Mary Augusta Wakefield 

Mary Augusta Wakefield is the most famous resident of Sedgwick -  a woman before her time. She was an enigmatic musician (a contralto and composer), author, suffragette and lecturer who is credited with being the founder of  England's  Competitive Music Festivals movement. She pioneered rural music education and founded the Mary Wakefield Festival in Kendal, which still takes place biennially.

​Mary was born into a wealthy Quaker family who had been established in Westmorland for at least at least six generations.
Roger Wakefield (born 1706) was the father of John Wakefield I (born 1738) who first made Sedgwick the family home when he built Old Sedgwick House close to where he had established the Sedgwick Gunpowder Company. His son, John II, and then grandson John III succeeded him and the family fortune grew with extensive banking, manufacturing and land-owning interests. John III’s only surviving son William Henry Wakefield was Mary’s father. William had been born at  Broughton Lodge, near Cartmel, May 18th, 1828 but was brought up at Sedgwick House. In 1850, while still a young man, he became a partner in Wakefield Crewdson & Co., the family bank.

In 1851, he married an Irish American - Miss Augusta Hagarty, daughter of Mr. James Hagarty, American Consul to Liverpool.

Mary's father was a “typical Wakefield, a man of quick decision and prompt action ; straightforward in speech and in dealing- ; undismayed by responsibility and unfailingly hospitable.” Although a busy business man, he found time for active open-air pursuits, and was known as a fine swimmer and skater, a first-rate whip and a fearless rider across country. He was also sincerely religious.  Mary's mother was a strong personality, with a sense of fun but a quiet sense of humour. ​

Mary's Grandfather John Wakefield III

Mary's Father William Henry Wakefield 

After their marriage, they lived in the Old Bank House in Stricklandgate, Kendal where William's great great grandfather Roger had started a money lending business which later became Wakefields Bank and then the Wakefield Crewdson Bank from 1840. 

It was at Bank House that Mary Wakefield was born, in August 1853. She was the second child but her older sister had died in infancy. Despite her ancestors not being particularly musical, her earliest memories were of being introduced to singing by the local women nurses employed as nurses by her parents   “singing a good deal by myself, between three and four years old, such songs as " Comin' thro' the Rye," " Jock o' Hazeldean," " The Lass o' Lowrie, " and many another Border ditty of like character.”

 In 1858, William Wakefield built himself a country house at Prizett, near Sedgwick, where the family lived for the next 10 years. Mary's great passion for music began to be realised by her mother, and one of the incidents which brought it home to her was the child's spending half a crown of her pocket money on the purchase of a violin. After some tuition, she made her first public performance playing the violin to her father's tenants at an audit dinner. She recalled " I have had many audiences since but never one more appreciative."  

She was remembered as  “a little girl bounding with health and spirits ; bubbling over with fun and the pure joy of living. Her rosy face, light brown curly hair and brilliant smile, form a picture that warms one's heart to look back upon. She was so joyous, frank and generous, and even in those early years, created an atmosphere of sunshine around her. She was free from all petty, self-centred traits of character : a truly delightful child, bright and intelligent beyond the average, and gifted with an unusual power of song and a keen musical instinct. "
Riding was one of Mary's chief joys and needlework her least favourite occupation. She received singing lessons from Mr Armstrong of Kendal. 

When, in 1866, Mary's grandfather, Mr. John Wakefield, passed away after a long illness, her father became senior partner in the Kendal Bank and inherited the Sedgwick property. He immediately set to work to rebuild the house, choosing a position on higher ground, surrounded by pleasant park-like grounds, and almost facing Prizett.

The growing family consisted of her father and mother, Mary and her siblings;  Ruth born in 1856,  John born in 1858, but who died in 1896, Jacob born in 1860, Minnie born in 1862, Agnes born in 1866 and William Henry born in 1870.

