The Lupton family in Yorkshire achieved prominence in ecclesiastical and academic circles in England in the 16th century through the fame of Roger Lupton, provost of Eton College and chaplain to Henry VII and Henry VIII. By the Georgian era, the family was established as merchants and ministers in Leeds. Described in the city's archives as "landed gentry, a political and business dynasty", they had become successful woollen cloth merchants and manufacturers who flourished during the Industrial Revolution and traded throughout northern Europe, the Americas and Australia.
Arnold Lupton MP and other members of the family contributed both to the political life of the UK and to the civic life of Leeds well into the 20th century. Several members were well acquainted with the British Royal Family and were philanthropists. Some were Lord Mayors of Leeds and progressive in their views. They were associated with the Church of England and the Unitarian church. The Lupton Residences of the University of Leeds are named after members of the family, and the law firm established by solicitor Sir Charles Lupton as Dibb-Lupton which after a merger became DLA Piper.
The Luptons are the paternal ancestors of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge: her great-grandmother, Olive Middleton née Lupton married Richard Noel Middleton, and members of the Lupton family were guests at her wedding to Prince William.
Video Lupton family
Early Luptons of Yorkshire
Lupton is a placename surname connected with Lupton in Cumbria (formerly Westmoreland). Examples of the surname in Yorkshire are in 1297 in Subsidy Rolls (Robert Lupton), in the 1379 poll tax in Thornton in Lonsdale (Thomas de Lupton), in Pateley Bridge (Leonard Luptonn) in 1551 and (George Lupton) in 1553 and in 1599 in Keighley (Judithe Luptonne). Father Robert Lupton was the Vicar of Skipton in 1430.
Roger Lupton
Roger Lupton, Provost and benefactor of Eton College, was born in Sedbergh, Yorkshire, in 1456 and graduated from King's College, Cambridge in 1483. He does not appear to have been educated at Eton College, though a number of his Yorkshire relatives were Etonians, including Ralph Lupton, with whom Dr Lupton had much in common; both were natives of Sedbergh and studied at King's (Ralph was admitted to King's in 1506), and were later benefactors to the college. Another Yorkshire relative was Thomas Lupton of Nun Monkton, an Etonian, who was admitted to King's in 1517. Roger Lupton was a Doctor of canon law and a Canon of Windsor. He was chaplain to Henry VIII at the time of his coronation in April 1509. Lupton founded Sedbergh School as a chantry school while he was Provost of Eton. By 1528, land had been bought and the school built, probably on the site of Sedbergh school library, and the foundation deed was signed, binding Sedbergh to St John's College, Cambridge, at which Lupton had established a number of fellowships and scholarships. He was Provost of Eton College for 30 years, and the tower in the school yard is named after him. He died in 1540 and was buried in Lupton's Chapel - his own chantry at Eton.
Maps Lupton family
Luptons of Leeds
The earliest recorded member of the Leeds branch of the family is Thomas Lupton of Holbeck, whose son Thomas (b. 1628) was a scholar at Leeds Grammar School and was admitted as a sizar to St John's College, Cambridge in 1648. He became a minister.
Clothiers and merchants
Francis Lupton (1658-1717) who married Esther Midgeley of Breary in 1688, was appointed clerk at Leeds Parish Church on 31 August 1694. They had nine children. Their son William II (1700-1771) was a yeoman farmer and clothier with business connections in the Netherlands and Germany who lived in Whitkirk, Leeds. He became Sir Henry Ibbetson's chief cloth-dresser. Master dressers were most skilled artisans who finished the cloth and the highest paid in the cloth industry. Appointed the sole executor of Ibbetson's partner John Koster, Lupton managed the company for Ibbetson during his last illness. His three sons attended Leeds Grammar School. The eldest, Francis II (1731-1770), was sent to Lisbon to trade in English cloth and was caught up in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. His second son, William II (1732-1782) was sent to board at Sedbergh School and attended St John's College, Cambridge. William was an assistant master at Leeds Grammar School and was ordained to pursue a ministry in the church. Arthur I (1748-1807), William's third son, was sent to Leopold Pfeil's school in Frankfurt when he was 15, to study High Dutch and French. In 1764, Wolfgang von Goethe, his contemporary at the school, wrote about his schoolmate.
