Savoy Hotel London

[JoMaley]

Hi there

My GG Grandad married in the chapel behind the Savoy Hotel in 1890.  He was living at the hotel at the time of the marriage and was a solicitor in Wokingham Berkshire.

Does anyone know any information about how much it would have cost etc to be married at this hotel a year after it opened?  I believe he had a very good standard of living.  I would love to be able to get information about the event etc...if anyone knows anything I would love to hear from you.

His name was Henry Trower Roberts and his wife was Mary Ann Goodwin of Wokingham and they married in June 1890.

I just would love to understand why they got married in London instead of their home town.

Thanks
Jo

[Lemontree]

The price for getting married in a chapel would be standard, regardless of where the chapel was situated, if it was CofE. The savoy would I take it be the address ont he marriage certificate? therefore the chapel would be his parish and then he would be allowed to be married in the chapel - was the marriage by banns or licence of somekind? Making the place of marriage in his homecity

[[Ray]]

Hi Jo

"I just would love to understand why they got married in London instead of their home town."


My belief is just because they could.

There is a very good railway program series by Michael Portillo.
He highlighted that to be able to go somewhere by train then the (not so poor) general public went. One of the examples was Newmarket racecourse.

To be able to get married in London must have been seen to get one up on the Jones'?
(Sorry to all the Jones' researchers)

A modern parallel, in my eyes, is for current crop of offspring to get married in places like Seychelles, Goa, Gibralta

Ray

[JoMaley]

Hi there

He lived in Wokingham but on the marriage certificate he is listed as living at the hotel.  Is this allowed?  Maybe he had to live at the hotel for a few days to make him eligible to get married in the chapel.  The vicar that performed the service was also from Wokingham.

I think your right, it was probably a rather flash thing to do and as it had only just opened must have been THE place to be seen.

It would be lovely if there was some photographs, but unfortunately we don't have any.

T

[Koromo]

Henry VII built the Savoy Hospital with a side chapel, completed in 1512.

In the 18th century it had a reputation for 'illegal' marriages.  In 1755 the vicar was sentenced to 14 years transportation for conducting marriages without banns or 'proper' licences.  The Proceedings of the Old Bailey:

"JOHN GRIERSON was indicted, for that he, after the twenty-fifth of March, 1754, to wit, on the twenty-seventh of June, in the twenty-ninth year of his present majesty, at the Savoy, did unlawfully, knowingly, wilfully, & feloniously, solemnize matrimony between JOSEPH VERNON, then a batchelor, & JANE POITIER, a single woman, without first publishing of banns, or any license first had, and obtained of a person having authority to grant the same, in contempt of our Lord the King, and against the Statute, &c."

The Savoy Chapel was mentioned in Brideshead Revisited as "the place where divorced couples got married in those days."

From A Companion to Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (scroll to bottom of page):

"The Chapel is in fact in the private possession of the monarch, and has been since 1937 the official chapel of the Royal Victorian Order. The fact that the chaplain is answerable only to the monarch and not to the church authorities allowed divorced people to book it for remarriage."

Not that I'm suggesting that either of your gg-grandparents were divorcees, just that the Savoy Chapel had a most interesting history.  I agree with Ray — it probably sounded exciting to say that 'we married at the Savoy Chapel in London!'


Koromo

Added: The Queen's Chapel of the Savoy

[Little Nell]

Apparently Sir Henry Irving lived at the hotel too.

The chapel was as fashionable as St George's Hanover Square for marriages during the 1880s.  So I think he was simply following fashion - and because he could. 

Nell

[[Ray]]

Hi

"I just would love to understand why they got married in London instead of their home town."

On 1891C there is a son John H (3m) with them in Wokingham (15 Milton Road).
He a solicitor-38y, she -30y.

They married June 1890
John H registered Q1 1891 Wokingham 2c 398

Hmmmm, is that another reason?

 
You have the actual marriage cert? What are the full details on it?




Joking aside, there could be a valid reason ...............
Deaths Mar 1893 Henry Trower Roberts 40y Wokingham 2c 269

Ray

[visitmystreet]

I've put a video guide to The Savoy Hotel here is your interested: http://www.visitmystreet.tv/video/535/THE-SAVOY-HOTEL