Excursus to Burnham ...

Not only is Ursula Bethell's family history interesting vis a vis why she visited some places in England or New Zealand or even around the world, and not others, but so, too, is the research I have done into land in New Zealand owned by her father and her maternal grandfather.

At the moment I am busily being distracted by the history of Burnham, Canterbury, New Zealand, which Ursula's father, Richard Bethell, named, having bought land in the area, and having lived at Burnham Beeches in Bucks in England.

Farming, transits of Venus, an Industrial School, a Military Camp, and All Saints' Garrison Church at Burnham, Military Camp - all are part of the story, including Ursula designing the brass plaque her mother gifted to the church in memory of Richard.  Ursula also ordered the bell in the church's bell-tower - making sure the tone of the church bell was sufficiently different from the tone of the fire bell so that people didn't rush off to fight fires when they should have been a-going to church!

Update

It is really fascinating doing family history research on Ursula Bethell's mother's father's side of the family - have just discovered her Uncle John Gascoigne Lillie and family lived in Devon, which would explain her frequent trips there!

And John's son, Denis Gascoigne Lillie, was on the ill-fated expedition with Sir Robert Falcon Scott to the Antarctic 1910-1912 - so Ursula was acquainted with at least two men on that expedition (the other being her friend Oriana Wilson's husband.)

Update

I have been scanning in the material on Sir Henry Brown Hayes and John Burnett, as well as doing further internet searches on these two men.

The next step will be to scan the material on the Rev Dr John Lillie, DD (1806-1866) - I rather fancy he has been confused with another Rev Dr John Lillie, who was born in Kelso, Roxburgh, Scotland, in 1812 and died Kingston, NY, USA, in 1867 [http://www.famousamericans.net/johnlillie/].

Update

The personal situation seems to be settling down, and, already, I have completed scanning the general material on Canterbury and Christchurch, and am ready to begin work on what I have about Ursula's father, Richard Bethell.

Update

My personal life is getting in the way of proceeding with this work at the moment.  However, I do hope to return to it once some of the more immediate issues have been resolved.

Update

Somewhere along the line, I managed to "lose" some of the material I had transferred from paper copy on to disc, preparatory to editing and having more readily available for reference purposes, so I am currently scanning documents and saving the files as OpenOffice documents on a flash drive.

So far, I have done the Bethell forebears stuff, and am now having a look at the Canterbury stuff - geography, agricultural history, etc.

The files I didn't lose contain material relating to the charitable works Ursula was involved in, from the time of the Boys' Gordon Hall in the 1890s, through to the House of Sacred Learning in the 1930s and 1940s.