The Wakefields were reknowned for their hospitality and Mary was the life and soul of them all.  " Looking back on those years," says one of her sisters, " I see that all our fun emanated from Mary. On Sunday she would take us up to her ' tower-room ' and make us learn our hymns and collects. But her rule was light, and her buoyancy and good temper unfailing." ​ 

In 1869, when Mary was about sixteen she was sent to a Brighton "finishing" school. Here, she was able to become immersed in a much wider range of musical experiences and had access top quality music teaching working under Mr. Kuhe for the piano and Signer Meccatti, an Italian singing teacher. It was in Brighton that she first heard the famous opera singer Patti, describing her as " a thing always to be remembered, for surely hers is the most wonderful throat in the world." She also remembered meeting  Guilio Regondi a guitar vertuoso of the early Romatic Period.​

​
​She returned to Sedgwick before she was eighteen to enjoy the lifestyle of a privileged wealthy family - enjoying her "luxurious" country home and all the pleasures and sports it afforded her. 

​The stables at Sedgwick, were crowded with horses and ponies of all kinds, and all the children followed their father in their keen love of riding and driving. But none of them surpassed Mary as a "whip". She was equally at home with a tandem or a single horse, and until her health began to fail in the last few years of her life, she was seen out in all weathers, especially when visiting local choirs or just enjoying the landscape. 

But her passion for music was ever-growing. In 1873 she made her first proper public appearance at a local hospital charity concert; she sang two songs then much in vogue; Sullivan's " Once Again " and Virginia Gabriel's " Sad heart, now take thy rest." Everyone who remembers her singing in the early 'seventies agree that even before she was twenty she had a remarkably beautiful voice, rich, warm and seductive in quality, and exceptionally round in tone for so young a woman.

She began writing her own songs and became involved in organising charity concerts in the local area. As early as 1875, Mary sang a song of her own entitled " O, the Sun it shone fair," at a concert which she organised for the funds of Crosscrake Church. The occasion was memorable to Westmorland folk for the first appearance among them of Mary's close friend the French lyricist Maude Valerie White, a prize-winning student at the Royal Academy ot Music and who became one of the most successful songwriters of the Victorian period.

​Later in the decade, a broken romance led Mary to be permitted by her father to seek solace in London where she was able to pursue her musical interests further. She began studying under Professor Randegger (left), a prominent Italian composer, conductor and singing teacher, best known for promoting opera and new works of British music in England and for his widely used textbook on singing technique. This  led to her meeting the popular musicians and writers of the time.

​She soon became an accompished performer, who was in high demand and part of an elite and influential set of musicians and artists. She began performing all over England and was in high demand at charity concerts as well as  writing her own musical compostions and adapting the work of others.

​At this time, she also studied the piano and violin when she was in London, but she frequently returned to her beloved Sedgwick House. At the time it was described as "a remarkably beautiful modern house, at once imposing and home-like, and almost ideally planned for musical purposes."  Rosa Newmarch, Mary Wakefield's biographer describes the House at length and paints a vivid 
"One enters almost immediately into a great square hall, open up to the full height of the house, with a huge fireplace, and walls hung for the most part with portraits of the family. The wide staircase on the lefthand leads to the first floor, round which runs a four-sided corridor, or gallery, into which open the chief bedrooms of the house. Other rooms there are on the ground floor : a dining-room commensurate with Wakefield notions of hospitality, and spacious drawing-rooms. But the great hall was the scene of those musical gatherings that were such a distinguishing feature of the life at Sedgwick. There stood  the grand piano at which Mary Wakefield, Maude Valerie White, and other friends spent many delightful hours. The height and spaciousness of the hall made it an admirable place to sing in. When the musicians gathered there, the guests and the family, and generally some of the servants too, would collect quietly at the best points of vantage in the surrounding gallery. Mary's fine, warm voice rang through the hall, and the tones ascended and were lost in the raftered ceiling above. It was like hearing her sing in the nave of some cathedral.
The hall was the place where Mr. and Mrs. Wakefield loved to gather a big house-party, supplemented by guests from the neighbourhood, and to hold gay festivity. Improvised concerts and theatricals were of frequent occurrence, and among the visitors who took part in them were many well-known amateurs of the day, and not a few professionals. Signer Randegger irreverently referred to by the young people as " Ran," tout court, was often at Sedgwick. Sir William then Mr. Cusins, and Herr Franke, who had been associated with Wilhelmji in organizing the Wagner Concerts at the Albert Hall in 1877, were also guests in the autumn of 1878.
Besides the hall there is another room at Sedgwick which will always remain as it were impregnated with the atmosphere of Mary's presence : the room which is associated with her hours of study, and perhaps also with her dreams of a wider activity and fame than circumstances permitted her to realize. From a door in the gallery which I have described, a winding stone staircase led up to the small room, with windows looking in three directions over the park-like grounds of Sedgwick, which she chose to make her sanctum. There she kept her books, and hung her favourite pictures; although unlike the ladies of medieval times, whose turret-chambers were perched high above the din and dust of dining-hall and courtyard, I am quite sure that Mary never solaced her quiet hours with tapestry-work or delicate broidery. The door of this room is decorated after the style in vogue thirty years ago, with hand-painted panels, the work of her sister Ruth (Mrs. Goodwin). The days of amateur decorations have long since fled, but this door remains and will probably always be allowed to remain untouched for the sake of the apt quotations inscribed on it : " Here will live sit and let the sound of music creep in our ears ; " " And music shall untune the skies."picture...​

