Charting Judith Chavasse’s life in West Cork and Waterford through her diaries and memoirs

By Rachel Finnegan

In this article, author Rachel Finnegan gives us a flavour of her new book on the life and times of Judith Chavasse (née Fleming) – a woman of the Irish gentry class from Skibbereen who came to live for a time in Waterford – as told through her unpublished memoirs, diaries and other family records.

Two years ago, I inherited a large collection of diaries that had been in my family for nearly four decades. The collection comprised an almost complete run of diaries kept by Judith Isobel Chavasse née Fleming (1867–1935) from 1890 to 1932, with two missing and the remainder was a smaller run of diaries kept by her husband, Major Henry (Hal) Chavasse (1863–1943), from 1922 to 1943.

Other volumes in the collection included a record of Judith’s servants, with fascinating details of their roles, salaries, weekly wages and reasons for departure – often due to dismissal for a range of misdemeanours. This record, kept for a 20-year period, also gave Judith’s frank views on the girls and women in her employment.

Unravelling Judith Chavasse’s story

Judith’s diaries began when she was 23 years old. Her father, local West Cork landlord Becher Lionel Fleming, had just died, leaving his wife with four unmarried daughters and a house that was entailed to a cousin. However, as this cousin was the dean of Cloyne, and was happy in his deanery, he allowed them to stay on at New Court in Reenamurragha, just west of Skibbereen town, until the girls had found husbands and were able to move out, although he insisted that they should maintain the property, which was then falling into disrepair.

Being of an inquisitive mind, I began to read the diaries but found the script quite difficult to decipher as it was small, spidery and often faint. I made the decision to digitize the whole collection, which enabled me to read the volumes more clearly, as well as helping to preserve them. Once I had read only a few volumes from this enormous collection, I knew that I would have to write up the story of Judith’s life, based on these sources. However, there was a problem – I knew nothing about her earlier life.

By dint of a little detective work and good luck, I tracked down one of Judith’s grandnephews, who had carefully preserved a collection of family records that he allowed me to borrow. They included typescripts of two childhood memoirs written by Judith towards the end of her life.

These memoirs, together with two others that she inspired her sisters Sue Fitzgerald and Hats Haythornthwaite to write (her eldest sister, Bess Somerville-Large, had died before this), were based on the big houses central to their early lives: their home in New Court, Skibbereen, Tramore House in Douglas, Cork, where their mother (Elizabeth Fleming née Reeves) had been brought up and White Hall, again near Skibbereen, where they had often visited their Townsend cousins.

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Judith and Hal spent 15 years in Co. Waterford, where members of the Chavasse family still live today. Although I already had a lot of material to work from, I was then given access to the Chavasse family papers kept in Cappagh House, Co. Waterford, home to the head of the Irish branch of the family, Charles Chavasse and his wife, Claire. This included letters, wills, birth and death certificates, telegrams, receipts, legal documents, more memoirs and hundreds of portrait photographs of Judith and her family, as well as albums from photos taken in the grounds of their various homes.

This collection also included a copy of a 500-page book published in 2007 on the history of the wider Chavasse family (including the English, Australian and American branches), written by three Chavasses, including Judith’s second son, Kendal, and based partly on the works of her eldest son, Claude. While it was very detailed, it devoted only three lines to Judith, basically stating her background and the date of her marriage to Hal, with no separate entry in the index. At that point, I felt obliged to rescue Judith from further oblivion and 18 months later, my book was finished!

I was lucky that I lived only 15 minutes from Judith’s Waterford home – Whitfield Court outside Kilmeaden – so I was familiar with the landscape, the names of the families mentioned in her diaries and the places she regularly visited in Waterford city.

However, I was not at all familiar with her birthplace or with the West Cork village of Castletownshend, where she was to spend the last 20 years of her life, so my research for those chapters involved making numerous trips to West Cork to visit the places mentioned in her diaries, find the graves of those she mentioned and immerse myself in the atmosphere of that wonderful landscape.

A F F I L I A T E  A D

New Book: Memoirs and Diaries of Judith Isobel Chavasse

My forthcoming book, The Memoirs and Diaries of Judith Isobel Chavasse: an account of life in West Cork and Waterford (1867–1935), which is being launched on 27 June in Waterford and 3 July in Castletownshend, documents Judith’s carefree years when growing up in the big house (New Court), her courtship, wedding and honeymoon, her early married years at Glandofan, in South Wales, life at Whitfield Court, where she raised her four sons (a fifth died in infancy) on her husband’s working farm and their move in 1913 to Castletownshend, where they lived in Seafield, a large house overlooking the bay. The final two years of Judith’s life, when she had abandoned her diaries to write her childhood memoirs, are told through the diaries of her husband.

The book gives a snapshot of gentry family life through the backdrop of the Boer War, World War 1 and the Irish Troubles, as well as providing a fascinating insight into the daily activities of a lively and popular woman who was very attached to the big houses in which she lived (especially New Court, sold in 1908) and whose main concerns were the welfare and education of her sons, her extended Fleming and Reeves families, the endless problem of how to find and retain a good cook, health matters and the Church of Ireland.

The book also details Judith’s close and affectionate relationship with her sisters, her friendships with women of the local gentry (including novelist Edith Somerville) and, in some cases, the aristocracy, and her contribution to their voluntary parish and war work.

Judith’s eldest son, Claude, trained in artillery in Ballincollig, Co. Cork and then served in the front, but returned from the war unscathed, from there going to Oxford and eventually being ordained into the Anglican Church. While he was at war, Judith and a small company of friends spent their days collecting moss from the woods and grounds of the local big houses and made them into dressings for wounded soldiers – an activity for which they were commended after the war, when their group leader – the owner of another local big house – was given an award.

An interesting feature of Judith’s diaries and other memoirs was that she often recorded anecdotes related to her family or staff. In one aside, she recalls a curious dream that she had in 1925:

A waking dream on Oct. 18 – I heard a voice saying – “I was reading a dead Lady’s diary of long long ago” – it said: “I was given today a lot of flower plants by Mr Stookly, however in the long hence I do not expect them to succeed.” However in the long hence they did succeed – the flowers grew.

Her reference to this dream of someone reading a woman’s diaries from the past seemed like a presentiment to me and I was glad that I undertook to document her life.

Pick up your copy

The Memoirs and Diaries of Judith Isobel Chavasse: an account of life in West Cork and Waterford (1867–1935) will be available to buy from 27 June from Pococke Press (www.pocockepress.com) and from selected bookshops. The book is retailing at €29.99.

Book launches: all welcome

Details of the two book launches are as follows:

• Greenway Manor Hotel, Waterford, Thursday, 27 June, 7:30-9pm
• Warren Gallery, Mary Ann’s, Castletownshend, Wednesday, 3 July, 6:30-8pm
  >

All are welcome but if you wish to attend either of the book launches,
please email waterford@
pocockepress.com or cork@pocockepress.com to confirm.

Dr Rachel Finnegan has published seven books on 18th-century travel tourism, including a series of three volumes of Rev. Richard Pococke’s letters from abroad. She is an academic editor by profession and lives in Co. Kilkenny with her husband and three adult sons. This is the first time she has ventured into the memoirs of a woman – and one of the more recent past.

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