My previous post discussed how in the early years of the 19th century, two brothers, Edward and Daniel Willmott from a modest Middlesex farming family carved out lives that had to cope with the ups and downs of life in the early 19th century. Their sisters forged equally important connections through marriage, linking the Willmott family into London’s merchant and trade networks. This post explores one of those sisters — Lucretia Willmott — and the wider family web that emerged around her husband, the successful City distiller John Reid.
The Willmott Family and Their Merchant Marriages
Henry Willmott, farmer of Duckett’s Farm in Hornsey, and his wife Albertina Haslewood raised a family whose marriages created a remarkably interconnected merchant community. While there were other Willmott siblings, the closest and most enduring bonds were among three daughters Lucretia, Albertina and Elizabeth.
Lucretia appears to have taken on a matriarchal role within her close community of family and friends. She bequeathed significant sums of money to her two sisters when she died. Lucretia’s will also left each of her brothers Edward and Daniel an annuity of £50. Both brothers named children after Lucretia and Albertina — clear signs of the affection and respect that flowed both ways.
The three sisters married within 5 years of each other. In 1788 Lucretia married an ambitious gentleman from the north of England, John Reid. John was to set up a flourishing business along Aldersgate street in the City of London which continued under one of his protégés until the end of the century. Albertina married a gentleman called Charles Jones who owned a haberdashery business along Jermyn Street in Westminster. Elizabeth married a gentleman called Daniel Hinley, a legal man who was one of the chief clerks at the Session House in Clerkenwell Green. Three different professions linked to the Willmott family by marriage.
John Reid: Cumberland Roots to a Substantial London Distilling Empire
John Reid (1757–1836), baptised at Kirk Andrews Upon Esk in Cumberland. His father was Richard Reid of Carlisle but no other information has been found about his background. Subsequent events in his life showed he had close links to the Sowerby family of Blencarn and Kirkland, and the Wright family of Knockupworth Hall near Carlisle. No bloodline links have so far been established between John Reid and these families.
He married Lucretia Willmott in 1788 at All Hallows church in Tottenham. The following year he was granted the Freedom of the City in 1789 in the Company of Distillers. I have not been any records revealing the exact timing of Reid’s move to London, nor any indenture documentation confirming if he had served any prior apprenticeship.
By 1803 he had established himself on Fann Street (then sometimes still referred to as Fann’s Alley), which ran eastwards off the upper end of Aldersgate Street. The 1803 Sun Fire Insurance policy lists him as “John Reid, Fan Street, Aldersgate Street, distiller” and covers not only the distillery but also a growing portfolio of tied or tenanted public houses across Whitechapel, Clerkenwell, Holborn, Wapping and other districts — a classic vertically integrated operation.
The map below (from the era when Reid was active) clearly shows Fann Street running east off the top end of Aldersgate Street, with the dense commercial and industrial character of the neighbourhood.
He reached the pinnacle of his trade in 1804 when he was elected Master of the Worshipful Company of Distillers. The 1817 parliamentary return of rectifiers records him producing 13,100 gallons of British spirits in a single quarter at his Aldersgate Street premises — solid output for a London operator at the time.
John and Lucretia had no children of their own. Instead, Reid became a patriarchal figure to both the Willmott family and his Cumberland kin. He deliberately brought three younger relatives from the Anderson/Sowerby/Wright “cousin” network south to London to learn the distilling trade under his wing.
• Brothers William Sowerby (b. 1809) and John Reid Sowerby (b. 1812) arrived first when they were teenage boys. William was formally indentured to John Reid; his 1825 indenture document (below) confirms he served a full seven-year apprenticeship which would have been completed when he was 23 years old.
• John Reid Wright (b. 1819) was the youngest and arrived later, probably around 1831–1833.
By the time the older boys joined him, Reid had acquired or moved into the main premises at 26 Aldersgate Street. Johnstones commercial guide of London for 1818 confirms John Reid was already operating at this address.
This area of London was densely packed with a diverse range of businesses. The image below shows Aldersgate Street in the 1830s, the bustling commercial world in which Reid and his protégés worked. On one side of John Reid’s establishment was the King’s Arms public house, later to be drawn into his property portfolio. On the other side was Larkin & Pearson, oil and hop merchants. Of the 79 businesses trading along Aldersgate Street in 1818, eleven were merchants of wine, spirits or beer, indicating that the product from John Reid’s line of business was in high demand and lucrative.
