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One hundred years of Campions

Rosslyn House B&B in Whitby

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF CAMPIONS

George Hudson was an English railway financier and politician who, because he controlled a significant part of the railway network in the 1840s, became known as "The Railway King" Hudson played a significant role in linking London to Edinburgh by rail, carrying out the first major merging of railway companies (the Midland Railway) and represented Sunderland in the House of Commons. Hudson’s success was built on dubious financial practices and he frequently paid shareholders out of capital rather than money the company had earned.

Eventually in 1849, a series of enquiries launched by the railways he was chairman of, exposed his methods, although many leading the enquiries had benefited and approved of Hudson’s methods when it suited them. Hudson fell a long way becoming bankrupt and after losing his Sunderland seat he was forced to live abroad to avoid arrest for debt. His name is associated with financial wrongdoing although others were at least partially guilty of similar practices. He never named any of his co-conspirators although many of them turned their backs on him when the bubble burst.

In 1860 George Hudson, to pay his mortgagees, sold land on the West Cliff in Whitby to Robert Robinson on which to develop housing which could be used for no other business purpose than Lodging House or Boarding School.
  
William Campion, a Retired Farmer of Ugthorpe, purchased number 11 Abbey Terrace, described as a Lodging House, in 1873, soon after it was built; on his death in January 1897 the property was inherited by his wife Hannah for her lifetime. Hannah continued to live at the property until her death in November 1919, when it passed to her daughters Ann and Rebecca. Ann died in 1939 and Rebecca continued to live in the house where she was born until her death, aged 97, in 1973. 

So for the first hundred years the same family lived in this house. As Ann and Rebecca had never married and had no children to inherit the property it passed to Miss Mildred Helm, who sold the property the following year, 1974, to Richard Hutton of Horsforth, who was a nephew of the famous Yorkshire Cricketer Sir Len Hutton.

 
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