Patrick Comerford
Along with the Cathedral Bells ringing out across the Cathedral Close, and the many church chimes on the hour, quarter hour and half hour, Lichfield has two public or civic clocks that have been keeping time in Lichfield for generation.
The clock on the façade of Donegal House in Bore Street has been one of the landmarks on Bore Street for almost a century, while the Friary Clock, first erected in 1863 at the junction of Bird Street and Bore Street, was moved to its present site beside the Bowling Green roundabout in 1928.
I had a good look at the Friary Clock and its plaques four months ago, so it was good to see the Donegal House clock back in place last week on the front of Donegal House after some recent repairs and renovations
Apart from the internal workings, the clock was restored in 2015 by Smiths of Derby. Unfortunately, the clock had been losing time, and because of this the original internal gearing had to be replaced with an electric motor.
The original gearing from the clock is kept in the original winding house in the Lichfield Festival office in Donegal House, along with part of the original winding instructions as well as old pulley wheels and weights.
The clock was donated to the people of Lichfield by Mrs MA Swinfen Broun almost a century ago, in 1928 – months after the Friary Clock had been moved to a new site away from the centre of Lichfield. A plaque beneath the clock declares: ‘This clock was presented to the Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens of the City of Lichfield by Mrs M.A. Swinfen-Broun. Swinfen Hall Lichfield. On the 5th November 1928.’
Donegal House sits between the Guildhall and the Tudor Café. It was built for a local merchant, James Robinson, in 1730 but takes its name from the Chichester family, who held the titles of Earl and Marquess of Donegall, and who once owned vast estates near Lichfield, including Fisherwick Park and Comberford Hall.
Lichfield Council acquired Donegal House for use as offices in 1909. Plans to create a large new Council Chamber on the first floor of Donegal House never went ahead. Council meetings continued in Guildhall while Donegal House was used as offices, and connecting doors were made between the two buildings on ground floor and first floor.
Mrs MA Swinfen-Broun, who presented the Donegal House clock to the people of Lichfield, is often overlooked and most references to the clock discuss her husband, Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Alexander Wilsone Swinfen-Broun (1857-1948). Indeed, even the plaque beneath the clock does not hint at her own original names.
Laura Swinfen Broun (1853-1932) was born Laura Crossley Eno on 17 September 1853, in Newcastle upon Tyne, a daughter of Elizabeth Ann (Cooke) Eno (1827-1907) and James Crossley Eno (1827-1915), a member of the Eno family of fruit salts fame.
Laura first married Dr John Nicholson Fleming (1848-1881), a doctor, in Gateshead, in July 1874. They lived at South Lodge, Champion Hill, Surrey, where he died on 3 July 1881, and he was buried in West Norwood Cemetery.
Laura was still in her late 20s and was left what was then a small fortune of £43,276 6s 9d – the equivalent of £6.7 million today. She was a wealthy widow still in her 30s when she married Colonel Michael Alexander Wilsone Broun on 13 October 1891, in Denham, south Buckinghamshire; she was 38 and he was 34.
He was born Michael Broun at Castle Wemyss in Renfrewshire, Scotland, on 9 July 1857, the second son of Charles Wilsone Broun (1821-1883) and his second wife Annie Rowland.
Charles Broun had spent his early childhood in a prosperous part of Glasgow. His father was called William Brown (1792-1884), and made some of his fortune in the slave trade. Charles preferred the affected or antiquated spelling of Broun, which his sons also used. After attending Glasgow University, he became a property developer and landowner, buying an estate at Wemyss Bay in Renfrewshire. There he built Castle Wemyss for his family, a large home with views across the surrounding countryside and out to the sea.
It is said that Anthony Trollope wrote part of Barchester Towers while was staying at Wemyss Bay, and that Portray Castle in The Eustace Diamonds is based on Castle Wemyss.
Charles Broun married his first wife Ellen Buchanan in 1846, but was widowed within a year. Two years after his first wife died, he married his second wife Annie Rowland. She was pregnant seven times in the space of 10 years, but only four of her children survived. She died at Castle Wemyss at the age of 37, when her youngest child was only one, leaving Charles a widower for the second time.
Three years later, Charles met Patience Swinfen, the widow of Henry Swinfen, who was the only son of Samuel Swinfen, the owner of Swinfen Hall, a large estate near Lichfield. Henry was a descendant of Samuel Swinfen, who built Swinfen Hall in 1757 and who, at various times, also owned Comberford Hall, in 1755 and again in 1759-1761.
The extraordinary tale of Patience Swinfen’s inheritance and her battle to become the chatelaine of Swinfen Hall have been told and retold in countless articles and books. The ex-parlourmaid’s claim to Swinfen Hall and her eventual victory was a Victorian sensation and the legal wrangles made national headlines. It is a story that is the stuff of trash novels, court intrigues and salacious rumour-mongering.