Arthur returned to England in 1766 before leaving for Lisbon. In 1768, he took on two partners and was joined by John Luccock, with whom he set up a subsidiary company, Lupton & Luccock, in Rio de Janeiro. William Lupton and Company Limited was established as such in 1773, but traded in cloth before this date. Lupton sat on the committee for the Leeds cloth halls, regulating their activities. In 1774 the leading merchants organised the construction of the 3rd White Cloth Hall. A trade directory of 1790 lists Lupton & Company as Merchants in the Leylands.
Arthur had married Olive Rider, the only daughter of David Rider in 1773. She brought a £5,000 dowry to the marriage. Her father had substantial land holdings in Mabgate and the Leylands between North Street and Wade Lane. Arthur and his wife inherited a life interest in the land after David Rider's death, after which the land passed to his grandsons. William Lupton inherited 5/8ths of their grandfather David Rider's estate and Arthur 3/8ths, which they held as tenants in common but in 1811 they divided the property. William took "Town End" which included his father's dressing mill built in 1788, warehouses, the tenter garth stretching to Wade Lane and a substantial house. Its insured assets included a warehouse, counting house, packing shop, machinery and tools for dressing cloth, a hot pressing shop and a steam engine.
Next generation
William III (1777-1828) operated from the North Street premises. He married Ann, the daughter of tobacconist John Darnton. He shared responsibility for the business with his brother, Arthur II (1782-1824) Trade was unpredictable; losses were made in 1806 but 1809 showed a recovery. In 1819, William formed a partnership with his nephew David Rider but Rider's share of £1,000 made him very much the junior as Lupton's share was in excess of £38,000. William Lupton also became entangled with the estate of his wife's grandfather, Nathan Rider. Winding up Rider's assets while providing an income for his widow and children ultimately took 15 years. John Luccock, their cousin, sought to expand the business in New Orleans in 1822 but was forced to give up a year later. The company's South American trade opened up again, albeit with difficulties in Peru.
During the 1820s the business made little profit and Arthur Lupton, the "travelling" partner reportedly shot himself while suffering from a fever in Paris in 1824. He left a wife, also named Ann, to bring up four children alone. William Lupton died in 1828 leaving behind a wife, ten children and extensive debts. He owed Becketts Bank more than £13,000 and more than £15,000 to his father-in-law. The Lupton widows maintained their social status and living standards with their own personal estates and by developing their inherited urban landholdings.
William's widow, Ann Lupton a woman of "considerable initiative and skill", maintained the family business with her sons Darnton, Francis and Arthur. The sole executrix of her husband's will, she set about developing the land. She laid out Merrion Street with plots for terraced houses and Belgrave Street with larger plots and a garden square. She retired to Gledhow Mount in the proto suburb of Potternewton in 1858 where she died aged 81 in 1865.
Religion, politics and philanthropy
Originally Anglicans, by the early 19th century the Luptons were Dissenters and part of a close group of established merchant families who belonged to the Unitarian Mill Hill Chapel Among its socially active congregation were the Luptons, Oates, Bischoff and Stansfield families who were subsequently joined by new money, the Marshalls, the Kitsons and radicals such as Samuel Smiles. Their denominational loyalty was mirrored by their political leanings, mostly they were Whigs and later Liberals.
They supported the New Subscription Library, set up in the early 19th century, with a "mildly whiggish character" as a counter to the Anglican, tory tone of the Leeds Library. and members of the family subscribed to the building fund of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, a learned society founded in 1819, which established Leeds City Museum.
