Eagle House Residents
The Blathwayts
The family who opened their arms and their home to campaigners for justice.
From 1882 onwards, the Blathwayt family lived in Eagle House in the village of Batheaston, just outside Bath. The house became a meeting place and a sanctuary for suffragettes.
Supported the movement in several ways. Linley acted as the suffragettes’ chauffeur, ferrying visiting suffrage speakers from Bristol or from Bath’s train station up to the house and he even taught Annie Kenney to drive. A rather touching habit he had was to leave white and purple sweet peas in a green vase for the women to see, as these were the three colours of the suffragettes (a colour scheme designed by Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence). Linley also built a cosy summerhouse to provide rest for suffragettes who’d suffered in prison. It was surrounded by vine-covered latticework and inside it contained chairs, writing tables and a rug. On top of that, he took photographs of the symbolic tree plantings, thus capturing iconic moments and providing a portfolio of some of the suffragettes. He’d probably have uploaded these photos to an Instagram account if it had been invented!
Born as Emily Rose in Exeter c. 1852. She married Linley in 1874. Like her daughter Mary, Emily supported women’s suffrage, attending local meetings of the Bath Women's Suffrage Society, subscribing to suffrage newspapers, organising garden parties at Eagle House and providing hospitality to visiting speakers. However, she grew uncomfortable about suffrage activities that broke the law. Her membership to the WSPU was rather brief: starting in 1908 and ending in 1909 after somebody threw stones at the prime minister. But she continued to welcome suffragettes into her home and care for the arboretum using her keen gardening skills. And she and Linley joined the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Society in 1914, a non-militant group. Emily died in 1940 in her late eighties.
Emily gave birth to her daughter, Mary Blathwayt, on 1st February 1879 in Worthing, Sussex. She was a toddler when the family moved to Eagle House and there she lived with her parents and brother William. She attended Bath High School before joining the WSPU and becoming a powerhouse in the fight for women’s right to vote. Her time was also spent teaching music to village children, caring for her chickens and studying insects. Her membership of the Bath Ladies’ Microscopical Society helped with the latter. As for her suffrage activities, she served as treasurer of the WSPU, attended meetings and protests, distributed leaflets, chalked slogans on pavements, posted material through letterboxes, wore sandwich boards and organised work across the entire West Country.
On 9th May 1909, she, Jessie Kenney and Vera Holme each planted a tree at Annie’s Arboretum. Hers was a holly tree to symbolise that she was an activist but wasn’t a militant. On census night 1911, thirty-six women banded together (including Mary) to hide at 12 Lansdown Crescent in Bath to avoid being counted and thus protest against the government. Mary’s diary of her suffrage work gives details of visitors to Eagle House and garden parties on the lawns. It is an invaluable resource for historians and feminists.
Mary gave up her membership of the WSPU in 1913 because she opposed the destruction of property, but her friendship with Annie Kenney endured and she continued certain activities, such as helping to run the suffragette shop in Bath. Mary’s wartime contribution was to serve with the Red Cross. Her remarkable life journey ended at her home on 25th June, 1961.
Generous with their time and money, even though they had precious little of either.
Ellen Morgan worked as a maid at Eagle House starting in 1904, rising through the ranks to become head servant towards the end of her time there. Emily Blathwayt dismissed Ellen in early 1910 when Ellen’s fiancé caught tuberculosis (which later killed him) and Ellen took time off to care for him. Emily noted in her diary that Ellen was
“suffering from much nervous irritability”
and told her that it would be better if Ellen left.
Long before this unsavoury event, however, Ellen accompanied Mary Blathwayt to her first WSPU meeting in 1907. It seems clear that Ellen wasn’t forced to go because 1) Mary didn’t need Ellen as a chaperone (two other women joined them) and 2) they didn’t get home until 2am, leaving Ellen only a few hours to rest before starting her work the next day. Clearly, Ellen was driven by something bigger than duty to her employer.
Elsie Harris worked alongside Ellen as the Blathwayts’ cook until her marriage towards the end of 1908.
Ellen Morgan, along with Elsie Harris and the cleaner Ellen Martha Rawlings (who was born in 1878 and lived in a cottage on the ground with her husband and children) began to attend more meetings in Bath and Bristol. Ellen Morgan even sold copies of a suffrage book at one event and had to dodge an attack from male hecklers.
Emily Blathwayt sometimes bought tickets for her employees to be able to attend these captivating meetings. But Ellen Morgan, Elsie Harris and Ellen Rawlings’ husband Moses, the family’s chauffeur, donated sixpence each from their own pockets to support the cause in February 1908.
These servants, therefore, did not just witness history being made at Eagle House; they were participants in the fight for women’s rights!
With the help of their employees, Emily, Linley and Mary Blathwayt created a haven for visiting suffragettes. How can we create safe, accessible spaces for today’s activists?
© Helen Pugh 2025, author of On This Day in Somerset.
Unearthing the Suffragette Spirit Project
The Women's Suffrage Movement by Elizabeth Crawford; A Nest of Suffragettes in Somerset by BM Willmott Dobbie; The Routledge Companion to British Women’s Suffrage edited by Krista Cowman; oxforddnb.com; The Wrong Kind of Working-Class Woman? Domestic Servants in the Suffrage Movement by Laura Schwartz; death and probate records; spartacus-educational.com; Feminism and the Servant Problem: Class and Domestic Labour in the Women's Suffrage Movement by Laura Schwartz; Suffragettes in Bath: Activism in an Edwardian Arboretum by Cynthia Hammond with Dan Brown.
