The Harrison Family of Poulton & Horncastle, Lincs.
As you enter St Chad’s through the door leading from the Market Place you will see on the opposite wall this large memorial tablet to members of the Harrison family, which was restored by Pat Allouis.
Who were the Harrisons, where were they from, why did some of them move to Lincolnshire, and who erected the memorial in St Chad’s?

The above family tree shows a little of their ancestry. ❶ John and ❷ Edward Harrison were brothers, sons of Richard and Agnes Harrison of Bankfield in Singleton, marked ❸ in the family tree. They were both baptised at Kirkham parish church, John in 1753 and Edward in 1759. Richard Harrison was the grandson of ❹ Doctor Cuthbert Harrison (1626-1681), who was both a physician and, for a time, an early Presbyterian minister who preached at a chapel in Elswick, before finally making a permanent home for the family at Bankfield, close to the River Wyre in Little Singleton.
John and Edward were also brothers to ❺ William Harrison, whose daughter Elizabeth married Giles Thornber of Poulton, both recorded in our web page for the Thornber Family (see link to this article). Elizabeth’s sister Agnes married Poulton curate Robert Bowness, but died shortly after the death of their son Robert Harrison Bowness, who became one of Poulton’s most significant doctors.
John and Edward’s sister Margaret was married to another William Harrison, the son of their father’s brother Joseph and therefore their cousin.
John Harrison married Ellen Bickerstaffe around 1780. Five children were born to them the youngest Margaret dying in 1790 shortly before her first birthday. Their mother Ellen died six months later on September 20th 1790, leaving John with four young children aged between 3 and 9 years. John’s brother, Edward Harrison, had trained as a doctor in Edinburgh and had moved from Poulton to Horncastle in Lincolnshire.
On September 24th 1790, just four days after the death of his sister-in-law Ellen, Edward returned to Poulton to marry Ellen’s sister Margaret at St Chad’s. After their marriage Edward and Margaret went to live in Horncastle.
When John Harrison died in 1796 his three remaining children aged 15, 11 and 9 were orphaned. In his will he had instructed his executors, William Harrison, his brother-in-law and cousin, and John Bonney of Blackpool, to ensure the ”maintenance, education and support of his children”. A decision was made to send them to Horncastle where they grew up in the household of their uncle and aunt, Edward and Margaret Harrison.

What attracted Edward Harrison to make the move from Poulton to Horncastle is uncertain, but he was a contemporary of another surgeon with close Poulton associations, John Hull MD (1761-1843) – father of one-time Poulton vicar, also named John Hull. Both seem to have studied in London under the Hunter brothers, John and William, Harrison following up his studies in Paris whilst Hull studied in Leyden. This level of training went far beyond that of most of their contemporaries who were locally-taught surgeon-apothecaries; they were both pioneers in their chosen profession. Their skills most likely attracted the rich and famous to be their clients, possibly explaining why Edward Harrison appears to have become involved with two major figures of the day. The family of Alfred Lord Tennyson hailed from a small group of villages in the Lincolnshire Wolds and Edward Harrison MD appears to have been the family physician, dealing with the recurring bouts of depression which afflicted several members of the Tennyson family. Tennyson family papers and letters record the high regard in which the family held Edward Harrison.

Also in Horncastle at the time was Sir Joseph Banks, explorer and botanist, President of the Royal Society, appointed by the King to set up Kew Botanical Gardens and companion of Captain Cook on his voyages to Australasia. Banks had a house in Horncastle and a family home at nearby Revesby Abbey. It seems likely that Harrison would have served as Banks’ physician. The Horncastle Dispensary, of which Joseph Banks was the president, was established by public subscription in December 1789 next door to the workhouse and was served for more than thirty years, from 1791 if not before, by Edward Harrison. Patients came to the Dispensary from as far away as Boston, Grantham and Lincoln. From 1804 to 1821 Harrison had a private lunatic asylum where he lived in West Street. He was involved in the formation of the Lincolnshire Benevolent Medical Society in 1804 and was its first President.

Edward died a widower in 1838 at his home in Cavendish Square London and was buried in St Mary’s church Horncastle, where the family are commemorated by a plaque on the south side of the centre aisle recording that Edward is buried there with his wife Margaret and the three children of his late brother John.

Postscript
There are other noteworthy Poulton-based members of the Harrison family. Elizabeth Harrison, who is mentioned above, married Giles Thornber, and they both appear on our Thornber Family page.
As also mentioned, Elizabeth’s sister Agnes married Poulton curate Robert Bowness. His duties and significance were enhanced because of the frequent absences of the vicars between 1810 and 1835, Nathaniel Hinde followed by Charles Hesketh. Rev. Bowness and his wife were also the parents of Doctor Robert Harrison Bowness.
Another significant person was Richard Harrison, who succeeded George Shaw as the town’s vicar on 6th October 1674, and was buried in February 1714. He is believed to have been a cousin of Doctor Cuthbert Harrison, but possibly not a first cousin. The position of vicar remained vacant for eight months until the appointment of Timothy Hall in October 1714.
Sources, acknowledgements, and later edits
This article was posted in an earlier form on our website, probably about 2004, with no stated author. Some of my own research has allowed me to make a few additions to these biographies, particularly that the family was descended from Doctor Cuthbert Harrison, a 17th century physician and sometime Presbyterian minister who installed his family at Bankfield, in Little Singleton by the River Wyre. As Edward Harrison, one of the main subjects of the article, was a pioneering surgeon, we can see a strong connection between the two generations.
The earlier article suggested that William Harrison, the brother-in-law of John Harrison, was probably the father of Elizabeth (Thornber), but Elizabeth’s father was actually John’s brother, also named William. The brother-in-law has now been identified as John’s paternal cousin, William Harrison, who married John’s sister Margaret in the same year that John’s brother, also named William, had married Mary Tennant; Mary was not only the mother of Giles Thornber’s wife Elizabeth, but also of Agnes, wife of Poulton curate Robert Bowness and mother of Doctor Robert Harrison Bowness. Mary’s father, Richard Tennant, was buried at St Chad’s in 1760, and his grave is unusually inscribed in Latin.
A Wikipedia article on Edward Harrison states, without citing its source, that he trained in London with two famous brothers named John and William Hunter, where he quite possibly met Doctor John Hull of Poulton and Manchester who trained at the same college. Although I cannot cite evidence for this, it seems likely that both men’s careers were carved out with the College of Surgeons in London, and I have added this in my update of the earlier version of the article.
The FamilySearch website of the Church of Latter-day Saints provided confirmation of the complex family tree of the Harrison family.
I have traced a gravestone for John Harrison in the West part of St Chad’s churchyard alongside Ball Street, which may be the John Harrison of this article.
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography includes a 2007 biography on Edward Harrison MD by Doctor Irvine Loudon (1924-2015), a revised and corrected version of his original biography published in 2004. Our own previous website article alluded to the preparation of this biography. Incidentally, a biography of Doctor John Hull appears in the same dictionary.
Ian Upward, 31 August 2024