Georgian Society for East Yorkshire

The Blaydes Family and Their House in The High Street, Kingston Upon Hull.

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by Col. R. A. ALEC-SMITH (writing in 1975)

Blaydes House (No.6 High Street, Hull), which had probably belonged to the family for several generations took its present form in the mid-18th century in the time of Alderman Benjamin Blaydes, whose monogram appears in stucco on the hall ceilings, (see the illustration of this in the Society's Transactions, Vol.111, Part 111, 1954, fig. 12).

The Alderman served the office of Sheriff of Hull in 1768, and that of Mayor in 1771 and 1788. Benjamin was very much a family name of the Blaydes and at least three members of this name served the usual civic offices in the 18th and early 19th centuries, whilst Joseph Blaides (sic.) was Mayor in 1636. This Joseph is said to have married Anne Booth, of Killingholme, and it was their son, James Blaydes who married Andrew Marvell's sister, Anne. It is from James that the merchant line in Hull descended. The business partnership with which Alderman Benjamin Blaydes was associated was that of Messrs. Blaydes, Loft, Gee and Company, ship owners and general merchants.

Thomas Haworth, a progenitor of the Haworth-Booth family of Hullbank married in 1713 Mary Blaydes, a daughter and co-heiress of an earlier Benjamin Blaydes, possibly the Benjamin who was Sheriff in 1702. At the Hullbank sale in 1936 a number of Blaydes family portraits were sold, including a full-length of Mary, as a child in a pink dress, and another of her brother, Joseph - a full length showing the boy in blue coat and breeches, with red stockings and buckled shoes, standing in a landscape. The former is now in the possession of Mr. Adrian Haworth-Booth in Surrey, and the latter at The Old Rectory, Winestead.

Another line of the Blaydes, now represented by the family of Page-Turner of Ambrosden, Oxfordshire, were described as of High Paull House in Holderness (this later belonged to Alderman Anthony Bannister, and was demolished many years ago, though one of its lodges still stands) and of Ranby Hall in Nottinghamshire.

The Blaydes bore for Arms, Azure a saltire between four pheons argent on a chief or a lion passant gules, with the motto Pro Deo rege et patria. These arms differenced are borne also by Lord Ebbisham, whose father formerly Sir Rowland Blades, of the well-known printers, Blades, East and Blades, was Lord Mayor of London in 1926-27, and was raised to the peerage in 1928.