I am very fortunate in owning a copy of “The Three Dorset Captains of Trafalgar” by A.M. Broadley that was published in 1906. It covers in detail the lives of Thomas Masterman Hardy, Henry Digby and Sir Charles Bullen who all fought with Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar. It was the latter, who is relevant to my talk with a chapter that covers the family's origin in depth from their roots in Norfolk.

I have updated the earlier Pedigree, with family  portraits or photographs, wherever possible, which I will be using during my Talk.

The Most  famous  ancestor  was Anne Boleyn who was born at Hever Castle to Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth Howard in 1501.The Bullens of Dorset trace their ancestry from Simon Bullen of Salle, in Norfolk, who, in the thirteenth century, married the heiress of Robert Malet. From him descended  Sir  Geoffrey Bullen, Lord Mayor of London (1456), the father of Thomas, Earl of Wiltshire, and grandfather of Lord Rochford and Ann Boleyn. Through strategic marriages, such as Thomas Boleyn's marriage to Elizabeth Howard, the family became central to the English court. Unlike most English girls of her status, Ann was educated abroad. She spent years in the prestigious courts of the Netherlands and France, serving Queen Claude. Her family name was originally Bullen, and it was Anne herself, after her time at the French court, who adopted the more aristocratic spelling of Boleyn.

Anne initially caught the eye of Henry VIII while serving as a lady-in-waiting to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Unlike her sister Mary, who had been Henry's mistress, Anne refused to sleep with the King without the crown. This refusal triggered the "Great Matter“ - Henry’s seven-year struggle to annul his marriage to Catherine. To marry Anne, Henry eventually broke with the Roman Catholic Church, declared himself Supreme Head of the Church of England, and set the stage for the English Reformation.

Anne and Henry married in secret in early 1533. She was crowned Queen in a lavish ceremony that June and gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth I in September. However, the triumph was short-lived.

Anne’s failure to produce a male heir and the King’s wandering eye ,toward Jane Seymour, made her vulnerable. Her chief ally-turned-enemy, Thomas Cromwell, began building a case against her to clear the path for a new marriage.
In May 1536, the world collapsed around her. Anne was accused of adultery with five men—including her own brother, George Boleyn, as well as incest and plotting to kill the King. Historians today widely agree these charges were fabricated.
After a brief imprisonment in the Tower of London, she was tried and found guilty. On May 19, 1536, Anne Boleyn stepped onto a scaffold on Tower Green. In a final act of "mercy," Henry had sent for a specialist swordsman from France. With a single stroke, the woman who had changed the course of English history was executed.

Anne Boleyn`s family began using the more sophisticated "Boleyn" spelling, likely influenced by her time in the French court and the family's desire to appear more aristocratic. Contemporary documents from the reign of Henry VIII refer to Anne's father and brothers as both "Bullen" and "Boleyn”.
Bullen Reymes belonged to a family that claimed descent from the same  Bullen/Boleyn line in Norfolk. The Boleyns rose from "humble beginnings" as tenant farmers and merchants to become one of the most powerful families in Tudor England.
Bullen Reymes was the son of Bullen Reymes of Overhill, Dorset. The first name "Bullen" was passed down through his family to honour their connection to the famous Tudor lineage. Born in Westminster on 28 December 1613, Reymes was the son of a court official under King James I.

The first link with Charmouth of the family comes through the marriage of Bullen Reymes’s mother, Mary Petre, to his father in 1611. Mary was the daughter of William Petre of Torbryan in Devon. The family pedigree shown here reveals that her great-uncle was the famous Sir William Petre aassociated with Thomas Cromwell in the suppression of the monasteries, he was knighted by Henry VIII and made Secretary of State. Sir William served not only Henry but his three successors - Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Sir William was able to purchase a number of former monastic estates. These included the Manor of Charmouth, with 548 acres of land, which he acquired in 1564 for £26. On his death in 1572, the manor passed to his son, Sir John Petre, who became Lord of the Manor of Charmouth.
There is also another link with The Petre family. It was Sir John Petre’s sister, Dorothy who married Nicholas Wadham and with their wealth founded Wadham College in Oxford. A branch of this family built the Manor House at nearby Catherston. Sir John Petre was to sell Newlands, that had formed part of his Charmouth estate to his relation, William Wadham in 1590.
Queen Anne Boleyn's cousin, Elizabeth Boleyn brought the name Boleyn into the Reymes family. In 1571, Elizabeth's daughter Mary became the wife of William Reymes, the Lord of the Manor at Overstrand. William and Mary were both prosperous and prolific. They had thirteen children - four daughters and nine sons. When, in 1586, her eighth son was born, Mary, in honour of her mother, named him Bullen. The illustrations show Sir William Petre, Sir John Petre, and the earliest known image of Charmouth, dating from 1539, with the beacon fires on the surrounding hills and the Cobb at Lyme Regis. The painting of Bullen Reymes is the only known depiction of him, which I have used in subsequent slides.

