Lupton family

This article is about the Yorkshire family. For the American family, see John Thomas Lupton.

Arms of Dr. Roger Lupton (d. 1540): "Argent, on a chevron sable between three wolf's heads and necks erased sable three lilies of the field on a chief gules a Tau cross between two escallops or". Arms granted by Henry VII

Lupton crest from 1922: "Wolf's head and neck erased sable", as seen in arms granted to ancestor Roger Lupton

The Lupton family in Yorkshire achieved prominence in ecclesiastical and academic circles in England in the 16th century through the fame of Roger Lupton, provost of Eton College and chaplain to Henry VII and Henry VIII. By the Georgian era, the family was established as merchants and ministers in Leeds. Described in the city's archives as "landed gentry, a political and business dynasty", they had become successful woollen cloth merchants and manufacturers who flourished during the Industrial Revolution and traded throughout northern Europe, the Americas and Australia.

Arnold Lupton MP and other members of the family contributed both to the political life of the UK and to the civic life of Leeds well into the 20th century. Several members were well acquainted with the British Royal Family and were philanthropists. Some were Lord Mayors of Leeds and progressive in their views. They were associated with the Church of England and the Unitarian church. The Lupton Residences of the University of Leeds are named after members of the family, and the law firm established by solicitor Sir Charles Lupton as Dibb-Lupton which after a merger became DLA Piper.

The Luptons are the ancestors of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge: her great-grandmother Olive Lupton married Richard Noel Middleton, and members of the Lupton family were guests at her wedding to Prince William.

Early Luptons of Yorkshire

Monumental brass rubbing of Roger Lupton in Eton Chapel with Lupton crest below

Lupton is a placename surname connected with Lupton in Cumbria (formerly Westmoreland). Examples of the surname in Yorkshire are in 1297 in Subsidy Rolls (Robert Lupton), in the 1379 poll tax in Thornton in Lonsdale (Thomas de Lupton), in Pateley Bridge (Leonard Luptonn) in 1551 and (George Lupton) in 1553 and in 1599 in Keighley (Judithe Luptonne). Father Robert Lupton was the Vicar of Skipton in 1430.

Roger Lupton

Roger Lupton, Provost and benefactor of Eton College, was born in Sedbergh, Yorkshire, in 1456 and graduated from King's College, Cambridge in 1483. He does not appear to have been educated at Eton College, though a number of his Yorkshire relatives were Etonians, including Ralph Lupton, with whom Dr Lupton had much in common; both were natives of Sedbergh and studied at King's (Ralph was admitted to King's in 1506), and were later benefactors to the college. Another Yorkshire relative was Thomas Lupton of Nun Monkton, an Etonian, who was admitted to King's in 1517. Roger Lupton was 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 while he was Provost of Eton. By 1528, land had been bought and the school built, probably on the site of the current Sedbergh School library, and the foundation deed was 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 College for 30 years, and the tower in the school yard is named after him. He died in 1540 and was buried in Lupton's Chapel – his own chantry at Eton.

Luptons of Leeds

Seventeenth century

The earliest recorded member of the Leeds branch of the family is Thomas Lupton of Holbeck, whose son Thomas (born 1628) was a scholar at Leeds Grammar School and was admitted as a sizar to St John's College, Cambridge in 1648. He became a minister.

Clergy, farmers, clothiers and merchants

Francis and Esther Lupton married at Adel Church in 1688

Francis Lupton II (1731–1770) c. 1760s

Francis Lupton (1658–1717) married Esther Midgeley of Brearey, daughter of Ralph, a yeoman farmer. Francis and Esther Lupton had married in 1688 at Adel Church, near Leeds. Francis Lupton was appointed clerk at Leeds Parish Church on 31 August 1694. They had nine children. Their son William I (1700–1771) was a yeoman farmer and clothier with business connections in the Netherlands and Germany who lived in Whitkirk, Leeds. He became Sir Henry Ibbetson's chief cloth-dresser. Master dressers were skilled artisans who finished the cloth and the highest paid in the cloth industry. Appointed the sole executor of Ibbetson's partner John Koster, Lupton managed the company for Ibbetson during his last illness. His three sons 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. Described an "an eminent merchant at that place", Charterhouse School registers record the marriage of Sarah, the only daughter of "Francis Lupton of Lisbon" in 1788.

