"Lakenheath and Wangford Volunteers" Topic

A Person from Australia recently posted a miniature portrait of a chap purportedly from the Lakenheath and Wangford Volunteers. The poster wanted to find out more on the unit in question and find out who the sitter was.

I gave him all of my opinions of the uniform and I also pointed him to a website which deals with such matters.

Here's a link to what transpired. The topic initially started here:

link

But then quickly moved over to another thread on the same site.

link

This is the same miniature after I tidied it up a bit :)

Anyone on here got any opinions?

PS. 42flanker also participated. and I am 'Dibble201bty' on that site…

Hi Dibble

The officer pictured is very probably Captain Robert Eagle.

OK so the Lakenheath and Wangford is a bit puzzling, because although both are places in Sussex, they're 60 miles apart. However, there was indeed a Lakenheath and Wangford unit of volunteers recorded in the 1803 volunteer strength returns

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and they are in the March 1806 returns too, although by then they are called only the Lakenheath volunteers. I have a pdf of this latter downloaded from Google Books, from which it has now disappeared.

The commanding (and only) officer mentioned in both 1803 and 1806 was one Captain Eagle. In 1803 they they were a single company 100 men strong. In 1806 they were still 100 strong but the detail says they comprised, besides the captain, five serjeants, two drummers, 93 rank and file present under arms and 4 absentees with leave. Their arms and accoutrements were described as "serviceable", their clothing as "much worn, still serviceable" and their state of discipline as "deficient".

Assuming the unit has been correctly identified, and I have no opinion on this because volunteers, then given the portrait is an officer of mature years it's almost certainly Captain Robert Eagle. If the unit name is accurate then the miniature must date from before 1806 because by then the "Wangford" bit wasn't in their title any more. After 1808 they were embodied into a "local militia" so may not still have been called volunteers at all any more.

The composition of the officers of these units at least did not seem to change a lot, not least because they tended to be elected, the candidates were local employers and the voters were their staff. So even if the date is later the same officer would be present, probably.

In sorta confirmation of this hypothesis, Googling "Captain Eagle" Lakenheath Volunteers brings up this
PDF link

which you may have already found (I've not read the whole links). It's from a local history site that says

The Eagle family played a leading role in the local Volunteer company. Among the officers were Captain Robert Eagle, Lieutenants FS Eagle and Robert Eagle (junior) and Ensign William Eagle.

So I say that is probably Captain Robert Eagle. This link ("The Monthly Magazine" of 1805)

link

apparently says that "Robert Eagle, esq., lieutenant of the Lakenheath volunteers, and second son of R, Eagle, esq. of Lakenheath", died in 1805. I don't quite follow that because this Google Books link

link

says Robert Eagle's second son was Francis King Eagle and that he graduated from Cambridge in 1809 and died aged 68 in 1856. I suspect he's the "FS" Eagle in the local history link.

I'm sure Googling for terms like "gazetteer" along with the name will bring up more. For example, a Major Mascall was the commander of the Ashford Light Infantry and local gazetteers from the period indicate that their assembly point was his "large handsome house built in 1759" in the midst of Ashford. From Google Streetview I think I know which house that is. A Major Mascall also fought at Corunna, Same chap perhaps.

Good luck, it's fun.

"both are places in Sussex"

Umm! A Freudian slip perhaps? Suffolk methinks you mean?

"Assuming the unit has been correctly identified, and I have no opinion on this because volunteers, then given the portrait is an officer of mature years it's almost certainly Captain Robert Eagle. If the unit name is accurate then the miniature must date from before 1806 because by then the "Wangford" bit wasn't in their title any more. After 1808 they were embodied into a "local militia" so may not still have been called volunteers at all any more."

Because the name 'Wangford' is later missing from the listing does not mean that the uniform buttons and cap plate badge would have been changed or indeed that the name 'Wangford' in the unit was no longer in use. I still think that by the style and cut of the uniform and that he has a hat rather than a bicorn leads me to date it after 1805.

PS. Wangford is nearly 70 miles from Lakenheath with the City of Norwich being more or less between the two. Wangford on the east coast and Lakenheath being due West inland.

Agree about the buttons, they wouldn't change those just because of a name change. However, the 1803 volunteer returns, which are summary and without much detail, describe them as the Lakenheath and Wangford while the far more detailed and meticulous 1806 issue drops the Wangford while providing information about unit composition etc. I'd be surprised if in doing all that it mistitled them. Fair point about the cap, but it's a stovepipe which I guess also sets a bound on how late this could be.

I've done a bit more Googling and found a few more sources. Google Books is often the best place for this.

For example, there is Suffolk writers from the beginning until 1800: a catalogue of Suffolk authors with some account of their lives and a list of their writings, which Google Books says dates from 2006 but that's probably when it was scanned in. It's likely to date from 1800 or not long after.

