William Alfred Stidston of Scobbiscombe. A Devon Farmer’s Life in the South Hams c.1810/1811 - 23rd December 1883 

Early life and family roots William Stidston was born at the turn of a new century, in the winter of 1810–1811, in the rolling countryside of the South Hams in Devon. Most compiled sources place his birth on 17 December 1810 at Lower Hatch Farm in the parish of Loddiswell, a village lying on the west side of the River Avon, north of Kingsbridge. The district was already long settled, with traces of Roman and medieval occupation on the surrounding hills, and by William’s day it formed part of a quietly prosperous agricultural belt of mixed farming, orchards and pasture. Into this landscape William was born as the son of James Stidston and Ann, née Wakeham, members of a farming family already tied to the farms of Loddiswell, Kingston and neighbouring parishes. The Stidstons were not newcomers to the district. Earlier gravestones in Kingston churchyard commemorate members of the family in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, while later genealogical reconstructions link William with siblings such as John Wakeham Stidston, born a few years later at Scobbiscombe.

The recurrence of family names – James, John, Ann, Jane – across nearby parishes gives a sense of an extended kin network rooted in the fields and farmsteads of the South Hams. William grew up against this background of close-knit rural society, in which land, family and parish identity were deeply intertwined. As the son of a farmer, his childhood would have been shaped by the rhythm of agricultural work. Loddiswell and Kingston sat within what historians describe as a mixed-farming zone: farms combined arable crops with the breeding and fattening of cattle, sheep and pigs. Across Devon in the nineteenth century, and particularly in the South Hams, farmers sought to improve productivity by careful manuring and by integrating their farms into coastal trade. Sea sand and lime, brought up the estuaries by barge and mixed with farmyard manure, were spread on the fields to maintain fertility.

The boy who would later control hundreds of acres at Scobbiscombe thus learned his craft in a region where farming was both traditional and quietly innovative, drawing on coastal resources, new ideas and long experience. Marriage, Hatch Farm and the making of a farmer By the late 1830s William had taken a significant step towards establishing his own household and position. He married Alice Cole of Bigbury, a parish just to the west of the River Avon and south of Loddiswell, and the couple set up home at Hatch in Loddiswell. The 1841 census captures them there: William, recorded as a 30-year-old farmer; Alice, aged 25; their young daughter Anne, just two years old; and an infant son, William, four months old. Already the household included several live-in servants – a house servant and a group of young male and female servants engaged in farm work and domestic duties. This early snapshot shows a young couple moving quickly into the ranks of employers and landholders, running a working farm that demanded round-the-clock labour. In these years William was still in his early thirties, raising small children and managing tenants, servants and seasonal labourers.

The farm at Hatch, though smaller than the holding he would later command, was large enough to need a resident workforce and to sustain a growing family. It is likely that he combined traditional mixed farming – cereals such as wheat, barley and oats, together with root crops and permanent pasture – with the breeding or feeding of cattle and sheep, in line with the agricultural patterns of the South Hams at the time. Scobbiscombe: a great South Hams farm During the 1840s William’s ambitions and responsibilities expanded. By 1851 he had moved from Hatch to Scobbiscombe, a substantial farm close to the coast between Kingston and the Erme estuary. Here, the census describes him as a 40-year-old farmer of 526 acres, living with his wife Alice, then aged 34, their children Anne, William Alfred, Walter John, James Henry and Richard, and an impressive staff of servants and farm labourers. A holding of more than five hundred acres placed William among the more substantial farmers of the region, a man of capital, skill and standing in the local community. Scobbiscombe itself occupied a landscape with deep historical roots. Later archaeological surveys have noted medieval or post-medieval buildings in the vicinity and have identified the nearby site of a Napoleonic-era signal station, part of the chain of defences watching the approaches to Plymouth during the wars with France. To the south and east the land falls away towards the Erme estuary and the sea, where barges once dredged sea sand for manure and small vessels carried grain, timber, lime and other cargoes. Scobbiscombe was thus both a working farm and part of a wider coastal landscape shaped by war, trade and centuries of cultivation.

