The Cowbridge family with links to Tsarist Russia
Cowbridge and District Local History Society
What tenuous links might these Cowbridge properties have with Russia? They are Nos 64, 66, and 68 Eastgate and 47 High Street.
In 1853, Alfred George James was born in 64/66 Eastgate, along with several siblings including Harriet Annette, his sister who was 10 years older. Their father, William James, was a joiner and builder and their mother, also called Harriet, was his third wife. Formerly Harriet Strange Fry, she had come from Bath where her father, Aaron Fry, was a stonemason working on Bath Abbey.
By 1871, William James had died, and, undaunted, widow Harriet moved next door to 68 Eastgate (now the ‘Arboreal’ restaurant) to continue the flourishing family business, employing four men and a boy whilst raising her young family.
Her daughter Harriet Annette was presumably well educated in Cowbridge, and at some point, by 1871, she had moved to Russia to become governess to the Nabokov family (uncle of Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita). Over the years she acquired property out there, owning a ‘dacha’ in the Caucasus mountains, and only returning to life in Britain in 1917 to flee the Russian Revolution.
She left apparently with only the clothes she had on her at the time. During her time in Russia, she was visited on several occasions by her younger brother Alfred George James. He had various adventures out there, at one time being mistaken for King George V, whom he strongly resembled, and on another being taken for a spy because of his love of sketching. Once whilst in the Caucasus, he had terrible toothache, and it was the village blacksmith who removed the offending tooth – the least painful extraction he reckoned he ever had.
Alfred James stayed living in Cowbridge. He joined the 18th Glamorgan Rifle Volunteers in 1866, aged 13, as a side drummer, wearing a scarlet tunic and white belt, and in 1887 wrote extensively to his family of his years of involvement with the regiment. He became a cabinet and coffin maker by trade, married (living initially in the Limes), had three sons, and finally by 1911 had settled himself, his family and his business in ‘Manchester House’, 47 High Street (now Arthur John’s clothing shop).
He ran a shop there, selling china and furniture, and was a patriotic Welshman. When a series of plates were sent to him to sell for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, he noticed they bore motifs for England, Scotland and Ireland, but none for Wales. He had them sent back for leeks to be inserted in the design, and I believe the Cowbridge Museum displays some of these pieces.
He taught woodwork in the Grammar School to boost his income, having lost money over a dispute about a right of way in Cowbridge. He died in 1922 and is buried with other family members in Holy Cross churchyard.
Sister Harriet never married and was looked after in her (‘crabby and difficult’) old age by one of Alfred’s sons and his wife in Newcastle on Tyne.
Betty Alden
🌟 This article first appeared in the printed edition of the Glamorgan Star on 19.05.22
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