John Wreford Julian Hardman 1863-1900            back to Clannaborough

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In Clannaborough Church there is a window depicting St Martin, in memory of John Wreford Julian Hardman who died in 1900 in South Africa during the Boer War.

 

Why it should be here is a mystery. He seemed to have no connection with Clannaborough, but the name Wreford gives a clue.

 

John W J Hardman was born in Berlin in 1863. His parents were Ann Wreford and Frederick Hardman.

 

John had a younger sister, Frances Anne de Rougemont Hardman, born in Florence in 1867. John and Frances's mother Ann Wreford was born at Nicholls Nymet near North Tawton; her father John was the brother of William Wreford of Clannaborough (see below). Ann married Frederick Hardman in Clifton, Bristol in 1861 when she was 40.

 

In Clannaborough Church there is also a brass memorial commemorating both Selina Ward Wreford nee Southwell, William's wife, and Ann Hardman nee Wreford, whose husband, Frederick, is described as being of "The Times". Permission to erect the memorial was sought by John Hardman and his sister Ann shortly after Selina Wreford died in 1892, and the request  does not mention Ann and Frederick Hardman, whose names are included on the memorial.

Born in London in 1815, John's father, Frederick Hardman was the son of Joseph Hardman, a Lloyds insurance agent,originally from Manchester. Frederick volunteered as an officer in the Auxillary Legion sent to Spain to assist Queen Isabella II in the First Carlist War.

In about 1850 he became a war correspondent of "The Times", initially in Spain, and then all over Europe including the battlegrounds of the Crimea. He wrote several books, some about his time in Spain. He was working in Paris at the time of his death aged 60 in 1874. Ann Wreford who died in 1881, was his second wife. His first wife, Maria was Spanish.

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Frederick's son, John Wreford Julian Hardman was educated at Stoke Poges School, Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1888 aged 24 he married Frances Mary Holford McMahon, daughter of General Sir Thomas Westrop McMahon.


A cavalry officer, a captain in the 1st Royal Dragoons, he served in the Boer War. In Natal, he contracted typhoid and died soon afterwards in the Princess Christian Hospital at Pinetown Bridge, on 30 May 1900. He is buried in the cemetery of St John's Church, Pinetown. He died a couple of months after William Warren's grandson, William de Mey Mottram Andrews. They both served in the same regiment, fought at the Relief of Ladysmith and Tugela Heights, and died from the same disease.


John and his wife Frances had two daughters and a son. Frederick McMahon Hardman b 1890 was killed in action in the First World War in the Battle of Messines, France in October 1914. Of the daughters, Frances Juliet Hardman became a missionary in Nyasaland (now Malawi), and Aubrey Annie Hardman married Russian Prince Alexander Gargarine.

It is possible that the window in Clannaborough Church was the idea of John's sister Frances Anne de Rougemont Hardman. They both were shown in the 1881 census as living in Bristol with their great aunt Selina Wreford. Selina was the widow of William Wreford of Clannaborough who drowned in Exeter canal basin in 1852 in suspicious and unsavoury circumstances. Both their sons died unmarried. So, the brass plaque (top) is in memory of both aunt Selina, who was a major benefactor of Clannaborough Church, and John and Frances's mother, Ann. It is still a puzzle as to why the window was erected in Clannaborough Church.


Strangely, in 1901, another stained glass window was erected in memory of the same John Hardman, in the church of St John the Divine, Dunton Green, Kent. The construction of that church in 1890 was financed by one Samuel Wreford (1814-1893) whose father, John, was born at Morchard Bishop in 1751 and who would probably have grown up with the brothers John and William Wreford from their common ancestral home at Clannaborough. Samuel's father John had moved to London and made his fortune in the silk business, with a factory in Leek in Staffordshire. In 1830 he purchased Broughton Manor, near Dunton Green. Samuel lived there until his death in 1893.


Around 1890, John Hardman and his family were living in Farnborough, Hampshire. After he died in 1900, Frances, his widow, moved into Wreford's Broughton Manor, near Dunton Green, which probably explains the presence of the memorial window in the local church. (The church was declared redundant in 1987 and now houses a veterinary practice.) She then moved to Dorset where she died aged 59 in 1926.

It is suggested that the window in Clannaborough Church was made by the firm Hardman & Co of Handsworth, near Birmingham, and that John Hardman was a relation of the owners.