Gerald Thomson Lermit (1825-1894) & Elizabeth Henrietta Downes (1826-1892)
Gerald Thomson Lermit was born on 25 April 1825, the son of Alfred Lermit and Maria Elizabeth Baker, at Mundlaisir, Indore, India. He returned to England with his mother after his father died of fever in 1829. He was educated at Stamford Grammar School and at Boulogne, before entering St John’s College, Cambridge in 1845. In was ordained Deacon in June 1849 and appointed as curate at Lexden near Colchester.
Elizabeth Henrietta Downes was the second daughter of William Downes and Ann Davey. She was baptised at Colchester on 3 December 1824 and grew up in Dedham, where her parents lived at Hill House.
On 12 September 1849 at Dedham church the Rev. Gerald T. Lermit of Lexden married Elizabeth Downes. They remained at Lexden for about a year before Gerald became curate and officiating minister at Aldham, north of Colchester. Their first child, Alfred William Lermit was born in 1850, and they went on to have thirteen more children; the youngest, Charles Murray Lermit was born in 1866.
In June 1852, Gerald was appointed to the second mastership at Dedham Grammar School. The following year, Gerald was one of 73 candidates who applied to be the master of the school, and in was included in the shortlist of 12. With the backing of his father-in-law William Downes and the latter’s brother-in-law, Francis Davey, who were both longstanding governors of the school, Gerald secured the majority of votes and thus was appointed.
Dedham Grammar School had been founded in 1571 and granted a charter by Elizabeth I in 1575. The school’s original building were replaced in the 1730s by the existing brick-built structures which remain a conspicuous part of the village. The school became increasingly successful over the remainder of the C18th and into the C19th. The 30 years headmastership of Gerald Lermit was summarised by his nephew (Gerald H Rendall) saying the period “saw the high-water mark in numbers and efficiency” of the school.
This description of Dedham in the “third quarter” of the C19th, written in 1937, looked back somewhat nostalgically to “the animated social life – educational, religious, musical and sporting – which assured Victorian Dedham a marked place in county life. The cricket ground was the scene of well contested matches, and of festival gatherings on speech days. At the annual county ball, held in the Assembly Hall, officers graced the occasion by wearing uniform. Fours and even an Eight plied on the long reach. Meets were frequented in the market-place…At Westgate House, Frank Davey [Elizabeth Henrietta’s uncle and brother of Ann Davey] as M.F.H. kept his three hunters, and kennelled his shooting dogs; and under his command a company of volunteers (16th Essex R.V.) was enrolled; and practised at the rifle range above Stratford Bridge.” (Dedham Described and Deciphered)
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A description of Dedham and the school is given in “Dedham Described and Deciphered” by Gerald H Rendall. G H Rendall, the son of Anna Downes (the sister of Elizabeth Henrietta), was a distinguished academic and Roman scholar who was principal of Liverpool College (now University) and then Headmaster of Charterhouse. He retired to Dedham, and was an Hon Canon of Chelmsford. He dedicated a window panel in the church to the memory of his mother and her sisters.
As a result of the success the school was enjoying, Gerald Lermit had a new school room built. This was opened in 1867 by the Bishop of Rochester. The new building was “built from designs made by the headmaster, aided by the practical experience of Mr Downes of Stonilands [Gerald’s father-in-law], an old and valued friend of the school”. Gerald’s brother-in-law, the Rev W E Downes of Baylham, presented a bell for the tower at the west end of the school room and a cross for the east end.
In 1867 Gerald was conferred as Doctor of Laws (LL.D) by the University of Cambridge.
The early 1870s were a period of significant change for the school. The Endowed Schools Commission which concluded in 1873, and which followed the 1868 report by Lord Taunton, made a number of changes to the governance of the school, including the headmaster’s pay. The Taunton report had commented that Dedham was an example of where the “foundationers”, usually poorer and local pupils for whose education the school had been established, were being excluded from activities and facilities provided to fee paying pupils: “the 20 foundationers are not allowed to use the playground or to associate with the boarders out of school hours. The playground is hired by the master at his own private expense, and he therefore thinks that the day boys have no claim to admission. The trustees of the school have proposed to exchange a distant piece of land for it, so as to secure a playground for the whole school. The head master opposes this plan.”
An advertisement in the Essex Standard in 1874 listed six masters, including Gerald who was the “lecturer on Chemistry and Physics”; his son, Alfred William Lermit, was included as an “instructor in surveying”.