Bullen Reymes father prepared him for a life of royal service through extensive travel and study. In 1631, at age 18, he joined the English embassy in Paris as an attaché.
Reymes's subsequent travels through Italy and Greece were remarkably sophisticated for his time. In Venice, he learned the lute and famously spent his time "reding in Shakespeares playes". He reached as far as Athens, where he recorded seeing the Parthenon's "beautiful ruins" decades before they were largely destroyed by explosion in 1687.

As political tensions in England escalated into war, Reymes remained steadfastly loyal to Charles I. He was appointed a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber in 1641. He was a high-ranking Royalist officer who served as a Colonel of Horse during the Siege of Lyme Regis in 1644. He was part of the Royalist army led by Prince Maurice that attempted to capture the strategically vital Parliamentarian port. Reymes participated in the unsuccessful blockade from April to June 1644. The Royalist forces, despite numbering roughly 6,000 against a much smaller garrison of 1,000 led by Colonel Robert Blake, were eventually forced to retreat when Parliamentary relief forces approached. His role at Lyme Regis was part of a larger period of "active service with the royalist army in the west," which only ended when he laid down his arms at the surrender of Exeter in 1646.

When King Charles II after the Battle of Worcester was attempting to escape to France in 1651 he was to stay at Trent, near Sherborne in Dorset at the house of Sir Francis Wyndham. This gentleman was the brother in law of Bullen Reymes who was married to his sister, Ann. Francis sought to get a boat to carry the King back to France from the Dorset coast. The man Wyndham found to hire a ship was Captain William Ellesdon. Bullen and Ellesdon were long time friends, a friendship that at one time involved Bullen asking Ellesdon to spirit away Sir John Berkeley, a year earlier from Charmouth beach. This picture, based on portraits of the two gentlemen depicts how the scene may have appeared.

In 1651, Trent had only recently been inherited by Anne Wyndham from her mother's estate. By rights it should have gone to Bullen Reymes, but he declined ownership of it favouring to live in Waddon Manor in  Portesham, near Weymouth. To deflect suspicion while the King was at Trent, Colonel Wyndham claimed his guest was his relative, Colonel Bullen Reymes. Lord Wilmot, the King's companion, even posed as Reymes because they shared a similar build.
 This Picture based on contemporary paintings show Sir Francis Wyndham in front of Trent Manor, which still stands in the village today.

Bullen Reymes was a loyal Royalist and a personal acquaintance of King Charles II. He played a vital role in the later stages of the escape when the King was seeking passage across the English Channel from the south coast. When Charles II was hiding at Trent House, the home of Colonel Wyndham, Reymes helped scout for potential ships in the Lyme Regis and Weymouth areas. Reymes was involved in the attempt to secure a boat from Charmouth. Along with Captain William Ellesdon, efforts were made to hire a local sea captain, Stephen Limbry, to take the King to France. This scene depicts the King and Juliana Coningsby outside The Queens Armes, now the Abbots House, where they were to spend the night of 3rd September 1651.

William Ellesdon, Lord of the Manor of Charmouth must have been held in high regard by King Charles as he almost succeeded in assisting in his escape to France after the battle of Worcester. William had formerly been a Captain for the Royalists who had since become a successful Merchant. He had assisted in the escape of Lord Berkeley to France and it was for this reason that Colonel Wyndham recommended him to the King to assist in his escape.
The King left his refuge at Trent, south of Dorchester and was to stay overnight with John, brother of William Ellesdon at his house at Monkton Wylde which still stands today and is known as Elsdon`s Farmhouse. He was then going on to Charmouth where a boat would be waiting to take him to France and safety. 

