The Authorized Version

I left our Very Private Public Breakfast a bit early, still in full Regency rig, to join my friend Brenda Cox on a research expedition. Globe-trotting Brenda is an acknowledged expert on Christianity in the Georgian period and her book Fashionable Goodness is a goldmine of information on the subject. She has set up a jam-packed day for us visiting the significant Hannah More sites in the West Country near Bristol.

Map created with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Fishponds

The knowledgeable driver Brenda has arranged through Celtic Horizons whisks us first to the historic school building in Fishponds Park where More was born in 1745. She was the fourth of five daughters for the headmaster and his wife. From this humble beginning Hannah More became the most influential female philanthropist of her day.

As the blue plaque over the door of the school says: “Hannah More 1745-1833, Christian educationalist, writer, and anti-slavery campaigner was born in the master’s house of this charity school. Built 1728.”

At the back we found a sign marking the very room,

and the door of the Master’s House.

We summoned the courage to knock on the door and an elderly gentleman, the current resident, kindly welcomed us in. He showed us his More mementos, including an engraving of her parents hanging on the fireplace of the beamed sitting room,

a picture of Hannah writing, propped appropriately in the corner of a desk,

and the stairway up to the room where she was born.

Successful Author

In 1785 Jacob More established a boarding school for girls in Bristol. His two oldest daughters Mary and Elizabeth ran the school and Hannah was a student and later taught there as well. While a pupil she wrote her first play, which her sister starred in.

She went on to write plays for the London theatre under the sponsorship of David Garrick. She gained wide recognition with her tragedy Percy (1777), which was produced at Covent Garden.

More also achieved early success with her poetry. The Bleeding Rock and The Inflexible Captive reflected her flair for moral and sentimental themes.  

Clapham Sect

During her extended stays in London More became involved with the Clapham Sect of Evangelical Christians. Their passion for changing society through moral and spiritual reform aligned with her own inclinations and her life focus changed. Her Essays on Various Subjects, Principally Designed for Young Ladies (1777) offered practical and moral guidance, cementing her reputation as a serious and influential writer. It was perhaps a bit like Fordyce’s Sermons which Mr. Collins insisted on reading to the Bennet sisters, but it significantly influenced the education and moral outlook of young women in late 18th and early 19th century England. 

In 1787 More met William Wilberforce, a prominent member of the Clapham Sect. She shared his passionate opposition to the slave trade and became one of his most important supporters. She wrote her poem 'Slavery' as part of his campaign to achieve abolition.

Cowslip Green

More gained financial independence through her writing and bought Cowslip Green cottage in Somerset in 1784. Her younger sister Patty ran the household and other sisters joined them.

Wilberforce visited Hannah More at Cowslip Green and they toured the West Country together. They were both shocked by the ignorance and moral conditions they found in the rural villages. She later wrote that she found people in Cheddar “without any sense of religion; poor, dirty, and almost naked.”

Charity Schools

Wilberforce urged her to start schools for poor children and supported her endeavors financially. Hannah set about the project with her usual vigor. She and her sisters set up schools that taught reading, sewing, hygiene, the Bible, and moral lessons, carefully structured to align with Anglican doctrine and to avoid accusations of promoting dissent or revolution (important in the tense post-French Revolution atmosphere).

So, Brenda and I were off to see what survived of Hannah More’s schools. Our drive under Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Clifton Suspension Bridge

and on through Cheddar Gorge was simply stunning—unlike any terrain I had ever seen in all my travels around England.

Authorities disagree, but this is as close as I can come to a chronology of the schools started by Hannah More:

Cheddar – 1789

Brent - 1789

Shipham – 1790

Rowberrow – 1790

Congresbury – 1791

Axbridge -- 1791

Yatton – 1791

Nailsea – 1791

Churchill – 1791

Sandford –1791

Winscombe – 1791

Wrington - 1791

Blagdon – 1795

Brislington - -1796

Wedmore – 1798

Banwell - -1799

Because many poor children worked during the week the More sisters often established Sunday Schools—which were particularly controversial. In site of sometimes severe opposition, however, the schools educated thousands of children, most of whom would otherwise have remained illiterate.