William's descendants
William III's children included Arthur (1809-1889) who lived at Newton Hall which he had owned since the early 1840s. He began to subdivide the estate and Newton Grove was built in the 1850s. He married Jane Crawford on 25 April 1866 and moved to the Elms, (renamed Headingley Castle).
Darnton Lupton
Darnton Lupton (1806-1873) of Potternewton Hall, was the Mayor of Leeds in 1844 and a magistrate. He was a director of the Bank of Leeds, which became part of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Darnton Lupton supported building the new Leeds Town Hall and as a director of the Leeds Chamber of Commerce, was president of the Exhibition of Local Industry which was arranged in conjunction with is opening. He was a member of the welcoming party that greeted Queen Victoria and Prince Albert who opened the town hall on 7 September 1858. Darnton became co-owner of the Newton Hall estate with his younger brother Francis when Arthur sold it in 1870.
Francis Lupton III
Francis III (1813-1884) was educated at Leeds Grammar School. He was 15 when his father died, but he had already acquired an extensive knowledge of the cloth trade. He joined the board of the Bank of Leeds, became a magistrate of the West Riding of Yorkshire and overseer of the poor in the parish of Roundhay. He was chairman of the finance committee of the Yorkshire College of Science, created in 1874.
In 1847 Francis married Frances Greenhow, niece of writers and reformers Harriet and James Martineau. A lifelong Unitarian, Frances Lupton was the honorary secretary and driving force behind the Yorkshire Ladies' Council of Education from 1871 to 1885. She also chaired committee meetings of the Leeds Ladies' Educational Association that promoted the taking of university local examinations by young women and in 1875 chaired a meeting of both organisations to form the committee that raised funds to start Leeds Girls' High School which opened a year later. She was the school council's vice-president until 1891. The Ladies Council provided lectures for women on health and nursing and she was instrumental in establishing a school of cookery in 1874 which became the Yorkshire Training School of Cookery.
Francis and Frances Lupton lived at Potternewton Hall from 1847, acquiring the freehold of the estate in 1860. By 1870, Francis owned Newton Hall, the adjacent estate. Potternewton Hall had been built in the early 1700s and was where their children were born. By the early 1860s, Francis and Frances lived at Beechwood, a Georgian country house and farming estate near Roundhay, which they bought from Sir George Goodman. Their sons - Francis Martineau, Arthur, Charles, and Hugh all contributed to the life of Leeds. Arthur married Harriet Ashton and Charles married her sister Katharine. Their brother was Thomas Ashton, 1st Baron Ashton of Hyde.
Joseph Lupton)
Originally born and bred in Wakefield, William III's son Joseph (1816-1894), a committed Liberal was on the executive of the National Reform Union. He was a leading Unitarian, serving as president and later vice-president of Manchester New College, the training college for ministers, during the 1880s and 1890s, helping to plan and finance its move from London to Oxford. He was a passionate anti-slavery campaigner, joining with the minister of Mill Hill Chapel, Charles Wicksteed, in being ardent admirers of the campaigner William Lloyd Garrison, an advocate of immediate abolition. Garrison was a guest at Lupton's home in July 1877. Joseph Lupton supported the campaign for votes for women, sitting on the committee for the National Society for Women's Suffrage. Joseph married Eliza Buckton (1818-1901) in 1842. Their son, Henry (1850-1932), a cloth merchant, married Clara Taylor (1860-1897). They had five surviving children.
Late Victorians
Kate Lupton (Baroness von Schunck)
Darnton's daughter, Kate (1833-1913), married Edward, Baron von Schunck in 1867 and lived at Gledhow Wood in Leeds. Kate Schunck was a wealthy woman with an interest in educational provision, particularly for women. One of her chief interests was the Yorkshire Ladies' Council of Education, of which she was an original member. Kate Schunck and her aunt, Frances Lupton, were members of the committee that established Leeds Girls' High School. She died at the age of 80 on 16 May 1913. The Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer reported that amongst her mourners were members of the family of Olive Middleton.
