Lupton family

Early Luptons of Yorkshire

Father Robert Lupton was recorded as being the Vicar of Skipton, in 1430.

Eton College Provost and benefactor, Roger Lupton, was born in Sedbergh, Yorkshire, in 1456 and graduated from King's College, Cambridge in 1483. Lupton does not appear to have been educated at Eton College, though a number of his fellow Yorkshire relatives were Etonians, including Ralph Lupton with whom Dr Lupton had much in common; both were natives of Sedbergh and students of Kings College, (Ralph was admitted to King's in 1506), and were later benefactors to Eton College. Another Yorkshire relative was Thomas Lupton of Nun Monkton, an Etonian, who was admitted to King's in 1517.

Roger Lupton became 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 in the town 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 had been 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 School for 30 years, and the tower in the school yard is named after him. He died in 1540 and was buried in Lupton Chapel – his own chantry at Eton.

Early 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 admitted as a sizar, age 20, to St John's College, Cambridge in 1648. He became a minister. Francis Lupton (1658–1717) who married Ester Midgeley of Breary in 1688, was appointed clerk at the parish church, now Leeds Minster on 31 August 1694. Many memorials to the Lupton family lie within the church. More recent memorials are found in St John's Church in Roundhay, and the Unitarian Mill Hill Chapel, where a stained glass window commemorates the family.

Georgians

Francis and Ester Lupton had nine children. Their second son, William I (1700–1771), became a farmer and clothier with business connections in Germany and the Netherlands. He was the chief cloth-dresser, "the highest paid and most skilled artisan in the woollen industry", to Sir Henry Ibbetson. William later managed his firm. He had three sons, all of whom 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 born in Leeds and sent to board at Sedbergh School, and became a "Sedbergh scholar" of St John's College. William was an assistant master at Leeds Grammar School and was ordained to pursue a ministry in the church.

The third son, Arthur I (1748–1807), was sent at the age of 15 to the school of Leopold Pfeil in Frankfurt, where he studied High Dutch and French. (In 1764, Wolfgang von Goethe was a pupil at the school and wrote of his schoolmate.) Arthur returned to England in 1766 before leaving for Lisbon. In 1768, he took on two partners and then was joined by John Luccock, with whom he set up a subsidiary, Lupton & Luccock, in Rio de Janeiro. In 1773 Arthur founded William Lupton and Co. and married Olive Rider. He sat on the original committee for the Leeds Cloth Halls, regulating their activities; see by way of comparison the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers in London. In 1774 the leading merchants came together to organise the construction of Leeds' 3rd White Cloth Hall. The trade directory of 1790 refers to Lupton & Co. Merchants, in the Leylands in Leeds. He built a woollen cloth works as the Industrial Revolution brought cottage weaving to an end, and passed the business to his son, William III.

William III (1777–1828) is listed in the 1817 Register of the Nobility, Clergy and Gentry for the West Riding of the County of York. His wife Ann, daughter of tobacconist John Darnton, died in 1865 at Gledhow Mount Mansion in Leeds. He shared responsibility for the business with his brother, Arthur II (1782–1824), and it prospered until 1819. John Luccock, their cousin, sought to expand the business in New Orleans in 1822 but was forced to give up in 1823. The South American trade opened up again, albeit with difficulties in Peru.

Several of the Luptons were supporters of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, a learned society founded in 1819, which established Leeds City Museum. They subscribed to its building fund.

Early and Mid-Victorians

William III had many children, including Arthur (1809–1889), who is recorded in the Pedigrees of the County Families of England as being "of Newton Hall and marrying Jane Crawford (b.1828) on the 25th of April, 1866". He had owned Newton Hall since the early 19th century and was planning his estate's original sub-division (Newton Grove) from the 1850s.

Another of William's sons was Darnton (1806–1873) of Potternewton Hall. He was Mayor of Leeds in 1844 and a magistrate. He was a director of the Leeds-York-Bradfield Railways and also a director of the Bank of Leeds, which became part of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Darnton was a long-time supporter of the new Leeds Town Hall, and, as a director of the Leeds Chamber of Commerce, became the president of the Exhibition of Local Industry which was arranged in conjunction with the opening of the Town Hall. As president of the Festival Committee, Councillor Lupton was a member of the official welcoming party that greeted Queen Victoria and Prince Albert upon their arrival in Leeds to open the Leeds Town Hall on 7 September 1858. Darnton, who was his brother Arthur's neighbour when living at Potternewton Hall, became co-owner of the adjacent Newton Hall Estate with his younger brother Francis when Arthur sold the estate in 1870. Arthur bought Headingley Castle in 1866.

Darnton's brother Francis III (1813–1884) 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 West Riding magistrate 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 (later part of the federal Victoria University, and from 1904 the University of Leeds). In 1847 he married Frances Greenhow, niece of writers and reformers Harriet and Dr James Martineau. Frances's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography focuses on her pioneering work expanding opportunities for female education, not least in co-founding Leeds Girls' High School. The couple's marriage is listed in The Patrician, the periodical written by Burke's Peerage's John Burke.