Mary had a Steinway upright piano hoisted into her favourite "Tower Room" and it was there that she spent many hours and days producing her best artistic works. She became well-known for her arrangements and compositions which became major "hits" of the time. The tower became known as the "The Tower of Music"

In 1881. Reverend Hardwicke Drummond - the eminent Priest, poet, local politician and co-founder of the National Trustwas a frequent vistor and was so inspired by what he called was "the little room, the centre of the musical life not only of Sedgwick, but of a large and ever-increasing district" that he wrote a poem about it: 

THE TOWER OF SONG.

When I am weary of the fret and jar
The tuneless rush of life's o'erwhelming tide,
I say unto my soul come thou aside
And climb the tower where rest and music are.
Thence, while the Torrent murmurs from afar,
My fancy borne on swallow wings may glide,
And, bound for Heaven, my hopes can venture wide
​O'er seas of darkness lit from star to star.
here on the morrow, when the lark awakes
Upward he soars; his little shadow moves
Across my room, a fluttering phantom song :
A thousand memories of forgotten loves
Sound from the pictured wall he floats along,
​Loud with a thousand tunes my morning breaks. ​

​It was from Sedgwick that she began her tours of the country, singing in charity concerts - including at Lambeth Palace. In 1877, she met Rosa Newmarch, a woman who would become a lifelong friend and her biographer. She also began travelling abroard - her first trip was to Paris with friends, where she visited the Louvre.

 
​In February 1878, she embarked on a long trip to Rome, travelling via Paris, Marseilles and Genoa, with her father, mother and brother Jacob. Whilst in Rome, she attended singing and piano lessons and began performing at charity concerts. At one of these concerts - at the Palazzo Odescalchi in Rome, one of the songs she sang was her own adaptation of Swinbourne's poem "Maytime in winter" - click on the music sheet to hear it played.

In the audience was author and painter, Anne Crawford, the Baroness von Rabe, who was amazed by her performance and wrote....
It had an Orphic, divine intensity: There is something Bacchante-like in her singing. She seems to pour out her voice as though it were a generous wine. […] We were all quite wild about her. […] All the sober, steady-going English people clapped and stamped for an encore to her Buononcini song – and I felt, in the perfect peace of listening to perfect singing, as though my weary journey were quite repaid. Her voice is marvellous in its wonderfully even quality. The notes linger on the air like the tones of a finely-vibrating stringed instrument.
Crawford also described her as  ‘glorious exuberant creature’, a sort of goddess or priestess of flesh and blood, able to arouse the normally staid expatriate audience through her ‘crowning gift’ of music.

