‘Old Farqy’ loved to party!

 

James John Farquharson of Langton Long was a man who loved to party and also  quite liked a drink.

Nicknamed ‘Old Farqy’, he was the Commanding Officer of the Blandford Troop of the Dorset Yeomanry. They had been recruited in 1831 to put down the prospect of the locals rioting in the town. The Troop exercised on Blandford Race Down.

‘Old Farqy’ was a splendid sight in his uniform of a scarlet jacket with blue facings and trimmings of silver lace. There was a regulation cap with red and white plumage and trousers with red stripes at the side and a red and yellow girdle. Troop membership required the attendance at an Annual Troop Muster for six days but there was the privilege of exemption from hair powder and horse taxes.

When the Blandford Troop of the Dorset Yeomanry was stood down in 1841, it became the excuse for a Grand Dinner in the town’s Crown Hotel. ‘The Dinner was served up with a sumptuous, profusion and elegance.’ Toasts drunk at the end of the meal were too numerous to mention. They included ‘the Queen’, ‘Prince Albert & the Princess Royal’, ‘the Queen Dowager & the Rest of the Royal Family’, ‘the Navy’, ‘the Army’, ‘the Bishop & the Clergy’, ‘the Lord Lieutenant of the County’, ‘the Parliamentary Members of the County’, etc. etc.

James John Farquharson was presented with a three quarter length portrait of himself painted by Robert Say. ‘The bells from the Church tower sent forth merry peels during the Dinner and throughout the evening.’

With the amount of alcohol consumed that evening, it was no surprise when those present burst out into song.

‘O! House of Langton, open wide,

Your lofty doors on every side.

Receive this picture in your Dome,

Give it repose and rightful home.

The Founder’s son in length and race, 

May on your walls his brothers trace.’

Eventful though this was it did not quite match ‘Young Farqy’s’ twenty first birthday celebrations back in 1805. These included two family inscribed, giant, transparent Chinese balloons, a seventeen gallon vessel containing punch for his servants, a supper to which 300 sat down to include ices and French wines, and dancing until five in the morning. Celebrations continued with an elaborate breakfast followed  by a display of Chinese fireworks in the evening for the amusement of 1,000 people. The entertainments lasted four days which ‘for variety, elegance and duration have no precedence in the County.’ Blankets  were distributed to poor families and shoes to the men, women and children of Langton. 

Langton House had a lovely setting overlooking a bend in the a River Stour with fine trees surrounding it but now is only a memory.

(Source: Meynall of the West [1936] by A Henry Higinson.)