The Hunts: Construction, Politics and Gin
Walter’s was the 7th child of James Edward Hunt, a builder of Westminster in London, and his wife Eliza (née Seager). Eliza was a daughter of a cofounder of distillers Seager, Evans & Co. whose most famous product was Seager’s Gin. In the early 1840s, Walter father was contracted by Isambard Kingdom Brunel to supply bricks for Box Tunnel.
Walter’s uncle Henry Arthur Hunt was quantity surveyor for the rebuild of the Palace of Westminster starting in 1830. There is a plaque dedicated to him in St Margaret’s Church, Westminster.
Walter’s older brother Frederick Seager Hunt inherited the family gin business. From 1885 to 1895 he was MP for Marylebone West, then MP for Maidstone from 1895 to 1898. In 1867, he married his cousin Alice Harriet, daughter of his uncle, Arthur Simon Hunt. They lived at Gennings, in Hunton, Kent. Alice took pictures of the house. They had no children.
Walter’s brother James Jennings Hunt died in India aged 29, leaving a son, James Edward Hunt, the identity of whose mother is currently unknown. He was brought up in England by his uncle Frederick, but died in 1885 aged only 22. His illness and death are recorded in Walter’s diary for that year. He is buried in Brompton Cemetery, alongside his grandfather James Edward and Walter and Alice’s son Ernest.
An extensive genealogy of the Hunt family
The Mortimores: Tanning
In 1870, Walter married Alice Mortimore, fourth of six children of William Mortimore and his wife Harriett (née Foster). William owned a tannery in London. Several members of Alice’s family feature in her photographs. Later Alice and Walter’s son, John, went into the tanning business as research chemist.
Alice’s sister, Edith Jane, married Thomas Joseph Simmons, who owned a tannery in Kent. Alice’s collection includes a number of photographs taken on visits to their houses in East Peckham and Speldhurst. Later, the Simmons’s retired to Salcombe in Devon, where Alice and her family visited them in 1899.
Alice’s brothers, Foster and Alexander Mortimore, married a pair of sisters, Harriet Jennings Hunt and Emma Pownall Hunt, daughters of Walter’s uncle, the quantity surveyor Henry Arthur Hunt (see above).
‘Alick’ and ‘Emmy’ feature in Alice’s photographs and were neighbours of theirs in Folkestone in the early 1900s. Their son Claude, who also features, went on to distinguish himself in World War I, being awarded a Legion d’Honneur (1st Class, Chevalier, 1914) and a D.S.O. (1917).
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