Nat Gould

Thomas Bateman 1760-1847

Thomas Bateman was born on 27 September 1760 at Hartington in Derbyshire, the son of Richard Bateman of Hartington 1727-1774 and his wife nee Elizabeth Leek, the daughter of Ralph Leek of the Heath House, Cheddleton in Staffordshire.

On 13 April 1786 he married Rebekah Clegg, daughter of Arthur Clegg who was a Manchester merchant (1). She died in 1797.

Thomas and Rebekah Bateman had the following children:

William Bateman 1787-1835. He was born in Manchester on 25 July 1787. He married Mary Crompton at Prestwich near Manchester on 19 June 1820. She was the daughter of James Crompton of Prestolee and Breightmet in Lancashire, a bleacher. She died at Rowsley in Derbyshire on 29 July 1822, and was buried at Hartington. William Bateman died at Middleton-by -Youlgreave in Derbyshire on 11 June 1835, and was buried at Hartington in Derbyshire on 18 June 1835.

Thomas Bateman 1792-1810. He was born in Manchester on 17 June 1792. He died at Everton near Liverpool on 22 April 1810, and was buried in the Dissenters' Chapel at Gatley in Cheshire.

Rebekah Bateman 1794-1838. She was born in Manchester on 12 April 1794, and was married there to Samuel Hope of Liverpool, merchant. She died at Everton near Liverpool in October 1838, and was buried there. Samuel Hope died at Middleton on 15 October 1837, and was buried in Liverpool.


Thomas Bateman was a staunch non-conformist and a wealthy magnate. In 1801 he sold his inherited Hartington lands to his kinsman Hugh Bateman (created a baronet in 1806), and bought estates in Lancashire, Cheshire and Derbyshire. In 1820 he retired to Middleton Hall near Youlgreave. He was appointed High Sheriff of Derbyshire in 1823.

From 1821 Thomas Bateman, assisted by his son William Bateman 1787-1835, began to transform the village of Middleton-by-Youlgreave. Middleton Hall had been built in 1626 by an ancestor Roger Bateman, but he had it dismantled and rebuilt. By 1825 it was ready for occupation. Most of the village as it appears today remains as it was built or rebuilt by Thomas Bateman. He also formed an excellent library at Middleton Hall, and encouraged his son William and grandson Thomas to study.

By the 1820s Thomas Bateman had collected vast quantities of local history and genealogical material for the library of his new mansion at Middleton Hall. When the family collection was sold in 1895, five very large volumes of Derbyshire archives were bought by the Duke of Devonshire and are now preserved at Chatsworth House. Four of them are scrapbooks of articles, notes and handbills grouped alphabetically by parish. They have preserved rare (even unique) ephemeral documents of great value to local historians. But it is the fifth volume that is treasure trove for the genealogist, a superb manuscript compiled by Thomas Bateman of the family trees of Derbyshire families. The task, and the research that it entailed, must have occupied him for many years, and was not quite completed. Many pages are illuminated with coats-of-arms, some being in colour. And among the tables of ancestry of aristocrats and yeomen, the genealogy of less well known families into whom they married is also included.

Thomas Bateman was particularly interested in the Gould family, for after all he was the great-grandson of that first William Gould who had come to Pilsbury Grange. And, most usefully, he interviewed old William Gould 1755-1845 of Hanson Grange (purchased in the eighteenth century by his grandfather William Gould 1677-1772), who generously allowed him access to his box of family deeds. He preserved some notes in William Gould’s own handwriting, correcting Bateman’s trees and adding his own recollections too. Bateman also gleaned much information then still within living memory from the elderly Mrs Whillock (2), a granddaughter of William Gould 1704-1757 of Brownhill.

Thomas Bateman died at Middleton Hall on 26 May 1847, and was buried at Hartington. Both his sons had died during his lifetime, and his estate passed to his grandson Thomas Bateman 1821-1861 (3).

(1) Llewellyn Jewitt The Reliquary volume II (1861-62) page 89. Information also taken from The Reliquary volume II (1861-62) pages 105-108.

(2) Anne Whillock was the daughter of Mary Salt nee Mary Gould the daughter of William Gould 1704-1757 of Brownhill in Warslow parish by his first wife Dorothy Beresford.

(3) When he died in 1861 his obituary by Llewellyn Jewitt in volume II of The Reliquary cited above (pages 87 to 92) gave a full account of his life and work, together with a detailed pedigree of the Bateman family.