Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Arthur Lane

1852 –09/09/1870

Son of John and Hannah Lane; died at the age of 18

Relatives

John Edward Lane (senior) — father

• Christopher Dolton

ARTHUR LANE; 1852 – 1870

Arthur was born in Berkhamsted in the third quarter of 1852. He was baptised on 4^th September that year. His parents were John Edward Lane and Hannah Lane. Both John and Hannah had been married before they married in 1852.

John Edward Lane’s grandfather, Henry, had started a nursery business in Berkhamsted in 1777. John’s own father, also named Henry, had continued the business and John too worked in the nursey, taking the business over and expanding it when his father retired. John’s first wife, with whom he had seven children (the youngest died shortly after his birth), was Sarah Lane, nee Foster. She was the sister of James Foster who ran The Swan inn and the brewery to the rear of the inn. James Foster was therefore John’s brother-in-law. James was married to Hannah, and she and James also had seven children.

Sarah Lane died in in 1848, leaving John a widower with six children to bring up. James Foster died in 1849. Hannah took over The Swan and in 1852 John Lane and Hannah married. John moved into The Swan with Hannah and developed the brewing and innkeeping business alongside his interests in the nursery.

Although between the two of them, John and Hannah had a total of thirteen children of varying ages, the couple had two further children themselves, Arthur, who was born in 1852 and a daughter born in 1855.

At the time of the 1861 census Arthur was eight years of age, and as one might expect living with his parents at The Swan, along a number of his other half siblings. Arthur, again as one might expect, was attending school, being noted as a “scholar”.

Unfortunately, Arthur did not enjoy a long life. He died at home in Berkhamsted on 9^th September 1870 at the age of 18. He was buried in Rectory Lane Cemetery in the grave in which his half-brother John Edward Lane (junior) had been buried when he died in 1868.

John Edward Lane junior (241)

d.01/08/1868

of John Lane nurseries

Relatives

Frederick Quincy Lane — brother

John Edward Lane (senior) — father

Mary Ann Lane — sister

Sarah Susannah Meek — daughter

• Jenny Sherwood

John Edward Lane junior was the son of John Edward Lane senior. Like his father, he was involved in the family business, a flourishing plant nursery business, which at its height was of national, even international, repute.

Lane Nurseries

The firm was established by Henry Lane in about 1777 and, taken over at his death by his son, also Henry Lane. It was really the latter’s son, John Edward Lane (senior) who developed the business leasing land close to St John’s Well Lane by the present Canal Fields but also land stretching up to Greenway Common on the south side of the High Street. There were also orchards at Broadway (Bourne End) and the Balshaw Lane’s Prince Albertat Potten End.

The Garden Index of 1885 writes

“For upwards of half a century the name of John Lane of Berkhamsted, the present head of one of the oldest and best known nursery firms in this country, has been familiar to horticulturists.”

It was not until the 1960s that the firm finally folded.

Lane’s Prince Albert Apples

Lane’s Nurseries were perhaps best known for introducing a new variety of apple: the Lane’s Prince Albert. This was cultivated by Thomas Squire, a Berkhamsted Quaker of the Homestead. On 26 July 1841, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited Berkhamsted en route to Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, where they were to visit to the Duke of Bedford. John Lane marketed this new apple variety as “Lane’s Prince Albert” in honour of the royal visit.

Family

Henry Lane and his wife are to be found in Grave number 247, John Edward Lane junior and his brother Frederick Quincey Lane, both sons of John Edward Lane and Sarah Foster (of the Berkhamsted Brewer family) are to be found in Grave numbers 241 and 245. It is notable that graves of some of the Foster family are nearby as are also those of the Meeks since Sarah Susannah Lane, daughter of Henry Lane married Richard Meek.

From the link with the Fosters it appears that both John Edward Lane and Frederick Quincey Lane had some share in the Foster’s brewery business. In the 1861 census John Edward Lane is listed as Brewer and Maltster and is residing at the Swan with Hannah, his second wife and other members of the family and his son-in-law George Foster, who is a pupil brewer. In the 1891 census Frederick Quincey Lane is listed as a Nurseryman and Brewer and was residing at the George.

It is not, however, only the man of the household who is worthy of notice but also Mrs Quincey Lane who is listed surprisingly in the 1891 census as journalist. The enumerator has additionally written in pencil ‘author’! In 1888 Vol. I of ‘The Hertfordshire Constitutional Magazine’ had appeared, available from G. Loosley of Castle Street, edited by Quincey Lane. In presenting the magazine to the people of Hertfordshire the proprietors aimed to meet a long-felt want, within the reach of the general public. ‘No pains will be spared to make the contents interesting and instructional to the highest degree.’ Frederick Quincey Lane, nurseryman and brewer could hardly be the author, but maybe his wife Eliza Jane was the mysterious Quincey Lane. Both the Hertfordshire Standard and the Journalist confirm this. ‘It is edited by Mrs Quincey Lane ….who was the first lady journalist enrolled on the books of the London District of the National Association of Journalists.’

Throughout the second half of the 19th century and well into the twentieth century members of the Lane family held prominent positions in the Berkhamsted Lodge of Freemasons. In the publication in 1945 to mark the centenary of the Masons in Berkhamsted a family tree of the Lanes is included to help the reader understand the complicated relationships.