The Schunck's daughter, Florence married Albert Kitson, 2nd Baron Airedale who inherited his father's title and Gledhow Hall in 1911. During the First World War Lord Airedale offered Gledhow Hall for use as a VAD hospital and his daughter Doris volunteered as a nurse.
Lord and Lady Airedale and Kate Schunck were invited to the coronation of King George V in 1911.
Francis Martineau Lupton
Francis Martineau Lupton (1848-1921), known as Frank, was Francis III's eldest son. He attended Leeds Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge where he read history before entering the family business. From 1870 to 1880, he was a member of the Leeds Rifles. From the 1880s, he and his fellow directors at Wm. Lupton & Co moved the business from being merchants to manufacturing in response to the restructuring of the economics of cloth making. They acquired mills and power looms and converted their mills to be driven by electricity. They took advantage of new sources of wool from the Americas and Australia. Their textile mills were established on Whitehall Road, Leeds.
In 1880, Frank Lupton married Harriet Albina Davis (1850-1892), daughter of clergyman Thomas Davis. His wife died in 1892, two weeks after the birth of their youngest son. They had two daughters and three sons. Frank Lupton lived with his family at Rockland, a stone house built for him on the Newton Park Estate.
Frank Lupton devoted his life to the business and civic work. A Liberal, he broke from Gladstone over Home Rule and became a Liberal Unionist. In 1895, he became a Unionist alderman and remained one until 1916. Frank Lupton served as a councillor and later an alderman on Leeds Council. He was interested in the welfare of the poor, and, impressed by social reformer Octavia Hill worked to improve Leeds poor working class housing. From 1896, for ten years, he chaired the council's Unhealthy Areas Committee, which had powers to address the legacy of slum housing. Led by Lupton, the committee cleared the York Street and Quarry Hill areas of almost 4,000 buildings and organised new housing. He opposed proposals to build tenements for rehousing triggering his resignation as chairman. Later he chaired the council's Improvement and Finance Committees. Halfway through this period, he wrote the book, Housing Improvement: A Summary of Ten Years' Work in Leeds (1906). He was an active member of the West Riding bench and took great interest in Cookridge Hospital. During the Great War he served on the Pensions Committee. As a Unitarian, he took a large share of the work and activities of Mill Hill Chapel.
British Pathé filmed Alderman Lupton inspecting the Leeds Pals at a camp near Colsterdale in 1915. Francis Lupton's three sons boarded at Rugby School after which they attended Trinity College, Cambridge. All three died in the Great War. Captain Maurice Lupton was the first to be killed in action by a sniper bullet in the trenches at Lille on 19 June 1915. Lieutenant Lionel Martineau Lupton was wounded, mentioned in dispatches twice and, after recovering, was killed in the Battle of the Somme in July 1916. Major Francis Ashford Lupton was reported missing at Miraumont on the night of 19 February 1917 when he went out with one man on reconnaissance and was later found dead. After their deaths Francis Lupton turned his family home, Rockland, into an institution for the children of sailors and soldiers, and moved with his daughters, Olive and Anne, to Roundhay. A generous benefactor, he contributed to many causes and institutions, including the extension fund of Norwich's Octagon Chapel, of which his great grandfather, Thomas Martineau, had once been deacon and also to the rebuilding in 1907 of Martineau Hall, the Sunday school his great uncle James Martineau had established.
Arthur G. Lupton and his daughters
Arthur Greenhow Lupton (1850-1930) was Francis III's second son. Educated at Leeds Grammar School, he entered the family business at the age of 16. He was elected to the board of governors of Yorkshire College at 25 and, after his father's death, took over his position as chairperson of its Finance Committee. At 36, he was elected to the city council and in 1889 became its chairperson. Arthur negotiated the separation of Yorkshire College from the Victoria University. Leeds University received its royal charter in 1904, which named "Our trusty and well-beloved Arthur Greenhow Lupton, chairperson of the Council of the Yorkshire College" as its first Pro Chancellor. He held the post for 16 years before returning to the council, promoting co-operation between the university and industry, especially the Clothworkers Company.
