Davis, Miss Angela, Wrington House, Chudleigh (now Old Fairfield House)
Beatrice Angela Davis (1879-1933) was brought up at The Grange, Westbury-on-Trym, Gloucestershire. Her father, the Rev. Guilleband F L Davis was a Clerk in Holy Orders and Schoolmaster. Angela was educated initially at home.[1] Following her mother’s death in 1908, the family moved to Wrington House (now Old Fairfield) in Chudleigh. This was described as a charming stone built residence (13 principal rooms) set in two acres of garden grounds with its own coach house.[2]
Angela became Secretary to the Newton Abbot branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and was an active participant at suffrage meetings in the county. As local branch secretary, she is mentioned in a newspaper report on the occasion when the Countess of Selborne gave an eloquent speech on women’s suffrage at Newton Abbot.[3] She refused to remain at home on census night in 1911[4] and left her sister Winifred, a fellow suffragist, to add the usual clause containing the words, ‘No Vote, No Census’. She may also have been the Miss Davis mentioned as one of the 1913 pilgrims arriving in Exeter who had marched all the way from Land’s End.[5]
She married Mr. H.F. Ellwood Bell of the India Office.[6]
Entry created by Helen Turnbull, September 2018
[1] Ancestry.co.uk. Census records.
[2] Sale catalogue, Messrs. Battam & Heywood, London W.1., 1927
[3] DEG, 31 Oct 1912.
[4] Ancestry.co.uk. 1911 census records.
[5] WT, 7 Jul 1913.
[6] Ancestry.co.uk. UK Register of Employees of the East India Co and India Office 1746-1939.