From Gordon’s gin in Wapping, to Broseley, Bridgnorth and Christ Church Oxford
Osborne Gordon’s trajectory to Christ Church was very different to Ruskin's. Osborne Gordon’s grandfather was Alexander Gordon (1742-1821), the founder of the Gordon Gin Company. Alexander Gordon opened his gin distillery in 1769 in Southwark, and then relocated his factory in 1786 to Clerkenwell, for the pure water of Clerk’s Well. He was baptised on 7 September 1742 at St John’s Church in Wapping, London. He married Susannah Osborne (c. 1752-1833) on 28 August 1769, the year in which he opened the gin distillery. Alexander Gordon is remembered as the founder of Gordon’s gin on the bottle labels today, more than 250 years later. Wapping was a commercial centre and port in East London, in the heart of dockland, with its many public houses, drinking dens and sailors. This state of affairs was captured by the pictorial satirist William Hogarth (1697-1764), in for example, his Gin Lane engraving that depicted the consequences of excessive gin, a popular drink for which Alexander Gordon, an astute businessman, recognised the enormous commercial potential.
From Wapping to Broseley, Shropshire
Osborne Gordon’s father, George Osborne Gordon (? -1822), was one of the ten children of the marriage between Alexander Gordon and Susannah Osborne. George Osborne Gordon followed in his father’s footsteps and his profession, listed on the birth certificate of his son, Osborne Gordon, was that of a wine merchant. George Osborne Gordon married into the large, powerful Onions (pronounced "innions") family, Shropshire ironmasters and pioneers of the industrial revolution. His bride was Elizabeth Onions (? - 1846). The Onions family, and co-founder William Banks, had a foundry in Foundry Lane, off Church Street, in Broseley. John Onions, who died 1819, shared the title, along with John Wilkinson (1728-1802), as "The Father of the Shropshire Iron Trade".
Vignette of Broseley and district
According to The Victoria History of the Counties of England, the name Broseley is thought to mean "woodland clearing" as much of the area was wooded in the Middle Ages (X, 257). However, by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it was on the edge of the industrial part of the county, near Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale, with their furnaces, comprising the heart of the so-called industrial revolution. In the early nineteenth century, Broseley was a small, but fairly self-sufficient town of approximately 4500 inhabitants. In 1811, it consisted mainly of one long street, at the top of an eminence, with narrow lanes and paths (known as "jitties") branching off and going down the slopes to collieries, furnaces, brick works, tile works, pipe works and small holdings. There were rows and rows of tiny, brick houses, and, in the more affluent Church Street, imposing properties such as The Lawns and Broseley Hall. In 1828, sixteen butchers were listed, as well as numerous taverns and public houses and a variety of shops and occupations (hatter, draper, grocer and tea dealer, cabinet maker, boot and shoemaker, basket maker, attorney, baker and flour dealer, blacksmith, brick and tile manufacturers, coalmaster, corn miller, draper, cooper, maltster, sadler, tallow chandler…). There was a fine Town Hall, a brick building with pillars and arches and rooms on the first floor, that had originally opened in 1779 as a market hall in the High Street. But the lack of fresh water was a constant problem and drinking water was so scarce that it was considered acceptable to give a butt of fresh water as a present. There was no street lighting until 1847.
The town’s great prosperity in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was due to abundant iron and coal in the vicinity and the proximity of Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale on the banks of the fast-flowing river Severn. It was but three miles down steep winding roads to the wooded narrow gorge of the river Severn traversed by means of the western world's first single-span cast iron bridge (hence the name of the town of Ironbridge) designed by Abraham Darby (1750-1791) and inaugurated in 1779. Adjoining Ironbridge were the Coalbrookdale coalfield and blast furnaces, romantic subject matter for many artists, far from the harsh realities of daily life.
Coalbrookdale by Night by Philip James de Loutherbourg (1740-1812). Oil on canvas, 68 x 106.7 cm. Courtesy of the Science Museum, London. [Click on images to enlarge them.]
