Swinnertons in the Arts

Charles was born on the 19th October 1813 in Liverpool, the fifth son (out of a total of 6 sons and 2 daughters) of Joseph Swinnerton and Hannah, nee Dodd. Joseph had been born in Betley and was the Master of the Charity School there for a time. Subsequently,however, he appears to have moved around the country a good deal as he had children born in Chester, London and Newcastle-under-Lyme before finally settling in Liverpool about 1800.

As a small boy, Charles witnessed the first steam boat to sail in the Mersey and the first railway train between Liverpool and Manchester. He learned the trade of stonemason and in his mid-teens travelled to London to work with the intention of proceeding to Rome to improve himself as a sculptor. However, this was not to be, and instead he crossed the Irish Sea to the Isle of Man where he was to work initially at dressing the stone being used in the building of King William’s College (1830-33). The crossing to Douglas took 2 weeks due to headwinds and heavy seas, a journey that today takes just a few hours!

He took lodgings in Castletown, where the College was being built, and there met Mary Callister or Collister – it has been spelt both ways — of a family who were resident in Cronk Renny, Castletown. She kept a small school near the country hamlet of St Marks. They married on the 13th August 1834 in St.Mary’s, Castletown, but subsequently moved to Douglas where he took up employment with Messrs. W.& R.Quiggin – timber, slate and general merchants. Mary is listed in the 1846 Directory of Douglas as a Staymaker. Their home at 60 Fort Street is listed in the 1847 Directory as a boarding house.

Charles’s talent was soon recognised by the general public; firstly for a Grecian Urn carved on a local tomb, and later a bust of one of his children carved in stone “direct from nature”.

By 1843 he had entered into partnership with Daniel Creer, a fellow stonecutter, with whom he purchased several building plots and erected terraced houses in the developing town. However the partnership did not last; by 1843 it had been dissolved and they had gone their separate ways. Charles moved to Fort Street where his wife advertised ‘Desirable Lodgings’. His stone yard, in which he employed 2 stonecutters and 5 labourers, was immediately opposite the house and backed directly onto the shore. Years later his eldest son Mark recalled how his father had tried to raise a pig in the yard. The pig was very fond of seaweed but never grew any bigger than a ‘good sized tom-cat’!

Charles was a man of many parts: he was the maker of the first steam engine ever made in the Isle of Man which drew crowds of country people to his house after Market on Saturdays. He took a great interest in things antiquarian, and due to his initiative several runic crosses and other historic objects were collected for the local museum.

One of his most ingenious works was a beautifully sculptured sundial enriched by Gothic ornamentation, a figure of Old Father Time and several grotesque heads: the unique feature was that it had sixteen dials each giving a different time for a different place in the world. One account says that the heads were all of different races of people, and when the shadow of the hand fell on a certain head, e.g. a Chinaman or an Egyptian, it told the time in that land. This article apparently appeared in America and was entitled Famous Sundials of the World. A Mr Joe Cannell of Cleveland showed it to Charles’s grand-daughter Florence: the article said that the sundial had been in the nunnery grounds for many years and was then taken to a boy’s school where it had been defaced. It was traced from there to a private estate in England but had since disappeared entirely. The calculations were all undertaken entirely by Charles. John, a great-great grandson of Charles, possesses a book in manuscript form entitled Problems in Dialing – As Worked Out and Figured by Charles Swinnerton, Douglas 1840. The book was bound in Sienna by the Reverend Charles Swynnerton to whom it was given by his father in 1905.

The mainstay of Charles’s business was monumental carving, which ranged from very straightforward headstones to the best examples to be found on the Island. His ecclesiastical work included gargoyles, angels, pulpits, fonts and reredos.

Charles worshipped at St.Thomas’s in Douglas, and when in 1875 they decided to erect a school he entered the open competition for the design of the building. His plan won first prize but he offered his services as architect free of charge. He also undertook some carving on the building and, at the foundation-stone laying ceremony, the vicar’s wife who performed the ceremony was presented with an engraved silver trowel which had been made and supplied by Robert Swinnerton, Charles’s 28 year old son who was a watchmaker and jeweller.

Amongst other work he carried out was the pulpit back of the altar wall in the chapel at Bishop’s Court and a reredos of Caen stone in St.Thomas’s Church, Douglas. This has since been replaced by a wooden one, but pieces of the original can be seen in the Castle Rusben Museum.

Charles took an active part in the affairs of the town of Douglas having been elected to the Town Commissioners or Council in May 1867. He topped the poll of 6 candidates with 124 votes, the last candidate gaining only 10. He retired from business in 1882 at the age of 69 and realised his life-long ambition to go to Rome where he spent 9 weeks out of his 3 months visit to Italy.

In 1890 he had a house-cum-studio built at Gansey in the south of the Island which was also used occasionally by his sons Joseph, the internationally known sculptor, and Frederick, the artist.

Charles died on the evening of St.George’s Day 1907 at the grand age of 93 years, 6 months and 4 days, having previously shown no signs of illness. He was buried in St.Peter’s Churchyard, Onchan, which is near Douglas where his wife had been laid to rest 33 years before on the 1st January 1874. He had, in fact, carved the plain headstone for this family grave himself and included his own name and the numbers 18… intending the mason to put in the last 2 numbers of the year he died. He had obviously never visualised that he would live on into the 20th century, and so, after the funeral, the whole reference to the date had to be carved out by cutting a recessed panel and a new date was then carved into it.

Charles and his wife are further commemorated in St.Matthew’s Church which is only a few yards away from their first home on the quayside at Douglas. The memorial, which was provided by their son the Reverend Charles Swynnerton, is a stained glass window depicting St.Matthew and is a very fitting memorial to a man who spent a lifetime creating memorials to others.

The Manx Quarterly reported that he was a commercial success and a ‘gentleman with a delightful manner’. According to family notes, his retirement home on the shore at Port St.Mary was very beautiful and had superb views of the sea and rocks and headlands all around, which was a definite encouragement to his artistic children. His grandchildren Godfrey and Frances said he never really got over the death of his wife Mary despite having outlived her by so long. She was described as being tall and slender but very soft and gentle. She was a very well educated person and a great reader but was a semi-invalid for years before she died. Another granddaughter, Florence, describes how she used to go to the churchyard at Onchan with her grandfather to visit her grandma’s grave; it had a high ornamental black iron fence around it which was always covered with delicate pink and mauve blossoms which were very fragrant.

(From the original article in the Manxman by Richard Kelly and additional notes by Douglas Swinnerton, another of Charles’s great grandsons).