William's second son, William II (1732–1782) was sent to board at Sedbergh School and attended St John's College, Cambridge. William was an assistant master at Leeds Grammar School and was ordained to pursue a ministry in the church at Headingley, near Leeds. His son, the Rev. John Lupton (died 1844), held an M.A. from Trinity College, Cambridge. Arthur I (1748–1807), William's third son, was sent to Leopold Pfeil's school in Frankfurt when he was 15, to study High Dutch and French. In 1764, Wolfgang von Goethe, his contemporary at the school, wrote about his schoolmate.

Arthur returned to England in 1766 before leaving for Lisbon. In 1768, he took on two partners and was joined by John Luccock, with whom he set up a subsidiary company, Lupton & Luccock, in Rio de Janeiro. William Lupton and Company Limited was established as such in 1773, but traded in cloth before this date. Lupton sat on the committee for the Leeds cloth halls, regulating their activities. In 1774 the leading merchants organised the construction of the 3rd White Cloth Hall. A trade directory of 1790 lists Lupton & Company as Merchants in the Leylands.

Arthur had married Olive Rider, the only daughter of David Rider in 1773. She brought a £5,000 dowry to the marriage. Her father had substantial land holdings in Mabgate and the Leylands between North Street and Wade Lane. Arthur and his wife inherited a life interest in the land after David Rider's death, after which the land passed to his grandsons. William Lupton inherited 5/8ths of their grandfather David Rider's estate and Arthur 3/8ths, which they held as tenants in common but in 1811 they divided the property. William took "Town End" which included his father's dressing mill built in 1788, warehouses, the tenter garth stretching to Wade Lane and a substantial house. Its insured assets included a warehouse, counting house, packing shop, machinery and tools for dressing cloth, a hot pressing shop and a steam engine.

Next generation

William III (1777–1828) operated from the North Street estate he inherited from his father, Arthur, where the enclosed fields of the Lords of the Manor of Leeds were occupied by a woollen mill and its reservoir, a substantial house and outbuildings. William married Ann, the daughter of tobacconist John Darnton. He shared responsibility for the business with his brother, Arthur II (1782–1824). Trade was unpredictable; losses were made in 1806 but 1809 showed a recovery. In 1819, William formed a partnership with his nephew David Rider but Rider's share of £1,000 made him very much the junior as Lupton's share was in excess of £38,000. William Lupton also became entangled with the estate of his wife's grandfather, Nathan Rider. Winding up Rider's assets while providing an income for his widow and children ultimately took 15 years. John Luccock, their cousin, sought to expand the business in New Orleans in 1822 but was forced to give up a year later. The company's South American trade opened up again, albeit with difficulties in Peru.

During the 1820s the business made little profit and Arthur Lupton, the "travelling" partner reportedly shot himself while suffering from a fever in Paris in 1824. He left a wife, also named Ann, to bring up four children alone. William Lupton died in 1828 leaving behind a wife, ten children and extensive debts. He owed Becketts Bank more than £13,000 and more than £15,000 to his father-in-law. The Lupton widows maintained their social status and living standards with their own personal estates and by developing their inherited urban landholdings.

William's widow, Ann Lupton a woman of "considerable initiative and skill", maintained the family business with her sons Darnton, Francis and Arthur. The sole executrix of her husband's will, she set about developing the land. She laid out Merrion Street with plots for terraced houses and Belgrave Street with larger plots and a garden square. She retired to Gledhow Mount in the proto suburb of Potternewton in 1858 where she died aged 81 in 1865.

Religion, politics and philanthropy

Originally Anglicans, by the early 19th century the Luptons were Dissenters and part of a close group of established merchant families who belonged to the Unitarian Mill Hill Chapel Among its socially active congregation were the Luptons, Oates, Bischoff and Stansfield families who were subsequently joined by new money, the Marshalls, the Kitsons and radicals such as Samuel Smiles. Their denominational loyalty was mirrored by their political leanings; mostly, they were Whigs and later Liberals.