The Strasbourg-born painter made a series of watercolours of industrial subjects in Shropshire. In his dramatic oil painting Coalbrookdale by Night (1801), he captured the terrific heat of those furnaces that operated non-stop, day and night, as the orange-red blaze rises up into the sky against a profile of the factory, the workers' dwellings on the hillside as well as the workers themselves. While cataloguing the thousands of Turner paintings and drawings bequeathed to the Nation (the Turner Bequest), Ruskin identified and catalogued the following four Shropshire sketches: nos. 13, 15, 16 and 17 are entitled respectively Large Fire-Engin in Coalbrook Dale; Fire-Engin, Coalbrook Dale; Iron Foundry, Maidly Wood, at the Top of the Hill ; Largest Fire-Engine of Coalbrook Dale (12.255 and 633). These were part of a series of "manufactory subjects" depicting what Ruskin called the "manufacturing picturesque" (12.255) of that mining community with its plentiful supplies of coal and clay, and its iron smelting works, furnaces and foundries. Turner may have executed these when he was in Shropshire in 1794 or when crossing the county on his way to, or from Wales at a later date. Turner's interest in scientific and industrial developments drew him to the birthplace of heavy industry and the cradle of the Industrial Revolution in the gorge of the river Severn at Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale and Madeley, places within a few miles of rural Much Wenlock. Particularly striking is his rendering of the dramatic moment of the opening of a furnace at night in his Limekiln at Coalbrookdale (c. 1797), a masterpiece couched, according to James Hamilton, "deliberately and fashionably, in the visual language of Rembrandt".
Left: The Iron Bridge. Right: Ironbridge as seen from the bridge. Courtesy of Wikipedia
The magnificent bridge at Ironbridge, weighing 378 tons, described by Viscount Torrington as "one of the wonders of the world", quickly became a tourist attraction in the little eponymous town advertised as the "Brighton of the Midlands". This feat of engineering was painted by William Williams (active 1758-1797) in his oil on canvas The Cast Iron Bridge near Coalbrookdale (1780). The bridge, linking the south and north banks of the river and gorge, provided an indispensable means of communication. Some of the finest ironwork of the Coalbrookdale Company was exhibited at the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, London, in 1851. The impressive "Coalbrookdale Gate" still remains in the Park.
The name of the wealthy industrialist John Wilkinson is synonymous with Broseley. He lived at The Lawns, a fine Georgian house set in extensive grounds in Church Road, opposite the parish church. The house, originally called New House, was built in 1727 for Thomas Stephens, a local mine owner, and remodelled by Wilkinson in the 1760s. The quality of the building was very high and included features by the Shrewsbury architect Thomas Farnolls Pritchard (VCH Shropshire, X, 261). Wilkinson owned several furnaces in the vicinity producing weapons – grenades, shells and cannon – as well as castings for domestic and industrial use. Not only was he an astute and to some extent ruthless businessman, he was also the inventor of an accurate cannon-boring machine that was used to bore cylinders for steam engines. He built and launched at Willey Wharf (on the Severn) the first iron barge, a precursor of the iron vessels on the Thames and Tyne. The threat of an invasion by France in 1803 sent Wilkinson's furnaces into a frenzy of production: men worked day and night to push the manufacture of ammunition for the British forces. Wilkinson's profits soared and he was even suspected of selling artillery to Britain's enemy or "bogey" Napoléon Bonaparte. A later notable resident of The Lawns was John Rose (died 1841), who owned factories at nearby Caughley and Coalport producing fine porcelain, often of distinctive blue and white hues, with the famous designs of the "Willow Pattern" and "Broseley Blue Dragon" that acquired a worldwide reputation.
