CovSoc member, Peter James, tells us about one of Coventry’s most famous actresses. Peter writes……
Benjamin Terry and his wife Sarah Ballard were actors. In 1847 they were performing in Coventry while living in Market Street. On 27th February that year their daughter Ellen Terry was born. On a visit to Coventry in 1898 Ellen was amused to find two different properties claiming to be her birthplace.
Ellen spent her childhood touring with the family and they lived in lodgings wherever her parents were performing. She had no formal education but by the age of nine was awarded a part in “A Midsummer Nights Dream” earning her fifteen shillings a week.
From 1856 to 1859 she appeared in a number of productions by Charles Kean. After a time at the Theatre Royal in Bristol she joined the Haymarket Theatre in London in 1863. Her marriage in 1864 to the painter George Frederick Watts was a disaster with them spending less than a year together. 1868 saw Ellen going to live with Edward Godwin. After seven years and two illegitimate children with him she returned to the stage in 1875 playing Portia in “Merchant of Venice” to much acclaim.
Charles Wardell an actor married her in 1877 after she’d divorced her first husband George Watts. Unfortunately this union didn’t last long either.
An association with Henry Irving and his company began in 1878 and lasted until 1902. During this time she was considered to be the leading Shakespearean actress in this country.
Illness robbed Ellen of the chance to perform at the Opera House in Coventry in 1904, but her daughter Edith was able to act in her place. It was not too long before she returned to Coventry in 1906 and laid the foundation stone of the Empire Theatre. Afterwards she was entertained at a civic reception and luncheon at St. Mary’s Guildhall . Two years later Ellen came back to Coventry and this time performed at the Empire Theatre.
In 1899 Smallhythe Place in Smallhythe Kent became her home. It was a half -timbered cottage built in either the late 15th or early 16th century which she lived in for the rest of her life.
Her third marriage in 1907 was to James Carew an actor and lasted just two years, however it appears that they stayed friends for the rest of their lives.
From 1909 Ellen spent some years touring the USA giving recitals. These were repeated in England in 1911 before she set off on a world tour in 1914. This was ill fated as the First World War intervened with her finally arriving back in England in 1915. Between 1916 and 1921 she appeared in five films while continuing to giving lectures in England and in the USA.
Her last stage performance was in 1919 in Romeo and Juliet at the Lyric Theatre in London. George V made Ellen a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in 1925 and three years later in 1928 she died at her home in Smallhythe.
Edith Craig was left Smallhythe Place in her mother’s will. She soon established the Ellen Terry Memorial Museum at the property. Eventually in 1939 Edith gifted the house to the National Trust. There is a sitting room containing mementos from Ellen’s life and a dining room with private and social items. One of the two bedrooms has been converted into a display area focussing on her time spent at the Lyceum Theatre. Another room was converted into a library in 1968 and holds around 3000 books.
