The story of the role of Brandsby as a leader in rural regeneration early in the 20th century and its squire Hugh Fairfax-Cholmeley has now been published by the Yorkshire Archeological Journal:
Patricia Alice McCarthy (2020) To Whom Belongs the Land: Change and Reform on a North Riding Estate, 1889 to 1914, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 92:1, 131-153, DOI: 10.1080/00844276.2020.1809851
Attached here is an unedited version of the above article, which you can read for free:
I would dearly like to know more about people reading this website? What is your interest? I am particularly interested in hearing from anyone who has a family connection to the Fairfax-Cholmeley’s or the Estate.
(née Moverley) Alice’s wedding dress remained in the family until April this year, 2018. It has now been donated to York Castle Museum where it will form part of their fashion archive. Please see attached pdf for some biographical information on Alice:
I was born in 1864 at Sans Souci villa about four miles out of Naples in Posilipo. The villa belonged to my mother’s father who had forsaken England in disgust at having to leave Newton near Rillington on his father’s death, he being a younger son. [Hugh’s mother was Rosalie St. Quentin only daughter of Charles Strickland] He bought the land at Posilipo very nearly on the summit of the promontory that divides the Bay of Pozzuoli and Baguoli from that of Naples and there built himself a lovely little villa with a long drive up to it through what was, when I knew it, the podersi. Continue reading “Italian Roots”
Hugh Charles Fairfax-Cholmeley was born in Italy at the home of his mother’s family. After he had a son of his own, Hugh wrote some memories and history of his first home in Posilipo, Naples, a charming account of life there in the final years of the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, for an English family which had adopted Italy as its home.
The Last Squire of Brandsby: Agricultural & Social Reformer 