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| Alfred Pope |
Alfred was born at Clifton Maubank, Dorset, on 2nd October 1842, son of John Allen Pope. The Popes had been landowners in Marnull, Corscoube and the Tollers for three centuries before this. Alfred was educated at Dorchester Grammar School, where he later became Chairman of the Board of Governors. In 1859 he was sent to Paris to continue his education and then became a solicitor in Bath, then at the Supreme Court in London. He then became a partner in the firm of Andrews, Pope and Andrews of Dorchester before retiring from the legal profession at the age of thirty-eight, retaining his interest in the subject as President of the Dorset Law Society.
In 1862 he had volunteered as a `citizen soldier', part of the National Volunteer Assocation formed `in consequence of apprehension of a new attempt at invasion by the French.' He was gazetted into the 17th Company of the Somerset Rifle Volunteers, rising to the rank of Captain. On the formation of the National Reserve in Dorset in 1909, he was again enrolled as a Captain but as that force was moblised for war in August 1914, he was ineligible for active service due to his age (seventy-one).
In 1880 Alfred moved from the `dry' profession of law, to the more `liquid' one of brewing, becoming a partner in the famous Dorchester firm of Eldridge, Pope and Co, developing the Dorchester Brewery, now preserved as a leisure and shopping precint near the market place.
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| Eldridge and Pope Brewery in its heyday |
In 1869 he married Mary Jenner. However she died in 1871, leaving a son, Alfred Rolph Pope. In 1874 he remarried Elizabeth Mary Whiting, a union which produced ten sons and four daughters.
He was elected to the Town Council of Dorchester in 1876 and was twice appointed Mayor, in 1878-79 and 1886-87. During his second tenure the Bath and West of England Show was held at Dorcester showground and was visited by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. In the words of a friend, "Alfred Pope had more than any man to do with the creation of Greater Dorchester." He supported the development of the Cornwall Estate, and bought land to the south of the town to enable the building of the Maumburyway suburb.
In 1887, he acquired the Wrackleford Estate, which is still in the family to this day, and with it the lordships of the Manors of Stratton and Grimston. When the ancient church at Stratton was restored in 1894, he paid for the erection of the chancel as a memorial to his first wife. In 1902 he erected a memorial window to his deceased son, Sub-Lieutenant William Eldridge Pope, R.N.
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| Wrackleford House |
Alfred was one of the founding members of the Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club in 1875, becoming an expert on Dorset medieval market and church crosses.
His enthusiasm for preserving the past was also evident in his work on the erection of the Dorset County Museum in 1881 and in 1899 he paid for the relaying of Olga Road, a tessellated Roman pavement unearthed in Dorchester, in the museum. He was a generous benefactor to Dorchester Library and in February 1918 was elected Vice-President alongside his friend and other eminent man of Dorset, Thomas Hardy O.M.
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| Olga Road Pavement, Dorset County Museum |
He was keen member of the Cattistock and South Dorset Hunts. He kept a head of game at Wrackleford.
The family memorial book described him as `a devoted Christian, and in politics…a strong Conservative, an ardent supporter of the Constitution and of the unity of the Empire.’
However all these eminent deeds, wealth and connections could not insulate Alfred from the grief suffered by hundreds of thousands of families in Britain during the Great War. In fact it was families such as the Popes who were expected to set an example in their localities by being among the first to join up, and often whose sons were to be the first out of the trenches towards the enemy.
We shall follow their story as war took its toll
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