BRAMPTON PARK REVUE
Lady Olivia Bernard Sparrow & William Makepeace
Lady Olivia Bernard Sparrow was a well known local benefactress in the Huntingdon and Cambridge area. Her daughter Millicent, who she survived, was Duchess of Manchester during the early to mid 19th century and Lady Olivia's papers can be found among the papers of the Dukes of Manchester of Kimbolton Castle.
William Makepeace was born in 1796 and Christened on August 14, 1796, in Tiddington, Warwickshire. He married a lady called Mary Cragg, who was born in Worthing and together they had nine children, eight of which were born at Brampton Park, between the 1820's and 1840's, when William Makepeace was working as a Footman for Lady Olivia Bernard Sparrow.
This was very unusual as many servants of that time were forced to stay single if they wanted a job and they were not even allowed to fraternise with members of the opposite sex, let alone having their families living with them on site as William Makepeace did, his family living at Brampton Park with him.
When William tired of living at Brampton Park and working for Lady Olivia he bought a shop and turned it in to a high class coffee house near Regent's Park in Marylebone, London, complete with ironed newspapers and many rare speciality blends of coffee. William ran the business successfully for a good number of years. Again this is different as servants would not normally have had enough money on leaving service to set up in business, but William Makepeace not only acquired the money, he was a successful entrepreneur as well.
William Makepeace's descendants moved all over the UK, one of his daughters moved to Thorpe Arch, then Bradford while other members of his family went to Oswaltwistle, Liverpool, Tunbridge Wells, Ticehurst and London to name a few places and some went to Canada and America.
Famous descendants of William Makepeace, include composer Sir Harrison Birtwistle, 1940's science fiction/ crime writer Stanley Makepeace Lott, who first went to Canada before settling in the USA, Horace Robert Walker, Lord Mayor of Bradford 1956-57, and Richard Hornshaw, a director of Lister's Mill, Bradford.
Many Makepeace family descendants were very proud of William Makepeace and often girls would be given the name 'Olivia' amongst their other names, presumably in memory of Lady Olivia Bernard Sparrow who was so very generous to William Makepeace and his family.
At Home With George Washington
The Makepeace lineage can be traced back to the 15th century in Burton Dassett, Warwickshire, with Henry Harry Makepeace, Master of the Gild of St. Anne, Knole. His grandson, Abel Makepeace, born 1542 in Chipping Warden, Warwickshire, married Mary Washington, daughter of Lawrence Washington, then owner of Sulgrave Manor, the ancestral home of George Washington, first President of the USA. During the early 16th century, Lawrence worked for Sir William Parr, uncle of Catherine Parr, sixth wife of Henry VIII. Personal records suggest Lawrence acquired the Priory of St. Andrew in 1537 during the 'Dissolution of the Monasteries', though some unverified sources claim this occurred in 1539.
