The Littledale Family of Whitehaven

The Littledale Family

Whitehaven News:  No Date. Taken from a Newspaper cutting of Copeland Notes and Queries by Scribe

This handsome Georgian building, No. 14 Scotch Street, Whitehaven, once the home of a wealthy mer-chant family, the Littledales, is now the offices of a group of solicitors.

The Whitehaven Museum has three Reform Bill pottery tum-blers made at the Whitehaven Pottery for Isaac Littledale, one of the contestants in the 1832 election that followed the passing of the Reform Act dealing with Parliamentary representation. These tumblers are relatively rare, and when one came on the market recently I was asked for information on the Littlelale family.

Isaac Littledale died in 1843 and there is a tablet commemorating him and other members of the family on the north side of the tower of St. James' Church.
The "Cumberland Pacquet" for February 14, 1843, has the following note on the passing of Isaac Littledale: "On Sunday morning last, at: his borne in Scotch Street (No. 14), somewhat suddenly, though he had been in a declining state of health for some months past, Isaac Littledale, Esq. Mr Littledale's removal forms a remark-able feature in the annals of the town, the family whose name he bore being one of the oldest and most remarkable of which it can boast, and the gentleman whose death we now record is the last male descendant in the town in which his family, we believe, originated. Whitehaven is consequently now, for the first time for above a century, without a male descendant of the Littledale family. Mr Uttle-dale, it will be remembe-red, was an unsuccessful candidate for the repre-sentation of this borough in the year 1832."

INCOMPLETE
His father, Isaac Littledale (1735-1791), mer-chant, married Mary Hartley at St. James' Church, on September 19, 1764. They had four sons and five daughters. Elizabeth, the youngest daughter, married, in 1816, Capt. John Words-worth, the poet's cousin. The witnesses on this oc-casion were Thomas Hartley, William Wordsworth, Ann Spedding, Anthony Hamilton, Elizabeth Wordsworth and Mary Ann Hartley.

The Littledale pedigree is diffuse and incomplete but Isaac Littledale senior's brother, Henry Littledale, mercer and draper, bapt. features In the St. James' registers. He married Sarah Wilkinson in 1766 and had a large family of nine boys and three girls. -

Henry Littledale's younger brother, Thomas, appears to have migrated to London and built up .a considerable continental business, as is shown by a marriage announcement in the "Cumberland Pacquet" for July 13, 1802:

"Tuesday last, at Great Mary-le-bone Church, London (by the Rev. Wm. Antrobus, M.A.) John Dixon, Req. late of this town, to Miss Littledale, daughter of Thomas Littledale, Esq. of Harley-street, London, late of Rotterdam, and formerly of this town. The new married pair are going to their intended residence at Rotterdam."

There was a business association between the Dixon and Littledale families. On August 2, 1770, Harry Piper, of Alexandria, Virginia, wrote to John Dixon and Isaac Littledale, mer-chants, Whitehaven, for 110 square. yards of flag-stones to lay in the aisles of the new Pohick Church that was being built in Truro Parish, Virginia.

BAPTISMS
The earliest reference to the Whitehaven Littledales occurs in the St. Bees parish registers which contains the note:

"1703, November 22nd. Thomas, son of Anthony Littledale, of White-haven, (baptised at the the Whitehaven Meeting House)."

This is followed by baptisms of the four children of Thomas and Elizabeth Littledale at St. Nicholas Church between 1709 and 1721.

The Littledales seem to have originated in the Ennerdale-Lamplugh area, the earliest reference to the family oc-curring in the Lamplugh register which records the marriage of John Littledale of Winder, Rowrah, to Agnes Gill, of Rowrah, on July 17, 1586. The family was represented in the Weddicar area In 1687 when John Littledale's daughter Anne was baptised, and in 1639 when William Littledale's daughter Frances was baptised.

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