Francis and Frances Lupton lived from 1847 at Potternewton Hall, acquiring the freehold of the estate in 1860. By 1870, Francis was the owner of 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 farming estate with a Georgian country house near Roundhay, which they bought from Sir George Goodman.

Francis employed a farm bailiff to manage the farms at Beechwood. A bailiff remained in the family's employ long after both Francis and his wife had died. Their sons – Francis Martineau, Arthur, Charles, and Hugh all contributed to the life of Leeds.

William III's son Joseph (1816–1894) was a committed Liberal, 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, who advocated immediate, not gradual, abolition. (See Anti-Slavery Society.) He 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.

Kate Lupton (Baroness von Schunck)

Darnton's daughter, Kate (1833–1913), married Edward, Baron von Schunck in 1867 and lived at Gledhow Wood Estate in Leeds; their daughter, Florence, who married Albert Kitson, 2nd Baron Airedale, lived nearby at Gledhow Hall. Kate Schunck and her daughter were invited to the coronation of King George V in 1911.

Kate Schunck was a wealthy woman with a keen 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. Other members included her daughter, Florence Kitson and aunt Frances Lupton. Kate Schunck and Frances Lupton were members of the committee that established Leeds Girls' High School. The Second World War edition of Burke's Peerage records that Kate 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.

Two of Francis III's sons married sisters named Ashton: Arthur to Harriet, and Charles to Katharine. A third Ashton sister, Marion, married James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce, the British Ambassador to the United States. Their brother was Thomas Ashton, 1st Baron Ashton of Hyde.

Francis Martineau and descendants

Francis Martineau IV (1848–1921), Francis III's eldest son, attended Leeds Grammar School before going up to Trinity College, Cambridge to 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 supply from the Americas and Australia. The family's textile mills were in Whitehall Road, Leeds. Francis Martineau lived with his children at Rockland, a large stone house built for him on the Newton Park Estate.

Francis 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. Impressed by the ideas of housing reformer Octavia Hill, he served as Chairman of the Unhealthy Areas Committee, later the Improvements Committee, addressing the legacy of 100 years of slums. Halfway through this period, he wrote a book on his experience, 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.

In 2013, British Pathé footage was discovered of Alderman Lupton inspecting troops – Leeds Pals – at a camp near Colsterdale in 1915.

In 1880, he married Harriet Albina Davis (1850–1892), daughter of clergyman Thomas Davis. Harriet died in 1892, two weeks after the birth of their youngest son. The couple had two daughters; Olive and Anne. Olive married Richard Noel Middleton in 1914 and is the great grandmother of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.

Francis Martineau's three sons all boarded at Rugby School after which they attended Trinity College, Cambridge. All three of their sons 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. At this point, Francis Martineau turned his family home, Rockland, into an institution for the children of sailors and soldiers, and moved with his daughters to Roundhay. A generous benefactor, Francis Martineau 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 the rebuilding in 1907 of Martineau Hall, the Sunday school his great uncle James Martineau had established.

Arthur and descendants

Arthur V (1850–1930) was Francis III's second son. Educated at Leeds Grammar School, he entered the family business at the age of sixteen. 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. The redbrick 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 sixteen years before returning to the council, promoting co-operation between the university and industry, especially the Clothworkers Company.

Recognising the need for large-scale generation of electricity, 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.

He married Harriet Ashton, with whom he had two daughters: Elinor (1886–1979) and Elizabeth (Bessie, 1888–1977). His wife died shortly after giving birth to Bessie. The girls' second cousin, Beatrix Potter, gifted a number of her hand-drawn watercolour Christmas cards to them. There are surviving examples from 1890 to 1895. The sisters never married; their brother Arthur VI survived the Great War but a riding accident with the Bramham Moor Hunt in 1928 resulted in his death the following year.

Elinor was awarded an honorary degree in 1945 for services to the university – for 23 years she had chaired its Women's Halls Committee; the Lupton Halls of Residence was named after her and her father. Her father and uncle had also been granted the honorary LLD, Arthur in 1910 and Charles in 1919.) In 1942–3, Elinor was the Lady Mayoress (ceremonial companion) to Leeds' first female Lord Mayor – Jessie Beatrice Kitson, niece of James Kitson, 1st Baron Airedale. The women hosted visits from royalty, including the Princess Royal and her husband Lord Harewood, the Duchess of Kent and Lady Mountbatten. In 1951 Elinor and Elizabeth Lupton donated land to Leeds University to enable the expansion of its campus. Both sisters 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.

In the 1970s, Elinor and Bessie Lupton campaigned to preserve open grassland on Asket Hill, a part of the family's Beechwood Estate. They succeeded in placing 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.

