Charles Sutton Campbell was born in Edmonton,
London, in 1805. He was a partner in a merchant business which ran plantations
in Jamaica, but he hated the slavery system and moved to El Puerto de Santa María
to try the Sherry trade instead where he set up in business as a wine producer and wholesaler with
a partner, Mr. BR Hodges under the name Campbell & Hodges. The partnership
was dissolved in 1843 and he traded thenceforth and successfully as Campbell & Co.
In 1834 he married María Luisa Walsh Lynch in El Puerto and
she bore him five children but died only nine years later, aged only 40. Campbell
bought three small sloping parcels of vineyard from Juana Lynch, Francisco Martínez
and María-Dolores Vaca in the Pago Balbaina near El Puerto between 1844 and
1850. He then unified them along with the casa de viña under the name of his
late wife. Here the wine was made for subsequent transportation to the bodega.
This was a smart edifice in the Campo de Guia
area of the city with 2,500 square metres. It had five aisles and a patio with
a well where the coopers worked. Behind the building was a pretty orchard
called Santa Susana, with a little house, a well and a pond. It is still
standing and situated at the corner of Calle Valdés and Calle San Bartolomé.
Campbell was British Vice Consul in El Puerto between
1834 and 1883 and lived in a lovely house in the Calle Larga. Queen Isabel II and her cortege would visit the house in 1862. In 1849 at
Woolwich, Campbell married Margaret Murray, fifteen years his junior, with whom he had six more children, however on his death it would be his son by his
first marriage, Juan Campbell Walsh (b 1840), who would take over the business. The business was presumably sold to Osborne, but the bodega has lain empty in recent years. Plans were lodged at the Ayuntamiento to develop the site into a commercial complex, but so far nothing has happened.
Although Campbell had married the Catholic María
Luisa in a Catholic ceremony, he was actually a protestant, and as he grew
older he decided to establish a British (protestant) cemetery and bought land
from El Puerto council at Palmar de la Victoria. It was a walled area with
trees and gardens, and here Campbell was laid to rest in 1885. But over time,
and as the British community in El Puerto shrank, it fell into disrepair and is
now the site of a shopping mall.
No comments:
Post a Comment