At Home With the Inglebys

11th January 2024

Guest musician from Ukraine, Iryna Rodionova pictured with her bandura.

Part 1: At Home With the Inglebys

Script researched and devised by Georgina Green. Georgina Green as Mrs Ingleby, Jeremy Smith as Dr Ingleby and Joanne Shore as the maid, Charlotte.

Mrs Ingleby (now aged 200!) welcomed everyone and spoke about the entire household living and working “currently” at Valentine House, the year being 1884. Sarah Ingleby had inherited the right to live at Valentines from her uncle, Charles Holcombe, with her husband Clement Ingleby being the official head of the household. The house would later be inherited from his great-uncle by her son Holcombe Ingleby. During her time at Valentines as a married woman, she ran everything on the 170-acre estate with the help of her staff. Of course, she had first come to live at Valentines as a child and had returned here as a married woman with four children in 1860 after the death of her aunt, sister of her mother who had died when Sarah was a baby. In 1884, Mrs Ingleby was 60 years old and her children were all grown up, though most still lived at Valentines.

The staff living in the household in 1884

Mrs Finlay, the housekeeper, aged 52

Charlotte, her personal maid and assistant, aged 44

John, the footman aged 32

Susannah and Margaret, housemaids, aged 43 and 23

Catherine, under-housemaid, aged 19

Martha Findlay (the housekeeper’s daughter), the cook

Valentina Findlay, aged 22, (the housekeeper’s daughter) living in the household, training as a needlewoman and dressmaker for Mrs Ingleby.

Living in cottages on the estate

William Shepherd, the farm bailiff

William Burns, the head gardener

12 labourers and a boy also work on the estate.

After Mrs Ingleby spoke about the comings and goings and daily routines at Valentine House in Victorian days, her maid Charlotte gave us insights into Mrs Ingleby’s character and benevolence as an employer and member of the local community. Dr Clement Ingleby whose interests and expertise had been described in some detail by his wife, then delighted guests with a rendition of the parlour song, “The Old Rustic Bridge By the Mill”, written in 1881 by Joseph Skelly, accompanied on the pianoforte and the bandura.

The Ingleby family household in 1884

Of the Inglebys’ four children, in 1884 two were still living at home: Holcombe aged 29 and Clementina, 26. Arthur, 31 had married 7 years earlier and had moved away to Folkestone in Kent. He and his wife Minnie had then gone to live in Stoke Newington with their children Ethel and Richard, before returning to Ilford, where Arthur had just become Perpetual Curate and Chaplain of the Ilford Hospital Chapel. Youngest son Herbert aged 27 was working and living away as a land agent. Mrs Ingleby shared her pleasure at now having her grandchildren nearby, before settling to listen, with us, to her husband’s singing and Iryna’s beautiful playing and singing.

Rustic Bridges at Valentines from Ingleby days, in the Dell, by the Wash.

Joseph Paul Skelly was an Irish songwriter, who emigrated from Ireland to New York in the 1850s, aged 4. In The Old Rustic Bridge by the Mill, the Inglebys could reminisce about the happy days of their courtship, although the song was written by someone in his 30s, longing for their homeland, thinking of the loss of the old rural life and historic buildings like old mills. It is now recognised as one of the great songs of traditional Irish music.

Safeguarding local heritage

This song reflects the pride that we feel for having helped preserve local heritage for the future, as did the Victorians before us. More about this at our event on 28th February “FROM TINY ACORNS” which will focus on the history of the Parkland at Valentines, how Valentines Mansion, Gardens and Park was preserved into the ownership of the Borough after the death of Sarah Ingleby in 1906, for us all to enjoy today and how we can all be involved in the future in in its preservation and improvement by joining the Friends!

Iryna Rodionova then played the following five pieces on the bandura, the most outstanding being a moving performance of Plyve Kacha.

Musical programme

J.S. Bach “Prelude in C major“
A 16^th century “Galliard”
“Plyve Kacha” instrumental variations on the traditional song from the region of Lemkiv. Plyve Kacha” translates litterally to “the duckling swims”, but the lyrics are a dialogue between a mother and a son going off to war, featuring two of the most moving lines of the song: “My dear mother, what will happen to me if I die in a foreign land?”. “Well, my dearest, you will be buried by other people”. Dozens of people were killed by snipers in Maidan during the Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv on 18 & 20 February 2014 and were buried and mourned in a mass funeral on 21 February, with this song being used to memorialise their lives.
Song: “Oh Three Wide Roads” music by Yakiv Stepovy, lyrics by Taras Shevchenko. Taras Shevchenko, a poet, writer, humanist thinker, talented painter and graphic artist, was a major figure of the Ukrainian national revival in 19th century, who campaigned for Ukraine’s liberation, and remain a national hero to this day. There are 1060 monuments to Shevchenko located in 32 countries on different continents and Iryna has referred to him as “Ukraine’s Shakespeare”.
“Zaporizhzhia March” by Yevben Adamtsevych. Yevben Adamtsevych was a prominent blind Ukrainian bandura player and a virtuoso performer of historical folk songs.

Undefeated Champions!

During the second part of the evening, there was a chance for everyone to meet and talk with each other, enjoy some refreshments, some more music from Iryna and play some games. Members Simon and Graham had to be prised away from their game of Reversi at the end of the evening! It has to be mentioned that Simon achieved the distinction of becoming undefeated champion of Five Men’s Morris and Rukhsana and Uma discovered how to play the fascinating game of Mancala.

Join us?

We hope you will join us for future events. Simply add your email address in the box at the top of this blog to receive regular updates. Or better still, join the Friends .