Handley Family
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The Handleys were a prominent family in
Sleaford Sleaford is a market town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in the North Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. On the edge of the The Fens, Fenlands, it is north-east of Grantham, west of Boston, Lincolnshire, Boston, and sou ...
, Lincolnshire, between around 1777 and the late 1800s. An offshoot of the notable Newark family, the Handleys of Sleaford came to hold position as lawyers, bankers, politicians and clerics in the town and attained great wealth and holdings in the area. The family maintained an interest in transportation - first in canalisation and later the development of the
railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...
s. The first family member to inhabit Sleaford was Benjamin Handley, who moved to the town some time in the 1770s. He helped develop the fledgling Sleaford Navigation and founded a bank in the town. The most well known member of the family is the politician Henry Handley, who was a Member of Parliament for the Southern Division of Lincolnshire between 1832 and 1841. He also helped pioneer the development of railways in the area. In the latter part of the 1800s elements of the family emigrated to
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(and later
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) as well as returning to Newark. Buildings and monuments related to the Handleys still exist in modern day Sleaford — including Handley street, Benjamin Handley's manor house on Northgate, Lloyd's Bank (Alvey House) and the Handley Monument.


Early Handleys

The Handleys distant forefathers appear, according to a 1614 pedigree of the family, to be the "Ancient Family Handley of Handley in the County of Somerset" with later ascendant's noted in
York York is a cathedral city in North Yorkshire, England, with Roman Britain, Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers River Ouse, Yorkshire, Ouse and River Foss, Foss. It has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a Yor ...
and other parts of Yorkshire. The family's first direct ancestors appear in baptism records for the area of Bramcote and Wilford (now part of modern day
Nottingham Nottingham ( , East Midlands English, locally ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located south-east of Sheffield and nor ...
) dating between 1590 and 1594. Later Handleys moved to Balderton and Newark, where the first member of the family to inhabit Sleaford, Benjamin, was born in 1754, to Willam and Sarah Handley.


Benjamin Handley, 1754

Benjamin Handley (17 October 1754 – 25 April 1828) was the youngest son of William Handley. He moved to Sleaford some time before April 1777, when he appears in records as an attorney in the town.Handley, 1992 p.70 In 1781 Benjamin was the clerk of a committee set up to work on the conception of the Sleaford Navigation, in 1824 he became treasurer of the project and later advanced an interest free loan of £1,000. Benjamin appears to have been involved chiefly in
conveyancing In law, conveyancing is the transfer of legal title of real property from one person to another, or the granting of an encumbrance such as a mortgage or a lien. A typical conveyancing transaction has two major phases: the exchange of contract ...
property in the area until he co-founded the Bank of Peacock, Handley and Kirton, which opened on 2 April 1792 in Sleaford market place. The enterprise was closely related to the Sleaford Navigation project and its finances (Peacock was the Navigation Company's chairman).Pawley, 1996 pp.64–65 In 1803 the bank moved to Alvey House on Northgate. Some years after Handley's death it merged with
Lloyds Bank Lloyds Bank plc is a major British retail banking, retail and commercial bank with a significant presence across England and Wales. It has traditionally been regarded one of the "Big Four (banking)#England and Wales, Big Four" clearing house ...
but it still occupies the same building today. Handley owned extensive areas of land in and around the town, including the manor at Burton Pedwardine and land in Heckington, Scredington and Spanby. In 1794, acting as commissioner of the Sleaford Enclosure Act, he received 25 acres in the town – with the land he built a manor house on Northgate. Benjamin Handley married Frances Conington on 31 January 1785. The couple had seven children only four of whom (Frances, Benjamin, Elizabeth and Henry) survived beyond childhood. Frances was unimpressed with Sleaford at the time of her marriage; in a letter the same year she referred to it as "a very badly built town, chiefly belonging to one person and not likely to amend".