The details of William’s farming methods are not recorded in the surviving documents, but their scale allows some reasonable inferences. Nineteenth-century studies of Devon agriculture emphasise that the South Hams was a region of “high farming,” in which larger farmers invested in drainage, manuring and improved stock. Fields were dressed with sea sand and lime, cattle were fed on carefully grown fodder crops, and the farmyard was organised to conserve and reuse dung and liquid manure. On a farm of more than 500 acres, with access to coastal trade at the Erme and Avon, it is likely that William combined arable fields, rich pasture and rough grazing in a complex rotation, employing specialist labourers and farm boys to manage the seasonal peaks of ploughing, sowing, haymaking and harvest. Family life, loss and continuity The prosperity of Scobbiscombe did not spare the Stidston family from the sorrows common in Victorian rural life. William and Alice raised a large family, but several of their children died young. A gravestone in Kingston churchyard commemorates Richard Cole, their son, who died in 1848 at the age of three years and four months; another remembers infant children of William and his second wife, underlining how fragile childhood could be even in a well-off farming household. The surviving children, however, carried the family name and connections far beyond Devon, with some later emigrating, others becoming farmers, agents or marrying into neighbouring families.

In about 1853 tragedy struck when Alice herself died in her mid-thirties. The Kingston gravestone survey associates an 1853 Kingsbridge death registration with her, and the churchyard inscription remembers “Alice, the wife of William Stidston,” who died aged 36. At this point William was a widower with several children still under age and the management of a large farm to sustain. Like many widowed farmers of his time, he did not remain single for long. A second marriage: the Hellens–Lowton connection Later in the 1850s William married again, this time to Elizabeth Sowton Hellens, from the Cockington and Paignton area to the east of the South Hams. The 1861 census shows them together at Scobbiscombe, where William, now 50, is still recorded as a farmer of 526 acres, employing six labourers and four boys. Alongside their own children – Charles, Ernest Samuel and the infant Alice Marian – the household includes Elizabeth’s sister Mary Hellins and her nephew Albert Lowton, both born in the Torbay region. This new marriage thus bound Scobbiscombe into a wider web of family ties reaching across South Devon, linking coastal Cockington and Paignton with the rural parishes of Kingston and Loddiswell. The blended Stidston–Hellens household is striking for its size and complexity. In addition to William and Elizabeth, their children and Elizabeth’s relatives, the farm supported a nurse, house servants and several young male farm servants. Boys as young as eleven and twelve are recorded in the census as “farm servants” or “indoor and farm” workers, learning their trade under the eye of William and his senior men. The farmhouse at Scobbiscombe was not only a family home but a centre of employment, training and social life, its routines structuring the days of dozens of people.

Children of the two marriages The line of William’s descendants is long, and only its main branches can be sketched here. By his first wife, Alice, William had at least the following children who survived into childhood: Anne, born about 1838 in Bigbury; William Alfred, born about 1841 at Loddiswell, later emigrating to California; Walter John, born about 1843; James Henry, born about 1847; Richard, born about 1849; and Richard Cole, born around early 1845 and commemorated on the Kingston gravestone as having died aged three years and four months in 1848. By his second wife, Elizabeth, William had a further group of children, including Charles, Ernest Samuel, Alice Marian (or Marion), Albert Edward, Kate, Edith and two short-lived infants, John Hellins and Edward. Later records show several of these children remaining in farming or allied occupations, some staying close to Kingston, others moving further afield. Shipping, the Erme and the wider economy One intriguing glimpse into William’s economic life beyond the farm appears in the Kingston gravestone and census survey, which notes that he owned eight shares in a vessel named the Erme.

