Mary Bond

A carte-de-visite portrait of Mary Bond, wife of Reverend Nathaniel Bond, the Rector of Steeple with Tyneham in Dorset.

Born in Ireland on 12 February 1815, Mary Hawkesworth was the youngest daughter of John Hawkesworth of Forest, Queen’s County, Ireland. In 1835 at Stoke-under-Hamden in Somerset she married Reverend Nathaniel Bond, second son of the Member of Parliament John Bond.

The couple appear on the 1861 census living at ‘The Grange House’ at Steeple with three sons and ten live-in servants, with a gardener and his family living nearby. The house servants included a butler, a footman, a coachman and a groom.

Mrs Mary Bond died on 15 April 1881 at The Grange in the Isle of Purbeck in the County of Dorset. She was buried in the churchyard of St Michael’s and All Angels at Steeple in Dorset.

Photographed by the Southwell Brothers of London.