page_title: Purleigh
section_title: Bonnell
hierarchical_section_title: Purleigh / Descent of the manor / Bonnell
caption_attribution_description: English: Pelling Place, Old Windsor, garden front. Seat of Bonnell family also of Purleigh Hall, Essex
context_page_description: Purleigh is a village on the Dengie peninsula about 4 miles south of Maldon in the English county of Essex. The village is part of the Purleigh ward of the Maldon district.
  The place-name 'Purleigh' is first attested in a charter of 998, where it appears as Purlea. In the Domesday Book of 1086 it appears as Purlai. The name means 'bittern clearing'.
context_section_description: Neale sold it in 1742 to James Bonnell. James was the son of Captain John Bonnell (d.1703), a merchant of London, possibly the Captain John Bonnell of the East India Company who sailed the Chandos to Madras 4 February 1689 -1 January 1691. James was executor of the will of his mother Margaretta Bonnell (d.1737), his father's second wife, and sister and heiress of a moiety of the estate of Edmund Waterson of Graces in Little Baddow in Essex, who by his last will ordered his personal estate to be invested in land in Suffolk  James's siblings, John and Sarah Bonnell, authorised him to pay £4,000 (out of the total moiety of £14,735 5s.) for the purchase of the manor and farm of Purleigh Hall. Sarah Bonnell (d.1768) left at her death £3,500 in public funds for the endowment of a charity school for girls in West Ham, still surviving as the Sarah Bonnell School, the oldest girls' school in England. An elaborate white marble monument exists to Capt John Bonnell and his family in the Monoux Chapel of Walthamstow Church.
  James Bonnell was lord of the manor of Purleigh in 1759. James Bonnell purchased Pelling Place and adjoining land including Beaumont Lodge in Old Windsor, Berkshire. James Bonnell of Spring Gardens, St Martin-in-the-Field, Westminster, died in 1774 and his estate was the subject of a case in Chancery between James Beal (d.1815), of St. James's, Westminster, plaintiff, who had assumed by royal licence dated 1774 the additional surname and arms of Bonnell, as was required by the will of James Bonnell, and John Bonnell of Newcastle and other Bonnell deforciants ('land-owners') from Durham. In 1853 by deed of gift Mary Anne Harvey Bonnell (1763–1853), spinster, of Pelling Place, Windsor, lady of the manor of Purleigh, who had herself adopted the additional surname of Bonnell in 1841, conveyed to James Bonnell, esq., the whole Bonnell estate. James was the middle son of James Bonnell (d.1850), who set up as a chemist and druggist in Carlisle when a young man in 1796, who became a manufacturer of aerated soda water, trading from premises in English Street, Carlisle. He sold the business in 1846, none of his sons having wished to continue in the trade. James jnr. in 1854 married Elizabeth Lowther, his cousin through his mother Esther Lowry (1771–1822). In 1860 James Bonnell obtained a licence to add the name Harvey before Bonnell. James Harvey Bonnell died in 1869 aged 60, as his gravestone in Purleigh Churchyard attests. The tenant in occupation in 1836 was William Clarke (senior). Clarke was born at Little Hallingbury, about 20 miles away, but his wife was born in 1814 at Purleigh. A painting of the Bonnell family armorials is held by Essex Archives, blazoned as follows: Argent, a cross gules charged with five cross crosslets argent between four of the fame gules, alternatively: Argent, a cross gules quarterly pierced 9 cross crosslets 3, 3 and 3 counter-charged. Queen Adelaide breakfasted with the Bonnell family on one occasion at Pelling Place, when the family gave her a shell-work vase, one of a pair home-made circa 1779-1781 by Mrs Beal Bonnell and Miss Harvey Bonnell, the other of which stood on a mantelpiece at Pelling and is now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
caption: Pelling Place, Old Windsor, garden front, in 1820. Seat of Bonnell family. Aquatint after John Grendall
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