The Keel Dynasty 1675 - 1780
Samuel Keel’s window, Eythin Hall 2020
The Keels are my favourite residents of the Hall.
Samuel (my namesake though not why I like him) arrived on Eythin in 1675. Geoffrey Calder, the second Lord had left no heir, but Samuel Keel arrived with a good likeness of his father and the paperwork to support his claim. It seems from records that there was little appetite to dispute his claim in any case.
He was the first Lord to take genuine interest in the island. He made friends of the fisherman and the priest, and commissioned the renovation of the Lighthouse, overseeing it’s recommission and taking over from the mainland the responsibility of its care.
A scholar, he was deeply interested in the occult and esoterica of the west country and was by his own claim a practitioner of some skill in ‘practical magic’.
In 1732, when Keel was in his 70s, a coach arrived late in the evening, bringing a passenger from a boat nobody on the island recalled landing. Keel met the driver and carriage himself and ushered a cloaked figure inside and straight to the top floor where he had furnished quarters. He declared himself married the next day. If anybody felt alarmed at events there is no record of it, Eythonians were, I’m told, nothing if not practical and the arrival of an unseen mistress changed little in the day to day of the house.
I assume at least some eyebrows were raised when a baby was heard crying some weeks later. Vivian Keel was born at dawn, on the 3rd of January 1723. Her mother vanished soon after.
Samuel Keel died on his daughters tenth birthday, and she inherited the island.
Vivian was a precocious child, talented in a way her father wasn’t. Technology and science interested her, and she spent her life trying to combine her passion with those of her father. She installed the lights that illuminate the Hall to this day. She married an engineer, William Read, in 1741 and her daughter, Colenso, was born soon after.
Things went downhill from there.
I’ll post some more about the lords soon, if you want to request information about the island or specific aspects of it, please let me know on Instagram, or on the contact page of the site.
Keel and his Daughter and Granddaughter