Friends of Hastings Cemetery


In 1833 Charles was appointed to a living at Onibury in Shropshire near Ludlow, £3-400 a year, and in a very pretty situation with 70 acres of Glebe, but he doesn’t like farming and neither does Charlotte.  The old house is falling apart so they have to build a new house.

He is described as governing absolutely everything, little concerns as well as great matters.  He apparently spent a year aboard ship as a boy, experiencing absolute authority.

5th December 1834, they go to Madeira or the West Indies, as they think he will benefit from the climate, Mr Langton not being well.  He is 33 years old at this time.  They leave on the Pandora, from Falmouth.

April 1835, they go to Rio, remain for 5 months before returning to the West Indian isles,  and by 1841 (the year the couple's only son, Edmund, was born) he had left the Church, and the couple returned to Maer to help look after Charlotte's mother Bessy, who suffered fits of ill health and confusion as she aged.

After the death of Bessy in 1846, Maer Hall was sold, and the Langtons moved to Hartfield Grove at Coleman’s Hatch in Sussex.  Charlotte's older sister Elizabeth also moved to Hartfield, and had a house built near theirs (The Ridge).

Charlotte fell ill in the summer of 1861.  She was taken to St Leonards to convalesce, but she died there in January 1862.  Charles left Hartfield for London, and in October 1863 married Charles Darwin's younger sister Catherine.  Widowed again in 1866 he didn’t remarry until 1884, two years before his death at the age of 85.

Charlotte WEDGWOOD (Mrs Charles Langton) (1797-1862)

Five watercolours by a daughter of Josiah Wedgwood II (1769-1843), who was a pupil of Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding and on whom the influence not only of John Varley, but of Robert Hills at his most sensitive, is apparent.

An album to include views of Tenerife, Madeira and Sorrento, as well as British landscapes, including Cowes and the Lake District, and also landscapes after A.V.Copley Fielding and J. Varley.

Charlotte Langton was a pupil of  Copley Fielding.

Some of her paintings may be found on the Internet.


Charlotte Langton, p.2