Written by Wantage historian Trevor Hancock

OVER the summer, I wrote an article in this paper about John and Fred Holmes of Berkshire Aviation Company Ltd.

This time I wish to tell you about their remarkable father James Robins Holmes.

If you turn off the main Oxford to Wantage road at East Hanney you will see almost immediately in front of you a little garden with railings round it, in the middle of which there stands an oak tree.

A stone memorial is in front of the tree with the inscription: 'This garden was given to East Hanney by James Robins Holmes whose ashes were placed here 1 March 1938.'

It is the monument of the man who, it has been said, probably did more for the village than any other inhabitant before or since.

James Holmes, the son of a Berkshire farmer was born at Days House in West Hanney in 1859 and lived all his life in East Hanney where he was at various times baker, grocer, fruit farmer, landowner, parish councillor and bookseller.

He was a benevolent landlord and there was much competition to rent one of his cottages when it became available.

Looking through parish council minutes one can see that Holmes took it upon himself to improve both the appearance and amenities of the parish.

When the old flour mill at the lower end of the village burnt down, he rebuilt it and turned the public footpath to it, into a walk with a waterfall with seats beside it.

A bathing place was created with a hut so that villagers could bathe in the Letcombe Brook in comfort.

Footpaths in the village were always repaired and potholes filled in and a post and telegraph office was established in the village.

Holmes was also a great tree planter to provide shelter and improve the environment.

However, it is Holmes' other activities that he is also remembered for today.

From 1891, until his death in 1938, James Holmes, to quote his business correspondence was 'a bookseller and dealer in neo-Malthusian and hygiene perquisites'.

His business was almost wholly mail order and he dealt with customers as far afield as the United States and Canada.

James Holmes was a keen advocate of birth control as a means of eradicating poverty, disease and premature death.

In 1891, he published a little booklet called ‘True Morality, or the Theory and Practice of Neo-Malthusianism' with a catalogue listing 30 items at its centre including 10 varieties of 'rubber envelopes' – amongst them a washable sheath for 'poor labouring folk'.

New brides in the village were usually given a copy of his book.

Holmes's activities were not popular with some, at the time, in 1892, a bookseller in Bombay, was fined £12 10s for stocking the book.

In 1911 a market trader was fined £20 for selling the work to Durham miners.

In 1914, Holmes himself appeared before Wantage Magistrates for sending ‘an obscene book’ through the post to Ireland.

Holmes had a large library of books on all subjects and would correspond with other like-minded individuals such as H G Wells and George Bernard Shaw.

He was also in contact with Dr Marie Stopes though the two later fell out for reasons not absolutely clear today.

Both Shaw and HG Wells visited James Holmes at his home “The Mulberries” in East Hanney.

He was a freethinker who sometimes said what he thought without pausing to weigh the consequences.

In 1900, he wrote a letter to the Oxford Chronicle in support of the Boers fighting against the British Empire in South Africa.

This caused a riot outside his house at East Hanney mainly due to the fact that more than 25 families in the village had relatives serving there.

However his good deeds to the village helped to gain the inhabitants trust again.

At the service for the scattering of James Holmes' ashes in the garden at East Hanney on March 21, 1938, R H Rosetti of the Secular Society said:

“James Robins Holmes was a man of unusual character. He did his own thinking. His thoughts were his thoughts and he moulded them upon a philosophy of common sense and a humanitarian outlook upon life”.