Lucy Copland

Lucy was born on 16th March 1803, the fourth child and only daughter of Alexander and Lucy Copland . She was to have another brother, Giffard (her mother’s family surname), who was born when she was 3 years old but he died after 20 days.

Her oldest brother Alexander, who she calls Alex in her diary, was 7 when she was born . William was 4 and Francis rising 2 . She was clearly fond of “Frank”, her closest sibling. She writes warmly about him and her scrapbook contains a number of his watercolours. He remained unmarried and several miniature portraits of Frank were passed down through her following his death.

In 1801 her father purchased land that had formed the major part of Princess Amelia’s Gunnersbury estate in Ealing for £10,000 (spending power £869,000 today). He immediately set about erecting the house in which Lucy was born, Gunnersbury Park, and surrounded 72 of the 78 acres of his new Estate with walls for his gardens and parkland. He enlarged the house in 1816.

Gunnersbury Park was largest landed property in the parish and Lucy grew up in a lavish environment, with grand gardens, lakes, ponds and Romantic classical architecture.

As members of Ealing’s most affluent society, the family entertained extensively and Lucy grew up in an environment that hosted grand garden parties, festivities and activities such as cricket and archery.

John Quincy Adams, later to be America’s 6th President, records in his diary of 21 September 1816 how he “walked to Mr Copland’s at Gunnersbury. There was a cricket match of about twenty young men upon his grounds”. He describes partaking of a lavish cold lunch, returning to watch the cricket till dusk and then repairing “to the portico, a detached building near the house where they have a billiard room” where “an elegant dessert was there set out, and the ladies, wives and daughters … and some others joined the party.” He continues with a walk around the grounds, set “in the most beautiful style of English ornamental gardening”, and returns to watch the fireworks over the lake. Whilst he played whist with friends, the “young people danced country dances until midnight” . Lucy would have been 13 at the time of Adams’s visit and by 1819 may have had the opportunity to enjoy the dances for herself. She would certainly have been in attendance during the small social events in which her mother sang or played the harp or piano.

Lucy’s portraits depict her as a confident, good looking young woman. As the only daughter of a very prosperous self-made man she would have been quite a catch and her father, who was generous to all his children, would have provided her with an attractive marriage settlement. However she was to remain unmarried until several years after her father’s death, eventually wedding a Major in the Queen’s Bays (her brother Frank’s Regiment) on 28th July 1838 at the late age, for those days, of 35.

By that time Gunnersbury was long sold, having been purchased by Nathan Mayer Rothschild in 1835. She was to follow her husband, Frederick Charles Griffiths (known as Charles) as he was posted around the country, through several regiments including the 9th and 12th Lancers and 10th Hussars until his promotion to Major General as Commandant of the Cavalry Depot at Maidstone. After his death in 1858 Lucy moved from Maidstone to her home in Great Pulteney Street, Bath, where she died on 17th March 1870.

The newly married couple were not blessed with children at first and it was nearly four years before Lucy and Charles’s first son, Frederick Charles Blakeney, was born on 6th April 1842. A second son, Arthur Edward, was to follow, but seven days before his birth on 6th March 1844 his elder brother died at the age of 1 year and 11 months.

Fortunately Arthur Edward was to thrive. When his cousin Alexander Lester Copland died childless in 1869, a year before his mother’s death, the estate passed to his only surviving sister, Amy Ursula Hanham and her children. As both Frank and William had remained unmarried at their deaths the male line ceased with Alexander Lester. To remedy this, Arthur Edward assumed the additional surname of Copland on 11th October 1894 and his children followed their father’s footsteps when they were granted the surname Copland-Griffiths by Royal License on 19th August 1905.