'THE TOLLEMACHE/TOLLEMARCHE GHOSTS'
by John Gardner


The Tollemache/Tollemarche Story - in words.

As with many families in this day and age, the Tollemaches/Tollemarches have spread themselves far and wide and are involved in a variety of different activities.

The main hereditary 'seat' of the English Tollemaches/Tollemarches is at Helmingham, near Ipswich, where Lord and Lady Tollemache (note the spelling) reside.

Others - like Eugene, the famous Cornish surfing star - are based elsewhere and have chosen to broaden their careers from such areas as: Farming, politics and soldiery, to: Managing breweries, dealing in fine-art and running a tranquiliser-user support group.

Tollemarches, Talmashes, Tollemaches, Talmarshes and Talemaches have given their names to inns, bowling trophies, roads and even entire towns - such as the one in a book by Helen Forrester. They have ventured to - and made their names in (or not) - many places throughout the world, from Capetown to Canada, from Holland to Ham (in Surrey), playing their part in the diaspora known as 'the human condition'. But where we should look to start off their traceable history is France - a place where many of them have also ended-up!

The Tollemache's/Tollemarche's story begins before the Norman invasion of 1066, is summarised well on one of the Helmingham Estate's websites (members.aol.com/helmingest/introduction.htm), and is where the following extract (written by the current Lord Tollemache) is taken from. Reading it may also be beneficial to those with an interest in Helmingham Hall and the area surrounding it.



- An Introduction
Helmingham and the Tollemache family have been together for many hundreds of years. The Hall and the old oak trees that you see today have seen much of the history of England pass before them, and many generations of this family.

The Tollemache family has lived in Suffolk from shortly after the Norman Conquest to the present day. Their home for the first 400 years was at Bentley, near lpswich, and although there was a proud boast, Before the Normans into England came, Bentley was my seat and Tollemache my name, it seems now certain that the family came over from Avranches on the Normandy coast. Their name was spelt Talemache, meaning 'purse bearer', and it is recorded that Hugh Tollemache was Purse Bearer to Henry 1.

They remained at Bentley as squires and knights throughout the turbulent years of those early centuries, fighting for both Henry II against the Welsh and Edward I against the Scots and quite often against their neighbours to retain their lands, Two Tollemache knights from Bentley fought at the Battle of Crécy against the French in 1346.

However, in 1487, John Tollemache married Elizabeth Joyce, the heiress of Helmingham, and his son Lionel also married a Joyce. further cementing the union, and so they moved to Helmingham where the Joyce family home of Creke Hall stood. John Tollemache and his wife proceeded to pull this down and build Helmingham, completed in 1510, as it stands today. surrounded by its deep moat, serene gardens and deer park.

It must have been some years after my family moved to Helmingham that they started work on the gardens, but old maps and drawings show that the original shape of the main walled garden predates the house by many years; it was most probably of Saxon origin and constructed to protect stock from marauders. There was a wooden palisade to protect the garden from the deer until the present garden wall was built in 1745.

There are two rose gardens at Helmingham, both formal, but very different in character. The main garden is on the west side of the house, which is described first in the Tour of the Gardens. The second garden, to the east side of the house, was laid out in 1982. The intention was to create something that was close to the kind of garden the family might have had in Tudor times, but one that would include old, scented shrub roses. The garden is laid out in a pattern combining the square, the circle and the cross in three decorative themes. Some years later, it looks as if it must have always been there.

The Park
The Park encloses 400 acres and has large herds of both red and fallow deer. Every year the stags grow antlers which they shed in the spring and, as they mature, the antlers grow to huge proportions. The deer have been in the Park for many centuries - the earliest mention of them is in 1660. In the archives there are reports of the Mound being used by the Helmingham Volunteers to practise their musketry during the Napoleonic Wars, but the Monument itself was constructed in about 1860, from the bricks of an ornamental seventeenth-century walled arboretum on the site, which had fallen into disrepair.

John Constable, whose brother was steward of the Tollemache woodlands, lived for some time at Helmingham Rectory, and painted a number of versions of A Dell in Helmingham Park. The oak tree in that picture, with its singular curved trunk, still stands. Some of the famous Helmingham oaks in the Park are estimated to be up to 900 years old, and many have immense girths, but the splendid oak avenue leading up the front drive was planted about 1680. This avenue and many trees in the Park suffered terribly in the great storm of 1987; a large replanting scheme is being carried out so that future generations will see little change.

The Church
The Church of St Mary, standing on the edge of the Park, is known to have existed in 1258, and is well worth a visit. The fine western tower was completed in 1543, and the Tollemache arms appear in many places on it. The plinth has the inscription: scandit ad ethera virgo puerpera virgula jesse (the Virgin Mother, branch of Jesse's stem, ascends to heaven). The south porch is of the same date, but the south doorway is early thirteenth century. It was in 1488 that John Tollemache signed the contract for the building of the tower with the Helmingham church-wardens, and he paid for the tower at a cost of £30.

