page_title: Handley family
section_title: Benjamin Handley, 1754
hierarchical_section_title: Handley family / Benjamin Handley, 1754
caption_attribution_description: English: Manor House courtyard 16th and 17th century stonework in the Manor House Courtyard off Northgate
context_page_description: The Handleys were a prominent family in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, between around 1777 and the late 1800s. An offshoot of the notable Newark family, the Handleys of Sleaford came to hold position as lawyers, bankers, politicians and clerics in the town and attained great wealth and holdings in the area. The family maintained an interest in transportation - first in canalisation and later the development of the railways.
  The first family member to inhabit Sleaford was Benjamin Handley, who moved to the town some time in the 1770s. He helped develop the fledgling Sleaford Navigation and founded a bank in the town. The most well known member of the family is the politician Henry Handley, who was a Member of Parliament for the Southern Division of Lincolnshire between 1832 and 1841. He also helped pioneer the development of railways in the area.
  In the latter part of the 1800s elements of the family emigrated to New Zealand as well as returning to Newark. Buildings and monuments related to the Handleys still exist in modern day Sleaford — including Handley street, Benjamin Handley's manor house on Northgate, Lloyd's Bank and the Handley Monument.
context_section_description: Benjamin Handley (17 October 1754 – 25 April 1828) was the youngest son of William Handley. He moved to Sleaford some time before April 1777, when he appears in records as an attorney in the town. In 1781 Benjamin was the clerk of a committee set up to work on the conception of the Sleaford Navigation, in 1824 he became treasurer of the project and later advanced an interest free loan of £1,000.
  Benjamin appears to have been involved chiefly in conveyancing property in the area until he co-founded the Bank of Peacock, Handley and Kirton, which opened on 2 April 1792 in Sleaford market place. The enterprise was closely related to the Sleaford Navigation project and its finances (Peacock was the Navigation Company's chairman). In 1803 the bank moved to Alvey House on Northgate. Some years after Handley's death it merged with Lloyds Bank but it still occupies the same building today.
  Handley owned extensive areas of land in and around the town, including the manor at Burton Pedwardine and land in Heckington, Scredington and Spanby. In 1794, acting as commissioner of the Sleaford Enclosure Act, he received 25 acres in the town – with the land he built a manor house on Northgate.
  Benjamin Handley married Frances Conington on 31 January 1785. The couple had seven children only four of whom (Frances, Benjamin, Elizabeth and Henry) survived beyond childhood. Frances was unimpressed with Sleaford at the time of her marriage; in a letter the same year she referred to it as "a very badly built town, chiefly belonging to one person and not likely to amend".
caption: Benjamin Handley's Manor house, Northgate Sleaford (2009)
exif: {}