Recognising the need for large-scale electricity generation, Arthur founded the Yorkshire Electric Power Company and Electrical Distribution of Yorkshire Ltd., and was its chairperson until nationalisation. He promoted the House to House Electricity Company, which was taken over by Leeds Corporation. With friends, he started the Wetherby Water Works, was concerned with the Yorkshire Waste Heat Company, a director of the North Eastern Railway and a West Riding magistrate. During the Great War, he established a shell filling factory at Barnbow. In 1921, on the death of his brother, Francis, he took over responsibility for Wm. Lupton & Co.
Arthur married Harriet Ashton, with whom he had two daughters: Elinor Gertrude (1886-1979) and Elizabeth (Bessie, 1888-1977). His wife died shortly after giving birth to Bessie. Their second cousin, Beatrix Potter, sent them her own hand-drawn watercolour Christmas cards; examples from 1890 to 1895 have survived. In 1908, Elinor was awarded an M.A. from Cambridge University. Elinor and Bessie Lupton served as V.A.D. nurses in France during the Great War. Their brother Arthur survived the war but a riding accident with the Bramham Moor Hunt in 1928 resulted in his death the following year.
Elinor Lupton was awarded an honorary LLD in 1945 for services to Leeds University after chairing the Women's Halls Committee for 23 years; the Lupton Residences were named after her and her father. Her father and uncle were granted honorary doctorates, Arthur in 1910 and Charles in 1919. Elinor was a J.P. and in 1942-3, she was the Lady Mayoress (ceremonial companion) to Leeds' first female Lord Mayor, Jessie Beatrice Kitson. The women hosted visits from royalty, including the Princess Royal, her husband Lord Harewood, the Duchess of Kent and Lady Mountbatten. In 1951 the Lupton sisters donated land to expand the campus of Leeds University. They were members of The University of Leeds Ladies' Club; holding meetings at their home, Beechwood, and were entertained at Harewood House in 1954 at the invitation of Princess Mary, the club's patron. Their aunt, Katherine Lupton, was one of the club's founders in 1923.
In the 1970s, Elinor and Bessie campaigned to preserve open grassland on Asket Hill, part of the family's Beechwood Estate. They placed a legally binding "non-build" covenant in the ownership deeds. After Elinor's death, Leeds Girls' High School acquired a Grade II listed building and named it after her.
Sir Charles Lupton
Charles Lupton OBE (1855-1935) was Francis III's fourth son, the third (Herbert) having died young. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School, Rugby School and followed his elder brother to Trinity College, Cambridge to read history. He qualified as a solicitor in 1881 practising mainly at Dibb & Co, which became Dibb Lupton and subsequently merged into DLA Piper, the world's largest law firm. In 1888 he married Katharine Ashton, sister of Thomas Ashton, 1st Baron Ashton of Hyde.
Charles was elected to the board of management of Leeds General Infirmary and in 1900 was appointed its treasurer and chairperson of the board as it evolved into a modern hospital. Leeds School of Medicine was integrated with the Yorkshire College. He retired from the appointment in 1921 and remained on the board. He was a member of the Court and Council of the University and chairman of the Law Committee.
In 1915-16, while he was Lord Mayor of Leeds, Lupton raised money to enlarge Chapel Allerton Hospital, which was then a military hospital. Newsreel footage survives of him inspecting troops with his three brothers in Colsterdale in the Yorkshire Dales in support of the Leeds Pals battalion.
A Liberal, he became a Liberal-Unionist at the time of the First Home Rule Bill. In 1918 he was Deputy-Lieutenant for the West Riding of Yorkshire; He was granted the Freedom of the City in 1926, alongside e.g. Stanley Baldwin and David Lloyd George. He was the city council's Chairman of the Improvements Committee and promoted the construction of the Leeds Outer Ring Road in the post-war years and the widening of Upper and Lower Headrows. He lived at Carr Head, Roundhay Park and left his art collection to the City of Leeds in 1935.
