Chichester, Miss Rosalie Caroline, Arlington Court, Barnstaple (1865-1949)
Rosalie Caroline Chichester (1865 – 1949) was born on 29 November 1865.[1] She was the only child of Sir Alexander Palmer Bruce Chichester (1842 -1 881) and Rosalie Amelia Chamberlayne (c.1843 – 1908) of Cranbury Park, Hursley, near Winchester, Hampshire. Rosalie’s parents were married in Hampshire in the first quarter of 1865.
The family home was Arlington Court, near Barnstaple, North Devon, with an estate comprising 5,417 acres and a neoclassical house dating from 1820, which Sir Alexander substantially extended by adding a rear wing in the 1860s.[2] The family enjoyed boating holidays and entertained on a grand scale. In 1871, the household comprised a housekeeper, two lady’s maids, a nurse, two housemaids, two female domestic servants, two grooms, two footmen, a butler and a male domestic servant.
Sir Alexander died at Arlington Court on 25 January 1881,[3] aged just 38, leaving substantial debts which took until 1928 to pay off.[4] In 1886, when she was 21 years old, Rosalie inherited the entire Arlington estate. In 1908, on the death of her mother, Rosalie bequeathed part of the Arlington estate to the National Trust. Before her death she made arrangements for the remainder of the Estate to be left to the Trust.
Rosalie lived at Arlington Court all her life, and chose to be registered there on the 1911 census. She pursued a number of literary, scientific and artistic interests. She was educated by a governess, who is recorded as living at Arlington in the 1881 census when Rosalie was 25. She was an accomplished photographer and her still life paintings are still on public view at the house. She was also a keen collector of curios which she kept in a private museum.
Rosalie was an avid writer from an early age. When she was eighteen she began to produce a monthly journal, written entirely by herself and containing short essays on different subjects, including current affairs, art and politics. She also wrote a number of unpublished romantic novels and was a regular contributor to the Daily Sketch and the North Devon Journal[5]. She also edited the ‘Letter Guild Journal’ produced in Birmingham, which gave ‘kindly counsel by cultured Christian women’ to working girls.[6]
Rosalie was interested in animal welfare and was known locally as a ‘champion of animals’. Like her mother before her, she was strongly opposed to stag hunting, taking legal action to prevent local hunts from entering the Arlington Estate.[7] The Estate was something of a sanctuary where Rosalie kept peacocks and bred Jacob’s sheep and Exmoor ponies.[8]
As the burden of her father’s debt eased, Rosalie engaged in global travel, including to Australia and New Zealand in 1920.
Rosalie was a Conservative. She was an advocate of the duties and privileges of the landowning elite, and a monarchist. Rosalie’s mother had been Dame President of the local habitation of the Primrose League, and Rosalie followed in her footsteps.[9] She played a prominent role in the local Primrose League habitation during the 1880s and early 1890s, and remained a member for some years after that. She spoke publicly on a number of occasions, and many meetings and events were held at Arlington Court, as well as all over that part of North Devon.
Even if she supported the idea of women’s suffrage, Rosalie does not appear to have formally joined the movement until 1913 when Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) militancy was at its height. The Barnstaple branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies was formed in 1911, but there is no evidence for Rosalie’s involvement until August 1913 when she subscribed to funds for the Land’s End to Hyde Park pilgrimage.[10] She presided over a meeting on 1 December 1913, during which she described militants as ‘no doubt well meaning, but were misguided people who had done any amount of harm to the cause.’[11] Further research is needed to confirm whether she hosted a pro-suffrage rally at Arlington Court in January 1914.[12]
Mitzi Auchterlonie has noted that Rosalie Chichester helped to found the Barnstaple branch of the Women’s Citizens Association in May 1918 and became its president, but it was Barnstaple’s mayoress, the vice-president, who took the chair and spoke to the members at the first meeting. By now Rosalie was over fifty years old and seemed to have taken a figurehead role in the organisation.[13]
Rosalie died, unmarried, on 17 January 1949 at Parade House, Woolacombe, Devon, another of the Chichester’s properties. Her wealth at death was £131,378 4s 4d.[14] Rosalie was cremated and her ashes buried on the bank of the lake at Arlington Court where in 1949 a C18 stone urn and pedestal by Robert Adam was erected to commemorate her.
Entry created by Liz Clare, November 2018
[1] Rosalie’s birth was registered in Barnstaple in the fourth quarter of 1865. General Register Office reference 5b page 468 (1939 Register gives the date as 29 Nov 1865)
[2] Arlington Court house is listed at Grade II* and the park, pleasure grounds and gardens are Registered at Grade II*. Listed Building entry for Arlington Court https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1106817; Register of Historic Parks and Gardens entry for Arlington Court https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1000687 . Accessed 26 Nov 2018.
[3] GR reference, Vol 5b p. 357. Sir Alexander’s probate entry (1881 p. 132) lists his personal estate as under £16,000.
[4] https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/arlington-court-and-the-national-trust-carriage-museum/features/miss-rosalie-chichester .Accessed 4 Sep 2018.
[5] National Trust. ‘Miss Rosalie Chichester.’ Article. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/arlington-court-and-the-national-trust-carriage-museum/features/miss-rosalie-chichester Accessed 4 Sep 2018.
[6] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 22 Jan 1907.
[7] National Trust, op cit.
[8] National Trust op cit.
[9] The Primrose League was set up in November 1883 by members of the so-called Fourth Party, headed by Lord Randolph Churchill, partly in order to deal with the implications of the impending extension of the county franchise which would come about in the 1884 Reform Act. The League provided the basis for predominantly upper class Conservative women to enter political life not only as ‘unpaid canvassers’, but as disseminators of the core principles of Conservatism – empire, monarchy, religion and the ideal of class unity.
[10] Common Cause, 29 Jul 1911
[11] Western Times, 1 Dec 1913.
[12] https://talesfromthearchives.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/votes-for-women-suffragettes-and-the-devon-connection-with-the-movement/ Accessed 28 Nov 2018.
[13] M.M. Auchterlonie, Personal communication, 29 Apr 2018.
[14] Probate, Exeter, 2 Jul 1949.