Educating Girls

More was especially concerned about the lack of education for girls and worked to provide them with opportunities to learn alongside boys. Her goal was to prepare young women for domestic service or to be industrious wives and mothers. While she did not advocate for academic education for the poor in the modern sense, she broke ground by promoting moral worth and practical usefulness over ignorance or idleness.

The More sisters began with the school at Cheddar in 1789. The Hannah More House there was not her personal residence, but a schoolhouse and possibly accommodation for the teacher. Today the heritage structure is available to rent from the Parish Council.

“The snug” is furnished in period style:

and the house contains an interesting array of mementos including a charming china replica and early photograph of the house as it would have looked originally.

More began a Sunday School in an anteroom upstairs over the stable in the Nailsea Tithe Barn. The barn was built in 1485 to house produce such as fruit, cider, and eels when people paid their tithes in kind. This was used to feed some 2,000 poor people annually. The building served as a church from 1650-1700 and Hannah More began her school there in 1791.

Photos Brenda Cox

We also visited the Hannah More House in Blagdon which she established as a school in 1795. One of the teachers at this school was the center of the “Blagdon Controversy” when he was accused of Methodism. A series of attacks on More followed. As a result, she suffered depression and nervous collapse and for a while was unable to write.

The next year, however, More started her school at Keeper’s Cottage Brislington in continuation of the educational mission she enunciated in one of her Cheap Repository Tracts (1795): “Teach the poor to read their Bible, and you will make them better Christians, better servants, better subjects.”

Final Years

In 1801 More built a lovely home at Barley Wood where she lived with her sisters until 1829.

Photo Brenda Cox

Here Hannah More continued to write for all levels of society. She produced small affordable tracts for the many poor people who were learning to read as well as books that challenged the upper classes to get more serious about their faith--including those educating Princess Charlotte. 

She also wrote her only novel Coelebs in Search of a Wife in1808. Jane Austen wrote to her sister Cassandra, “You have by no means raised my curiosity after Caleb. My disinclination for it before was affected, but now it is real. I do not like the evangelicals. Of course I shall be delighted when I read it, like other people; but till I do I dislike it.”

A decade later Jane wrote to Cassandra after calling on their neighbor in Chawton: “They are all reading with delight Mrs. H. More’s recent publication.” This was Practical Piety a guide to Christian living. Its emphasis was on moral behavior, personal responsibility, and the cultivation of a life that is dedicated to religious faith and good works. It reflects Hannah More’s strong beliefs and her desire to promote a life of virtue, especially for women in her time. The book was a bestseller.

In 1814, however, Jane wrote to her niece Fanny Knight, “I am by no means convinced that we ought not all to be Evangelicals, and am at least persuaded that they who are so from Reason and Feeling must be happiest and safest.”

More, who never wavered in her evangelical convictions, also remained active in the anti-slavery movement and continued to work with William Wilberforce.

When she learned that her Barley Woods servants had been cheating her Hannah moved to Windsor Terrace, Clifton, Bristol.

She remained at Clifton until her death. Both Hannah More and William Wilberforce died in 1833 (surviving just long enough to know that the act to abolish slavery in the British empire, for which they had worked so hard, had finally been passed). She was buried next to her sisters in the yard of All Saints Church, Wrington, not far from their old home at Barley Wood.

The Road Home

With our heads full of Hannah More and her incredible accomplishments in so many fields of endeavor, we turn back toward Bath. With the help of our Celtic Horizons driver, however, Brenda has 2 final surprises for me. First, a lovely, quiet interlude in the grounds of Wells Cathedral enjoying the serenity and beauty of the long evening shadows across the close,

including the Bishop's Palace and moat.

And finally, a quick whiz along the back side of Glastonbury Tor in a salute to my flagship novel Glastonbury, The Novel of Christian England.

Next time, continuing in the theme of industrious women who changed their world, we’ll look at the accomplishments of another remarkable woman of the time—The Countess of Huntingdon and her chapel in Bath.