The Buckmaster Family

John Buckmaster is best known locally for his long campaign to save Wandsworth Common from enclosure — a story he tells in Chapter XV of his autobiography, published as A Village Politician: The Life-Story of John Buckley (1897), in which he changed some names of people and places. He worked with the Science and Art Department at South Kensington for more than thirty years, and described teaching as “the hardest of all work.”

His early life was extraordinarily hard. His mother died when he was very young, and he was sent at the age of seven to live with a sadistic uncle in Uxbridge, his only respite being the local school where he is reputed to have stayed from 11am to 8pm. At thirteen he was apprenticed to a carpenter. In 1837 he walked fifty miles to Andover to escape, having sent his tools ahead. He became a powerful public speaker for the Anti-Corn Law Movement before training as a teacher at St John’s College, Battersea. There is also an unresolved question about his parentage: a researcher and descendant has noted that his illegitimacy is “not a proven fact, merely a possibility.”

His father’s first name is given as Thomas in Burke’s Peerage, but as Robert in the most detailed academic study of his life. The Buckmaster family had been rooted in Slapton for generations; in 1810 a John Buckmaster was tenant of Slaptonbury Farm, and the churchyard at Holy Cross, Slapton contains many memorials to the Buckmaster family.

He is known to have had at least one brother, who emigrated to America — possibly Ohio or Pennsylvania [actually Idaho], and later NY — and became a lawyer there. Further details are not yet established.

The Buckmaster family had farmed in Slapton for generations. In 1810 a John Buckmaster was tenant of Slaptonbury Farm, the ancient manor site, and the churchyard of Holy Cross, Slapton contains numerous Buckmaster memorials. John Charles’s mother died when he was very young, and his father apparently sent him at the age of seven to live with an uncle in Uxbridge. Further details of his parents remain to be established from the Slapton parish records.

John Charles Buckmaster is known to have had at least one brother who emigrated to the United States and became a lawyer. Note that in his autobiography John changed some names of people and places, so the brother may appear under a pseudonym if mentioned there. Research in the Slapton parish registers and American naturalisation or bar records may identify him.

George Goodliffe was a butcher in Cambridge. He and his wife Mary are recorded in the 1841 census in Cambridge, and by the time of his death in 1851 the family had moved to Church Street, Trumpington. He died when Emily Anne was about nineteen and her sister Mary was fourteen. His will is preserved at the National Archives.

Emily Anne has received little attention until now, yet she was clearly a remarkable woman. She was the real driving force behind John’s celebrated series of lectures on cookery — tutoring him in the subject and providing the substance of what he taught. The family themselves acknowledged that whilst the voice in those lectures was John’s, “the words and acts were those of his wife Emily.” The lectures were a great success, drawing fashionable audiences who found them more entertaining than West End theatre; John even persuaded famous chefs from London’s top clubs and hotels to demonstrate their signature dishes. They were eventually turned into Buckmaster’s Cookery, a best-selling book that remained in use until the First World War. Out of those lectures also grew the National Training School of Cookery and the whole concept of Domestic Science. Emily’s contribution to all of this has gone almost entirely uncredited.

She was born in Cambridge around 1831, the elder daughter of George Goodliffe, a butcher, and his wife Mary Arnold Matthews, a London woman. Her father died in March 1851 and was buried at Trumpington; his will is held at the National Archives. At the time of the 1851 census Emily was nineteen, living with her widowed mother and younger sister Mary at Church Street, Trumpington, on the southern edge of Cambridge. Her mother died in December 1860.

Emily married John Buckmaster in September 1853 at St George, Southwark — the year before their first child Charles was born. By the 1861 census the young family had moved to London, where Emily already had two children. She went on to have at least six children in all, four sons and a daughter (Phoebe Emily), with one further child whose name has not yet been established.

She died in September 1890, aged about 59, in the Kingston registration district, and is buried alongside John at Teddington Cemetery. Her gravestone inscription reads: “Emily Anne Buckmaster, born November 1st 1831, died June 30th 1890, R.I.P.” — John outlived her by eighteen years.

