GILCRUX 1750-1950: JOHN PENNY WRITES TO MARY DYKES

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I’ve been mapping the village graveyard for an age now, slowly making a headphones-on audio guide to the Georgian and Victorian-era people buried there. A lot of the families are interconnected in ways that keep ambushing me: Carters, Fearons, Halls, Briggs… I’m looking for John Penny’s gravestone though, so if you’re a local reading this tell me, have you ever come across it? Anyway, I’ve inserted his name in the biggest village family tree I’ve worked on to date. And that’s because John was married, in the village, to Sarah Carter in December 1784.

I don’t know much about John yet, but he was a yeoman who worked for the manor, for the estate, if you like. He was a bailiff or steward, he collected rents, as I’ve seen in various legal documents. John died at Warthole[1] in August 1825, “advanced in years.”

Whitehaven. The county archive. A big table, a pencil and pad, my camera and a pile of 19th century documents to do with a court case that would take me some time to unfurl and read and photograph. I’d asked to see a letter[2] from John Penny, too. Nothing to do with the court case, but back at the cottage I’d been working on that big village family tree…

What follows is a so-called diplomatic transcription where I’ve tried to preserve John’s spelling, grammar and punctuation.

Hon. Madam

I am sorry to inform You of the Death of Your little Cousin (Miss Ballantine) who Died on Monday Morning in the Meazels and for who’s loss Your Aunt B is almost Inconsolable. I rec’d Your kind letter with the greatest pleasure and we are all happy to find Your Uncle & Aunt Dykes so much pleasure in You and I hope Your most amiable behaviour and command of knowledge will make it Your study to be obliging to them but I need not to have mentioned any thing of the sort knowing Your goodness ever from Your Craddle and which will always gain You Esteem, Your Uncles & Aunt here are happy to find that Your earnestly paying attention to Your Education gives them the greatest pleasure imaginable and we hope to have the pleasure of seeing You next Summer in Cumberland.

I have Your little Mare under my care and where I hope You’ll not Dispute my attention to any thing concerning You as I shall always make it my Study if I can be of Service by Day or Night. I have let Your Estate to Your old Farmers til You be at Age and who are happy to live under You.

Mally’s letter was to have come some time since as You’ll see by the Date and by Mistake laid at Cockermouth. my Wife desires her best Wishes to You and we all long to see You. I am in Duty bound most

Hon. Madam

my Duty to Your kind Uncle & Aunt and if You Please, and I will write to You again ere long and give You a long Acct. of all Your Aquaintance.

Your most humble Servant to Command

John Penny, Warthole

Oct. 17th 1786

A child is dead, Mary’s little cousin. Measles. A Monday morning. A mother barely able to function.

John Penny puts it in the first sentence and presses on. A twelve-year-old girl owns tenanted land in the village. She is away learning to be a lady. John Penny is running everything.

Four years later, in the Newcastle Courant, on February 13 1790[3]

“A marriage treaty on foot between the Earl of Strathmore and Miss Dykes of Warthole Hall. The Lady is said to be very handsome, and is not yet 17. She will be possessed of 6000l. a year.”

The treaty came to nothing. In 1791 Mary married her cousin Joseph Ballantine-Dykes and moved to Dovenby Hall. Mary and Joseph’s son, Fretcheville Lawson Ballantine-Dykes later served as Member of Parliament for Cockermouth. Mary died in 1860, at around eighty-six years of age.

Warthole Hall, where Penny wrote his letter, is long gone. The Maryport Advertiser in June 1822 conjures armour-clad retainers and the music of a stream, then looks up and sees nothing. Before that, there was a Dykes ancestor hiding in a mulberry tree after Marston Moor, fed in secret by his wife and daughter, later imprisoned in Cockermouth Castle. When offered his liberty and property, he said: Prius frangitur quam flectitur. Rather break than bend. The Dykes family made it their motto.

In 1802, John Penny and his wife Sarah, with Sarah’s sister Mary and her husband Joseph Fearon, transferred a property called the Garth at nearby Hayton to Barbara Carter: their widowed mother. A legal mechanism of the time. A widow secured. From time to time I see documents like this, Penny doing his duty, stepping back into the record.

I can’t say how much information I’ll be able to put together to trace the long life of John Penny. But when I think of him now, I think of how kind he was to a twelve year-old girl who had just lost her cousin. He looked after her mare. His wife sent her best wishes.

They all longed to see her.

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[1] Warthole today is Wardhall.

John Penny’s death was announced in the Carlisle Patriot on Saturday August 13, 1825 Available at: https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk via paid subscription

[2] Ref Whitehaven YDX 324/2/1

Letter from John Penny of Warthole Plumbland to Miss Dykes notifying her of the death of her cousin and commending her studies. 1786. 1 Letter. 

[Date visited: Wednesday January 21, 2026]

Whitehaven Archive and Local Studies Centre, Scotch Street, Whitehaven, Cumbria CA28 7NL

[3] Newcastle Courant, February 13 1790. Available at: https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk via paid subscription