John Hubert Washington Hibbert

John Hubert Washington Hibbert (1804-1875) was the son of Thomas Hibbert (1761-1807) and Dorothy Mansfield. His father had been a partner in his uncle Thomas’ (1710-1780) slave factorage business in Kingston alongside his cousins Thomas Hibbert (1744-1819) and Robert (1750-1835). He sold his interest in the firm and bought out his cousins from the Aqualta Vale estate which they had previously co-owned. His brother was Julian Hibbert (1800-1834) a radical who was involved in the establishment of the National Union of the Working Classes and the transformation of the Blackfriars Rotunda. John was a Captain in the First Dragoons.

John’s father died when he was young leaving him an inheritance of £20,000. John attended Eton with his name appearing in the register for 1817. In 1839, aged thirty-five, John married Julia Tichborne, the third daughter of Sir Henry Joseph Tichborne. She had previously been Lady Julia Talbot having married firstly Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Thomas Talbot. The couple had three children - Paul Edgar, Lydia Anne and Cecilia Elizabeth Tichbourne Hibbert. Cecilia was the great-grandmother of Miles Francis Stapleton, 17th Duke of Norfolk. John purchased an estate in Warwickshire in 1840, he completely remodelled the house employing Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin to design both the exteriors and interiors. The work was on a grand scale; starting in 1841 it took ten years to complete and has been described as ‘one of the other great domestic schemes of Pugin’s mature years’. In 1866 the Hibberts sold Bilton Grange and moved to London. They had transformed the house which remains an English Heritage grade II listed building. Shortly after the Hibberts’ departure the house became a school with pupils entering under the Reverend Walter Earle in 1887. The school - Bilton Grange - still exists as an independent preparatory school.

Saint Marie’s Catholic Church in Rugby owes its existence to John; his wife Julia was a Catholic and later in life he himself converted. John purchased land on Dunchurch Road and commissioned Augustus Pugin to design a church. When the congregation required an extension of the church building Hibbert and others put together the funds for Pugin’s son Edward Welby Pugin to undertake the necessary work. In recognition of the part Hibbert had played in the founding of the church the old chancel became known as Hibbert Chapel. Hibbert paid for a 200 foot tower and spire designed in the Gothic style by Bernard Wheelan which was completed in 1872. The Hibbert coat of arms can be seen entwined with that of his wife in tiling in the church. Hibbert and his wife were interred in the family vault beneath the Hibbert Chapel.

Christina Parolin, Radical spaces: venues of popular politics in London, 1790-1845 (Canberra, Australian National University Press, 2010 ), p.231.

Will of Thomas Hibbert (1761-1807) in Oliver Vere Langford, Caribbeana being miscellaneous papers relating to the history, genealogy, topography, and antiquities of the British West Indies, Vol.4 (London, 1919), p.197. H. E. C. Stapylton, The Eton School Lists from 1791 to 1850 (Every Third Year After 1793,) With Short Notes (London: E. P. Williams, 1863), p.115. http://www.cracroftspeerage.co.uk/online/content/index1618.htm [accessed 01/02/2013]; Paul Atterbury, ‘Pugin and Interior Design’, in, A.W.N. Pugin: Master of Gothic Revival, ed. Paul Atterbury (The Bard Centre for Studies in the Decorative Arts, 1996), p.194. http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-308671-bilton-grange-school-and-attached-chapel [accessed 01/02/2013].

http://www.stmaries.co.uk/history-of-st-maries.html?showall=1&limitstart= [accessed 01/02/2013].