Cyril Shingler
Cyril Shingler was born in Stoke-on-Trent on January 10th 1902, the son of Philip Shingler and his wife Mary. Philip was an accounts clerk with the North Staffordshire Railway, and in 1921 Cyril, then 19, was an engineering pupil with the same company, living with his parents at 34 James Street, Stoke.
At the end of 1930 Cyril married Margaret Beardmore in Stoke. It was a marriage into a pottery family: Margaret’s father Frank had run the Sutherland Pottery in Fenton and spent his working life in the trade, and her uncle was the novelist Arnold Bennett, who made the Potteries famous as the ‘Five Towns’.
Cyril became a designer and worked for several Stoke factories, among them Mason’s, the makers of ‘Patent Ironstone China’. The firm had been founded by the Mason family in Lane Delph early in the nineteenth century, and by the 1930s it belonged to G. L. Ashworth & Bros of Hanley, who still used the famous Mason’s name and crowned mark.
King George V and Queen Mary celebrated their Silver Jubilee on May 6th 1935, twenty-five years after the King came to the throne, and the potteries produced souvenirs by the thousand. Cyril’s contribution was a limited-edition jug for Mason’s. Each side carries a moulded portrait in a laurel wreath, the King on one side and Queen Mary on the other, with their names on a ribbon above and the dates 1910–1935 below. The lion and unicorn of the royal arms rear up beneath the lip, and the handle is modelled as a lion.
The jug was also made with enamel colours.
Each jug was numbered: this one is No. 213. Another, No. 155, was sold at auction in Sheffield in 2018.
Cyril was a talented artist in other ways too, as shown by his portrait of his father-in-law Frank.
Cyril later moved to Royal Worcester, where he worked in the pattern room. The company had been bought in 1934 by Charles Dyson Perrins, of the Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce family, a great collector of Worcester porcelain. In 1946 Dyson Perrins set up a trust to bring his own collection together with the old factory museum, and Cyril was appointed curator. He prepared the new museum in the former company showrooms, and it was opened by Princess Elizabeth in June 1951, during Royal Worcester’s bicentenary celebrations.
Cyril remained curator until 1966, when he was succeeded by Henry Sandon, later well known as an expert on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow. The collection then moved into the old St Peter’s School building next to the factory, where the Museum of Royal Worcester is today.
Margaret died in 1976; her death was registered in Bromyard. Soon after her death Cyril moved into Davenham in Malvern, the house that had been Dyson Perrins’s own home and is now a home for the elderly. In 2001 the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited Royal Worcester for its 250th anniversary, fifty years after she had opened the museum as a princess, and Cyril, then 99, was presented to her together with his successor Henry Sandon.
Alan’s son Rick and his wife visited Cyril and Margaret at Cradley Heath before they were married, and later saw Cyril at Davenham. Looking back in 2016, Rick remembered Uncle Cyril as “a pure lovable gentleman”, always smartly dressed and always wearing a tie.
Henry Sandon remembered Cyril just as warmly. In a letter to Rick in 2014 he recalled that Cyril was very happy at Davenham, and that he and his wife Barbara went to Cyril’s hundredth birthday party there, when there were four centenarians in the room. In the 1950s Cyril had made a pottery bust of Shakespeare at Royal Worcester, which the factory never produced; he gave it to Henry on their last visit. When the Queen spoke to Cyril in 2001 he was unable to answer, and Henry broke protocol to explain that he was 99 and had opened the doors of the museum when she opened it in 1951.
Cyril celebrated his hundredth birthday in January 2002 and died in Malvern a few weeks later, on February 27th 2002. Many of the family photographs on this website were in his collection, and he passed them on to his nephew Richard shortly before his death.
Sources: the 1921 census; the General Register Office indexes of births, marriages and deaths; the Museum of Royal Worcester; Sheffield Auction Gallery, April 2018.
Rick remembers Uncle Cyril
In February 2016 Cyril’s nephew Rick wrote this note about him, on a sheet with his own photograph of Cyril and himself taken on 16 September 1989, when Cyril was 87. The year 1965 was added in blue ink.
19/2/16
I did not know much about Uncle Cyril until latterly. We visited him and Margaret at Cradley Heath before we were married. (1965) Later we saw him at Davenham.
I agree with Henry, Cyril was a pure loveable (lovable) gentleman. He was always smartly dressed and always wore a tie, not so now with most men!
Henry knew more about Cyril than me – see his letters.
Rick
Label on the photograph: “Cyril Shingler 16/9/89 JRB”.
