Prior to our last talk a group of us spent a pleasant afternoon retracing the life of Horatia in Pinner. Lily Style, her family, together with a few members of The Nelson Society, The Emma Hamilton Society and our friends in Pinner visited places which had links to Horatia and her family.
Horatia’s Early Life
Horatia Nelson Thompson was born at 23 Piccadilly on 29 January 1801. Her mother was Emma, Lady Hamilton wife of Sir William Hamilton (a fictional person). Her father was national hero, Admiral Horatio Nelson.
While Sir William seems to have embraced the relationship between his wife and Nelson it was not considered seemly that her true parents be acknowledged and Horatia was given to the care of a wet nurse. Sir William Hamilton died on 6 April 1803 and Horatia was then baptised at St Marylebone on 13 May. Her parents were her godparents and her father was recorded as Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Thompson Bt. Though Horatio and Emma settled down to family life at Merton Place in Surrey and claimed that they had adopted Horatia and they never married as her father was still married to Frances Nelson.
Nelson, her father was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805. Emma Hamilton could have lived comfortably on her income but she was extravagant and was soon impoverished. She died on 15 January 1815, in Calais France, with Horatia nursing her. Horatia was 14 years old.
Horatia married the Reverend Philip Ward at Burnham Westgate on 19 February 1822. In the 1841 England census, Horatia Ward (41) was living in Tenterden, Kent, with husband Phillip Ward (45), and with children Horatio (18), Eleanor (17), Marmaduke (16), Nelson (13), William (11), Horatia (8), Phillip (7) and Caroline (5). Phillip was a clergyman.
Later life in Pinner
The Walk – In Horatia’s Footsteps
We began with a coffee in Daisy’s in the High Street, the probable location of the death of Horatia’s daughter Ellen, run over by a bolting horse in the High Street in 1847.
The next house Horatio lived in was New House (now Elmdean) in Church Lane where she lived with her son Nelson and Daughter Ellen.
View of New House (now Elmdean), Church Lane, Pinner. A seventeenth-century house. Horatia Nelson lived at Elmdene after the death of her husband. Philip Ward. Other renowned owners of Elmdene were actors Ronnie Barker and David Suchet.
Lily Style and her family at Elmdean.
From there we walked over the fields to the site of the Woodridings Estate, Hatch End where Horatia, her sons Nelson and William and their families lived. Horatia lived here until her death 1881.
From there, we returned, by bus, to West House for a talk on the history of the West House from Cliff Lichfield. West House had become the home of Nelson Ward, the grandson of Admiral Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton, and his family by 1875.
Finally we visited Horatia’s grave in Paines Lane Cemetery. Horatia died at 2 Beaufort Villas at Pinner in Middlesex on 6 March 1881.[10] She was buried at Pinner Cemetery on 11 March 1881 in the plot purchased for the burial of her daughter Eleanor in 1872. Her son Philip is also buried there.
The inscription reads ‘Here rests Horatia Nelson Ward, who died March 6. 1881, aged 80, the beloved daughter of Vice Admiral Lord Nelson and widow of the above-named Revd. Philip Ward’.
The inscription originally read ‘Horatia, the adopted daughter of Vice Admiral Lord Nelson’. The inscription was altered to overwritten with beloved’.
By then, a refreshing drink was needed in the Queen’s Head.