Although the specific escape attempt from Charmouth failed because Stephen Limbry's wife locked him in  their house  to prevent him from risking his life, Charles eventually secured passage from Shoreham on the ship Surprise. After the Restoration in 1660, Charles II rewarded many who helped him, including Reymes, who went on to serve as a Member of Parliament and held various royal appointments in recognition of his loyalty.
He granted William Ellesdon a pension of £300 per year.The tradition further records that the King revisited Charmouth on 2 July 1671 and honoured Ellesdon personally.  

Reymes was friends with both the great 17th century diarists, Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, and was a keen theatre-goer and gardener. He is mentioned several times in Pepys’s diary. For instance, on 24 January 1668, Pepys wrote: ‘I to the King’s playhouse, to fetch my wife, and there saw the best part of The Mayden Queene, which, the more I see, the more I love, and think one of the best plays I ever saw and is certainly the best acted of any thing ever the House did, and particularly Becke Marshall, to admiration. Found my wife and Deb., and saw many fine ladies, and sat by Colonel Reames, who understands and loves a play as well as I, and I love him for it.’

In 1660, Reymes was elected Member of Parliament for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis. At the same time, he resumed his position as gentleman of the privy chamber. He served as commissioner for assessment for Dorset from 1660 to 1669. He partnered with Constance Pley to import French sailcloth, eventually becoming a major supplier to the Royal Navy during the Dutch Wars.  

While Reymes had a town house in Melcombe Regis (now part of Weymouth), his primary estate was nearby at Waddon Manor, Portesham, Near Abbotsbury in Dorset. He inherited the estate in 1651 through his wife, Elizabeth Gerard, whose Dorset kinsfolk (the Cokers) had arranged the marriage. He is credited with beginning the "gentrification" of Waddon House, transforming it from a 16th-century structure into a more elegant residence, which still stands today on thr outskirts of Portesham.

After a long illness, Reymes retired to his Dorset estate and died in December 1672. He is buried in a vault in the north aisle of St Peter's Church in the village of Portesham, where a memorial still references him. He was survived by his daughters but only one of his sons, also called Bullen, who died at Waddon after having been mysteriously found wounded in Weymouth in 1695. Reymes married Elizabeth Gerard, daughter of Thomas Gerard of Trent, Somerset in 1640 and had three sons and two daughters.
After Elizabeth died at Waddon in 1661. Reymes remarried his second wife, Anna, who outlived him.
After Reymes, the house was significantly extended around 1700 by Henry Chafin, whose descendants, the Chaffyn-Grove family, still reside there today. The impressive memorial to the Chaffyns shown here has a number of references to the Reymes Bullen who were related to him with the marriage of his daughter, Anna to Harry Chaffyn in 1697

Cathanger Manor (located in Fifehead, Somerset) was the seat of Edmund Wyndham. He took up residence there after marrying the daughter of Hugh Pyne in 1623. The Bullen family specifically held an estate under the Wyndhams at Cathanger during the 17th century. William Bullen of Cathanger was a kinsman of Bullen Reymes. The Family Tree shows how the Bullens were linked to many of the important Dorset families, including the Petres, Cokers and Wyndhams through marriages. It is the marriage of Bullen Reymes to the heiress, Elizabeth Gerard in 1640 , which results in the division of her father`s Estate with her receiving Waddon Manor and her brother, Sir Francis Wyndham , the Manor of Trent.

It is A.M. Broadley who in his book: “The Three Dorset Captains at Trafalgar”, provides a Pedigree of the Bullen family. This has been very useful as it shows the descent of one branch of the family from a William Bullen of Cathanger. It was his grandson, Joseph Bullen who purchased the freehold in 1780 of the Manor. In due course, his son, Robert Uttermare inherited it in 1806 and was to sell it in 1824 to Wadham Wyndham, so ending the Bullens association with Cathanger.
 Earlier there was a split in the family and one branch under William Bullen resided at Cathanger and the other branch under Richard Bullen moving 10 miles south  to Seavington St. Mary. The family tree shows clearly the 2 branches of the family from William Bullen of Cathanger.

The Manor House at Cathanger still stands, The Painting, based on its property details imagines how William Bullen  and his wife, may have appeared in the garden of their House.

This slide provides an image of how  the marriage of Joseph, son of William Bullen to  Mary Uttermore at Curry Mallet in Somerset may have looked in 1767.