Charles had a career in education, following his father into the world of examinations and school inspection. He was assistant master at Magdalen College School, Oxford (1874) and at Llandovery School, Wales (1876–1880), before becoming an examiner for the Science and Art Department in 1880. He later became Assistant Secretary of the Board of Education (1908–1914).

Stanley was the most distinguished of John Buckmaster’s sons. Called to the Bar in 1884, he took Silk in 1902 and entered Parliament as Liberal M.P. for Cambridge Borough (1906–1910), then for Keighley (1911–1915). He was Solicitor-General (1913–1915) and Director of the Press Bureau (1914–1915).

He served as Lord High Chancellor from 27 May 1915 to 5 December 1916. He was created 1st Baron Buckmaster in June 1915 and 1st Viscount Buckmaster in February 1933. He was also Bencher of the Inner Temple, and held honorary doctorates from Oxford, Toronto and Edinburgh. He has an extensive entry in the Dictionary of National Biography.

He held the office of J.P. for Hertfordshire, and was appointed G.C.V.O. in 1930.

Martin was a distinguished artist and art expert, specialising in English lustre ware — he wrote the preface to Pink Lustre Pottery, a Handbook for Collectors by Atwood Thorne (1926). He was an arts master at Tonbridge School and lived for most of his adult life at Coleherne Mansions, Kensington. He died aged 98, outliving all his siblings.

The 1871 census confirms the family home was at 2 St John’s New Road, Battersea, and that Phoebe Emily was the only other child at home — consistent with the sixth child having died in infancy before 1871.

Phoebe is recorded in the 1871 census living with her parents at 2 St John’s New Road, Battersea, aged about three. She was the youngest of the children known to have survived infancy. Nothing further about her life — marriage, occupation or place of death — has yet been established.

The London Remembers article on Martin Arnold Buckmaster states that he was “the fourth of the six children” of John and Emily, but names only five. The 1871 census shows the family at 2 St John’s New Road, Battersea, with only Phoebe Emily (born 1868) as the other child at home — which strongly suggests the sixth child died in infancy before 1871. Further research in the Battersea baptismal and burial registers, or the General Register Office, may identify them.

Adrian is the great-great-grandson of John Charles Buckmaster. The viscountcy reached him by an unusual route: the 3rd Viscount (his uncle Martin, son of the 2nd Viscount by his first wife Joan Simpson) died unmarried in 2007 without issue, so the title passed sideways to Adrian, whose father Colin was the 2nd Viscount’s younger son. Adrian thus became the 4th Viscount despite being of the same generation as the 3rd.

His son Andrew Nicholas Buckmaster (1980–2023) predeceased him. Andrew’s son Rupert Stanley Buckmaster (born 2015) is the heir apparent to the viscountcy.

Rupert is the heir apparent to the viscountcy and barony of Buckmaster. His father Andrew predeceased the 4th Viscount in 2023, so Rupert will, in due course, succeed his grandfather Adrian as 5th Viscount. He is the sixth generation of direct descent from John Charles Buckmaster.

Dorothy was the daughter of George Alfred Buckmaster, John Charles Buckmaster’s second son and Professor of Physiology at Bristol. Through her marriage to Ronald Tasker she is the mother of Mary Tasker, the researcher and educator who wrote about her great-grandfather in the 1970s.

Mary Tasker is the researcher who wrote about her great-grandfather John Charles Buckmaster in an article published in New Scientist in 1974 and 1977, drawing on family knowledge to correct misapprehensions about him, including the suggestion that he was illegitimate. She stated: “As the author of the article on Buckmaster and incidentally one of his descendants, I wish to make it clear that Buckmaster’s illegitimacy is not a proven fact, merely a possibility.”

Her academic career was in education — fitting for a great-granddaughter of one of Victorian England’s great educational reformers. She was a lecturer in Education at the University of Bath and former Chair of Human Scale Education, and has written for the journal Resurgence.

The 3rd Viscount died unmarried in 2007, and the viscountcy became extinct on his death.