Martineau family

The Martineau Family is a political dynasty associated mainly with Birmingham, England. Several of its members have been Lord Mayor of England's second city. The family were prominent Unitarians, to the extent that a room in London's Essex Hall, the headquarters building of the British Unitarians, was named after them. They worshipped at the Church of the Messiah, where they mingled with other dynastic families of that denomination, such as the Kenricks and the Chamberlains, with much intermarriage occurring between them. Several of the Martineaus are buried in Key Hill Cemetery, either in the family grave or separately.

The Martineaus came from a Huguenot immigrant background, and were noted in the medical, intellectual and business fields. The founder, Gaston Martineau, was a surgeon in Dieppe, and moved to Norwich after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes of 1685. They were initially Calvinist dissenters, who brought their children up as bilingual in French and English.

Gaston's grandson David Martineau II (1726–1768) was the third generation of surgeons, and had five sons who made up the male line of Martineaus. By the fourth generation the family was divided into Anglicans and Unitarians.

The eldest of the five sons was Philip Meadows Martineau (1752–1829). A surgeon, Martineau was "one of the most distinguished lithotomists of his day". Apprenticed to the surgeon William Donne, who was noted for skill in lithotomy, he became a medical student at a number of universities, then returned in 1777 to become Donne's partner, and carried on his speciality. Henry Southey was his student. He had one daughter. In 1793 he purchased the Bracondale Woods on the outskirts of Norwich and in 1811 the adjacent property of Carrow Abbey He built Bracondale Hall, described in 1847 as a "handsome mansion with pleasure grounds delightfully laid out". From the ruins of Carrow Abbey, Martineau also constructed on his estate a "small gothic priory with windows of ancient stained glass". By 1879, this estate had been sold.

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