Hugh Lupton
Hugh (1861-1947) was Francis III's fifth son and followed Charles to Rugby School before attending University College, Oxford, reading modern history. He was apprenticed to Hathorn Davey, makers of heavy pumping machinery, in 1881 and rose to managing director, only to see the Great Depression force the company into a takeover by Sulzer's of Zurich. Hugh was a member of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, as was his cousin, Arnold Lupton, who was the Member of Parliament for Sleaford from 1906 to 1910. Hugh sat on the Roundhay and Seacroft Rural District Council and, for a year, was chairperson of the board. When the RDC became a ward of the city in 1913, he was elected to Leeds City Council and served until 1926. During most of the time he was Chairman of the Electricity Committee. In 1926, he became Lord Mayor of Leeds, with his wife Isabella Simey as Lady Mayoress. In these roles, they hosted visits by the Princess Royal and her husband Lord Harewood; a film of one visit, captured on British Pathé newsreel, was discovered in July 2013. In June 1927, Lady Mayoress Isabella Lupton was reportedly presented at Court by the Countess of Harewood, Princess Mary's mother-in-law.
Both of Hugh's sons survived the Great War: Hugh, who married Joyce Ransome (sister of the Swallows and Amazons author Arthur), and Charles Athelstane, known as Athel, who wrote a book on the family.. Hugh's family include Hugh Lupton and Rosamund Lupton.
Twentieth century
Olive Middleton (née Lupton)
Francis Martineau Lupton's eldest daughter Olive (1881-1936) was born at Newton Grove and grew up at Rockland on the family's estate in Potternewton. She was educated at Roedean and was accepted to study at Cambridge University but remained at home with her father. In 1914, she married solicitor Richard Noel Middleton who subsequently became a director of William Lupton & Co.
In 1909, Olive Lupton was a member of the executive committee of the Leeds Association of Girls' Clubs, and the Appeal Committee for the enlargement and improvement of Leeds General Infirmary Nurses' Home. She was an honorary officer at the Stead Hostel, a home in Leeds for working women and girls.
During the First World War, Olive volunteered to work at Gledhow Hall, the home of her second cousin Lady Airedale as a V.A.D. nurse. Her sister-in-law Gertrude Middleton also volunteered. Following her death in 1936 from peritonitis, Olive's descendants inherited trust funds which had been established by her father.
Olive and Noel Middleton's son, Oxford-educated pilot, Peter (1920-2010), was the grandfather of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. British Pathé newsreel film discovered in 2014 showed Middleton as Prince Philip's co-pilot on a two-month tour of South America in 1962.
Anne Lupton
Francis Martineau's younger daughter, Anne, (1888-1967) attended Newnham College at Cambridge University. Anne had wished to enter the family business, but as women were excluded, she travelled for many years in South America and Canada in particular. She never married, but on her return to England, set up a home in Chelsea with Enid Moberly Bell, a sort of Boston marriage. The daughter and biographer of The Times editor Charles Frederic Moberly Bell, Moberly Bell was vice-chair of the Lyceum Club for female artists and writers and the first headmistress of Lady Margaret School in Parsons Green. In 1937 Anne Lupton financed the purchase of the Georgian property, Elm House, in which the school is located.
In March 1920 Anne was awarded the M.B.E. for voluntary work for the Leeds Local War Pensions Committee. She was the chief founder and organiser of the London Housing Centre. In 1938, Anne organised an exhibition at the London Housing Centre for the centenary of Octavia Hill's birth which was visited at Anne's own request by Queen Mary. Anne collected the raw material for Enid Moberly Bell's biography of Octavia Hill.
Geoffrey Lupton
The eldest son of Henry Lupton (d.1932), Geoffrey Lupton (1882-1949), was a significant figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement. He apprenticed himself to Ernest Gimson, described by the art critic Nikolaus Pevsner as "the greatest of the English architect-designers". He used his inherited wealth to commission Gimson to design the Lupton Hall at Bedales School, which he and his siblings had attended.
