My name is Mark Davis. I am an independent Oxford local historian and guide with a particular interest in the city's waterways.
And I am standing now above the River Thames on the footbridge,
which carries the Thames pass over the River Medley, about two miles upstream from Farley Bridge.
To the Southwest, I can see some new wooden fences and a lawn with tables and chairs.
This is the new medley beer garden to which I refer again shortly.
Beyond it, there is a substantial stone wall and a bit farther,
still just visible through some trees on the roof and upper windows of a large house with some adjacent outbuildings and sheds.
I just met Lee Manor Farm, a place with which I have a personal association to empire in North America
and India for some 20 years while I researched the history of this location.
I had absolutely no knowledge of this. That research included a section about meddling in my first local history book.
When I brought things right up to date by interference as an owner, Charles G.
In the late 1990s. Subsequently, I included descriptions of medley on guided walks or in passenger boat commentaries and magazine articles,
and published a second edition of my book A Towpath Walk in Oxford.
Yes, in all that time, I had no inkling that I had any personal connexion that the entire 83 acre farm had once belonged to an ancestor.
Why would I, when that ancestor was born in Ireland, lived all his adult life in India and quite possibly never even set foot in Oxford.
But before I tell you about this peculiar coincidence, let me first summarise the long and well-documented history of Metal Manor.
The name Medley can be traced back to the Saxon period as the middle island in the 12th century came into the possession of nearby Osuna IP,
but passed into Henry the its clutches in the H in the 1840s.
As a result of the dissolution of the monasteries by the early 18th century,
Medley had passed into private hands and it is the purchase in 1720 by Benjamin Sweet, one time sheriff of Oxfordshire, which set in train.
The sequence, which resulted at the end of that century in the ownership by British East India company ancestor Matthew Leslie.
It is a sequence in which all the owners came from County Cork in Ireland,
which is where Benjamin Sweet had family, to whom he bequest the estate upon his death in 1740 for.
Suites have become wealthy as the British Army's paymaster during the nine year war with France and
subsequently became the victorious Duke of Mowbray's financial agent at planning on purchasing madly sweet,
immediately set about constructing an imposing three storey mansion with a commanding view as a port matter.
This inspired the Oxford diarist, Thomas Hearn, to comment that it shows him to be whimsical,
the place being drowned often in winter and sleeping only a place of pleasure to go Caesar by boat in the summer season.
Indeed, Medley had enjoyed a reputation as a hospitality destination since at least the early 17th century.
Its enduring appeal is apparent in these lines from a long sixteen ninety one poem by Mrs. Alice Danvers,
a place at which they never fail of custard, cider, cakes and ale.
Benjamin Sweet ensured that Al remained available at the location by either retaining or reopening a public house known as the Cheesecake House.
The opening of the new Mitre Beer Garden in May of 2021 is therefore highly appropriate in sustaining a tradition of at least 400 years.
But he was still composed of the large mansion with grazing meadows,
83 acres plus the public house and outbuildings when it was purchased in 1764 by Colonel Matthew Leslie,
the uncle of my identically named four times great grandfather.
Leslie Senior had fought against the French in North America in the 1940s and 1750s, first as an assistant surgeon, then as a quartermaster.
It was in this staff officer role that he was wounded during an ignominious defeat in 1755,
serving alongside a certain aide de camp called George Washington.
Four years later, Leslie fought at a successful season of Quebec,
being one of four officers remembered in the will of the fatally wounded General James Wolfe's.
Captain Leslie, as he was in 1764 across the metal estate from another Cork man,
Jasper Lucas, who was related by marriage to the Irish branch of Benjamin Sweet's family.
Lesley probably intended it as an investment or future retirement location because
any thought of residing there vanished in 1768 when he resumed his military career.
This time he was appointed as a lieutenant colonel in the Army, a British company.
At least Lieutenant Colonel was the rank that he had been promised prior to departure.
But on arrival in Calcutta, he found that during the months that he'd been at sea, several other officers had been promoted over his head as a result.
Leslie threatened to get the first available ship at home. He was persuaded to remain, however, and was posted to the vicinity of Tatna,
a large and commercially important city on the river Ganges in the modern state of Bihar.
The British military generated enormous employment opportunities for Indian civilians,
and one Patna resident who benefited by finding work within the regiment commanded by Matthew Leslie, was a remarkable young man called Din Mahomet.
Muhammed later became the first Indian to publish a book in English and also the first to open a genuine Indian restaurant in Britain.
Leslie, as mentioned briefly in Mohammed's autobiographical memoir,
and I like to think that it's no coincidence that it was published in Cork, his first place of residence, after emigrating in 1784.
But back to Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Leslie. Still feeling undervalued by the East India Company,
he carried out his earlier threat to return home and was back in England by the beginning of 1771.
He was recalled in 1773, but in the meantime, he had decided to demolish Benjamin Sweet's Mansion House,
probably on account of the susceptibility to floods mentioned by Thomas Hearn.
Such an expert in Jackson's Oxford Journal of June 1772,
invited tenders from builders willing to remove the entire edifice by March of the following year,
including the Wainscott marble chimney pieces, floors, timber led iron glass bricks, tiles, slates, paving stone and other materials.
Leslie set off for India again early in 1773, having finally persuaded the directors of the East India Company in London to recognise his merit
by appointing him to the highly important logistical role as quartermaster general so they can go.
He would never return when he died on active service in 1778.
By this time a colonel, his soldier was his namesake nephew who was also employed by the East India Company in Bengal, but in a civilian role.
Younger Matthew Leslie, my four times great grandfather, also born in Cork, lived all his adult life in India,
rising to a position of considerable seniority as a senior church and member of the Board of Revenue in Bengal.
He retained ownership of Metal Manor,
a property he had almost certainly never seen in a city and possibly even a country that he had never visited until 1792.
Now, the old saying about all this is that I had researched the history of madly in ignorance of any personal connexion that
lived on a narrow boat within a few hundred metres of a certain certain extent of metallic manor meadows since 1992,
I might never have discovered any association.
Had it not been for some documents retained by a later owner of the estate, namely the Oxford College of Christchurch.
There amongst the various conveyances leases and entered in dentures.
I came across a copy of Matthew Leslie's will and some related correspondence while researching a quite different topic.
Otherwise, although some association with Medley would no doubt have become apparent,
eventually the sequence of events leading to Matthew Leslie's ownership would almost certainly have remained a mystery.
Indeed, something else which might have remained hidden is the fact that I had any Indian family associations at all.
Matthew Leslie, Junior and three other of my expat ancestors all fathered children with Indian women in the late 18th century and early 19th century.
Such liaisons were viewed as understandable and acceptable at the time.
But attitudes changed subsequently, and they have not been so much of a whisper of this within the narrative of my family's history.
Not even when a substantial biography of a great uncle was published in the 1990s,
it was only because my Surrey stockbroker, great grandfather Matthew Leslie's great grandson,
had been honest in the 1881 census by stating that his birth place was Calcutta, that this exotic branch of the family was revealed.
But that's another story, albeit one going back nearly a thousand years.
The first Scottish left of Leslie, the current story demonstrating how subtly the influence of Empire can exert itself.
And so with the younger Matthew Leslie's death in India in 18 04,
and if there is nothing tangible to indicate his connexion with Madeleine, he has at least fared better in India itself.
In the modern state of Chuck Hunt, where Leslie once served as the East India company tax collector.
There was an unremarkable township named for the time being, at least.
Leslie Ganj.