{"id":19993,"date":"2025-11-23T10:59:32","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T10:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/selwyn-family.me.uk\/~chris\/wordpress\/?page_id=19993"},"modified":"2026-01-13T13:54:45","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T13:54:45","slug":"the-wider-family","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/selwyn-family.me.uk\/~chris\/wordpress\/ancestry-resources\/hunts-of-sedgeford\/the-wider-family\/","title":{"rendered":"The wider family"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Hunts: Construction, Politics and Gin<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Walter was the 7th child of James Edward Hunt, a builder of Westminster in London, and his wife Eliza (n\u00e9e Seager). Eliza was a daughter of a cofounder of distillers Seager, Evans & Co.<\/a> whose most famous product was Seager’s Gin. In the early 1840s, James Hunt was contracted by Isambard Kingdom Brunel<\/a> to supply bricks for Box Tunnel<\/a> from his brick-making factory in Chippenham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Walter\u2019s 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<\/a> in St Margaret\u2019s Church, Westminster.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Caricature of Sir Frederick Seager Hunt <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Walter\u2019s older brother Frederick Seager Hunt<\/a> inherited the family gin business. From 1885 to 1895 he was MP for Marylebone West<\/a>, then MP for Maidstone<\/a> 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 Hunt took pictures of the house<\/a>. Fred and his wife had no children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walter\u2019s 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\u2019s diary<\/a> for that year. He is buried in Brompton Cemetery, alongside his grandfather James Edward and Walter and Alice\u2019s son Ernest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have researched a much more extensive genealogy of the Hunt family<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Mortimores: Tanning<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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In 1870, Walter married Alice Mortimore, fourth of six children of William Mortimore and his wife Harriett (n\u00e9e Foster). William owned a tannery in London. Several members of Alice\u2019s family feature in her photographs. Later Alice and Walter’s son, John, went into the tanning business as research chemist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alice\u2019s sister, Edith Jane, married Thomas Joseph Simmons, who owned a tannery in Kent. Alice\u2019s collection includes a number of photographs taken on visits to their houses in East Peckham<\/a> and Speldhurst<\/a>. Later, the Simmons’s retired to Salcombe in Devon<\/a>, where Alice and her family visited them in 1899. The house in East Peckham is now used as the offices of the wall covering company Muraspec Ltd.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alice\u2019s brothers, Foster and Alexander Mortimore, married a pair of Hunt sisters, Harriet Jennings Hunt and Emma Pownall Hunt respectively, daughters of Walter\u2019s uncle, the quantity surveyor Henry Arthur Hunt (see above).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Alick\u2019 and \u2018Emmy\u2019 feature in Alice\u2019s 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\u2019Honneur (1st Class, Chevalier, 1914) and a D.S.O. (1917).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Hunts: Construction, Politics and Gin Walter was the 7th child of James Edward Hunt, a builder of Westminster in London, and his wife Eliza (n\u00e9e 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, James Hunt was contracted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":7688,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"hunt-ancestry","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-19993","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/selwyn-family.me.uk\/~chris\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/selwyn-family.me.uk\/~chris\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/selwyn-family.me.uk\/~chris\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selwyn-family.me.uk\/~chris\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selwyn-family.me.uk\/~chris\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19993"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/selwyn-family.me.uk\/~chris\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20839,"href":"https:\/\/selwyn-family.me.uk\/~chris\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19993\/revisions\/20839"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selwyn-family.me.uk\/~chris\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/selwyn-family.me.uk\/~chris\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}