Bad luck tale of a Shropshire family

"The family are very tragic," says Ian Davies, of Oswestry.

Thirteen-year-old Cicely was dragged to her death by a pony which bolted. Her foot was caught in the stirrup. The pony had been her birthday present.

Ethel's first marriage failed and her second husband drowned in the sinking of the Titanic.

When during the Great War the Germans shelled Captain Alister Chapman's regiment, the men were well sheltered in cellars and there were hardly any casualties. Except for Alister.

Alister, known to colleagues as "The Bo'sun," was killed. He was the sole male heir to the family estate.

The family home, Kilhendre Hall, at Dudleston, Ellesmere, was sold in 1923 – Ian thinks it might have been a bankruptcy sale.

Later it was hit by a fire. Later still it was demolished.

And when Lucy died she was surrounded by wild dogs which had to be shot to get at the corpse.

Ian, 57, a retired nurse, has uncovered the tale of woe for the Chapmans as part of his researches into his own family history.

"My great-grandmother Katie Jones was in service at Kilhendre Hall. She died in the 1920s. I haven't found out a great deal about her, but I have about the Chapman family who were the gentry living at the hall."

Eton-educated Alister Hillyar Darby Chapman, 33, was the only son and was killed at the Battle of Loos on September 27, 1915, while serving with the 1st Royal Dragoons. He had been almost the last officer left who had served continuously with the regiment since it had landed in France, so he had been riding his luck.

"I think the family were devastated," says Ian.

His cousin, Lieutenant Maurice Darby, the last male heir of Shropshire's famous Darby dynasty, had been killed in action a few months earlier.

Unusually, Lieutenant Darby's body was brought home to Shropshire, something only the wealthy could afford to do, and the practice was soon stamped out.

Ian says Alister's father was twice married, so he had both sisters and half sisters.

He would have been coming up to 11 when Cicely was tragically killed in September 1893. Incidentally she was described in press reports simply as Miss C. Chapman, but there is a memorial in Dudleston church to a Cicely Caroline Mary Chapman who died in 1893 who must surely be the same person.

Accompanied by a groom, she had been riding her pony towards Ellesmere when, near Pentre Madoc, they met a trap. Her pony shied, throwing her, and dragging her for about 400 yards as it galloped away.

"He would have been quite close to that sister, you would have thought," says Ian.

Another sister, Ethel, married Edwin Hill-Trevor. They divorced in 1910. She then married Christopher Head. He died on the Titanic in 1912. She went on to marry a third time – to a general.

From information Ian gleaned from a local farmer, now died, the fate of another sister was unhappy.

"I'm reliant on information given to me by the late Mr Dulson, of Church Farm in Dudleston.

"The other sister was Lucy Beryl Chapman, a spinster, who is recorded at Kilhendre in 1937, which I have never quite worked out because it is after the date of the sale in 1923. I think it was a bankruptcy sale. Perhaps she got back living there.

"It appears that in her time there was a fire at the hall. I was told she went to live in a caravan at World's End, near Llangollen, and was quite wild, and had wild dogs. When she died, I was told, the dogs had to be shot so the authorities could get to her corpse."

As for Kilhendre Hall, that is no more, having been demolished around the late 1950s.