They supported the New Subscription Library, set up in the early 19th century, with a "mildly whiggish character" as a counter to the Anglican, Tory tone of the Leeds Library. and members of the family subscribed to the building fund of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, a learned society founded in 1819, which established Leeds City Museum.

William's descendants

Headingley Castle, Arthur Lupton's home from 1866

Arthur Lupton

William III's children included Arthur (1809–1889) who lived at Newton Hall which he had owned since the early 1840s. He began to subdivide the estate and Newton Grove was established in the 1850s. He married Jane Crawford on 25 April 1866 and moved to The Elms, which was given its original name, Headingley Castle.

Darnton Lupton

Darnton Lupton, Knight of the Legion of Honour and Mayor of Leeds.

Darnton Lupton (1806–1873) resided at Potternewton Hall estate from the 1830s. He was the Mayor of Leeds in 1844 and a magistrate. He was a director of the Bank of Leeds, which became part of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Darnton Lupton supported building the new Leeds Town Hall and as president of the Leeds Chamber of Commerce, was president of the Exhibition of Local Industry which was arranged in conjunction with its opening. He was a member of the welcoming party that greeted Queen Victoria and Prince Albert who opened the Town Hall on 7 September 1858. He was created a Knight (Chevalier) of the Legion of Honour by Napolean III for the Exhibit of Cloths in the Paris Exhibition of 1855.

Darnton became co-owner of the Newton Hall estate with his younger brother Francis when their brother Arthur sold it in 1870.

Francis Lupton III

Francis W. Lupton, Esq.

Francis Lupton lived with his mother Ann at Newton Green Hall Estate prior to his marriage in 1847

Potternewton Hall c. 1860. Members of the Lupton family in the foreground

Francis III (1813–1884) was educated at Leeds Grammar School. He was 15 when his father died, but had already acquired an extensive knowledge of the cloth trade. He joined the board of the Bank of Leeds, became a magistrate of the West Riding of Yorkshire 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.

In the years prior to his marriage, Francis was living with his mother Ann at Newton Green Hall, the Georgian house and estate which adjoined both Potternewton Hall and Newton Hall, the homes of his brother's Darnton and Arthur respectively. In 1847 Francis married Frances Greenhow, niece of writers and reformers Harriet and James Martineau. A lifelong Unitarian, she was the Honorary Secretary and "driving force" behind the Yorkshire Ladies Council of Education from 1871 to 1885 and was the Leeds representative of the Ladies' Educational Association for the North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women (NECPHEW). In 1875 she chaired a meeting of both organisations to form the committee that raised funds to start Leeds Girls' High School. She was the school council's vice-president until 1891. Frances belonged to the Education for Girls Committee of the Royal Society of Arts.

Francis and Frances Lupton lived at Potternewton Hall from 1847, acquiring the freehold of the estate in 1860. By 1870, Francis owned Newton Hall, the adjacent estate. Potternewton Hall was where their children were born. By the early 1860s, Francis and Frances had moved to Beechwood, a Georgian country house and farming estate near Roundhay, which they bought from Sir George Goodman. Their sons, Frank, Arthur, Charles, and Hugh all contributed to the life of Leeds. Arthur married Harriet Ashton and Charles married her sister Katharine. Their brother was Thomas Ashton, 1st Baron Ashton of Hyde.

Joseph Lupton

Joseph Lupton, abolitionist

Originally born and bred in Wakefield, William III's son Joseph (1816–1894), a committed Liberal was 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, an advocate of immediate abolition. Garrison was a guest at Lupton's home in July 1877. Joseph Lupton 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.

Late Victorians

Kate Lupton (Baroness von Schunck)

Darnton's daughter, Kate (1833–1913), married Edward, Baron von Schunck in 1867 and lived at Gledhow Wood in Leeds. Kate Schunck was a wealthy woman with an interest in educational provision, particularly for women. One of her interests was the Yorkshire Ladies Council of Education. An original member of the council, in 1908, she was on its Management Committee, the president being Lady Frederick Cavendish. Kate Schunck and her aunt, Frances Lupton, were members of the committee that established Leeds Girls' High School. Kate Schunck died aged 80 on 16 May 1913. The Schunck's daughter, Florence married Albert Kitson, 2nd Baron Airedale who inherited his father's title and Gledhow Hall in 1911. During the First World War Lord Airedale offered Gledhow Hall for use as a VAD hospital and his daughter Doris volunteered as a nurse.

