Alternative Origins

In my last post I described some of the activities of the Border Reivers, including some Croziers. So were the Moorfield Croziers descended from these scoundrels? Well, it is possible. The accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne (as James I) in 1603 marked the beginning of the end of the Reiver era. James cracked down hard on the lawlessness along the English-Scottish border and many outlaws escaped the hangman's rope by going to Ulster and settling there. This accounts for the frequency with which Reiver surnames occur in many parts of Ulster. In Fermanagh, for example, we find many Armstrongs, Elliotts, Johnstons, Grahams and Hendersons, all common Reiver surnames.

But there is another theory for the origins of the Ulster Croziers. I have taken a certain interest in Francis Crozier, the 19th Century Royal Navy Captain who was the second-in-command on Sir John Franklin's ill-fated expedition to the Canadian Arctic in search of the North West Passage. Captain Crozier came from Banbridge in Co Down but his earlier ancestry, according to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Crozier provides some tantalising clues. He was supposedly descended from a Cavalry Officer, a Captain John Crozier, who came to Ireland in the 1630s with Sir Thomas Wentworth, later the Earl of Strafford and settled here. He had two sons, William, who went to Co Down and was the ancestor of Francis Crozier, and John, who settled in Fermanagh and "had lands in Fermanagh at Coa, Canvantillicormac and Ardvarny and in Tyrone at Moorfields (sic) and founded the Fermanagh Branch of the Family".

I haven't been able as yet to find the original source of this information but can the mention of Moorfield be a coincidence? Even if there isn't a direct line from our family back to John Crozier we can speculate about other possibilities. Did John Crozier have relatives who needed to get out of the Borders fast? Did they approach the Cavalry Officer's son for some land where they could settle and farm? Or were John Crozier's lands subsequently split up among his direct descendants? There's plenty of hunting still to do.

The Cavalry Officer's origins are interesting too. Wikipedia reports that "he came from came from Redworth Hall, County Durham and his family had been there since 1407". There is still a Redworth Hall; it is now a rather splendid hotel. When we called there while we were in the north of England on holiday this summer I picked up a leaflet outlining the history of the building...

REDWORTH HALL, COUNTY DURHAM

A Potted History

Redworth Hall was built as a family home in 1693 for George and Eleanor Crosier and their five daughters, and was then know simply as Redworth House, though still a fine 18 room building in its own grounds.

In the same year their youngest daughter Jane, married Edward Surtees of Mainsforth, a Northumberland family who owned land and estates across Durham and Northumberland, including Redworth village, and whose ancestry can be dated back to 950AD: in fact, at the Battle of Crecy in 1346, an ancestor of Edward Surtees named Sir Thomas Surteys, saved the life of the then Prince of Wales and was awarded the honour of the Feathers, which why you can see the Prince of Wales feathers depicted in the stonework and stained glass around the house today. Also depicted in the stained glass of Redworth Hall are the coat of arms commissioned to celebrate the nuptials of Jane and Edward, that of Surtees impaling Corsier. The couple made their home in Northumberland.

Their furst son and heir, Robert Surtees, at the age of 50, married Dorothy Lambton aged 22, heiress to the vast Hardwick estates in County Durham. This union was much against his father Edward’s wishes, so much so that Edward offered his son £2,000 to marry any woman but her, but to no effect, and only thirteen days after the marriage took place, Edward disinherited Robert and all future heirs.

In 1744, using his wife’s money, Robert bought and greatly added to Redworth House, the former home of his maternal grandparents, Goerge and Eleanor Crosier.

Another great alliance came about in 1769, when Robert arranged for his 17 year-old daughter Jane to marry his brother Crosier’s son (also called Crosier), in order to cement the family line, the marriage taking place on 12 September in Heighington Parish Church. Unfortunately for Jane, her husband Crosier was by all accounts, an extremely unpleasant man, and although she bore him 11 children in 16 years, theirs was a loveless marriage with Crosier gradually taking control of all her land and estates.

In 1800 it was reported that Jane had left Redworth Hall and the area without a trace, and within a few months Crosier also left to live with his mistress in Hamsterley. Crosier died in December 1803 aftern an evening’s drinking and dining at the Duke of Cleveland’s home in Raby Castel, he was found frozen to death at Linburn Beck after being thrown from his horse. His second son, another Robert Surtees and holder of the title of High Sheriff of Durham took over the running of Redworth House.

1863 saw the turn of Henry Edward Surtees (MP for Hertfordshire) to inherit Redworth House and it was he who added the Jacobean style spiral stone staircase and magnificent galleried Baronial Hall in the early1890s and it is also from this point that the house and its estates became known as Redworth Hall. On Henry’s death in 1895, his son Major Henry Siward Daliol Surtees of the 2^nd Lifeguards inherited the estates. During his distinguished career, the Major served with the Household Cavalry in the Boer War and was attached to the Royal Garrison Artillery during the First World War. In 1929 he also took up office as the High Sheriff of Durham. Sadly, the Elizabethan manor house and its 25 acres of gardens and woodland was sold to the local County Council in 1950, by the Major, for tax reasons, after 250 years in the Surtees family.

POINTS OF INTEREST

·      Redworth House was the site of many battles in the Civil War, between the Royalist Garrison at Middridge Grange (approx. 2 miles to the east of Redworth) and the Parliamentary Roundhead trrps

·      Prince Alexander Yourievsky of Russia, grandson to the murdered Alexander, fled his homeland during the First World War and spent many years living within the Hall and the village.

·      1855-1958 – Nine members of the Surtees family held the office of the High Sheriff of Durham.

·      1958-1966 – Redworth Hall was a school for physically handicapped boys.

·      May 1966 – Redworth Hall became a Residential School for “naughty boys”.

·      1987 – The Hall converts to a 17 room private hotel.

·      1997 – Scottish Highland Hotels PLC buy Redworth Hall Hotel.

·      1999 – Paramount Group of Hotels become the new (and present) owners and continue the investment with a £1 million refurbishment.

·      The drive on the approach to Redworth Hall is lined with lime trees.

·      Trees to the left of the drive are red horse chestnut, horse chestnut, mulberry and a rather special Handkerchief tree planted in 1930 and which oly blomed for the first time in 1970, then again in 1991; so call because the white bracts of flowers give the appearance of handkerchiefs hanging from the branches.

·      To the right of the drive are elderberry, holly and copper beech, with the lawns divided by yew hedges and cherry laurel.

·      In the 1930’s, Major Surtees had the summerhouse built for his wife, and also in that devaie the lower lawn was marked out as a chess board, with servants dressed in black and white and used as “live” chess pieces.

·      The large, low hanging sycamore tree which dominates the left hand side of the lawn as you look down from the Hall is believed to be about 260 years old.

THE HALL BOASTS AT LEAST TWO GHOSTS

The first is that of a woman who felt the need to throw herself from the top of the Jacobean Tower when her lover jilted her. She is said to walk the rooms at the front of the house, particularly the bedrooms.

Secondly, the laughter and crying of young children is sometimes heard in the area of the Great Hall. One of the Surtees many children was “ill of the mind” and their days and nights were spent chained to one of the Great Hall fireplaces.