Peter Davey (1725-1760) & Katherine Hurlock (1726-1804)
Peter Davey, was baptised on 28 December 1725 at Felsted, Essex, the son of Joseph Davey (c1685-1750), a farmer and Mary.
Peter Davey, a bookseller, was admitted to the Freedom of the City of London in 1751 in the Company of Stationers. He and his business partner, Bedwell Law, traded as Davey & Law of Ave Mary Lane in the London from about 1755.
Katherine Hurlock (1726-1804) was the daughter of James Hurlock (1695-1774) of Elmstead Hall, Essex and Martha Brooke (1699-1767) of Halstead (whose brother, George Brooke, was Deputy Clerk of the Peace).
The Hall had been owned by the Hurlocks since the 1690s when James’s father, Capt. John Hurlock (1660-1711), originally from Rotherhithe, “purchased it with his wife’s money…and she left it to her second son, James, charged with an annuity of £40 a year to her eldest son” (History of Tendring Hundred, 1877).
Capt. John Hurlock’s wife, Katherine Till (1664-1729), was the only child of Capt. Hugh Till, of Shadwell, a mariner, who was appointed an Elder Brethren of Trinity House in 1685, and was jointly responsible for the building of St Agnes Lighthouse in the Isles of Scilly in 1680.
Grade II listed: Timber framed and plastered dating from C15th and C16th but of earlier origin with later C17th and C18th alterations and additions.
Peter Davey and Katherine Hurlock were married at Elmstead on 30 June 1756.
Peter and Katherine had two daughters, Katherine (1757-1832) and Martha (1759-1845), who were baptised at St Martin’s Ludgate.
Peter Davey died aged 35 in April 1760, and was buried at Elmstead. Katherine remained at Elmstead where her son, Peter, was born in December 1760.
Katherine later moved to Dedham so her son, Peter, could attend the Grammar School.
This connection with Dedham was already established as Katherine’s younger brother, Brooke Hurlock (1729-1803), had attended the Grammar School. The Rev Brooke Hurlock was rector of Lamarsh for 41 years (and so must have known the family of his great-neice’s husband, William Downes) but lived at Langham, where he was curate, near Dedham so his own sons could attend the Grammar School – and his family came into contact with the artist John Constable who also attended the school in the late 1780s. The Hurlock connection with John Constable was represented in the paintings Lamarsh Hall, Lamarsh Essex, c1799, and the four watercolours of the Stour Valley given by Constable to Brooke Hurlock’s daughter on her marriage.
Hill House, south of Dedham, shown by blue arrow
Katherine lived at Hill House, an early C18th building previously called Hill Farm, which she enlarged and converted into a family residence, including adding french windows which were then in fashion.
Katherine’s son, Peter, went into partnership with John Townsend as a coal merchant at Union Wharf, Wapping, in 1787; and in 1789 her eldest daughter, also Katherine, married Francis Morgan, a farmer from Bramford in Suffolk.
Katherine died in 1804 – “At her house in Dedham, Essex, aged 78 years, Mrs Katherine Davey, relict of Peter Davey, formerly a bookseller in London” (Oxford Journal). In a codicil to her will, she directed that she was “to be buried in Elmstead Church in the said county of Essex by the side of my late dear husband”.
The local importance of the Hurlock family was shown in the south chapel of the parish church of St Anne at Elmstead. Below the east window in the south chapel are two similar marble memorials, one for Martha Hurlock and her husband James Hurlock and the other to Peter Davey and Katherine.
After the death of Katherine’s elder brother, James Hurlock (junior), in 1776, her younger brother, the Rev Brooke Hurlock, inherited the family holdings and the Hurlock interest in Elmstead shifted to Dedham where he lived.