The master of the vessel, William King, held twelve shares. Small local ships of this kind were the backbone of coastal trade in the early and mid-nineteenth century, carrying agricultural produce, lime, coal, timber and general cargo between the South Devon estuaries and larger ports. The estuaries of the Avon and the Erme, not far from Scobbiscombe, were busy working waterways. Historical studies of the area describe barges dredging sea sand from the bar at the river mouth and landing it on the banks, where it was mixed with mud and dung to produce a powerful manure. Other vessels brought in limestone for burning in local kilns, supplying lime for the fields. By holding shares in the Erme, William not only invested capital in a profitable enterprise but also helped ensure reliable transport for the heavy materials his large farm required. The relationship between land and sea was thus more than scenic: it was economic and practical, integral to the “high farming” of the South Hams. Later years: from farmer to landowner As the decades passed, census entries chart the evolution of William’s role from hands-on farmer to something closer to a rural gentleman or landowner. In 1871 he is recorded at Kingston farmhouse as a 60-year-old landowner, still living with Elizabeth and several of their younger children, supported by domestic servants.

He was no longer described chiefly in terms of acreage and numbers of labourers employed, but in terms of ownership and status. Yet he remained tied to the land. In 1881, two years before his death, William appears once again as a farmer in Kingston, aged about 70, with Elizabeth and several of their adult or near-adult children, including Ernest, Alice, Edward, Kate and Edith. A live-in servant continues to attest both to their social position and to the ongoing work associated with farming and household management. These later years coincided with a period of change and uncertainty in British agriculture. From the mid-1870s, falling grain prices, increased foreign competition and shifting economic conditions produced what historians have called the Great Agricultural Depression. Devon, with its emphasis on mixed and pastoral farming, was somewhat less exposed than the great arable counties of eastern England, but the challenges would still have been felt. On a farm and estate the size of William’s, decisions about cropping, stock, investment and labour would have demanded judgment and experience. That he remained in place as farmer and landowner into his seventies suggests both resilience and adaptability. Death, memorial and resting-place On 23 December 1883 William died at Kingston, aged about 73. He was buried in the churchyard of St James the Less, the parish church which had watched over his family and neighbours for generations. His slate gravestone bears a simple but affectionate inscription and stands among those of other farming families, labourers, craftsmen and seafaring men and women, forming a stone record of Kingston’s nineteenth-century community. Nearby stones commemorate his first wife, Alice, and their child Richard Cole, as well as the infants John Hellins and Edward, sons of William and Elizabeth.

Together they evoke not only the prosperity of Scobbiscombe and Kingston farmhouse but also the losses and tenderness woven through their story. Reputation and significance While no surviving source proclaims William as a celebrity beyond his district, the evidence allows us to see him as one of the notable farmers of the South Hams in his day. A farm of 526 acres worked across successive decades; a household employing numerous servants and labourers; an investment in coastal shipping; and a position as landowner in later life – all these mark him as a man whose decisions helped shape the local economy, landscape and society. His life illustrates a pattern typical of the best-established West Country farmers of the nineteenth century. Born into a local farming family, he took on progressively larger responsibilities, built up a major holding at Scobbiscombe, married into kin networks that broadened his connections across the region, and raised children who would go on to farm, emigrate and marry into other families. He participated in the mixed-farming economy of the South Hams, which integrated arable, livestock and coastal resources to sustain a relatively dense rural population.

Through his shipping shares, he linked the inland fields to the estuarine trade, helping to maintain the flow of manure, lime and produce that underpinned agricultural “high farming.” Landscape and legacy Today, Scobbiscombe and its surrounding fields remain part of a cherished South Devon landscape of rolling pasture, high hedgebanks and glimpses of the sea. Archaeological and landscape studies have noted the persistence of medieval and post-medieval field patterns, farmsteads and lanes in the area, even as farm buildings have been altered or rebuilt. Within that longer history, William’s tenure represents one significant chapter: a period in which the farm functioned as a large, active mixed holding, employing labourers, raising a family, investing in shipping and participating in a wider economy of estuarine trade and agricultural improvement. His gravestone in Kingston churchyard and the traces of his family in parish records, census returns and local memory keep his name alive as one of the men who worked, shaped and cared for this part of Devon.