Lord and Lady Airedale and Kate, Baroness von Schunck were invited to the coronation of King George V in 1911.

Francis Martineau Lupton

Francis Martineau Lupton

In 1921, Frank Lupton owned the family mills and textile manufacturing firm William Lupton and Co. Est. in 1773.

Francis Martineau Lupton (1848–1921), known as Frank, was Francis III's eldest son. He attended Leeds Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge where he 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 textile business from being merchants to manufacturing in response to the restructuring of the economics of cloth making. They acquired other mills and power looms in Pudsey and converted their mills to be driven by electricity. They took advantage of new sources of wool from the Americas and Australia. Their textile mills had been established on Whitehall Road, Leeds.

In 1880, Frank Lupton married Harriet Albina Davis (1850–1892), daughter of clergyman Thomas Davis. Frank's wife died in 1892, two weeks after the birth of their youngest son. They had two daughters and three sons. Frank Lupton lived with his family at Rockland, a stone house built for him on the family's Newton Park Estate much of which, upon the death of his mother in 1892, he had inherited along with his three brothers.

Frank Lupton devoted his life to the business and civic work. He was a Magistrate/J.P. for Leeds and the West Riding. A Liberal, he broke from Gladstone over Home Rule and became a Liberal Unionist. In 1895, having been a councillor, he became a Unionist alderman on the City of Leeds Council at the time that his relative James Kitson, 1st Baron Airedale was the first Lord Mayor of Leeds. Frank remained an alderman until 1916, when his brother Charles was Lord Mayor of Leeds. Frank was interested in the welfare of the poor, and, impressed by social reformer Octavia Hill worked to improve Leeds poor working class housing. From 1896, for ten years, he chaired the council's Unhealthy Areas Committee, which had powers to address the legacy of slum housing. Led by Lupton, the committee cleared the York Street and Quarry Hill areas of almost 4,000 buildings and organised new housing. He opposed proposals to build tenements for rehousing triggering his resignation as chairman. Later he chaired the council's Improvement and Finance Committees. Halfway through this period, he wrote the book, 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.

British Pathé filmed Alderman Lupton inspecting the Leeds Pals at a camp near Colsterdale in 1915. Frank Lupton's three sons boarded at Rugby School after which they attended Trinity College, Cambridge. All three 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. After their deaths Frank Lupton turned his family home, Rockland, into an institution for the children of sailors and soldiers, and moved with his daughters, Olive and Anne, to Roundhay. In April 1917, King George V commanded that a letter be written to Lupton in which the King recognised the exceptional loss of "your gallant" sons.

A generous benefactor, Frank Lupton 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 to the rebuilding in 1907 of Martineau Hall, the Sunday school his great uncle James Martineau had established.

Arthur G. Lupton and his daughters

Arthur Greenhow Lupton (1850–1930) was Francis III's second son. Educated at Leeds Grammar School, he entered the family business at the age of 16. 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. 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 hosted George V when the King visited the University on 27 September 1915. He held the post for 16 years, then returned to the council, promoting co-operation between the university and industry, especially the Clothworkers Company.

Recognising the need for large-scale electricity generation, he 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, Frank, he took over responsibility for Wm. Lupton & Co.

Arthur married Harriet Ashton, with whom he had two daughters: Elinor Gertrude (1886–1979) and Elizabeth (Bessie, 1888–1977). His wife died shortly after giving birth to Bessie. Their second cousin, Beatrix Potter, sent them her own hand-drawn watercolour Christmas cards; examples from 1890 to 1895 have survived. In 1908, Elinor was awarded an M.A. from Cambridge University. Both Lupton sisters served as V.A.D. nurses in France during the Great War. Their brother Arthur survived the war but a riding accident with the Bramham Moor Hunt in 1928 resulted in his death the following year.

