Page 100 - GAHS Journal Volume 9

A QUIET WOMAN?

family home until 1975. William senior had been Clerk of the
Crown and Peace for County Wicklow since 1902 and was to
remain in post until 1926. According to the 1911 Census there
were 6 people in the house, including two servants, Winifred
Young the cook aged 23, and the housemaid Kate Young aged
19, both Roman Catholics from Kings County, William senior’s
birthplace.

Careful restoration by the current owner, Philip Flynn, has
ensured it is still possible to read the Edwardian grandeur in the
bones of Ellesmere, complete with its large pantry and array of
servants' bells. Most of the surrounding ample grounds, in which
there was a tennis court, and a fruit and vegetable garden, have
gone, bar the coach house, (now a separate residence). But in
1911 it was a spacious 12 roomed residence with double fronted
doors, a library and a dining room with a table for at least 20
guests. Judging by the inventory for the Deverells’ previous
house in Bray, the 1975 auctioneers’ advertisement and items in
the archive, there was plenty of Sevres, Spode and Worcester
china and linen and an abundance of mahogany, brass and
glass.

But it is an 18th century Russian candle in the archive and
the family names that contain clues to Averil’s rich family history.
The Carrs from Yorkshire and the Statters from Northumberland
were British merchants in Russia from the late 1790s, many
lured to St Petersburg and its lucrative trade. William Statter,
Averil’s great-great-great grandfather became Steward to Count
Razumovsky, managing his vast estates and 90,000 serfs in the
Ukraine. In 1792 the two families were joined by the marriage of
his daughter Mary, born in St Petersburg, to George Carr, a
branch agent for the Bank of England there. William Statter
occupied an important place in the family’s memory as is clear
from use of his surname down through the generations. One

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