Ian Handford: The Baroness who fell in love with Torquay

It was during the l840's that Angela had befriended Dickens and the Duke of Wellington but it the Duke who advised how best she might conserve her wealth saying "while using it to best advantage".

The advice was noted although Angela was already pretty "switched on" financially, with her overriding concern being to help orphans (mirroring herself) and the poor of society. Her wealth would of course bring problems not least when professionals became involved. Having spent two years fighting the Bacon family who had tried hard to prove their daughter Lady Charlotte Bacon was an illegitimate child of her father Sir Francis. She won her case when the claim was dismissed. 

All personal friends were very important to Angela including Disraeli, Gladstone, Rajah Brooke, Charles Dickens and the Duke being just a few.  Having inherited the bank at 23 in 1837 virtually almost immediately shje was "bombarded with proposals of marriage” and knowing the "source of her sudden appeal" quickly dismissed all offers.

Yet just ten years later she was proposing to the Duke of Wellington knowing he had no need of her money and at seventy eight was still an intelligent and attractive man. Her proposal in 1847 flattered the Duke although he knew he had to find words to "diplomatically declining" yet keeping their friendship alive, realising marriage would be a disaster. 

Meanwhile, Hannah had married and then Dr Brown and Hannah lived with her although the "companionship" aspect was never the same again. When Hannah's  later died iot was not long after Hannah went blind and from 1855 for two decades Angela was her carer. Angela continued her philanthropy, helping form the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Also having been a devout member of the Anglican Church she built or assisted others to build, Parish Churches and schools around Britain. She even endowed new Bishoprics in Adelaide, British Columbia and Capetown becoming the female philanthropist to remember.  

Having visited Torquay as a child, it took until 1857 before she returned to us and soon fell in love with Torbay.  Now at age 42 she chose to rent Meadfoot House on Hesketh Cresent as her second home and then returned to us during the following three seasons when not in London or elsewhere.  During the second season she lived in “Villa Syracruse” (today the Headland Hotel) before finally deciding to establish a permanent holiday home in Torquay.

Ehrenburg House (later Erin Villa) on Chelston Avenue was after her death demolished to make way for the Rosetor Hotel. Then decades later this would be demolished by Torbay Council so that they could create today's  "International Riviera Conference Centre" on Chestnut Avenue. 

During her life Angela would spend over 20 years visiting or living in Torquay and her home Erin Villa entertained many aristocrats and notables of Devon like Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter (his second home the Palace Hotel on Babbacombe Road), March Phillips, Lord Churston, Lady Brownlow, the Vivian family and Sir Charles Lyell a close friend of the Pengelly's, who had backed William for his excavations of Kents Cavern. Royals like: Sophia-Queen of Holland - the Rajah Brooke of Sarawak and our Royal family also regularly visited Angela's home.

By now her gifts, donations, sponsors and loans numbered hundreds which must had made her wonderful life busy as she still had to oversee the Bank's affairs. A great number of “schemes” applied and helped the poor of London who eventually named her the “Queen of the Poor” at n  time when the Monarch was rarely seen in London.

In Torbay meanwhile built our so-called Dame Schools at Barton, Cockington and Shiphay and then published a written paper entitled “The Ambulatory Schoolmaster” being an account of how she funded so many schools built in rural areas. She even provided cash to support the - British Seaman’s Boys Home - in Brixham, while when in Australia she aided aboriginal tribes before creating a relief fund for the  refugees of the Russo-Turkish War.

(To be continued next week)