Elinor Lupton was awarded an honorary LLD in 1945 for services to Leeds University after chairing the Women's Halls Committee for 23 years. The Lupton Residences were named after her and her father. Her father and uncle were granted honorary doctorates, Arthur in 1910 and Charles in 1919. Elinor was a J.P. and in 1942–3, she was the Lady Mayoress (ceremonial companion) to Leeds' first female Lord Mayor, Jessie Beatrice Kitson. The women hosted visits from royalty, including the Princess Royal, her husband Lord Harewood, the Duchess of Kent and Lady Mountbatten. In 1951 the Lupton sisters donated land to expand the campus of Leeds University. They 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. Their aunt, Katherine Lupton, was one of the club's founders in 1923.

In the 1970s, the sisters campaigned to preserve open grassland on Asket Hill, part of the family's Beechwood estate. They placed a legally binding "non-build" covenant in the ownership deeds. After Elinor's death, Leeds Girls' High School acquired a Grade II listed former church and named it the Elinor Lupton Centre after her.

Sir Charles Lupton

Lord Mayor of Leeds, Sir Charles Lupton by Sir Arthur Stockdale Cope

Charles Lupton OBE (1855–1935), Lord Mayor of Leeds 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, which became Dibb Lupton and subsequently merged into DLA Piper, the world's largest law firm. In 1888 he married Katharine Ashton and was thus the brother-in-law of both Thomas Ashton, 1st Baron Ashton of Hyde and James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce with both men sharing their interest in politics with Charles and his cousin Arnold Lupton MP; Lord Ashton of Hyde, Lord Bryce and Arnold Lupton were all members of the House of Commons in 1906–1907 when Charles's brother Francis Martineau Lupton was a City of Leeds Alderman and Charles himself was Chairman and Treasurer of the Leeds General Infirmary.

Charles was elected to the board of management of Leeds General Infirmary and in 1900 was appointed its treasurer and chairperson of the board as it evolved into a modern hospital. Leeds School of Medicine was integrated with the Yorkshire College. He retired from the appointment in 1921 and remained on the board. He was a member of the Court and Council of the University and chairman of the Law Committee.

In 1915–1916, while he was Lord Mayor of Leeds, Lupton raised money to enlarge Chapel Allerton Hospital, which was then a military hospital. Newsreel footage survives of him inspecting troops with his three brothers in Colsterdale in the Yorkshire Dales in support of the Leeds Pals battalion.

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 was 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 Lupton

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, in 1881 and rose to managing director, only to see the Great Depression force the company 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, serving on it for many years. 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 visit, captured on British Pathé newsreel, was discovered in July 2013. In June 1927, Lady Mayoress Isabella Lupton was reportedly presented at Court by the Countess of Harewood, Princess Mary's mother-in-law.

On 23 August 1933, as one of the "great figures of Yorkshire", Alderman Hugh Lupton was presented to King George V and Queen Mary at the Leeds Town Hall.

Both of Hugh's sons survived the Great War; surgeon Dr. Charles Athelstane (died 1977), studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and wrote a book about the Lupton family. His other son, Hugh Ralph Lupton OBE (died 1983), was also educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and married Joyce Ransome (sister of the Swallows and Amazons author Arthur). Their sons were Arthur Ralph Ransome Lupton (1924–2009), Dr. Francis G. H. Lupton OBE (1921–2006) and Geoffrey Charles Martineau Lupton (1930–2019) who married Colina, daughter of Sir Raibeart MacDougall. Hugh's family includes performer Hugh Lupton and author Rosamund Lupton.

Twentieth century

Olive Middleton (née Lupton)

Nurse Olive Middleton, back row far right, in 1915 at Gledhow Hall, the estate of her cousin Baroness Airedale

Frank Lupton's eldest daughter Olive (1881–1936) was born at Newton Grove and grew up at Rockland on the family's estate in Potternewton. She was educated at Roedean and was accepted to study at Cambridge University but remained at home with her father.

In 1909, Olive Lupton was a member of the executive committee of the Leeds Association of Girls' Clubs, and the Appeal Committee for the enlargement and improvement of Leeds General Infirmary Nurses' Home. Olive worked as an honorary officer at the Stead Hostel, a home in Leeds for working women and girls which was established by her father. Olive volunteered for The Leeds Ladies' Association for the Care and Protection of Friendless Girls whose meetings were held in 1932 at Olive's family seat – Beechwood Estate – at the invitation of her first cousins, the "Misses Lupton" who lived at Beechwood and were also volunteers for the Association. Olive's grandmother, Frances Lupton, had established the association in Leeds in 1885.

