Any links to Sir Thomas Slade? [closed]

Question

While looking for pretty much anybody with my last name, I came across Sir Thomas Slade (1703/4-1771), who designed the HMS Victory, Admiral Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar (and several of the other ships in Nelson's fleet). He stuck me as a pretty interesting guy, related or not, so I put up a profile for him in hopes that somebody else might be able to build out some connections (in pretty much any direction). I gather that he was part of a family noted for shipbuilding, based in Harwich and Ipswich.

Greg

Comments

That is very interesting. Thanks for that Greg!

I had not thought of either Ipswich or Harwich as being shipbuilding locations. I mean I know the ports, but in Nelson's day they needed local timber supplies and both of those places are in the fenland areas of eastern England. Not noted for ancient forests.

It is one of the reasons why sich small out of the way places such as Bucklers' Hard, Beaulieu and Lymington on the Solent were then important for ship building, they ahd the many stands of wood in the neighbouring New Forest - indeed they were responsible for much of the timber denudation of the New Forest!

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Hey, I don't know wich from wich. I was just going on the notes at the National Maritime Museum's page on Sir Thomas' portrait. It has a bunch of details that I can't verify. The placenames it includes are Ipswich, Harwich, Deptford, Woolwich, Plymouth, and Chatham.

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Hi Greg

I don't dount that you are right, I am just surprised about the two ports on the east coast above the Thames!  Deptford and Woolwich are on the Thames and formed parts of the Port of London despite being on the opposite bank to London in Surrey and Kent respectively.

The proximity of the Royal Palaces at Greenwich made these important places - and they were close to vast numbers of acres of heavily wooded ground immediately to the south. Plymouth is in Devon, a rural county even today, and their wood reserves back in the day were good, with hundreds of wooded valleys. Chatham was and remained a Royal Naval Yard, at times the most important one of the Royal Navy. It was near the mouth of the Thams and again close to the Kentish sources of wood.

If you were unaware, the suffix Wic (prounced Wich) is to be found in many English placenames - especially ports. It is an Anglo-Saxon (Old English) word relating to a market or a trading port. The original foundation of Southampton was called Hamwic, for example.

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Hi John,

 

A quick Google shows that Ipswich had a "flourishing shipbuilding industry" from the 13th to 19th centuries http://www.localhistories.org/ipswich.html

The rivers round there have surprisingly steep banks and look to be well wooded to this day, at least from the water.

And there are Rendlesham and Dunwich forests in Suffolk, which I think are modern reforestations of medieval forests.

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I wouldn't say that I was right. Those notes could be totally wrong for all I know. (But I hope, for the sake of the museum's reputation, that they're at least reasonably accurate.)

Most of what I know about that period, I learned from the Horatio Hornblower books ;-) and I have only visited England briefly a few times, and I don't recall actually visiting any of those towns. (Although now I'm thinking that I should add them to my wishlist of places I'd like to see, right alongside Slade and Westward Ho!)

I find both Thomas Slade's Wikipedia entry and the notes from the Maritime Museum tantalisingly brief. I would love to know more, not just about his family (although finding out that I was related to a genius would be pretty cool), but things like what, exactly, he did to make his ship designs so much better than previous ones. (Not that I expect to be called upon to design a ship of the line any time soon...)

Actually, I'm curious about pretty much everything, so thanks for the information about geography and etymology, too.

Greg

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Thanks for that Steve. I suppose my reason for surprise is that the East Anglian area in the medieval time was still under fenland clearance - not conducive to afforestation. However there are places of high ground (relatively speaking) so it is possible. I had just not heard of it before.

I live in Lincolnshire (the opposite end to East Anglia south of the Wash), and the areas of woodland that exist are all relatively new and very little of ancient stands. The fens which occupy East Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and down through East Anglia, including Cambridgeshire, and the Isle of Ely (a piece of high ground!)

I am ashamed that I do not know the area better than I do. My mother was born in Bury St Edmunds where my grandfather was a baker. After they left in 1936 the family had no further connections with the area, because her parents were from Essex and Monmouthshire.

I was born in Wiltshire, grew up in South London/Surrey and tended to know the south and south-west far better. I later moved to Hampshire and then to Yorkshire - seemingly, and obliviously, avoiding East Anglia.

Nonetheless, I shall follow your lead and take at look at both the forest areas that you mention.

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Greg, I too hope that the museum's reputation is not on the line - although I did cause a small fracas at the City of Oxford museum once when I found an assertion on one of their displays which I felt could not possibly be correct. I then proved it from their own collections! Thus proving that even museum curators are not immune to mistakes (even in Oxford!).

I am still in a dispute with the Bodleian which may never be resolved because there is insufficient evidence to support either side in the period in question (being the high medieval period) concerning their wonderful 'Gough Map'.

Frustratingly I had a paper that I had written about a highway rejected by the peer reviewing journal that I submitted it to. I had made an assertion that they disagreed with. They were correct to reject it on the basis that I had offered insufficient evidence - which has led to me having to write two other papers bringing together the evidence for specific facts, in order that I might re-submit my first paper!

Its a long process - I just hope I live long enough!

Answer 1

It turns out that I'm going to need some help with Sir Thomas. Specifically, he has an entry in Find A Grave which refers to his wife Hannah and her parents being buried together "in the tomb to be seen next to the West boundary of the churchyard" in the St Clement churchyard in Ipswich. However, FInd A Grave only has 7 interments listed, and there is no Hannah among them. Is there anybody in or near Ipswich who could get us some names and dates?

Greg

Answer 2

I did finally find some links I could source: Thomas' sister Hannah married Isaac Inglefield, and then there were three Inglefields in a row, all of whom were notable enough to merit Wikipedia articles. No progress yet on finding Thomas' wife Hannah's maiden name, his father's name, or any children of Thomas and Hannah.

Answer 3

Okay, I finally put the last link in place. The chain goes like this:

Sir Thomas Slade
http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Slade-702

his sister Hannah (Slade) Inglefield
http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Slade-764

her son John Nicholson Inglefield
http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Inglefield-20

his daughter Ann (Inglefield) Hallowell Carew
http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Inglefield-23
(Actually, her original married name was simply Hallowell, but when her husband took the surname Hallowell Carew upon inheriting the Carew estate on 28 March 1828, so did she.)

her son Charles (Hallowell) Hallowell Carew
http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hallowell-110

his wife Mary Murray (Maxwell) Hallowell Carew
http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Maxwell-3946

her father Captain Sir Murray Maxwell
http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Maxwell-3945

his father James Maxwell
http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Maxwell-3943

his father Sir Alexander Maxwell, 2nd Baronet of Monreith
http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Maxwell-1418

and Sir Alexander was already in WikiTree and shows as being 21 degrees from Kevin Bacon, 24 degrees from AJ Jacobs and 33 degrees from Nikola Tesla on the WikiTree family tree. So now Sir Thomas is now linked, however circuitously, to the main family tree.

Greg