George Hyde Clarke

Son of Major Edward Clarke (q.v., under Edward Clarke of Trelawny) and Elisabeth Guthrie. Although described as 'virtually disinherited by his family' in the History of Parliament entry for his son Edward Clarke (q.v. under Edward Clarke senior), George Hyde Clarke in fact inherited in 1776 the Swanswick estate and some 220 enslaved people in Trelawny from his father, whose second Jamaica estate Hyde Hall was entailed to George Hyde Clarke's son Edward Clarke senior, then a minor.

1. George Hyde Clarke appears to have undertaken some entrepreneurial activity and infrastructure and industrial investment in and around Hyde in Cheshire. His uncle George Clarke of Hyde left him the 'bin houses and implements' for the colliery at Hyde, although not apparently the colliery itself. George Hyde Clarke was a promoter, prominent shareholder and member of the Committee of the Peak Forest Canal company, set up to link the Manchester-Ashton under Lyne canal to the limestone quarries of the Peak District, authorised under an Act of Parliament of 1794.

2. Sebastian Coe, now Lord Coe, explored his links to the George Hyde Clarke in an episode of Who do you think you are?. Coe was the great-great-great-great-grandson of Hyde John Clarke, George Hyde Clarke's (illegitimate) son with Sophia Astley.

3. Death of George Hyde Clarke of Grafton Street, Berkeley Square, and Hyde Hall, Cheshire, in 1824. He was buried at St Lawrence's Church, Denton, Lancashire, where his son Robert Clarke aka Robert Astley had been baptised in 1779.

For an account of the lineage of the Clarke family see John Burke, Genealogical and heraldic history of the commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, enjoying territorial possessions or high official rank: but uninvested with heritable honours (London, Henry Colburn, 1835) Vol. 2 pp. 189-191 and Vere Langford Oliver, Caribbeana being miscellaneous papers relating to the history, genealogy, topography, and antiquities of the British West Indies (6 vols., London, Mitchell, Hughes and Clarke, 1910-1919), Vol. 1 p. 375.

The George Hyde Clarke family papers, 1705-1937, including accounts of the Hyde and Swanswick estates, are held at Cornell University: http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/ead/htmldocs/RMM02800.html [accessed 07/11/2012].

1. Will of George Clarke of Hyde proved 06/12/1777, PROB 11/1037/126; http://www.penninewaterways.co.uk/peak/pf2.htm [accessed 19/08/2016]; http://www.penninewaterways.co.uk/peak/pf2.htm [accessed 19/08/2016].

2. http://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/episode/sebastian-coe [accessed 19/08/2016].

3. http://www.pittdixon.go-plus.net/clarke/clarke.htm sourced to Derby Mercury 14/07/1824 with photographs of Hyde family gravestones.

We are grateful to Mitchell Owens for his assistance with compiling this entry.