In 1910, Olive was honorary secretary of the West Riding Ladies' Club.

In 1914, Olive Lupton married solicitor Richard Noel Middleton who subsequently became a director of William Lupton & Co. During the First World War, she lived at Gledhow Hall, the home of her second cousin Lady Airedale where she volunteered to work as a V.A.D. nurse. Olive's cousin, the Hon. Doris Kitson and her sister-in-law, Gertrude Middleton also volunteered. During this time, Olive's husband, Lieutenant Richard Noel Middleton was fighting on the Western Front.

Newspapers from December 1933 record that "Mrs. Noel Middleton" was a committee member of "The Infirmary Appeal" with "the Princess Royal" agreeing to "become Patron of the whole Appeal" – supporting the "scheme" of fundraising for the Leeds Infirmary. The committee's Vice-Presidents included the Princess's sister-in-law the Hon. Mrs Edward Lascelles and other women "serving on the Committee" included Olive's relatives; her first cousin Elinor Lupton and J.B. Kitson.

Following her death in 1936 from peritonitis, Olive Middleton's descendants inherited the trust funds established by her father.

The Middleton's son, Oxford-educated pilot, Peter (1920–2010), was the grandfather of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Pippa Middleton, and James William Middleton. Peter Middleton was Prince Philip's co-pilot on a two-month tour of South America in 1962.

Anne Lupton

Anne Lupton

Francis Martineau's younger daughter, Anne, (1888–1967) attended Newnham College at Cambridge University. In the 1920s, Anne and her cousin Elinor Lupton were members of the Classical Association and lived at Beechwood. She wished to enter the family business, but as women were excluded, she travelled for many years in South America and Canada. She never married, but on her return to England, set up home, a sort of Boston marriage, in Chelsea with Enid Moberly Bell, the daughter and biographer of The Times editor Charles Frederic Moberly Bell. Moberly Bell was vice-chair of the Lyceum Club for female artists and writers and the first headmistress of Lady Margaret School in Parsons Green. In 1937 Anne Lupton financed the purchase of the Georgian property, Elm House – subsequently renamed Lupton House – in which the school is located. At Westminster Abbey on 17 October 2017, Lord Chartres "celebrated Anne's support of Lady Margaret School".

From June 1915, Anne Lupton was the secretary of both the Leeds General Hospital Committee and the organising secretary of the 2nd Northern General Hospital at Beckett's Park. Anne and her uncle Charles Lupton were guests when King George V visited the Beckett's Park Military Hospital on 27 September 1915. In March 1920, she was awarded the M.B.E. for her voluntary work for the Leeds Local War Pensions Committee.

Anne's Newnham College, Cambridge friend – Dorothy Davison – married Anne's brother, Francis Ashford Lupton at St Martin's Church at the family's Newton Park Estate in August 1914.

Anne Lupton was the founder and organiser of the London Housing Centre. In 1938, she organised an exhibition at the London Housing Centre for the centenary of Octavia Hill's birth which was visited at her request by Queen Mary. Lupton collected the material for Moberly Bell's biography of Octavia Hill.

Geoffrey Lupton

The eldest son of Henry Lupton (died 1932), Geoffrey Lupton (1882–1949), was a significant figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement. He apprenticed himself to Ernest Gimson, described by the art critic Nikolaus Pevsner as "the greatest of the English architect-designers". He used his inherited wealth to commission Gimson to design the Lupton Hall at Bedales School, which he and his siblings had attended.

Barbara Lupton (Lady Bullock)

Barbara Lupton at Cambridge University c. 1913

Henry Lupton's middle daughter, Barbara (1891–1974), grew up in Headingley, Leeds and attended Bedales School, Newnham College, Cambridge (1910–1913) and the London School of Economics (1913–1914) where she obtained a social science qualification. The 1923 leather-bound handwritten volume Newman College, Cambridge University War Work records that during the First World War Barbara and her second cousin Anne Lupton worked for the war effort; Barbara for the Ministry of Munitions Welfare Department from 1915 to 1919 and Anne for the Leeds Pension Commission as Honorary Assistant Secretary. Both cousins were Newman alumna, their years as undergraduates coinciding. Other members of Barbara's Leeds family who volunteered for the war effort reportedly included Anne's sister Olive Middleton.