This is the the original marriage certificate for the wedding of Joseph Bullen  to Mary Uttermare in 1767 at the village Church in Curry Mallet, where she was living at that time. She came from local gentry, with a number of distinguished Clergymen amongst her relations. The Land Tax records for 1798 have Joseph paying £10 Tax. By the time of his death in 1806, he had been able to purchase the freehold of his Cathanger Estate, which he left to his only son, Robert Uttermare Bullen.

Thanks to a number of photographs that were taken when the property  was recently on the market. it has been possible to recreate how Cathanger Manor may have looked when the Bullens lived there. This is the great Hall that still exists.

Here we see the Gateway  and the manor house and gardens as they would have looked when the Bullens lived there.

Robert Uttermare Bullen was born in 1768 in Fivehead, Somerset, the son of Mary and Joseph. He married Helen Wilkes on 24 January 1801 in Bidford on Avon, Warwickshire. They had two children during their marriage. The 1841 Census has him as a Solicitor, living at East Reach in St. Mary Magden, Taunton, Somerset. He died on 15 October 1845,aged 77. and is buried at Kensal Green in London.

To confirm the ownership of the Cathanger Estate in Somerset by the Bullens is an advert in the Sherborne Mercury in 1815, when Robert offered the lease of it. It reads as follows:
TO be LET, for a term, All that Capital and Truly Desirable ESTATE, called CATHANGER FARM,situate in the parishes of Fivehead and Isle Abbots, in the county of Somerset, 268 acres N. B. A good Mansion House, adjoining the farm-house, might be taken with or without the farm. To view the premises, and for further particulars, apply to Mr. Bullen, at Cathanger aforesaid.

I was fortunate to find a number of Documents relating to the  Cathanger Estate and the Bullens, some of which are shown here. The first between Abraham Naftel, of Fowey, and Rev. Bowden and Robert Uttermare Bullen of Taunton , eldest son, describes in detail the Will of  1803 for Joseph Bullen. His son, Robert was to later take a mortgage of £5,000 on his inheritance and later sell it to Wadham Wyndham for £7630 in 1824. After the sale, Robert Bullen moved back to Taunton with his family where he practiced as a Solicitor and so ended this branch of the Bullens family link  with Cathanger. It is the more relevant branch of the Bullen who had moved to Seavington St Mary who I will now cover.

I return to the Pedigree of the Bullens with the 2 branches of the family, stemming from William Bullen of Cathanger. After the sale of Cathanger in 1824, that branch of the family disappears from the records and it is Richard Bullen and his descendants of Seavington St. Mary in Somerset, I now wish to cover.  He married Elizabeth and were to have 5 children: Richard born 1736, Elizabeth in1739, Simeon in 1747, William in 1748 and John in 1752.

This map shows clearly the proximity of Cathanger, Fivehead with Seavington St. Mary, east of Ilminster, where for a long time the two branches of the Bullens were to live, ten miles apart. There were 2 attractive estate maps shown here of the adjoining villages produced in 1820, which I came across in Somerset Archives. The last map has the current boundaries of the village.

Richard Bullen was a prominent farmer in Seavington St. Mary, Somerset, during the 18th century. He lived there as early as 1733 and died in March 1786 at the age of 76. There are a number of references in various documents, some of which are shown here. The earliest is in 1736 when his eldest son, Richard is born. In 1746, an advert refers to him owning several Tenements in Seavington Abbot. A 1765 List of Freeholders in the village describe him as a Yeoman Farmer. The Land Tax List for Seavington Abbot in 1785, the year before he died has him leasing  land to Joseph Beck. There are references to Richard Bullen Senior and Richard Bullen Junior. From this one would assume that his eldest son with the same name was to carry on farming with his father.

This painting gives us an impression of Richard and Elizabeth Bullen with their five children outside their village church at Seavington St. Mary in Somerset.

Under the east window in the chancel of St. Mary`s Church in Seavington is  a mural monument of black stone to the Bullens.  It reads “Here underneath lye the bodies of Wm: & Betty, son & daughter of Richard: & Elizabeth BULLEN,  William  died March 28, 1768, aged 20 years.  Betty died Dec: 12, 1775, aged 36 years.
Also Elizabeth, the wife of Richard Bullen, died Dec 28, 1775, aged 61.  Here lies the mortal part of a beloved wife,  Prudent in all her conduct here in life, A tender mother, faithful consort here, Lamented by her spouse & children dear.

