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In William Hoyt Fancher's 1947 Foreward to "The Fancher
Family", the first published Fancher genealogy, he writes "Candor compels the
admission that no royal blood courses through Fancher veins. We can lay
no claim to any noble lineage. We have no Coat of Arms... We descend
from humble folks..."
This remains true today. For while we have recently discovered that
our American Fancher surname originated from the English Fanshawe
surname, we still can not lay claim to royal blood, noble lineage, or
even a
Coat of Arms.
The English lineage of the progenitor of the Fancher
family in America, William Fancy/Fanshaw, Sr., remains unknown. The
Fanshawe family in England did not have royal blood. Only one branch of
the English Fanshawe family became prominent when Henry Fanshawe
(1560-1616) became Queen Elizabeth I's Remembrancer of the Exchequer and
acquired extensive estates in Essex. He was Knighted by James I, and his
family suffered severely during the Commonwealth for their loyalty to
the King. At the Restoration, Richard Fanshawe was made a Baronet by
Charles II. (Baronet is the lowest hereditary title that can be
bestowed.) This family's influence had faded by the early 1700's. Our
ancestor, William Fancy/Fanshawe, does not fit anywhere in Sir Henry
Fanshawe's family tree. For centuries in England, the majority of
Fanshawes were yeoman farmers, just as the early colonial American
Fancher generations were. Yes, we probably had humble beginnings in
England...
There are several Fanshawe Coats of
Arms. Most of them belong to Sir Henry Fanshawe and his descendants.
Heraldry is the study of Coats of Arms, and The College of Arms in
England are the Heralds for the British Isles who are empowered to
decide who is authorized to display a certain Coat of Arms. Contrary to
what all of those websites selling Coats of Arms, Family Crests, and
other related merchandise, may say, in the British Isles there is no
such thing as a "Family Coat of Arms." A
Coat of Arms is issued to only
one person, never to a family. And if a person does not have
authorization from the Heralds, they are not authorized to display any
Coat of Arms. For a Fancher to have a legitimate right to a Fanshawe
Coat of Arms, it would have to be granted to them or they would have to
be descended in the legitimate male line from a person to whom the Arms
were granted or confirmed in the past. No, even though we can trace our
origins to Fanshawes, a Fancher can't use or display any Fanshawe Coat
of Arms...
But we do have an
ancestral Family Seat in England...
FANSHAWE GATE
Fanshawe Gate Hall Today
The Fanshawe family in England draws its origin
from Fanshawe Gate, located on the edge of the
Peak
District National Park, in
Holmesfield,
Parish of
Dronfield, in
The Scarsdale Hundred,
Derbyshire.
Fanshawe Gate is both the name of the property, and the name of the
house.
"Gate" means a point in the hills
at which a road or path crosses a crest. In the shadow of Hallamshire
Moors, Fanshawe Gate stands between two roads running from the Sheaf
Valley to the Holmesfield Ridge.
Fanshawe Gate Hall, 1991
It is difficult to accurately
determine when the first Fanshawe came to Holmsfield. In 1411, Joan, the
daughter of John Fanshawe, was "admitted to one messuage and seven
bovates" at Holmsfield by Lady Alice d'Eyncourt. (The d'Eyncourts held
Holmsfield from 1086.) Estimates of John Fanshawe's birth date place it
as early as 1375, and the family may well have been settled there
another 100 to 200 years earlier. Lady Ann Fanshawe (1625-1680) said
that she had seen several very ancient gravestones in Dronfield Church,
from which it appeared that the Fanshawes had been seated at Fanshawe
Gate for some hundreds of years before her day. (The earliest monument
now remaining is 1578.) 1260 seems to have become the generally accepted
date that the Fanshawes were in Holmsfield.
The house at Fanshawe Gate was
referred to as "le ffaunchall gat hede" in 1456, "hede" being the
Anglo-Saxon for "house". In 1491 "unum toftum iuxta fownchallgatehed"
appears in the Holmesfield Court Rolls. Although by 1571 the house and
property were usually described collectively as "Fanshawe Gate", it was
still being called "ffanchawegathed" in the Court Rolls of that year.
Today the house is usually referred to as "Fanshawe Gate Hall".
The original house is believed to
have been "quite a grand fifteenth century edifice" with later
alterations, which was dismantled, according to one account, in 1636.
When Sir Henry Fanshawe became a Remembrancer of the Exchequer, he
received substantial estates in Essex, where his heirs settled
permanently. The next three generations were also courtiers. Another
account says that it was this last generation, who was raised to the
Irish Peerage as Viscount Fanshawe in 1661, who was responsible for
dismantling his Derbyshire house because it was remote from his six Home
Counties estates. The title became extinct in 1716, and the Fanshawe
Gate estate passed to T.E. Fanshawe of Great Singleton, whose descendant
Rev. C.S. Fanshawe sold it to his relative, Captain Basil Fanshawe
(1857-1944).
The present house is a
mid-seventeenth century L-shaped gabled farmhouse, built of coal measure
sandstone rubble, with low mullioned windows. In the modern notes
appended to the "Memoirs of Lady Ann Fanshawe" (originally published in
1829), the building is described as "a substantial yeoman's dwelling of
Tudor times, similar to many others in the neighborhood... Two sets of
square stone pillars, one surmounted by pine cones and one by pyramids
of balls, still mark the approach to the house; such pillars commonly
marked residences of the gentry in the 16th and 17th centuries."
Fanshawe Gate Hall Remaining Structures, 1991
Two earlier buildings also remain.
The first faces north, and is a very tall four-story structure built of
rubble, "brought to course with a single-light windows, one above the
other on the top three floors with a straight coped gable, described as
a dovecote." It has all the attributes of a stair tower from a tall
house. Beside it, separated by a few feet, is a lower building "two by
two bays, again with quoins and a straight coped gable". It has
two-light mullioned windows, and may have been the kitchen wing of the
larger house to which the taller building was once attached. These two
buildings are believed to be all that remain of the original fifteenth
century house.
Fanshawes owned Fanshawe Gate from 1260 to 1944. After 700
years of being in the Fanshawe family, when Basil Fanshawe died in 1944,
it passed out of the hands of the family. The present owners purchased
it in 1959. Since that time the Ramsdens have restored the house and
gardens, and have generously opened Fanshawe Gate Hall's beautiful gardens to the
public.
Today, the
Fanshawe Hall Gate Gardens
are only open to the public on certain weekends in
May, June, July and September.
Admission, plant sales, Ploughman's
lunches, and cream teas benefit local and national charities.
Some
Fanshawe Links:
Fanshawe Portrait
Gallery
The Wicked Lady - Lady Katherine Ferrers (married
to Thomas Fanshawe) - The Legend Of The Lady Highwayman
Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe - By Anne (Harrison)
Fanshawe
Valence House Museum
 �Fancher
Family Association
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