They were all spinsters and not terribly attractive, but the Rev. Robert Le Marchant’s nine daughters made the best of life in a cold Cotswold rectory. And as Stephen Furniss reports, a new book on the family’s move from affluent Guernsey society to relative penury is not just a social history but a fine read. HE WAS originally destined for a career in medicine, but Robert Le Marchant, son of an illustrious family that included seven Bailiffs, turned instead to the church.

Having trained as a doctor at Trinity College, Dublin, the Guernseyman spent several years in the profession before entering the ministry. A year later, at the age of 30, he married Eliza (nee Tupper) at the Town Church on 5 June 1850.

The marriage united two of the island’s most illustrious and long-established families.

The Le Marchants, believing that they were descended from an aristocratic Norman family thought to have settled here in the reign of King John, could trace their ancestry as far back as Peter Le Marchant, Lt-Governor and Bailiff in the time of Edward III.

The family was among the island’s principal landowners and for more than two centuries owned Brecqhou, which they renamed Ile des Marchants.

The Tuppers were descended from an ancient Saxon family and were part of a privileged island elite.

In his book, A Victorian Rector and Nine Old Maids, Michael Boyes records the dramatic changes experienced by Robert, Eliza and their vast retinue of children as a result of his calling.

In 1862, Robert took up the post of rector at the tiny Cotswold village of Little Rissington – a move that was to cement his family’s relationship with the area for more than a century.

Eliza bore Robert 15 children, nine being the girls of the book’s title. All remained spinsters and Mr Boyes devotes time to several explanations for this. As they unfold before us, we are granted a glimpse into the expectations and restrictions of Victorian society, its demands and code of conduct.Robert’s daughters were greatly disadvantaged by their father’s lack of income, which undoubtedly resulted in their being viewed as somewhat undesirable financial catches by the eligible bachelors of the day.

Although idyllic, Little Rissington was remote, leaving the girls marooned from society with all the social calendar events conducted either in London or in the larger towns of Gloucestershire.

But there were other reasons. Another rather valid observation by Mr Boyes is that none of the sisters could be deemed a beauty by any means and this, combined with other factors, rather destined them to a life of spinstership.

But these minor setbacks did not diminish the maids’ delight in life at Little Rissington and they involved themselves actively in all manner of sports and pastimes as well as the duties expected of them as the daughters of the local rector.

In fact, it is to the younger girls that the reader is especially drawn. They ‘disdained the chains of modern society’, preferring to spend their winter days following the hounds on foot and in summer wandering the fields in search of birds’ nests, butterflies and wild flowers.

Spurning their parents’ pleas to find themselves suitable husbands, they took up energetic sports and kept an impressive menagerie, including a troublesome monkey.

They read widely and, exploiting their new-found freedom, ventured as far as Cheltenham and Oxford – journeys of many miles – on their bicycles. In later life they travelled regularly to the Continent.

Mr Boyes has undertaken the most staggering amount of research, not only into the history of Little Rissington but also into the social history of the day. His thoroughness has resulted in no stone being left unturned in the quest to present a truly comprehensive history of the area and many of its former inhabitants.

He has been fortunate to have had at his disposal a wealth of Le Marchant family archives to draw upon, something which is often denied to researchers of more eminent Victorians, and he has put his information to very good use.

The book is very easy to read and has a flow that makes either prolonged reading or shorter dips into its content a joy to undertake. Besides written archives, the Le Marchant family has also left us a great many photographs, taken by the girls, and these are generously reproduced throughout the book on the pages relevant to the text, which I always find far preferable to block illustrations in the middle of a book where one has to keep flipping back and forth between text and photographs.

Mr Boyes is obviously not only a resident of Little Rissington but also a great lover of his adopted home and this affection is evident in the book.

Perhaps a familiarity with the village and the Cotswolds might be an advantage to the reader, but it is not a necessity, for the feel of the place is amply portrayed.

The Le Marchant and Tupper families who founded this dynasty were from the upper echelons of Guernsey society and Eliza in particular found the reduction in her circumstances, once married, hard to bear. The damp Cotswold weather did not agree with her health and one imagines she would have preferred to have remained in Guernsey, where the two families lived in some luxury.

She instilled in her family a sense of having come from a society family, a station that in reality the girls found difficult to sustain in England.

In many ways the book presents to us a rather sad existence by our 21st-century standards, but in the main the Le Marchants were very happy with their country lives and their own company.

I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in an in-depth study of rural social history in the 19th and early 20th centuries, for all subject matter is discussed by Mr Boyes.

For those interested in the Le Marchant and Tupper families in Guernsey, the book only briefly refers to their life in the island.

All the large and important Guernsey families of 200 years ago have now largely gone, but the island is very fortunate to have as a testimonial their legacy of beautiful Georgian and Regency houses which they had constructed for their own comfort and self-gratification.

Almost all these properties still stand, mainly because Guernsey has wealthy open-market residents who have the funds to maintain them. One feels that if these houses had been built elsewhere in the British Isles, they would have been demolished or converted into flats a great many years ago, and so it is to be hoped that these villas will remain long after the current fashion for concrete and glass has passed.

On a purely selfish note, perhaps Mr Boyes can be persuaded to write about the Le Marchants in Guernsey from the mid-18th to mid-19th centuries. I feel sure any such publication would be a pleasure to read and a valuable record of the island’s history, for his skill at conveying Victorian social history is undoubtedly very masterful.

* A Victorian Rector and Nine Old Maids is published by Phillimore and Co. Ltd at £25.