Of the five children raised by Richard and Elizabeth Bullen, it was John, born in 1752, who rose to prominence during his short life. He grew up in Seavington, Somerset, in a family of prosperous farmers, but rather than remaining in agriculture, he pursued a career in medicine and became a naval surgeon. This was a highly respected profession requiring extensive training and considerable skill.
By the time of the American Revolutionary War, John had risen to a senior medical position. From 1779 to 1781, he served as Surgeon-General of the naval forces employed on the coast of North America under Vice-Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot. In this role, he was responsible for overseeing medical services for a substantial Royal Navy command during the war against the American colonies and their French allies.
John married Ruth Liddell, daughter of Charles Liddell of Newcastle upon Tyne, a family connected to John Scott, later 1st Earl of Eldon and Lord Chancellor. The marriage took place on 14 February 1767 at Christ Church, Tynemouth, Northumberland.
John Bullen died in 1783, aged just 31. Ruth survived him by many years; records indicate that she was buried at Havant, Hampshire, on 3 April 1818, aged 82.

Richard Bullen was born on 8 February 1779, the younger son of John Bullen. He was educated at Wadham College, Oxford, graduating in 1800, and received the education expected of a gentleman of his standing before embarking on a military career.
Rather than following his father and brother into naval service, Richard joined the British Army and became a Captain in the prestigious Scots Greys, the 2nd Dragoons, one of Britain’s most renowned cavalry regiments. His military career coincided with the long struggle against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.
In 1801, he married Jemima Foster Sutherland at Newport on the Isle of Wight, shown here. The couple had seven children before Richard’s early death in 1814, at the age of just thirty-five, one year before Napoleon’s final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.

Sir Charles Bullen was one of the most distinguished naval officers of the Georgian era. He served in the Royal Navy for more than sixty years.
He was born on 10 September 1769 and  entered the Royal Navy at an early age. As a young officer, Bullen gained experience during the closing stages of the American War of Independence. The outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1793 transformed the Royal Navy into Britain’s principal defence against France, and Bullen’s career advanced rapidly.
During the 1790s and early 1800s, he served under several distinguished commanders and developed a reputation as a capable and courageous officer and  was present at numerous naval engagements.

Bullen’s most famous service came under Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson. By 1805, he was captain of HMS Britannia, the 100-gun flagship of Admiral Lord Northesk, who served as third-in-command of the British fleet at Trafalgar.
On 21 October 1805, Nelson defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar. During the action, Britannia held a prominent position in the British line and was heavily engaged. Bullen commanded his ship with skill and determination throughout the battle. Although Nelson was killed in the fighting, Trafalgar became one of the defining moments of British national memory, and Bullen was recognised among the officers who had helped secure that triumph.

Following Trafalgar, Bullen continued his naval career throughout the remaining years of the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815 brought an end to a generation of conflict, but Bullen’s service to the Royal Navy continued long afterwards.
In recognition of his distinguished career, he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, becoming Sir Charles Bullen. Over the following decades, he continued to rise through the ranks, eventually attaining the rank of Admiral.

In his later years Sir Charles enjoyed the status accorded to one of the surviving heroes of the Napoleonic age. He was to retire to Weymouth, where he  remained respected both locally and nationally for his long and distinguished service. This picture of him is based on a portrait to be seen at the National Maritime Museum in London. There also used to be a similar painting on the walls of Catherston Manor, when the Bullens lived there.

Sir Charles Bullen died in 1853 at the fine old age of eighty-three. Few men witnessed such profound changes in Britain’s fortunes or contributed so directly to them. He was buried in the churchyard of St Mary’s Church, South Stoneham, Southampton. His funeral took place on 7 July 1853. A memorial hatchment and wall plaque to him are also in St James’s Church, Shirley, Southampton. 

With the death of Sir Charles Bullen in 1853, that distinguished branch of the Bullen family came to an end. The family pedigree therefore returns to Simeon Bullen, son of Richard Bullen of Seavington and brother of John Bullen of Weymouth. In 1775, Simeon married Elizabeth Fitzherbert of Chideock, and it is through them that the Bullen family line continued. Their story, and that of their descendants, shown here, forms the focus of the remainder of this talk.