Broseley declined rapidly throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; in 1870, Murray’s Handbook for Shropshire, Cheshire and Lancashire described it as "an unattractive town, principally dependent on its potteries and brick-yards". The entry remained unchanged in the 1879 and 1897 editions. The absence of a railway and the closure of furnaces contributed to this decline. After a sharp drop in the area’s fortunes with the closure of the coalfields and the rail branch lines, Ironbridge – but not Broseley – enjoyed a revival from 1986 when it was designated a World Heritage Site and became a flourishing tourist centre. The old mills and furnaces were converted into museums and the former industries gained historical and cultural importance. The heritage industry replaced heavy industry. The famous Iron Bridge, under the care of English Heritage, was repaired and restored between autumn 2017 and January 2019.
Gordon Family
According to the Broseley Parish Register, George Osborne Gordon and Elizabeth, née Onions, produced six children (five boys and a girl; SA, Shrewsbury, Box 13), all born in Broseley and baptised in the parish church. Their third child, Osborne Gordon, was born on 21 April 1813; his only sister, Jane, born on 27 July 1816, outlived all the siblings and died on 25 February 1892, aged 75. Jane married John Pritchard, who, as Member of Parliament for the Borough of Bridgnorth, played an important role at national and local level, and enjoyed the friendship of prestigious literary giants such as Ruskin.
Controversy surrounded the legality of Jane’s baptism on 24 August 1816 at St Leonard’s Church, Broseley. The Rev. W[illiam] C[harles] Gregory who officiated was revealed to be a bogus cleric and impostor who also used the aliases of Laurence Halloran and Laurence Hynes (Henry) Halloran (1765-1831; SA, Shrewsbury, 1813-1916, microfiche, p. 71 of Broseley baptisms.). He was curate to the rector, the Rev. Townshend Forester, a member of the prestigious Forester family of Willey Hall, Shropshire. Gregory may have continued for a considerable time as curate at Broseley if a particular misdemeanour had not been discovered. In 1818, he was charged, at the Old Bailey no less, with forging a frank on a letter that he sent from London to Broseley and of defrauding the revenue of 10d. He was indicted of a charge of counterfeiting the tenpenny frank in the name of Sir William Garrow, MP, in order to avoid payment of the duty of postage on the letter. Was the letter for the purpose of accrediting himself as a curate? Gregory lost his case and was sentenced to seven years’ penal transportation to New South Wales. He departed on the Baring in December 1818, along with three hundred convicts, and arrived in New South Wales on 26 June 1819 where he remained until his death in Sydney on 8 March 1831. Little hard information is available about Halloran. He was of Irish origin, persuasive, with a talent for preaching, although he was not ordained: he claimed to be a Doctor of Divinity. His background prior to coming to Broseley was colourful; he had several children, was a bigamist, was often in debt, he published sermons and, no doubt to escape attention, lived in several places, not only in England but in South Africa. In Sydney, he seems to have made a name for himself as a pioneer schoolmaster! How he arrived in Broseley is unclear. Like Osborne Gordon (and Ruskin), he was immortalised in the Dictionary of National Biography, and in its successor the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, published in 2004. There is also an interesting entry on Halloran in the Australian Dictionary of Biography (1966).
The legality of Osborne Gordon’s baptism on 8 July 1813 is not, however, in doubt; it was conducted legitimately by the Rev. Townshend Forester (SA, Shrewsbury, microfiche of baptisms in the parish of Broseley). During Osborne Gordon’s lifetime, there were two parish churches in Broseley – the centuries-old parish church of St Leonard and the new church, renamed All Saints, rebuilt on the same site between 1843 and 1845. It was designed by Worcester architect Harvey Eginton (1809-1849) – he also designed Holy Trinity Church at nearby Dawley – and re-built by William Exley & Sons at a cost of approximately £9,500, a sum raised mainly by subscriptions. The estimated cost of £3000 in 1841 had more than tripled (VCH Shropshire x, 287-88). It was a relatively large church for a dwindling population.