Henry is Henry Sandon, who succeeded Cyril as curator of the Museum of Royal Worcester in 1966.
Henry Sandon (1928–2023)
Henry George Sandon MBE was born in Whitechapel, in London’s East End, on 10 August 1928. He trained at the Guildhall School of Music, and moved to Worcester to teach music at the Royal Grammar School and to sing as a lay clerk in the cathedral choir. Roman and medieval pottery turned up in his garden near the cathedral, and started a lifelong passion for ceramics.
In 1966 he succeeded Cyril Shingler as curator of the Dyson Perrins Museum, now the Museum of Royal Worcester, and stayed until 1982, becoming a leading authority on Royal Worcester porcelain. From 1979 he was one of the best-loved experts on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, appearing for some forty years, and he wrote and lectured widely on ceramics. He was appointed MBE in 2008.
Henry was married to Barbara for 56 years, until her death in 2013; their son John Sandon is also a ceramics expert. Henry died in a care home in Malvern on Christmas Day 2023, aged 95.
More about Henry Sandon on Wikipedia.
Olive Dale to George Beardmore, 20 December 1967
Olive’s Christmas letter, with the long-sought record of William and Mary’s marriage. The first page has been joined from two scans.
Transcription
92 Hassam Parade, Newcastle, Staffs. 20th December, 1967.
My dear George,
I am just sending you a few lines to let you know that I have made a little progress regarding your old WILLIAM BEARDMORE, died at Audley. I found at long last an entry in LEIGH Register (of which we now have the original books at the County Record Office) stating that Banns were read for WILLIAM BEARDMORE of the par. of Leigh, and MARY CRITCHLEY of the par. of DRAYCOTT-IN-THE-MOORS, during December, 1780, but no mention of the marriage having taken place. I therefore found out the name of the Rector at Draycott-in-the-Moors, wrote and gave him the exact date Dec. 26, 1780, and asked him please to check if they were married there. I hoped that the entry might give a clue to father’s name. I also asked him to please make any charge necessary. I received the following reply.
“22nd November, 67. Dear Mrs. Dale,
Thank you v. much for yr. letter of yesterday, & I have spent part of this morning in looking up our registers. Your luck is in & I enclose a copy of the entry 107, entered in our Marriage register started 2 Nov. 1754.
The name of your ancestor is clearly CRITCHLEY, like the great majority of people (esp. the women) then she could not sign her name but made her mark & the name of the second witness appears to me to be NEWTON IKIN but the forename is not clear. It may be a family name. We have a Doomsday farm here in Totmonslow called NEWTON.
Strangely enough you live in a Parade called after my father’s cousin (his mother & my grandmother were sisters, BURGESS) and I have his gold pencil & pen (this unserviceable) in my desk at this moment. He died in June 1926 & I came down from University to his funeral at S. George’s, N.C., at my father’s urgent request.
As regards payment, make it what you like & divide it into 2 equal parts, one for me & one for the church of S. Margaret’s, Draycott. Best Wishes, (sd) Charles Healy, Rector.
P.S. The two slips in the copying are mine. Sorry. I will keep the book (a most interesting volume from other points of view) at the Rectory for a week or so, & if you could care to run over you can see it in my study. We are usually in (one of us), but it would be wise to ring first. Many years ago I knew a Miss Beardmore who married Cyril Shingler. They were both in the Repertory players & I remember that she was related to (? niece) Arnold Bennett.
Extract from Marriage Register: “Banns of Marriage between WILLIAM BEARDMORE & MARY CRITCHLEY were published on the 3rd, 10th & 17th of Decr. 1780. No. 107. The said WILLIAM BEARDMORE of the parish of Leigh, Farmer, and MARY CRITCHLEY of this parish, Spinster, were married in this church by banns this twenty-sixth day of December in the year One thousand seven hundred and eighty – by me, J. Bill, Rector. This marriage was solemnised between us, WILLIAM BEARDMORE. The mark X of MARY CRITCHLEY. In the presence of WILLIAM ASTON, NEWTON IKIN. C. W. Healey, 22. Nov. 67.”
In view of the above, I was rather bothered as to what sum to remit to the Rector, but as I had given him the exact date and he had only to consult that book and check the entry, I eventually decided to send him 10s. (Previous parsons have charged say 1s. 6d. per entry if one examines the book oneself.) I have also recently had four entries sent by a friend who paid 3s. 5d. to the Rector there – at that parish I mean. I never heard again from the Rector, even an acknowledgment, so do not know whether he was offended at the smallness of the sum or not. However, this verifies that WILLIAM seemed to be of age on marr. and was evidently living at Leigh at the moment, as their first child Francis was bap. there in July, 1781.
