Willett L. Adye
(1818-1878)
30 May 1861

Volume 3, page 335, sitting number 4023.

Born on 4 May 1818 at Kerkyra in Corfu and baptised there by an army chaplain on 19 June 1818, Willett Lawrence Adye was the eldest son of Major James Pattison Adye of the Royal Artillery.

In 1851 he was a 32-year-old ‘Clerk in the Ordnance’ living with his widowed mother at 18 Fulham Place, Paddington Green. The household also comprised a cook and a housemaid.

On 22 April 1856 at the parish church of Walcot in Bath he married Elizabeth Marian Ross, ‘youngest daughter of the late Robert Ross, Esq., of Cargenholm, Kircudbrightshire, N.B.’ (Lady’s Own Paper, 26 April 1856).

The following year his cousin Henry Ralph Willett died and Adye inherited Merley House, a very fine Georgian building of brick with stone facings at Wimborne in Dorset.

In March 1861 he became a Lieutenant in the 6th Company of the Dorset Rifle Volunteers (Morning Post, 27 March 1861).   

When the census was taken the following month, he and his wife were living at Merley House with their three young sons Henry, James and Claude. Willett gave his profession as ‘Landed Proprietor.’ Also present on the night of the census were ten servants, including a butler. Willett and Elizabeth’s marriage eventually produced a total of eight children.

Merley House was later rented to the Australian explorer William Charles Wentworth (who died there in 1872), while the Adye family lived at Puckpool House in Ryde on the Isle of Wight. Apparently at this point in his life Willett was a biblical scholar and the author of some religious tracts; he was also a Methodist lay preacher around the villages on the island. He was, moreover, a musicologist and a talented amateur violinist. In 1869 he published Musical Notes, a work in three parts on the great composers, violinists and the violin, and the violin and its history.

In 1872 Willett abandoned the marital home. In addition to his eight children with Elizabeth, he had had a further six children with his mistress, Ann Sophia Brown or Browne aka Martin. In later censuses she called herself Adye and claimed she was a widow, though no marriage had taken place.

In 1877 Wiillett Lawrence Adye ‘of no occupation, 18 Manley-terrace, Kennington-park’ was declared bankrupt (Lloyd’s List, 4 August 1877).

He died on 27 November 1878 at 12 Dante Road, Newington Butts. The cause of death was 'dilated heart' and 'broncho-pneumonia.' His personal estate was valued at only £50. Some ten years later Charles Booth’s ‘poverty maps' classed Dante Road as ‘Mixed: some comfortable, others poor.’