Christian, Roy: A knight to remember in the Christian family

Roy Christian: A knight to remember in the Christian family

Maxwell Craven pays tribute to Derby historian Roy Christian who died, aged 92. He mentioned that he had some illustrious ancestors, including the mutineer Fletcher Christian. Here, he expands on some of his less notorious but equally interesting relatives, which included four admirals, 11 vicars, some colonial administrators and a knight.

ON Tuesday I wrote about the irreplaceable Roy Christian, including his Manx origins. What I failed to mention was that he was no newcomer, for his family have lived in Derbyshire since 1875 and, as such, deserve a mention.

Roy himself was born on October 8, 1914, and was sent to Derby School, along with his brother, Garth, who was a writer of note.

Their father was the Rev Frederick Ewan Christian, who married the daughter of the vicar of Riddings and later took over the parish from 1913-1930, followed by St John’s, Derby, and Stanley.

Roy also had two sisters and two other brothers, one of whom was killed in the First World War. Reginald, the eldest, was registrar of the county courts at Alfreton and Ilkeston. His wife, Alice, was the daughter of a Strelley of Oakerthorpe.

The Christian family came to Derbyshire when the Rev Frederick White Christian was appointed vicar of South Wingfield in 1875.

He was the son of Hugh Christian, who lived at Bilton Hall in Yorkshire, but later came to live with Frederick in South Wingfield and died there. Hugh was a grandson of Admiral Sir Hugh Cloberry Christian KCB.

Admiral Sir Hugh was from a branch of the Christians who lived in Milntown on the Isle of Man and Ewanrigg Hall in Cumberland.

His father was a third-generation ship owner at Liverpool who had turned privateer – “pirate” might not be too strong a term!

He purchased the Hook Norton estate in Oxfordshire on the strength of having captured “several Spanish galleons”.

The Admiral made the family aptitude for the sea “legit” , for he had a good war, ending up as a KB in 1796 and Commander-in-Chief of Good Hope.

It must be a trait in the Christian family, which certainly re-emerged in Roy, that modesty will always prevail over grandeur.

The Admiral fought no less than eight successful actions in the West Indies against the French during the American War of Independence.

He took St Lucia from a strong French defence in a spectacular action in 1797 before heading for the Cape.

For his actions, he was created a peer, Lord Ronaldsway, but died unexpectedly in late November 1798, aged 51, before the news had reached him.

His elder son, Hood Christian, was named after Admiral Lord Hood, his godfather and a close friend of Sir Hugh’s, but he turned out to be precocious in the extreme, entering the Navy in 1792 at the age of eight.

Even more astonishingly, he was made Commander RN in 1800 at 16, having commanded “a division of boats” under a member of my family, Capt Richard Craven RN, at the siege of Genoa.

He, too, ended up an Admiral but, after a life crammed with action, never got round to assuming his father’s peerage. No member of the family has laid claim to it subsequently, although the eligibility to bear it passed to Roy Christian’s nephew, Richard, 10th in succession to the Admiral, in 1946.

In the meantime, an Earldom of Ronaldsway in Orkney was granted in 1892 to Laurence Dundas, along with the Marquessate of Zetland.

What other family would have passed up such an opportunity to be a peer and partake in the legislature through two centuries?

Mind you, they were pretty grand at that time, for two of Hood’s sisters married very superior continental noblemen – General Baron von Hompesch, premier baron of Austria, and the Dutchman, Count Willem Bylandt.

Another member of the family was the renowned Victorian architect, Ewan Christian, president of the RIBA in the 1880s and architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.

He was no stranger to Derbyshire, designing the church at Somercotes in 1852 and carrying out the impeccable restoration of Bonsall parish church a decade later.

Being architect to the Commissioners seems to have been a bit of a family fiefdom, for he was succeeded in the post by his nephew, J H Christian, and he by his brother-in-law, J L Pearson.

In all, there have been 10 Naval officers in the Christian family, four of them admirals, 11 parsons and innumerable colonial administrators, including a grandson of Admiral Hugh who perished with his wife and daughters in the Indian mutiny.

We are lucky that we had a branch of the family long settled in Derbyshire.

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