Mary's fame grew and not just because of her seductive voice. Two years after the concert in Rome,  one of her own compositions No Sir!, became an extraordinary ‘hit’ which within months had made her famous. She based the song on a tune sung to her by an American governess, completing the music and the words for herself. The song was published in 1879 by Messrs. Paterson of Edinburgh and by 1881,  it had reached every strata of society and a version entitled " Yes Lord " became very popular with the Salvation Army. It was not surprising that she was tempted to follow up her success, for publishers were now ready and anxious to bring out her lyrics. Its follow up, Yes Sir!, appeared a year later, and was succeeded by dozens more songs, some of them collaborations with other popular composers of the day,  including "Yes Sir," "A Bunch of Cowslips," " May time in Midwinter," " More and More," or " Beyond all, thine," " Love's Service," "Shaking Grass," " You may," " Moonspell," "Serenade," "For Love's sake only," "Life time and Love time," "Sweet Sally Gray," "Lass and Lad," "Leafy June," "Nancy," "Courting Days," "After Years," "Little Roundhead Maid," "Shearing-day," "When the Boys come home," and "The Children are Singing." 

However, a career as a performer on stage was not deemed appropriate for the time - especially by her father, but this did not stop him welcoming her new friends to Sedgwick House, which became the hub of Mary's social and working life.

Her relationship with  Maude Valerie White, (left) had become extremely close. Maude was a constant visitor at Sedgwick, where she had her own room in the lower story of the tower.  Several of her best songs, including- " Absent yet present,'' were written at Sedgwick. Mary and Maude Valerie White took part in many concerts together all over the country. Another musical friend who visited Sedgwick was Mr. J. A. Fuller Maitland, who became musical critic of the Times. The gifted family of Robertsons were also among her musical friends.   She also formed a life-long friendship with  Rhoda Broughton (right), the controversial homoerotic Welsh writer. ​

​
​In 1884 and back in Rome, she met the Norwegian composer Grieg - she spent a great deal of time with him and his wife, singing many of his songs and recieved an album  from him in which he wrote " Mary Wakefield with my best thanks for her beautiful songs. Edward Grieg. Roma. 1887."

Later that year, mary first met the actress Marion Terry (right)  and her sister Ellen, the most famous shakespearian actress of her time. Her very close friendship with Marion would be one that lasted for the rest of her life. Marion was another frequent visitor to Sedgwick, often accompanying Mary on long drives across country. ​

Her circle of fashionable friends grew... By 1881, she was a favourite of the Duke of Westminster who placed Grosvenor House at her service for holding concerts. In 1882 Mary was introduced to  Violet Paget  (who is most remembered  for her supernatural fiction and her work on aesthetics under her pseudonym Vernon Lee) by the novelist Mrs Humphry Ward.​ While Lee initially appears to have been reticent, even caustic about Wakefield, describing her in a letter to her mother as ‘fat’ and ‘grotesque’, she did warm to her greatly. In a later letter, she states that Wakefield was ‘a strange puzzle to me, but attractive with the attractiveness of extreme individuality’ and sang ‘like four & twenty seraphs’.

Unable to pursue a career on stage, she poured her love of music into making it more available to local people in rural communities. In 1884, she wrote an article for the Musical Times in which she explained her desire to encourage local, amateur music. She founded and trained a number of choirs in the villages around Kendal and together with her sister Agnes, brought them together for the first time in 1885 to take part in a ‘Singing Competition’ held at Sedgwick House to raise money for Crosscrake Church. This was the first Wakefield Festival, but her plans were far more ambitious and radical. The festival, she hoped, would inspire a national movement, so that music would become ‘an integral part’ of the nation’s social life - she said "if ‘music as a serious art is ever to be appreciated and understood as it is in Germany, the formation of an educated, enlightened public is the first requisite’.  

The festival's popularity quickly grew, mainly due to Mary and Agnes's dedicated work - Mary would travel, night after night, in all  weather, to visit choirs to "infuse into their members something of her own tremendous enthusiasm."  "Her personality was so charming, so captivating, she made us all do what she wanted. How the choirs loved her ! There were no rehearsals like hers."  