Charles and descendants

Sir 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, later Dibb Lupton, and now 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 treasurer and chairperson of the board as the infirmary evolved into a modern hospital. Leeds School of Medicine was integrated with the Yorkshire College (later Leeds University). He retired from the appointment in 1921 and remained on the board. He became a member of the Court and Council of the University and chairman of the Law Committee.

In 1915-16, Charles served as Lord Mayor of Leeds, raising money to enlarge Chapel Allerton Hospital, which was then a military hospital. Newsreel footage survives of him inspecting troops in this role, travelling with his three brothers to Colsterdale in the Yorkshire Dales to show support for the Leeds Pals battalion.

Starting as 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 became 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 and descendants

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, joining the firm in 1881 and rising to managing director, only to see the Great Depression force it 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 this 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 such visit, captured on British Pathé newsreel, was discovered in July 2013.

Two 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.

Olive Middleton (née Lupton)

Francis Martineau had two daughters. The eldest, Olive (1881–1936) was born and grew up on the Potternewton Hall estate, alongside her cousin, Kate Lupton. Olive was educated at Roedean, until 1900. In 1914, she married solicitor Richard Noel Middleton who became a director of William Lupton & Co.

From 1909, Olive and her relatives - cousin Elinor Lupton and Hilda Kitson, daughter of James Kitson, 1st Baron Airedale - were members of the executive committee of the LAGC: Leeds Association of Girls' Clubs. Olive served on other committees, including the Appeal Committee for the enlargement and improvement of the Leeds General Infirmary Nurses' Home. Olive was an honorary officer at the Stead Hostel – a home in Leeds for working women and girls.

During the First World War Olive worked alongside her second cousin - Florence Kitson, wife of Albert Kitson, 2nd Baron Airedale - as a volunteer nurse at Gledhow Hall, which, during the war, was a VAD hospital. All Olive's brothers were killed in the war; Francis, Maurice and Lionel Martineau Lupton whose friend, Albert Spencer, 7th Earl Spencer had been at Trinity College, Cambridge and had studied the same subject. Both men enrolled at the same time to play their part in the war effort.

In 1917 Noel and Olive Middleton were mourners at the funeral of William Cliff, uncle of Albert Kitson, 2nd Baron Airedale.

Olive Middleton's uncle, Dr Arthur Lupton (d.1930), was the brother-in-law of Thomas Ashton, 1st Baron Ashton of Hyde, who was Beatrix Potter's first cousin.

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 Middleton (1920–2010), was the grandfather of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. British Pathé newsreel film discovered in 2014 revealed that Middleton had been Prince Philip's co-pilot on a two-month tour of South America in 1962.

Olive Middleton's sister, Anne Lupton, (1888–1967) wished to enter the family business, but as women were excluded, she travelled abroad 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 Charles Frederic Moberly Bell, Enid was vice-chair of the National Society for Women's Suffrage) and the Lyceum Club for female artists and writers. Enid was second mistress at Lady Margaret School in Parsons Green, and in 1937 Anne Lupton financed the purchase of the Georgian property, Elm House, in which the school is located. It was reported in 1935 that Anne was Organiser of the London Housing Centre.

The eldest son of Henry Lupton (d.1932), Geoffrey Lupton (1882–1949), was a significant figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement. He designed Lupton Hall at Bedales School which he and his siblings had attended.

Barbara Lupton (Lady Bullock)

Henry's middle daughter, Barbara Lupton (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 had worked in 1919 as Winston Churchill's Principal Private Secretary. Bullock rose to become the Air Ministry's Permanent Under-Secretary from 1931 to 1936. Sir Christopher and Lady Bullock had two sons, Richard Henry Watson Bullock C.B. (1920–1998) and Edward Anthony Watson Bullock (1926–2015), both of whom entered public service, in the Home Civil Service and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office respectively.

Two grandchildren of Darnton Lupton (d.1873): Agnes and Norman Darnton Lupton, left a substantial bequest to the 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. Like many Lupton men, he was a J.P.. His daughter, Marjorie Lupton, married Godfrey Vyvyan Stopford, the nephew of the 7th Earl of Courtown in 1934.

Legacy

Noel Middleton's family sold the business William Lupton & Co to Pudsey textiles firm A.W. Hainsworth in 1958. By the outbreak of the Second World War, two of the Lupton estates – Potternewton Hall and Newton Hall – had become Newton Park Estate, the largest private housing estate in Leeds. The granddaughters of Francis Lupton, Elinor and Elizabeth Lupton, were the third of several generations of Luptons to inhabit Beechwood. They had regularly opened their estate's gardens to the public during the 1940s and 50s. During the late 1970s and 1980s, as Beechwood College, the Lupton's Beechwood Estate was as 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 by the 1950s to create the Seacroft council estate/township. The manor house remained in family hands into the 1990s. Portions of the Beechwood estate remain in the ownership of the Lupton family; in 2014, 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". Lupton's Field at Roundhay is named in honour of the sisters.