This painting based on one that can still be seen  in St. Giles church in Chideock provides us  with an image of how  Simeon Bullen and his bride, Elizabeth may have appeared on their wedding day in 1775. He would have been aged 28 in that year and his wife 37 years of age. His family had a Farm at Seavington St. Mary, near Ilminster in Somerset, where his sister and two brothers lived with his parents in that year. His other brother, John had taken a different path as a high-ranking Naval Surgeon. As a younger son, Simeon would have had to make his way in the world. It was his good fortune to meet and marry Elizabeth Fitzherbert with her marriage settlement from her father, William  Fitzherbert of Wanehouse Farm with its 50 acres of land. 
I will now cover from all the information I have gathered about the Fitzherbert family, who originated from Tissington in Derbyshire a century earlier, a distance of over 200 miles.

The Fitzherbert family of Tissington is one of the oldest continuously resident landed families in England. For more than five centuries they have owned and lived at Tissington Hall, a remarkable example of continuity among the English gentry. The family’s connection with Tissington began in 1465 when Nicholas Fitzherbert, second son of John Fitzherbert of Somersal.  Herbert, married Cecily Frauncis, heiress of Tissington. Through this marriage the Manor entered the Fitzherbert family and has remained with them ever since.  In 1609 Francis Fitzherbert demolished the old moated manor house and built the present Jacobean mansion, Tissington Hall shown in the painting.

Remarkably, descendants of the builder still occupy the house more than 400 years later, making it one of a small number of English country houses continuously inhabited by the same family.  

The Arundell family owned the Manor of Chideock from 1425 until 1802. The connection began when Katherine de Chideock, daughter and heiress of Sir John de Chideock, married John Arundell of Lanherne in Cornwall around 1425. Through this marriage the manor, castle, and estate of Chideock passed into the hands of the Arundells. The Death of John Arundell at Chideock Castle in 1633, marked the end of their residence there. In 1738 the Chideock estate passed to the Wardour branch of the Arundells through inheritance.

Henry Arundell was born on 31 March 1740, the son of Henry Arundell and Mary Bellings-Arundell. In 1763 he married Mary Christina Conquest. A keen collector and patron of the arts, Arundell spent lavishly on the building and furnishing of New Wardour Castle in Wiltshire. His extravagance left him with immense debts, despite his considerable estates. He died on 4 December 1808, aged sixty-eight. After his death, his trustees were compelled to sell part of his Dorset lands in order to settle his debts. In 1802 The Chideock estate  was sold to their cousins, the Weld family of Lulworth.

There is a tenuous connection with the Fitzherbert family and the subsequent owner of  the Chideock Manor estate.
Edward Weld was the first husband of  Maria Anne Smythe, who  married Edward Weld in July 1775. Weld was a wealthy Catholic landowner, heir to the vast Weld estates centred on Lulworth Castle, and was about sixteen years older than Maria.
The marriage was tragically short. Just a few months after the wedding, Edward was thrown from his horse and died from his injuries. Because he had not yet updated his will following the marriage, Maria was left with little financial provision, and the Weld estates passed to Edward’s younger brother, Thomas Weld.

Three years later, Maria married Thomas Fitzherbert, from whom she took the surname by which she is remembered. After being widowed a second time in 1781, she later entered into her famous relationship and secret marriage with the future King George IV.  

The Lulworth Estate is still owned by the Weld family. Today it is directly managed by James Weld and his wife Sara. The estate covers about 12,000 acres in Dorset.  

The Welds acquired Lulworth in 1641, when Humphrey Weld bought the estate from Thomas Howard, who had built Lulworth Castle between 1608 and 1610 as a hunting lodge and grand residence.  The family became one of the most important old Catholic gentry families in England.

Chideock should be justly proud that its village church contains a magnificent Baroque memorial to the Fitzherberts. Today, it can be found in the closed-off area behind the organ, alongside two other memorials to the Bullen family, to whom they were linked by marriage.
The memorial was placed in its present position by Francis Woodhouse after the death of his wife, Ann, in 1765. It also commemorates her father, William Fitzherbert, described as “of this Parish, Gent.”, who had died four years earlier at the remarkable old age of 86. He would have been born in 1675, soon after his family had moved to Chideock, as there are no records of any Fitzherberts on the Protestation List of 1641 or Hearth Tax List of 1664, The memorial also records that William’s second daughter, Ann, had married Francis Woodhouse of Duke Street, Westminster, a successful Barrister, in 1740. Tragically, their only child, Elizabeth, died within a month of her birth. The painted  figure at the top of the memorial appears to be a carved representation of St Giles, the patron saint of the church.