The Wakefield Family built a hall in the village to accomodate the festival as it grew - the building is now the Village Hall.

Early in September, 1886, Mary and Marion Terry spent some weeks togetherat the Palazzo Barbaro in Venice and they were joined there by Vernon Lee.   Whilst she was there, Lee wrote and dedicated her short ghost story ‘A Wicked Voice’ (1887) to Mary. (click here to read it)  The dedication reads: ‘To M. W. In remembrance of the last song at Palazzo Barbaro, Chi ha inteso, intenda [Whoever has understood, let him understand]. The story is believed to include many references to Wakefield and her acquaintances. 

Another close friendship was with John Ruskin, the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, philosopher, prominent social thinker and philanthropist, whom she had first met in 1876 in Oxford. Ruskin was a neighbour, having bought Brantwood at Coniston in 1871. He visited Sedgwick House in 1876 and began writing to Mary's mother and Mary shortly after.  Their letters shed much light on Ruskin's life. During periods of his ill health Mary visited Ruskin at Brantwood and the tone of the letters which changed from " Dear Miss Wakefield " into " My dear Mary," and  " ever your affectionate, Ruskin." demonstrates their growing friendship. They shared a love of flowers - the Wakefields even grew specimen plants for Ruskin's botanical studies and Mary was able to share her love of music with him. 

Mary, continued to performed as singer all over the country, but always returned to Sedgwick, until 1889, when tragedy struck.

Her Father, William had suffered from a heart condition for the previous 8 years, but had recovered enough to participate in the local Hunt. At the end of the hunt, having dismounted his horse to catch the hare, he collapsed, dying instantly from an aneurysm . He was buried in the graveyard at Crosscrake, at  the church which the family had helped rebuild using money from Mary's first festival. Mary's brother Jacob inherited Sedgwick House and Mary moved out with her widowed mother and sisters, to another family house at Eggerslack, Grange-over-Sands. 

She was now a woman in the late thirties, master - or mistress of her own destiny, and still possessed of a very fine voice. It was too late to think of a career as a concert, or operatic, singer, but her experience in many branches of music and her wish to spread the knowledge and appreciation of national melodies to the public, led her to her to come up with the then innovative idea of giving self-illustrated lecture-recitals  She began by giving a farewell lecture on the eve of leaving Sedgwick. It was a great success... " No one was more surprised," she said, " than I was myself at the popularity of it a year later." 

For the next ten years, giving these lecture-recitals  became her profession. Through an agent, she offered such topics as  English National Melody, Scotch National Melodies. Irish National Melodies. Shakespeare's Songs and their Musical Settings. Songs of Four Nations (England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales). The Songs of Schubert. The Songs of Schumann. The Song's of Handel. Madrigal Time. A " Jubilee " Lecture on Victorian Song. She also expanded the subject of English National Melody, into four exhaustive and scholarly lectures which were sub-divided into : I. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Centuries. The Monks and Minstrels. II. English Melody under Elizabeth, including contemporary settings of some of Shakespeare's Songs. III. English Melody in the i7th Century. Cavaliers and Roundheads. Two Great Song Writers. IV. English Melody in the i8th Century. Musicians and the Folk. 

Meanwhile, from its small beginnings at Sedgwick House, the music festival Mary had started, had grown to become an established event on the musical calendar. Each succeeding year saw the movement further advanced as more choirs and villages joined in. The festival hosted massed choirs, which would perform some of the greatest works in the choral repertoire, and Mary encouraged the performance of the works of many contemporary composers such as Arthur Somervell (1863-1937), Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912). 

By the 6th Festival in 1891, there were 635 competitors. By 1892 it was estimated that there had been over 2,500 competitors and by the tenth anniversary festival in 1895, at least 10,200 vocalists and instrumentalists had taken part in the annual contest at Kendal. This pioneering work establishing the Wakefield Festival at Sedgwick House had also inspired an ever increasing number of similar events  all over the country and before long, a national movement had begun.  An ‘Association of Musical Competition Festivals’ was formed, which, according to the Musical Standard, spread the ‘festival movement over the whole country’. 49 other festivals set up due to Mary's lead, were held in 1904.