Two of the three protégés carried the distillery business forward at 26 Aldersgate Street after Reid’s death in 1836. William Sowerby continued the distillery, initially in partnership with business associates Thomas Gash and Joseph Todd. That partnership was dissolved in 1840 and William carried on as William Sowerby & Co. until his death in 1851. Following William’s death the 26 Aldersgate Street property, together with other estates from John Reid’s portfolio, was put up for auction as part of the Chancery suit Wright vs King.
The distillery was subsequently acquired by the second protege, John Reid Wright, who ran John Reid Wright & Co. until his own death in 1896. John Reid Sowerby predeceased his mentor in the early 1830’s.
Retirement at Holywell House
In later life the Reids moved to Holywell House in St Albans, where both died in 1836. Holywell House was a gothic styled country house on the south side of St Albans which had previously been the residence since 1783 of the Dowager Lady Spencer (widow of the 1st Earl Spencer). Lady Spencer had commissioned work on the gardens at Holywell House by Samuel Lapidge, a former assistant to Lancelot Brown.
When Lady Spencer died in 1814 the house was put up for sale. The estate did not attract a buyer near the price expected, £1500, nor at a reduced price when advertised again in early 1815. The following year negotiations for a private sale were opened with John Reid. The estate included the gardens of 10 acres together with a small farm of 27 acres.
John and Lucretia were drawn to Holywell House not only by its location but no doubt by its extensive pleasure garden. Although the house itself was already showing signs of disrepair, the mature gardens would have been a major attraction. John Reid owned the freehold of the property; his will explicitly devises ‘all my freehold messuages or tenements lands and hereditaments’ in the Parish of the Abbey, St Albans, to Lucretia for her lifetime.
There is no evidence of any major refurbishment having been done to the house by John Reid and Lucretia. An advertisement in 1825 offering timber and building materials for sale suggests that the grounds were being run down. The house was demolished the year following John & Lucretia’s death, the estate was divided and sold off, and some of the land used for the expansion of the Holywell Hill thoroughfare. There’s currently a blue plaque marking the location of the old house and gardens although nothing remains of the estate today.
John and Lucretia’s Wills
John Reid’s will made careful provision for his Cumberland kin. Having no children of his own, he placed the great bulk of his estate — the distillery and its stock, the portfolio of public houses, London freeholds, investments, and the lands in Cumberland — into a trust that gave Lucretia the income and use of Holywell House for her lifetime. On her death the entire residue was to be divided equally between the descendants of his two “cousins”, Jane Sowerby (née Anderson) and Ann Wright (née Anderson). The Chancery suit Wright v King that followed in the 1850s was not a dispute over entitlement, but an administration action to determine precisely how the assets should be divided among the many grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Jane and Ann once all life interests and annuities had expired. Both the Sowerby and Wright lines were actively involved in the division; William Sowerby had even served as one of the original trustees, and the Sowerby descendants received their full share of the residuary estate.
Lucretia’s will went one step further than her husband’s in supporting her immediate family. In addition to the £500 cash legacies to her sisters Elizabeth Hinley and Albertina Jones, she left each of her brothers Edward and Daniel an annuity of £54 12s per year. Crucially, she directed that on the death of each brother the annuity should continue to be paid to his surviving children — Edward’s son Charles and daughter Albertina, and Daniel’s daughters Ann and Albertina. These annuities therefore ran for up to sixty years in Edward’s line, providing a modest but useful income that may have helped his son move to London and begin his printing apprenticeship. Only once the last of these named children had died did any remaining capital from Lucretia’s residue fall back into the main trust established by John Reid, ultimately benefiting the Cumberland Sowerby and Wright descendants.
Elizabeth Hinley (widow of Daniel Hinley) also moved to St Albans and died there in 1852; her will named Sebastian Smith (son of Sir Christopher Smith, wine merchant and MP for St Albans) and Charles Jones junior (the nephew who was an accountant by profession) as executors.
Their Legacy
John Reid and Lucretia Reid acted as patriarchal and matriarchal figures for both the Willmott siblings and the Cumberland “cousin” lines. The three protégés they mentored, the generous legacies between the Willmott sisters (including Lucretia’s £50 annuities to her brothers Edward and Daniel), and the overlapping executors across the wills show a resilient, affectionate merchant community that supported commerce, retirement in St Albans, and continuity for the next generation.
Through strategic marriages and thoughtful estate planning, the Willmott family created a web that connected Cumberland yeoman roots, London distilling, haberdashery and wine imports — a lasting bridge between north and south that endured well into the Victorian era.