I have studied the pages of the “Staffordshire Advertiser” Births, Marriages and Deaths, and found the following three entries:
1834. Sept. 6. At Burslem, on the 27th ult., George, son of Mr. George Beardmore, builder, aged 21.
1836. Oct. 15. At the Parish Church, Burslem, on Tuesday, Mr. J. Beardmore, blacksmith, to Miss Mary Lea, daughter of Mr. Lea, of the Old Crown, of Burslem. (Presumably “Billy Lear”.) (Entry states “Lea”.)
1839. Feb. 23. On the 17th instant, at Burslem, Mr. George Beardmore, aged 51, late of that place, builder.
If I can get any other information of help, I will write again.
In the meantime, I am busy spending millions with other members of the County Educn. Cttee, and struggling through the horrid fog, working all day and earning nothing.
So cheerio for the moment, – wishing you everything you wish yourself for a Happy Christmas and Prosperous New Year.
Best Love, Olive
What the letter tells us
The Draycott marriage. After years of searching, Olive found the banns at Leigh and then, through the Rector of Draycott-in-the-Moors, the marriage itself on 26 December 1780. This is the Rector’s transcription quoted on William’s page. It does not name William’s father, but shows him as a farmer of Leigh, of age, and still living at Leigh, where their first son Francis was baptised in 1781.
George the builder. The Staffordshire Advertiser records the deaths of George Beardmore (1787–1839), builder, of Burslem, aged 51, and of his son George, aged 21, in 1834 – matching the entries in George’s Bible.
Margaret and Cyril. The Rector, Charles Healey, remembered Margaret Beardmore and Cyril Shingler from their days in the Repertory players, and that she was related to Arnold Bennett.
The 1836 marriage of “Mr. J. Beardmore, blacksmith” to Mary Lea of the Old Crown, Burslem, is almost certainly that of Thomas Beardmore (1813–1884), who married Mary, only daughter of Billy Lear of the Old Crown – as Olive herself guessed (“Presumably ‘Billy Lear’”). The initial may have been misprinted.
Hassam Parade. Olive’s road was named after the Rector’s father’s cousin, who died in 1926.
Henry Sandon’s letter to Rick, 27 November 2014
Henry Sandon succeeded Cyril as curator of the Museum of Royal Worcester in 1966, and later became well known on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow. He wrote this letter by hand on his own notepaper, which carries a small reproduction of his portrait in oils at the top left. A few words are hard to read and are marked [?].
HENRY SANDON M.B.E.
Worcester
27th Nov 2014
Dear Richard:
Lovely to get your letter of 23rd Nov with photograph of the coffee set that Cyril gave you as the wedding present in 1965. As you say, not quite like the Roadshow service but much more meaningful and loved than a greyhound trophy.
It was great to read your account of the day at Davenham with Cyril and I am sure that the lunch and visit to Upton upon Severn meant a lot to Cyril. Cyril booked into Davenham soon after his dear wife died and he was very happy there. Barbara and I went to his 100th birthday party there and he was very full of life though his memory had gone; I suppose we would call it dementia now. There were 4 centenarians in the room, counting Cyril.
When Barbara died last year I had thoughts of applying to go to Davenham but have stuck it out here and still manage to do lots of talks and the odd Roadshow. Even came near you: to Pudsey a couple of years ago. I am so pleased that Cyril passed the family bible and photos to you. When Barbara and I saw him in his room on the last occasion he gave me a pottery bust of Shakespeare that he had made at Royal Worcester back in the 1950s. The factory never produced it but I treasure it.
He was a lovely man and I will never forget him. One of my treasured photos was when he and I were presented to the Queen on her visit to the factory and Museum to celebrate the 250th anniversary. When she spoke to him he was unable to answer and I’m afraid I broke protocol and spoke for him, explaining he was 99 and opened the door of the Museum when she opened it in 1951 – the bicentenary of the founding. Now, regrettably, the factory is no more; thankfully Cyril did not see its demise, and remembered when the two of us remade the Museum in its present home – still going strong. Perhaps you will be able to visit it one day – will be delighted to take you around. You could see the new oil painting of me (see top left of this letter). Cyril would have been proud and pleased.
Yours sincerely,
Henry Sandon
Notes: Barbara was Henry’s wife. The Royal Worcester factory closed in 2009. The Museum of Royal Worcester is in the old St Peter’s School building beside the factory site. Henry Sandon’s address and telephone number have been removed from the letterhead.