Benjamin Handley, 1791

The eldest surviving son of Benjamin and Frances, Benjamin Handley (27 October 1791 – 22 May 1813) was a Lieutenant in the 9th Regiment of the Light Dragoons. He drowned in 1813 during the
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(1808–1814) when his boat capsized crossing the
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river. His cousin from the Newark arm of the family (also called
Benjamin Benjamin ( ''Bīnyāmīn''; "Son of (the) right") blue letter bible: https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h3225/kjv/wlc/0-1/ H3225 - yāmîn - Strong's Hebrew Lexicon (kjv) was the younger of the two sons of Jacob and Rachel, and Jacob's twe ...
) was in the same boat, but survived.


Henry Handley, 1797

Probably the best known Handley, Henry (c. 1797 – 29 June 1844) was the youngest son of Benjamin and Francis. Educated at Eton and
Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...
he was elected Member of Parliament for a borough in
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. In 1825 he married Caroline Edwards, with whom he had 10 children. At this time the family lived in Culverthorpe Hall, 5 miles from Sleaford, which Henry was renting. The year after his marriage Handley left parliament and became a
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at Culverthorpe. In 1832, at the request of local freeholders, he was elected again to parliament, this time representing South Lincolnshire (along with Gilbert Heathcote) and a member of the Whig party. Handley received local praise for his parliamentary action and was again elected in 1835 and 1837. During the early 1830s Handley was a proponent of steam power; both in relation to agriculture and the railways. In 1829 he had offered a prize to anyone able to create a successful steam plough.Nottingham & Newark Mercury, 16 January 1830, p.5, col.3: "We understand that Henry Handley Esq has received a model of a steam plough for which he has lately offered a handsome premium" In 1835 he helped revive Nicholas Cundy's proposal for a "Grand Northern Railway", running between London and York. As well as forming a company for the project, Northern and Eastern, Handley obtained the services of engineer James Walker to survey the proposed route. In 1836 various proposals for such lines were considered by parliament; the Northern and Eastern line was approved, but only as far as Cambridge (
George Stephenson George Stephenson (9 June 1781 – 12 August 1848) was an English civil engineer and Mechanical engineering, mechanical engineer during the Industrial Revolution. Renowned as the "Father of Railways", Stephenson was considered by the Victoria ...
had convinced parliament that a Northern line via Derby was sufficient). Handley's support of the Liberal government in an 1840
vote of no confidence A motion or vote of no confidence (or the inverse, a motion or vote of confidence) is a motion and corresponding vote thereon in a deliberative assembly (usually a legislative body) as to whether an officer (typically an executive) is deemed fi ...
caused a falling out with his party and he decided not to stand in the 1841 general election. Nevertheless his candidacy was proposed and seconded, although he was not re-elected. A year after leaving parliament for the second time Handley became president of the recently formed Royal Agricultural Society; he had been one of 12 trustees during the society's formation in 1838/39. Handley died on 29 June 1846 at Surrenden-Dering, Kent, he is buried at Pluckley. The following year Sleaford townspeople began raising a subscription to construct a memorial in the town, eventually obtaining £942. Construction on the "Handley Testimonial in Sleaford" (now known as "Handley's monument"), designed by William Boyle, began in 1850 and was completed in 1852. A street was later named after him.


Rev. Edward Handley, 1842

Edward Handley (21 October 1842 – 1 February 1904) was the youngest son of Henry and Caroline and an ordained minister of the
Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...
. He became Rector of Winthorpe in 1886, whereupon he commissioned a new church building. This marked a return to Newark for the Sleaford branch of the family.


Henry Edwardes Handley, 1835

Henry Edwardes Handley (24 September 1835 – 24 June 1892) was a soldier and
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veteran. The eldest son of Henry and Caroline he was educated at Eton and in 1853 joined the 2nd Dragoons as a
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. During the famous
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in 1854 he commanded the right hand troop of his regiment.Handley, 1992 p.91-93


Family tree

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Footnotes


References

Bibliography * * *


External links


Henry Handley
at
Hansard ''Hansard'' is the transcripts of parliamentary debates in Britain and many Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth countries. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard (1776–1833), a London printer and publisher, who was the first official printe ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Handley family of Sleaford, The English families