Francis Jekyll, 1882-1965
Known to family and friends as ‘Timmy’, Francis Jekyll (pronounced “Jee-call”) was the nephew of Gertrude Jekyll, the garden designer. After attending Eton and Oxford, in 1906 he took a job at the British Museum as Assistant in the Printed Books Department, working in the Printed Music Section. Between 1905 and 1911 he collected folk songs in Sussex, Herefordshire, Kent and Norfolk, and a number of Irish dance tunes from a fiddle-player at Kilmarnock in Scotland. The material he collected appears in the collections of Ella Leather, Lucy Broadwood, and his close friend George Butterworth – all available to view via the VWML Archive Catalogue.
He noted two songs from a Mrs Powell at Minster in Sheppey, in August 1910. She appears to have been a resident of the Sheppey Workhouse, where George Butterworth collected a further 3 songs in September of the same year.
Jekyll resigned his post at the British Museum in 1914. In a letter to Lewis Jones dated 3rd June 1999, Francis Jekyll’s great niece Mrs. Primrose Arnander wrote:
I am sure that there was an initial nervous breakdown which must have led to recurring clinical depression, an illness well understood, accepted and treated nowadays but little understood then…
In 1932 Gertrude Jekylll died and left Munstead Wood [her home in Surrey] and its contents to her sister-in-law, Agnes Jekyll, Francis Jekyll’s mother. In 1937 Agnes Jekyll died and Munstead Wood passed in toto to Francis Jekyll. He did not live there for very long, but tried to keep her nursery garden going and was still fulfilling orders up to the war time. Around 1939 Francis Jekyll moved into the Hut, a smaller house in the grounds, and Munstead Wood was let and finally sold. There was a sale of all the contents in 1948; this included books and chattels from Munstead House that had been left to Francis and also, in that sale, he must have sold all his music and books for the contents of the sale included books, scores and periodicals which showed an interest in music that would have been far beyond Gertrude Jekyll. Timmy lived on in the Hut with a housekeeper until his death in 1965. He was a sad and rather lonely figure at the end and was never really able to shake free of his debilitating depression. He attended concerts and festivals of music, but never returned to an active role in the field.1
He died in 1965, aged 82
- quoted in Lewis Jones, Francis Jekyll (1882-1965) Forgotten Hero of the First Folk Song Revival, English Dance and Song, June 2000 ↩︎
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