A cast iron plaque on the south transept wall of Broseley Parish Church tells us that Osborne Gordon’s father died on 1 April 1822, at the early age of forty-three. Ruskin’s friend was but nine years old when Elizabeth, his mother, was left to bring up three sons and a daughter, aged ten, nine, seven and five respectively, as well as a baby (William Pierson). She sought help and solace from her widowed mother, Jane Onions, and from her (Elizabeth's) sisters Mary and Martha (Jane Onions died on 30 May 1825; Mary on 30 November 1825, and Martha on 25 April 1860). It was fortunate that Elizabeth had been born into a comfortable middle class family. The large, powerful Onions family – there were many branches and members who often had the same names, hence the likelihood of confusion – were ironmasters and pioneers of the industrial revolution. They owned and developed huge ironworks with blazing coal furnaces in and around Broseley, Ironbridge and the Black Country. In 1801, John Onions's new Broseley foundry was the envy of rival industrialist John Wilkinson who reputedly described Onions's products as the neatest he had seen anywhere (VCH Shropshire X, 276). H. E. Forrest’s The Old Houses of Wenlock and Wenlock Edge, their History and Associations explains their accumulated wealth enabled some members of the Onions family to live in the spacious, square-shaped Queen Anne house called White Hall, in residential Church Street (Wilding & Son, Shrewsbury, 1922, 3rd ed, p. 87). This solid residence was still standing in the twenty-first century. Only two years before his untimely death, George Osborne Gordon had taken on much extra work and responsibility – the management of his father-in-law’s ironworks at Brierley, near Dudley, in Staffordshire. He placed the following public announcement in The Times of Tuesday, 13 June 1820, page 3:
Brierley Iron-Works for Castings, Engine Work, Bar Iron, and Tire. – GEORGE OSBORNE GORDON, Son-in-law and successor to the late Mr. John Onions, respectfully informs Brewers, Distillers, Sugar-bakers, Soap-boilers, and the Public in general, that he has undertaken the BUSINESS of his late father-in-law, at Brierley, and solicits the continuance of the favours conferred on Mr. Onions, which he assures them they may depend upon being executed with the greatest attention, punctuality, and despatch, and upon the lowest terms. All letters and orders are requested to be addressed to him, at Brierley, near Dudley.
At Bridgnorth School
When Gordon was a boy, there was no recognised academic school in Broseley, apart from a few privately run establishments; a National [i.e. Anglican] School was not built until 1854/5. So from 1825 until 1831 young Osborne Gordon, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, attended the ancient fee-paying and notable Bridgnorth School or Free Grammar School ("free" meaning "free from ecclesiastical oversight") in the pretty, prosperous market town some ten miles away.
Bridgnorth, with a population of approximately 6000 inhabitants, was an attractive place in which to spend those six formative years. It had (and still has) immense character – a Low Town on the banks of the river Severn in a valley bounded by precipitous rocks covered with wood, and a High Town with an eleventh-century fortress castle, a seventeenth-century Town Hall astride the High Street, innumerable black and white houses and ancient taverns. Murray’s Handbook for Shropshire, Cheshire and Lancashire (1870), extolled its situation: "Few towns are more picturesquely placed" (p. 24). From the terraced walk around the castle remains, from the top of the cliff, there is a sheer drop of almost 200 feet. When King Charles 1st of England visited the town he was awestruck, and famously declared: "The finest view in all my kingdom!" Turner was attracted to its unique features and as part of his first Midland tour in 1794, he worked from the Low Town and sketched in pencil and watercolour a View of Bridgnorth on the River Severn, Shropshire with the Church of St Mary Magdalene in the distance.
