Valentine Orde

Thank you to Heaton History Group for allowing us to share this incredible information. Permission given by Chris Jackson.

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Valentine Evelyn Orde born on on 14 February 1889, hence her first name!

The daughter of Lieutenant Colonel William Orde and Winifred Mary Jones.

She had three older brothers, Charles William, who would become a diplomat and county councillor; John Barwick and Percy Lancelot; plus an older sister, Violet Isabel, and later, another sister, one year Valentine’s junior, Hyacinth Eleanor. 

The Orde family were descended from Simon de Ord, who came to England at the time of William the Conquerer and, in the eighteenth century, Nunnykirk Hall, Northumberland became the family seat. At the time of Valentine’s birth, her family were living in Grindon Farmhouse near Norham on Tweed but by the time of the 1901 census, they had moved to the family’s 43 roomed seat near Netherwitton. William, Winifred, 22 year old Valentine and her older sister, Violet, were in residence along with eight servants.

Few of Valentine Orde’s neighbours on Boundary Gardens in High Heaton knew much about the ‘retired’ music teacher’s past – until they watched the ‘colourful and moving portrait’ made by Tyne Tees when she was 92 years old. And even then, much about her long life and distinguished career remained untold.

Music

The Ordes were a musical family and, aged 10, having already being taught the piano by a governess, Valentine began cello lessons. She was clearly gifted and so, aged 15, she left the family home, along with a governess chaperone, to study at the Royal Academy of Music and then went on to study abroad under the tutelage of well known cellists of the time. But she still spent many vacations at home in Northumberland.

The first record we have found of Valentine performing date from 1905, when she would have been 16 years old. The Orde family, as the Nunnykirk Quartet, put on a concert for the Hartburn Habitation of the Primrose League, in Netherwitton Schoolroom. Her father was a member of the league.

A 1907 report in ‘The Era’ of a Royal Academy of Music concert mentions Valentine’s accomplished cello playing twice. 

War

After the outbreak of World War 1, a ‘Grand Patriotic Concert’ was held at Morpeth Masonic Hall in aid of Queen Mary’s soldier’s fund. Among the many artists was Valentine playing solo cello. 

Sadly, in 1917, Valentine’s brother, John was killed in action and this must have motivated her to join actress Lena Ashwell’s YMCA Concert Parties, the first large-scale entertainment organised for troops at the front.

(Incidentally, Lena was born on board HMS Wellesley at North Shields, while her father was its commander). Valentine travelled to France a number of times, recounting how in the winter it was difficult to play the cello with ‘frozen’ fingers. 

After the war, Valentine became a professional musician. Between 1921 and 1924, she was a member of the London Wayfarers Quartet, the aim of which was to take classical music to a wider public by touring and performing at village halls and schools throughout England. During the 1920s and 30s, while based in London lodgings, she could often be heard on the radio and seen at venues throughout the country.

And, in 1924-5, she helped fellow cellist, John Barbirolli set up the chamber orchestra that was to bear his name. Soon after, incidentally, in September 1926, he made his debut as a conductor – in Newcastle.

Safety

But the world was at war again from 1939 and Valentine returned to the comparative safety of Northumberland. In the 1939 Register (an emergency census taken at the beginning of the war), she was living at Mitford Hall.

She soon became fully involved in the musical life of the north-east, co-founding the Wansbeck String Players along with Mrs Osbaldeston-Mitford, secretary of the Newcastle Symphony Orchestra.

Valentine was the conductor of the new (to begin with all female) ensemble, which performed in order to raise money for ‘worthy causes’. Mrs Mitford played cello and the other players in 1940 were Lady Joicey and ‘Mrs  Sample of Bothal’. Their debut concert was in aid of ‘moral welfare work in Morpeth and Ashington districts.’

There are many records of its playing well-attended concerts before appreciative audiences throughout Northumberland eg at Hexham Abbey, Rothbury’s County Hotel and Durant Hall and the King’s Hall, Newcastle.

Valentine was also by now very well-known and respected as a teacher of the cello. The ‘Independent’’s 1997 obituary of Antonia Butler who had gone on to have a distinguished career, playing, for example, at the Proms and with many of the well-known instrumentalists of her day, credits Valentine Orde with being her first cello teacher from the age of ten.

Before the end of the war, Valentine began living at Bothal Castle with William Sample and his wife Anna Hilda, who was (as already mentioned) a member of the Wansbeck String Players.  In the 1939 Register, William was described as a ‘land agent’ and their daughter a ‘chicken farmer’.  Hilda, as she was known, was said to be an accomplished cellist and Valentine her ‘musical companion’. When William died in 1950, Valentine continued to live with Hilda at the castle.

Death:

Valentie died on 9 Dec 1983 of 11 Boundry Gardens, Heaton.

Orde, Valentine Evelyn of 11 Boundry Gardens High Heaton Newcastle Upon Tyne died 9 December 1983 probate Newcastle Upon Tyne 16 April £92353. 8452002858C