Title:
SPERLING FAMILY OF DYNES HALL, GREAT MAPLESTEAD
Level: Category
Estate and Family records
Level: Fonds
SPERLING FAMILY OF DYNES HALL, GREAT MAPLESTEAD
Scope and Content:
The Sperling family acquired the Dynes Hall estate from the Bullock family in 1766. Their estates, which centred on Dynes Hall in Great Maplestead, extended into north Essex and Suffolk with outlying properties in Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and elsewhere. The collection includes the papers of other associated families, including those of the Piper, Van Hagen and Hart families. The Piper estates were centred around Lamarsh and Ashen and the family also owned property in Ireland. The Van Hagen family estates included Tickford Park in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghmshire and Brampton Place in Bexley, Kent.
The majority of the Sperling family papers were deposited by Mrs Barbara Gould, the daughter of C.F.D. Sperling, through her cousin, Miss D. Gibbons, and the Lincolnshire Record Office. The Van Hagen family papers passed to Charles Brogden Sperling on the death of his uncle, Frederick Luard Wollaston, who had acted as trustee for his sister-in-law, Harriett, widow of Henry Van Hagen, and as executor to her mother-in-law Elizabeth Clara, widow of Frederick Hendrick Van Hagen. The Hart family papers were deposited by Dr Tindal Hart, the great-grandson of the Revd. Robert Hart, curate of Great Maplestead and later vicar of Takelely, 1869-1896, and vicar of Greenstead Green, 1896-1904, who in 1867 married Mary Kate Sperling, the daughter of George and Charlotte Sperling of Dynes Hall, Great Maplestead.
This collection also includes the papers of the Revd. Thomas George Gibbons, who in 1890 marries Ethel Harriett Ellen Sperling, the daughter of Charles Brogden Sperling (see D/DGd F27). He was the vicar of Halstead, 1886-1899, and the vicar of Wickham Bishops, 1899-1907, and the collection includes a number of ecclesiastical records for these and other parishes. The papers were deposited through Miss D. Gibbons, the daughter of the Revd. T.G. Gibbons. The Revd. Gibbons inherited the Holton Park estate in Lincolnshire in the early twentieth century and subsequently changed his name to Dixon. The family papers for this estate were deposited in the Lincolnshire Record Office. The Essex portion of this collection was transferred to the Essex Record Office at the same time.
The papers of the Revd. T.G. Gibbons include those used by him to compile his Wickham Bishops Parish, 1899-1907 (1907), (copy in ERO Library). This material was also used by Sir Mordaunt Currie in his History of Wickham Bishops (1966) (see D/DGd Z43; another copy in ERO Library). Additional material for the history of Wickham Bishops was deposited by George S. Dixon, the son of the Revd. T.G. Gibbons in May 1965 (T/P 175), together with transcripts of parish registers (T/R 95) and other parish records (D/P 236). The papers of the Revd. T.G. Gibbons also include material for a proposed history of Halstead, which was never published. However an edition of William Holman's Historical Description of the parish and town of Halstead by T.G. Gibbons was published in 1902 (copy in ERO Library) (see also D/DGd Z42 for typescript copies of Holman's MS histories of Heybridge, Langford and Wickham Bishops).

Other collections in the Essex Record Office containing material on the Sperling family and their estates are as follows:
D/DQl Ledger of Henry and John Sperling of London, furriers, trading with businesses in Great Britain, Europe and the Levant, 1719-1758
D/DSe Correspondence, mainly 19th century, of Sperling family of Great Maplestead, including letters received by James Brogden, M.P., brother of Charles Sperling's mother-in-law, 1795-1872
T/A 249 Microfilm of Astle and Sperling family correspondence, 1788-c.1900
D/DAc 157-166 Particulars and other papers re Dynes Hall estate, 1585-1662
D/DSm M40-44 Manorial records of Dynes Hall, Hosdens and Caxtons, Great Maplestead, 1839-1923
D/DSm M45-50 Manorial records of Ballingdon within the Bridges, 1768-1914
D/DSm M51-53 Manorial records of Ballingdon and Barringtons Fee, 1768-1899
D/DSm T42-48 Deeds of Sperling estate, Great Maplestead, Sible Hedingham, Steeple Bumpstead and other parishes in Essex and Suffolk, 1651-1907
D/DK T36 Deeds including Dynes Hall, Great Maplestead, 1571-1739