Welsh Journals

EDMUND LAMB WALLIS, 1849-1940 SOLICITOR, AND ALDERMAN AND FREEMAN OF THE CITY OF HEREFORD EXTRACTS FROM HIS MEMOIRS CONCERNING HIS YEARS AT KNIGHTON, 1869-1877. EDITED BY M. B. WALLIS Edmund Lamb Wallis often recalled with pride that if he was a self-made man, he came of Northamptonshire yeoman stock and for generations his family had not been wanting an Edmund de Waleys, variously described as Husbandman, Yeoman, or Grazier. He was born on St Valentine's day, 1849 in the Northamptonshire parish of Finedon where his grandfather Owen Wallis farmed land and built the Gate Inn there. His father was a tradesman and a churchman. His mother was a Baptist. At the age of five his family moved to Hefnel Hempstead in Hertfordshire where his eldest sister died in 1857, aged 16, and his mother the following year. His father died six weeks after and the family broke up. A sister, Maria, aged 19, became a governess in Oxfordshire and after her marriage emigrated to Brisbane where she and her husband flourished; later they founded the town of Parkes. His brothers George and James were apprenticed, and he and his younger brother Owen went to live with their grandmother at the Three Tuns in Wellingborough. Having first attended a local dame school for 6d a week, he entered the Lower Grammar School, Wellingborough where the fees were two shillings a quarter. Out of school Edmund Wallis's education was augmented by the Wellingborough Parochial Lecture Society and the Literary Institute which met in the Corn Exchange. When he was twelve and a half he started his legal career in the office of a local solicitor at a salary of six shillings a week, beginning work in the office at 7 a.m. before breakfast. On Saturdays the office closed at 4 p.m. and he was then free for the rest of the weekend. In 1865 he left his grandmother's and lodged in the home of one of the other office clerks where encouraged by some of his schoolmaster fellow lodgers he continued his self-education. In 1867, becoming restless with life in Wellingborough, he answered successfully an advertisement in the Law Times for a clerk's post in Faringdon, Berkshire. He was now eighteen years old. "After 2 years again restless I answered an advertisement in the Law Times for a similar, or as it turned out, a more important post at Knighton in Radnorshire. I went in July or August 1869 to see Mr Thomas Peters. Passing through Hereford I went as far as the Cathedral and was chiefly struck with Cabbage Lane, little dreaming that in this City my life's chief work was to be done. I had dinner at the Temperance Hotel at Craven Arms and I remember it was duck and green peas. I went on to Knighton and got the job. The time came to leave Faringdon to which I had become much attached. The venerable Vicar, Mr Barne disapproved of my going to