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This tells us Robert Eagle was married to Elizabeth née King, so now we know why Francis King Eagle. Francis was born in November 1784 and baptized at Wangford. His brother William was born in August 1787. William Eagle was later the owner of the "Lakenheath Cross", an Anglo-Saxon find in gold which is now known as the Wilton Cross. It's in the British Museum.

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We learn from the previous source that Robert Eagle lived at Lakenheath Hall. Googling the latter brings up marketing details of a gated estate very recently converted from a pukka "big house" – a link I found says "7 existing dwellings which include three converted units in the old hall and four further new builds".

PDF link

This link says the locals weren't happy about this – 100 trees were illegally felled – and confirms this was a listed building. I'd say that was pretty conclusively your sitter's home and estate.

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Robert Eagle definitely owned an estate because on 13 December 1800 the local newspaper reported that "a man called Collins was committed for trial for stealing one rabbit from the warren of Mr. R. Eagle of Lakenheath." If you've got a hundred trees and a rabbit warren, you've got an estate, I'd say.

link

Further down in the same link:

1804 – Lieutenant Robert Eagle, of the LAKENHEATH AND WANGFORD VOLUNTEERS, son of ROBERT EAGLE of Lakenheath Hall, died, probably as a result of an accident.

A happier story about the Eagles from 1819 says that Mr. R Eagle's daughter Charlotte was "married from the Hall" to a Mr. W Clark of Thetford. Further down we learn that Robert Eagle was "the major land owner in the village", and that he died in 1830 aged 73, so he was born in 1757.

I made the assumption based on your picture of the miniature that it was an older man because the hair looks grey. Robert Eagle senior would have been about 50 to 60 when it was painted, which fits, but OTOH the grey could be the age of the picture rather than of the sitter. Maybe it was a memento portrait of the late Robert Eagle Junior? His death in 1804 would explain why there's only one officer listed for the unit in the 1806 returns (the 1803 one doesn't break this out).

It does seem though that the Eagle family were local landowning gentry and that he had three sons and four daughters, the sons being lawyers. The boys attended Charterhouse School, as did the band Genesis rather later, so if one wanted to one could probably find out more about the Eagle family through them. These old schools tend to keep stuff.

A bit of an OTT response but I find it fascinating and rather moving how much one can find out on the internet from a desk in 2020 about the lives of people 200 years ago. Interestingly a search of 192.com for the surname Eagle in Lakenheath brings up 21 results including a William Eagle…

Thank's for that. You have done some real good research which should please the owner.

I posted this thread on behalf of the person who originally posted the miniature over on ACG, but my interest is purely on the uniform and unit he belonged to.

That he has a stovepipe does not necessarily mean that his unit got them at the same time that they were first issued and it is known that even Millita units were still dressed in uniforms that were of an older cut. even in the modern age, we saw territorial units still using the old M44 helmet when the regular units were using the Mk6 and also the 58 pattern webbing when again, the regulars had long used the khaki, then camo pattern PLCE webbing. This is why on examination, I think that the picture is later than 1805.

Again, thanks for your excellent contribution. I'll share this link with the owner.

I was wondering if there was some other Wangford in 1805ish other than the one that's 60-odd miles from Lakenheath. We know that the children Robert, Francis, William and Charlotte were christened in Wangford (and even the name of who christened them) but it seems unlikely to me you'd have taken an infant 60 miles to be christened, or indeed that the Eagles were big landowners 60 miles away as well.

So I looked up "old map" Lakenheath. Doing that here sends you to links like this

link

wherein we learn that in 1860ish

The chief landowners are the executors of W. G. Eagle, Esq.

But it also transpires that there is indeed another Wangford, and it's about four miles east of Lakenheath, at the north east corner of the present air base. The latter may explain why there's no sign of the Wangford church any more.

link

Other old maps show the chalk pit where the Anglo Saxon cross was found to be on the southern edge of the estate.

Riveting stuff, to me anyway, because of the inferences you can sometimes draw. For example, among the volunteer cavalry, the correlation between number of horses and men absent with leave tells us that the yeomanry provided their own horses. Probably they provided their own uniforms as well. As for what the uniform was, well yes, as you say old patterns seems to have persisted and I'm not versed enough in this stuff to know how long. That's why when I said the stovepipe cap "also sets a bound on how late this could be", I didn't say what the bound was :-)

I have always wondered what the "Returns" data meant by "clothing", i.e. were the men in their own clothing or in uniform? We'd need a painting of a muster of foot volunteers to be sure and I don't know of any.

I do know of one source that reckons the volunteers were intended to be used to chuck up fortifications and what not, so it's not obvious they'd have need a proper uniform at all.