Henry Adams Hicks.
Isaac and Eliza’s employer at Southfield Farm.
Photo courtesy: Anne Hicks,
Somerset, England

Southfield cottages
The first cottage on the left, (with the two windows) is now the Brean Post Office.
The Methodist Chapel is the middle cottage.  The church notice board is out the front.  The entrance to the Chapel is via the corrugated iron porch.
Chapel House is the end cottage on the right.  This is where Isaac lodged with the Lewis family in 1851.
Photo courtesy: Anne Hicks.

Southfield Farm, Brean, Somerset

This is where Eliza worked as a house servant for the Hicks family.
Photo courtesy: Anne Hicks.

The Fry family can be traced back to Rooksbridge, in Somerset. We can be   certain of this as it is verified by two independent sources.  The first is the Fry family bible which records Isaac Fry’s birthplace as Rooksbridge in 1824. The other source is the 1851 census. On the census Isaac   himself says that he was born at Rooksbridge.   

Rooksbridge was at that time a small rural community in the parish of East Brent and not large enough to support a church of its own.    This meant that the Frys had to travel into nearby East Brent (which was about 3 kilometres away) to worship and have their children baptised. While church and electoral records give East Brent as the place where the family lived, I suspect the family home was located in or near Rooksbridge.

One of the earliest references to Isaac in Somerset is in the 1851 Brean census.   He was listed on the census as a 25-year-old farm labourer who was born at Rooksbridge.   On census night Sunday 7 June 1851, Isaac was lodging with Frederick and Hester Lewis and their daughter Mary Ann.  Frederick Lewis was 31 and was born in South Brent. Frederick like Isaac worked as an agricultural labourer. Isaac and the Lewis family’s address was given as Chapel House, Brean.

Eliza Quire appears on the same census page as Isaac.  According to the census Eliza was working as a house servant and was employed by Henry Adams Hicks.  The Hicks family owned Southfield farm, a property of 65 acres. Henry Adams Hicks 26, wife Maria 21 and son Henry who was just nine months old were farmers in Brean. Hicks employed two other servants.  Thirteen-year-old Fanny Board described as a housemaid and thirteen-year-old Jane Pin, who like Eliza was employed as a house servant.  Eliza was 26 years old and according to the census was born in Cannington, Somerset.    

Nothing more was known of Isaac and Eliza’s time in Brean apart from their marriage there in 1852. This all changed when in April 2004 I came across the Brean Methodist church website. I found a list of church office bearers and decided to write to the first person on the list which was Stuart Hicks.  I thought that there was a good chance that Stuart might be related to the Hicks family who employed Eliza. My hunch turned out to be correct. A couple of days later I received a reply from Stuart’s daughter Anne Hicks. Anne said that her family have owned and lived in Southfield Farm since the early 1700’s and still do.  Henry Adams Hicks was her great, great grandfather.

When Isaac and Eliza married in Brean in 1852, I assumed that the marriage took place in the parish church of St. Bridget.  I now suspect that the marriage may have taken place in the Brean Methodist chapel which was then located on Henry Adam Hicks’ Southfield farm.
According to Anne, the Brean Methodist chapel had its beginnings at Southfield farm in the late 1700’s. Anne’s ancestor William Hicks was responsible for getting Methodism started in Brean. William became a convert when he heard the founder of the Wesleyan church John Wesley preach in Bristol.  Some years later John Wesley himself paid a visit to Southfield farm where he conducted a church service. In the early days church services were held in the lounge room of the Hicks’ farmhouse.

In 1847 the Chapel moved from the farmhouse to one of the farm workers cottages on the property. The cottage was converted into a Methodist chapel meeting house and was known as the Wesleyan Chapel. If you refer to the photo above you will see the Chapel as the middle cottage. The cottage on the right of the Chapel was known as Chapel House. It was here that Isaac was staying on census night. The first cottage on the far left is now the village post office.
The photo of the cottages was taken sometime early last century and according to Anne the building would have looked much the same as it did in 1851 when Isaac lodged there.  It is also likely that Isaac and Eliza married in the chapel. This would have been in June 1852.
It would appear that Isaac also worked for the Hicks family at this time.  Henry Adams Hicks employed five labourers on his Southfield farm.   The fact that he was living on Hicks’ property and in one of his farm worker’s cottages makes it very likely that he was.  According to Anne Hicks…

Yes I do think that Isaac must have been working for Henry Adams as a farm worker on the basis that he was living in Chapel House.  These cottages were all farmworker cottages in the 1850’s and only farmworkers and their families would have lived in them.  There was no culture then of letting these sorts of cottages to other people- they were kept for the staff.

In an e-mail to Anne in May 2004, I asked her if she could provide me with some background information on Southfield farm.  Anne very kindly sent the following information.

In the time of Henry Adams the farm would have been mixed. There were mostly milking cows (all hand milked of course) some beef cattle and some sheep.  I am not sure if any of the fields would have been planted with wheat or corn, probably not, Somerset is not really an arable county, but I expect they would have grown some turnips or kale for fodder.  We have one very small field that is known as the Ploughground suggesting it was ploughed then but certainly there was no tradition of  ploughing.  The cattle would have been Herefords and possibly some Jerseys.  The farm also had a lot of sheep and kept big cat horses to pull trailers. So as a farm worker Isaac’s main job would have been milking.  Hand milking is very slow and even a good milker cannot really manage more than about six in a session so they needed a lot of farmworkers even for a few cows. They were milked twice a day in an old cowshed that is now gone but which I remember.  As well as that there would have been the general looking after of the stock, mucking out in winter and feeding.  In summer there was haymaking which was hard work in those days. The grass had to be cut by hand with a scythe then it had to be turned, dried and then piled up on wooden wagons before being taken into the barns.  Women usually helped as well. In summer as well there was a lot of apple picking and cider making.  Southfield farm has a large orchard, dad remembers his father planting some of the trees but most are before his time.  I am not sure how much the men were paid but it wasn’t very much.  However they were entitled to a quart of cider a day- which seems a phenomenal amount but I don’s think it was very strong and it may have been safer than the water.  They were also entitled to some milk and of course they got their living accommodation free. 

Eliza would have worked in the farmhouse and probably lived there as well. As a maid she would have been expected to do a lot of housework and cooking and cleaning, looking after the fires and almost certainly would have made the cheese and butter as well in the dairy.  I think there were usually two maids in the house.  The cheese made on the farm was Caerphilly cheese which is a soft crumbly cheese which is fairly quick to make.  She would have worked very hard I am sure. Once the children began to arrive she would presumably have looked after them as well.  Henry and Maria had eight children.  Life was not easy then and Brean was very isolated.

Soon after Isaac and Eliza were married they left Brean and moved to Edith Mead.  This was where Eliza’s parents John and Fanny Quire were living at this time. Their first child a daughter Jane Fry was born in March 1853.  She was baptised on Christmas day 1854 at nearby Burnham.   A son Frank Norvill Fry was born in June 1855.  The family left Somerset in February 1859 and arrived in Melbourne the following June.