Jenny Sherwood

Mary Ann Lane

23/05/1835 –23/05/1894

Daughter of John and Sarah Lane who remained a spinster

Relatives

John Edward Lane (senior) — father

Hannah Lane — mother

John Edward Lane junior (241) — brother

• Christopher Dolton

MARY ANN LANE; 1835 – 1894

Mary was the second of seven children born to John Edward Lane and his first wife Sarah. Mary’s memorial tells us her date of birth was 23^rd May 1835 and she was baptised on 21^st June that year.

John and Sarah Lane had married in Berkhamsted in 1833. The Lane family had been established in Berkhamsted for at least two generations. John’s grandfather had started a nursery business in the town which John’s father, Henry Lane had continued. On Henry’s retirement John was himself to take over the family business and under his stewardship the business grew further and earned a world-wide reputation.

In 1841 Sarah and John were living on the High Street, together with the four oldest children, including Mary. The 1841 census does identify where on the High Street the family lived, but the 1839 Tithe records do identify John Lane as the owner and occupier of two cottages and gardens on the High Street, opposite John’s Well Lane and the family nursery.

Mary’s mother, Sarah, died in 1848, leaving her father with six children to bring up. (The seventh and youngest, George Septimus Lane had died in 1847, the year in which he had been born.) Mary’s father, however, soon remarried. In 1852, he married Hannah Foster, a widow who herself had seven children. Hannah’s first husband, James Foster, was Sarah’s brother and had been the innkeeper and brewer at The Swan on Berkhamsted’s High Street. Following his death, Hannah had taken over both the inn and the brewery and when she and John Lane married, John moved into the Swan, where, in addition to his interest in Lane’s nurseries he also developed a business as a brewer and publican.

The 1861 census reveals that whilst John had joined Hannah at The Swan, Mary remained living in the High Street with her brother Henry and two of her younger sisters. The census return tells us that Mary was then 25 years old and was unmarried. She was to remain unmarried throughout her life. No occupation is noted against her name.

As an unmarried woman, a spinster, Mary was fortunate that her family was sufficiently well off that she did not need to work, not even to do the housework, for which purpose a housemaid was employed.  British society of the mid-nineteenth century raised and educated its girls with the sole aim of their becoming good wives and good mothers. As Trollope’s Lizzie Eustace put it in his novel “The Eustace Diamonds,” an unmarried woman’s strength lay solely in the expectation of approaching matrimony.  Victorian Society, however, contained a large excess of single and widowed women over single and widowed men. To the Victorians, one important consequence of this situation was a major “spinster problem, ” which was focused especially on difficulties in finding suitable occupations and homes for single women as they aged. Employment was a major issue for women in the Victorian age, especially for the middle-class woman who were restrained by Victorian notions of respectability from leaving home or engaging in the trades open to working-class women. Such women were dependent and without vocation. Hence the need for women to marry, so as to avoid being a burden for their parents. Single women did not meet the traditional standards for women at the time and were simply not fitting in the Victorian family model. Such women, like Charles Dickens’ Miss Havisham, mouldering in her wedding dress, became objects of pity because they were unable to fulfil their domestic role, as a wife and a mother. Their situation was often precarious for they either depended on the men in their families for the rest of their lives or ended up in a situation of poverty. Had Mary’s family not been able to support her, as a young woman she would probably have ended up in domestic service and a recipient of Poor Relief as an older woman.

But we cannot simply make the assumption that Mary did not marry because she could not find a husband. Whilst the Victorian ideal may have been marriage and motherhood, not all Victorian women shared that aspiration. In 1889 Tit-Bits magazine asked for responses to the question “Why am I a spinster?” Replies included the following:

“Because men, like three cornered tarts, are deceitful. They are very pleasing to the eye, but on closer acquaintanceship prove hollow and stale, consisting chiefly of puff, with a minimum of sweetness, and an unconquerable propensity to disagree with one.”

“Because I have other professions open to me in which the hours are shorter, the work more agreeable, and the pay possibly better.”

At the time of the 1871 census, Mary was present at The Swan, but as a visitor, not a resident. Mary’s step mother Hannah had died in September 1861 and Mary’s father had moved out of The Swan and was living in the High Street, presumably with Mary Ann and others of his children. The Swan was then in the care of Hannah’s son, Henry Foster.

Mary and her father were living in the same house at the time of the 1881 census together with her two youngest half-brothers and two domestic servants.

Mary’s father died in 1889 and in 1891 Mary had moved to Boxwell Road where she was living on her own, apart from a domestic servant. She was then 53 years of age and was financially independent, “living on her own means.”

Mary died on her 59^th birthday, 23^rd May 1894. She was buried in Rectory Lane Cemetery in the grave in which her younger brother, John Edward Lane (junior) and her half-brother Arthur Lane had been buried when they died in 1868 and 1870 respectively.  Her coffin was carried by men from the family nurseries as well as undertaker’s men. Floral tributes from family members, including Miss Q. Lane, “Auntie’s favourite flower” and employees of the nurseries adorned the coffin.