Geneaological research notes relating to the Boldero (Barnard) Families

Small collection of information and photocopies relating to the Boldero (Barnard) Families

The Barnard family were Hull merchants who can trace the line back to William and Elizabeth Barnard in the late sixteenth century. Their son, William Barnard, became mayor of Hull and died in 1614. Of his seven sons, two of them also served time as mayor of Hull, including the sixth son, Henry Barnard (d.1661), through whose direct descendants Leuyns Boldero Barnard was eventually destined to succeed (Hall, A history of South Cave, p.27).

Henry Barnard, who was married to Frances Spurrier, had a son and a daughter. His daughter, Frances, married William Thompson MP of Humbleton and his son, Edward Barnard, who lived at North Dalton, was recorder of Hull and Beverley from the early 1660s until 1686, the year he died. He and his wife Margaret, who was also from the Thompson family, had at least seven children, the eldest of whom, Edward Barnard (d.1714), had five children some of whom died without issue and some of whom had only female heirs. The second son, William Barnard (d.1718) married Mary Perrot, the daughter of a York alderman, but they had no children. The third son, Henry Barnard (will at U DDBA/14/3), married Eleanor Lowther, but he also died, in 1769 at the age of 94, without issue (Hall, A history of South Cave, p.28).

From the death of Henry Barnard in 1769 the family inheritance moved laterally. His sister Margaret, who had died in 1753, had married twice, the second time to William Leuyns of Eske. Two of their daughters had died without issue, but their third daughter, Mary, who had died in the same year as her mother, 1753, had married Edward Gale Boldero (d.1761) of Cornborough and had four sons and three daughters. Their eldest son, Leuyns Boldero (b.1708), inherited from his great uncle in 1769 and changed his name to Leuyns Boldero Barnard. A wealthy and successful lawyer practising in his wife's home town of Pontefract, Leuyns Boldero had begun buying land in the East Riding before his uncle died. In 1737 he bought land in Walkington outside Beverley and in 1748 he bought the East Hall manor of South Cave where the family estates became centred. He continued to expand these estates, buying Faxfleet in 1750. He began a rigourous programme of enclosure (Hall, A history of South Cave, pp.28-9).

Leuyns Boldero (Barnard) married Ann Popplewell and had two sons and two daughters. The eldest son, Henry Boldero Barnard (b.1755), succeeded to his father's estates on his death in 1783. The younger son settled in Walkington. Henry Boldero Barnard was educated at Harrow and Trinity College Cambridge and followed his father into law, becoming a member of Lincoln's Inn. Immediately his father died, Henry Boldero Barnard began expanding the estates further, buying the West Hall estate of South Cave in 1784 together with the rectory and advowson of South Cave and he took up where his father had left off in pursuing an enclosure policy that was not always very popular. In 1787 he built the gothic style Cave Castle, where he then lived with his wife, Sarah Elizabeth Gee, coheiress of Roger Gee of Bishop Burton, and their four children - Henry Gee Barnard (1789-1858), Charles Leuyns Barnard (1790-1815), Edward William Barnard (1791-1828) and Sarah Ellinor Barnard (1810-1852). The second son was killed at Waterloo. Edward William Barnard was vicar of South Cave and a minor poet (Hall, A history of South Cave, pp.28-9; Alec-Smith, 'Cave Castle', pp.53-4).

Henry Gee Barnard succeeded his father on his death in 1815. He was married to Elizabeth Mary Barnard but they had no children. A number of papers in the collection relate to this generation. Henry Gee Barnard was a captain in the Scot's Grey and after he died in 1858 his wife remained at Cave Castle until her own death in 1872. She was actively involved in local education and various charities. When she died the estate passed to her nephew, Charles Edward Gee Boldero Barnard (b.1822), the son of Edward William Barnard and his wife, Philadelphia Wrangham. He immediately began restoration of Cave Castle including putting in gas. He married Sophia Letitia Barnard (see entry for U DDCV[2]/54), the daughter of Andrew Godfrey Stuart of Lisdhu, County Tyrone, the younger son of the Earl of Castlestuart. Charles Edward Gee Boldero Barnard's two surviving sisters went to London to live together where they wrote wills together in 1882 and died in the same year as each other in 1893 (Hall, A history of South Cave, pp.29-30; Alec-Smith, 'Cave Castle', pp.55-6).

Charles Edward Gee Boldero Barnard and Sophia Letitia Barnard had three children: Sophia Isabel who was born and died on 14 January 1867, a son who was born and died on 25 April 1868 and Ursula Mary Florence who was born on 4 July 1869. Charles Barnard died in 1894 and Sophia Letitia Barnard died in 1910. She left her estate in the hands of trustees for her sole surviving daughter, Ursula, who lived at Cave Castle with her mother until that time. Ursula Barnard went on living there with a relative, Miss Stuart, but moved to Bournemouth in 1925, trying to sell the South Cave estate at that time. It eventually sold in 1938 when she herself died, the last in the Barnard line. The trustees sold all the art works, furniture and objets d'arts, just leaving Cave Castle to transfer into new hands. It has since had several owners and is now a golf club (Hall, A history of South Cave, pp.30, 34-5, 37; Alec-Smith, 'Cave Castle', pp.55-60).

More than perhaps any other East Riding landed family the Barnards transformed the rural landscape into which they bought. Cave Castle is a determinedly unique piece of architecture being baronial on a grand scale. In the late 1790s Henry Boldero Barnard left his mark by designing and building a Market Hall in the Market Place with a school above it. A systematic programme of rebuilding in one half of South Cave turned the village there into a mock-Tudor, almost model-village with very distinctive half-timbered houses which still exist today (Pevsner & Neave, York and the East Riding, pp.700-1).

Access will be granted to any accredited reader

Donated by Joy and Charles Boldero, Dereham, 8 December 1998

Papers of the Barnard family of South Cave [Ref U DDBA]

Papers of Mrs Sophia Letitia Barnard of South Cave [see U DDCV2/54/1-99 and U DP/202]

Other repositories:

East Riding of Yorkshire Archives and Records Service, Beverley [Ref DDX1282/44/6]