A Sunday school that began at Ashbury
c.1827–1914
Ashbury House at Waimataitai
Anglican Sunday school
Frances Anne Fendall came to Canterbury with her father, the Reverend Henry Fendall, aboard the Rose of Sharon in 1853.
Before marrying, she reportedly kept house for her father and brothers. She married Captain Belfield Woollcombe in 1861 and moved to Ashbury, the family property overlooking Waimātaitai Lagoon in Timaru. (natlib.govt.nz) (woollcombe.co.uk)
Frances and Belfield raised their family at Ashbury. Their children included Laura Russell Woollcombe, who later became a professional nurse, and Jaquette Mary Woollcombe, who moved to Waimate after marriage.
A Woollcombe family history records that Frances began a Sunday school in her own home with eleven children. It says the class later developed into the Waimataitai Sunday School and that her daughters Katherine and Frances helped teach there. (woollcombe.co.uk)
If confirmed through parish records, this would make Frances’s home an important early site of local education. Sunday schools taught scripture, but they could also provide reading, writing and organised instruction in communities where formal schooling was limited.
The story should not be presented as Frances working alone. Contemporary advertisements show that the Ashbury household employed cooks and general servants. These women contributed to the food, cleaning, laundry and other work that allowed a large household to function and may have made room for activities such as the Sunday school. Their names have not yet been recovered. (paperspast.natlib.govt.nz) (paperspast.natlib.govt.nz)
Frances also maintained correspondence with her daughter Laura while Laura was nursing in South Africa. In 1900, the Timaru Herald published extracts from a letter Laura had sent to her mother describing work aboard a hospital train. Frances therefore helped preserve and circulate one of the few first-person records of a Timaru woman serving as a military nurse. (paperspast.natlib.govt.nz)
Frances died in 1914, in her eighty-seventh year. (natlib.govt.nz)
Her contribution is best understood through the home as a place of community activity. At Ashbury, family life, paid domestic work, religious teaching and correspondence intersected. Frances’s story helps reveal how women’s homes could become early spaces of education and connection.
Read the WuHoo stories:
The Cuddy, the Women and the Gifted Rose
The Woollcombe Family and Their Connection to Ashbury Park
Sources
National Library: Frances Anne Woollcombe
Supports her marriage, Timaru connection, family identity and death in 1914. (natlib.govt.nz)
Woollcombe Family Archive: Frances Fendall
Supports her migration, household work before marriage and the reported Sunday school at Ashbury. This is a family source and requires comparison with parish records. (woollcombe.co.uk)
Timaru Herald, 6 January 1900: Nursing in a Hospital Train
Confirms that Frances received and shared Laura Woollcombe’s wartime nursing letter. (paperspast.natlib.govt.nz)