The Kingdom Family and Their Public Houses

The kingdom family and their public houses

In the 19th century the Kingdom family were associated with two public houses in Dulverton. They had been in Dulverton for centuries as shoemakers and several were convicted for theft and swearing in the 18th century.

Betty Kingdom, widow and retired publican lived in Duck Puddle in the 1840s with her unmarried daughter Maria, son James and her grandson George Dobbs. James was a mason and his business was sufficient to enable him to employ a man to assist him. By 1861 he described himself as a builder and became innkeeper of the White Hart in Dulverton. He was still unmarried in his 40s, sharing the house with an older mason. In the 1860s he married grocer Rhoda Greenslade, a butcher’s daughter from Tiverton half his age and with an illegitimate daughter Emma. The couple had seven daughters and a son Albert, born when his father was about 50 who followed in his father’s trade. The eldest daughterJulia married a Bedminster currier William Butson. Two other daughters went into service; Laura at Battleton House with retired G.P. George Sydenham. Rhoda’s eldest daughter Emma Greenslade acted as nurse to her half siblings before going as housemaid to Dulverton Vicarage.

James and Rhoda were sufficiently prosperous to give up the White Hart in the 1880s and settle in Back, later High, Street and also to invest in property in Bridge Street. The Bridge Inn was kept by Charles Edmunds or Edmonds from Gloucestershire and his wife Elizabeth. His usual trade was gardener and he had lived in many places so it may be his wife who was the publican. One or both were fans of the novels of Walter Scott and christened their only child Ivanhoe Walter! In 1886 James Kingdom let the Bridge Inn to William Hancock, brewer and banker of Wiveliscombe for 14 years at £18 a year.[1] James retired before 1891 when there were only two children at home including Albert then a mason’s labourer. In 1900 James died but Rhoda remained in Dulverton with her son and youngest daughter. In 1904 she made a new lease of the Bridge Inn to Hancock and Sons Ltd for 27 years but at the same rent so it was clearly not her sole income. She died in Dulverton in 1910. Albert, still a mason in Dulverton, made a new lease of the Bridge Inn with Hancock’s in 1926 for 21 years at £25 a year but died in 1935. A kinsman Thomas Kingdom kept the Boot inn in Bridge Street in the 1930s so clearly pub-keeping was in the family’s blood.

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[1] SHC, DD/HCK 6/2/9.