Andover: The Elms and the families who called it home

This week, we move on to succeeding generations of the family over the next hundred years or so.

Solicitor John Todd senior died in 1805, his wife Sarah pre-deceasing him by 18 months or so.

Their son, John Henry Todd, was by then a partner with his father in the practice at Andover, which in all likelihood was at 16 Bridge Street.

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John junior married Lucy Marcer at Reading in 1803 and after both his parents’ deaths, they were certainly at The Elms.

Sadly, there seems to have been no children of the marriage and Lucy died in 1814, aged 44.

The Elms showing the east side, facing Western Road (Image: Contributed)

Three years later, John married Ann Sutton, the daughter of Charles Sutton who was innkeeper of the George Inn.

There was 20 years difference in age between the bride and groom, and from this marriage there was just one daughter, Ellen, born in 1820.

Meanwhile John Henry Todd was moving up the local, social scale.

Gaining a seat on the ruling corporation of the town in 1809 he was promoted to the position of approved man in 1815 and became bailiff for the first time in 1816.

He served as bailiff again in 1821 and 1829.

The elitist corporation was difficult to enter without wealth, influence or family connections to others already on it.

John Todd stayed a member until his death in 1834, just a year or so before the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act was passed.

This widened the local franchise and established councils with a mayor, aldermen and councillors, replacing the old system of bailiff, approved men and capital burgesses.

After John’s death, his wife and daughter remained at The Elms, and in 1840 the 20-year-old Ellen married Thomas Lamb, another practising solicitor who had come to Andover in 1829 and made a good reputation for himself.

Early directories place his practice in Bridge Street but this was not the same address as his late father-in-law, which is still a solicitor’s practice today (as Talbot Walker), but elsewhere.

Later, around 1867, the practice was moved to 26 High Street, where it remained until the 1930s, under Thomas’s grandson Bruce.

Thomas Lamb was never a member of the town council but did hold several offices pertinent to local government, principally as clerk to both the County Justices and to the guardians of the Andover workhouse.

His obituary of 1867 speaks of excessive work and a weak constitution that hastened his death at the early age of 59.

He died in Wurtemburg, where he had gone in the hope that a milder climate would be beneficial, and his body was brought back to Andover, where he was buried ‘in a vault near the vestry door in the cemetery.’

Thomas and Ellen had five children - three daughters and two sons.

Thomas, born in 1843, had only recently qualified as a solicitor when his father died.

Like his father, the second Thomas Lamb took on numerous, civic appointments of a legal nature but never stood for council.

He married Frances Brewer in 1872 and the couple first lived at Elm Cottage, a not unsubstantial house in Western Road, adjacent to The Elms itself and perhaps built in its original garden.

At The Elms, his mother and grandmother were still living, with his two unmarried sisters, Ellen and Kate, but over the next few years, both senior women died and by the time of the 1881 census, The Elms was home to Thomas and Frances, and their burgeoning family of five sons, together with a governess and four servants.

A daughter, Vera, was born in 1887 but sadly, Frances died the following year.

Thomas re-married in 1890.

His second wife was Effie Margaret Clarke, the daughter of Turner Poulter Clarke of Western Cottage, which is now the site of The Broadway.

Effie’s father was a general ‘mover and shaker’ of the town and had been mayor five times, though was now in extreme old age.

At the time of the marriage, Lamb was 47, while his bride was just 22.

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In those days, it may have been considered ‘a good match’ with an agreeable meeting of money on both sides and a suitable mother for the younger children.

Two more daughters were born of this marriage but Thomas Lamb died in 1906 and by 1911, his widow, her two daughters and one step-daughter were living at The Limes in Junction Road.

None of the sons remained at The Elms and here the Lamb connection with the house is severed.

It passed through several different hands over the next 50 years until its eventual demolition around 1965.

But there is yet one more chapter in the history of the Lamb family, to follow next week.

If you are interested in local history, why not join Andover History and Archaeology Society? Details can be found at andoverlocalhistoryarchaeology.uk.