Miss Barbara Giffard
(1848-1935)
1866

Volume 8, page 52, sitting number 9830.

[Identified as ‘Miss Giffard in the Silvy daybooks, a pencilled inscription verso in a period hand reads: ‘Mrs Vincent Eyre née Barbara Giffard.’ In addition, her maiden name is written in ink across the top of the print.]

Born in 1848 at Brewood in Staffordshire, Barbara Agnes Caroline Giffard was the daughter of Thomas William Giffard of Chillington Hall and his wife Charlotte Laintall née Earl. She was baptised in Brewed on 25 October 1848. 

In 1873 she married Vincent Thomas Eyre. 

‘Captain Vincent Eyre, formerly of the Inniskilling Dragoons, eldest son of Mr Vincent Eyre, of Lindley Hall, Warwickshire, one of the wealthiest landholders in the district of England, cousin to the Earl of Wicklow, and brother of Mrs Anthony Norris, wife of the senior partner in the eminent Catholic firm of Norris and Sons, is about to be married to Miss Barbara Giffard, youngest daughter of the late Mr T. Giffard, of Chillington Castle, Yorkshire’ (The Sun & Central Press, 13 August 1873). 

The marriage produced seven children; two of these children predeceased their mother. 

The family appear on the 1881 census living at 34 Beaufort Gardens in Kensington. The household included seven live-in servants. 

Vincent Eyre died on 26 September 1893 at Lindley Hall, Nuneaton, Leicestershire. He left an estate valued at £84,441. 

Mrs Barbara Eyre appears on the 1911 census living with one unmarried daughter and three female servants at 9 Wilbraham Place in Chelsea.

She died on 17 March 1935 at Leigh House, 52 Shorncliffe Road, Folkestone. She left an estate valued at £48,313. 

[The following sitting in the daybooks (Volume 8, page 53, sitting number 9831) is her sister Lucy, identified as ‘Miss L. Giffard.’]