Aethelred the Umpteenth ... lived on MY patch ..!

 

When I looked at this photo, taken in London's Portman Square, I had absolutely no idea what I was about to discover ...

Dryden Sneyd. Actually Dryden Henry Sneyd of Ashcombe Park, Staffordshire ...

And what does this gentleman have to do with me?  Well, for some thirteen years Mr Sneyd lived just a few kilometres from my home at Gerolstein, New Zealand. He owned 100 acres of land which have become the centre of the village of Kaiapoi, and left his mark in the name of one of the main streets -- Sneyd Street.

Dryden Henry Sneyd (b Basford Hall, Ipstones, 2 September 1833; d Cheddleton, Staffs 20 January 1913) was born in Ipstones where his father, the Rev John Sneyd MA (d 17 February 1873) was the vicar of St Leonard's Church. Like all well-off clergy he fathered a multitude of children on his wife, Penelope née Holley, was looked after by a multitude of servants ...    Dryden, being a younger (3rd) son of a younger son in a cadet branch of the very wealthy, landowning Sneyd dynasty of Keele Hall had little 'expectations' and, at the age of twenty, he boarded the ship Minerva (830 tons) and sailed out of England to the gold-prosperous shores of New Zealand. He arrived 2 February, purchased his 100 acres at 'Ashcombe', established the township of Keele, comprising Sneyd, Audley and Kynnersley Streets and ... he farmed. Perhaps not madly efficiently ..

He described himself, simply, as 'gentleman', later as 'stockowner'. He got involved modestly in local affairs, local land bickerings, social occasions, grand juries etc. Kaiapoi acquired a pub called the Sneyd Arms!

Otherwise, he seems to have made little noise during his time in New Zealand, which came to an end in 1866 ...

I wonder why. I suspect that there had been a thinning of the Sneyd ranks (brothers 2, 4, 5 & 6 had died), and that he had crept a little closer to the top of his particular Sneyd-tree. Anyhow, a manual of aristocratic folk (The Landed Gentry) referred to him as 'second surviving son of Rev John of Ashcombe Park' 'of Ashcombe Park, Belmont and Onecote' '29th in direct male descent from Eawulf (a noble of Wessex) and his wife Elfwyn daughter and heir of AEthelred the last King of Mercia by Etheliked .. and so forth and so forth. Fancy, a toff in Kaiapoi!

Ashcombe Park, which had been built by grandfather William, thus descended to bachelor Dryden who lived out his days there, and at his death passed it on to a nephew ... by 1926 it had passed out of the family.

I'm not going into AEthelred and the other ramifications of the Sneyd family ... of which this gent seemed to have been a reasonably inconspicuous member ... but he seems to be largely responsible for Kaiapoi ...

Hmmm. In the 1950s, when travelling from Christchurch to Nelson, my brother and I used to beg papa NOT to take the road via Kaiapoi ... such a GLUM place.  Well, its been shook up a deal since then, and somewhat expanded ... but it is still not a place you would expect to find a descendant of Eawulf and Elfwyn ...

The nephew turned out to be a wondrous eccentric -- Chief Bard of the Order of the Imperishable Land and sucklike, and penned Arthurian poetry ... of which much can be read about elsewhere ..