The church itself is filled with beautiful and magnificent memorials to a number of generations of the Tollemache family, including a large tomb with a verse describing four generations of the family. These were cleaned and renovated in 1976 in memory of John, 4th Lord Tollemache, who had brought Helmingham back to life in the 1950s and who died in 1975. Contributions are gratefully received to ensure the good upkeep of this famous Suffolk church.

The Hall
When John Tollemache started work on Helmingham in 1480, it was built in traditional half-timbered style with an overhang to the upper floor both outside and inside the courtyard. There have been a number of changes in external appearance, hut the basic form of a courtyard manor house has never altered, and many of the brick chimneys arc (sic.) original, although all have had to be repaired over the last two centuries.

In about 1760 a number of exterior changes to the Hall were made. The Tudor gables, with the exception of those at the corners, were removed; and in addition to other Georgian alterations, the existing half-timbered walls were concealed, the lower walls being covered with brick and the upper ones with tiles. To the casual observer these tiles may appear to be bricks, but they are in fact only about a quarter of an inch thick and hung by wooden pegs. About 1800, the well-known Regency architect John Nash covered the whole exterior of the house with a coating of cement on the instructions of Wilbraham Tollemache, 6th Earl of Dysart, who thought that grey stucco and battlements would make Helmingham more of a castle. This stucco was fortunately removed in 1821.

Helmingham has been extremely lucky over the centuries in that whenever the Hall has been in danger of falling into disrepair, another generation of Tollemaches has come along, who by their energy and love for the place have rebuilt and restored their family home. Two in particular were both called John Tollemache. In 1840 the 1st Lord Tollemache, on his succession, found the house in a deplorable condition, and a great deal of restoration, particularly on the garden front, had to be done; the courtyard overhang was bricked in at this time. Anthony Salvin is believed to have been the architect for this work, and it was he who was made responsible by Lord Tollemache for the design and building of Peckforton Castle on his Cheshire estate. Sadly, all correspondence, estimates and bills for the work at Helmingham have been lost.

Just over a hundred years later, John, 4th Lord Tollemache, came to Helmingham in 1953 and again found the Hall sadly neglected. There was no electric light, no bathrooms and no running water - in fact, until this time, drinking water had come from the moat. There were many holes in the roof, and wall tiles and bricks were lying everywhere. Without the vigour and enthusiasm of my father and mother, Helmingham and the heritage which it brings with it would have joined the ranks of so many other family homes which have been pulled down and have disappeared forever.

The two drawbridges are pulled up every night as they have been since 1510, and the Hall thus becomes an island, protected by its wide moat which is stocked with many kinds of fish, including pike - the heaviest being just over 25 lbs.

Queen Elizabeth I is said to have come twice to Helmingham: first in 1561, and later to attend the christening of Lionel Tollemache as her godchild, one of ten consecutive generations of the family with that name. Helmingham has been privileged to receive Her Majesty The Queen and other members of the Royal Family on many occasions over the last few years.

In 1611 King James I instituted the title of Baronet and the Lionel Tollemache of the time was one of the first created. During the Civil War and before the Restoration in 1660, Helmingham was one of the headquarters of the secret Society of the Sealed Knot, which was instrumental in bringing Charles II back to the throne. In the Hall there are several letters from him, written whilst in exile in Paris, to Elizabeth Tollemache. Her father had been 'whipping boy' to James I's son, later Charles I, and had earned his Earldom of Dysart, together with the beautiful Ham House in Richmond Park, by being beaten for the misdemeanours perpetrated by the young prince. Elizabeth was a somewhat notorious lady, who on the death of her father became Countess of Dysart in her own right; whilst she and her husband were involved with the Sealed Knot, she maintained at the same time a close friendship with Cromwell. When her husband Lionel Tollemache died, she married again, her second husband being the Duke of Lauderdale, the 'L' of the 'CABAL' government. On the death of Elizabeth, Ham House was inherited by Lionel Tollemache, her son, who thus became the 3rd Earl of Dysart. He brought more property into the family by marriage with a Wilbraham heiress, who owned the Cheshire property of Woodhey and Peckforton. He was also brother to General Thomas Tollemache, the third Colonel of the Coldstream Guards, who was killed fighting the French at Brest in 1694. The last three generations of the family have also served in the Coldstream Guards.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century on the death of Wilbraham Tollemache, 6th Earl of Dysart, who had no male heir, his sister Louisa inherited the title together with Ham House and Buckminster, near Grantham. Ham House was made over to the National Trust in 1948, whilst her descendants still live at Buckminster. Her younger sister Jane inherited Helmingham and the Cheshire property, and it was her grandson, John Tollemache, who was made a peer in 1876 for his services to agriculture and the welfare of his tenants.

His great-great-grandson is the present Lord Tollemache, who, with his wife and children, continue the love of Helmingham which has been its hallmark for almost 500 years.

We hope that the previous eighteen generations of the family would be pleased to see that their home, built so long ago and protected by its sixty-foot-wide moat, still has its two drawbridges pulled up every night and lowered each morning.

Last Updated
Monday, 15 January 2001

Content
© Lord & Lady Tollemache


Story to be continued...


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