The Portrait of Sir William Bryan Cooke

An article by Brian Barber, the former Archivist of Doncaster Council and author of A History of Doncaster

Subject Sir William Bryan Cooke of Wheatley Hall, eighth baronet (1782-1851). The hall and its grounds were sold by the family to Doncaster corporation for use as an industrial estate on Wheatley Hall Road in 1933. The hall was demolished and its seventeenth-century staircase was relocated to Herstmonceaux Castle, East Sussex.

Painter William Beetham (1809-1888), was born Doncaster, the son of a local family of wine and spirit merchants. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1834 and continued to do so until 1853. Two years later, he and his wife and ten children immigrated to New Zealand. There he continued to paint with considerable success. He was the founder and first president of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Art in 1882.

History of the Portrait and Subject This, and two other portraits in the Mansion House, is associated with a major event in local government which took place in 1835. The government of the borough of Doncaster, and of 177 other long-established corporations in England and Wales, was fundamentally reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. The Whig (moderate liberal) government, after reforming the parliamentary constituencies and the system of election to the House of Commons in 1832, turned its attention to local government. It abolished the system of self-selection employed by most of the old corporations, including Doncaster, and replaced it with election by the ratepayers. In Doncaster, this meant that the Tories, who had dominated the old corporation, were swept aside, and their places were taken by reform-minded men.

Cooke, a political reformer amongst the landed gentry, was chosen as the first mayor of the new regime in November 1835. His career on the council was short, lasting only three years. It was brought to a close in November 1838 after the death of his fourteen-year old daughter, Louisa, who had died in September. The portrait was painted at the request of the borough council after his resignation.

Cooke’s own death a dozen years later created a strong public response in the town and neighbourhood. Charles White, a bookseller in Baxtergate, organised the production of a mezzotint of the council’s portrait from the engraver Thomas Lewis Atkinson (1817-1898).This was to be sold to subscribers for 1 and 2 guineas, and 114 copies were subscribed for. A copy can be seen on-line on the website of the National Portrait Gallery.

The respect in which Cooke was held was demonstrated in the memorial subscriptions that followed his death. The lesser subscription, which raised £360, was invested to buy books for prizes at Arksey school. Arksey was the parish for which the Cooke family owned the right of presentation of the vicar. They had their burial vault in the church, and had built almshouses for the poor in the seventeenth century.

Another subscription raised around £1,200, a huge sum at that time, and financed the design and making of a stained glass memorial window in Saint George’s church. This was to fill the large west window. The work was carried out by William Wailes of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a celebrated stained glass maker. He proposed the theme of the Tree of Jesse, (the family history of Christ) at a cost of £600. Installing it involved the relocation of the organ and the removal of the seating gallery which had been built in front of it.

The window was installed in November 1852. It was viewed by Benjamin and Mrs Disraeli in January of the following year, when they were staying with Richard Pemberton Milnes of Fryston Hall. The two-and-a-half hour visit – their train arrived at 12.55 and left at 3.40 – caused great interest locally, because Disraeli was both a well-known novelist and an exotic character and rising star in politics. In the following month he became Leader of the House of Commons and Chancellor of the Exchequer, although only briefly on this occasion. Sadly, the new stained glass window survived barely a year for it was consumed in the great fire of 29 February 1853 which destroyed the church itself.