Coincidentally there is a similar highly ornate carved  Baroque style mural  Memorial to the Bragge family dated just 4 years later in St. Andrews Church in Charmouth by the Altar. The inscribed central tablet framed by scrollwork and decorative foliage is  typical of gentry memorials placed inside parish churches in the eighteenth centuries in Dorset.

Early parish records for Chideock before 1660 have not survived, and the earliest known reference to a Fitzherbert living in the village is the Will of William Fitzherbert Senior, written in 1673. The Fitzherbert estate in Chideock appears to have been founded by William Fitzherbert Senior, who had settled in the village by around 1670.
It was his son, William Fitzherbert Junior, born in 1675, who made the greatest impact. He lived to the grand old age of eighty-six, dying in 1761. On his death, the estate passed to his only son, William Fitzherbert, who died in 1779 aged seventy-five. His Will shows that he divided his estate between his son, John Fitzherbert, and his daughter, Elizabeth, who had married Simeon Bullen just four years earlier.
John Fitzherbert survived his father by twenty years, dying in 1799, when it was inherited by the Reverend Samuel Fitzherbert, who collected its  rents until his death in 1832. His estate was sold soon afterwards, marking the end of the family’s long association with the village. This slide of the Family Tree incorporates seven of the  memorials  and Table Tombs to them and the Bullens to be found today in Chideock and Charmouth Churches.

On the death of John Fitzherbert in 1799, the Chideock Estate passed to his son Rev. Samuel Fitzherbert. John Fitzherbert had married Mary Roper in 1768 and they had a son, Samuel, born the following year. It would seem that she died soon after, at the age of just 25. John went on to remarry Ann Mullens in 1772 and had a daughter. Anna, born in 1775. The Tomb which I illustrate was later erected by Samuel in recognition of his tragic mother, Mary Fitzherbert.
Samuel was to marry Ann Langdon on 31 March 1802. His  half sister, Anna was married to Gilbert Langdon, brother to his own wife Ann. He served as the Rector of Winterborne Houghton and curate for the Church of Saint Eustace in Ibberton in Dorset.  When Joseph D’Aubeny died in 1817, aged 80,he left his considerable estate to Samuel which included Buckshaw House, where he was to live until his death in 1833, aged 63. He  was buried at Holwell church where there is a memorial to him. The accompanying picture depicts him outside his home,  Buckshaw House and the Table Tomb to his mother, Mary Fitzherbert to be seen today in St. Giles Churchyard in Chideock.

It was only 4 years after her marriage that her father, William Fitzherbert was to die at the age of 75 and her mother, Mary, shortly afterwards.  The original Will shown here divides his large Estate equally between his son, John Fitzherbert and daughter, Elizabeth Bullen. He had earlier given her Wanehouse Farm, with over fifty acres of land on her marriage to Simeon Bullen.

Simeon and Elizabeth Bulllen`s  original house still stands as a ruin behind Felicity’s Farm Shop, on the border of Chideock and Morcombelake.
Using this and other evidence, I have been able to recreate an image of how Wanehouse Farm may have looked when they lived there with their three sons in 1790. I will be using this, together with other illustrations based on old photographs, maps and paintings, throughout the second part of my talk.

Before I go any further in my Talk, I must answer the question a number of people have asked me about exactly where is Wanehouse Farm in Chideock. It is in fact on its border with Morcombelake. I have circled the buildings today on the first map showing its proximity behind the old Moore`s Bakery and Felicity`s Farm shop. There is a footpath that leads to it at the old Bakery buildings. The remains of the Farmhouse can be made out in the attached photographs. Most of the original Farm is now owned by the National Trust, although the derelict buildings are scheduled to be demolished and accommodation built on it in the future, subject to planning.

The map accompanying the 1953 Auction is useful as it reveals that the area covered by Wanehouse Farm in green. Little had changed over the years since the earlier 1841 Tithe Map.

There will now be a refreshment break and I will be happy to cover any questions you may have about the Bullens. The second half will cover their  lives in Chideock, Charmouth and Catherston