In April 1917, Barbara married Sir Christopher Bullock, whom she had met at Cambridge; he was a civil servant at the British Air Ministry. Bullock was Winston Churchill's Principal Private Secretary in 1919. Bullock was the Air Ministry's Permanent Under-Secretary from 1931 to 1936. Sir Christopher and Lady Bullock had two sons, Richard C.B. (1920–1998) and Edward (1926–2015), both of whom entered public service, in the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office respectively.

Agnes and Norman Darnton Lupton

Two grandchildren of Darnton Lupton (died 1873): Agnes and Norman Darnton Lupton (died 1953), left a substantial bequest to Leeds Art Gallery in 1952. Norman had attended Marlborough College and Trinity College, Cambridge and was a mechanical engineer and artist. Norman shared his love of art with his relative – architect Sydney Decimus Kitson (died 1937), half-brother of James Kitson, 1st Baron Airedale. Norman held the rank of Major during the First World War. He is referenced in a telegram sent by his relative Lieutenant R. Noel Middleton to Middleton's father-in-law, Francis Martineau Lupton upon the death of Francis's eldest son, Major Francis Ashford Lupton on the Western Front in 1917. Norman's and Agnes's donation to the Leeds Art Gallery included works by John Sell Cotman, Thomas Girtin and J. M. W. Turner. Another of Darnton's grandchildren, Alan Cecil Lupton (died 1949) graduated from Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a J.P.. His daughter, Marjorie, was reported as marrying Godfrey Vyvyan Stopford, "nephew of the Earl of Courtown" in 1934.

Legacy

Many memorials to the Lupton family lie within Leeds Minster. More recent memorials are found in St John's Church in Roundhay, and Mill Hill Chapel, where a stained glass window commemorates the family.

Noel Middleton's family sold William Lupton & Co to Pudsey textiles firm A.W. Hainsworth in 1958. By the outbreak of the Second World War the land at Potternewton Hall and Newton Hall had become the Newton Park Estate, the largest private housing estate in Leeds. Elinor and Elizabeth Lupton, granddaughters of Francis Lupton, were the third of several generations to inhabit Beechwood. They regularly opened their gardens to the public during the 1940s and 50s. During the late 1970s and 1980s, Beechwood College was 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 to Leeds City Council by the 1950s for the Seacroft council estate and 500 council houses, shops, parks and Beechwood Primary School were built on it. Beechwood, the Georgian mansion remained in the family into the 1990s. In 2014, members of the Lupton family retained ownership of some the estate; 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". The Lupton name is commemorated in Leeds by the Leeds University's Lupton Residences, Lupton House at Leeds Grammar, the street names – Lupton Avenue and Lupton Street – and Lupton's Field at Asket Hill, Roundhay, which is named in honour of Elinor and Elizabeth Lupton.

The Quarry Hill Flats in Leeds contained a large block of apartments built in 1938 which were named "Lupton House" in honour of members of the Lupton family; "probably Sir Charles Lupton".

Sources

• Fraser, Derek, ed. (1980). A History of Modern Leeds. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-0781-X. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hanks, Patrick; Coates, Richard; McClure, Peter, eds. (2017). The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland. Oxford University Press. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Morris, R. J. (1990). Class, Sect and Party: The Making of the Middle Class in Leeds1820–1850. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-2225-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Morris, R.J. (2005). Men, Women and Property in England, 1780–1870: A Social and Economic History. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-09346-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Pullan, Margaret (2007). The Monuments of the Parish Church of St Peter-at-Leeds. Maney Publishing. ISBN 978-1-9059-8152-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Wilson, R. G. (1971). Gentlemen Merchants: The Merchant Community in Leeds, 1820–1850. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-0459-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Further reading

• Hall, Coryne (October 2013). Well Connected. Majesty. London: Rex Publications Limited.