About
This website seeks to share the handwritten material contained in the folios of receipts and medicines dating between 1782 and 1808 in a collection of papers (found with the Whitaker papers below) concerning the Starkie family at Huntroyd House and Blackburn Vicarage.
The latest investigation of the papers, resulting from the preparation of this web archive, shows a number of receipts for goods relate to the Reverend Thomas Starkie, Rector of Blackburn.
It is known Le Gendre Piers Starkie (1760–1807) and his wife Charlotte Preedy lived in Huntroyd at the time. Alice Starkie contributed one recipe, as did others. The waters get muddy because Ann Starkie née Yatman died in 1795. Alice was their daughter. However the travels of the papers and their compilation, although the reference to Alice seems close, is complicated and so the authorship is ascribed to Charlotte.
The papers have been handed down over the past 238 years by inheritance from the Starkie family, to the Whitaker family and then the Gillespie family. There are also other connections with the family of Thomas Dunham Whitaker and his wife Lucy Thoresby. (The Gillespie family gave the Thoresby Society the love letters from TDW to Lucy Thoresby).
Ultimately these receipts will go to them for preservation and safe keeping. The main objective is to preserve the heritage that lies inside the documents and give anyone access to them.
And finally, please note that transcriptions on this site will be updated to fall into current standards. In the meantime the Gillespie Family wishes to make them available in the short term and improve them in the longer one.
We are also the direct descendants of Major General Sir Robert Rollo Gillespie.KCB who died attacking the fort at Kalunga, Nepal on the 31st October 1814. He is buried in Meerut, India and commemorated in Comber, County Down and St. Pauls Cathedral.