Some detail about the practicalities of running the school were described in the memoirs of a former pupil, W. E. Heitland (After Many Years, 1926): “But the then Headmaster, the Rev G T Lermit, was a High Church man…[he] had no easy task. The school could not pay its way on the support of local families. To attract and keep boarders from the outside was the only chance of success…In later years he told me that he had saved no money out of his time at Dedham…What he gained was a home and the means of educating a large family…Private connexions [sic] had enabled Lermit to draw some pupils from families of good standing, lads who would have been of a credit to any school…The school teaching was not of a high order. No doubt the salaries were not such as to attract masters of the highest qualifications…The masters did their best…Lermit himself was a born teacher. When he stood chalk in hand before a blackboard, taking a class in elementary mathematics, he was at his best.“
When Gerald stepped down from the headship in 1884 he and Henrietta left Dedham for Cheltenham, where he had accepted the post of curate-in-charge of the Holy Apostles’ church at Charlton King’s. In 1885 he was presented with the living (in the gift of his Cambridge College, St John’s) at St. Florence, near Tenby.
In 1885 their fourth son, Francis John Lermit, died aged 26 at Mehama, Oregon, United States, while crossing a swollen river.
Elizabeth Henrietta died on 1 June 1892. Gerald died on 25 October 1894.They were buried in the churchyard at St Florence.
When four chancel windows, which had previously been blocked up for over 150 years, were refilled in the late C19th with stained glass “by those who had…old associations with Dedham” as part of the “extensive and judicious restoration…[that] restored to much of that original beauty which the barbarian of a later age had defaced”, one of the windows memorialised Gerald Thomson Lermit and Elizabeth Henrietta (Downes) Lermit.
The left & centre brass plaques below the panels
Summary of the children of Gerald Thomson Lermit (1825-1894) & Elizabeth Henrietta Downes (1826-1892)
- Alfred William Lermit (1850-1929), married in 1879 Emily Jervis, daughter of Rev W G Jervis and granddaughter of Col Jervis of the Bombay Cavalry, and worked as land agent and surveyor and founded the firm of Tomlinson & Lermit (civil engineers, architects and surveyors) in Singapore in the 1880s.
- Henrietta Lermit (1851-1943), married in 1875 James Rodger Best. In 1901 was lodging in Tenby, and in 1911 was a boarding house keeper at Nottingham Place, Marylebone. She died at Coles Oak, Dedham.
- Annette Laura Lermit (1852-1932), married in 1874 the Rev. William Maitland Clark, headmaster of Hartlebury Grammar School (1874-79), vicar of St Lawrence, Winchester and from 1904 vicar of Kilmeston, Alresford, Hants.
- Mary Lermit (1853), died aged five months.
- Arthur Major Lermit (1854-1926), married Emily Collingwood, eldest daughter of George Collingwood and Emily Genn Saul) at Stratford St Mary in 1879, and lived in Birmingham where he owned a business in partnership with George Frederic Rendall under the name of “Rendall, Underwood & Co” as manufacturers of leather dressing cases and bags in Birmingham and London. The works were at Irving Street and the shop at 130 Great Charles Street in Birmingham. The business also made bicycle saddles under the name of the “Westwood Saddle Co Ltd”; in 1906 the saddle company J B Brooks took legal action against Rednall, Underwood & Co for patent infringement. Arthur Major Lermit died on 15 February 1906 at his home in Edgbaston.
- Gerald Henry (Harry) Lermit (1855-1915), worked as an insurance clerk (1881) before emigrating to the USA where he settled in Chicago and married Delphine.
- Georgina Finlay Lermit (1857-1935), accompanied her parents to Wales and in 1901 was lodging in Tenby; she returned to Dedham and was known as “Auntie G” and was “full of good works”
- Francis John Lermit (1858-1886)
- Horace Lermit (1859-
- Lawrence Hosier Lermit (1860-
- Edward Stanley Lermit (1862-
- Rose/Rosa Helen Lermit (1863-1876), died aged 12 on 3 February 1876 of Scarlet Fever in the 1876 outbreak at Dedham
- Maria Elizabeth married William Collingwood (the brother of Emily Collingwood, the wife of Arthur Major Lermit).
- Charles Murray Lermit (1866-1955), married Elvire Desiree Painchault in 1897 and lived in Orleans, France.