter and seven sons, and those who survived continued to run the family’s affairs. Meanwhile, he made very specific provisions both for himself and for the town of Bourne. Two of his wives had died before him and he left instructions that he was to be buried near to them in the churchyard although no sign of their graves remains.

Other bequests were altruistic, the most important being an endowment of £30 a year to maintain "an honest, learned and godly schoolmaster" in a school built by himself. He stipulated that it should be a free grammar school incorporated by royal charter and to be called "the Free Grammar School of King Charles in the town of Bourne and the county of Lincoln, the foundation of William Trollope, gentleman". It was erected in the grounds of the Abbey Church where it can still be seen, although largely rebuilt since his day.

The present school building dates from 1678 and was attended by the sons of the town’s leading families with the vicar and his curates serving as masters and lead ultimately to the foundation of Bourne Grammar School, but the building was closed in 1904 and never re-opened for its original purpose, being eventually replaced by a secondary school that became the present grammar school in 1921. The building has been used for various purposes since and is currently administered by the Bourne Educational Foundation but has been closed since 2003 when it was declared unsafe and although now up for sale, its future remains uncertain.

The second important bequest was to help the underprivileged because Trollope also left sufficient money to found almshouses by giving the sum of £33 for the maintenance of "six poor aged men" of the parish on a site near the church in South Street and now known as the Tudor Cottages. A stone tablet on the front suggests that they were built in 1636 but this is misleading and most likely date from the late 18th or early 19th century, constructed on the foundations of the original building and using much of the materials from the previous properties known as the Trollope Bedehouses but still providing a useful community service today.

Now a most interesting connection with the Trollope family has surfaced with an email from Jenny Elliston in Australia, who writes that this was the maiden name of her maternal grandmother, being descended directly from William Trollope. Her branch of the family moved to London during the 17th century where Thomas Trollope, William’s great great grandson, worked as a merchant in the London port wine trade. His son, the Rev Arthur Trollope, clergyman and schoolmaster, married Sarah Wales, daughter of William and Mary Wales which brings us to the leap from England to Australia through the explorer and navigator Captain James Cook. During his second voyage to Australia aboard HMS Resolution from 1772-75, he took with him a team of experts including a mathematician and astronomer, William Wales, a Fellow of the Royal Society which had commissioned the exploration. As the new continent was opened up, emigrants flocked there to start new lives, among them William Trollope, son of Arthur and Sarah and also a clergyman and schoolmaster, who sailed for Australia in 1849 as cabin passengers aboard the 638-ton sailing ship John Munn with his wife and five of his children.

Unlike his illustrious ancestor, William Trollope appears to have been extremely self-righteous and bad tempered, arguing with everyone and making few friends. He spent much of the voyage trying to convert the passengers below decks and there was continual friction over poor provisions and drunken and riotous behaviour. On arrival in Melbourne he quarrelled with the bishop and accused him of being wicked, libellous and vindictive and eventually moved to Tasmania where he settled in Green Ponds, now Kempton, and became the rector and opened a small private school but soon became disliked by his parishioners. He died there 1868, aged 65, and is buried in the churchyard and despite his unpopularity, there is a memorial to him in the church.

Ironically, he has become a literary curiosity in Australia because his shipboard diary giving an account of life aboard the John Munn during the voyage from England has survived and is now in the National Library of Australia in Canberra. Jenny, who has contacted me from Glen Waverley, Victoria, is descended from William’s son, Edward, and his daughter was her grandmother, and her quest for more information has now switched her search to the old country where she is trying to add more names to her family tree through the Bourne web site and I am now busy helping provide more information about our own William Trollope and his many relatives.