Barbara Lupton (Lady Bullock)
Henry Lupton's middle daughter, Barbara (1891-1974), attended Bedales School, Newnham College, Cambridge (1910-1913) and the London School of Economics (1913-1914) where she obtained a social science qualification. Her contributions to the war effort during the First World War included nursing and official work for the Ministry of Munitions. In April 1917, she married Sir Christopher Bullock, whom she had met at Cambridge; he was a civil servant at the British Air Ministry. Bullock was Winston Churchill's Principal Private Secretary in 1919. Sir Christopher was the Air Ministry's Permanent Under-Secretary from 1931 to 1936. The Bullocks had two sons, Richard C.B. (1920-1998) and Edward (1926-2015), both of whom entered public service, in the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office respectively.
Agnes and Norman Darnton Lupton
Two grandchildren of Darnton Lupton (d.1873): Agnes and Norman Darnton Lupton, left a substantial bequest to Leeds Art Gallery in 1952. Norman had attended Marlborough College and Trinity College, Cambridge and was a mechanical engineer and artist. Their donation to the gallery included works by John Sell Cotman, Thomas Girtin and J. M. W. Turner. Another of Darnton's grandchildren, Alan Cecil Lupton (d.1949) graduated from Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a J.P.. His daughter, Marjorie, married Godfrey Vyvyan Stopford in 1934.
Legacy
Many memorials to the Lupton family lie within Leeds Minster. More recent memorials are found in St John's Church in Roundhay, and Mill Hill Chapel, where a stained glass window commemorates the family.
Noel Middleton's family sold William Lupton & Co to Pudsey textiles firm A.W. Hainsworth in 1958. By the outbreak of the Second World War the land at Potternewton Hall and Newton Hall had become the Newton Park Estate, the largest private housing estate in Leeds. Elinor and Elizabeth Lupton, granddaughters of Francis Lupton, were the third of several generations to inhabit Beechwood. They regularly opened their gardens to the public during the 1940s and 50s. During the late 1970s and 1980s, Beechwood College was a base for co-operative education and for a time housed the office of the Industrial Common Ownership Movement (ICOM).
Much of the farmland surrounding Beechwood was sold to Leeds City Council by the 1950s for the Seacroft council estate and 500 council houses, shops, parks and Beechwood Primary School were built on it. Beechwood, the Georgian mansion remained in the family into the 1990s. In 2014, members of the Lupton family retained ownership of some the estate; Mr M, Mr D and Ms H. Lupton - the great nephews and niece of Elinor and Elizabeth Lupton - were keen to ensure that, despite any Asket Hill housing developments, as "wildlife lovers", they would protect their family's land, "just as their great aunts had done years ago". The Lupton name is commemorated in Leeds by the Leeds University's Lupton Residences, Lupton House at Leeds Grammar, the street names - Lupton Avenue and Lupton Street - and Lupton's Field at Asket Hill, Roundhay, which is named in honour of Elinor and Elizabeth Lupton.
References
Sources
- Hanks, Patrick; Coates, Richard; McClure, Peter, eds. (2017). The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland. Oxford University Press.
- Morris, R. J. (1990). Class, Sect and Party: The Making of the Middle Class in Leeds1820-1850. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-2225-8.
- Morris, R.J. (2005). Men, Women and Property in England, 1780-1870: A Social and Economic History. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-09346-0.
- Fraser, Derek, ed. (1980). A History of Modern Leeds. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-0781-X.
- Pullan, Margaret (2007). The Monuments of the Parish Church of St Peter-at-Leeds. Maney Publishing. ISBN 978-1-9059-8152-6.
- Wilson, R. G. (1971). Gentlemen Merchants: The Merchant Community in Leeds, 1820-1850. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-0459-4.
Further reading
- Hall, Coryne (October 2013). Well Connected. Majesty. London: Rex Publications Limited.
Source of article : Wikipedia
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