Henry Swinfen (1802-1854) had been living a dissolute and aimless life in Paris and London and was 29 when he met Patience Williams, the 18-year-old daughter of a Welsh farmer. When Henry first met Patience she was a parlourmaid in a lodging house in Bloomsbury. They married secretly in March 1831 without letting their parents know and spent the next 13 years travelling on Continental Europe. Attractive and much more intelligent than her husband, Patience charmed all she met, including Henry’s ageing father, Samuel Swinfen.
When Henry Swinfen died in June 1854, Patience had already charmed her way into the affections of her father-in-law, if not his bed. Samuel Swinfen was 80 and in his last illness he a made new will naming Patience as his heir. He promptly died three weeks later in July 1854. Patience had been left Swinfen Hall, 1,200 acres of land 4.5 miles south of Lichfield, and £60,000.
But her inheritances was challenged by other members of the Swinfen family and a series of court cases ensued involving several celebrated lawyers. Charles Rann Kennedy (1808-1867), who eventually acted for Patience, became involved with her in a romantic and sexual relationship, abandoning his wife and six children.
Kennedy won the case for Patience, but when he tried to claim a large fee from her she resisted and instead Patience married the widowed Charles Broun in 1861, much to Kennedy’s chagrin. Kennedy then dragged Patience and Charles back into the courts in what became a scandalous trial that the newly-wed couple eventually won.
Charles and Patience moved onto the Swinfen Estate near Lichfield, and two of Charles Broun’s children, including four-year-old Michael, adopted the name Swinfen-Broun, although they were not descended from the Swinfen family. As for Kennedy, he turned from calling Patience the ‘suffering Dame’ in his poetry or doggerel to calling her ‘the Serpent of Swinfen’. He was disbarred from practising law and when he died in 1867, he was bitter, disgraced and utterly broken.
Michael Alexander Swinfen-Broun, as he was now known, was sent to school at Rugby. From there, he was commissioned in the South Staffordshire Regiment in 1876.
He married the widowed and wealthy Laura Fleming in 1891 when she was 38 and he was 34. The following year, he became the commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion of the South Staffords in 1892. He fought in the Boer War in South Africa in 1901-1902, and he remained an honorary colonel after he retired from the army in 1904. He was the High Sheriff and Deputy Lieutenant of Staffordshire in 1907 and was a senior magistrate in Lichfield.
The Swinfen-Brouns were generous patrons and benefactors of good causes in the Lichfield and Weeford areas. He was the President of the Lichfield Victoria Hospital for 14 years, they both gave major donations to the hospital, and they gave many gifts to the City of Lichfield, including a valuable collection of silver as well as the public clock on the wall between Donegal House and the Guildhall.
His other bequests to Lichfield included statues by Donato Barcaglia, known locally as ‘Old Father Time’, and by Antonio Rossetti, known in Lichfield as ‘The Reading Girl’.
Laura died at Swinfen Hall on 23 August 1932, at the age of 78, and she was buried in Weeford, outside Lichfield.
The Swinfen-Brouns were the parents of an only daughter, Elizabeth Doris Farnham (1893-1935), known as Elsie. She married John Adrian George (Jack) Farnham (1890-1930) at Saint Peter’s Church, Pimlico; she was 20 and by now the Eno heiress, he was 22. But the couple had no children, the marriage was unhappy; after five years, Elsie left Jack and they were divorced in 1925. Jack married again in 1926, but he died after a heart attack on 24 September 1930, aged only 40 and leaving a young widow and three young children.
Within three years of her mother’s death, the divorced Elsie died on 16 April 1935 and she was buried in Saint John the Evangelist churchyard in Frieth, Buckinghamshire.
Although widowed and bereft, Colonel Swinfen-Broun remained active in public life, and the City Council conferred the Freedom of Lichfield on him in 1938 as a token of gratitude for his generosity.
He continued with this benevelonce and his most valuable gift to Lichfield was 12 acres of land at Beacon Park, given in 1943 to extend the recreation grounds and for use as a public park and garden. He died on 8 June 1948.
Swinfen-Broun left his estate to the Church and the City of Lichfield, and most of the land was sold off. Swinfen Hall was unoccupied for many years until 1987, when it was converted the main house into a hotel that closed in recent years.
Swinfen-Broun’s Barcaglia statue was sold at auction at Sotheby’s in London for £150,000 in 2008, as the council could no longer to provide it with a home that had suitable conditions to prevent its deterioration. ‘The Reading Girl’ is on display in the Hub at Saint Mary’s, Lichfield. And the Swinfen-Broun Clock is back in its place between the Guildhall and Donegal House on Bore Street in Lichfield.
Further Reading:
Angela Coulter, A Stream of Lives (London, Troubador, 2021)
Swinfen Hall, Staffordshire, Heritage Impact Assessment, Donald Insall Associates, Chartered Architects and Historic Building Consultants, for Bushell Investment Group, June 2023, < https://docs.planning.org.uk/20240806/49/SGVKPUJEIFG00/stmiyo4snp9j4bdi.pdf >