When her mother died in 1894, and after a period of travelling to Bayreuth,where she saw Richard Wagner's opera  Parsifal and the Bavarian Highlands, Mary resumed her lecture-recital tours, living in her flat in London. However, by April 1895 she returned to the area when she made Nutwood, a house in Grange-over-Sands with a fine garden and views of Morecambe Bay and the Cumberland and Westmorland hills her home.  (see picture, right) 

​She lived there very happily with her companion, the writer Valentine Munro Ferguson. Both women shared a love of music and both were early supporters of the female suffrage movement. Sadly, this  period of happiness did not last very long, because after an acute illness, Valentine died  at Nutwood in 1897.  ​

​After a visit to Italy, Mary settled back to a solitary life at Nutwood in 1898, but soon after, she met Stella Hamilton, of Windermere, who became her close companion for the rest of her life. Stella became Mary's assistant and in addition to continuing to organise the Wakefield Festival, together they landscaped the garden at Nutwood. They both supported the Women's Suffrage movement and Stella became a keen photographer, many of her pictures from this time, feature in Mary's biography. 

​In 1909, Mary published her book - Cartmel Priory and Stetches of North Lonsdale which features many of Stella's photographs. 

In 1900, Mary Wakefield retired from the role of the conductor of the festival and became its president. Its name changed from the Wakefield Festival to the Westmorland Musical Festival to prevent it being confused with the festival held in the Yorkshire town. Mary, remained active in supporting performers and by 1904 the Festival had become an event of such importance that it appointed Sir Henry Wood as its conductor and he performed alongside the Queen's Hall Orchestra offering "the dwellers in the rural districts of Westmorland" the opportunity to hear "one or two symphonic works performed in first-rate style during their Festival- week".   Wood's association continued as the Wakefield Festival grew - in the picture below he is seen conducting at the twentieth anniversary concert in 1905. ​

In 1903 and 1904, Mary spent long periods of time in Italy nursing Stella after a illness but returned home when her own health caused concern. She suffered from neuritus and rheumatic fever. Despite this, Mary continued to support the Festival committee and attend events. In 1906  the Festival was attended by Princess Christian, Queen Victoria's Daughter. 

Over the next few years, she spent the winter months in London, enjoying the company of her friends, amongst them the composer Sibelius, and attending musical events. But during the summer, she returned to Nutwood until in 1909, her health problems forced her to stay in London where she lived in a flat in Carlisle Mansions. By the summer of 1910, she had rallied and was well enough to travel back to Nutwood where she was able to be taken around her favourite countryside and receive visits from her many friends. But by the autum her health failed for the last time and she died on Friday, September 16th, 1910. 
On the following Monday she was laid to rest beside her father and mother in the little churchyard at Crosscrake, for the rebuilding of which she had sung and worked years before in the Sedgwick times. She was carried to her grave by the conductors of the various choirs belonging to the Westmorland Festival ; while representatives from each district formed the choir that took part in the funeral service. 

In 1911, Stella Hamilton proposed  that the Association of Musical Competition Festivals create medals bearing a portrait of Mary, to commemorate her contribution to the movement with which she was so strongly associated. Funds were raised for a Mary Wakefield medal to be awarded as a prize at the festival. The medal bore the image of Wakefield,  a picture of a lyre set into a frieze of roses, and the words of Martin Luther: ‘Music is a fair and glorious gift from God’.

The Festival she founded was renamed The Mary Wakefield Festival and became ever more popular - especially with children's junior choirs and young music makers.

The Crosthwaite WI choir and School Choir champions c 1970

The Festival is still held every two years in Kendal where a plaque commemorates her life and work. ​

Information taken from 
MARY WAKEFIELD – A MEMOIR BY ROSA NEWMARCH ML  1912
Introducing Mary Wakefield