None given

53

Married

Chapelwood Manor, Nutley, East Sussex

NUWSS

Away in France

Sybil Brassey (1858-1934) Sybil de Vere, daughter of the Earl of Essex, married the widowed Lord Thomas Brassey and became the stepmother of Muriel, Countess de la Warr. The couple’s Sussex home was Chapelwood Manor, Nutley, but at the time of the 1911 Census they were on holiday in France. Sybil hosted and chaired suffrage meetings at her London residence, 24 Park Lane, and in Sussex. In November 1910 Millicent Garrett Fawcett addressed a reception at 24 Park Lane; in March 1911 Sybil chaired a meeting at Horsted Keynes in the company of Lady Betty Balfour, Louisa Martindale, Flora de Gaudrion Merrifield, Marie and Cicely Corbett, Mary Benson, Mary Spooner, and Edith Bevan. In May 1911 Sybil, as President of the Bexhill, Hastings, and St Leonard’s Women’s Suffrage Society, presided over a Crowborough meeting at which a message of support from her husband was read. The meeting resulted in the formation of a NUWSS branch, with Sybil as President. When, shortly afterwards, at a meeting chaired by Sybil in Hastings, Lord Brassey declared in person his ‘conversion to feminism’, this was reported nationally. In July 1911 Lord Brassey became an Earl and, as Countess Brassey, Sybil attended the first meeting of the Rotherfield and Mark Cross NUWSS branch. In October she chaired three lectures on women’s suffrage: in Uckfield by Liberal academic Walter Lyon Blease; in Burgess Hill by Lord Robert Cecil; and in Crowborough by Elizabeth Robins. In November Sybil presided at the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage in Hythe and a rally in Hastings was addressed by the Brasseys, Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Earl Lytton. Meetings chaired in 1912 began with Lord Robert Cecil at Forest Row, then included Tunbridge Wells, Rochester, Uckfield, and Deal. In October Sybil hosted a reception at 24 Park Lane for Men’s International Alliance for Women’s Suffrage delegates to a MLWS conference. In March 1913 she attended with Muriel the National Political League demonstration against force feeding. Neither she nor Muriel were able to attend the Hastings, St Leonard’s, and East Sussex rally in October at which Earl Brassey declared that he ‘loved the cause’, but in December Sybil formally opened the Women’s Franchise Club in Brighton. Sybil’s involvement in both London and county suffrage activity was exemplified by two important engagements in July 1914. On 6 July she hosted a reception at 24 Park Lane, under the auspices of the WTRL, for International Week guests of the Women’s Suffrage Union, British Dominions Overseas. Later that month she was on the platform in Cuckfield’s Queen’s Hall, supporting chair Lady Eleanor Cecil, at the 5th annual meeting of the Cuckfield and Central Sussex Women’s Suffrage Society addressed by Millicent Garrett Fawcett. During the War Sybil chaired fund-raising meetings in London and Sussex for the NUWSS Scottish Women’s Hospitals. Wounded officers who convalesced at Chapelwood Manor included war poet Siegfried Sassoon. In June 1918 Sybil presided over a meeting of the newly inaugurated Hastings and St Leonards Women Citizens Association addressed by Ray Strachey on ‘The Vote: Women’s New Responsibilities’. Contributed by Frances Stenlake, Independent researcher & writer.