Joseph King (Liverpool, 31 March 1860-25 August 1943) was the eldest son of Joseph King and his wife Phoebe (née Powell). King played a key role in the Peasant Arts movement in Haslemere, a number of the items produced are in the Victoria and Albert Museum. He was the financier, provider of buildings and promoter of the cause through the Peasant Arts museum and the support of his wife, Maude Egerton King’s, role in the movement.
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Phoebe’s younger sister Louisa married George MacDonald, making Greville MacDonald, another key figure in the Haslemere Peasant Arts movement, and Joseph King cousins. King’s father was a surgeon and his grandfather was a co-founder of the Liverpool Stock Exchange. Joseph’s brother, John Godwin King, created the Priest House museum in West Hoathly.
The family are described as ‘non-conformist stock’, Joseph went to Trinity College Oxford were he was active in founding the non-conformist union that aimed to bring free churchmen together. After graduating he entered into the Temple with the intention of studying for the Bar. But he continued his theological studies studying at the University of Geissen in Germany in the summer of 1885. For family reasons Joseph returned to the UK and completed his legal training.[1] Interestingly both King and Godfrey Blount, another key figure in the Peasant Arts movement had considered becoming non-conformist ministers, but instead had decided upon more orthodox career paths.
By 1885, King was engaged to Maude Egerton Hine who were both living in Hampstead. Greville MacDonald first met Maude that year when he sat beside her at a dinner party and discovered that she was engaged to his cousin, Joseph King, who was at the time a young barrister.[2] In 1887, Joseph and Maude married. The Kings moved to Lower Birtley, Witley, near Haslemere in 1894. In 1895 Maude’s brother, William Egerton Hine painted a pencil and watercolour picture ‘A House at Lower Bertly, Witley’ [3] which doubtless was painted whilst visiting the Kings.
By 1892, King was drawn into politics, unsuccessfully standing as a Liberal Party candidate for the New Forest constituency. In 1894, shortly after moving to Haslemere, King served on Surrey County Council, eventually losing his seat six years later. His parliamentary career continued unsuccessfully, losing two elections in 1904 and 1906, until in 1910 he was finally elected MP for North Somerset in the landslide Liberal victory that year, holding the seat until 1918. Like his friend, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, of nearby Shulbrede Priory, King defected to the Labour Party.
MacDonald described King as “keenly appreciating genius, though his inclinations embraced rather politics and non-conforming orthodoxies, gave her (Maude Egerton King) every opportunity for her hopes in spinning-wheel and loom”.[2] King owned the land on Kings Road, Haslemere, that was then called Foundry Meadow, and it was here that the Peasant Arts buildings were erected, with the architect Francis Troup designing them. Around 1902, Francis Troup completed a large arts and crafts country house called Sandhouse, in Witley, where the Kings lived until 1922 when they moved to Hill Farm, Camelsdale, near Haslemere until Maude’s death in 1927.
King donated Foundry Meadow to the Peasant Art Guild in 1914. This was the land where the weaving houses and workshops were. It also housed the Peasant Arts museum from 1912. On several afternoons, King took groups of children in the Peasant Art Galleries, in order to stimulate their interest in folk history and the appreciation of art and handicraft. During the development of the Haslemere Educational Museum Joseph King spoke to the Museum committee on the peasant arts collections and supervised the move from the King’s road site to the museum in 1926. The Guild offered the collection to the Museum committee as a free gift together with a building fund of £500 which King matched using his own private funds. The Guild furnished, fitted and decorated two rooms to house the collection and King authored a handbook describing the collection. He was appointed Honorary Curator of the collection until his death in 1943.[4]
In 1928, a year after Maude’s death, King married Helena Gertrude Martins and went to live in Brownholme, Tilford. Helena was the Honorary Secretary and Treasurer of the Dolmetsch Foundation. An advertisement for a Dolmetsch early music concert and reception in 1951 states that tickets are ‘obtainable only from Mrs Joseph King, Brownholm, Tilford’.[5] It has been asserted that King's "greatest contribution may well have been his influence in persuading Arnold Dolmetsch to settle in the Grayswood Road in 1917, and introduce the community to the delights of early music".[6]