Bridgnorth School was located in a quiet part of the high town, in an ecclesiastical close adjoining St Leonard's Church. Gordon was most likely a boarder, one of just over a hundred at the time. Each day started early; boarders rose at six o’clock, followed by prayers at six-thirty, then the first lesson at seven o'clock. In addition to the academic programme, there were organised sports – swimming in the river Severn in Low Town, cricket, twenty-mile walks – and a weekly visit to the theatre. Older pupils were encouraged to read for pleasure and self-improvement Ancient and Modern History, poetry and Shakespeare. Gordon's Headmaster during his entire school years was the Rev. Thomas Rowley (1797-1877), regarded as a staunch Tory. Rowley had good academic credentials; he had studied first at Shrewsbury School under the headship of Samuel Butler and then at Christ Church, Oxford. Gordon was immensely talented and had a reputation for being a "genius who could dispense with work, and who occupied an unapproachable position of his own", according to the recollections of his younger fellow school student (later Sir) Ralph Robert Wheeler Lingen (1819-1905). In his final year, Gordon became Head Boy. Lingen recalls the eighteen-year-old’s traits: “The long, thick, soft, and dark hair, the refined features, and the large expressive eyes, the look rather absent and dreamy when at rest, but always with a lurking mockery about it, instantly called by occasion into characteristic and witty comments, – the rather sauntering gait, the head somewhat on one side, and the hand somewhat raised.”
Osborne Gordon by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1857. Albumen print. . Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London NPG P7(5).
A photograph of Gordon, taken taken in the spring of 1857 by fellow Christ Church scholar and lecturer in mathematics (from 1855), Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known later as Lewis Carroll, author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), reflects some of those characteristics. It depicts a pensive, studious, relaxed forty-four-year-old; slim, well dressed, with dark hair and sideburns (no beard), and seated reading a book propped against a table covered with a decorative cloth. He is a handsome man. However, one must treat photographs with caution; well before the era of digital enhancement, they were sometimes retouched to ameliorate the qualities, health and youth of the sitter. Another photograph shows a slightly older Gordon, still beardless, holding a walking stick in his left hand, seated in an upright armchair and facing the camera with a strong, direct gaze. A third portrait, a stipple engraving, can be found in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Bridgnorth School had a special relationship with Christ Church through the Careswell Exhibition – so named after the benefactor Edward Careswell – an endowment financing the University studies of a small number of very talented boys. Preparation for the scholarship was based on a classical curriculum and there was no better teacher of classics than Rowley. Osborne Gordon won the coveted scholarship.
On the first leg of the journey from Broseley to Christ Church, Gordon would have travelled by coach and horses to Birmingham, then changed to the Oxford coach. The Emerald provided a regular service between Shrewsbury and Birmingham, calling at the White Hart Inn, in Ironbridge, every morning at ten o’clock. It was a huge step from life with his widowed mother in the small town of Broseley to the great Oxford College, founded in 1525 as Cardinal College by Cardinal Wolsey and re-founded as Christ Church in 1546 by King Henry VIII with a chapel designated as a cathedral. That College was to play a central role throughout Gordon's life.
Gordon matriculated on 25 October 1832, a ceremony that required him to present himself at Oxford before his college Dean and Vice-Chancellor. Perhaps there is a missing letter by Gordon describing the ceremony? However, one of the most vibrant accounts of matriculation at Oxford is provided by A. [lfred] E. [dward] Housman, writing to his stepmother from St John’s College on Sunday, 21 October 1877:
.At a quarter to five on the Saturday afternoon all the freshmen of this college, twenty-two in number, were collected in Mr Ewing’s rooms, and were there instructed how to write our names in Latin in the Vice-Chancellor’s book. Alfred, he said, became Alfredus, Edward, Edvardus, and so on; the surnames of course remaining unchanged. Then he marched us off to New College, where we found the Vice-Chancellor [James Edwards Sewell] seated in dim religious light at the top of the hall. Another college was just concluding the ceremony, and when they had finished, we one by one inscribed our names in a large book, in this wise. "Alfredus Edvardus Housman, e Coll. Di. Joh. Bapt. Gen. Fil. natu max." which is, being interpreted, "A. E. Housman, of the College of St John the Baptist, eldest son of a gentleman". Sons of clergymen write "Cler.Fil." and sons of officers write "arm. Fil." Then I wrote my name in English in a smaller and less dignified book, and then paid £2 10s. 0d. to a man at the table, and then we sat down one by one in a row till all had written their names and paid their fee. Then an attendant brought in twenty-two copies of the Statutes of the University, bound in violet, and piled them on the table, hiding the vice-Chancellor from the eye. Presently his head appeared over the top, and we got up and stood in a sort of semicircle in front of him. Then he called up each of us by name and presented each with a copy of the Statutes, and with a paper on which was written in Latin, or what passes for Latin at Oxford:- "At Oxford, in the Michaelmas term A.D. 1877, on the 13th day of the month of October: on which day Alfred Edward Housman of the College of St John the Baptist, gentleman’s son, appeared in my presence, and was admonished to keep the laws of this University, and was enrolled in the register (matricula) of the University.
J. E. Sewell
Vice-Chancellor"
Then he settled his gown over his shoulders and said, "Gentlemen of St John’s College, attend to me." We attended. He said, in Latin, "Allow me to inform you that you have this day been enrolled in the register of the University, and that you are bound to keep all the statutes contained in this book" (with the velvet cover) "as far as they may concern you." Then we went. As to keeping the statutes contained in the violet cover, you may judge what a farce that is when I tell you that you are forbidden to wear any coat save a black one, or to use fire-arms, or to trundle a hoop, among other things.
Osborne Gordon had had such a thorough academic grounding at Bridgnorth School that he easily outshone the Christ Church undergraduates, many of whom had been admitted on the grounds of their noble birth. Gordon was registered at Oxford as being from a family, like Ruskin’s, entitled to bear heraldic arms. But it was not necessarily an easy environment for a true scholar with aspirations, and the lack of order and cleanliness must have been a shock. Tim Hilton describes the undergraduates in the 1830s as "idle and riotous" with "wines, gambling and hunting" being the chief amusements, and concludes, with reference to Ruskin, that "it was not an inspiring environment for such an eager young man".
Gordon excelled in Greek, a passion nurtured by Thomas Rowley. His proficiency soon brought him to the attention of Thomas Gaisford (1779-1855), Regius Professor of Greek, and Dean of Christ Church since 1831. Gaisford nominated Gordon to a Studentship in 1834, and a firm friendship developed between them.
The Sleeping Children by Sir Francis Chantrey. Lichfield Cathedral.
By 1835, Gordon gained the Dean Ireland University Scholarship, "chiefly through the merits of eight exquisite lines of Doric Greek on the subject of Sir F. Chantrey's monument to two children in Lichfield Cathedral". This was Francis Chantrey's sculpture of the children of the Rev. W. Robinson that Ruskin praised so highly many years later in his lecture on the Sienese sculptor Jacopo della Quercia (1374/5-1438) at Oxford on 24 November 1874; it was, he proclaimed, an example of a "portrait-statue still retaining the recumbent position, [...] very touching and lovely" (23.229). Winning the Dean Ireland Scholarship was a considerable feat that caused some astonishment, admiration, and no doubt some jealousy among his peers but quickly set Gordon apart as an intellectual force to be reckoned with. It also caused a flurry of excitement and much pride among the staff and students at Bridgnorth School.
In 1836, Gordon took a double first in Classics and Mathematics. According to his contemporaries and local tradition mixed with a degree of malice and envy, this BA degree was obtained "after being idle for the greater part of his undergraduate’s career, and then working a fabulous number of hours daily in the last year, especially towards the end of it, when the less critical spirits spoke of sixteen hours out of the twenty-four". Gordon remained at Christ Church as a Tutor to a prestigious list of undergraduates, including the future King Edward VII, G. Ward Hunt, future Chancellor of the Exchequer, Chichester Parkinson-Fortescue, British Liberal politician, and John Ruskin, perhaps the most influential of all!
Last modified 9 March 2020